This is only a test

Today you'll be taking an online test.

Part of this test will require you to write in a Word document, so please call one up now. Make sure your name is at the top and that you follow the instructions in the test. Email the document to me at the end of the test.

carters@uinta6.k12.wy.us

Login information is on the board and pasted below.

To access the test site CLICK HERE

or type achievementseries.com into your URL bar.

Click the "Student" button at the top left corner of the window.

Site ID: 32-2506-0344

Test ID: 

6th Period: 64082

7th Period: 18686

8th Period: 62685

(if one test ID doesn't work for you, try another)

Username: the last two letters of your first name and whole last name (for example Hannah Montana would log  in thus: ahmontana)

You don't need a password.

Have fun.

And, yes, this is worth points.

Now, a word from our sponsors

Yesterday (or Thursday for 7th hour) we talked about how, as the medium of advertisements changed, so did the ads. While the major medium for ads was the magazine or newspaper, ads tended to use a lot of words to persuade your head that you should buy its product. However, as America moved into the age of television around 1939, the focus of advertisement turned to association, trying to persuade the emotions.

So, while a print ad is more likely to explain the qualities of a particular product, television is more likely to associate its product with something exciting without touching on the product's qualities at all.

Today you're going to look at ads and analyze them.

I want you to look at four ads.

Two of them print ads, and

Two of them television ads.

Your job is to (1) Describe the ad and provide the URL where you found it, and (2) Evaluate how well each ad uses its medium.

Find one television and one print ad (for a total of two ads) that does not use its medium well. Describe in a paragraph or more why they don't work.

Find one television and one print ad (for a total of two ads) that does use its medium well. Describe in a paragraph or more why they do work.

You can find some fun vintage (old) ads at the following Web sites:

For print ads:

http://adclassix.com/

For television ads:

http://adclassix.com/classictvindex.htm

Click here to see Super Bowl 2007 ads.

Google Video also has a lot of ads. However, when you do a search, you need to restrict the search to videos hosted by Google only, because You Tube is blocked.

To sum up your assignment:

I want 8 paragraphs out of you. For each of the 4 analyses (two for effective ads and two for ineffective ads) you will

1. Write a paragraph describing the ad and providing the URL where you found it.

2. Write a paragraph analyzing the ad for its effectiveness.

3. Email your analysis to me at carters@uinta6.k12.wy.us by the end of class.

4. Yes. this assignment will be worth points.

Measuring Mountains

Of all practices, it seems like measurement of physical objects should be among the most precise. But as we'll see, such is not always the case.

Ask most anyone and they'll tell you that the highest mountain in the world is Mount Everest. And, indeed, Mount Everest is 29,028 feet tall according to the most recent measurements.

However, that's 29,028 feet above sea level, which seems to be a strange way to measure mountains. After all due to the orbit of the moon, the tides are always going in and out, changing the sea level constantly. Not only that, but because of the shape of the earth, more gravity is concentrated in the polar regions of the earth than at the equatorial regions, pulling more water toward the poles. So sea-level is quite a variable benchmark.

We decided that maybe it would be more productive to abandon the sea-level benchmark and measure the height of mountains from their base to their tip. Then we'd at least have the land to give us a benchmark rather than the ever changing sea.

If we used this measurment we saw that Denali is the world's tallest above water mountain and that Mauna Kea is the world's tallest partially submerged mountain.



But, as we thought about it, how in the world do you tell where the base of a mountain is? Do you start with the shallow inclines that precede the steeper angles? Or do you go right to where the steep slopes really start?

In the end, wouldn't our ideas of what constitutes the base of a mountain be as variable as sea level?

So we searched for a better benchmark. Something unmoving. Something we could all agree on.

We came up with the core of the earth. Since we know the circumference of the earth, we can plot mathematically where the core is. Then we'd just have to find which mountain was furthest from the core of the earth.

That mountain happens to be Mount Chimborazo. It is located in Ecuador. And though it is shorter from base to tip that both Denali and Mount Everest, since the earth is tomato shaped, and the equatorial regions are furthest from the core, Chimborazo is the tallest mountain in the world.
What we're doing here is getting a concrete look at how the medium affects what you see. When we decided that this highest mountain in the world would be the one most elevated above sea level, we came up with Mt. Everest. When decided that base to tip measurement would be better, we came up with Denali. When we took the earth's core as our benchmark we came up with Chimbarozo.

Three different tallest mountains in the world using three different media.

The medium we use changes our perception of the world.

Crazy Gods

As we learned in the previous post, a tool (or medium) can completely color the way we see the world. A good example of this concept is the old saying, "If you're holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

The influence of a medium can go far beyond just affecting our physical actions, though, it can also change our entire worldview.

