Her Heart in Your Hands

The pictures I chose (both from separate people's blogs) were open hands and a flaming heart. At first, I was searching Google for images of butterflies, but some how I stumbled upon this picture of the heart, and I thought it looked pretty cool! It actually reminded me of some lyrics to a song by Keith Urban: "She laid her heart and soul right in your hands..." Sorry if you're not a country music fan, but I love that song!

The image of the hands was originally in color, so I had to change the picture to black and white. I also changed the opacity a little bit. Then, I took the picture of the flaming Sacred Heart and used the oval elliptical marquee tool to feather the edges. Then I placed the heart on top of the hands, changed the opacity, and used the smudge tool to kind of blend the edges of the flames.

There wasn't really any particular reason to manipulate the photos, I just thought it would look awesome. I wouldn't consider the manipulation of the images to be harmful, unless a person actually believed this was a picture of someone literally holding a heart bursting in flames... It was just for fun!

Now, on to the article "Journals Find Fakery in Many Images Submitted to Support Research." It is absolutely not okay for scientists to manipulate the images they use to support their research data. Science is all about backing up or disproving previous scientific findings, so changing something that a scientist uses as evidence will totally disrupt the scientific process and "delay progress in...scientific inquiry."

Student Presentations

On Tuesday, most of the class presented their PowerPoint about their field of interest. I enjoyed all of them and thought it was awesome that every single person did something totally different! I loved Will Prudich's slide show about bonobos; I found it to be quite entertaining. His presentation was informative, yet at the same time, engaging and casual. He seemed comfortable talking in front of the class, and I applaud him for keeping his cool when his music wouldn't play. (I, on the other hand, was so incredibly nervous that my voice was shaking! Public speaking is definitely not my forte.) Also, the pictures and music he used were perfectly fitting, and they just cracked me up! Also, I really liked Aaron Bishop's presentation about preserving national parks. He seemed to be well-informed on his topic. Also, his scenic pictures were absolutely beautiful! I think it's important to have items in your slides that are visually appealing to capture the audience's attention, which is exactly what his photos did!

Good job, everyone!