Journal #3 "A Commercial I Find Distateful"

A few months ago when South Dakota was voting on abortion laws and the changes to choices for pregnant women, there was a "right to life" advertisement. This advertisement was plastered on a truck that would randomly drive around Sioux Falls with images of torn limbs of babies along with blood and a placenta. Although I do realize that this is a possibly true image result of an abortion, I do not believe that these violent images should be paraded around on a truck. As I have mentioned before, I do not appreciate my children exposed to violence and these images were violent. I was raised in a very conservative republican home, however, I have tried to raise my children to appreciate the rights of independent choices that we can make as a voter in this country. I want my children to be able to make decisions when they are older based on facts and not on grossly advertised images that they remember seeing on their way to dinner with their family.

"Creative and Informative are ways I use to communicate every day."

When I am at work and at home I use both creative and informative ways of communication to speak to my patients and to my family. When we receive a new patient on our floor there are many safety issues that have to be understood by the patient. The way I inform the patient can vary drastically, depending on their ability to understand and their activity level. This is where I have to become creative since the safety issues still have to be present regardless of how I get the patient to understand. At home I use this same technique when dealing with my children, while explaining homework, a family dilemma, and acceptable behaviour. It is interesting to analyze how the same creativity can be used in both instances. I am always having to use different ways to inform the people around me of many things and enjoy using my creative side to figure these techniques out.

"An American logo/icon that is recognized worldwide"

My family consists of a husband and two sons, aged 14 and 12. One of the things that we do together as a family is read and enjoy comic books and comic book characters. Each of us in the family have our own character that we enjoy the most. My husband is Spiderman, my eldest likes The Punisher, my youngest likes the Incredible Hulk and I am SuperMom. I have many Superman t-shirts and every time my boys get me something it usually has the Superman logo on it, somewhere. My husband has been many places worldwide, since he was in the Marine Corps, and he has told me this interesting story about when he was in Somolia. This country is one of the poorest in the world, it is riddled with poverty, disease and political dissent; however, one of the things that he noticed about the kids was their love of comic book heroes. None of the children could barely speak any English, but they knew the Superman, Spiderman and Batman logos and how to say those names in English. Since my favorite is Superman I choose that logo as the one being recognized and anywhere you go, if you have a T-shirt that has the Superman logo, everyone knows that the logo represents the Man of Steel, or in my case, the Mom of Steel!

Journal #2 - "Is Jon Stewart a Credible Source?"

After viewing Jon Stewart's show from Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2010, I feel entertained and a little distressed. I believe that Mr. Stewart is just as credible as anyone in the media today. However I have very little faith in any media journalist that is popular in modern America. I have found that in modern society, there are extremely few "REAL" and "TRUE" journalist. Mr Stewart is more of an entertainer than a journalist. He targets his views and comments towards a young generation and somewhat more right in politics. I agree with a lot of what he says when I do have the time to watch or listen to him, I just have so little respect for any journalist today that I really don't watch the news much anymore. Jon Stewart is fun to listen to, as far as credibility, my disillusionment with all of the media presently overshadows any respect I may have for him or any other journalist.

Journal #1

A person that I suppose has had a huge impact on our culture, at least in my lifetime, has been Bill Gates. I realize a lot of people have a negative attitude about him since as a capitalist he has been pronounced to be one of America's richest individuals, However his fame and fortune has been attained from revolutionizing the communication industry. His invention of the computer and software as we know it today has opened doors of opportunity for education, businesses and politics. We, as the public, have access to news in seconds, whereas years ago, we would not know about something for at least a few hours and even a day if the news were from a third world country. Mr. Gates may be one of the richest men in the world today, however he and his wife have also been known to be great humanitarians. They donate much of their time and money to charities that are close to their hearts. The Microsoft company also continues to progress in ways of communications and making computers more accessible and easy to use. As a writer I am thankful for Mr. Gates' contribution and look forward to the advances that we may see in the future from his company.