Author: samcrumly

Batman is better than Superman

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By Sam Crumly
Stonehaven Upper School

One of the main reasons why Detective Comics (DC) has any traction at all is because of these two characters. They have been around for over 87 years. DC has never really had a successful career in building a cinematic universe unlike Marvel. But the few movies that have done well have a common theme. They are either about Batman or Superman movies. But who is better? Batman, it’s Batman, Batman is better.

Photo by Ronu00ea Ferreira on Pexels.com

Christopher Nolan states that, “Superman is essentially a god, but Batman is more like Hercules: he’s a human being, very flawed, and bridges the divide.” Superman was an alien who was given powers by virtue of just being on earth at all. Batman is a human who actually had to be creative to beat his villains. The thing that makes Superman interesting as a character is how he deals with a god complex. That is not a relatable struggle at all, his whole thing is that he is too overpowered for all of his bad guys, it’s boring and not relatable. Batman is just a rich dude who isn’t built like a cyber truck. He has to actually think about how to beat the bad guy, and even though he doesn’t have all the powers of a god like Superman, he is still responsible. Both Batman and Superman have a no kill rule, but Batman is dealing with a much worse situation. It’s easy to have a no kill rule when you’re fighting some budget humpty dumpty. Batman is being nice in Gotham. Everyone likes Batman, even Barack Obama, he doesn’t just do things operatically he has to put effort in.

In the 2000s when the Dark Knight movies were coming out, everyone loved them. Even Barack Obama praised the movies made by Nolan. Along with Kevin Hart and Henry Cavil. The literal actor for Superman knows it too. Batman is just better, the whole man of Steele movie was just larping Batman the whole time. Superman isn’t bad, but Batman is better. Even now the new Batman movie is better than the new Superman movie. they are both extremely different, Batman still bets out Superman. Just look at the box office numbers the new Batman movie made 772.5 million while Superman made 670.1 million. They both made a lot of money but still, Batman beat Superman in the box office.

When asking a student about this debate they agreed, “Batman is just better.” Because he is! Who genuinely is saying Superman is better? I don’t know, because they don’t exist, because everyone agrees Batman is better. He, Superman, and Wonder Woman carried DC for many years, but that doesn’t change the cultural effect Batman has had on the world, and in the DC Universe.

The Attention economy and the death of curiosity

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By Sam Crumly
Stonehaven Upper School

Photo by Garrison Gao on Pexels.com

Have you ever walked into a cafeteria and seen so many good options for food that you just pick whatever food is the most familiar to you? If I’m being honest I don’t really like burgers and that kind of thing. If I’m in a massive food court with a bunch of cool options, I’m going to what is most familiar to me, even if I don’t like it that much. This phenomena can also be seen in day to day life with the way that people, particularly Gen Z, takes in information. Everyday you scroll on your phone, but how many of those reels can you remember? Seven? Five? Two? One? None? No one learns anything new, they simply reset to how they were before.

When asked multiple students said that they looked at around 200 short form videos per day. Only remembering 10 from that long scroll, and looking into none of those short form videos. They admitted that they found those videos interesting or worth looking into, but when asked one person said that she, “just didn’t see the point when I’m already seeing so much other stuff when I just scroll.” But people who only looked at 100 short form videos or less stated that they were more interested in the videos that they saw.

On average most people remembered around 12 to 13 videos, if they watched around 100 per day. Looking into two to three of those videos which they remembered. In my research those who were asked said they only watched around 100 reels, remembering significantly more than those who watch 200+, some even remembering 30 of the videos they watched. Out of the 30 videos they watched, they remembered only 10. The final person asked about this said that she only watched about 50 short form videos and remembered half of that, of the half remembered they looked into 15 of those stories told in those videos.

The more information that people consume the less, and less they can process. This concept is called information overload. When we consume lots of stimuli, like short form videos, and we process none of it, we learn absolutely nothing. It’s not that you can’t process that information, it is simply that you’re not giving yourself the time to think about what you learned. Lots of people will simply forget about all of the things that they saw, it is like spring cleaning for your brain. But nobody really wants to process information that much, because it’s not as stimulating to think about the cool stuff you’ve seen, it is stimulating, however, to see more videos which you will forget about in five minutes.

The professor for mass communications at Piedmont University, Joe G. Dennis. “Some people are overwhelmed, they just tune it out, retaining nothing.” he states, “The human mind is only ment comprehend so much. That is why a phone number is limited to ten numbers, because those are the ones we can call to memory instinctively. Because we have been processing those numbers for so long.” As we can clearly saw earlier, the more you consume the less you retain, and the less you care. The death of curiosity is when people think they know everything. Dennis also addresses this saying quote, “curiosity is human, however, just trying to get information told to them which they agree with, is not.” This is also a problem which has a made people generally more apathetic about the things they see around them.

They see so much and then when they look it up, they get a fluffy feel good answer. It makes people not care, because why would they? The answer they found on Google AI agreed entirely with their previous sensibilities, so they can just “trust their gut.” Dennis states that, “You will stop pursuing a difficult truth when ai or your for you page says exactly what you want to hear.” Causing people to become numb and not think critically, the death of curiosity is when no one cares, and when everyone thinks they are smarter than they are.

