Blog_28

My CP link isn’t working and I can’t log on, so I’m just going to blog about some more “Dollhouse.“ Well this show has literally got me hooked. I am well into the second season, and crazier stuff keeps happening. Right now, the active Alpha is on the loose, but Ecko is back safe in the Dollhouse. Alpha wants revenge from all of the clients who used Ecko, because he is in love with Ecko himself. He starts making arrangements with these old clients, and kills them before Ecko even arrives, so by the time that they get to the scene, the client is already dead. Alpha is a strait mad man.  He strapped a bunch of explosives to a man’s body on tope of a roof, and blasted him into nothingness. Personally, I think that is pretty sick. Well, he ends up breaking into the Dollhouse, and being the genius he is, used a device he created that imprinted something onto all of the Actives’ brains that tells them to kill each other. Now all of these Dolls are fighting to the death, and it’s very chaotic. Alpha goes strait for Paul, Ecko’s new handler, because he thinks that Ecko loves him. I did not see the rest of this episode, because I passed out while watching it last night. But the show is getting pretty sweet, and it is cool that Ecko now can remember all of her personalities. I think I can see how this is going to end up in the situation that the season finales are in, now that the imprints are so easy to tamper with and to do it remotely. 

Blog 24

            I do not yet have to scene that I am doing written out, but I am using a scene in this first season of Dollhouse. The scene is a flashback into Caroline’s life before she was put into the Dollhouse. She found out that the major drug company, Rossum, was using animals and possibly even humans to test out new drugs. When she breaks in, she is caught, and that it the reason she is sent into the Dollhouse. This scene has real world value, but I have not yet decided exactly what I want my real world example to be. There are too many examples of corrupt practices, and I still haven’t been able to choose the one that fits this scene the best. I suppose I will use the corruption of Tammy Hall in New York City. This relates quite well because they were a powerful, rich, political machine. When people, detectives, or cops tried to bring them down, they could not, for the machine was too powerful. They instead only had a choice of accepting bribes, which was they bet they could get out of the situation. Power such as the Tammy Hall political machine, and the Rossum corporation in Dollhouse, is very difficult to penetrate. Sometimes, there is nothing that you can do to stop these powers, which is displayed in Dollhouse, and many other corrupt political machines. Both of these situations are linked by one’s desire to do better, and the powerful barrier they need to overcome in order to gets what they want. Too bad that in most cases, as these two, the powerful political machine wins.

Blog_21

David Brin, an American science fiction writer, once said, “It is said that power corrupts, but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.” Everybody may not believe this quote, but I see truth in it. Each corrupt politician, CEO, or anybody who has power uses their position for personal gain. The reason that they strived to be in the position that they hold is their desire for power and wealth. Not everybody who gets in a position of power is corrupt though. Many people obtain these powerful positions because they love what they do, they are qualified for what they are to do, and to help make things better for the people whom they govern. The reason there is so much corruption is because many of the people who would do good things with power, the right things, don’t want the power. There are so many others things to gain and to want in this world, and unfortunately for us, the corruptible want power, and most of the sane don’t. This is very applicable to my paper, because the Rossum Corporation is involved in this corrupt business for absolute power (we find this out in the second season). Examples of the sane people are the people who run the Dollhouse. This may seem funny, but they want what is best for the actives, and they turn out to be good people. The Rossum Corporation plans to bring down the Dollhouse, after getting what they needed from it, to try an achieve power in the government. They do this by using the technology developed by the tech-guy to imprint a perfect senator who can get into a position of power. When this happens, the Rossum Corporation would have power in the government.

