Saving Private Ryan

In late July 1998, Steven Spielberg landed on the American public with his World War II film Saving Private Ryan, which won the war of critics, veterans, scholars, historians, and the general movie going public. All that is left is the cleanup at the box office and the final awarding of medals such as the Oscar for Best Picture. The bottom line of the positive critical evaluations is this, Saving Private Ryan is a new and different World War II combat film because it finally refutes the dishonesty of previous Hollywood movies of the genre. I believe this was one of the best movies of all time even to this day. We even used this movie in football to look at and we had to come up with certain ideas to tie it to our team. Saving Private Ryan represents another case in the ongoing struggle for film historians, who must constantly deal with modern critics who judge artistic events by the standards of their own times. For the combat movie, this means if there's no blood and guts, there's no glory. Although there is no question that Spielberg made a fine film or that Tom Hanks and the rest of the cast have done an excellent job, there are issues of film history to be addressed in evaluation. No one is going to argue with the World War 2 veterans who have stated that Saving Private Ryan is the most realistic presentation of combat they've seen. There is also no question but that Spielberg has achieved integrity in his images. He closely consulted with historian Stephen E. Ambrose and Dale Dye, a retired Marine Corps captain who acted as his chief military adviser. The issue to be discussed is not combat accuracy but rather accuracy about the history of the World War 2 combat genre and Saving Private Ryan's place in that history. Overall, I think this movie has so much meaning to it and because it is so good and realistic at the time it makes the movie that much better. As the action unfolds, the audience sees blood, vomit, dead fish, dismembered arms and legs, wounds spurting fountains of blood, torsos disintegrating while being dragged to safety. Men drown, are wounded, and are shot and killed in a chaotic atmosphere of fear and bewilderment. Medics are forced to make ruthless decisions about the wounded.

Oklahoma

Here is the strangest part about Saturday's final push toward the College Football Playoff: the only lock among the four currently atop the ranking isn't either of the two unbeaten teams, nor the one that recently defeated defending national champion Ohio State. The lock is the team that lost to seven-loss Texas. Oklahoma is the team sipping an umbrella drink while everyone else scrambles for the final three semifinal spots. The Sooners represent the Big 12 conference, the same league that botched last year's finish because, lacking a conference title game, it declared Texas Christian and Baylor co-champions. This is why you always use a pencil, not a pen, to predict college football seasons. They are like snowflakes; no two are the same. Last year, Texas Christian was third in the next-to-last ranking, then blasted Iowa State, 55-3, in its final game — and dropped to No. 6 in the final ranking. The Horned Frogs' only loss was by three points, on the road, against Baylor, another top-10 team. Yet, this year, third-ranked Oklahoma has almost zero chance of missing the playoff, even though the Sooners own the worst loss of any team in the top eight. The selection committee, in its final regular-season release Tuesday, all but spelled out how things were going to play out. Any mystery is only being manufactured by members of the media who emphatically eliminated Stanford after it lost to Oregon and are now too embarrassed to acknowledge the Cardinal is on the doorstep of being back in. This is why, in some places, you see long-shot and praying for chaos attached to Stanford's portfolio. True chaos only occurs if Clemson loses to North Carolina in the Atlantic Coast Conference title game and Alabama loses to Florida for the Southeastern Conference championship. If Clemson and Alabama win, well, any mystery is over. The committee provided the clues in Tuesday's ranking — you just had to find them. It effectively eliminated Florida from contention, even as a two-loss SEC champion, by dropping the Gators six spots to No. 18. There is no way Florida gets to four from 18, even if it defeats Alabama.

Rio Olympics

The Olympics in 2016 are supposed to be held in Rio but supposedly the water in Rio is so polluted and bad that the athletes are getting sick and they said they would try and clean it up. After awhile I guess they came out and said it's going to extremely hard to fix or that they may not be able to do so. This just seems really confusing to me the fact that they chose a place and did not think ahead of time of the consequences of what would happen if athletes from around the world would happen to meet at this place. They must have known that there was pollution and have a understanding on how bad it really was before deciding where to put it. A similar thing happened in China for the Olympics and was said athletes were getting sick there too. I wish they put more effort before making these decisions and would figure out what to do before everything becomes such a big problem that they can not fix it in time for the Olympics. They are reporting that it was a scandal that involves long scheme that the oil company was allowed to use the water as waste therefore allowing them to dump whatever in there they needed because it brought so much economy. I don't ever think the economy is worth this much damage and pollution to your area. It can be so harmful to people that I think the risk out weighs the return on the economy. This is not the first time this has happened, where big companies were basically aloud to do whatever they want because they brought so many jobs and helped the economy in the area especially through the rough times. If you were to do something like this, I don't see how you then could think it would be okay to host an Olympics competition where people all over the world will come and participate. People from different parts of the world would probably handle the pollution differently too. One place might be super clean to them and when they get to Rio, their body might go in to overdrive and get extremely sick. I hope they can do something about this before the Olympic games start, but I just don't see how this seems to be a reoccurring thing that happens years and years when you could just send someone there beforehand to see if everything checks out and is safe enough for the athletes to participate.

