E-Portfolio

Hello, and welcome to my portfolio! I am an undergraduate student at Penn State majoring in Chinese and International Relations. When I first came to Penn State, I was only planning to major in Political Science. I had always been interested in politics, and it just seemed like the natural major for me. To fulfill my foreign language requirement, I decided to take Chinese, because I figured it would be useful. However, I never expected to fall in love with the language the way I did. The very nature and structure of the language fascinated me, and as a result, I became very interested in Chinese culture, which also led me to make friends with Chinese students at my school. Now, I have decided to duel major in both Chinese and Political Science. As of April 2011, I am spending my summer studying Chinese in Shanghai. There, I will take four hours of Chinese classes a day, which will be the equivalent of one year of Chinese. Apparently, I'm the first Penn State student to ever do this program. I can't wait to spend my summer in Shanghai, and I'm eager to improve my Chinese as fast as possible.

Looking back, it was foolish to only major in Political Science. An appropriate duel-major I think is necessary in order to supplement your knowledge, and to distinguish oneself from the legions of political science majors. Chinese I feel is a perfect supplement.

 

Thomas Holt's e-Portfolio 

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College Food

So, while I was waiting for a sandwich at The Big Onion at East Commons the other night, I started thinking about something. Maybe it's just me, but "The Big Onion" seems to be a really unattractive name for a sandwich shop. It doesn't really imply anything about the quality of the food. And then I also realized that "Good 2 Go" and "Fresh Express" are really bland and uninspired names. Not to mention that fact the logos and color schemes for all three shops seem kind of garish and ugly.

As a whole, it seems like universities don't put a whole lot of effort into designing appealing logos and names for their on-campus shops and dining areas. I noticed this both at Penn State and at other universities I visited before applying to Penn State. I'm guessing many universities just think that since students are going to be forced to eat their food anyway, why bother designing an appealing name and logo? The thing is though, if a store has an unappealing name, it's going to make the food seem less appealing by association. Maybe not consciously, but subliminally. And this subliminal association might cause students to unconsciously avoid eating at the commons if possible. I've personally noticed that I've ordered Pita Pit several times rather than just walk down to the commons. Not to mention that this whole laziness regarding design doesn't really leave a good impression on potential students about the quality of a university.

So really, it seems like universities shoud show some pride and actually try to sell their food, rather than just assume we'll eat whatever crap they give us.

More Chinese Rhetoric

So the other day, in my Chinese class, my teacher decided us to give us a worksheet where we analyze different cultural situations. Most of them dealt with different situations like an American teacher teaching in China, Americans having a dinner party with Chinese and Americans going on a tour in China. I can't copy them verbatim but they dealt with themes like how the memorization method of teaching Chinese are used to might conflict with how an American teacher wants to teach, how cultural differences can make socializing with Chinese people seem awkward (for instance, Chinese don't seem to view asking a person's income or age as rude at all), and how the collectivist and hierarchical nature of Chinese society could offend Westerners.

What all of this illustrates is that it's important to keep in mind cultural differences in mind when speaking to people of a different nationality than you. Not just in public speaking, but in normal socializing too. What you consider normal conversation may be viewed as extremely rude and vice versa.

It's of particular concern to me because I'm actually spending two months in Shanghai this summer learning Chinese, and will need to keep cultural differences in mind. I have Chinese friends, but I'm not sure that's going to fully prepare me for living in China. All I can hope for is that the culture shock that doesn't drive me completely insane.

Dunbar's Number

The other day,while I was browsing the internet, I stumbled upon this article by The Onion:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/deaths-of-20000-japanese-afford-planet-solid-15-mi,19785/

As cynical as this article is, it does illustrate a particular aspect of human psychology. Specifically how the farther removed a person is from another person in terms of personal relationships, the less they each have the ability to feel empathy for each other. This phenomenon is known as Dunbar's number,  which states that the maximum amount of personal relationships a human being can maintain is around 150. The concept is named for Robin Dunbar, a British anthropologist who first theorized the concept. A humorous explanation of the concept can be found here:

http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere_p2.html

As David Wong in the Cracked article points out, Dunbar's number causes us to see other humans removed from our social groups in a "us vs them" perspective. It causes us to view different nationalities and subcultures as as identical masses of people with no individual personalities. It's almost psychologically impossible to view that one asshole who cuts us off as a human being with the same feeling as us.

Keeping Dunbar's number in mind can help us avoid grouping people into a bland category. Humans are unimaginably complex and we should remember that each individual human has gone through countless life experience which have shaped their way of thinking and have resulted in each human having a vastly different perspective than another person. Even if two people seem to have a lot in common, they may have very different opinions under the surface.

With all this in mind, it becomes easier to resist simplistic "us vs them" or "good vs evil" arguments. Countless people have been able to manipulate other people because they realize this particular facet of human psychology. Remember, the world is an unimaginably complex place and no problem is ever mono-causal.

