Religion

I don't have a problem with religion but I don't think it's right to try to shove your beliefs down everyone's throats. Personally I do believe in God but I don't really follow any religious group. I just feel like there is some sort of creator. But I don't follow any of that stuff that really religious types follow such as hating gay people. I have some gay friends and they are the nicest sweetest people ever. They're not evil. You can't help who you fall in love with you know what I mean? This is just my beliefs but I know everyone does bad things but that doesn't make them bad people which I think some Christian types don't really get. I think the truly good people are the ones who live with love in their hearts. Like I said before I don't really follow any religious group, I just have my own thoughts about religion and all that. I also don't think it's right for an atheist to shove their thoughts down your throat. I had to go to the 6:00 series this semester for bonus for my psychology class and the speaker was an atheist guy. At first he would be civil to really Christian people then all of a sudden he changed his story and the end of his presentation was him bashing Christians and saying what they believe is wrong and stupid. I just thought that was hypocritical of him. If you're gonna believe in God, fine, and if you're not going to, that's fine too. I think you should just follow what's in your own heart and mind.

A Plague of Tics

I read the story A Plague of Tics in our coursepack. It's about this kid who has these weird problems where he has to press his nose against objects, and he likes to roll his eyes around and rock in his bed. I've never even heard of people doing this sort of stuff haha. I think it's kind of weird. I thought the story was kind of weird and random. I think everybody has their weird obsessive compulsive quirks but I think this kids were really over the top. I'm kind of wondering if he was masochistic haha because in one part he was in the car with his dad and his dad pressed really hard on the break and the boy's head shot out and hit the windshield. It hurt him obviously and he was bleeding but he liked. it. What the heck?? Hahaha. Although this story was weird and I really don't know what to make out of it I thought it was an entertaining read.

5th Blog Post

The specific question I'm proposing to answer for my research paper about Black Swan is if there is one true meaning/moral to the story. The film has many different visual effects I guess you would say where you can't tell if things are just hallucinations by the main character Nina. Also it's hard to determine whether things are real or not. A sentence that works for my thesis statement is Black Swan is a film that can be determined any way you want it to. Here's my overview about what I already know about the issue: I really don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen the movie but basically the story line is there's a ballerina named Nina and she's picked for the role of the Swan Queen in the new revival of Swan Lake. For her part she has to play both the Swan Queen and the evil twin the Black Swan. Her personality fits the Swan Queen perfectly (she's quiet, innocent, and is a perfectionist) but the main dilemma of the movie is her struggle to also become the Black Swan which is the complete opposite of herself. Nina's mind becomes obsessed with her trying to perfect the role and she begins thinking another ballerina Lily is trying to steal her part because of how easyily she can dance the role of the Black Swan. Again I don't want to give away spoilers but Nina goes through a lot of delusions where she sees weird things but it's unclear about what really happened. And in the end of the film something tragic happens (I don't want to say!) but does what really happen *really* happen? Also what is the moral of the story? Is it about the struggle for quiet people to come out of their shell? Is it the stress put on ballet dancers by their directors? Or is it something weirder such as occult symbolism? I want to show readers all of the cool things that could be interpreted from this movie because it's such a weird movie but it's so good. I also want to show readers a history of the ballet Swan Lake that the film was based on and show the role of the White and Black swans from that ballet. What I still need to find for this is I need to find sources that support my claims about the shy people coming out of their shell or if Black Swan's purpose is to attack the ballet world's pressures on their dancers. There might be some internet articles on that but I need to look. Those are just 2 theories I came up with after I saw the film. Some arguments I plan to make are for the first claim 1. Although Nina breaks free from that quiet girl in the end of the film, it ultimately causes her demise. 2. For the ballet world being too harsh, any profession can be stressful on people (musician for example, or jobs in business and teaching, etc), so it's purpose isn't to attack that career field. 3. An argue for the occult symbolism is that people are just making this stuff up just to get attention because there are a lot of people on the internet who make up stupid stories. Here are the sources I've looked at so far for my topic but I can always find some more to help me:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Movies/black-swan-psychiatrists-diagnose-natalie-portmans-portrayal-psychosis/story?id=12436873
http://www.oddfilms.com/blog/movie-recommendations/black-swan-movie-interpretation/
http://vigilantcitizen.com/moviesandtv/the-occult-interpretation-of-the-movie-black-swan-and-its-message-on-show-business/
http://journals.lww.com/oncology-times/blog/TurrisiTakesOnTheMovies/pages/post.aspx?PostID=4
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I also have a book about famous ballets and there's a summary on Tchaikovsy's Swan Lake. I also have a book about famous composers and it discusses Swan Lake in one part. I'm also citing the film Black Swan obviously. I need to find another scholarly article though.

