Questions from pg. 175.

1. I believe Heather Havrilesky's main insight of the show Mad Men is one of an almost disdain; not entirely towards the show its self, but I think more on the ideas the show accentuates. In her opening statement she makes it very clear that the american search for upgrades has become a "sickness that's infused in our blood..." The show very cleverly portrays that reinforcement of needing to have the next best thing, but also, though it may be lost sometimes in the glorification of the main characters, that having the best doesn't actually fulfill the void we want it to. As Heather continues on she really covers  almost every main character's struggle with keeping up with the appearances of the relation of happiness and objectivity, and their true struggles to maintain such a facade.
2. Havrilesky establishes her authority to write about the show in her first few paragraphs by summarizing the similarities between the show, and our real lives, emphasizing our ridiculous need to never be satisfied with what we have.
3. When Havrilesky wrote "...millions of aspiring 3-year-old princesses hum "someday my prince will come!" to themselves, turning their backs on the sweetness of the day at hand." it really tugs at our heart strings, because many of us young girls have seen the glorification of princesses sitting around and waiting for their prince to arrive instead of going out and living our lives, maybe even meeting him on the way.
4. I have seen Mad Men before, and actually quite enjoy it, and I do think this is a very accurate description of the show, and the points she's made in her article are definitely ones that have occurred to me and have impacted me while watching the show.

Analyzing websites.

Vacation Packages

Priceline.com

• Minimalistic; easy to navigate, great if I already know exactly what I want.
• Not too overwhelming  in the sponsored stuff /adds; makes it very easy to find the smaller links to what I want.

Expedia.com

• Has an extensive  list of not only their featured deals but also their top deals. Nice in case you don’t already know where you want to vacation to.
• Each different advertisement for the different deals is bright and eye catching, really drawing me into the different adventures.

Currently I'm more partial to Expedia than I am Priceline simply because I don't have any idea what sort of vacation I'd like, and Expedia privides so many choices right off the bat. I find that a bit amusing because I usually prefer Priceline to Expedia usually because they offer more for a better price. Since I'd have to really start digging through Priceline's website I would probably use Expedia as inspiration to find my perfect get away. I did find Expedia's webpage a bit overwhelming as I slogged through the various deals they provided, and eventually got irritated at how much they were pushing on me, this did make me enjoy Priceline's minimalist version a whole lot more. Once I got deeper into Pricelines website I really noticed how consistently easy they made it. Expedia also kept with their cluttered theme; and the adds didn't match what I selected...so when I looked into a vacation to Cancun the add on the side of the page was for Alaska...which isn't even remotely close to what I'd currently like in a vacation. So while my initial vote was for expedia - because of my undecided-ness - I will more than likely use Priceline because of it's ease of use and minimalist style. 

Decisions I Make

Easy things:

 Breakfast is crucial during my school week, so no matter what I need to eat something substantial to help me get through my day. I do generally keep it high in protein but due to time constraints, that protein may vary. On my weekends I merely need to maintain the habit; so depending on what all I need to accomplish that day, I usually reward my diligence with a tasty alcoholic beverage or two. 

Hard things:

While deciding weather or not to buy a car is a lot harder than deciding whats for breakfast, I feel my motives are a lot clearer and the actions I'll need to take are very cut and dry. No matter what the need is, my decision will 100% come down to money in this case. My actions following my decision to spend the money or not will vary, but in the case of replacing my car, this is a much easier decision for me. 

 A lot of people argue that without a government or law enforcement that our society would erupt into violent chaos. There would be murder, mayhem and thievery as far as the eye could see. Did the word anarchy just pop into your head? Well it shouldn't have; the association of anarchy and violence is kind of a new thing. While it does mean that there would be no government or law, the violent stereotype associated with the word has become a form of fear mongering that has been planted in our brains by those who are truly afraid of how beneficial and progressive a stateless society could be.  I for one believe that without the state, the very opposite would happen. Our government and its subsidiaries commit these grievous crimes on a daily basis under the pseudonyms of war, imprisonment, and taxes. There has been very little societal progress during my short time on this planet, and what we do consider progress is something that should have never been an issue to begin with such as race, gender, and sexuality. If America truly were the land of the free, our national debt wouldn’t be in the trillions, people wouldn’t be kidnapped from their homes and families for “crimes” such as owning a certain plant, and the millions of innocent lives that have been lost due to war could have been spared. The American society has become complacent to the hypocritical double standard our government enforces.

