Hey Ashby!
Do you want 40 FREE COOKIES? Come down to the TV lounge this Wednesday at 9pm!
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Spreak Break's just around the corner!
>>As you make travel plans for Spring Break, please keep in mind that you will need to check out with an RA by 5pm Friday, March 4. Have a safe and relaxing break!
Gray
Gray
Monday, February 21, 2011
Ashby Tall Turns 100!
Ashby RA Grace White and Spotswood RA Brandon Hyman teamed up to put together a birthday celebration for Ashby's 100th. Residents hung out and enjoyed birthday cake and assembling a time capsule to be filled with this year's memories!
If residents have photos they would like to add to the Ashby time capsule, they should see Grace (whitegf@jmu.edu)
If residents have photos they would like to add to the Ashby time capsule, they should see Grace (whitegf@jmu.edu)
--
Gray
Saturday, February 5, 2011
And you thought learning a second language was hard?
Source: http://www.xamuel.com/10-reasons-why-english-is-hard-language/
So you've heard that English is one of the most difficult languages to learn, but why? Follow this link to find out!
The purpose of this article is to put language difficulty into perspective for native English speakers struggling with foreign languages. Languages like Japanese, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, or even easier languages like Spanish, can seem very difficult, just because we’re not used to them. English seems sooo easy and simple, but that’s because we’ve been raised with it. Here are ten reasons why English is actually one of the hardest languages in the world.
THE WORLD’S CRAZIEST SPELLING SYSTEM
English spelling is extremely counter-intuitive! Why is it that words like “through”, “trough”, and “though” sound so different? It seems like for virtually every “rule” a prescriptivist writes down to try and model English spelling, exceptions can be found.
The fact is, although it’s possible to make rough guesses at English spellings using phonetics, in order to really know English spelling, you have to memorize the spelling of every word. Even words whose spelling seems straightforward and simple, you still memorize (maybe subconsciously without even trying) just because otherwise when you wanted to spell it, you’d have no way to know it was simple and straightforward.
There is a method to the madness of English spelling. It’s based on etymology. Based on how a word is spelled, we can make guesses about where the word came from. German, French, Latin? Maybe somewhere more exotic like Japanese? This is very useful, because it keeps spelling consistent between different English-speaking nations.
English is pronounced rather differently in the United States, in Britain, in Australia, and in India. If, as so many people have suggested, spelling reform were attempted, which nation would be the standard? At most one nation could enjoy perfectly phonetic spelling. The others would just switch from one bizarre spelling system to another. And even for that one country, the spellings would become obsolete as the pronunciations of words changed. Even in the United States, pronunciations vary from dialect to dialect.
So, there’s good reason for the English spelling system. It’s one of the most successful spelling systems in the world, because of its flexibility and its strength across wildly differing dialects. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to learn! For a foreigner trying to learn English, spelling is extremely difficult!
THE SOUND SYSTEM IS SO RICH
When you study a foreign language, you’re liable to run into sounds which aren’t present in your native tongue. Part of the challenge is learning, mechanically, how to produce these sounds. In Japanese, there’s a different “R” sound, which actually sounds something like a mix between “R”, “L”, and “D”. In Mandarin, there are a dozen sounds which are all really hard to learn. German is famous for its hard gutteral sound, which we’d have to master if we wanted to get Johann Sebastian Bach’s name right.
Generally, more exotic new sounds mean more difficulty learning a language. English has a very rich set of sounds. It has the ability to string consonants and vowels together almost arbitrarily. Take a look at the word, “strengths”. There’s only one vowel out of six or seven consonants, depending how you count! Again look at “squirrel”. A very difficult word for foreigners to learn to pronounce.
And this is only made worse by the crazy spelling system. Not only are there a million sounds to learn, but there’s small indication from a word’s spelling which sounds are involved.
And, going the other direction, some foreigners must learn to identify certain sounds which they consider distinct. For example, English actually has two distinct “L” sounds, but we as English speakers can’t hear the difference because we never need to in order to understand the language. But to, e.g., a native Russian speaker, suddenly there are two sounds floating around and both are to be considered identical. It’s similar to learning Japanese, where the “g” of “go” and the “ng” of “thing” are treated as being identical.
SUBTLE ORDERING
In English, there are subtle ordering requirements which even English native speakers aren’t consciously aware of. We get them right every time, because we subconsciously know about them through practice, but that just makes it all the harder for foreigners, since these rules are so subtle and hidden.
