hw 28 informal research

• Anonymous,, . "wikihow." how to be cool in 7th grade. wikihow.com, Web. 7 Dec 2009. .

This article is a basic how to article compiled by a few different authors. What drew me to it was that it is specific to 7th grade. It gives various tips on how to be cool, some of which are broad and unsurprising like be confident, and practice good hygiene. It even gives links on how to be smart, the more surprising step was to be smart and keep grades up but not so much so, almost as if grades are for appearances.

This article is pretty simple and gives a well rounded group of practices to be cool. The steps are not all related, so it gives ideas and suggestions to be liked by a wide variety of people, thus making you even cooler. Together the eight steps for being cool reflect the overall consensus for being cool, nice, smart, funny, and confident. This Source is good for understanding that there are some basic principles for being cool that in most instances can be followed.

• "Cool." Urbandictionary.com. Urbandictionary , Web. 7 Dec 2009. .

This article is less of a how to and more of a what is. It gives the various definitions of cool (disregard the ones defining weather.) The most interesting part was at the top of the page, in which there were different words for cool. There are some contradictions, smart and stupid, which proves that cool varies based on values and life style.

This article is worth looking at because it gives the different situations in which cool is used, it brings up the point that cool is someone superior and is also something used as a filler word (definition 2) the abundant definitions show the underlying principles of cool... popular and what other people want to be. This source helps me deepen my understanding of how different people have different interpretations of cool.

• Fenichel, Dr. Michael. "What is "Cool"? (What's Hot? What's Not?)." 2008. Web. 7 Dec 2009.

this article is an informational article about teens and why coolness is so important. The author mentions how teens look to other teens to see what is cool. The author talks briefly on what types of things dictate whether or not you are considered cool. He also mentions self-esteem but i'm not sure how relevant that is to this assignment. At the bottom of the page the author shows the responses from the question what is cool? he asked boys and girls ages 12-18.

I think that if i were to use this article I would probably use the interviews at the bottom. Although i have my interviews which I also plan on using these show how the definition if cool changes with a span of just a year. In addition the article has a lot of information, much of which is in the interviews on what makes up cool.

• "Cool (aesthetic)." Wikipedia. Wikipedia, Dec 8 2009. Web. .

This is a wikipedia page that will probably be used by a lot of people but it is quite substantive. It is a basic overview of the word cool. it goes through the idea of cool in the sense that where are studying, like behavior and culture, but it also mentions the religious types of cool, and cool during the renaissance and the cold war. I decided to focus mostly on the sections U.S. pop culture cool and cool as a social distinction.

This page is good for finding evidence of cool it gives a ton of different references for further research, which will be very helpful in my paper. In addition if i decide to talk about the way coolness has been utilized by the media there is a really good quote by Kalle Lasn "[Cool is] a heavily manipulative corporate ethos."