Seven Slices of Life

The Oregon Trail (1985) Schools and teachers oftentimes are at odds with video games, feeling they have to fight with them to get the attention out of the students required to learn. The Oregon Trail however, is one of the few that break the mold in that regard. It is one of the few games that can be found in many schools across the nation. It has been around for over three decades and has been a part of schools just as long, meaning children and adults of today can both be excited at the thought of the 8-bit educational game. The Oregon Trail is an 8-bit game that has the player take the reins of a traveler in the 19th century. The player's character and a party of a few people embark on the historical and titular route, the Oregon Trail. Throughout the game, the player must make decisions on how to further proceed through the trail. For example, the player can come across a river and decide whether to cross by going straight through or attempting to float the wagon across....

The #HashtagTrend A hashtag is the little symbol (#) used by many social media sites to organize, categorize, and unite anyone who share the same topic. For example, if you were on Twitter and wanted to know what everyone else thought about the most recent episode of your favorite show, you could simply search "#gameofthrones" and everyone's posts that included the same hashtag would be presented. It is not  just twitter however. Many other social media websites have incorporated the hashtag system in their websites such as Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. I cannot pinpoint the time that the hashtag trend rose in popularity. I can however say that the moment that made me aware of it was after the release of the song "The Motto" by popular rapper Drake in 2012. The popularity of the song caused many of the fellow young people around me to not just make posts with Drake's motto: "#YOLO", but to also verbally say the hashtag in regular convers...

Ducey's Education Article Education is one of the few aspects of government that affects us all on a daily basis. It is mandated that everyone living in the United States attend some form of schooling, and going past what is mandated opens the doors to greater opportunities and higher wage jobs. Naturally, an expansion to the funding and support of schools is often greeted with high praise, regardless of political or ideological affiliation.  https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2016/09/17/arizona-needs-more-college-grads-ducey/90363958/ Linked above is an op-ed piece written by my Arizona governor Doug Ducey. He writes this to give the readers of the AZ Central the why and how of his plans to increase the rate of college graduates in my state. He talks about how his role as a head of a household and major political figure obligates him to care about the people of Arizona, specifically their education. He lays out his projections to get the college graduate rate...

Evolution of Storytelling For all of human history, storytelling has been perhaps the most enjoyed pass time among society (aside from physical intimacy of course). Storytelling is one of the few activities we still do that largely resembles the same activity that primitive humans engaged in. It may not look exactly like how it did back then, but that is because of our desire to create engaging stories has allowed us to reinvent storytelling time and time again.  Cavemen of course began the art of storytelling before any of civilization was created. Cave paintings have shown us that these primitive tribes would all gather to enjoy a story told to them, oftentimes passed down from generation to generation. Not much is known about these though, as the written word was not yet invented and therefore no documentation exists. Not long after the birth of civilization and societies came the art of theater. Stories were told through a play, where multiple people pretended to be pa...

Nuclear's Typical Media Meltdown Nuclear energy has been a hot topic in the news for decades. The fear that the large-scale production of electricity using uranium would bring about a new age of terror or disasters has been on the minds of many since the first major nuclear incident. Though this strikes me as confusing, as it was met with hope and promise when the first nuclear reactor opened. It was believed that energy would be so plentiful that electricity would never be a worry for anyone, or how decades later nuclear would rid us of coal and oil. With huge promises like these, there has to be a reason greater than just fear that would prevent us from making these goals a reality. http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/02/22/jacobson.nuclear.power.con/index.html Due to the recent introductions of renewable energy sources like solar, wind, and geothermal, nuclear energy is being forgotten by the media (all of its benefits that is). Articles like the one linked above from CNN...

Television vs. The World (Wide Web) The television is one of the most important inventions of the 20th century. I would argue its importance rivals that of the automobile and airplane. It allowed the instantaneous stream of news and entertainment. Sure the radio may have done that before the television, but the radio did not have the type of hook that television had. Television eventually became the standard for entertainment. If not for the car radio, television would have likely made the radio all but extinct. Few technologies have become as recognizable, widely used, or as inseparable as the cable television. However, this would only be the case until the 21st century. Radio had little chance of competing with the superior television In the early years of the 21st century, the modern internet was born. Like the television, the internet brought with it entertainment and news instantly. Unlike the television however, there was more than "passive media" (media th...