Video Games In My Life

Video games have always been a part of what I do every day for the most part. Growing up I always played video games with my brothers, starting on the Nintendo 64 I can remember the Kirby, Zelda, Super Smash Brothers that I played all the time. But growing up my brothers always got the new consoles and started pretty much just hogging it most of the time. I think this is probably why I have a resentment towards game such as Call of Duty or similar games like that. I always watched them play games though no matter what, especially story driven games. I normally just watched them and then I would go play games on my computer which is probably why I became a computer gamer over consoles in the first place. With all the consoles being taken up all of the time, there was nothing left for me to do except play on the computer. So now naturally I still enjoy watching people play games and that part never gets old. No matter what the game is or how dumb it may seem. I always find a way to be able to sit down and do it. I don't like much shooter games because of the resentment I had towards Call of Duty being played seemingly 24/7 every day. Although I did play Halo and enjoyed that for a little bit, I stopped following that after the second one I think. Now it's a lot more casual game play of the games I do play. Being in school seems to have cut down a lot of the game time I did devote to it a lot compared to what I use to do. I keep telling myself that I will probably that this game or that game but never end up doing so and just stick to what I have been playing. My brothers still play video games today as well so it is something that I do with them sometimes which is nice since I never really did when I was younger because they always tried really hard to keep their stats up. Overall, I still have video games in my life and maybe not as much as I would maybe like but maybe that will all change when I get out of college, I am not sure how it will all work in the end. 

My Sports Career vs Normal

My sports career was not very long but I feel like I did do a lot. All of them stopped after high school. My main sport was football and I played that for 10 years starting when I was 8 years old. I always enjoyed football the most and loved playing the team oriented sports. Unlike track which I only did for 4 years of middle school, I could not stand doing it. Sure you won as a team and each section and event gave points toward your ultimate goal of winning the meet. But I could not stand it was me to perform the best for the team so I can award “X” amount of points for our team. I always played baseball too aside from track but could not be apart of the baseball team in middle school because I was always told to do track because track helped with football and since football was my go to sport at the time then I thought it would make the most sense. But when high school came around, I could stand track anymore and decided to play baseball. So the last 4 years of high school I was on the baseball team and that was just about it. I am not sure if it was because playing all these sports was so sudden or what, but towards the end of my senior year in high school I started getting injured more and more and could not play. I started varsity football my sophomore year and since it was on a higher scale than junior varsity then I think that has some to do with it too. I even could have gone to Otterbein and played football there. But after high school, I felt my body was too beat up from all the sports I played. It makes all the people who do this for a living and go to D1 schools and all that look even better to me. Its a new perspective I look at it ever since I figured all that out. They have it so much harder probably because they were multi athletes too and then they have to train even harder because the tougher competition and everything. In the grand scheme of things, I guess a lot of pro players retire in their 30s which is relatively young still, but I don't think I could ever do something that long. 

How Fast College Is

College life is coming to a close and somewhat quickly. I am a junior and just thinking I only have three more semesters can worry me sometimes. I still feel sometimes that I don't have everything I need in order to go on to the next step. I do not want to end up at the end of college and not knowing what to do or where to live and how to get my job. I know you are suppose to start looking for your job towards the end of your years at college, but I am still not even really sure what part of business I want to go in. I am majoring in Business Management, Accounting, and Marketing. I don't know what road to go down after I graduate and then on top of all that if I want to stay around the place I live now or go somewhere else. Is it something you find a job first then find a place to live nearby? Or do you find somewhere you want to live then try and get a job around there? There are a lot of thoughts that I am still not sure how to handle right now even though it feels that college may end any day now. With the different things I can do with my majors, I am hoping that it helps me find more job opportunities, but it doesn't help me pin point what I exactly want to do. There could be a lot of trial and error or me deciding what I want to do best and that could take even more time after I graduate. It seems like it is another one of those unwritten rules that just happens when it comes across your life path. I will probably be fine when the time comes too, but just thinking about this stuff can make me uneasy. College has seem to go by extremely fast though so far, people always said that high school flew by, but for me it didn't. I never stood back and said that high school went by really fast because it didn't for me. College however seems like it is just going by so easily. I just hope that I can keep up and figure out what I am doing after all of this.

Mark Zuckerberg and Wealth

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan say they will give away 99% of their shares in the company to good causes as they announce the birth of their daughter Max. Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement in a letter to Max on his Facebook page. Which is crazy to thing how much someone is willing to do for their kids as soon as they are born. He said they were donating their fortune to the Chan Zuckerberh Initiative to make the world a better place for Max to grow up in. I am not sure how this will be effective in the long run considering there is a lot of things that money may not be able to change. The donation amounts to $45billion at Facebook's current value. However the shares will not be donated to charity immediately, but over the course of the couple's lives. Were Mark Zuckerberg to give away 99% of his shares immediately, he would still possess hundreds of millions of dollars. This is crazy since he will still be a millionaire which must be super nice still. I don't know what I would do with that amount of money, but it would be amazing probably. Ms Chan's worth has not been documented. Max was born last week, although her birth was only made public recently. In his letter Mark Zuckerberg said the aim of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is "to advance human potential and promote equality for all children in the next generation". Overall, I think it is great what Mark Zuckerberg is doing and wish him the best and hope everything works out for him at the end. At the end of the day, he still has a lot of money and can live comfortably. I think it's good that billionaires are giving their money away like this before they die, it can be rather disappointing that they just hold onto it all and after they die it would just seem to disappear with them. It's nice to see something like this happen and would probably like to see it in the future maybe. Although if I was a billionaire, I am unsure if I would do the same so it is easy for me to say this stuff now. I wish it didn't sound so greedy, but I just am not sure how I would handle it, I would probably make sure everyone I knew and cared about was well off first. Not saying that he didn't because I don't know, but I feel like it would also be hard to give up that much money.