Snow in Boone

12"-15" of snow

Meditation

A man sits in deep concentration completely removed from traffic and pedestrians

Music on the Mountaintop

Music on the Mountaintop is a festival put on by Yellow Dog Entertainment in Boone NC local bands and artisans come out for an amazing day

A young girl sells ice cream


Peter Connell of High Country Glass uses a large torch to create flame worked glass

This was for an article on Body Image for the Appalachian Newspaper

Tarheel Sports Car Club Rally Cross Competion August 1 2009

So on Saturday me and a couple friends decided to check out the THSCC's rally cross competition at the Orange County Speedway. After accidentally showing up to a go-cart comp down the street we found the real action. We got to seem some old school FF cars tear up the track and some badass Subraus show their stuff not to mention a pretty sweet Audi Quattro Coupe.





I got to ride in this monster


and Foresters kick ass

Brand NEW!!!

And Coming soon Courtney Triplette

New Virtual Life Trading Cards

Collect Them All TODAY!!!!!

Sources

What are we in academia but an amalgamation of the work of our predecessors?

-Drew

Cory Doctorow. 2007. Creative Commons. Locus Magazine. http://www.locusmag.com/Features/2007/11/cory-doctorow-creative-commons.html

Jo. . Creative Commons - Pros and Cons. Just Jo (Blog) http://jocalling.blogspot.com/2007/08/creative-commons-pros-and-cons.html

-Lindsay

Chris Turner. “LifeWay explores connections through social media” 04. May. 2009

http://www.transworldnews.com/NewsStory.aspx?id=75239&cat=12

Jonathan Dube. “Journalism = Community = Democracy.” 15. October. 2004

http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/001619.php

Megan McAuliffe.” Aussie expert: 90 percent of hackers are kids” 17. July. 2001

http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/business/0,39044229,30090434,00.htm

“Social Media.” 10. April. 2009

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media

-Aubryn

Research Blog

2009. Collective Unconscious query. Answers Corporation. http://www.answers.com/topic/collective-unconscious

Anna Piermyer. 2007. collective consciousness. University of Chicago. http://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/collectiveconsciousness.htm

Duane Elgin. 2009. Awakening the Double Wisdom of Civilization. EnlightenNext Magazine http://www.enlightennext.org/magazine/j27/elgin.asp

-Courtney

“Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs”. 09 February 2009.
.http://psychology.about.com/od/theoriesofpersonality/a/hierarchyneeds.htm

-HoLt

-Billout, Guy. 2008. Is Google Making Us Stupid?. The Atlantic. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

-2009. World Internet Usage Statistics. http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

Marc Mishkind. A Test for Morphic Resonance in Behavioral Response to Multiple Response Stimuli [online article] (Journal of Analytical Psychology, 1993. Available from the ASU PsychInfo Database

The life and times of Courtney Triplett

I am an advertising major with minors in graphic arts imaging and technologies and business. I’m originally from Boomer, NC and I’m a junior. I like to read, listen to music and just hang out with my friends. I’m currently considering transferring from ASU to UNCC or UNCG due to the constant gloomy weather up here! I really like warm weather and sunshine! I don’t really care to write blogs or anything like that. The closest thing that I have is a Facebook and I intend to keep it that way!

HoLt Menzies: an overview

An excerpt from Life Through a 55mm Lens.
“It was in my younger days traveling the back roads of the southern Congo that I first met Joanne and Will Menzies, two former members of the Peace Corps who decided that Uncle Sam didn’t have anything more to offer and just decided to make their own way. Though it would be their son Holt who would ultimately captivate this old writer. Joanne loving as she might be, let young Holt wander into a township. He returned that evening with three deep cuts on his left shoulder (he never did say what they came from), those scars would unite us again some 13 years later.
When he was 8 his parents were killed by rebels, Holt was taken captive his only possessions a 35mm Pentax camera and a 55mm lens. The photos he took in the intervening years were breathtaking if not depressing beyond measure. In a market in Kinshasa I spied a young man with a camera draped from his neck and three scars on his left shoulder. I asked for his name but it was a formality I already knew. After he and I spent several months visiting the locations across the Congo where he had lived Holt Moved to North Carolina and enrolled at Appalachian State University and joined th Psychology department. He hopes to continue his work as a documentary photographer outside of college.”

-Martina Bennett

Ha
Joking I was born in D.C. and have spent the better part of my days in N.C. After College I do want to pursue a career as a Photojournalist

Aubryn Gates 101

Hi, my name's Aubryn Gates. I'm 22 and a Senior at Appalachian State University. I’m a Communication major with a concentration in Advertising and a minor in Graphic Arts. In my spare time I love to take pictures and pursue my interest in Photography. After I graduate, I hope to find a job that enables me to combine the two.

Drew Stewart: The Biography

Hi, my name is Drew, born and raised in Winston-Salem, NC. I am currently a student at Appalachian State University majoring in Technical Photography with a minor in Media Studies and Internet Studies. I snowboard during the winter and that was one of the major reasons for me attending Appalachian. I also love to camp, kayak and hike during the warmer months. After college I am not sure what I want to do in the world of photography but I wouldn’t mind working for a studio or a magazine.