As an example, Galileo Galilei, armed with a new medium - the telescope - hypothesized that it was not the sun that orbited the earth, but the earth that orbited the sun. Galileo's heliocentric model was a new medium of thought. And boy did it get some danders up. Especially in the Catholic Church.

There was alot hanging on the idea that the earth was the center of the universe and that everything orbited around it. For example, Psalm 93:1, Psalm 96:10, and 1 Chronicles 16:30 include text stating that "the world is firmly established, it cannot be moved." Then Psalm 104:5 says, "the Lord set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved." Further, Ecclesiastes 1:5 states that "And the sun rises and sets and returns to its place, etc."

The Church saw Galileo's theory as being a challenge to the Bible's inerrancy, and therefore the Church's authority.

But it went further than that. The idea of the earth being the center of creation gave Christians the feeling that they were important, that their god's eye was upon them and his hand in their lives. Moving the earth from the center of the universe implicitly questioned this conviction.

In other words, Galileo's theory turned the world on its head, and people didn't know how to deal with its implications, except by silencing him.

You'll also remember that much the same thing happened when Charles Darwin hypothesized evolution. The idea seemed to disprove the story of Adam and Eve, which Christians took literally. Evolution implied that mankind wasn't created specially by the Christian god, but rather, the result of chance. An idea completely incompatible with the Christian worldview.

So, again, an idea turned the world on its head. The Christian world is still dealing with the implications of evolution.

Thus, an idea, as well as an object, can be a medium that colors our entire worldview.


In the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy, the peaceful life of an isolated Bushman tribe is upended when the pilot of an airplane throws a bottle out the window. The bottle lands in the Bushman's camp and the people start finding uses for it, rolling dough, smashing roots, music. But soon the people start fighting over the bottle and the chief decides that the gods must be crazy to have sent this tool because it creates strife in the community. He decides to take the bottle to the end of the earth and throw it off.

The bottle was a new medium, and it started to change the Bushman culture.

We did an exercise where we chose one item to drop on a Bushman tribe: a flashlight, a machine gun, an ATV, or a television. What would this new medium do to the tribe?

One group chose the ATV. They decided that the Bushmen would start using it to gather water, and then move on to using it to transport the carcasses of animals they had killed for food. Using the ATV this was would significantly reduce the amount of travel the tribe would have to do, because they would not have to follow the water around and they could get more food with less effort.

Eventually, the tribe would lose its nomadic ways and start to build more permanent housing. They would lose their skill at stalking prey because they could just zip up to an animal on the ATV and kill it. However, they would turn into very good drive-by marksmen.

In other words, the whole structure of these people's lives would change, all because of one medium. They would interact with the world in a completely different way.


Media scholar Neil Postman has compared the introduction of a new medium into a culture to introducing a single drop of red dye into a glass of water.


The result is not a glass of water with one drop of dye floating around, it's a glass of pink water. The dye has spread through and changed the entire glass of water, not just a tiny portion of it.

That's the way a new medium can affect a culture.

The Medium is the Message

Today we explored the concept pioneered by Marshal McLuhan known as, "The Medium is the Message."

A medium is a tool, anything from a screwdriver to a television to a pill. A medium is a tool that helps you do something. Though a medium (tool) helps you, it also colors the way you think about the world.

To clarify this concept I took you on a journey through the history of human language.

Toward the beginning of humankind's languaging time on earth, we did our abstract communication almost exclusively through our mouths. The mouth was our medium of communication.


When we communicate through our mouths, we speak. But oral communication doesn't last very long. It evaporates as soon as we stop speaking. Also, you need to have people nearby to hear the speech if you actually want to communicate. And, happily, if someone has a question about what you're saying, he or she can speak with you immediately.

So, when you use your mouth as a medium of communication, then communication is:

1. Present-oriented (it evaporates immediately)
2. A face-to-face activity (people need to be nearby).
3. A two-way operation (your audience can speak back)

Those three elements are the "message" of the "medium" of your mouth as a communicator.
Then along came written language. Written language as a medium sends a completely different message about communication than oral language sends.
Suddenly writing is future-oriented. Words can now stick around for years, possibly even outlasting their creators. A word that comes from a chisel doesn't just evaporate like speech, rather, it continues on. With the advent of writing language is suddenly durable.

Another important thing has changed as well. When you read something, you usually don't question the text. The reasons being, it won't answer. Writing has made language into a one-way communication: from author to reader. The reader cannot respond the way an audience member can.

