Josh Bayani's Blog

Researching topics

jabayani — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 07:24:40 +0000

Today we met at the library in room 105, and we talked about our topics. So each group said their topics. Dr. Berg told us that most of them were pretty broad, so he told us to make them more specific. Then he sent us to research them. My group’s topic was the Massachusetts Bay, from there we split it up into subcatagories. Mine was the interaction between Native Americans and Puritans. Sadly i couldn’t get a computer to look it up so i went to look it up in some of the books in the library but i ended up helping my group members find their books. Also it was kinda hard to find things in like 20 minutes maybe if i had more time i could have something but oh well.

research project

jabayani — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 08:15:25 +0000

wow today seemed like it went by really fast, it seemed that there was alot said but what i do remember is that Dr. Berg put us in groups of three and we all had to come up with two topics each. After we did all that we pick one of the six to do a project on. While we were doing this Dr. Berg mentioned a research project he was doing before on a topic that he thought was interesting at first but later found out how bad it really was. I’ve done that before too but in glad it wasn’t for years like Dr. Berg. But yeah back to the topics my group did well the other two member picked a topic that they liked and i really didn’t have much interest for but it seemed somewhat interesting. I thought to myself i guess sometimes you can’t always do research on something you want like. So i guess “I’m just gonna have to stomach it for a couple of hours”, (yes Dr. Berg did say that in class, and i thought it was appropriate). Oh yeah today before class ended we had our first “field trip”. Well it really wasn’t much of a field trip it was more like a “we’re going to the McDowell Center and you guys are getting student ID’s or you fail the next quiz” trip so yeah i got a schoolcraft student ID now. I guess there are some benifits to it like i can use the computer lab and take out books from the library using it instead of having my class schedule with me. Oh yeah theres one more perk $3 movie tickets at emagine theaters with school id, so yeah im going to be watching more movies now. haha

primal beings?

jabayani — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 07:49:39 +0000

well in class we watched a video by a guy named Highwater, i remembered the name cause Dr. Berg kept on saying his name was Hightower but the video said Highwater and i remebered it do to the mistake. But anyway In the video Highwater kept talking about thedifferences between the Native Americans and The Europeans, and well it was kinda interesting somewhat. Seeing his views and how the time affected the video so much, because it was made in like the 80′s or something. I kinda couldn’t see what he was trying to portray because he kept going to how the Native Americans were people who made their buildings to stay with nature and how the Europeans wanted to go above and beyond nature, and i was thinking about all the other examples which contradicted what he was saying. Through out the video i was just thinking of ways to disprove it and i really didn’t learn much from it, and I’m actually disappointed that my mind was closed because I knew to much. Like when Highwater showed the church and how it was going up toward the sky reaching to space going above the trees, when I saw how he was explaining it, i started thinking of how many buildings that i’ve seen that weren’t like that, that were european, for example mountainous forts in europe we not made to stick out but blend into the mountain so that any unsuspected enemies would be susprised attacked. Also when he showed the adobe village and how he made exaples of how they were Native Americans thats made their buildings with the nature, but with that i started thinking of all the other native american cultures that didn’t do that, and made large buildings like the europeans, like the aztec and mayan temples. I guess i should really have had a more open mind to what was trying to be said.

Weeping camel

jabayani — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 03:13:55 +0000

Today we didn’t go to class again instead we went to McDowwel center to watch a film called “The Weeping Camel”. I really didn’t get why we had to watch it but was actually quite boring. I got the whole “Weeping Camel” thing and i kinda get what it was trying to say but not really. Like the movie was really long like an hour and forty five minutes but the way it was told was boring. The movie was very dragged on I guess the whole wanting to show how the everyday life of the farmers went while the story was still showing the story of the camels. There seemed to be alot of unnessary stuff in the movie like the part when the boys went to get batteries seriously the seemed stupid, even though there was another reason for the trip was to get the musician to calm the mother camel. I still think the battery part was pretty unnessary. But when all the camels were born it was interesting. The one that was really interesting was when the hite camel was being born, man was it disgusting. Especially when the mother Camel was just walking around with the legs and the head sticking out, uuuhhhhhh. When the baby camel was born it was sad cause the mother was denying it and that seriously must suck. Being rejected not given any attention at all young animals need that from their mothers. But then again I understand why the mother didn’t want the camel cause it caused her so much pain. In the end it I get the title the mother camel started weeping then finally accepted her young after a long time. It was pretty interesting, I still think the movie should have just been centered on the camels and the farmers’ lives too

A Pale Blue Dot?

jabayani — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 05:44:12 +0000

Well i watched this video called “A Pale Blue Dot” that Dr. Berg recomended to watch, and well i only watched ine version, and i want to see the other ones but i can’ find them. But anyway the version i watched was kinda different for me it meantioned lots of things involving humanity, and how we destroy, preserve, and only have this planet. It seemed to have a really “Save this world” thing to it at the end. What really caught me was this question it asked in the video. It said “Who wil save us” and then it says “God?” as if acknolegding while questioning his existense. It just a different video I guess I’ll have to watch it a couple more times to really get it’s meaning and understand it, but this is what i came up with after watching only one version once, i wonder what i’ll think when i watch the others and this one a couple more times?

analyzing history

jabayani — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 13:23:29 +0000

Well today Dr. Berg talked to us about our blog and keep mentioning wordpress, alot. I guess he really likes wordpress. He show us some example of other students blogs, and it helps a bit knowing what i can now do with this blog, hehe.

