Who is this?

It's amazing finding things like this. It's like a time capsule into the past mind of Joe. I honestly don't even recognize myself through writing. I sometimes do not value my education to the level I should. Yes I may have a grammatical error here and there still. Dear goodness my writing was pathetic. How did I do life? Yikes. Well here I am in 2015 college graduate married to a doctorate student. We've come a long way Joe. I hope next time I read this and have similar emotions to what I felt tonight. Such happiness for the way my life has turned out so far. Eight years ago I could not have imagined being married with a good job and my very own dog.

Apparently Me Llamo Nocho!


Ps. That teacher was a tool.

-Joseph

Hello old friend

Hello,

I literally can't believe I just stumbled on my old blog. I had to do for college writing 700 when I was 16. Crazy times they were, well I don't have time to blog now but expect more to come! Of course future Joe will probably be the only one reading it... Oh well, still is good to put thoughts on paper.

Joe Blaney

Portfolio

Joe Blaney

12/5/07

Simply my writing skills are less than good. I always however do try; it’s just not my subject. Although I am still not good at it I am getting better, I have never used MLA formatting before and that was interesting to use. As I have said I still have a lot of work ahead of me but I believe that I can accomplish this skill I just have to keep at it.

The most trouble I had was with the personal statement paper. That one gave me great hardship it was very difficult to talk about my strengths and leave out my weaknesses. I pressed through it and turned out to be my best graded paper during the class. Another harder paper for me was the descriptive paper. This one you could not use “I” or any first person views at all. That was more challenging than I thought it was going to be, but that paper also turned out to be one of my higher grades.

I have never really taken a real English class before. So the revision part of the paper was newer to me. I always though “That’s one of the least important parts.” It turns out I could not be any further wrong, it is one, if not the most important part and makes writing the rest of the paper easy. When you are not working about your grammar while writing knowing that you are going to just go back through it later it makes writing the paper much easier

I know that I am far from being done with my writing process. This is just the first step to becoming a good writer. The main points that I have to focus on are grammar and sentence structure. Most of the time when I am typing I tend to talk as if the reader were right in from of me, this is probably my biggest problem. I am sure that I can continue to English 101 and succeed

paper 1

Aggression and video games

Joe Blaney

On April twentieth 1999 the hundredth and tenth anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s birthday Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered thirteen and wounded another twenty three in their high school in Littleton Colorado. Since then there have been several school shooting and other signs of violence and aggression amongst teenagers. In every case of these shootings, investigators found that killer has had a strong history of playing violent video games. I am not suggesting that if you play these games that you’ll automatically perform the next random act of violence. I would like to persuade you to limit and control violent video game play for pre-teens and high school teenagers.

Aggression is usually defined by psychologists as “behavior directed toward another individual and carried out with the intent to cause harm.” Violence is usually defined as “physical aggression at an extremely high level, such as murder and aggravated assault. All violence is aggression, but much that is aggression is not violence.” For example if one child pushes another child off of a swing set it is aggression but not violence. A shooting at school involves both aggression and violence. (Anderson, Carnagey, book) It is important to understand the difference as most video games do not promote violent behavior, but rather increases aggressive behavior.

The General Aggression Model is a dynamic model that includes situational, individual, and biological variables and provides specific theories of aggression. GAM is largely based on social learning and social-cognitive theories developed over the past three decades by a large number of scholars from social, developmental, and personality psychology. For instance, the flow chart below maps the interaction between situation, thinking and arousal. Video games accelerate the situation process due to the rapid game play which causes a high degree of arousal. The arousal creates a decision process that is focused on impulsive action. Typically there is very little social encounter, as games play against others on line and the process starts over again. This continued cycle creates an emotional frenzy that accelerates or magnifies aggression.

