The Pennon - March 2011

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MARCH 2011

THE PENNON IS ONLINE AT: northshore.edu/pennon

N S C C o n F ac e b o o k an d T w i tt er !

R A D I O H EA D ’ S T HE K I N G O F L I M B S

• A Monthly Publication For The Students of North Shore Community College, Danvers, Lynn & Beverly, Massachusetts •

Are you on Facebook? Do you Tweet? Have you signed up for LinkedIn? North Shore Community College hopes so, and is eager to learn your social utilization habits. media Students should be on the lookout for an email survey in the next few weeks which will inquire about their communication habits and preferences.

Input received will be used to enhance the college’s social media strategy to improve connectivity and communication between the college and its key audiences. The college has been active in this arena for about a year. The NSCC Social Media Group (SMG) formed in 2010 and was instrumental in moving the college into social media use. The group continues to meet regularly to monitor, CONTINUED ON PAGE 4

NSCC Celebrates “The Power of Women”

BY LINDA BRANTLEY A re-enactment of Lynn’s Great Shoemakers’ Strike Of 1860 will be a highlight of North Shore Community College’s monthlong programming for National Women’s History Month in March. “THE POWER OF WOMEN: Defining Moments in North Shore Workforce History” will feature exhibits, panel discussions and historical portrayals to raise awareness and appreciation for the contributions of local and regional women and the issues they face. The month’s events will kick off on March 1st with NSCC student panel discussions on Women in the Workforce: Unions Then and Now, from 9:30-11 a.m. on both college campuses. The Danvers

INSIDE:

event will be held in the Student Lounge. Students in Professor Moonsu Han’s economics classes will give a Powerpoint presentation on the history of the 1860 Shoemakers Strike, exploring its impact on the labor movement. They will then examine the modern implications, and discuss the pros and cons of labor unions. Members of the audience will then have an opportunity to ask questions. In the Lynn cafeteria, students of Larry Davis' class will conduct a similar program. All NSCC students, faculty and staff, as well as community members are invited to participate in the symbolic reenactment of the historic day, March 7, 1860, when hundreds of women shoe workers joined

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Women Pop Artists Page 3

BY CHRIS RICCI In 2007, English altrock band Radiohead surprised the music industry with the unique way they presented their seventh album, In Rainbows. They decided to release said album on their website as a digital download and gave the listener the option to pay whatever they wanted for the album. Despite the fear that too many people would “buy” the album for a penny or less, the average price people payed for the album was around six dollars. Since the unorthodox release of In Rainbows’, many critics and fans have been wondering how the band was going to top this style of release. On Valentine’s Day, Radiohead decided to answer that question; they announced that the physical release will come out in March, the special edition in May, and the digital download in four days. The sheer surprise

that their album would literally come out in less than a week (at a very set price, mind you: nine dollars for an MP3 download and 14 for a high-quality WAV format) caused the order website to crash numerous times as well as various fan sites. Clocking in at just less than forty minutes and containing eight tracks, The King of Limbs is the shortest full-length album Radiohead has ever released. The denseness of the

album, however, makes it seem a whole lot longer. The album’s opening track, “Bloom,” has the odd atmospheric feel of albums past. However, this is quickly replaced with this odd and, at times, jazzy ambient feel. All the instruments begin at once and, initially, sound chaotic. However, once Thom Yorke’s voice fades in, The track seems to tie itself together.

back to the person. People wondered how Edison was able to teach a machine to speak Latin. A person would speak Chinese into the machine and it would speak Chinese back to them. Again, people would wonder how the “Wizard of Menlo

one had ever heard a recording of his or her own voice. Arthur C. Clarke once said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Can you imagine seeing a technology and completely misunderstanding what

Park” taught the machine to speak Chinese. People simply did not understand the concept of a recording. And back then; no

it was doing and how it might work? For most people, that’s what happened on February 16,

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IBM Supercomputer Watson

BY SHELLY PALMER

In 1877 Thomas Edison invented the phonograph. Ever the showman, Edison liked to demonstrate his device by allowing people to speak into the machine and then playing the recording back for them. However, back in the late 1800’s, the technology was outside almost everyone’s conceptual understanding. Up to that point in history, the only thing that could mimic the sound of one’s voice was a ventriloquist, so people thought it had to be a trick. Clergymen came to pronounce it “the devil’s work” and to discredit Edison. But here’s the really fun part. Edison used to charge people 25 cents to try to “fool the machine.” A person who spoke Latin (a dead language) would speak Latin into it and, of course, it would speak Latin

PAWS Pick of the Month Page 6

Who are Arcade Fire? Page 8

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Spotlight: John Hruska Page 16


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