Shape Up or Poor Form?

Posted by John H. Heinrichs

Feb 27

Shape Up or Poor Form?

What do Wayne Gretzky, Karl Malone, Joe Montana, and Kim Kardashian all have in common?

Wayne Gretzky is making a comeback in Hockey?  Karl Malone is training again to reenter the NBA and take over the all time scoring record?  Joe Montana has been secretly practicing for later in life, post-retirement comeback? What could possibly be the motivating factor and common story line here?  Is this story one of poor form with the Skechers Corporate Brand advertising gone wild? 

What could possibly be the motivating factor and common story line here?

Apparently Skechers has come out with a brand of shoe that they say has unique abilities to shape and tone your body as you exercise.  All three of these ex-athletes have endorsed the product and have not said they were mounting comebacks as a result, but if you watched the television advertisements you would be thinking that is what they were using the shoes for.  Multiple issues would seem to arise here for the common consumer.  Are any of these claims true about these athletes and is there anything special about these shoes that would make them different from any other athletic training shoe that a person would buy?

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Topic Categories: Information Literacy

Gender Equality and Information Literacy

Posted by Audrey Austin

May 28

Introduction: Confessions of a Nerd Child 

When I was young, my family had an ancient set of Funk & Wagnalls new world encyclopedias.  My favorite entries were those about different countries.  I loved reading about their histories and cultures, even if the information was outdated.  At the beginning of each article was a list of demographics for the country.  Checking the variations between countries was one of my many list-based hobbies growing up.  I especially liked seeing the similarities and differences between countries that were near to each other, or were similar in size. Population density was a favorite demographic; for some reason I thought it was very interesting how two countries could be roughly the same size, yet have differing amounts of people packed into their borders.  Using the Gapminder World program available at www.gapminder.org  is like taking those juvenile comparisons and multiplying them out exponentially.  With this tool, you have the ability to compare the trends in demographics of many countries over many years, in a two-dimensional space.  It is awesome!

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Topic Categories: Information Literacy, Gapminder

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