March 2009 Archives

March, 2009, is a productive month for Aero Windwalker, a freshman in Seton Hill University (SHU). Even though Windwalker missed the photo editing during spring break, he dedicated 7.5 hours on photographing, photo editing and web designing for Setonian.

The following data is Windwalker's time sheet:

March 28, spent 1 hour on fixing old Setonian Online's style sheet
March 28, spent 90 minutes on photo editing
March 27, spent 30 minutes on fixing old Setonian Online's style sheet
March 27, spent 1 hour on posting photos on Setonian Online
March 27, spent 1 hour on photographing Lacrosse
March 24, spent 30 minutes on photo editing
March 24, spent 30 minutes on photographing Rehearsal
March 17, spent 30 minutes on photo editing
March 17, spent 30 minutes on photographing Bibles with Christina at Reeve Lib
March 6, spent 1 hour on interviewing Lion Club at Reeve Lib

Windwalker wrote Lions Club on the prowl for community service for issue 9. This is the first time he published an article in Setonian after the rejections of previous two submits. To this English as third language writer, Benjamin Poorbaugh, a sophomore in SHU, said, "It's surprising that Aero now can write an article that is much more readable than many others' on the paper."

Windwalker found that Setonian Online has a serious problem, when he was posting photos on Setonian Online at March 27. This problem causes the value locked at 1650px. He revised the style-sheet and realized the designer made a mistake, which he mistakenly created a container table that is not relative to the text. Windwalker then later spent almost 2 hours to rewrite the whole style-sheet and create necessary background picture. Now people can easily see that the article container in Setonian will automatically extend for the long text. Jeremy Barrick, a senior in SHU, claimed, "Aero has shown ambition towards making the Setonian Online better by learning the proper steps involved in publishing photos."

For the new Setonian Online, Windwalker post his article My Opinion of New Setonian Online Mockup on March 24. He briefly described the importance of the website and predict some difficulties in the future.

As an old photographer for Setonian, Windwalker is stilling dedicating on photo journalizing for the Setonian paper. On March, Windwalker photographed Azar Nafisi's speech, Men's Lacrosse game, and some other events. He spent about 5 hours on photo journalizing and photo editing. Madelyn M. Gillespie, a sophomore in SHU, commented, "Aero participated in the last few issues of the print Setonian by sending in several photos to be used throughout the paper. He has submitted a couple of articles for the paper and he will soon be taking over the editing of photos. I think that Aero should see what works best for him and the staff and then go from there."

The mockup for Setonian had existed for a long time. Even though it does not look fashion or fancy, the functions and concept of showing best interest about contest is great. However, with great ambition and little time, the mockup had never been established to a real style sheet.

Last week, after reviewing the mockup on EL200, I talk to Dr. Jerz about the project I planned a while ago. In this project, we would be able to use a mockup blog to do the co-authored designing. The basic concept is that everyone who is interested in programming or creating photo background would be able to modify an existed lay-out on a new accessed blog called EL200Design.

Like all the plan we had in the history, this plan does not go very well for now. Part of the reason is that the special technique this project required is hard to comprehend, and students who have the certain skilled were very busy last week. However, I personally will start contact Aja and Jessie (the boy) this weekend see what we can do in three or two hours.

About the detail designs or the fancy effect of the website, I really think it is less importance. Right now, most people would not even have time to read through the whole old style sheet, for example, me. And many others can't read the style sheet. In the limited human resource and timing concern, I believe the online project will be a extremely hard assignment for this EL200 class to accomplish.

How to fight is a question that both man and woman want to know. It's not a question of how to beat the other up, but the question about how to keep one's justice.

The movie demonstrates the true spirit of a fighter - who does not fight for win, not to compete with others, but for the common right. It does not have fancy cinematography or even a nice piece of music. However, in the artless scenes, it shows us a real world and a impressive story.

In the last thousands of years, men and women, or even the third gender, were dedicating themselves to find a balance of genders. No matter the matriarchal society or the patrilineal society did not successfully issue a solution. Today, feminists are dynamical in the last reign of males' dynasty. However, scientists and sociologists question, "Is the equilibrium of gender benefits our society?" According to new science discovery, the Bible, and some other traditional religions' perspectives, the equation between genders shall not be existed. Gender is part of who we are, but not what society put on us. The way to achieve a florescent future being human being should be build on the diversifications between genders' social statuses.