So with the medium of written language sends two messages that are very different from the messages speech sends:

1. Language is durable. It is future-oriented.
2. Language is a one-way communication. The reader cannot respond to the author.
   

We've been looking at writing carved into stone. Below we have writing on a piece of papyrus. What's the difference between stone and paper as mediums. What message do these two different media send about the nature of the language inscribed on them?
Well, papyrus is certainly more portable. If I were a king and wanted to send a message, I'd much rather use papyrus than granite. However, If I wanted to inscribe my kingly commandments to rule my kingdom through the ages, I'd use stone. (Is that why Jehovah inscribed the ten commandments on stone instead of Post-it notes?)

Something that is written on a piece of paper has much less weight (literally and metaphorically) than something carved into stone. The fact that you took the time to carve something into stone means that your words are important and should last through the ages.

The medium is the message:

• stone = important
  
• papyrus = not as important.

Here's Seymour the Monk making a copy of the Bible. There are a lot of words in the Bible and he doesn't want to make any mistakes. So he proceeds slowly and carefully. It takes him months, if not years, to complete the copy.

Now it's true that he didn't carve it into stone. But the copying did take a significant portion of his life. And copying a book by hand is the only way to get a copy. It's a do-it-yourself affair. Therefore, books are very valuable.

So valuable, in fact, that books were often chained to their bookshelves, and the owners (often monasteries) would inscribe curses on them directed against anyone thinking about stealing the book.

For him that Stealeth a Book from this Library,
Let it change into a Serpent in his hand & rend him.
Let him be struck with Palsy, & all his Members blasted.
Let him languish in Pain crying aloud for Mercy,
Let there be no Surcease to his Agony till he sink to Dissolution.
Let Bookworms gnaw his Entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not,
When at last he goeth to his final Punishment,
Let the flames of hell consume him for ever & aye.

So, the fact that information was bound up in a book made that information extra special. The medium was the message.

But then along came the printing press.
And then suddenly books became much easier to acquire. A book that once took months or years of dedicated labor to produce could now be produced in a few weeks. And it wouldn't just be one book that was produced, it would be a whole slew.

Suddenly the medium of the book rendered written information less valuable. No longer did you have to make a pilgrimage to a monastery to read a book, you could buy it at a store. Books were suddenly everywhere, which meant that written information was also everywhere. And with that proliferation of books came a proliferation of writing, some of it good, some of it bad. The book's message had changed, it no longer said, "That contained herein be valuable enough to lay a curse upon he who stealeth it," rather "Aw, you can get this information just about anywhere. And if you lose it, no problem!"

• Hand-copied book = valuable
• Printed book = not as valuable
  

And then came the copy machine.
Suddenly the written word could be copied with almost no effort. As written language proliferated its value plummeted. A piece of paper, once the vehicle of a god's holy word, or the immortal utterances of poets and philosophers became the bearer of memos and agendas and fliers for Joe's Eatery.

• Printed book = valuable
• Copied paper = not as valuable
  

And then, the most recent medium in written language: the computer and its attendant Internet.


There is so much written language on the Internet that you could not read 1 percent of it if you spent a lifetime at it. Anyone with access to a computer and at least a nose, if not a finger or two, can post some written language on the Web.

Through the medium of the Internet written information has hit an historical low. It may contain the Bible and the works of the poets and philosophers, but it also contains the endless ramblings of the unwashed masses.

However, the Internet has restored to us what we had lost with the transition from oral to written communication. We can suddenly have a conversation again. We could not converse with books, but the instant nature of written communication on the Internet makes it so we can in fact, query the author of a piece of confusing writing. Two-way communication has been restored to written language.

So. The medium is the message. If you change the medium of communication, you change what communication means. Oral communication says something different than written communication. Paper says something different than stone. That which is copied by a monk says something different about the value of a piece of written communication than that which is copied by a copy machine.

And remember, you read this on the Internet.

Analogue vs. Abstract

Today we looked at a series of paintings reproduced below. As we did, I asked the class to tell me the story behind each painting.







Interestingly, the whole class agreed on the interpretation of the first four paintings. The class told me that the paintings depicted the crucifixion of Jesus. Not only that, but everyone agreed that them man on the middle cross was Jesus. Not only that, but they said that Jesus was in the process of paying for the sins of humanity. EVERYONE agreed on these points.

The class stuck to its guns as we progressed through the paintings. Even though the second picture doesn't actually seem to have a cross, and the third has strange flying objects and people not dressed in the style of ancient Jerusalem, and the fourth has a checkered floor, a weird looking cross, no beard on Jesus and no nails holding him to the cross. Despite these huge differences the class insisted that the paintings were all portraying the same story.

