Mark Dery, “Dawn of the Dead Mall”
One. What is a dead mall?
A dead mall has a high vacancy rate or is in a state of decomposition. There’s a sadness from seeing the “Vatican of happy consumerism” turn into an empty ghost lot.
There is in particular a sadness for the mall’s death since it’s a sign of unbridled greed. This view is embraced by bobos, those people who are half bohemian, half bourgeois. See page 113, paragraph 10.
Two. What is most loathsome about shopping malls?
Perhaps it’s that “we don’t need most of what they sell” (115). They embody superfluous identity and as such are worthless, even destructive. They turn us into mall zombies, creatures of “mindless consumption.”
Thomas Hine, “What’s in a Package” (118)
One. How does the world change when you walk behind a shopping cart?
You process a cacophony of intense visual cues, which cause your brain to move at a higher speed.
You conflate your food choices with your self-appraisal as a failed or successful human being.
You’re measuring the quality of your identity based on the items that reinforce or violate the identity you wish to create.
You’re often so overwhelmed by the visual cues, that the items often become a blur and you have to assert extra effort to focus selectively on what you deem are the important items. This process proves fatiguing.
Two. What differentiates a supermarket from a traditional market?
A supermarket has no images of death like a traditional market: butcher scraps of flesh and blood, hanging carcasses.
Death is hidden by being processed and packaged into happy consumer food items.
The supermarket has little or no human connection. You are submerged into a world of packaging and the information of that packaging. (Is Trader Joe’s an exception? It seems the employees there are encouraged, required even, to establish a convivial banter with the customers.)
Packages are the key sign and source of information, not people.
Three. How are packages a looking glass into our changing tastes and aspired identities?
“How do you handle a hungry man?” With Man-Handler Chunky Soup, of course. This soup confirms your manliness.
Anything “Lite” tells you and the world you’re serious about dieting.
“Not Animal Tested” tells the world you love animals.
“Biodegradable” announces that you care about the planet.
Altoids are made to look like the curios and mementos you’d fine in an antique dresser from the Imperial Palace.
Grey Poupon mustard comes in a distinctly French jar, which suggest high class, as compared to the squeeze-bottle low-class American mustard.
A lot of sugary high-fructose corn syrup drinks are marketed with beautiful Edenic landscapes on the label with rich foliage and mangoes, pineapples, apples, and other fruits even those these drinks have no fruit in them. But clearly these labels announce you’re identity with good health even though the sugar content is as high as soda.
Scott Jaschik, “A Stand Against Wikipedia”
One. What is Wikipedia’s credibility problem?
The problem with Wikipedia is that it is protean, changing shape, evolving. All this change is based in part by random people who contribute information that may or may not be accurate.
Further, experts in the field do not esteem the information.
Two. What is Wikipedia’s second problem?
It encourages laziness, as it becomes the one-stop place for all a student’s research.
Patti S. Caravello, “Judging Quality on the Web” (69)
We read that a reliable, useful website does the following:
One. Cleary states the author and/or organization.
Two. Clearly states the date of the material.
Three. Provides accurate data that has been tested by the person’s peers.
Four. Provides comprehensive, in-depth information.
Five. Keeps bias to a minimum.
Six. Provides links to high quality scholarly sites.
Seven. Keeps advertising separate from content.
Eight. Is clearly organized and easy to use.
Trip Gabriel, “For Students in Internet Age, No Shame in Copy and Paste (71)
One. Plagiarism includes Wikipedia and unauthored sites and anything that the writer may attribute to “common knowledge” when in fact the writing was taken from a source.
Two. Students are not grasping the idea of plagiarism. Nor are they understanding the moral violation and possible punishments rendered by plagiarism. It seems so “free and easy” to take writing from the Internet and has been going on for so long that a lot of students are numbed to the idea of plagiarism.
Three. The information is “hanging out there like low hanging fruit, easy pickings.”
Four. A lot of undergraduates don’t care about the connection between their own writing and their personal identity. They just to pass the “damn class” with some “good writing,” even if it’s not theirs.
Using sources for your research paper (75-79)
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