Hundreds years ago, Sigmund Freud has stated the connection between sexual impact and humanity. In the last decades, most people hiss his idea. However, the evident that sexual illusion is a part of humanity is uncountable. "Researchers used brain scans to show that when straight men looked at pictures of women in bikinis, areas of the brain that normally light up in anticipation of using tools, like spanners and screwdrivers, were activated." (Sample) This research result strikes the traditional view, which always claims that the social myth is the essential reason that is responsible to wild-spread sexualization of female images. "Sex in advertising is pornographic because it dehumanizes and objectifies people, especially women, and because it fetishizes products, imbues them with an erotic charge - which dooms us to disappointment since products never can fulfill our sexual desire or meet our emotional needs." (Colombo, 417) There intention of this statement is quite obvious - it claims that it is the advertising products help people objectify females. However, in the sexist test, "The brain scans showed that men who scored highest had very little activity in the prefrontal cortex and other brain regions that are involved with understanding another person's feeling and intention." The fact that sexists are easier to understand female as a person shows that the culture myth which cause gender separations came from those non-sexists. A mentally healthy male should see a female as an object in publications. The desires of reproduction and infestation are the source power for gender diversity. In another word, separating the social status of genders is a biological desire.

Although the forms of human culture are abundant and pluralistic in the evolution of human society and culture, the universality of female subordination is an existent fact, which not only exists in any kind of social and economic design, but also permeates in any stage of social development. This cultural character of gender difference is also vividly presented in ancient Israelite culture recounted by the Hebrew Bible. "So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him." (Bible) According to the Bible, only males are created in God's image. "And the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. . . So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, He took one of the manÕs ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib He had taken out of the man, and He brought her to the man." (Bible) The females, on the other hand, are only created from a part of males. Apparently, the Bible clearly indicated the social status for genders - the females are complements for males. However, it does not mean that the status of female is lower. The story of female hero Judith, who killed Holofernes in Bethulia (Beth Aloa - means God's land), is the representative of the intelligence and courage of femininity. In fact, if the Bible is read wisely; the interpretation will show us how genders stay in each position, and play brilliant co-operations to develop the society.

There are never lacks of attempts of breaking down the different between genders. In the Maya culture, Nakbe and ElMirador, as the center of the civilization, had popular third gender culture. "The third gender culture even becomes the main stream of the society in the end of this civilization. Mayapan, Uxmal, and ChichenItza were led by eunuchs." (Fei) In Ancient China, Ancient India, and many other ancient culture, eunuchs and homosexual are wildly accepted by these societies. The reason is that within the development of social conscious, part of the society members does not agree with the biologic gender they were born to. While the metal desire were stronger than the biological demand, the free will from inside will determine the modification of gender position within the social status. The third gender is another approach of the same goal for the feminists nowadays. Gender status does not limit the free will of human being. Anyone who does not fit in the social position can always choose one way or another.

Consequently, the gender is a component of our society. Men cannot be pregnant, and women cannot impregnate. Physically, the diversity of genders is existed. The biological diversity demands the sexual objectifying of female bodies for healthy beings. The social contact cannot be separated from sexual impacts. Platonic love is only fantasy for minority. Various examples provide theologically evidential documents to support the gender status in any societies during the last epoch. A mosaic of third gender patterns in many civilizations since thousands of years ago claims the gender does not conflict with the will from a free being. Contrarily, only accepting the gender as a part of us, can we be free. The goal today is the pursuing of gender equilibrium, but not the gender equation. As the part of human being as well as human society, gender shall never be erased. By facing the different and benefiting from the function rather than refusing and denying its incontestable existence, we can receive a splendid future.

I watched movie It's a Boy Girl Thing tonight, and I was entertained and laughed out loud several times. The movie is very engaging to life, and the story is interesting, and "ideally". There are reasons why we would love it:

1. The actors and actress are very attractive.
2. The scenarios are romantic.
3. The customs are fashionable.
4. The lines combine the American slang and classic poetries.

However, I do think this "ideally" story conveys unhealthy information to us. There are some facts we can begin with. First of all, the main male character, Woody, acted by Kevin Zegers, who is a physically attractive young man, has a very bad personality and perverted moral awareness. Yet, after a very short period of time, he turns into a great guy. Secondly, the physically less-attractive male characters remained plain, or even silent in this movie. Lastly, the physically attractive females, who are not the male female character, are equally detestable and perverted as Woody at the beginning, but they did not change, or even became worse at the end.

These facts subconsciously gave the audiences many unhealthy conceptions. Of course, the goal of this movie is to entertain people, mainly females. In this case, it models a perfect guy, who is closed to ordinary, and less-perfect in the beginning. Then after the representative of the audience, Nell, acted by Samaire Armstrong, soon modify this person into an ideally role. On the other hand, the other attractive girls still remain their old personality, which are not compatible with Nell.

The movie use its way to please its audiences, but also invisibly changed people's subconsciousness. The cool guy is always perfect, and the geek is always geek. The only reason the cool guy does not have an intelligent or moral duty is that they did not have a right girl to be with. So keep fighting between girls and grab the cool guys as soon as possible. On the other hand, guys should just act cool and be the jerk waiting for their nice girls.

The fact is intelligence and morality are more important characters than physical attraction, and they are harder to build. If we believe (which unfortunately we all do, if we say we like the movie) in the what the movie demonstrate, our subconsiousness will accept this fantasy gradually. Then, basically, there will be increasing female heart breakers or even asshole out there aiming for those naive angels - and trust me, that would of being any of you (if you are a girl, I mean).