 Taxation is theft. Many people argue that they voluntarily pay their taxes, and maybe they don’t really even mind them. Honestly the idea – aside from forcibly having our hard earned income taken from us - seems noble. With our tax money we can help with the funding for schools, hospitals, transportation, protection, and even our own entertainment! After all; education, health care, and roads, are essential for success in our modern world, and it is nice to take in the occasional national park. Unfortunately this money also goes to people who contribute little if anything to our society, whether they are a government official such as a congressperson or just a welfare recipient who refuses to pull their weight. There is also the added down side that if I don’t pay my extortion fees, for whatever reason, someone will show up at my door, kidnap me, and throw me in a cage. That doesn’t sound too voluntary at all…There are numerous other ways for us to educate ourselves, ensure our health and even pave roads without being robbed. If our hard earned money wasn’t being taken away to fund all the things we hate about taxes, we probably wouldn’t mind contributing to the things we do enjoy. In fact, not having any government involvement would essentially eliminate the middle man and their ridiculously high income; and since I’d no longer have to worry about the kidnapping and caging for not paying for something that I may not even use, I can turn around and voluntarily give my money to the things I actively want to keep.

  War is murder. This ideal is usually a tough one to swallow; after all many of us, our friends, or our family, at some time or another, has served in the military. While I do acknowledge and applaud the bravery of many of those service members, I find it hard to support the violence and corruption the military embodies. Barging into a neighbor’s house, and killing them, their children, or even just their pet, simply because you do not agree on something, or they have something you want is the same as going to war with another country. Occupying my neighbor’s home until they have forfeited their beliefs or property is in no way shape or form acceptable for a single person to do, why then do we support it on a much, much larger scale? According to Google, “There are more than 133,000 individually recorded civilian deaths since the 2003 invasion of Iraq due to direct war related violence and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have been wounded.” These are all people, who up until their untimely deaths were more than likely going about their business just as we are right now. We can try and justify it as some and say they were part of a terrorist organization, or maybe their religious beliefs would have led them to eventually kill us; kill or be killed, but in all honesty they were just humans, the same as you and I, trying navigate their way through life. We’ve all heard the saying “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”, it all comes down to perspective, however violence only begets violence. Murray N. Rothbard, a renowned libertarian, once said "If no man may aggress against - invade - the person or property of another, this means that every man is free to do whatever he wishes, except commit such aggression."[1] If we were to model our life after these words alone, the death machine that is war would cease to exist.

So without the government and the military how do we achieve the illustrious freedom that we, as humans, are all entitled to?  The best answer is through a free market economy and society. In Rothbard’s article found in The Consice Encyclopedia of Economics, he defines the free market as such: [The free market] “is a summary term for an array of exchanges that take place in society. Each exchange is undertaken as a voluntary agreement between two people or between groups of people represented by agents. [2] This model would essentially become the foundation for our interactions with each other. If everything we do is based off a voluntary agreement between two consenting people, the majority of petty crimes would be eliminated. There is always the exception to the rule, and someone somewhere would commit an act of violence, but in a society where it would be just as easy to boycott a bad business, we could basically boycott the offender. In extreme cases imprisonment or exile may be necessary but only after absolute guilt has been proved. The use of the free market and reputable private parties can also help define the blurry lines of justice that many of us call for. Using Rothbard’s nonaggression principle and adding in a free market economy for structure is the perfect recipe for true freedom and maybe even a little happiness.

1. http://mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp ch. 2, pg. 1.

2. http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/FreeMarket.html

collaborative commercial analysis

Subway Crop fit

Main message: suitable diet for whatever fitness fad. play on cross fit and it's silly extremes. 

Crop fit- extreme farming fitness - satirical 

regular looking people eating subway, doing healthy things. 

How was writing paper #1 different from paper #2? What have I learned about myself and my writing?

 My first paper was a lot easier to continuously write. Once I solidified my main idea, the words flowed onto paper incredibly smoothly. Most of it was easy because it was simply relaying something that had previously happened. My second paper was SO much harder to convey into words. I had a topic that I was passionate about, but I think that may have been half the problem. It was a huge challenge trying to figure out what direction to approach my topic from and once I finally did, I was overwhelmed with the task of relaying it into essay form. I probably shouldn't have chosen such a dynamic topic.

 I've learned that storytelling is my strong suit and position papers are not.