Also today he gave us an exercise to do, we had to analyze history based on what we had. It was funny cause he gave us two envelopes. The first one everyone opened and what looked like they were hoping for a clue to what we were supposed to figure out, but he screwed us over and left it blank. Which pretty much he said that when we analyze history sometimes we are left with nothing to go back on, so pretty much we can’t stuff up. Now in the second envelope we got clues, seasoning (pepper), a spoon, popcorn cernals, a napkin, a paperclip thingy (i really dont what it is, it looks like a paperclip though), a tack, a dollar bill, and coffee beans. When my group started discussing it we thought that the coffee, seasoning, and popcorn cernals represented trade. Then used a bit of word play to say that the tack meant tax, so we put the trade stuff together with the money and thought of a tax on the spoonfuls of the trade items. The funny things is we were like way off, I mean way off the answer was Dr.Berg’s office. All the items we were given were from his office. After he said that I understood the lesson, my group and I were making things up out of thin air and forgot about the empty envelope he gave us before. We weren’t supposed to make things up like what we were doing but we should have listened to the clues he told us and use the clues he gave us but no we didn’t, the whole class didn’t.

Oh yeah he also mentioned a video called a pale blue light, which was discussed in one of the students blogs that he showed us. It sounds interesting because the student said that the video in all three versions, were wrong he didn’t like the view it was presenting because it was against his christian nature. I’m agnostic and I’ve grown up in a christian home so now i want to see these videos, I’ll look them up and post what I think cause this guy sounded very offended by the video.

Hateful things?

jabayani — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 12:22:16 +0000

Today instead of meeting in class we met at the student activities center to watch a video and take a look at some things from the Jim Crow Museum. We watched the video about the Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University for I dont know how long, probably like 30 minutes. It should some stuff that you could tell was racist and some stuff that didn’t make any sense to how it related to racism.

One thing that stuck to me as racist was a post card. The post card picture showed a large, african american man tied to a pillar or a tree being beat by a well dressed white man, in the backround of the picture was a large group of white men, and on the back of the post card someone wrote “This is how the deal with poeple down here” probably a northern tourist visiting the south. I can see how someone could take the card as racist showing only one african american man in the picture, to make it worse he is being beat, he isn’t dressed that well so an observative person would persume the man is a slave. But to someone who doesn’t pay attention to detail, and ignores some facts in the picture could see how harmless the card can be. I think the card only shows what you want it to show, someone could interpet the card as a criminal being beat, or someone can interpet it as a slave being beat and call it racist, but some may think other wise.

After the video we looked the items from the Jim Crow Museum, also caled Hatefull Things. Some items were clearly racist items, some examples of this was the metal target, and the “ten little niggers” story. The target I really can understand the racism in it, the sign said that there were point makers on it displaying low point values on any vital areas and high point values on feet. It said that the target was made i think a couple hundred years ago. So i’m guessing it was train slave hunters where to shoot slaves so that they dont die and can work again. But the sign also said that the target wasn’t used til about 2000, so now a days it could have been used as just a normal target. I target shoot and I hunt, at the range i have seen many targets that involve a human figure. I’ve seen one that actually shows a picture of a man holding a gun and there are point values on his vitals, I’ve seen one that only shows a human like picture showing no face, or color just blank. If the target in the hatefull things exibit is racist then i guess all targets involving any human form are racist right? The human figure a white man could thats a racist target because the paper on it is black or a caldean man could call the target with the man holding a gun racist because it looks like a caldean man. People onle see what they want to see. So to me i think that the target in the hateful things exibit isn’t really racist because I see it that way, but i do think the “Ten Niggers” story is racist.

In the “Ten Niggers” story, it tell of how ten young african american boys met their demise. One gets eaten by a fish, one sleeps himself to death, one gets taken by a man who looks like a judge (maybe a reference to the law, I dont know), but the most interesting one i thik is the last one, “The last one got married and then there were none.” I guess the author is saying that when you get married thats the end, it all goes down hill from there. Well in the picture for the last he didn’t look all that happy either, huh? I looked up the story when I got home and apparently there are many versions of this story, one called “Ten Little Soldiers” and one called “Ten little Indians”. Apparently in all versions of the story there ten people stuck on an island and have a deadly secret, all are killed or taken accordingly til there is one left. I wonder the beginning wasn’t shown in the exibit, just the racist part. Somethings are clearly racist others aren’t so clear, and things that are racist can be disproven to be racist, i guess it how you look at things.

One things in the exibit that i really didn’t understand why it was there was the holloween mask. I’ve seen this mask before, and in many different colors not just the brown colored one. I’ve seen in it in a white colored mask, redish colored mask, and in a black colored mask. My point is many races can call these things racist, and many can just overlook it.

When i went to the exibit I keep an open mind, but I saw things that were racist and things that didn’t make sense to their relation to racism, and somethings that could taken as racist or not. Maybe I wasnt open enough but really racism isn’t anything new we have to deal with it and i think it is annoying when people maximize things and call things racist or people racist or see a certain view as racist. In my experience sometimes the people that look for racism in others or things sometimes the ones who are the most racist, but i can be wrong, it just a point of view.