Week 10: Literary Culture

If you have not heard of Harry Potter or Twilight, then you are lame. Just kidding, but you have been under a rock somewhere. I have read all the books in both series and am a fan of both authors, but I was wondering, which has had the greater effect on teen culture. Harry Potter films on average have grossed nearly $900,000,000 per movie, with only five movies released and the franchise is the second highest grossing franchise in history (Second to James Bond, with 22 movies, average gross: $200,000,000). With all movies, merchandise, and books (400 million printed copies) accounted for, the Harry Potter brand is worth about $15 billion dollars, an expensive brand to say the least. Onward to Twilight. The Twilight series, with just 4 books, compared to Potter's 7, has sold 42 million copies worldwide, approximately 10% of Potter. The first film, titled "Twilight", grossed about $375,000,000 about 42% of the average Potter film grossing, although Twilight had a significantly lower budget ($37 million).

Furthermore, the Twilight series has been compared to the Harry Potter series. They say that reading the books in unnecessary and to just watch the movies instead. Harry Potter is better literarily I think Harry Potter wins! P.S. Stephen King said Meyer can't write.

Project Precis

My final project will be to make a short documentary discovering my global impact. I will track my water, electricity, food, and gasoline usage for a week, and then film my use for one day. I will use the averages from the week in my documentary and then possibly extrapolate my usage for a month, a year, etc. I hope to gain a more complete view of my footprint on the world.

Week 9: Pickens Plan

I am a member of the Pickens Plan, a plan to end the United States' dependence on foreign oil. The plan's namesake, T. Boone Pickens, made his money in the oil business, but now, he has invested significantly in this plan, and stands to make a lot of money off of the plan if it succeeds. I don't blame him, because at least he has a plan. The plan includes changing many of the truck fleet to run on domestic natural gas and investing in solar and wind power. However, this blog post is not about the plans details, but how the plan is marketed. The most recent e-mail I got concerning the plan includes a link saying "Join the virtual march." In a flat world, people are busy, and many people don't have the time to march and participate in demonstrations, especially in today's economy. However, by making the participation in this plan virtual, and thus much easier, T. Boone can increase the number in his "Army." Also, on the website of the Picken's Plan, there are links to widgets, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, videos, articles, lectures, etc. This mass amount of information as well as the ease of access to other media outlets also helps out the Plan. Third, T. Boone appeals to citizens on the patriotic front. The slogan "End Our Addiction to Foreign Oil" links negative connotations to foreign oil and many quotes on the website emphasize that we are sending our money abroad when we should keep it in our country. By appealing to pathos, ethos, and logos, T. Boone Pickens provides the greatest oppurunity to connect with potential recruits to promote his great plan.

Week 8: Poor Little Penny

I'm writing this after getting off a 6 hours shift at work. I worked as a cashier for those 6 hours and I had to make change, a lot of change. And I realized something, counting out 1, 2, 3, or 4 pennies is quite annoying. Although work was not that busy tonight, counting all those pennies costs times, and if we were busy, that wasted time would translate to customers having to wait for their food. For my wage, $7/ hour, a penny is equivalent to about 5 seconds, while for the average hourly wage of $17/hour, a penny is equal to about 2 seconds. According to a USA Today article, the penny wastes about $300 million in consumer's time. Not only that, it costs about 1.5 cents to make a penny due to the high cost of zinc, but even if the penny could be made for free, its usefulness has faded faster than its shine. Myths that rounding purchases up or down to the nearest nickel also are invalid. Anyone with a basic knowledge of statistics could testify that about 50% of purchases would round down with the other 50% rounding up, so all consumers would come out about even. My recommendation, get rid of the penny! It could replaced with a dollar coin, to replace the wearing paper dollars.