Is it the holiday season?

Answer: Variable

For many in our community it is most certainly the holiday season; either Hanukah has just ended or Christmas is fast approaching. But for some, this is not a holiday season at all. I was reading an article about how people have come to face the 'December Dilemma' due to the fact that they don't celebrate a holiday during this "holiday" season. For example, Glen Fullmer's 7-year-old son came home with an assignment to make a poster about his family's holiday traditions. There was, however, one problem: the family is Baha'i and do not celebrate a holiday during this time of year. Therefore, he made his poster on the Baha'is gift-giving season in February. I appeared that many people chose to embrace the spirit of season, but not to celebrate the holiday. Hannah Vahaba said, "It's a beautiful season. It brings out a joy but I'm not going to celebrate it." referring to Christmas. This seemed to be the view of many. However, it seems difficult to deal with the holiday/Christmas season for many who do not celebrate any holiday or perhaps not the holiday people would expect.  The other day, for example, I was in the grocery store and the lady at the register wished me a Merry Christmas on the way out. While I do celebrate Christmas I was thinking to myself, 'What if I didn't celebrate Christmas? What do I say then?' I can see how that could be a touchy situation for many people.

So why do people assume? Is it just something that has become so ingrained in society that they don't even stop to think? What do you think?

What's in a name?

Today in class we talked about names and what they mean. We discussed things such as how a name sounds or if a name has an association with a certain social class. Another thing we discussed is how many family names were changed when immigrants came to the United States through Ellis Island. I know, for one, that my great-grandfather's name was Wolfgang when he came to the states, but that was immediately changed to William. A few people also gave examples of names being shortened. I think names hold the potential to shape who you are or, at least, how you see yourself, and this is why I find them so intriguing. Our teachers also showed us a really cool link that showed the trends of popularity for names in the past. We plugged in several different names to see what type of trends there were, and got quite a few different reactions from kids among the class. For one, there were a few names that did not make it into the database. It was also interesting to see the various trends and current popularity of the names of kids in the class. Another surprise was the gender usually associated with certain names. For example, my name, Quincy, is usually considered a boys' name, however, my parents chose to use it for me. Most people in the class did not realize that my name was, in fact, traditionally a boys' name. Perhaps it is because they don't know other Quincys and therefore they associate the name with the gender of the person they know. But I wonder what this tells us.

Does this mean that certain names have certain connotations because of the way the have been used in the past? Or do names just "sound" a certain way to people? Can a name define who someone is? Why do you think some names are so much more popular than others?

Gitmo detainees in Illinois?

The people of Thomson, Illinois (a town of about 600 that lies about 150 miles west of Chicago) are happy that the prisoners may be moving to the Thomson Correctional Facility. Mostly, people are motivated by the fact that it could provide jobs or, at least, stimulate the economy of this small town where the unemployment rate is close to 11%. All of the citizens of the town interviewed in an article by CNN were up for the move and did not seem the least bit concerned by the fact that the detainees could soon be living practically right next door. Nor, did it seem to bother them that these men were people the government considers terrorists. However, people like Republican Mark Kirk are worried that the new location will make Illinois a prime target for terrorists. He claims that if the US government spent so much money to keep terrorists off US soil then it should stay that way, especially if it puts American citizens at risk.

What do you think? Should the detainees be moved to Illinois or should they stay in Guantanamo Bay? Are the citizens' opinions influenced by the economic recession?

Super Science

Today in class we watched a clip from the movie Minority Report, and one of the things we touched on briefly was the technology that was used in the film. Some of it, as far-fetched as it may have seemed, is actually close to becoming a reality and may be available in the next few years. This amazed me, but what shocked me even more was an article that I found tonight about another advancement in technology and science: the possibility that parents could chose the gender of their children. The technology, called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PDG) was originally developed to determine whether an embryo had a genetic disease and allow parents to prevent their children from having genetic diseases. The parents, however, we required to use vitro fertilization, where the eggs are fertilized outside of the womb. The technology now allows parents to chose the gender of their child through vitro fertilization. To me, it seems like it's taking away from nature and how things are supposed to work, and I'm not sure I agree with the idea of being able to chose what gender a child is. I also feel that this could pose potential gender domination threats in countries such as China or India, where customs favor the male child.

What do you think? Should people be allowed to chose the gender of their child? Why or why not? Does it bring up any ethical or moral questions?

How much is race an issue?