Psychologist Doug Gentile, PhD “indicates it is likely that violent video games may have even stronger effects on teens aggression because, (1) the games are highly engaging and interactive, (2) the games reward violent behavior, and because (3) you repeat these behaviors over and over as they play” (Gentile, News article). Do research studies conclude that teens frequently playing violent video games are more aggressive than the occasional video game player? What affect do frequently playing violent video games have on teens that normally have an aggressive personality? In the report “The General Affective Aggression Model: Explaining the Effects of Point of View in Violent Video Games” (Farr, Kirstie, Krcmar, Marina, and Nowak, research article) found that frequent players as compared to less frequent violent game players reported more aggressive feelings and higher resentment scores. In addition, those that were playing first person violent games had somewhat more aggressive feelings as compared to those that played 3rd person games. Lastly, the point of view games that had blood portrayed were somewhat less irritated but significantly more verbally and physically aggressive. In summary, there was evidence that the generalized model of aggression was supported and that furthermore, first person, graphically violent games can accelerate violent effect.

A strong counter argument would be that “Violent behavior is a result of many factors; often genetics, parental attention, environmental stimulus, internal psychology and sometimes pathology, and an infinite number of other variables.” (Raczkowski, internet) Raczkowski has written several books on violence in video games. I agree that violent behavior is a result of many factors; however every study has shown that frequent violent video game playing magnifies aggression. If someone already has an aggressive nature due to these factors they should not play any violent games.

Some studies have yielded no significant video game effects you might say, just as some smoking studies failed to find a significant link to lung cancer. But when you look at all the studies put together, five separate effects emerge with considerable consistency. Violent video games are significantly associated with: increased aggressive behavior, thoughts, and affect; increased physiological arousal; and decreased helping behavior. (Anderson & Bushman, internet)

Recently a mother condemned the British makers of a game in which players act as bullies. Giselle Pakeerah, who blames the murder of her son on a violent video game, called for the game to be banned. I do not agree that inappropriate games should be banned. I don’t believe in censorship; however I do believe that the game manufacturer has some responsibility for their product and who it is sold to.

I have pointed out clearly that violent video games causes increase in aggression which can lead to violent behavior and can also leading to addictive and non-social behavior. I recommend that the current rating system be changed because it is not working or enforced strongly enough.

I suggest that we abolish the “Mature” rating and force game manufacturers to produce only “Teen” or “Adult” for action or first person shooting games. I suggest that we get rid of the current “Mature” games because it will force game producers to appeal or focus to their audience, which will result in more teen rated games. The high end details of killing and gore is much more detailed in “Mature” games then in “Teen” games. However I do offer a solution to gamers that are appeal to an adult audience making “Adult Only” with strict age verification requirements. This system of purchasing “Adult Only” games would also be extremely strict, allowing only adults to sell the game to an adult. In order to do this, the retailers must have an age verification point of sale system in order to sell these games and retailers will lose their license if they sell “Adult” games to teens.

All video game consoles should enforce parental controls which enable parents to block any game that they think may not be suitable for their teens. This system already exists on the Microsoft gamming consoles but is not currently enforced on all gaming platforms.

We have laws set in place that ban high school students from smoking and drinking I believe that we should treat video games the same. This will become a major issue if we have increasing levels of aggression of our teens. We must make these changes now to avoid more unnecessary conflict.

journal 3

so i have been playing this game called assassins creed as of late and it is simple amazing. but can be very frustrating. I run around a city while beggars are asking me for money while i am trying to catch the villain. anyway the game rocks. I have been also playing rock band which is awesome! i am cheap though so i went with the one without the drum set : ( but it is a blast none the less....

Journal 2

So if u don know i play hockey for the flames. I had a game last sat and i had to work also, i got off work 1 hour early to make it to my game although the weather outside was a bitch making it very difficult to get there. So i get there half way through the first period and we are losing by 1. It is now the second period and this jackass keeps punching me in my head so as i try to through him off of me i kick him on accident. all the reff sees though is me kicking this kid so he throws me outa the game... so that also sucks.

Jounal

As we all know the x-mas season is coming up and well if you work retail, it just sucks! So the big item of the year is the nintendo wii.... It is my most hated item of the year. "Sir do u have any wii's?" no of course we dont i say. Friken nintendo make enough damn wii's! and that is what pisses me off : )