Cleaning the jars and the cumbers.
Cutting the cumbers.
Cooking the dill pickle spices.
The finished product!
Friday, July 22, 2011
Pickling
Cleaning the jars and the cumbers.
Cutting the cumbers.
Cooking the dill pickle spices.
The finished product!
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Strawberry Jam
I made strawberry jam for the first time.
We picked our own berries.
All crushed and ready to be cooked.
The finished product.
It tastes yummy too!
We picked our own berries.
All crushed and ready to be cooked.
The finished product.
It tastes yummy too!
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Everything Bad Is Good For You
I read and reviewed Everything Bad Is Good For You by Steven Johnson. I then thought that it would be fun to use Xtranormal to create my review. I have posted it on Twitter and Facebook as well. Enjoy!
Transcript:
In Everything Bad is Good for You, Johnson attempts to de-bunk the popular narrative that the culture industry is making us stupider, by feeding us more and more dull television shows, video games, and movies. Johnson suggests that the Sleeper Curve in popular culture is actually making texts more complicated over time. Many video games, television shows, Internet sites, and movies are making us smarter by challenging out mental faculties. Because of this we have to make more intellectual and social connections. The texts of video games, television shows, movies and internet sites leave out information that we have to figure out on our own. We also have to figure out the rules of the video games because they aren't told to us explicitly; this in turn gives us delayed gratification. IQ tests scores have been improving over the last few decades, and while it's problematic to compare IQ tests across cultures, races, and locations. It's not as problematic to compare them across generations.
Differences between the generations don't pose the same problems that differences within generations do (page 142). The gene pool has not changed in a generation yet the IQ scores have gone up. Johnson believes that some environmental factors are responsible for this. "The question that Johnson is asking is: What is the reigning technological paradigm - combined with both market and public-sector forces - doing to our minds (page 205)?” Johnson believes that we are living through a period when the combination of digital-age network technologies, public sector investment (the creation of the internet itself), and market-driven incentives (the "most repeatable programming" notion) have come together to create an upward trend in the complexity of the culture (page 205).
In conclusion, Johnson states that all around us the world of mass entertainment grows more demanding and sophisticated, and our brains happily gravitate to that new found complexity. Dumbing down is not the natural state of popular culture over time. Johnson says, that where pure problem-solving is concerned: we are getting smarter (page 144).
Transcript:
In Everything Bad is Good for You, Johnson attempts to de-bunk the popular narrative that the culture industry is making us stupider, by feeding us more and more dull television shows, video games, and movies. Johnson suggests that the Sleeper Curve in popular culture is actually making texts more complicated over time. Many video games, television shows, Internet sites, and movies are making us smarter by challenging out mental faculties. Because of this we have to make more intellectual and social connections. The texts of video games, television shows, movies and internet sites leave out information that we have to figure out on our own. We also have to figure out the rules of the video games because they aren't told to us explicitly; this in turn gives us delayed gratification. IQ tests scores have been improving over the last few decades, and while it's problematic to compare IQ tests across cultures, races, and locations. It's not as problematic to compare them across generations.
Differences between the generations don't pose the same problems that differences within generations do (page 142). The gene pool has not changed in a generation yet the IQ scores have gone up. Johnson believes that some environmental factors are responsible for this. "The question that Johnson is asking is: What is the reigning technological paradigm - combined with both market and public-sector forces - doing to our minds (page 205)?” Johnson believes that we are living through a period when the combination of digital-age network technologies, public sector investment (the creation of the internet itself), and market-driven incentives (the "most repeatable programming" notion) have come together to create an upward trend in the complexity of the culture (page 205).
In conclusion, Johnson states that all around us the world of mass entertainment grows more demanding and sophisticated, and our brains happily gravitate to that new found complexity. Dumbing down is not the natural state of popular culture over time. Johnson says, that where pure problem-solving is concerned: we are getting smarter (page 144).
Friday, June 3, 2011
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Saturday, February 5, 2011
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