The best example is adjective ordering. Compare, “a cute little puppy” to “a little cute puppy.” The first is fine, while the second sounds wrong. How is a foreigner to know which order to use?
Can you explain it to them? (There is actually a method, but it’s rather complex and better to just learn subconsciously)
WHICH SYNONYM TO USE??
Because of its diverse, promiscuous etymological origins, English has lots of synonyms which, just from a dictionary definition, seem very similar if not identical in meaning. Part of becoming a master English speaker, is knowing which words to use when. Although synonyms are grouped up in a thesaurus, that doesn’t mean the words are identical. Even if their official meanings are identical, different synonyms convey subtly different moods and ideas.
You can watch a movie or see a movie, but you can only watch TV, never see it. You can’t view either of them, even though when you watch either of them, you become a viewer (and never a watcher, much less a seer!) Try explaining that to someone who speaks Arabic!
STRESS
In English, the entire meaning of a sentence can be changed by placing stress on a word. For example:
• I entered my room.
• *I* entered my room.
• I *entered* my room.
• I entered *my* room.
• I entered my *room*.
A grammar of English usually only even addresses the meaning of the first, stressless, version of the sentence, even though a foreigner will hear all variations if they’re immersed deeply enough in the language.
For native speakers of stressless languages, it’s very difficult to even hear the stress at all. This counter-balances Mandarin’s dreaded tone system which English speakers always cite as evidence of Mandarin’s horrid difficulty.
POETIC, OLDER ENGLISH IS EVERYWHERE
In order to be really fluent in English, you can’t just learn modern English, you must also know a little bit of older, more poetic English. Not actual “Old English”, since that’s a whole other language entirely, but “older” English.
Here in downtown Columbus, there’s a church which advertises with the message: “Which part of ‘Thou shalt not‘ don’t you understand?” This slogan always makes me laugh, because, having studied languages, I’ve come to see how the slogan must be extremely confusing to most ESL speakers. The truth is that, for a lot of speakers, “Thou” and “shalt” are both unfamiliar. And the fact that by stringing them together in essentially the same structure as “You will not”, you end up creating a command– that’s even worse!
Older English shows up in literature, plays, poetry… even video games.
WHAT’S UP WITH THESE QUESTIONS??
In English, it’s very strange how the whole grammar of a sentence changes when the sentence is put in question form. “It is warm” becomes “Is it warm?” Notice how the “it” and the “is” are switched. To us, this is totally natural because we’ve been raised with it. To a lot of speakers of other languages, the whole device seems needlessly difficult.
Continuing with the “It is warm” example, there actually is a valid question, “It is warm?” It’s interesting to ponder the difference in meaning between “It’s warm?” and “Is it warm?” In the latter, the speaker genuinely doesn’t know whether it’s warm. In the former, it seems almost like the speaker thinks it’s not warm, and is asking for re-confirmation.
These kinds of subtle distinctions make English a pretty difficult language grammatically.
IRREGULAR CONJUGATIONS OF VERBS, AND SIMILAR PHENOMENA
Some people who study Spanish think the verbs there are bad. English is stuffed full of irregular verbs! How come the past tense of “buy” is “bought”, and the past tense of “sell” is “sold”, and neither “buyed” nor “selled” are real words?
And that’s just the “usual” conjugations of verbs, i.e., past tense and third person singular. There are other verb conjugations, but they’re just so irregular we don’t even acknowledge them as conjugations. For example, taking an adjective and forming it’s “-ness” quality. As in, deriving “swiftness” from “swift”. This process is as irregular as you can get. “Strong” doesn’t become “strongness”, it becomes “strength”, even though its opposite, “weak”, does become “weakness”. “High” becomes “height”, and if you mess up and say “highness” instead, it sounds like you’re talking about some bizarre royal bloodline!
Sometimes you can even “undo” a conjugation and end up with a whole new word than what you started with. The word “truthiness”, for example, has recently been popularized. Another example is “awesomeness”. “Awesome” is actually derived from “awe”: something is awesome if it inspires awe (at least, that’s the original meaning). So in theory, “awesomeness” and “awe” should be the same thing, and “awesomeness” shouldn’t even be a word since it should be redundant, and yet, they don’t mean the same things and “awesomeness” is a word.