Future of Newspapers

As we are all well aware, newspapers have been declining in circulation for years and their demise seems imminent. Most people seem to not view this as a big deal, as we now tend to get all of our news from either TV or the internet. We figure that if newspapers stop putting out print editions, then they'll probably just switch to an all-online format. However, this raises the question if any of the major newspapers will be able to operate entirely online.

Currently, nearly all newspapers have free online editions. Some newspapers require a subscription to access some online content but those are few and far between. If print circulation of newspapers continues to decline, I see it as inevitable that all the major newspapers will eventually require subscriptions to view their online content. And also inevitably, this will raise protests from the online community.

People will say that newspapers should just increase their online advertising rather than require subscriptions. The problem with increasing advertising is that it raises conflict of interest issues, since more and more newspapers will be reluctant to launch investigations of major companies who could also be potential advertisers. Not to mention that increased online advertising will likely be distracting. And may not even help all that much since a lot of people tend to have ad blocker installed on their browsers.

People will also declare that they'll get their news from other sources such as cable TV or blogs. First off, I can't be the only person who prefers to read the news rather than just watch. I usually check Google News every day for stories and I'll only put on CNN for background noise. There's also the fact that the entire purpose of cable news is to be sensationalistic in order to attract ratings. Cable TV generally only broadcasts stories which will attract the most rating while important, but seemingly boring stories get pushed into horrible timeslots. I prefer to be able to search online for stories which interest me and get more in-depth analysis, while cable TV will generally shorten stories to soundbites.

Meanwhile, the problem with blogs is that they usually don't have the resources for investigative journalism or even actual reporting. Usually, they're just reposts of stories from major newspapers. And they tend to be politically biased and I like my news sources to at least try to maintain neutrality.

So, if newspapers decide to make their online editions subscription-based, it'll be interesting to see how it'll affect where people get their news. Maybe they'll just accept it and shell out money for the subscription. Or maybe they'll just switch to blogs and cable TV. Hell, news stories may even become pirated in a way similar to how movie, music and TV shows are pirated over the internet. Whole sites could spring up dedicated to sharing free news stories from major newspapers, creating a whole new issue in copyright law. All in all, the affect it'll have on the public being well-informed will be enormous.

Effortless Friendship

If one thing can be said about Facebook, it's that it has made staying in contact with people infinitely easier. By merely sending a friend request one, through a news feed, can receive constant updates as to what is going on in a person's life. A person can literally spend months without having even a single IM chat with a person but still know everything that happened in those months.

It used to be that staying in touch with people actually required effort. If someone moved away, you would have to call them regularly and write often in order to find out what has happened in their lives. If you wanted to see people from your old high school you lost touch with you would have to go to a high school reunion. Now all you have to do is friend the people you want to stay in touch with, no need for a reunion. To learn about a person's interests, you had to engage them in lengthy conversation. Now, a quick glance at a person's Facebook page usually lets you get the gist of a person.

With all this in mind, it raises the question of what Facebook does to the value of friendship. Because staying in touch with people is now so effortless, does it cause us to view friendship more casually? Or since we can now so easily learn what a person is like, does it cause us to appreciate people more?

Either way, it'll be interesting to see how Facebook continues to affect human relationships. Assuming Facebook is still around then, we could friend a person now and still be Facebook friends with a person sixty years from now. You could watch sixty years of a person's life in the form of Facebook statuses while barely talking to them. I could almost see funerals in the future having a ritual where the most important Facebook statuses of their lives are read aloud.

Gaddafi's Failure of Rhetoric

I'm sure we have all been following the protests in Libya with intense interest for the past week. Hopefully, I'm not the only one constantly refreshing Al Jazeera's live blog of the protests. Of particular interest is Gadaffi's remarks during this whole event. During a speech on Tuesday, he referred to the protesters as "rats" and "mercenaries" and accused them of being on hallucinogenic drugs. Unsurprisingly, this speech has actually been blamed for further angering the protectors, and accelerating Gadaffi's inevitable downfall. Not to mention the widespread condemnation it brought from the rest of the world.

Now, the fact that Gaddafi's speech failed to rally Libyans to his side is unsurprising given his harsh despotic rule and the the fact that he's widely considered to be insane. But it does illustrate a key point when trying to persuade people to your side. Don't insult your opposition. First off, by making the argument personal all you'll end up doing is adding to your opposition resolve, who will be more determined to prove your wrong. A similiar situation was during the Iranian protests of 2009 where the President of Iran referred to protesters as "dust in the wind", which only furthered increased the protests who angrily chanted "we are not dust". And, as Gadaffi showed us, insulting your opposition hurts the legitimacy of your arguments. Granted, Gadaffi had few legitimacy left at this point but worldwide condemnation did seem to increase after that speech.

So basically, when you're in a debate with someone, remember to not make the argument personal. All it will do is hurt any legitimate points you had. This can be applied for a variety of situations, such as an informal debate with a friend, an organized debate with a debate club, or if you end up a leader of a third-world nation through a military coup and are trying to brutally suppress a popular uprising.