Joe G. Dennis: just be a nice guy

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By Sam Crumly
Stonehaven Upper School

Just Your average Joe

John Mayers the seven time grammy award winning singer and guitarist, Chris Jericho a prominent WWE wrestler and lead singer of the heavy rock band Fozzy, and Isaiah Thomas an NBA hall of Famer. what connects all these people? Just your average Joe, Doctor Joe G. Dennis. How did he make all of these connections? “Just being nice.” He says, “Communicating with everyone nicely. Just try to be a nice person and a good human being. By taking an active interest in other people and it will pay-off.”

Joe G. Dennis began his career in Journalism, and mass communication at North Central College university, he worked at the Walton tribune, as well as Reporter Progress News and now is working as the associate professor of mass communications at Piedmont University. Doctor Dennis always had an interest in actively telling the stories of the people all around him. This zealous curiosity is what led him to be so interested in this career as a whole. He always had this passion, but his intentions began to evolve to a desire to work as a teacher. He states that his intentions for his career changed when quote, “I was out with my wife, who was pregnant at the time, shopping for items for our baby, when I got a call. From my contact at the GBI (Georgia Bureau of investigation). Saying that I needed to drive down to Loganville to meet up with them for a drug bust they were about to conduct on a kingpin in that area. Telling me ‘this is gonna be a great story you won’t want to miss it.’ And I realized, aw man, this sucks, I’m having some family time and now a have to drive down to Loganville. The reality of the profession I was in is that this would be happening a lot when the baby came.” This type of situation was not the type of situation that could be ignored. Leading him to turn to teaching instead.

Dennis’s entire career as a Journalist was about telling the story of other people and showing the world what their lives were like. He reported on a couple keeping their chapter of the Red Cross alive in their own home, the infamous drug bust with the GBI, and also the story of a judge who was unable to get access to an organ transplant in time. The main thing even allowing him to do all of this was his network of connections. Which he maintained by, “Keeping up contact with each of the people you meet in your life. Not treating them like contacts, but instead treating them like human beings. Building a rapport and trust with each of the people you know. Because you never know who could become your next contact.” This concept is what allowed Joe Dennis into these all of the rooms where he could be the one trusted to tell these stories.

Staying grounded in reality as well, telling stories about people in his own community. Also stating that, “We consume lots of information, try and limit your information from the internet and focus on the reality of it all.” Because although lots can be learned from the internet, lots more can be learned from the real world. The stories that happen in the embodied world and don’t make to your for you page on reels.

Although his career as a journalist was an incredible one, it was a demanding one. Having to sacrifice personal time for the sake of those stories, as we saw with him having to leave his wife for a story. He states that, “I really wanted to something in the field of Journalism, but with more of a stable schedule, leading me to teaching at Piedmont.” This conflict is what made him change his career so that he could focus more on his own story with his wife and family. while still leaving his skills in the field of reporting to his students at his job at Piedmont.

Samuel C. Crumly

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Good morning my name is Samuel C. Crumly. I was born in Marietta, Georgia in Piedmont hospital in June 2009. I am the youngest of seven children to Jonathon and Kimberly Crumly. Before I was born my parents decided to homeschool the entire family so that they could see their children’s growth, and educate them in a Christian way. They wanted to send us to a Christian school but they did not have enough money at the time to do this.

When I was very young I broke both of my arms, and because of this I had to be in a cast for a whole year of my early development. Because of this my hand coordination skills have always been lacking. I have dysgraphia, which is a mental disorder where everything in my brain is shifted to the right, leading me to be terrible at sports like basketball, volleyball and football. I should be horrible at drawing because of this disorder, but because I kept with it the majority of my life I am a decent artist now, or at least that’s what my mom says. I was homeschooled from kindergarten to the 8th grade, but after four of my siblings moved out of the house and started living on their own they sent my brother and I to the Stonehaven upper school. This school was started in the early 2000s and they started their high school in 2016. Personally I like to learn about modern history, global news and work out. In my free time I will sometimes play around with legos, or take my dog Bear on a walk. I like picking up other hobbies as well, like learning how to skateboard and surf, but I recently quit skating because I got hit by a car while skating down a hill, so I probably won’t be doing anything like that anytime soon.

I am 16 years old, a sophomore in high school. I am on the varsity Track team at this school, I’m not super fast but I’m fast enough to be competitive. In 10th grade I worked to start the student newspaper, the first newspaper at this school. I have worked to keep it afloat for the past year, the newspaper has around 12 people writing. The name of the newspaper is the Stonehaven Spotlight. This year my brother graduated from high school and from his role as captain of the Track and Field team. For the summer I am working at the school to repair the building. We paint walls, fix doors and repair dry wall. I started getting into journalism when I was around 14 because I remember seeing people fight over this or that thing. Not for any real reason besides them just having different information, both of the people fighting were very reasonable people. I always thought that kind of thing was dumb, and I thought it would be cool to be one of the voices educating people about stories they haven’t heard before. I want to tell stories about things that people who are genuinely curious, and who want to learn more about the stories of people around the world.

My main goal in my career is to do on scene international reporting, to see the world, to let people know what’s going on in places they cannot reach on their own. Working in some form of broadcasting for international events would also be extremely interesting. I’ve started learning some basic levantine Arabic, because one of the main requirements for international reporting is being bi-lingual. This is my main goal with my career and it will happen one day. I want to educate people who are interested in learning about these places. People should know what happens around the world and how it affects the average Joe across the world. Because even if it is reletively nice over here, the same could not be said about many other places, and their stories deserve to be heard as much as ours do.