Pumpkin Chucking

Extra Credit Blog: 10/23

Today I went to the pumpkin chucking event on the mall, this event was something I did not know of until this class. This event was being held on the mall and started at 8:00am and went until 6:00pm so it was an all day event. I watched the event for a little bit to understand the idea of the pumpkin chucking before I talked to a few of the teams.

There are three divisions in the event, middle school, high school, and an open- age group. I spoke to two teams at the event, the middle school team and the high school team. Both of the teams used the event to build teamwork, education for the students, and collaboration. I wanted to talk to the students at the event; however, they all were quite shy so I mainly talked to the adults.

The first team I talked to was a group who was a home schooled group and used the event to teach the kids math, science, and much more. I spoke to Lee, who was the mom of a few of the boys on the team. Her family has been going to this event for the past six years, and has been using the same catapult every year. Each year they have made a few changes to the catapult. She said, “While the kids are learning a lot, my husband is the main leader of this event, we want all the kids to learn from each other and collaborate with what they want to see. But he puts it all together because same of them are a little young and this is a dangerous.”  

Blog extra credit speaker:

10/27

This picture is taken by me of the speaker:

Open access papers are not the only papers people have access to, today we have access to almost anything. No matter how much people try to privatize and limit the ability to access, many can still copy the work. PubPeer is an open access journal where people can comment without having their name being on the line. However, this is a problem because they post brilliant ideas and content posts but no one can give credit to them since they are anonymous. Misconduct has increased over the years, and this lead increased problems of plagiarizing. Something that really stuck with me was when he said, “Men are nine times more like to have committed fraud.” This was also reflected in the slide show of the leading board of the top 30 people, only two were women.

A lot of papers get cited, however not may people use the correct citing. However, research forgets to reflect on why the research has been retracted. Retraction is when a journal is taken down because the research is wrong; this is also missing guided. The criminal justice system is not getting involved into these problems. People are serving 5 year of jail time for this misconduct and fraud. Doing the right citing will let you reap the rewards from scientists without ripping them off.

Photo 2: http://www.ipscell.com/2015/01/stem-cell-shootout/
Photo 3: http://www.somersault1824.com/4-tips-to-make-your-science-figures-more-accessible/ 

Freedom of Speech

Blog 10:27

My group and I chose to meet up during class time today seeing that we all had it free. So before we met up we talked about what we wanted our topic to be for the group project. We each came up with one idea on are our own. I was researching and going though article when it hit; we had are own mini content and social object. This idea was Brother Dean. While I do not support what he says or does, many people gave him the recognition he wanted, which makes Brother Dean come back time and time again.

One time I saw a girl who was crying to a police officer begging him to take Brother Dean away, I did not hear exactly what he said to make her this upset but from the little I did hear him say I understand why she wants him gone. “How can I pay so much to go to school here and be bullied by a monster like him?” This is a question my friend asked me. While I do agree with her that it is an awful thing, at this point, others just see it as freedom of speech. We are blessed to have the right to speak our minds and say what we want. However, at what point does this become sexual assault? Sexual assault is something more and more people are becoming more aware of today and it becoming something less of unspoken rule.

While they did arrest him for kicking a girl in the chest, I would have always hoped to see him gone sooner. I ask my self why anyone wouldn’t say this was sexual assault before it got to this point? He had called out many girls before and said things I will not repeat. I just have to ask at what point does sexual assault and freedom of speech meet? Where do we draw the line?

In the end, I did not bring him up to my group because there was not enough information to do this project on him and the things he stands for. Yes, his Twitter was one way media and may have trended, but this was not something that I believed was meaningful to study and present a project on.


Photo 1:https://www.orangewebsite.com/articles/category/freedom-of-speech/
Photo 2:http://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2016/09/you-deserve-to-be-raped-street-preacher-arrested-for-assault/
Photo 3:http://www.wildcat.arizona.edu/article/2016/09/brother-dean-arrested-today-after-kicking-female-ua-student-kicked-off-campus-for-one-year