Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving

Nick MacInnes

Over the years it has become more common for people to work on Thanksgiving. This is a rather sad fact considering that Thanksgiving is a day to spend with your families and celebrate everything that you have. Many places such as grocery stores and party stores have people work on thanksgiving. As far as I’m concerned Thanksgiving is an important holiday to be together with the people you care about most and nobody should have to work on this day.

One of the many reasons why people do work on Thanksgiving is because families that are cooking sometimes forget key ingredients for the big meal on this special day. However, this is no excuse for people to be working. Yeah businesses are messing up potential sales, but it is more important for their employees to be with their families. Besides Thanksgiving isn’t just about food, like many people think it is, it’s about being thankful for everything that you have and knowing that there are people out there that have it worse than you.

My Ultimate Marvel

My Ultimate Marvel

Nick MacInnes

Ever since I was I child I had hoped to escape reality and live within a fictional world. My escape was found within comic books. I’ve spent my entire life reading these fun comics and have shared countless memories with friends based on my enjoyment of these stories. A very controversial debate that exists within the comic industry is which publisher is better; Marvel or DC. Marvel crushes DC because they tell a more complex and enjoyable story, have more relatable characters, and excel in their crossover events.

Marvel comics were founded by a man named Martin Goodman. Goodman introduced the world to heroes such as the Fantastic Four and Captain America (both of which are still around today). While Goodman was very talented at writing comics he struggled with distributing comics to all of his fans. To help him he hired a man named Stan Lee, who is currently the head of the company. Lee created the majority of Marvel’s characters to this day and even cameos in their related movies. Some of Lee’s most iconic characters ever created are: Spiderman, Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, and Wolverine.

The Clash of Heroes

I remember when I first started reading comic books. When I was a kid I used to go to the store all the time to pick up Spiderman and Batman comics. When I started reading these comics I had no idea that they were made by two rival companies.

Over the past century comic book fans have witnessed the rise and fall of their favorite comic distributors. However, there are two companies in which this never affected; each wanting the ultimate supremacy over the other. These companies are: Marvel and DC. Each company specializes in many different things. Marvel comics tend to be more child-friendly compared to DC, which make more mature content. DC includes classics such as Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman whereas Marvel created Spiderman, Wolverine, and Ironman. Overall each company creates quality content. In the end it comes down to the readers’ choice of what they feel like reading.

TED Talk about gaming

http://www.ted.com/talks/tom_chatfield_7_ways_games_reward_the_brain?language=en

In the TED talk “7 Ways Gaming Rewards the Brain” Tom Chattfield explains how we gain knowledge from playing video games. The first method is through gaining experience points in a game. This establishes the idea that each and every single objective that you do adds up to you reaching your goal. Next gaming teaches you how to multitask. In some games you can progress through multiple quests at the same time causing your brain to stay focused on certain goals. In video games you get rewarded for every task you accomplish no matter how big or small, creating a feeling of importance to players. Gaming also shows players how their actions change the world in which they are playing in. The element of uncertainty is very strong within games, it drives players to complete quests not knowing what the reward or outcome will be. Another lesson gained from gaming is having an enhanced attention span. Becoming dedicated to one objective helps you gain a better attention span. Finally the final reward to your brain for gaming is being around other people. The world is a big place and there are many gamers out there.

Since I am a gamer myself I can really relate to what Tom talked about. I completely agree that gaming gives you a better ability to multitask and it gives you a greater attention span.  However there were some things that he talked about which I didn’t wholeheartedly agree with. One of which is that he titled this “7 Ways Gaming Rewards the Brain”. I expected this to be more about knowledge gained, rather than about fulfilling people’s emotions. An example would be the game Assassin’s Creed. In this series players travel back in time to many locations such as: Israel, to Rome, and even the US during the revolutionary war. What makes this series so special is that, unlike most games it teaches you stuff as you play. For example the game includes many famous people from those times such as: Leonardo Da Vinci and George Washington. The game even goes as far as having a data base telling you everything you could possibly want to know about these people of history and many iconic buildings which the player encounters. During the TED talk Tom talked about some abilities gained, but I thought he would’ve gone into more detail about them than what he did. It seemed like he had only scratched the surface of special abilities gained. Myself personally I started playing video games when I was really young. When I was little I spent much time in the hospital and at home sick. The best way for me to keep my mind off of the pain was to play video games. By playing games it helped my mind stay focused on other things. This is by far one of the greatest uses for video games and I was really disappointed that he did not discuss it.