THE CASE OF THE LEFTOVER CASES
Being derived from German, which has a heavy case system, English originally had its own heavy case system. English cases have mostly been phased out, but the remnants of a case system still exist, which almost means in English it’s the worst of both worlds.
Let me explain what cases are. Cases are different “forms” for words to indicate what function they serve in a sentence. For example, in the sentence “the cat ate the fish”, “the fish” is the “object” (it’s getting eaten), and “the cat” is the subject (he’s doing the eating). There are no cases here; in order to tell who did the eating and who got eaten, we have to look at word order. If the sentence were “the fish ate the cat”, the meaning would be very different!
In a cased language, “the cat” might have different forms, to indicate whether the cat is the subject, object, or something else (German has four different cases and Russian has even more). Similarly with “the fish”. The advantage of a cased system is that word order is more flexible. The forms of the nouns tell us what roles they play, so the order of the sentence is less crucial. The downside of the case system is that it’s more complicated, and there’s more to memorize.
As I said, English is mostly case-free. But, there are leftovers from the old case system. That’s why we have “I”, “me”, “mine” and “my”. And why we have “you”, “yours” and “your”. And why we have “he”, “him”, and “his”, and “we”, “us”, “ours” and “our”. In each of these groups, it’s really the same word, just in different forms- different cases. So, part of learning English is learning a case system, even though it’s only used for a handful of words.
And English doesn’t even get the positive advantages from its case system. Even in a sentence entirely using cased words, like “I hit him”, word order is still important– “Him hit I” is totally incorrect unless your name is Yoda.
Incidentally, the leftover case system also explains the annoying “who”/”whom” dilemma, which many native English speakers are confused by, not to mention ESL speakers!
WHAT KIND OF WORD IS THIS, ANYWAY??
One of the most difficult things about English, is the fact that there’s very little in the way of signals to tell you what kind of word a word is. For example, in Japanese and Spanish, all verbs have similar endings. Not so in English.
The lone exception is the English adverb, which often ends in “-ly”, but even this isn’t a universal rule, and adverbs are about the least important words in a language anyway.
In English, the same word can even fall into multiple categories. “Trust” is a noun, but also a verb. “Quiet” is both a noun and an adjective (even though its opposite, “loud”, is only an adjective). “Abstract” is all three!
In fact, almost any adjective can be used as a noun, just put “the” in front of it: “The dead shall walk the earth.” And any noun can be used as a verb, like in the famous example, “I’ll cookie you!” The possibilities are endless, as long as you’re creative. All this makes English a lot of fun- but it also definitely makes the language complicated!
CONCLUSION
If you ever find yourself stressing out over learning a foreign language, just be glad you don’t have to learn English as a second language!!
--
GFK
So you've heard that English is one of the most difficult languages to learn, but why? Follow this link to find out!
The purpose of this article is to put language difficulty into perspective for native English speakers struggling with foreign languages. Languages like Japanese, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, or even easier languages like Spanish, can seem very difficult, just because we’re not used to them. English seems sooo easy and simple, but that’s because we’ve been raised with it. Here are ten reasons why English is actually one of the hardest languages in the world.
THE WORLD’S CRAZIEST SPELLING SYSTEM
English spelling is extremely counter-intuitive! Why is it that words like “through”, “trough”, and “though” sound so different? It seems like for virtually every “rule” a prescriptivist writes down to try and model English spelling, exceptions can be found.
The fact is, although it’s possible to make rough guesses at English spellings using phonetics, in order to really know English spelling, you have to memorize the spelling of every word. Even words whose spelling seems straightforward and simple, you still memorize (maybe subconsciously without even trying) just because otherwise when you wanted to spell it, you’d have no way to know it was simple and straightforward.
There is a method to the madness of English spelling. It’s based on etymology. Based on how a word is spelled, we can make guesses about where the word came from. German, French, Latin? Maybe somewhere more exotic like Japanese? This is very useful, because it keeps spelling consistent between different English-speaking nations.
English is pronounced rather differently in the United States, in Britain, in Australia, and in India. If, as so many people have suggested, spelling reform were attempted, which nation would be the standard? At most one nation could enjoy perfectly phonetic spelling. The others would just switch from one bizarre spelling system to another. And even for that one country, the spellings would become obsolete as the pronunciations of words changed. Even in the United States, pronunciations vary from dialect to dialect.