Blog_20

            I found an article called “Shrinking Government would Diminish Politicians’ Power,” to be quite interesting. The quote this article discusses is “Protect free speech without gutting public financial law.” This quote is an attempt to get rid of the kind of government we have today, one which is powered by money. The politicians to be elected are always extremely rich and powerful. The reason they are elected is because it is so easy to get their message out to the public. If you only see one person campaigning on the television, well chances are they will be the one that you are going to vote for. Not because they claim to have the policies that will fix everything, but simply because you know more about them than a politician who does not have enough money to get public attention. This is a major problem, because with this system, money pretty much rules everything. Why do people spend so much money just to get elected? With the power that comes with a high-ranking position, you can reward yourself and punish your enemies far too easily, which is a completely corrupt system. If you can money, you have power, but that isn’t the way that the government was meant to be. The only way to end this type of corruption is to level the financial playing field for all candidates, and all who would like to run for office. However, personally I don’t think this will ever be achieved. I feel that it is part of human nature to seek power, and very few people would put the people before themselves with such power.

Blog_15 Corruption in Detroits Government.

            I found an article that discusses a specific example of somebody in power exploiting his position for personal profit; in this case, it is a simple government bribe. The article is titled “Kilpatrick is Indicted in Criminal Ring.” Kilpatrick is now imprisoned, but is a former mayor of the city of Detroit.  Kilpatrick and a couple of his close aides used their positions to rig contracts, defraud taxpayers, and collect bribes. Ultimately they became pretty rich. The date of the article is 12/16/2010, and was published in the New York Times. This is the date when Kilpatrick was charged on 38 accounts of long-term crimes within his inner circle. The reason I feel that this article is of much importance is because the investigation to catch these crooks was started in 2004. This means that this criminal ring was ongoing for at least six years before they were stopped, stealing tens of millions of dollars from the city, as well as the people who live there. 2004 was only when the investigation started, so I feel it is safe to assume that their crimes were going on long before they drew attention from the federal government. Had you been a citizen of Detroit, money was being stolen from you, which you worked hard to get, and it would hardly be noticeable. This is a major problem because many people would overlook their taxes at the end of the year, so it would slide past in a subtle manner. Also nobody was their to monitor the mayor, at least with power over him, so he could do these criminal acts with great ease, and there is nothing an individual citizen could do about it. Corruption was put to an end in this case, but only after millions of dollars was lost to the hands of these politicians. 

Blog_14 Corruption article

            I decided to change the topic of my essay, to something easier for me to understand. I chose to research corruption in business. This relates extremely well to how Ecko actually got into the Dollhouse. Ecko saw that a major drug company was using various animals for inhumane testing of newly developed drugs. When she was caught, trying to get footage for the animals in cages, to bust to big drug company, the drug company turned her over to the Dollhouse, and made her the offer. This is because the major corrupt drug company funds the illegal human trafficking that goes on in the Dollhouse, and is fully aware of it. I read an article that was very similar, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/22/national/main3533284.shtml?source=related_story, and it is quite interesting. It is about a legitimate company that is supplying an illegal company with cars, plane tickets, hotels, and other services in order to help illegal aliens across the boarder.            

            The writer of Dollhouse is trying to make a science fiction connection with the real world, by exploiting a theme that is commonly overlooked in today’s society. There are multiple businesses in this article that help these aliens, which may open our eyes because that is only for a specific field. There must be a disgusting amount of corruption that goes on in every aspect of our lives, from a Federal government scale, to a local business scale, it is all around us. I am excited to see what other forms of corruption are out there for the public to see, and I wonder how much we can’t see.

Blog_13

I read the abstract of an article called Erasing Sensorimotor Memories via PKMζ Inhibition. I did not get much useful information out of this article, but just more confusing science that leads me to no confusion. This article discusses a method used to erase a rat’s memory. The rat learns something in the lab, and then is injected with some sort of protein, which does a lot of confusing stuff to the rat’s brain. After the rat ingests this substance, it then goes through the same task that it did previously. The rat takes the same amount of time to learn how to do this task as it did the first time, which indicates no memory retention about the specified task. After all of this research, I really would like to change my topic. Does anybody have any better ideas of which aspect of “Dollhouse” I should focus on, rather than the mind erasing and memory implanting part? I feel like I will never find anything useful about this, because it is such an unknown topic, and very confusing. I have found it very hard to find an article that is actually useful for this paper, so does anybody have any suggestions for another search engine or a sight with more in depth sources? Thanks!