Blogs, A Bother or a Benefit

One thing I think I liked the least about this class has been the blogs, sure they have been a nice way to communicate with other students it has been a bother to me. Sure it was a nice touch to this unique class but to remember constantly to post our own blogs and commenting on others while doing the other homework for our classes it has been exhausting. Between working on this class, other classes, and work it becomes a lot to juggle for a student. I think that another problems with the blogs is that they became very narrow in terms of topics....

Read More

Looking back on UC256; my favourite lecture

Thinking back about all the lectures we had for UC256, one of my favorite lectures was about the relation between language and games because it made me realize how big a role language games play in my own life. I will give you guys two examples that I thought about during and after the lecture. When I heard we would get a lecture about the relation of language and games, I wasn’t sure what to expect but link between language and (board)games...

Read More

Cancelling Greatness

So recently I decided to watch the Joss Whedon series Firefly and the subsequent movie Serenity and lets just say I was hooked off the bat. The way Whedon artfully forms the 2 genres of Western and Sci-Fi into one show is flawless leaving the viewer grasping for more. hulu.com Unfortunately this show was cancelled after one season and the movie was used to wrap up the series. To me this begs the question, how do great series such as...

Read More

GO BLUE!

The minor quest IV about a "Third Century Initiative" for the University of Michigan made me think about the differences of the school system in America and the Netherlands. For our presentation we thought ‘BIG’ and we came up with something completely new, and so did other guilds, and I really hope that some of the ideas will be implemented in the future, although it would take quite some time to see if some of the things we suggest truly work in real life. On the other hand, you might not want to change anything because the university of Michigan...

Read More

The Creator of Worlds

When one thinks of the “magic circle”, one typically envisions a sports arena where college athletes battle for victory, or a field in which children run and play tag. However, with today’s technology, the concept of the magic circle has expanded to include entire virtual worlds where the participant can be wholly enraptured by the level of detail and imagination that goes into creating these worlds. “Mr. Adamowicz, who died on Feb. 9 at...

Read More

The 49ers Race to the Top

The San Francisco 49ers are building a new stadium in Santa Clara, California.  The stadium is projected to open in 2014 for the NFL season.  It is estimated to hold 68,500 seats, and to be expandable to hold approximately 75,000 in order to host major events (Super Bowl,  FIFA World Cup, etc). It is estimated to cost more than $1 billion.  The San Francisco 49ers believe that they can generate half a billion dollars in seat...

Read More

The Game of Life...How Badly do you Want to Win?

   As this course comes to a close, I have come to the realization that almost everything in life can be considered a game. When I used to think of the word game I immediately would think of playing board games or sports games. Now, when I hear the word game countless different types of games come to mind. I guess that because of this class I have become more cognizant of how almost everything in life is a game. First we can...

Read More

Playing with your life….. Thanks to the center for global and International Study (CGIS), an awesome organization that organizes trips for international students, I went to Detroit last week. After hearing comments like ‘make sure you wear a bullet proof vest’, ‘have fun in ghost town’ and reassuring my parents that it really was a safe trip because I would go with a whole bunch of people who really knew the city and weren’t going to take us...

Read More

College Sports: The Balance Between Commercialism and Education

No other country on the planet does college sports like the US does.  We put huge amounts of resources into making college sports happen.  We build stadiums that can hold over 114,000 people (The Big House), which is the largest college football stadium in the nation, and one of the largest football-only stadiums in the world.  The University of Michigan football program ranks first in NCAA history of both total wins and winning...

Read More

How to Win the Game of Persuasion

Recently I read an article called "Harnessing the Science of Persuasion" by Robert B. Cialdini. The article got me thinking about persuasion and I came to the realization that persuasion is like a game. If you are able to convince someone to do something that they did not want to do or if you can make someone believe something that they did not previously believe then you are considered a winner in the game of persuasion....

Read More