Eitan's Open Minded World

"'Balancing on the Brink.' Eagle Peak summit, Chugach Mountains, Alaska"   by  Paxson Woelber  is licensed under  CC BY 2.0      This was definitely my favorite class this semester. I enjoyed the diversity each weeks topic had. It was like opening a present like " ooh what am I learning about this week?" I also thoroughly enjoyed the creative work put into this class. There were times where I hit a wall when it came to creating a blog or drawing an assignment, but thats when your imagination is put through the test. My favorite activity about this class was the drawings. Creating the children's fable comic with no words was challenging but so rewarding at the end. I am also really appreciative of each week's unique topic. There were some topics which I was really ignorant on such as the year of 1968, how maps are very inaccurate, or how your senses are seeing what your brain wants them to see. This class gave me the ability to understand visuals and

"W.E.B. Du Bois"   by  US Department of State  is licensed under  CC BY-NC 2.0                                                                                                William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (W.E.B. Du Bois) was an American sociologist and civil rights activist. Bois was born in Great Barrington Massachusetts where he was in a family of a small free population. Bois studied at Fisk University, a historically black college, where he first experienced Southern racism. These experiences helped define who Bois is as he started questioning the behaviors of society. In the year 1900, Bois wrote the " The Exhibit of American Negroes " where he composed hundreds of photographs depicting the future of African Americans. These pictures included charts, graphs, and maps. As well as a sociologist, Bois was also a civil rights activist. He criticized presidents for their racist beliefs such as when he urged black people to withdraw from the Teddy Roosevelt's

  "Uncle Sam I Want You - Poster Cleaned"   by  DonkeyHotey  is licensed under  CC BY 2.0 Political advertising is a tool that's been around for centuries. This tool is the most effective way politicians send their messages to their audience. Obviously this shouldn't be a full paper listing out all of the candidates policies, more of a slogan or catch-phrase to persuade the audience. This is because it is very easy to be emotionally invested to a simple poster/ad, then a paper listing policies. This is dangerous because when involving peoples emotions you can manipulating an entire country and that was shown in last election.   An example I have for this is Donald Trump's Make America Great Again slogan. The way Trump advertised this slogan to America is incredible. The other day I walked to the grocery and saw a guy wearing a red hat and automatically thought he's a Trump supporter. Trump did pollical advertising the way it was intended. He gave a simple red

  "Crazy anti-vaxxers protesting outside 111 Bourke Street, Melbourne"   by  avlxyz  is licensed under  CC BY-NC 2.0      Propaganda can be defined as the management of collective attitudes by the manipulation of significant symbols. What this means is the ability to have a collective amount of information and spread the ones that's most favorable regardless of how damaging. An example of this is let's say hypothetically speaking, Bob saved 30 people, but while doing so he let 3 die. A witness who holds a grudge against Bob spoke out and said “that guy murdered 3 people”. He would be saying the truth, but not the whole truth. There is a saying the best lies are the ones with the truth in them.      A current example we see of blatant propaganda would be the way Donald Trump uses it. For total covid death count in the world, America is first with 252,000 deaths with Brazil second at 165,000. Covid affected America worse than any other country in the world and this loo

                                        "World map"   by  Martyn Wright  is licensed under  CC BY 2.0 Mapping became a key tool in human succession. Whether it was mapping villages to understand your surrounding, or mapping oceans to have a route to your destination, or even trying to find Kingda Ka in six flags. Maps are just extremely simple and efficient. But throughout history, as countries started becoming more nationalistic and humans started thinking they were more superior to others, they would as a result present these behaviors through everyday life including maps.      In the 15th and 16th century as North and South America were just discovered by Europe, the world maps that we are familiar with were being concepted. However, because these maps were being drawn by Europe the scaling and proportion for the map was going to be  propagandized for their benefit. Some of these benefits could be making Africa seem smaller to other countries in order to imperialize the mo

 When wanting to share knowledge on a certain subject, our goal is to be to share the most information to the audience about the subject. Writing novels on this might be an advantage if you want to point out all the details in your learnings, but according to research only 20 percent of all the information we read actually gets retained. Through evolution, our brain learned to gain the most information through colors and visuals. Texts involving colors increase our willing to read by 80 percent. This means we get 80 percent more interested in any subject just because it has colors. The best way to present information to the reader would therefor be via infographic visuals. I can tell you from experience that my eyes would glue to these types of visuals. An example of this would be from the election race. I wanted to see the states from last year's race and understand which ones are going to be the important deciding ones. Instead of reading 2,000 words on why its Florida and Pennsy

