Just an Update on that Grim Reaper Picture (Actually Father Time)

For those of you who had read my post a couple weeks ago about some pictures I took on campus, I commented on a mysterious sundial that's located in the middle of the quad. Here is the picture below (you can click on it to enlarge it):

I stated how odd it is that there's a sundial in plain view with the grim reaper on it. After being puzzled, I went to look for answers. Why was it there? What does it mean? Why would Kansas State allow a sundial with the epitome of death right in plain view?

I went to the library, the only place I thought suitable to ask a question about Kansas State lore and mythology. I met a man named Dan, who worked for the library, and asked him "I was wondering if you could help me with an odd question. I noticed a while ago that the sundial in the quad had a picture of the grim reaper, and I was just wondering, what's the deal with that?" He looked at me funny and said he never noticed that there was a grim reaper. I then showed him the picture, where he stared at it for a little bit and said "oh! that's not the grim reaper, that's supposed to be father time!" Father Time? When I think of Father Time, I think of someone like Jeffery Tambor in that one episode of Arrested Development where he had to play God, with a big white robe and long white hair with the beard to match. I never thought of Father Time in a dark robed, scythe carrying, lone-ranger type of guy. After doing some research though I was quite shocked to see the similarities. Take a look for yourself:

Father Time

The Grim Reaper

There you have it. I think you could agree with how easily you can mistake that sundial like I did. My first Kansas State mystery solved! I'm ready for the next one, and make it a challenge next time won't you KSU?

Facebook: Why I will return and do it right this time

Go ahead and say it. I'm a hypocrite. It's not something that I am proud to say in the first place, but I shall be making my return to Facebook. Not because I miss it, not because I am having withdrawals, but simply because I was blaming the wrong person for my problems with the social media giant. Everything I said in my last blog about Facebook were my honest opinions. I do believe that Facebook is used too much nowadays to just rack up friends and stalk people legally, but instead of looking at my own lack of self responsibility I blamed the site itself. I stated that Facebook caused me to become antisocial and not using the site because it forced me to become overly social. That simply isn't true. My own behavior caused this. I have no one to blame but myself. It's like saying that you cheated on your significant other because you were forced to. You weren't forced to have an affair, you CHOSE to do it for your own reasons. You chose to ignore responsibility for your actions. This is happening all over the world right now, not just with Facebook.

My friend who left Facebook stated in his letter that he is sick and tired of Facebook and how it contributed negatively in society. The problem isn't Facebook, it's the people who use it. It's like owning and using a gun. If you are trained and certified to use it responsibly, no problems will occur. Put that same gun in a curious and uneducated child's hands, and that spells disaster. In the words of Dr. Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park, "(Genetic) power is the most awesome force the planet's ever seen, but you wield it like a kid that's found his dad's gun." Facebook doesn't contribute negatively to society, all it does is allow those "children who found their dad's gun" to have a larger platform to express their ideas and opinions on a broad scale.

Why did I decide to go back to Facebook all of a sudden? It wasn't because I was missing it per se. At first I did find myself going on the computer to check it, only to remember it wasn't there anymore. No, I want to go back to it so I can show how a responsible person SHOULD use it. It's all about BALANCE and MODERATION. Obviously checking your Facebook every two minutes is a bad thing, but you also don't want to wait an entire week before you return people's messages.