Plagiarism

I really liked the article about the laugh tracks. I thought I was the only person in the world who didn't get the point of them. I remember when I was little I used to think that when there was laughter on the show it meant that it was really funny and you should laugh anyway because everyone else did. And most of the stuff on sitcoms in the past were actually funny. I didn't start to realize how stupid laugh tracks were until I watched the show on Nickelodeon Drake and Josh. I remember they would say really stupid, corny jokes and the laugh track would play and I'd sit there and think "why is that funny???" I think for old sitcoms like Three's Company the laughing in the audience is ok because nobody laughs at once. At some points of the show you can hear like a few people laughing at something funny because it appealed to them and it seemed more real because maybe those people thought something was funny when others didn't. I also agree with his comment about how we laugh a lot here in the US. I know I laugh a lot. I don't think there's anything wrong with that really. Maybe Europeans should lighten up a little haha.

Although I think laugh tracks are dumb I think they are able to change the genre of something quite quickly hahaha. I found a clip on Youtube from the movie The Shining. Everyone knows this movie is a horror film but someone took scenes from the movie and put it in a Seinfeld style show with the laugh track and that little bass interlude that plays during changes of scenes on the show hahahaha:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRtyqK4nbVU&feature=related


The movie seemed a little more funny to me after I watched this haha.

For the article about plagiarism I agree that a lot of people my age do copy a lot. I think it's because there's this notion going around that writing papers is so awful. I don't think it's that bad unless you're writing about something you don't care about. I can understand how that feels to go "ughhh I don't want to do this. I don't even care!" and you just want to copy off of people but you can't do that. I do think some plagiarism rules are a little too strict but it's not ok to take sentences word for word without giving credit.

Black Swan

I think for my research writing paper I want to do an analysis on the movie Black Swan. I think this movie will be interesting to research because in the movie there are many scenes where it's hard to tell what's really happening and what's imagined. So I'd like to take a look at that and see if we can figure out what really happened. I found some really cool internet articles that I think I might use:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Movies/black-swan-psychiatrists-diagnose-natalie-portmans-portrayal-psychosis/story?id=12436873

http://www.oddfilms.com/blog/movie-recommendations/black-swan-movie-interpretation/

http://vigilantcitizen.com/?p=6223

But I do need to be careful on what kinds of sources  I use. I was also thinking of watching the real ballet Swan Lake so I can see the original story the film is based on. I'm sure there are tons of videos out there about it and will be easy to find. The only thing I'm worried about for this paper is finding enough sources to use and making sure they're reliable. But this movie was so good and really interesting and I would really like to write about it!

Annotated Bibliography

I used the article Fostering Effective and Enjoyable Practice by Margaret Berg from the magazine The American String Teacher Associtiation. The article basically gives string teachers tips on how to get their students to develop healthy practicing methods. I used this article because I'm a violin student and a teacher. This article is useful to me for both ways. They give tips on how to teach your students how to be patient with their practicing. I learned from this article what I need to do in order to get me to practice more which is what I need to do. I can also use these techniques to help my students.

Berg, Margaret. "Foserting Effectice and Enjoyable Practice." American String Teacher Association 60.4 (2010): 30-33. Print.

About me and English prompt

Hi everyone!
My name's Annie. I'm a sophomore at IUP. I'm a violin performance major. I've been playing the violin since I was 8. I love it!! My goal in life is to become a professional violinist and play with a symphony orchestra. I love music more than anything in the world haha. I made this blog for my English class because we needed to start a blog about certain things we read.

This is my response to the article about Your Brain on Computers. I'm kind of neutral on the situation. I don't really have an opinion because I can see both sides of the argument. It's obvious that technology does a lot of things to our brains. It can help and damage us. But I don't think that everyone can become as addicted to technology as Mr. Campbell. There are probably a lot of people out there who can become addicted to it like how there are other people out there who have all kinds of addictions like alcohol, drugs, whatever. But that doesn't mean everyone will turn out like this guy where they have to constantly check their email. I think I use my computer a lot, but usually all I do is listen to music. I get on Facebook occassionally, but it's not something that I have to do or I'll be in a bad mood until I do it. I just think it all depends on the person.

One thing I didn't really understand was the whole discussion about multi tasking. Sometimes for the violin you have to do things one step at a time like playing double stops and placing your fingers at the right intervals. I struggled with that a lot because I would try to place both my fingers at the same time. But my violin teacher told me that it's actually impossible for the brain to multi task. You have to make steps in your head of what you want to do first. And for me I had to place one finger down first and then the next after. So what I didn't get was why are professional people talking about multi tasking if you actually can't to it?

I liked the article but I think they were just a little preachy kind of. I think it all just depends on who you are to get addicted to technology and have it affect you. I honestly don't think that it has made me become distracted or anything to the point where I forget things like the family in the article. This stuff doesn't happen to everyone. Also on a side note there was something that irritated me about this article. I really hate when I see little kids using cell phones/ipods or anything. I think little kids should be playing with toys. I don't think kids should be getting on Facebook or using a cell phone. They need to be outside playing or playing with their Barbie dolls or whatever. Their brains are still developing and I believe that can cause developmental problems with it. I don't think the Campbell's should have let their daughter in the 2nd grade have a laptop, a portable DVD player, and an ipod. Kids don't need to be wasting their time on that stuff.