Drawing upon humor for change

Lizza Donnelly was born 1955. She’s an American cartoonist, best known for her work in The New Yorker. During her intervention as a public speaker, she argues that the cartoon, especially the drawing using humor, has a real power to change attitudes. In the context of this conference, she works more precisely on the status of women worldwide. In her speech, she relates her own experience, first as a little girl, then as a woman, to explain how medias or society in general constantly dictate to women how they should behave. After that, she specifies that humor is the best way to change that: “humor takes what we know and twist it”. She believes that change will come from women who are in her view guardians of tradition.

In my point of view, yes, we are formatted since childhood. Yes, some things must change. And yes, humor can help people become aware of the need for these changes. But I don’t think this is the only way. Before lampooning what is wrong in our societies, people must first be informed. And despite what someone are currently saying  about an "information society", even today around the world, information is a luxury. I don’t think that we can only rely on caricature drawing to obtain a general awareness. indeed, most parts of the world's people and more women are educated through oral tradition not using the mediation of technologies.

Is humor changing with cultures? Yes, inevitably. Physiologically, we are all entitled to laugh when our brain perceives a contradiction that he is unable to explain. But what we find offensive or contradictory change according to our culture, our education. Thus, we find funny situations what we face in our daily.

WWOOFING!!!

Hye everybody! 

I just want to explain you what "woofing" is because I'm going to become a volunteer in next June. The WWOOF (World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) is a global network of organic farms that intend to accommodate anyone wishing to share his life and his work in exchange for room and meals. 

In my opinion, it's a good way to cross different goals: travel, discover a country, a culture, a way of life, meet other people, spend some good time with local populations, learn techniques of farming and ranching environmentally and, for sure, improve my english!

One of the main advantages of this arrangement is the price: 20 € membership per year. It's also why I can tell you this organisation: I suppose that you're students and you're like me: you're broke! This registration gives you an instantaneous access to the list of hosts that offer to welcome you in their houses, anywhere in the world!

If you want more informations, please tell me, I'd be happy to answer!

"school days", or a typically teenager vision of the mobile phone's role

From the 07.03.07 to the 09.27.07, we discovered for the first time on the japanese TV channel "TV Kanagawa" the cartoon "School Days", directed by Keitaro Motonaga. This manga is an adaptation from a video game specialised in the simulation of dredge. It staged some teenagers: first of all "Makoto", a shy young men falled under the spell of "Kotonoha", who take the same train as him every days after school. And then, there is "Sekai", Makoto's friend, who'll try to improve his relationship with his ladylove.
So, this novel is talking about one of the most important teenager's concern: the love, and how to fall in love! It also deals with subjects such as friendship, school setting, and, less explicitly, the role of the mobile phone as a mediation tool necessary in any kind of inter-personal relationship among the teenager population (remember: the story revolves around the photography of Kotonaha taken by Makoto with his mobile phone!).
This is also from this light that we will try to analyse "Scool Days". Indeed, I remember that when I was younger, it seemed to me capital to get the last fashionable gadget that all my classmates had already got. Now, I find it stupid nevertheless I think this phenomenon has increased for the new generations. But where this belief in the technic' supremacy is coming from? How simples machines have managed to make themselves indispensable in the construction of communication between people? Broad issues...I believe this is necessarily the result of crossing multiple factors that we can not make an exhaustive list. However, we can assume that the wide diffusion of fictions such as "School Days" at popular listening hours with teens acts as a standard framework for these beliefs and practices...