A response to Peggy Orenstein's "What's Wrong with Cinderella?"

This essay was kind of interesting to read from a male's point of view. I was not able to really relate personally to anything that she said, but I tried to compare what she was saying of younger girls to that of my nine year old sister.

The one part in particular that I thought was funny had to do with little girls basically abusing thier Barbies. Orenstein says, "I recall a headline-grabbing 2005 British study that revealed that girls enjoy torturing, decapitating, and microwaving their Barbies nearly as much as they like to dress them up for dates." I thought this was a funny line because it is exactly what my little sister does to her Barbies (except for the whole micowaving thing because my parents would flip out). The closet in mybasement could be considered my little sisters Barbie Graveyard. The closet floor consists of many messed up Barbies and accessories. I have no idea how many she actually has, but I would be willing to bet money that the majority of them are disformed in some way of another.

I thought that Orenstein's Essay was sort of a stretch in what she was trying to get out of it. I am not a woman so my views are obviously different, but I believe that playing with dolls and wanting to be a princess are just parts of a little girl growing up. I don;t believe that wanting to be a princess and dressing up like them will haunt a woman for the rest of her life. I guess that I really didn't understand what Orenstein was trying to get through to me in her essay because the only thing i can really think of when i look back at her essay is: What's the point?

A response to Steven Johnson's "Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today's Pop Culture is Actually Making us Smarter"

I really did not like this essay or the way that it was written. Johnson spent more than half of his essay describing the difficulties faced in a Legend of Zelda game. He then compared the methods of solving the difficultiers to the was that we solve problems in life. Johnson uses the word telescoping to describe the way that objectives in video games work because for the majority of the time you have to complete one objective before you can move onto another one. Hence there are different layers of problems and they somewhat resemble a telescope.

I didn't like the way that Johnson wrote this mainly mainly because of the lists that he used in the piece. I think that he overused them and still didn't prove his point to me. Here is an example of one of the lists that he actually used twice in his essay:

"With the letter to the Prince, you must now befriend the Prince
To do this, you need to get to the top of Dragon Roost Mt.
To do this, you must get to the other side of the gorge.
To do this. you must fill up the gorge with water so you can swim across.
To do this, you must use a bomb to blow up the rock blocking the water.
To do this, you must make the bomb plant grow.
To do this, you must collect water in a jar that the girl gave you."

I know that some people probably liked the way that Johnson wrote this piece, but for me it was easy to lose interest. I had a hard time trying to concentrate and follow what his point was. It was probably harder for me to follow his point because he didn;t really get to the comparison of video game to human life until the second to last page of his essay. Overall Johnson could have spent a little less time describing the Zelda game and spent more time on actually getting his point through.

Wikipedia: Reliable or Not?

This is a response to the essay "The Book Stops Here" written by Daniel H. Pink.

I believe that everybody has used wikipedia at least once to check something out, or even to kill time. Wikipedia might not be the most reliable source to write a paper on, but it can be a deciding factor of a bet between a bunch of friends. I am not sure how many articles are on Wikipedia, but it sure beat the hell out of a regular encyclopedia, and the best part is that it is free.

Professors and teachers do not respect Wikipedia's reputation as a source for a paper because the articles are not thoroughly checked and re-read for errors. Plus anyone at any time could edit a particluar article and change some of the information that one used for their paper. I remember when i was in high school people would always change articles on Wikipedia. We would go to the computer lab for study hall and to just kill time we would edit Wikipedia. I would always just put my name in articles. I always put my name under the "Famous People" section in my hometown Phoenixville, Pa. I would also write funny things about my friends in certain articles. I was one of those people that helped contribute to the fact that Wikipedia is not considered a reliable source and is certainly not invited to a research paper's bibliography, but I think that is what makes Wikipedia, Wikipedia.

It is a great "encyclopedia" to use to find out a quick answer to a question, or search for such a small and a not-well known fact. Its also great because people are constantly updating it. Daniel Pink mentioned this over and over again in his essay, but I'll say it one more time. Overall I'd have to agree with almost everything that Pink has said about Wikipedia and his essay, but I think he could have left the little biography about Wales out of it.

Response to Ivey and Tepper's "Cultural Renaissance or Cultural Divide?"

I thought that this essay on popular culture was interesting because it showed how popular culture has changed since the late 19th century till present. I knew that technology has changed the way that people looked at objects and people, but I did not know that it has changed them completely. I thought the second paragraph in was the most interesting because it asks us to imagine that we live in a town in the late 1800's. Then it says that our opinion of immigrants is formed by buying things from that market and not from anything else. Ivey and Tepper also wrote that back in the day when people listened to music it had to be live music, and it was most likely local performers who were putting on the show. It a person wanted to hear the same song again, they couldn't just hit the play button on their computer again, but rather they would have to bring the whole entire band back up on stage.