As American's I believe people like to think of us as a "racism-free" nation, especially with President Obama in office. However, I wonder how true this claim is due to a recent article I read about how a college education from a good school isn't enough to overcome the racial barrier that people experience. Some people of color have gone to great lengths to hide anything that might give away their skin color on their résumé. Johnny R. Williams said, "If they're going to X me, I'd like to at least get in the door first." This, to me, was a little bit of a slap in the face. I mean, I understand that racism is still a problem, but I guess I underestimated the severity of people's feelings, especially when it comes to employment. In fact, the unemployment rates of college-educated blacks during the recession have been twice as high as that of college-educated white men: 8.4% compared to 4.4%. Also, a study published in the American Economic Review showed that people with black-sounding names got 50% fewer callbacks than those with white-sounding names.

I find it hard to understand why people don't want to hire someone simply because of their name or because they went to a "historically black college". How much of an issue do you think racism is in America? Do you think it's fair that people use preconceived notions about potential employees to determine if they are willing to hire them?

Will Afghanistan become Obama's Vietnam?

The question caught my attention on CNN's home page, not only because of Obama's speech later this evening, but because we connected the two wars today in class. However, after the opening question, the article went on to say that "experts" were claiming that while there are similarities between the two wars, there are even more differences. A few similarities are the troop increases (soon to be, in Afghanistan's case), the government the US supports is the minority and faced with corruption charges, and the fact that we are fighting "mostly poor, rural insurgents". This, however, proves one of the most difficult problems we face because insurgents can stay forever; they are at home. The only difference that was explicitly stated was the larger presence of a national identity in Afghanistan than there was in South Vietnam. To me, it seemed like the article had more to say on the similarities than they did on the differences. Maybe they wanted it to sound like Obama's fight in Afghanistan is similar to Vietnam, but I am still unsure as to how much the two wars actually mirror one another.

What do you think? Is the war in Afghanistan very similar to the war in Vietnam? What about president Obama's influence on the war?

"Fauxmance"... really?

I was caught slightly off-guard today when, on the home page of CNN, there was an article about Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart. Maybe it's because I went to see the midnight premier of "New Moon" last night or maybe it caught my attention because it wasn't exactly the type of thing I expect to see on CNN's home page. Either way, I was intrigued and decided to see exactly what the article was about.

"Are they or aren't they a couple? That's the multimillion dollar question fueling the "Twilight" franchise." By 'they' the article refers to Robert and Kristen. "Really?" I thought to myself as I continued reading; I know for a fact that I didn't go to see the movie last night because I cared about whether they were dating in real life. I mean, sure, it might be nice to know, but I wonder... Is that all people really care about? I expect people would still have gone to see the movie even if they knew the truth about their love life.

But if all that people care about is whether Rob and Kristen are dating then what does that say about us as a nation? Why are we so concerned with what is happening in celebrity's lives?

American?

Earlier this month, my dad was reading the newspaper when he came across an article about the New York marathon. The title claimed that for the first time since 1982, an American man had won the race, and immediately he had my attention. Meb Keflezighi broke the tape in 2:09:15, a personal best. Now, when my dad read this name, he stopped. If you just look at the name you may wonder, is this guy really an American? (Or, at least, that's what my dad wanted to know.) He kept reading and discovered that Keflezighi had emigrated to San Diego in 1987 from war-torn Eritrea, as one of 11 kids. He became a US citizen in 1988.

Even after reading that he had become an American citizen my dad's reaction was that this guy wasn't REALLY an american, and I'm still trying to understand why... maybe it's because he emigrated here rather than being born here, but isn't that what all of our ancestors did? What does it mean to be an American? Are some people more American than others? Why?

Life as a Trevian

I'm sure most would agree that life at New Trier is not exactly typical high school experience. I mean, sure we have extracurriculars and classes and a social life to balance out. However, even though we have a student body of nearly 4,500 kids we have NO school spirit and have more divided "cliques" than most schools do (Mean Girls the movie is based on our school for all of you who didn't know). Of course, this is not what I would consider the bulk of the difference; it's the competition among classes that I consider our most distinguishing factor, and it's not always a good thing. Friday was the end of the first quarter for us, and so we have recently been receiving grades from our teachers, and you will come to understand how competitive people are when you learn that people are disappointed when they get B's. But why? That's above average, right? For most people, yes, but in a school bursting with genius', a B can look pale in comparison to another student's straight A report card. This may sound ridiculous to some, but comparing ourselves to others has come to part of who we are, and how are brain processes information.
I'll be perfectly honest; I try so hard to do well, and I get really frustrated when I do poorly (remember what poor means in this context). But when I try to look at it from an outsider's point of view, I really don't understand why we are all as competitive as we are. Is it because of the environment we were raised in or do we force this upon ourselves? I know we have pressure to do well from our parents, and an expectation to get into a good college, but is it subtler than that? Would we be as competitive without the pressure from our parents?

