Random.
Some advertisements are so good that it grabs more attention than the TV shows that are supposed to hold your attention long enough to get you to watch the advertisements. MOCCA adverts. Sure enough, the car advert and the partner seeking adverts were quite different from the rest of the advertisements shown, but that bodybuilder advertisement is seriously attention grabbing. I think there are more people talking about it than there are people talking about the TV shows.
Some advertisements are so standard that you don't even consciously realise that it even exists... until 5 years later, when you see the brand and you remember the jingle or catchphrase. It's kinda like subliminal messaging; it subconsciously affects your preferences and decision-making, which leads to a higher probability of you buying their product, but you don't remember paying much attention to the advertisement when it was being broadcast.
But the UIC advertisements are seriously horrible! I shall summarize it for you. "Omg our washing powders suck!""Yeh, it is so difficult to clean stuff!" Protest, protest! Then a man-in-white comes along. "Don't worry, use UIC cleaning chemicals!" And everyone is happy about his solution(no pun intended), and the man-in-white saves the day. (Yes, I can see that a society like that really needs a paternalistic government indeed.)
Then you have another one about a daughter going to get married, but she's worried about the housework. Then her mother reassures her, and they sing the jingle "UIC oh UIC, clean and green for you and me!" "If, with the help of UIC, your mother and your grandma have no problems managing the household, then neither would you!" "Ahh yes, we must thank UIC!" (No dear, that's not the point. You are supposed to thank your mother and grandma! Afterall, it's they who do the cleaning!)
The two advertisements are painful to watch. I'll change channel when I see them if the remote is in my hand.
Maybe I've been talking more about advertisements than TV shows, which might make you wonder if I turn on the TV just to watch advertisements. Actually, if there's nobody else in the house, I hardly turn on the TV. It's my parents who watch TV drama. It's perhaps rather silly to actually practice what I learn in KI, but when I watch TV drama, I have to watch it, attempt to understand the storyline, and also actively suppress any beliefs that I gain from it which I may later generalize to the real world. There's this part of the brain that says, "For goodness sake, you are watching drama! Suspend your disbelief!" Then there's the other part that asks me, "What is the producer trying to convince you to think? You are supposed to think that this guy is in the wrong, because everyone else in the show thinks so, but what is the assumption here? In real life, would this person really behave this way?" It's quite tiring. But when I watch advertisements, I know that their purpose is to convince me to buy their wares. There's no suspension of disbelief, so I can carefully line up the arguments involved. Besides, advertisements keep repeating, so there's less memory work too!
Have been randomly surfing youtube. For the sake of efficiency, I shall not post the videos here.
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Superheroes usually have some superpowers based on some scientific phenomena, like "Magneto" or "Electrika", but hey, where would science be without math? Here we have a superheroine, Math Girl!
Math Girl: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgMSgJdr4k0
Go ahead, cringe at the cliched storyline, and the moral of the story thinly veiled in the battle against adversity, "I must pay attention during every math lecture from today onwards!"
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Masochism Tango: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TytGOeiW0aE
Don't worry, it's not really a video about SM. It's just a guy playing a piano and singing a song.
On a random note, some American schools, noting that Singapore topped the TIMSS Math, tried to use the Singapore math textbooks as a teaching resource. They call the math in it "Singapore Math". One website abbreviates it as SM. Compared to American Math, it's a pretty apt abbreviation, I must say. (Some of their criticisms of SM is that there's not enough drilling. Drilling you want? I welcome you to send your child to South View Primary School. If we can finish 3 exam papers per day 7 days a week, so can your child!)
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Comments by IntenseDebate
Posting anonymously.
2007-10-16T10:51:00+08:00
Yak
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