Wired Magazine Article "Gone"

I thought that the article we read this weekend was extremely interesting. It is crazy to think about how difficult it is to disappear in todays current society. The author of the article was extremely experienced and knowledgeable about how it would e best to not get "caught". The hunters were also very good at looking after him and using great technology and resources to find James Gatz. When some one goes by the name of James Gatz and completely changes their identity and living arrangements, it is very difficult to find some one. However Evan Ratliff did a great job in not leaving any traces of his whereabouts and went "gone" quite well.

The article also gave many different point of views. A lot of people were searching for Evan Ratliff and first hand accounts were given of the hunters and the ways they went about finding Ratliff. This story was a lot like "Into the Wild" because Ratliff just goes away like Chris McCandless. NO one knows where he went or what his plans were they both just independently went on and lived their lives the way they wanted to.

This article also left me with a lot of questions. I wonder if Ratliff traveled around more, whether that would have an impact on him being found or not. I also wonder if truly no one knew about his whereabouts and if he was the only one aware of where he was. I feel that disappearing in the United States in this day and age would be a very difficult thing to do. I feel that people can disappear at first but eventually every one will be found.

IR Blog Post 3- Grownups need to get over dread of big-screen 'Yogi Bear'

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/40477300/ns/today-entertainment/

This article was all about how parents will be dreading to take their kids to the new animated film of the season "Yogi Bear". Apparently there have been many status updates and tweets about how the movie will be terrible and a repeat of Alvin and The Chipmunks. I actually do not see why these parents are so upset. I watched the trailer and I do not think that it will be as bad as every one thinks. It looks comical and I don't think it will be a complete bust. When there are movies with both animations and real actors it usually does not work out well but I believe that this will be funny and a good movie to watch with the family over the holidays.

IR Blog Post 3- Warming temps in South

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/12/16/winter.weather/index.html?hpt=T2

For this week my current event was all about the odd weather that has been happening all over our country. There is snow falling and expected in places such as Indiana, Ohio, North Carolina, and Tennessee. This is actually unfortunate because areas like this are not accustomed this weather. There have been many accounts where people state they were losing control and sliding in the snow. There have been few accounts of power outages due to this absurd weather except several flights were cancelled due to the snow. I do not know how these areas will deal with more snow because they certainly do not have many snow plows in the area and most residents of the Southern states are not used to having snow.

IR Blog Post 3- HARVEY DUNN

For this independent blog post I decided to do my art topic on Harvey Dunn. His art instantly caught my attention. I noticed that it looked very realistic and his paintings were incredible. A common theme among his work was the setting. I lot of the paintings seemed to be painted representing desolate areas. I lot of the paintings were of different scenes in open fields. This is most likely because Harvey Dunn grew up as a prairie farmer.

Another key theme of his art was also war. There were no war scenes but the viewer can depict from the paintings that the setting was during a war time period. I wonder which wars these paintings represented and who and where they were. Harvey Dunn traveled a lot and had different occupations such as being a teacher. I think he was a very skilled artist and I hope to look at some more of his artwork.

Theme #3 Reflection

1. I did not do terrribly with this theme but I cerainly could have done better. I do not think I am bad at poems but I definitely have stronger areas in my writing. I felt a little lost while I was writing this and I feel like I did not really know what I was supposed to do or what the main objective was. I think I wrote the poem well but didn't really do the portray or describe the point I was trying to get across.

2. My tone could have been better and so could my imagery. I should have used more descriptive language and explained my points more thoroughly.

3. I should pay more attention to the FCAs and be sure to nderstand the complete purpose of the poem.

IR Blog Post 2- Is it time to call the Xbox Kinect a hit?

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/gaming.gadgets/11/30/kinect.hit.mashable/index.html?iref=allsearch

The recently released Kinect that came out for Xbox last month has already sold over 2.5 million units. It seems to be a great hit from Microsoft and will most likely be very successful throughout the holiday season. Sales are predicted to be over 5 million units by the time the holiday season. Kinect is a new addition to Xbox 360 to enhance the gaming experience with physical motion. When the Wii for Nintendo came out it was very popular because gamers could physically move the bodies along with the game which was very new for people. Next PS3 came out with Playstation Move which was the same concept. Now XBox has Kinect and is competing very well against the other two game systems. I am personally excited to see how Kinect works and I may be interested to use one in the future. I wonder if this article is accurate and Kinect will reach 5 million sales during the holiday season. We will have to wait and see.

IR Blog Post 2- Ear relief: Congress acts to stifle loud TV ads

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40481562/ns/business-us_business/

For this weeks current event I decided to do an article on loud commercials. I know from a personal stand point I become very upset when i am watching TV and a commercial comes on and it even hurts my ears because it is so loud. Recently on Thursday a bill was passed that would prevent advertisers from raising the volume to catch the attention of the audience. The sponsor of the bill, Anna Eshoo, D, from California said she was fed up with so many "earsplitting experiences" that she knew she should act on this bill. The bill is currently on its way to President Obama for his signature. Unfortunately processes like these take awhile so if he does decide to sign it, it won't be until about a year later that these new policies come into affect. I was happy to read this article because the only thing I dislike more than commercials are loud commercials.

IR Blog Post 2- Art That Outclasses Its Subject Matter

For this weeks art related independent reading I decided to go through a bunch of comics. The article states that all though comics such as ones found in MAD magazine may seem "unintelligible" or not worthy of TV, there a many hidden messages. Comics can have a lot of meaning behind them even if they do not appear to have any point of message that they are trying to get across. A MAD magazine artist named Mort Drucker drew many famous comics such as Popeye but was also assigned to draw and write other comics to well represent American culture. Drucker puts a lot of detail in his comics and really tries to bring the drawings and dialogue of the characters to life. I wonder what exactly it was that made Popeye so popular. I think it is because he takes a sailing character to the extreme and back then, many people found this rough and tough sailing man amusing.