So, there’s good reason for the English spelling system. It’s one of the most successful spelling systems in the world, because of its flexibility and its strength across wildly differing dialects. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to learn! For a foreigner trying to learn English, spelling is extremely difficult!
THE SOUND SYSTEM IS SO RICH
When you study a foreign language, you’re liable to run into sounds which aren’t present in your native tongue. Part of the challenge is learning, mechanically, how to produce these sounds. In Japanese, there’s a different “R” sound, which actually sounds something like a mix between “R”, “L”, and “D”. In Mandarin, there are a dozen sounds which are all really hard to learn. German is famous for its hard gutteral sound, which we’d have to master if we wanted to get Johann Sebastian Bach’s name right.
Generally, more exotic new sounds mean more difficulty learning a language. English has a very rich set of sounds. It has the ability to string consonants and vowels together almost arbitrarily. Take a look at the word, “strengths”. There’s only one vowel out of six or seven consonants, depending how you count! Again look at “squirrel”. A very difficult word for foreigners to learn to pronounce.
And this is only made worse by the crazy spelling system. Not only are there a million sounds to learn, but there’s small indication from a word’s spelling which sounds are involved.
And, going the other direction, some foreigners must learn to identify certain sounds which they consider distinct. For example, English actually has two distinct “L” sounds, but we as English speakers can’t hear the difference because we never need to in order to understand the language. But to, e.g., a native Russian speaker, suddenly there are two sounds floating around and both are to be considered identical. It’s similar to learning Japanese, where the “g” of “go” and the “ng” of “thing” are treated as being identical.
SUBTLE ORDERING
In English, there are subtle ordering requirements which even English native speakers aren’t consciously aware of. We get them right every time, because we subconsciously know about them through practice, but that just makes it all the harder for foreigners, since these rules are so subtle and hidden.
The best example is adjective ordering. Compare, “a cute little puppy” to “a little cute puppy.” The first is fine, while the second sounds wrong. How is a foreigner to know which order to use?
Can you explain it to them? (There is actually a method, but it’s rather complex and better to just learn subconsciously)
WHICH SYNONYM TO USE??
Because of its diverse, promiscuous etymological origins, English has lots of synonyms which, just from a dictionary definition, seem very similar if not identical in meaning. Part of becoming a master English speaker, is knowing which words to use when. Although synonyms are grouped up in a thesaurus, that doesn’t mean the words are identical. Even if their official meanings are identical, different synonyms convey subtly different moods and ideas.
You can watch a movie or see a movie, but you can only watch TV, never see it. You can’t view either of them, even though when you watch either of them, you become a viewer (and never a watcher, much less a seer!) Try explaining that to someone who speaks Arabic!
STRESS
In English, the entire meaning of a sentence can be changed by placing stress on a word. For example:
• I entered my room.
• *I* entered my room.
• I *entered* my room.
• I entered *my* room.
• I entered my *room*.
A grammar of English usually only even addresses the meaning of the first, stressless, version of the sentence, even though a foreigner will hear all variations if they’re immersed deeply enough in the language.
For native speakers of stressless languages, it’s very difficult to even hear the stress at all. This counter-balances Mandarin’s dreaded tone system which English speakers always cite as evidence of Mandarin’s horrid difficulty.
POETIC, OLDER ENGLISH IS EVERYWHERE
In order to be really fluent in English, you can’t just learn modern English, you must also know a little bit of older, more poetic English. Not actual “Old English”, since that’s a whole other language entirely, but “older” English.
Here in downtown Columbus, there’s a church which advertises with the message: “Which part of ‘Thou shalt not‘ don’t you understand?” This slogan always makes me laugh, because, having studied languages, I’ve come to see how the slogan must be extremely confusing to most ESL speakers. The truth is that, for a lot of speakers, “Thou” and “shalt” are both unfamiliar. And the fact that by stringing them together in essentially the same structure as “You will not”, you end up creating a command– that’s even worse!
Older English shows up in literature, plays, poetry… even video games.
WHAT’S UP WITH THESE QUESTIONS??
In English, it’s very strange how the whole grammar of a sentence changes when the sentence is put in question form. “It is warm” becomes “Is it warm?” Notice how the “it” and the “is” are switched. To us, this is totally natural because we’ve been raised with it. To a lot of speakers of other languages, the whole device seems needlessly difficult.
