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     Are advertisements pornographic? 

     In my opinion, most of the advertisements shown in today's society use sex appeal to persuade the customer to buy or use their product, but to determine whether or not the ad is considered pornographic depends on what is being revealed on the person and also the gender of that person.  I also think a society's view of "normal" contributes to the opinion of whether ads are pornographic or not. For example, if a man were to have his shirt off in an ad selling cologne I do not think that is considered porn because it is normal for a man to be seen without a shirt on. Now if a woman was in an advertisement with her shirt off selling perfume, that would be considered porn because our society is not used to seeing women walk around without their shirt on. These circumstances could be different based on where you live, how you were raised, and many other factors.

State of Oregon v. Jesse Caufield

     In the case of Jesse Caufield, Jesse was wrongly accused of holding Cooper Chase at gun point and stealing her car and wallet based on officer Nighthorse's stereotypical view of African Americans. Officer Nighthorse already had a preconcieved notion that the suspect must black because the victum said the man with the gun appeared to be Afican American so he immediately excluded out every race except for African Americans even though other races have darker skin that could resemble an African American in the dark. The officer also had a negative attitude against this specific race because he said, "these kinds of kids have no respect for the law' and 'it was crap- just people hiding behind race." Based on these two examples Jesse Caufield fell into the trap of stereotyping. Caufield was automatically made into a criminal in Nighthorses eyes because he was an African American, when in reality Caufield was a hardworking college student going to school to be a social worker. If the officer looked further into the case without immediately making judgments, he would have realized that Jesse was an innocent person trying to be a good citizen. Unfortunately stereotyping is everywhere even in our legal system where everyone is supposed to be treated equally.

Field Day Assignment

After doing this project, we came to the conclusion that being a critical thinker has many qualities involved. A critical thinker can be determined by many different ways as long as you have an open mind and willingness to listen to both sides by tolerating other people's views. To be a critical thinker, you have to be able to eliminate your emotions when judging a subject or topic because when your emotions get into the way you become bias. There is not always going to be a wrong or right answer but you have to be able to back up your view with statistics, examples, and good sufficient reasoning rather than personal preferences. These examples reflect on how our group believes what a good critical thinker should posses.

Evaluation Sheet: 1-5 (1=lowest, 5=highest)
1. Did he contradict himself? [1]
2. Is he elaborating on his points by giving examples? [5]
3. Is he being relevant, sticking to the main points? [5]
4. Does his emotions come into play? [3]
5. Is he being ignorant or staying humble? [1]
6. Is he really biased? [3]
7. Is he sympathizing with logic, emotion, and experience of his perspective? [4]
8. Is he making assumptions? [4]
9. Is his purpose clear? [5]
10. Are his reasons good and sufficient? [5]

Credit:
Lauren Bock and Whitney Mann: evaluation sheet
Ashly Appleby: video taped
Cody McVey: person we interviewed
Brian Schlatter: Interviewer
Lauren, Whitney, Brian, and Ashly wrote the paragraph