The final factor that played into my decision to come back was actually a presentation in my agricultural communications class by a man named Jim Langcuster, who works as an extension communications specialist with the Alabama Cooperative Extension Service. He talked about platforms and how important social media will be to the future of journalism and agricultural communications. After his presentation, we asked him questions. I raised my hand and asked him "how would you address critics (which was really just me) who say that social media such as Facebook and Twitter actually degrades communication and takes away emphasis from personal communication?" He chuckled and said that he didn't believe that. He believes that Facebook actually DOES encourage face to face communication. After he gave his answer, multiple students in my class defended Facebook and gave specific examples of incidents where Facebook has given them a new process to communicate with people. After class, I took a look at myself and I realized something: the blame shouldn't go to Facebook, it should go to ME. I wasn't angry at social media, I was angry at myself for my behavior. And to be honest, it's a lot easier to blame a website than look at your own faults. To be honest, I have a security blanket, and sometimes instead of doing things that push myself or requires a lot of effort on my behalf, I just go hide under my security blanket. It's something I need to work on, but I realized not having a Facebook is actually leaving me worse off. If I need to push myself to be more social and meet more people, Facebook is a fantastic tool (if used responsibly). Not to mention the fact that I'm a communications major and social media is something that I will not only encounter in school, but also in my career. If I leave myself out of the loop, technology will pass me up and I will not be an adequate communicator in my career. This is not a smart business strategy.

I will gladly take the verbal bashings from people. I now understand the truth, and that empowers me. I know that if I want to use Facebook I can. I shouldn't punish myself because I'm not happy with my own behavior, I should strive to correct it. I also will be responsible for myself on the web and off. If more people followed that equation, maybe Facebook wouldn't be so bad after all.

Home Came To Me Last Weekend

Last weekend was a great weekend. My sister Renee, who is quite the traveler, decided to come visit me. I hadn't seen her for almost 5 months, so it was very nice to see her. I kind of felt bad because I completely took advantage of her having a vehicle, having her take me to run errands on the first and last day she was in town. I also got to eat at the Little Apple Brewing Co., one of my favorite steak places ever.

Probably the highlight of the weekend was going to the K-State/Missouri football game on Saturday. It's quite amazing to see the color purple completely covering the stadium.

Tailgating is obviously huge here. I was told at school the next week that most of the stadium's parking lots were filled by 10 am, and the game wasn't until 2:50 pm.

The man with the white hair in front of the team is Bill Snyder (the stadium is named after him, with good reason). This man singlehandedly pulled K-State out of the depths of mediocrity, twice. He will definitely be a hall of fame college football coach. We are now currently ranked 17th and 18th in the college football rankings, and will hopefully be undefeated when we play Oklahoma on the 29th.

It's amazing to see the pride in this school, and I can say that while I am not from Kansas, I feel a sense of belonging here to this university. I have nothing but good things to say about KSU and being K-State PROUD!

This is our mascot, Willie the Wildcat. From what I've heard, the identity of the person who is the mascot is kept under wraps. He is not allowed to tell anyone. If you're asking yourself why is he wearing biker gear, that's because that day was Harley Day, so he rode in on a harley.

On Sunday my sister and I went to the Sunset Zoo here in Manhattan. It's funny because while being in a smaller town, it actually has pretty cool animals including bengal tigers, red pandas and sloth bears. There were other animals too.

This bird didn't move once. It looks like the William Howard Taft of birds.

I was surprised to see one of my favorite animals, the otter. These were quite a bit smaller than the sea otters one would see at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

All in all it was a great weekend. Renee got to see a little bit more of where I live, we got to see the Wildcats beat Mizzou and we got to go to the zoo.

Around Campus

So last week I decided to take some more pictures from KSU's campus to show all the people back home some more.

This wasn't actually taken by me, but by my partner in my agriculture communications class, but I liked it.

This is Anderson Hall. It's the admissions building here on campus. Every building on campus has these stone walls, making campus look like a castle or a fortress, which is pretty cool in my opinion.

This is probably my new favorite picture. I came across this walking back from class.

KSU also has lots of wooded areas. This is part of the nature area in the southeastern area of campus.

I'm sure I'm not one of the only people intrigued by the sheer amount of the squirrels and rabbits around here on campus. Every time I see one I just want to yell "squirrel!"

I found this sign on the ground, and I couldn't agree with it more.

This is the most puzzling piece to KSU in my honest opinion. This is the sundial in the middle of the quad, between the buildings for the library, College of Agriculture and the Department of Art. On it is a picture of the grim reaper holding his scythe with the phrase "Grow Old Along With Me, The Best Is Yet To Be". I think I found something to research here on campus on my down time. Let me know what you think it means in a comment.

