AHA Moments

1. Something that really caught my eye earlier in the quarter was about the first prints of books and what kind of paper they used to write on. Papyrus, which is a type of reed that was used to make an early form of paper. I found this to be crazy because it was founded and invented in 3000 BC. It really makes you think that as a species, we have come a long way from just creating paper. There are so many new innovations and inventions still to come too.

2. Another Aha! moment I had was discovering about the Radio Act of 1912. This was put in place because the Titanic sank, and all other ships radios were turned off. For this, it is now that all ships must leave there radios on 24 hours a day. First off, I immediately thought to myself, "Well, wouldn't they already want to leave the radios on anyway just in case something happens?" I found it baffling that they didn't already have something like this in effect already, that's why this was so eye popping to me.

3. Lastly, looking at all the money spent on advertising has blown my mind. We could do so much more with that money than just spending it on one product. Seriously, is it really necessary to spend billions of dollars on an ad that might be thirty seconds long? Just alone, direct mail spends sixty billion dollars a year to get the attention of folks at their house to make them want to go buy their product. I was blown away by some of these numbers. For example: Yellow Pages: $14.2 billion, Radio: $19.6 billion, Newspapers: $47.7 billion. You notice that it doesn't say million, but BILLION! That's just crazy if you ask me. What next, a trillion dollars spent on crap that isn't going to benefit me? HORRIBLE!

Media Ethics/Law

Over the years, South Park has been looked upon as one of the most grotesque and vile television programs that has been on the air. Every season, the creators; Trey Parker and Matt Stone take the show to new limits. In 2010, South Park aired its 200th and 201st episodes. In these episodes, all of the famous stars of movies and television got together to protest against the town of South Park. Their request was that they receive the prophet Muhammad or else they are going to sue the town for slander. 

Previously, about ten years ago, Muhammad was depicted in a South Park and had the power of flames. In 2006, Comedy Centrals Network didn't approve of showing Muhammad due to threats from the Muslim religion. And as of recent, in 2010, they brought back the prophet for another run. A group called RevolutionMuslim.com decided to write the network, but this time they meant business. They sent a passive aggressive threat, stating that if Muhammad is to be shown or to be heard, that the creators would face the same fate Theo Van Gogh did (Theo Van Gogh was an artist that made a film about the mistreatment of women in the muslim religion. He was killed for this). The Comedy Central Network was forced to bleep everything, even a speech by Kyle Brovlofski which was about intimidation and fear which was bleeped because of the fear instilled by the religious group. 

South Parks right to freedom of speech and expression was taken from them. It's sad and have made many people very angry, excluding the Muslim group that originally made the threat. In the past fourteen seasons, South Park has been full of racial and religious bigotry that has never been taken to this aptitude. For the creators, they're disappointed that the muslim group didn't have any sort of repercussions for the threat they sent. But, the FBI refuted their argument because no ones life was at risk at the time.