Zoning in The Suburbs

Mr. Bolos brought up an interesting fact during Friday's discussion, that signs in the suburbs are significantly smaller and less obnoxious than they are in urban communities. My dad is the park board president for Kenilworth, so it brought to mind things he had mentioned to me about disagreements over zoning laws and housing regulations. In many cases, the conflicts arise when one family wants to expand their house in some way, and a neighboring family complains that their view would be tarnished by the expanded house. Often things as simple as cutting down trees on one's property can cause great discord among neighbors. I believe this is because of the immensely high property values in Kenilworth, and peoples' worries that another bigger house, or a lack of trees around their property would decrease the value of their house. Mr. Bolos also brought up how suburban areas have strong regulations against commercial districts near residential districts. I think there are about two businesses within Kenilworth and they are both on Green Bay road, very separated from residential areas. In my opinion i think this is a good thing. It's nice to have separate residential and commercial districts so that I can both walk home through a quiet, peaceful neighborhood and at the same time drive 10 minutes and have access to fast food and all kinds of stores. How do you feel about this separation of districts?

The Power of Diction

In class we've spent a lot of time talking about selection, secret messages, and diction. In this post I am going to examine the power of diction, as I believe the way someone chooses to present their words makes an enormous difference in how others will react. I know from personal experience that the way I tell my parents about a situation greatly impacts what reaction they will have. For example, if I make it clear through my diction that I am not much concerned about a poor test grade, my parents will assume that it was an isolated incident and future test grades will make up for it. That is a big way that diction can be used, to show others how important or unimportant something is. If the speaker shows a clear lack of interest in the subject through his/her diction, then the listener will likely believe that the subject lacks importance. However, if the person speaks with distress and great concern about something, the listener is likely to think that the topic is important to not only the speaker but themselves as well. Do you think that diction is as important and opinion-swaying as I do?

Variation in Media Sources

During this friday's class, Mr. Bolos asked us to describe news sites like yahoo and AOL by associating each one with a different flavor of ice cream. I recall someone saying that they would describe them as Vanilla, Vanilla Bean, and French Vanilla, meaning that they had slight differences but were overall very alike. This idea got me to start thinking about similarities and differences in media sources. In many cases, a news story that may appear on television, like a local event that will be occurring or a crime that has been committed, can really only be presented in one way, through telling the viewer facts about the event. In an equally large number of news stories, however, there is some sort of conflict with two sides to it, that can be broadcast in many dissimilar ways or from opposing viewpoints. In this case it is up to the media organization whether to voice both sides of the issue equally and stay essentially neutral, or to take a side and explain why it has done so. Although some news organizations have gained a reputation for having more conservative or liberal views, almost all claim to be unbiased. I guess my ultimate question is: are we cheating ourselves by trying to be completely unbiased when presenting political news, when really it is impossible?

iPhone Jailbreaking Becoming Commonplace

During Friday's class, the topic of jailbreaking apple devices came up. What I found most interesting about our short discussion about this concept was that only a few students were unfamiliar with the term "jailbreaking". The ability to jailbreak an iPhone or iPod Touch has been accessible from the very first generation of Apple iPhones, but I am sure if the same topic was brought up only a year ago to the same group of students, less than half would have recognized the term. Although I would say only a small percentage of iPhone users actually jailbreak their phones, most of them have heard of jailbreaking these days. I feel this is significant because most devices released in recent years can be "hacked" or modified in some way that gives the user access to more content than the manufacturer intended, however this concept has been largely unknown to the average consumer up until very recently. Jailbreaking has been the first widely used and recognized method of device modification. To me, this shows that consumers are more interested than ever in gaining access to every single feature that a device they purchase has. As more and more people use and support the jailbreaking concept, it will become easier to apply and better supported by independent software developers because of the greater consumer interest. Eventually, I don't find it unlikely that a completely unlocked, opened, and modifiable device will become a selling point. Manufacturers will advertise the fact that their device can run any software made by an independent or 3rd party developer and contain no locks on the device's features. I find the concept of widespread modification and unlocking very intriguing, how about you?