                                              "a generalized human cell"   by  adrigu  is licensed under  CC BY 2.0           Science is the understanding of our physical world. However unlike the other subjects, science requires a visual picture or video to fully understand it. You cant put a picture on math or English. You may be able to make an argument for history, but science works hand and hand with pictures. This is because our brains want to make a connection with a picture. In high school I remember I would draw pictures of how cells, and atoms work. This helped me because instead of just memorizing words, I would understand the picture first and then the definitions would just make sense. This method of visualizing science isn't anything new either. This dates back millennials to the time of Alexander the Great when Greek physicians would record their studies. However during the Renaissance, visualizing science globalized the world. This was due to the printing

    "Moon over Massapequa, New York. Third Quarter. 50 Percent of Full. 5:48 AM ET September 5, 2015."   by  John                                                                                    Wisniewski  is licensed under  CC BY-ND 2.0      So far, I've had a lot of fun with this class. When I was a kid I used to loved drawing so rekindling that aspect of my childhood is a pleasure to say the least. I would say the most fascinating takeaway from this class is understanding the minor and simple details that an artist apply into his work. These details really give that piece the extra appreciation. Their was also the learning aspect of the class. There was a bunch of historical events, and common knowledge that I was ignorant on and understanding them really opened my views. An example of this was the importance of 1968, power that comic books hold, the affects vision can have when altering your reality. There was also the assignments of the class, which I thought were

    "Damian Lillard at the Black Lives Matter march in Portland"   by  Matthew Almon Roth  is licensed under  CC BY-NC 2.0 Last week we had an assignment about key moments that defined 1968. The events that took place in this year was really critical for America on how it would be defined for decades. As these events took place I started seeing a connection between 1968 and 2020. The way both of these years just screamed disaster. They shared very similar moments but also had very different ones. There was a bad main disaster that everyone agreed was awful. For 2020 its the killer Coronavirus, and for 1968 it was the cold war that if invoked enough could end all life. Both of these had dramatic effects on everyday human life. In 68 you were trained how to deal with a nuclear attack, you would have this fear on you every day that it could be your last. In 2020 because of the virus, millions of people had to apply for unemployment, as well as social distancing became a norm. Ot

  "Winnie the Pooh & Us"   by  ProSam  is licensed under  CC BY-NC-ND 2.0   Last weeks assignment required us to make a sort of comic book. This was, in my opinion, extremely challenging due to the limitations that we were given. Essentially, we were given only 5 colors to draw with and no words. The assignment was about a recreation of a children's story tale. I thought I would do Winnie the Pooh. I originally thought about making Pooh a yellow and red square and Piglet a small pink cylinder, but because I would already be using more then half of my colors on just 2 characters, I decided to make the characters really detailed and the background colorful. This was really difficult because I quickly realized that showing  emotions through facial expression is not simple.  A simple raise of an eyebrow would change the entire   expression of the character. This really humbled me and made me appreciate artists more. The small  subtitle details are what really gives life t

               Last weeks assignment was one that tested our knowledge with literary techniques and how capable we are at performing them. After understanding some of these techniques, I honestly never noticed how much we use them on a daily bases . When I kept track of all the metaphors I was surprised how many my friends and I used to joke with one another. We just called it "clever insults" and never thought twice about it. It feels like they were engraved in us to a point where it became casual. An example of this would be when I saw the assignment required you to pick your any book/film, and make a poster or advertise for said book. The first book that came to my head was 1984 and alongside that came a clear idea of what I want to create. In that idea I noticed I was already using literary techniques without trying to. However I should give credit when its due, George Orwell (The author) did a great job depicting the dystopian world of 1984. I just never noticed he was u

     "SNAP (1976) #spiderman #comics"   by  Q9F  is licensed under  CC BY-NC 2.0      Growing up, I was always told “Stop reading comics, they are like candy for the brain.” To be fair to the people telling me this, that's all I was reading. I came to America as an immigrant not knowing much to any English . I was like 3 grades behind my entire class when it came to English and literature. I couldn't read the same books my class were reading because it would take me much much longer to finish a page. And I couldn't stand reading the pre K/Kindergarten books because it made me feel like an imbecile. So I just read comics all day. Sure you can make a very strong argument to say novels are superior, I mean they are 3 dimensional. With novels the author makes you imagine the atmosphere, the scene and the characters you are journeying with whereas in comics you are put in said scene. However one strong parallel trait with novels and comics is your put in these charac

            This weeks reading spoke about the correlation that perception has with sensation. I always found it hard to believe that your eyes can deceive you. I mean your eyes are simply showing how the world looks. "What you see is what you get" and to be fair, its true. When light bounces around objects and hits your pupil, it sends information to your brain through your retina. However its your brain that controls what to do with this information. My first time understanding perception have an affect was back in 2015 with the whole black and blue or white and gold dress. I was amazed that the brain can subconsciously change how we view realities but it also scared me because I wondered what other tricks is my brain playing on me. I think John Green put it best "Sometimes seeing is believing but believing is also seeing."