Continuing with the “It is warm” example, there actually is a valid question, “It is warm?” It’s interesting to ponder the difference in meaning between “It’s warm?” and “Is it warm?” In the latter, the speaker genuinely doesn’t know whether it’s warm. In the former, it seems almost like the speaker thinks it’s not warm, and is asking for re-confirmation.
These kinds of subtle distinctions make English a pretty difficult language grammatically.
IRREGULAR CONJUGATIONS OF VERBS, AND SIMILAR PHENOMENA
Some people who study Spanish think the verbs there are bad. English is stuffed full of irregular verbs! How come the past tense of “buy” is “bought”, and the past tense of “sell” is “sold”, and neither “buyed” nor “selled” are real words?
And that’s just the “usual” conjugations of verbs, i.e., past tense and third person singular. There are other verb conjugations, but they’re just so irregular we don’t even acknowledge them as conjugations. For example, taking an adjective and forming it’s “-ness” quality. As in, deriving “swiftness” from “swift”. This process is as irregular as you can get. “Strong” doesn’t become “strongness”, it becomes “strength”, even though its opposite, “weak”, does become “weakness”. “High” becomes “height”, and if you mess up and say “highness” instead, it sounds like you’re talking about some bizarre royal bloodline!
Sometimes you can even “undo” a conjugation and end up with a whole new word than what you started with. The word “truthiness”, for example, has recently been popularized. Another example is “awesomeness”. “Awesome” is actually derived from “awe”: something is awesome if it inspires awe (at least, that’s the original meaning). So in theory, “awesomeness” and “awe” should be the same thing, and “awesomeness” shouldn’t even be a word since it should be redundant, and yet, they don’t mean the same things and “awesomeness” is a word.
THE CASE OF THE LEFTOVER CASES
Being derived from German, which has a heavy case system, English originally had its own heavy case system. English cases have mostly been phased out, but the remnants of a case system still exist, which almost means in English it’s the worst of both worlds.
Let me explain what cases are. Cases are different “forms” for words to indicate what function they serve in a sentence. For example, in the sentence “the cat ate the fish”, “the fish” is the “object” (it’s getting eaten), and “the cat” is the subject (he’s doing the eating). There are no cases here; in order to tell who did the eating and who got eaten, we have to look at word order. If the sentence were “the fish ate the cat”, the meaning would be very different!
In a cased language, “the cat” might have different forms, to indicate whether the cat is the subject, object, or something else (German has four different cases and Russian has even more). Similarly with “the fish”. The advantage of a cased system is that word order is more flexible. The forms of the nouns tell us what roles they play, so the order of the sentence is less crucial. The downside of the case system is that it’s more complicated, and there’s more to memorize.
As I said, English is mostly case-free. But, there are leftovers from the old case system. That’s why we have “I”, “me”, “mine” and “my”. And why we have “you”, “yours” and “your”. And why we have “he”, “him”, and “his”, and “we”, “us”, “ours” and “our”. In each of these groups, it’s really the same word, just in different forms- different cases. So, part of learning English is learning a case system, even though it’s only used for a handful of words.
And English doesn’t even get the positive advantages from its case system. Even in a sentence entirely using cased words, like “I hit him”, word order is still important– “Him hit I” is totally incorrect unless your name is Yoda.
Incidentally, the leftover case system also explains the annoying “who”/”whom” dilemma, which many native English speakers are confused by, not to mention ESL speakers!
WHAT KIND OF WORD IS THIS, ANYWAY??
One of the most difficult things about English, is the fact that there’s very little in the way of signals to tell you what kind of word a word is. For example, in Japanese and Spanish, all verbs have similar endings. Not so in English.
The lone exception is the English adverb, which often ends in “-ly”, but even this isn’t a universal rule, and adverbs are about the least important words in a language anyway.
In English, the same word can even fall into multiple categories. “Trust” is a noun, but also a verb. “Quiet” is both a noun and an adjective (even though its opposite, “loud”, is only an adjective). “Abstract” is all three!
In fact, almost any adjective can be used as a noun, just put “the” in front of it: “The dead shall walk the earth.” And any noun can be used as a verb, like in the famous example, “I’ll cookie you!” The possibilities are endless, as long as you’re creative. All this makes English a lot of fun- but it also definitely makes the language complicated!
CONCLUSION
If you ever find yourself stressing out over learning a foreign language, just be glad you don’t have to learn English as a second language!!
