eTeach: The Perfect Replacement To All Live Lectures!

eTeach is an online tool that allows professors to simply record a video of themselves delivering a lecture, and place that video online along with a PowerPoint that is synchronized with their lecture. This online lecture would then be accessible to anyone taking that particular course.

The typical full-time college student has to attend at least two to three lectures per week. But should we students even have to take the time and go the distance to any classroom when we can have the comfort of listening to a lecture delivered online through eTeach? Just imagine the amount of time college students and professors could save every day. In addition, online lectures offer the flexibility of choosing when you want to view the lecture during the day. Time management would be so much easier without having the commitment of going to actual lectures. This would in turn make students more relaxed everyday, thus helping to decrease stress levels amongst college students. Decreased stress means that college students would be less likely to do crazy or illegal things, since these are usually just ways of relieving stress. In turn, there would be a lot less violence in the University!

After all, we are in the age of technology, and we should definitely take advantage of the powerful online tools that the University has to offer. This would show that we support the University for its efforts to provide us with these tools. If we don't show our support, then the University may start spending less money on this technology. The University may eventually decide not to spend their budget on managing servers for these tools. Sites like Learn@UW would soon cease to exist!

I believe that the University should cancel all live lectures and make all professors deliver lectures via eTeach. My friend taking CS310 says that he loves the way the course uses eTeach, and that this has significantly improved his life. I am confident that eTeach is the solution to improving the lives of many, many college students all across the University.

New Study: Politicians Not Human

Politicians Not Human According To New Study
http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s2i26155

We see corrupt politicians almost all the time on TV. This is a fictitious article about a new study confirming that politicians are an entirely new species. It is aimed at everyone who either dislikes politicians, or simply needs to read something amusing in order to leash out their anger at politicians who are corrupt.

The article directly makes a number of assumptions about all politicians, all of which are negative. The author does this by listing and exaggerating examples about behaviors people commonly believe politicians to have, such as the "complete and utter lack of ethics" and possession of "the innate ability to look and sound sincere while lying in your face". The image at the right stresses the author's negativity towards politicians by using strong words and a relatively offensive image.

The humor in this article is mainly driven by the fact that the author is able to relate to what the majority of people think about politicians, and selectively pick on negative traits to focus your thoughts on these rather than anything good the politicians could possibly have done. In a sense, it is inductive reasoning using multiple examples to show that politicians are indeed corrupt bastards.

That Little White Thing You Stand On

Lots of people are fans of Wii. But there's more coming up for this interesting piece of gaming technology. It was announced at the E3 press conference in July 2007 that Nintendo will be releasing Wii fit, a video game designed to function with the Wii balance board peripheral. Wii fit was apparently intended as a "way to help get families exercising together", and was billed as a fitness breakthrough. But is it? This clever parody of a Nintendo Wii Fit commercial attempts to show why this isn't the case.

This video is very sarcastic. It makes fun of everything the product claims it is. It begins by immediately belittling the peripheral itself, referring to it as "a little white thing you stand on". In addition, it sarcastically mentions how other video games have been limited to being "fun and entertaining". It provides many examples of Wii fit games and just how "exciting" they are.

Visuals play a huge part in portraying everything as if they were all mundane activities. The graphics shown on the TV screen really don't seem that exciting at all. It is interesting how they seem to pick games that are inherently boring. By doing so, they are trying to make a hasty generalization of all the games by picking on some of the more cheesy games. First they start off by naming very plain, dull exercises like "leaning side to side" and "sticking out your leg". Then they move on to activities that seem to be replaceable using the Wii fit, like hula-hooping or playing soccer. They bring out issues like the money spent on purchasing the peripheral and the replacement of "that annoying plastic hoop" to show how ridiculous it is that people would possibly want to use a Wii fit to replace real activities. The soccer example serves to make fun of the fact that the "family is exercising together", while at the same time criticizing the Wii fit for making families stay home in front of a TV instead of going out to exercise. Since not all families may choose to stay at home all the time just because of the Wii fit, it is apparent that they are simply using inductive reasoning to generalize that everyone would no longer leave the house to exercise.