Why I'm Quitting Facebook

Ladies and gentlemen, I have come to a conclusion. Things were better in my life before the introduction of things such as Facebook, Myspace and Google Plus. For those of you telling me to get off my high horse, hear me out. Do you remember when you were a kid (by that I mean junior high through high school) and you called your friends or a person you had a crush on? Remember how exciting that was? I remember calling my friends and feeling like it was an olympic event, usually it was to plan who was coming over whose house and what we wanted to do while we were there. Or calling a girl I had a crush on, when I had to muster up some courage to finally dial her number and wait for someone to answer (this was before we all had cell phones, so occasionally her mother, or worse, her father, answered the phone). I now realize that came with a rush of adrenaline, which is something I don't receive anymore because I don't make phone calls. Facebook has sucked all of the excitement out of communicating with people. All it allows you to do now is rack up people in your friends list, play mafia wars and farmville, and stalk people in a non creepy way (by the way, it's still creepy, but I must admit, even I did it). I forgot to mention how Facebook uses all your information to sell ads on their website also, same with Google Plus I'm sure.

I have been planning to leave Facebook for a while now. I waste so much time everyday just checking the dang thing (and getting no new notifications in return), that I could use that time towards doing something new like going outside and exercising, or calling a few people, or god forbid, studying. For those of you who may not understand, here's a little research for you. According to Nielsen, an international advertising and marketing company, US internet users spent an astounding 53.5 BILLION MINUTES on Facebook, and that was just for May of 2011! That's 891,666,666 HOURS! There are about 95 million US Facebook users, so that would equal out to about 9.5 hours per person per month on the Facebook site, and I know that the number is even higher for some people. Don't believe me, here's the link: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/americans-spent-535-billion-minutes-on-facebook-in-may-2011/3566.

At first I kept defending my actions by stay saying lines such as "How will I keep in touch with people?" or "Facebook keeps me in the know." I now believe that those who care about you will stay with you or find their way back to you, and the ones that lose touch either don't care or simply don't want to talk with you anymore. I have had it, and one of my friends named Rich put it so eloquently in his message to all his friends regarding why he was leaving Facebook:

"Hi Friends,

I am tired of Facebook. I am tired of the way our society is turning and how Facebook contributes to it. I hope to stay in contact with all of you, but I would rather get an email or a phone call from you, instead of impersonal, yet all too personal sometimes, Facebook posts about your life. Please take down my phone number and email address, or even write a letter to me the old fashioned way, so we can stay in contact. In a week I'm leaving Facebook and probably never coming back. If you want, please reply with your contact info so I can stay in touch with you.

Hope to hear from you soon. I'm going to enjoy life in a little bit more good old fashioned, traditional American way."

I couldn't have said it any better myself. Somewhere along the way, Facebook has stopped being a tool to communicate for me and become a way to make people become antisocial by being OVERLY social. Some of you are outgoing and social enough where you can make Facebook, Twitter and meeting people out in public all work smoothly, but that doesn't work for me. If I put more energy into one thing, the other suffers. For example, I put so much energy into Facebook, eventually my social skills are going to suffer, and I've noticed this happening to me already. I'm so used to talking with someone behind a computer screen that I forget how to properly interact with people.

I'm not against technology one bit. In fact, I think it's crucial to embrace technology. I currently have an email account, Skype, this blog of course, and even a twitter account (which I do not post on, I use it to receive news and information quickly from people/groups/organizations/media outlets that I follow). In fact, I encourage everyone to communicate with me, whether it's by phone, by email, Skype, Facetime, or heck, I may even start up an AOL Instant Messenger account! As long as it's personal, I'm more than happy to chat. Speaking of chat, that was the only feature I really used on Facebook.

So my message to everyone is, enjoy your Facebook. Enjoy your timeline, your ticker, your private profile not being private. Enjoy summarizing your thoughts in 480 characters or less. I'm going to do something a little more worthy of my time.