The fifth painting (by Picasso) gave us pause. We weren't quite sure what it was supposed to be. We all noticed a few forms that looked like feet, as well as a horse figure, but beyond that interpretations varied widely. Some of you thought that the central figure (in white) was a crucifixion and concluded that this painting was telling the same story as the others.

Then, along comes Bob the alien.
Bob has just landed on earth. He has no knowledge of earth's cultures or languages. He's completely ignorant of everything on this planet. You decide to show him the first picture of the crucifixion.


As an exercise, we put ourselves in the mind of the alien, what would he think was going on in the painting?

Among us we came up with a number of interesting interpretations. For example: perhaps Bob infers from the painting that people grow on trees and that these three men are being born. Or perhaps he thinks these three men are space travelers about to be launched into space on their tiny little rockets.

Many of us found this exercise to be difficult. We couldn't separate our story about the painting from the painting itself. When a story and an image are inextricably bound together in the minds of a large number of people, we call it an archetype.

As we go further into mass media studies we will start to see how heavily producers of images rely on archetypes to access your emotions and your mind.

Now that we have shown Bob the painting, we next show him this passage of text.

“When they came to the place called the Skull, there they crucified him, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left.”

What will Bob make of this? Probably nothing. Since he has no knowledge of human language, the letters would be meaningless black marks to him.

Bob enjoys his tour of earth so much that he brings you to tour his planet. When you arrive he shows you a painting. It looks like this:



Now we are the ailens. We have no knowledge of Bob's culture. How do we interpret this image?

We came up with a number of interpretations. Perhaps it represents the cycles of seasons. Perhaps it is a schema that represents how the government works. Maybe it is a representation of the circle of life.

In fact it is a rendition of a Navajo sand painting called "Whirling Logs." It depicts a river journey a character must make to prove he is a man, and the gods he will meet along the way.

What we established with this exercise is the difference between analogue and abstract. When something is analogous, it represents the subject with great accuracy, such as a photograph of Brad Pitt.


When something is abstract, it codifies the subject. It renders, for example, the person Brad Pitt into eight letters:

B, R, A, D, P, I, T, T

which have no analogous relationship with Brad himself. The more we abstract something, the less analogous it becomes.

It is helpful to think of analogue and abstract as being on a continuum as shown below. (You can click to enlarge it.)

The painting that is most like life is very analogous, while the middle painting is more abstract using distorted shapes instead of analogous shapes. It is the text, however, that is most abstract, bearing no resemblance at all to the event of crucifixion.

Since the Navajo sand art is so abstract, and since we know little of their culture, we had a difficult time even knowing what the figures were meant to represent (just as Bob would would be completely bewildered by Picasso's rendition of the crucifixion). However, a Navajo would be able to see a lot in these abstract images.

As we discussed yesterday, images can't make arguments. Therefore, in order to be able to work an idea or a person into an argument or a series of related thoughts, we need to abstract that idea or person into language or text. Otherwise, the idea or person remains an analogue and we can do nothing but look at it.

The abstract enables thought.

The Essential Difference Between Images and Text

There is an essential difference between what an image can convey and what text can convey.

Text (or language) can convey thoughts and arguments. Images cannot (unless there is text in the picture).

To explore this concept we first read the following text:

"The sky is not blue. The fact is, of all the colors in the visible spectrum of the sun’s light, the only color the atmosphere reflects is blue. It absorbs all the other colors. Therefore, the sky is every color BUT blue."

The text is putting forth an idea that you could argue for or against. If I asked you to argue against it, you could do it by critiquing any one of its assertions.

Next we looked at this painting by Artemisia Gentileschi.

I asked what this painting was arguing. We came up with many ideas such as, "Don't mess with girls," "It takes two women to take down one man," and "Take a look at what happens to men who cheat on their wives."

We looked at some other images as well such as: (you can click to enlarge them)




For each image we came up with a number of different ideas of what it was arguing.

Then we went back to the beginning and I started to give you background information on each image. For example, with the Gentileschi painting, I asked what its argument would be if you found out that the artist had been raped in adolescence. Suddenly the interpretations changed. The painting was suddenly arguing "Men are pigs." Some class members thought that the artist was getting her revenge on the man who raped her.

The same thing happened with each image, the more information I gave you, the more your interpretations changed.

At one point I asked a class member to argue against one of the images. The most common response was, "Argue against what?" It was a very good question. Images contain no arguments. Any argument an image might inspire must be created by the viewer and formed into language.

This is an essential idea to understand as we head into mass media studies: text (or language) can put forth arguments, images can not.

In other words, a picture may be worth a thousand words, but the viewer is the one who must make those words.