Impressions of looking at Appalachia

Shelby Lee Adams doesn't think of himself as a documentation but instead giving showing the way these people live. He feels betrayed by the media in the way they made his home town appear; the people feel the same way. Shelby is truly passionate about his home town and the people who live there. After traveling house to house with his uncle, the doctor, he learned to love the people like he did. He talks about low self-esteem of the people of the area with leads to problems. He has a true passion for what he does. This article sheds light on his side of the story. It really changed my opinion of Shelby Lee Adams. He really wants to be friends with the people and not just take exploit them. I like during his teaching he teaches his students to give a picture to the people that they take a picture of. This shows his passion for his work and the following quote summaries it.

“When embracing all of humanity, there is no elitism or poverty. If people in the hollers can do this, so can you, each in your own way. Photography is a powerful tool and I am one Kentuckian who is concerned about many of our people that some wish weren't here. I know my process is now reaching others.” –Shelby Lee Adams

He faces all lot of critics but I believe his work requires you knowing his story to fully understand it. His passion for his homeland and the people there is inspiring.

Secrets of the Brain

I found the article Secrets of the Brain interesting. After taking psychology in the fall semester it furthered my understanding having some knowledge of the topic. I liked how the author put pieces of the article into perceptive to the average reader. For example his comparison of the grain of salt sized area of the brain and it can hold as much data as contained in 25,000 HD movies. That really made stop and think just about how much information can be held in the brain. I also was very interested in how little we know about the brain. With modern technology and the idea we sometimes have that we have everything figured out but we are far from that. We are still in the early stages of mastering the brain. The brain’s purpose wasn't even confirmed until four hundred years ago. A lot of progress has been made on learning about the brain and much more is still to come.  The article does get a bit dry in between the authors main ideas. I feel as if he would lose a reader that didn't care much about science since it does seem a repetitive with his topics of how large the brain is and the dying of certain parts. But he does kept the article interesting by moving to new topics and ending with the robotic arm controlled by mere thought. That was a great way to end the article because it lets the reader imagination go wild with what is actually possible as we perfect our learning of the brain.