Lindsay Swaim (a brief Intro)

My name is Lindsay Swaim. I am a sophomore advertising major at Appalachian
State University. I am a member of several clubs at Appalachian. In my spare
time I love spending time with my family and friends. Also, I love playing
tennis and enjoying the outdoors. My favorite movie is Marley and me. I am a
huge dog lover and that movie gets to me every time I watch it. After I graduate
college I plan on attending Graduate School. My dream job is to work for a
fashion company in their marketing department. I love fashion and being able to
advertise for fashion would be amazing!

So where do we go from here. Well lets start with the big question: how has it changed us? Having access to the most intamate aspects and mundane utterances of 1,574,313,184 people has changed us in big ways some good some bad (source: Internet World Stats).

• For starters its changing the way we think and I say for the better. As one who has consistently struggled with facts and figures having instant access to every single iota inforamtion known to man including 404,000 different results for "how a flux capacitor works" found in .21 seconds. So instead of getting bogged down in mucky facts we can spend more time creating meaningful connections. Interesting article from the The Atlantic.
  
• It's slowly gnawing away at the social fabric of the human race. So while we are increasing our ability to form new and creative connections in our brain our ability to form new and creative relationships with people is slowly degrading. All those neat ideas and nobody at a cocktail party to share them with. In fact several researchers at the University of Michigan conducted a study on this very subject and found a strong correlation between facebook friends on and perceived popularity. People with 300 facebook friends tended to be the most popular.
• It's the best and worst thing to happen to the practice of science, since like forever. The scientific community like any other group whose practitioners must adhere to a strict set of principals and practices lest they be cast out forever (religious leaders anybody?), develop a manner of elitism. And In a practice where radical ideas and theories thrust the discipline forward this environment is most detrimental to it's advancement. Like the written word before it (yes I am comparing the internet to the invention of written language) the web provides a place where all ideas maybe given equal credence; judged by the merit of the theory and the quality of its evidence alone. Herein lies the problem like 90% of people will never look at the quality of supporting evidence, much less it's existence. Ideas spread like wildfire in an Australian outback (too soon?) and evidence is pushed to the wayside. On the plus side people pushing revolutionary ideas now have more of a voice than ever before, but the almost virus like dissemination of ideas is without an adequate dam to hold back the deluge of information pouring forth from your computer.

Sources Cited
-Billout, Guy. Is Google Making Us Stupid?. The Atlantic.
-World Internet Usage Statistics. Available from Internet http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

That class is not the only place that I have heard about this. In Richard Linklater's Waking Life Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke talk about this very experiment and all the implications it has. I admit I want to believe this.

So inevitably at a party Jung comes up and people wax philosophical and I can barely contain myself. Ooo, ooo, ooo I chime in, check out this study. People listen and are excited to hear that science confirms beliefs they take comfort instead of cutting them down with mechanical efficiency.

The closest thing to any confirming evidence was a study by Marc Mishkind in 1993 on "inducing Morphic Resonance fields." While sifting through pscyh articles Morphic Resonance appears the "scientific" term for what we dub the collective unconscious or the ability in some fashion access or be influenced by the past experience after others.

Though stumbling upon this particular study hardly bolstered my confidence in this phenomenon. For starters the plethora of results on the Psychological database that popped up upon typing "Morphic Resonance" (man that is fun to write) dwindled to about eight when I told it only to display peer reviewed studies. Then that eight was narrowed down to one when the rest were lengthy articles with researchers talking about possible mechanisms for the existence of "Morphic Resonance." So I'm left with one study with questionable methodology and vague results.

All this boils down to the fact that teh internets isn't an expression of the "collective unconscious" because that doesn't exist, at least not until now. The Internet is the closest thing to a unified collection of human thought and experience.

Yes humans seem to behave in eerily similar ways but that’s because we are all wired the same way. My skepticism stems from a deeply routed obsession with having something demonstrated. Yes all this nebulous information floating on the Internet would suggest a pattern, but where is it. Without strict scientific analysis it would seem that the majority of the unconscious is preoccupied with dick jokes and porn.

Sources cited
-Marc Mishkind. A Test for Morphic Resonance in Behavioral Response to Multiple Response Stimuli [online article] (Journal of Analytical Psychology, 1993. Available from the ASU PsychInfo Database
-Waking Life, DVD. Directed by Richard Linklater. 2002

So my senior year of High school is when I decided that psychology would be the pursuit I would dedicate my self to in college (and with any luck and a Ph.D) possibly beyond. I learned about all of the seminal experiments in psychology Milgrams study in obedience, Zimbardo's Prison study, the boring but interesting Ashe's conformity study, but the most fascinating was this study.

Two budding psychologists wanted to see if past experience one group would effect the decisions of another isolated group in the future. So using data crossword puzzles from the New York Times they saw how long it took people to finish the cross word when it first came out. Then with another group isolated they had them complete the same crossword puzzle and compared how long it took both groups to finish. Lo and behold the isolated group finished like 20% faster.

This fascinated me to no end. Solid empirically derived evidence of some greater force that binds us all (and allows those who don't keep up with the news to finish their crosswords faster). I always cursed myself for never remembering the names of the psychologists who conducted the study. I realize now that my teacher never mentioned them because the study was never conducted.

Let's get started shall we

Before I begin a few caveats:
-I am a practicing cynic
-I have yet to see any convincing evidence for the collective unconscious
and
-For however much of a pompous ass Richard Dawkins might be, I think he's right ideas are like viruses. Quality and virulence are independent. That is to say an Ideas ability spread is separate from its quality