--
GFK
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Last Chance!
Hey Everyone!
Thanks to everyone who made it out to the open house on Friday. I hope everyone is excited for Madison International to move to Hoffman Hall next year. This is a final call for all applications for Madison International applications! The applications are due on MONDAY!! Here is some informational from the housing office.
"Applications are now being accepted for the 2011-2012 Madison International Program. Online applications can be found at http://www.jmu.edu/orl/
As you may have heard, MIP will be housed next year on the third floor of Hoffman Hall. You must have a signed housing contract in order to be a part of MIP. If you do not have a housing contract for next year, you can complete a housing application at https://rms.jmu.edu/.
Students who are admitted into MIP for 2011-2012 and have signed housing contracts will be able to pick a spot on the third floor of Hoffman Hall during Online Room Selection on Monday, February 21, 2011.
If you have any questions, email res-life@jmu.edu. Have a great semester!"
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
ninjakiwi.com
Hey everyone!
Not to contribute to your delinquency, but if you have some free time on your hands I recommend this website for mindless fun. The site is ninjakiwi.com and I personally prefer playing Bloons Tower Defense 4. These are all free and fun games to get your mind off of whatever is frustrating you at the time. If you need a de-stressor, go to this website!
Burn Baby Burn!
Workout+Smoothies on Gray's Hall!
Wednesday, Jan. 26th at 8:30pm
Feel the burn and then enjoy some snacks!
(Richard Simmons not included...)
--Gray
kiddgf@jmu.edu
Friday, January 14, 2011
Important Dates for On-Campus Housing 2011-2012
Keep these dates in mind when it comes to on-campus housing for next year:
- Jan. 24th Madison International applications due (that's right, Madison International will be in Hoffman Hall for 2011-2012!)
- Jan. 28th On-campus apartment interest forms due (JMU will begin leasing on-campus apartments next year)
- Week of January 24, 2011 Students that signed on-campus housing contracts for 2011-2012 will begin receiving their lottery numbers via e-mail.
- February 21st-March 4th Online room selection will take place. Your lottery number determines your appointment time. Check the ORL website for additional information (http://www.jmu.edu/orl).
If you are interested in living in the Madison International learning community in Hoffman for 2011-2012, there will be an open house on Friday, January 20th, in Hoffman (across from the Madison statue). Be sure to stop by between 3 and 4:30pm.
Gray
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Google Zeitgeist 2010- Does the World Live Online?
Google Zeitgeist 2010 – Does the World Live Online?
by Linn Baumgardt
linnbaumgardt.com
Google did it again. They just released their yearly Google Zeitgeist analysis to “capture the spirit of 2010.”
Google Zeitgeist 2010 – The Winners and the Losers
According to the Google Zeitgeist 2010, swine flu is the fastest falling search term, definitely an upgrade from 2009. The fastest rising term changed from Michael Jackson to the online video chat site Chatroulette, which is followed by the iPad and Justin Bieber.
The Google Zeitgeist 2010 also shows that the world is heavily engaged with movie- and pop stars, rather than politicians and writers. Justing Bieber, Kate Perry, Selena Gomez, Kim Kardashian, and Eminem are the fastest rising search terms regarding people. Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, Taylor Lautner, and Robert Pattinson also made the Top 10.
Most of those personalities have a very strong fan base within the 12 to 18 year old, which is one of the first age groups that literally grew up with the Internet and cell phones. They are a market that adapts new technologies such as smartphones incredibly fast and is therefore more likely to frequently search for information online than older age groups (especially age 65+).
The Spirit of 2010 – Does the World Live Online?
In how far does the Google Zeitgeist 2010 actually “capture the spirit of 2010”?
It is safe to say that terms such as Haiti and Vancouver 2010 are “One Year Wonders” that will always remind us of global events that will inevitably be connected to the year 2010.
There is a huge trend can be observed when looking at the Google Zeitgeist 2010: We are moving our social life into the online world.
In the Top 10 fastest rising search terms in 2010, we find a video chat website(Chatroulette) , a site that offers a different media for phones (Myxer), two online gaming sites (Friv, Gamexer), and two social networks (Twitter and Facebook). Also, number two on the list is the iPad, a device that allows us to be constantly connected to the internet.