Overall, the video uses sarcasm to try and persuade everyone that this is quite an unnecessary product to own. Unless one really likes playing with Wii, or is willing to look past the examples of boring games, it is likely that one would be convinced that outdoor activities provide far more exercise than the Wii fit.

You've Got to Get Yourself Some Marble Columns!

Alternate video URL: http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/#mea=94844

This is a video from Saturday Night Live of a spoofed commercial for marble columns. I found this particularly interesting because it mocks the usual methods of persuasion in typical commercials.

First and foremost, this video ridicules and exaggerates the fact that people are so material-based. The video makes it seem as if anyone could simply own marble columns and feel that they are very superior. Scarlett Johansson portrays this fact with the line, "People are going to look at you and go, 'Who lives there? The Pope?' " The video also describes some very regular day-to-day events, like eating breakfast and sleeping, that could be enhanced simply with the presence of marble columns.

This is certainly very reminiscent of today's society. For some people, it seems as if the possession of certain "classy" items would make them more high-class. This is also why most commercials are successful: they like to play on the human desire for power, and thus persuade them to buy material products. An example of how this commercial portrays this is when Jason Sudeikis says "Nothing says I have money and power like marble columns". He even establishes authority for what he is saying: "How do I know this? Because I have been selling marble columns to rich people for over 10 years! I'm talking millionares!"

The video also makes fun of the fact that commercials always try to hard-wire concepts into your mind by repeating a line (or several lines) over and over again. Just like the "Head-On" commercial which keeps repeating "Head-On, apply directly to the forehead", this commercial keeps insistently repeating the line, "You've got to get yourself some marble columns!". This video amuses us by using an emotional appeal to the audience, since most of us would usually we usually agree that commercials like the one for Head-On are quite annoying and ridiculous.

We are entertained by how everything sounds stupid, and by the sarcasm employed through the cheesy examples of how marble columns could enhance any place. We are also implicitly informed that we should be wary of commercials that attempt to use bandwagon or other approaches in order to persuade you to buy material items.

What If The Internet Crashed?

Breaking News: All Online Data Lost After Internet Crash

People these days are so dependent on the Internet that they can hardly live without it. This video is interesting because demonstrates in a humorous way what would happen if the Internet crashed and all data was lost. This video makes great use of parody and sarcasm.

The mention of "Eric Tipton of Wallingford, Connecticut" as the suspect of causing the Internet crash with loads of windows, IM, etc. running pokes fun at the fact that people are such Internet addicts, while pointing out at the same time that the police are so paranoid they could attribute anything to anyone.

This news video also mentions that the government stated "they do not have a backup of the Internet, but had always meant to get around to making one. They are so mad at themselves." This is meant to ridicule the fact that it sometimes takes forever just to get anything done through the government. "They are so mad at themselves" implicitly suggests that the government will one day regret not taking proactive measures to solve a lot of today's common problems. This is one of the ways the author of this video tries to persuade the audience that the government is not very effective. Toward the end, we see that American organizations are providing aid by either playing more funny videos on TV, or handing out more celebrity gossip etc. In a sense, this is another satirical attack on the government, ie. some American organizations can do better than the government itself. This is also intended as a snapshot of people trying to rebuild life without the Internet, as mentioned at the end of the video about how a man was being "heroic" to rebuild his entire Flickr album. This "snapshot" further allows everyone to feel the impact that an Internet crash would have on everyday life.

The video points out that the blogging community was hit hard by this crisis, and lots of blog articles were lost. By pointing out these things, the author points out how much people are depending on the data on the Internet, and establishes the effect of losing all this data. Certainly, even this English 201 project depends on using the Internet for blogs. If the Internet crashed right now (oh gosh, please don't...), everything I am typing right now would be lost.

Welcome! Enjoy...