Vision of the Students today

I agree with the post of "A vision of students today". I do think that education has evolved and that standard classrooms and chalkboards are pointless. According to studies even with a high level of education students today are not guaranteed the experience and know how to get the job after graduation. I find class to be pointless and boring. As a future educator myself I already have in mind a more innovated form of teaching planned to actually get the students hands on experience so that not only are they more interested but also more involved. I find that actual trips, visuals and hands on get more excitement and remembrance.

Lincoln Library

I never knew there were so many in depth accounts for art. I thought art was art, you saw it displayed or performed but I did not really think that they kept records. That was actually a high point for me. I have always been interested in art via dance or drawing, ceramics, painting, sketching, etc; but you know parents don't find artist to be a suitable career so I deflected but the interest is still viable. The library brought back those old feelings and once again peaked my interest. The only down side was that I was not able to fully see everything. It was a nice experience.

The Uncanny and The Shadow

The connection between these two readings is the familiarity but yet uncomfortableness of ourselves. We all have this uncanny shadow looming over us that we try to deny. It is an outside characteristic to the kind of person we think ourselves to be so we do whatever we can to exclude it but it never really goes away. In actuality if you look at it our shadow is our true selves that we don't want to see. I know I'm uncomfortable at times in my own skin because deep down I know there is another part of me that I don't want known.

Simone

Simone was the perfect mirror image of our crazy, celebrity and beauty obsessed Hollywood world. Our now is very all technology and I fear a little too obsessed with it and how far it has gone and will continue to go until it completely takes us over. Seriously, How soon before we have our own Simone if we haven't already.
Western/American culture is blind to a pretty face. Look at the part where Viktor was trying to discredit Simone so he made her disgustingly trashy, drunk, druggie, she was vile and they still loved her. It 's like the Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan situation both changed from America's sweethearts to hard partying, out of control drunks, going through breakdowns and still we keep them on this pedestal for people to idolize.
The psychology of people who live in this culture are sick and sad. They would rather glamorize and implore this fantastical lifestyle then to acknowledge the real world. The "American Dream" has changed from substance and stability to one of superficial and monetary value. This new dream is not very practical and ideal but one that people are willing to sacrifice everything for.

Abre los ojos (open your eyes)

The theme I saw in this movie was mind over matter. This guy's perception in his belief was so strong that it transcended reality and therefore created its own idea of real. It's like that saying seeing is believing well in Caesar's case believing was seeing. He so wanted to have the dream life he could have had before the accident where he got the girl and lived happily ever after, that his desperation drove him to self pity, suicide, and psychosis. He actually paid to kill himself and then have his body frozen away and implanted with his vision of happiness. All was well until the ugly little matter of reality started to kick in. There is only so much fantasy and dreams your mind can take before it wakes you up.
The similarity I saw between this movie and the Matrix was that both title characters sensed that something was not right but were so blinded by what they deemed to make sense to them that they continued to follow along even though there were countless signs of distortion and inaccuracy. It was not until they went searching for answers that they were able to finally their eyes and face the truth.

Research topic

I am thinking of writing my research paper about how living in america our media is distorted to as in the Matrix to keep us ignorant and uninformed. We are given just enough "news" to keep us alert but never enough to keep us from the mall. My eyes are becoming focused to see beyond the materialistic fabrications to the actual "truth". The United States likes to keep it's occupants in a protective bubble for fear of hurt and danger, well as September 11 showed us the world is a dangerous place and it is time we open our eyes to the real world and equip ourselves with the knowledge to defend and protect ourselves.

What is an Alien?

A main theme that I found really interesting between The Matrix, Star Trek and Farscape was that "aliens" were of human form and characteristics and that reality is of perception.

I am not much for science fiction but I did sometimes watch the original Star Trek as a child and what made it interesting to me was that here were these aliens on a spaceship from distant planets and galaxies and many of them were very much what would be categorized as normal human beings. Not only that but every planet and galaxy they went to had there own idea of normal and what was real. There would be planets were giant gorillas like in the planet of the apes were of the dominant species talking and walking and working just like you and me; other times large, mis-shapen creatures in more futuristic and advanced civilizations than earth. It did not matter what the physical characteristics of the species were, everyone was considered normal. On the planet they stopped on there was nothing there but a door; once they walked through the door there was a whole other world on the other side. Though it was foreign to them it was very real to the people in that dimension who had no idea that they were just props created by aliens who had captured a crew from Nasa and had created this idea of human reality from a book to help ease the crew from being homesick.

In Farscape here was this "human" who got lost in space and befriends these "aliens' who are aiding him in finding his way back home to earth. In this episode he thinks that he has found his way back to earth. He finds his way to Australia where he meets up with father and colleagues and his is so happy to be back to what he knows as normal. Everything is going alright until his alien friends show up to make sure he is okay, once they show up his reality starts to slip away and he has to face the truth.

Perception played a big part in The Matrix, Neo thought that he was living in the real world come to find out that he was living in a computer generated reality designed by robots to keep humans dumb and uninformed as they used their bodies for battery.

When we think of the word alien were are supposed to be scared. The images that are portrayed are of foreign, grotesque, sluggish, scaly, power hungry, destructive and monstrous beings not of this world and therefore a threat that must be eliminated but in these three programs it showed humans can also be alien and reality is in the eye of the beholder.