Out of the Top 10 fastest rising terms, only three are not online and technology tools whereas there are only two key words within the Top 10 fastest falling terms which are online tools (mininova and myspace layouts).
Although there are many factors that I did not consider here, the Google Zeitgeist 2010 makes it impossible to ignore that the spirit of 2010 is the world’s movement to “live online”.
by Linn Baumgardt
linnbaumgardt.com
Google did it again. They just released their yearly Google Zeitgeist analysis to “capture the spirit of 2010.”
Google Zeitgeist 2010 – The Winners and the Losers
According to the Google Zeitgeist 2010, swine flu is the fastest falling search term, definitely an upgrade from 2009. The fastest rising term changed from Michael Jackson to the online video chat site Chatroulette, which is followed by the iPad and Justin Bieber.
The Google Zeitgeist 2010 also shows that the world is heavily engaged with movie- and pop stars, rather than politicians and writers. Justing Bieber, Kate Perry, Selena Gomez, Kim Kardashian, and Eminem are the fastest rising search terms regarding people. Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, Taylor Lautner, and Robert Pattinson also made the Top 10.
Most of those personalities have a very strong fan base within the 12 to 18 year old, which is one of the first age groups that literally grew up with the Internet and cell phones. They are a market that adapts new technologies such as smartphones incredibly fast and is therefore more likely to frequently search for information online than older age groups (especially age 65+).
The Spirit of 2010 – Does the World Live Online?
In how far does the Google Zeitgeist 2010 actually “capture the spirit of 2010”?
It is safe to say that terms such as Haiti and Vancouver 2010 are “One Year Wonders” that will always remind us of global events that will inevitably be connected to the year 2010.
There is a huge trend can be observed when looking at the Google Zeitgeist 2010: We are moving our social life into the online world.
In the Top 10 fastest rising search terms in 2010, we find a video chat website(Chatroulette) , a site that offers a different media for phones (Myxer), two online gaming sites (Friv, Gamexer), and two social networks (Twitter and Facebook). Also, number two on the list is the iPad, a device that allows us to be constantly connected to the internet.
Out of the Top 10 fastest rising terms, only three are not online and technology tools whereas there are only two key words within the Top 10 fastest falling terms which are online tools (mininova and myspace layouts).
Although there are many factors that I did not consider here, the Google Zeitgeist 2010 makes it impossible to ignore that the spirit of 2010 is the world’s movement to “live online”.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
New Year's Resolutions
New Year's Resolutions, Love them or Hate them here is how to keep them!
With the a new semester about to start here are some tips on how to keep you New Year's resolution. The beginning of the semester is a great time to consider the new academic goals, now with one semester under your belt you will be able to set more attainable goals. Here are five steps courtesy of ehow.com to get you started off on the right foot.
1. Aim low. It goes without saying that most New Year's resolutions are easier announced (or written) than done-but if you set the bar too high, you're doomed from the start. Instead of a sweeping declaration like "I will lose 30 pounds by April and finally fit into that dress," target a goal that's more attainable, like losing 10 or 15 pounds.
2. Don't overload yourself. It's difficult enough for the average person to follow through on one ambitious New Year's resolution; why on earth would you saddle yourself with three or four? Choose the most pressing issue at hand-losing weight, finding a girlfriend, improving your relationship with your parents-and concentrate on that. Trying to do everything simultaneously practically guarantees failure across the board.
3. Tell everyone you know. One school of thought says that New Year's resolutions are best kept to oneself, but look at it this way: the more people to whom you announce your resolution, the more people there'll be to prod you along if you fall behind. There's no shame in seeking help if you can't accomplish your resolution on your own.
4. Reward yourself. Following through on a New Year's resolution is rarely easy, so a little Pavlovian conditioning goes a long way. If you've resolved to shop less, stroke yourself for not buying those shoes by springing for a steaming hot cappucino at the mall. If you've resolved to be nicer to people, buy yourself a nice jacket after enduring that tedious cocktail party without delivering any insults.
5. Wait until spring. Sometimes the best way to accomplish a New Year's resolution is to make it at a time of year of your choosing, rather than the one dictated by the calendar. May 1 is a good alternate date, since the change of season will neatly coincide with the change you're hoping to accomplish in yourself.
Good Luck this semester! Don't forget all of the staff is here to help you achieve you goals this semester!
Good Luck this semester! Don't forget all of the staff is here to help you achieve you goals this semester!
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