Assigned Entry #4 The 99%

Capitalism an American Love Story in my opinion was a really informative movie. We've been learning about ho to use rhetoric to persuade or to inform. I think this movie did an excellent job informing.From discussion in class it seems everyone thinks the purpose was o persuade, but really what is Michael trying to persuade you to believe? This isn't the same as a movie about being pro-choice where at the end you can still make a moral decision about the subject. In the case you would need to be persuaded to one side of the argument or the other. With the American Love Story, we don't really have to decide if the big banks are screwing us over at the end. We know they are. Michael Moore is just pointing out the injustice, he's just making sure that the big banks are not able to get away with theft, at least not without keeping us informed.

Movies like this are important to spreading awareness about any kind of injustice. I personally think that Michael Moore is a credible journalist. He is just reporting on some majorly controversial topics. For some reason or another people have a hard time hearing the truth. I think that is why some people have such a big problem with with Michael Moore, and he knows that people don't like to hear the truth, that's why he has so much comedy in his movies. He knows if he just threw hard facts at people the whole time he would loose his audience pretty quick.

"I refuse to live in a country like this, and I’m not leaving."- Michael Moore

This Is A 'Mostly' Science Blog.

Holy High Definition Batman!

I just have to take a moment and tell you guys about how incredibly excited I am for the release of the new expansion to Starcraft 2 "The Heart of the Swarm" or 'HotS' The game officially launches tomorrow, and could not have come at a better time. I was playing in open Beta since January and have grown attached to all the new units, and changes they made. Beta was closed on March 1st. Right now you can still log into the Classic Starcraft 2 servers and play games. and Tomorrow they will re-open the Heart of the Swarm servers for the official game launch. I'm extra excited just because I've had the opportunity to practice with all the new units and will probably rank higher when the game launches.

Starcraft 2 has become a huge competitive E-Sport.

"The GOMTV Global StarCraft II League (or GSL for short) is a large tournament-based League held on location in South Korea and holds multiple events each year. Having started in late August 2010, the league was first step towards a professional league in South Korea for StarCraft II. The event is broadcast 3 nights a week (Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday) on GOMTV.^[1] The Team League is broadcast the remaining 2 weekdays. (Thursday and Friday)"

http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/GOMTV_Global_StarCraft_II_League

The GSL Prize pool pays out pretty big too:

Winner: 100,000,000 KRW (aprox. $85,700 USD)
Runner-Up: 30,000,000 KRW (aprox. $25,700 USD)
Semi-Finalists: 10,000,000 KRW (aprox. $8,600 USD)
Quarter-Finalists: 4,000,000 KRW (aprox. $3,400 USD)

Anyway, I am in no way a pro gamer, and I am not going to devote my life to Starcraft, BUUUT I do really enjoy working through the ladder and seeing progress, with time spent. I currently rank Gold, and when I started I was ranking in Top bronze and Silver.

Entry #3 Shorter Class, Good For You A.S.U.

Is adding  71/2 week classes to it's Spring and Fall face-to-face semesters.

I don't really know how I feel about this, I get that everyone is different and maybe this does appeal to some people. I get that some people can handle cramming everything down to half the amount of time and not go crazy trying to juggle school, and life. I just don't think I wouldn't want to put myself through that kind of stress to graduate a little sooner. 

This is cool though because usually people who want that kind of fast paced class environment like the article said are having to take online course to accomplish that. Online course at A.S.U. even for an instate student are treated as out of state for tuition purposes. So now people who need to have a shorter class time to allow for more time for working, or things like that, are able to.

All and all I think it is a step in the right direction, and also the article does say that they realize not all classes are able to be condensed down like this. Not all material can be taught in a 71/2 week format, but for the more general classes this is a great move on A.S.U.'s part.

It's 2013! Where Are We At With Robots Anyway?

Doesn't it feel like this is 2013, and we should have some cool robots by now? I wanted to check and see what the current status on real world applicable robots was, this is what I've found.

Here is one example I found. The A.R.M. program or Autonomous Robotic Manipulation program, is developing this new software that allows robots to complete human level tasks, with little human input. This is phase 1 of development, they are moving onto phase 2 because of the success they had with this phase. The robot uses vision, force, and tactile (or pressure) sensing to manipulate objects like opening a door, or taking out the trash. The possibilities of meaningless tasks that could be completed by robots is endless.

My God they are teaching them how to throw heavy objects?!? We're screwed!

This Robot is called BigDog. It's is being developed by a branch of the military. It's cool because it's not a lot now, but just like how the cavemen started with primitive tools that were refined to be more advanced tools, so on and so on until we get modern technology. This will be that kind stepping stone to way cooler robots in the future. Anyway here is a video of BigDog being used for transport by the military.