Charlie Wilsons War

After watching the movie Charlie Wilsons War with Tom Hanks, I really sat back and thought about the movie and what was happening in the movie.  I thought that Tom Hanks did play a great role in the film but what I don't think was realistic was how outlandish and crazy he was.  Im not saying it was fake or false information but in this day and age a United States Senator would not be able to get away with all of those acts and violations and not have it surface somewhere either on the Internet or on the TV.  Now a days with the camera phones and all of the little technological gadgets we have, someone would find the way to spill the dirt on Charlie Wilson if he was out partying and doing drugs.  I do think though that maybe with our technology the government could hide and maybe block these images or stories from getting out, but i do think it would be extremely hard.  I just think that now with all of the technology it would be extremely hard to hide things from the public and basically to do whatever you wanted without anyone finding out.  If you are a person in power or a celeberty then it is very hard to keep yourself out of the public eye, especially with the technology we have.    

College Gameday

On saturdays i usually wake up pretty early and end up watching College Gameday.  College Gameday is where 3 analysts' who travel to different campuses which have the biggest college football game that day.  Then preview the whole day and then they make their game picks.  I found it really interesting how they related their media coverage of the games to the college lifestyle.  I enjoy watching the game because ESPN can show the relationships of the campuses to the football teams and also they give backgrounds on the university.  I find it awesome how they can grasp the attention of such different audiences from all over the country to watch.  I just think it is pretty cool how all of the commentators and the shows on ESPN can have such a wide variety of audiences that cant go a saturday without watching their show.  The TV media is really coming a long way to improve their show qualities and also to improve their audience that is watching their shows. 

ISPY Blog 2

   Surveillance does not really operate in my life too much.  I dont have any surveillance on anything important and i do not have to go into a job or a school that i need surveillance.  I think that the gadgets or devices that I use to participate in surveillance is my blackberry phone.  MY phone can show where certain people are, it has a map and people know usually where i am most of the time.  Also onstar in my car, onstar lets people know exactly where you are at any specifc time.  I dont think that my onstar affects the choices i make on a daily basis because i am not doing anything illegal or weird.  If onstar would like to know when i am going to subway and then when i am going to school then they can watch me all they want.  When i charted my survellance for two days i noticed that i really did not do anything out of the ordinary.  I had school then i went to eat and then i went to lacrosse practice.  There was nothing real instrumental in what i did at all and really no harm was done.   

ISPY Blog #1

 When i googled myself many different things came up.  The first thing that came up is my blogger profile for blogger.com.  Then my UMBC men's lacrosse bio comes up and the website for school.  Most of the google websites that came up from me typing in my name are actually me.  There are alot of site that came up and they are mostly relevant to my name and everything about me.  I do not have any googlegangers, unfortunatly no one really has the same name as Steve Settembrino.  I dont think that my name googles well because it is such a unique name and is something that is not very common like mike smith.  The digital impression of of me on the internet is of my lacrosse profile picture.  I am pretty happy of that picture coming up because it shows that i am in college and i am a athlete and also it does not have anything embarrassing about me.  I think it is great not having a comon name because it is something that is unique.  It would be terrible to have a very common name like John Smith and then have to surf through alot of things to just find out about you.  

Cult of the Amateur

After reading the definition of an Amateur and then doing some thinking i feel that I am a amateur at the sport of Lacrosse.  I know that i play lacrosse because it is something i love and something that i feel has defined my life for the past 22 years.  I defiantly spend time on lacrosse because i love it and also because it is the main reason for my success.  If i did not play lacrosse i do not know if i would be attending UMBC.  Lacrosse absolutely overlaps with my schoolwork because playing a Division 1 sport it is almost exactly like a job and you need to commit yourself to the sport and also you need to commit yourself academically in order to stay eligible and be able to compete at the highest level.  I think that the value of work we do because we love it is completely different than the work we do for pay.  I think that if everyone was getting paid for something they love then there would be no problems at their jobs and they would love going to work everyday.  There are only a select few people who can actually say that they love what they get paid for and they do not regret working there or that being their job.  I think i am motivated by passion when i am competing in something.  I feel like for anyone if you have a competitive edge and you love just competing for something that either you love or that you have set your mind too then it is when it becomes passionate.