National Emergency

As of Saturday, the H1N1 (or swine flu) virus has officially been declared a national emergency by President Obama. This is due a rapid increase in cases across the country. The declaration allows Health and Human Services to aid local health care facilities that would otherwise be unable to deal with the pandemic themselves. Some people, however, seem to be slightly skeptical of the action. One administration official called Obama's action a "proactive measure that's not in response to any new development." According to CNN, since April, when the pandemic first hit, there have been millions of cases, at least 20,000 people have been hospitalized, and more than 1,000 have died, and it is continuing to spread. 46 states have reported widespread flu transmission; this would not be unusual except that it is extremely rare for the flu season to peak so early.

People lined up to wait for their vaccine

I understand that for the elderly and the young, especially, the virus can be deadly, but for the majority of the population, the swine flu is just a longer, harder version of the flu. So I start to wonder why this has been declared a national emergency. It seems to me like everything has been hyped up by the media to make it seem worse than it actually is, and I wonder why.
Does the media want people to think that it that much worse or do they honestly believe that the swine flu is so severe? And why might they want to think this pandemic is a bad as they are making it sound?

Fake veteran faces 'stolen valor' charges

How Richard Strandlof decided to construct a lie about surviving the 9/11 attacks and a roadside bomb in Iraq, no one knows. He even went so far as to say that he had a metal plate in his head from the explosion that he escaped. He now claims he didn't mean to cause any harm, but there are certainly plenty of repercussions for lying that you are a military veteran. According to the FBI "the penalty for his crime is up to one year incarceration and a $100,000 fine."

Before his lies were discovered, he stood by politicians and spoke on behalf of veterans. He even created a group called the Colorado Veterans Alliance. Now we know the whole thing was a lie. He wasn't at the pentagon, he never served his country, and his real name is Rick Duncan. According to CNN, he denies being a pathological liar, but claims he suffered from "some severely underdiagnosed mental illness". Doug Sterner has catalogued numerous people claiming to be veterans who have never served in the military, and he says it is not unusual for those people to claim a mental illness in order to cover for themselves.

What he has done does not only affect himself, but hundreds of others. The group that he created took money away from legitimate causes for veterans. Also, any person who claims they are a veteran is going to be questioned and come under the scrutiny of the media because people know that others have lied before. I know he claims he didn't mean any harm, and this may very well be true, but the fact is, lying almost never has positive outcomes.

Personally, I don't believe that he has a mental illness, so why would someone lie about something as big as this? Did he really think he could do any good or get away with it forever?

Do numbers lie?

Today in American Studies class we started off with the significance of numbers, and we got into the matter of whether or not numbers could lie. One classmate said that she had heard the quote, "The figures can't lie, but the liers can figure." This really got me thinking... Can numbers lie? While I completely agree with the second part of the statement, and know that people can pick apart the data to get the answers or conclusions they want, I'm still not so sure about the first part. The numbers can be influenced by someone's bias, even if they are real numbers, but what if they make up the numbers? Aren't the numbers lying if they are completely made up? In some ways I think that they are, but I also feel like it's the person who made them up who's the liar and not the numbers because the numbers came from somewhere, even if it was just inside that person's head. This to me is that hardest part about figuring out whether the numbers are lying or not...
In class it seemed that we came to the decision that the numbers couldn't lie, but a bias could be applied to the way they are presented or even the way the data was collected, but I still don't know. What do you think? Can numbers lie? 

Waiting with bated breath...

I don't know about the rest of the Chicago population, but I'm guessing they are all as excited as I am to hear whether Chicago gets the bid for the 2016 summer Olympics. The results are said to announced sometime Friday, and even the Obamas have put in a good word for the city...

But what would happen if we did get the vote? Undoubtedly, the Olympics would cost a large sum of money and we are spending about $100 million on the bid alone. In an article I read recently the reported estimate cost is $3.8 billion (I'm not even really sure if I can grasp how much money that is...), but Robert Livingstone, an expert in the Olympic selection process says, "It will probably cost more..." The city, however, still has a strong argument due to the fact that we don't need to do much to augment the infrastructure that is already in place. Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College, even seemed to think that Chicago could make money from the Olympics if we can learn from cities like Atlanta and Los Angeles. This surprised me quite a bit... I always thought of it only as how much it would cost and not that there was even really a possibility of making money. Which makes me think... If the city can make money is it worth the huge amounts of money it will cost us now? The city has put in their bid, but is this good for the city or will we regret it if we get the bid?

Why so secret?

I recently read an interesting article about 10 restaurants (all of them fast-food based) that talked about all the hidden or "secret" items on their menus. I thought it was interesting that restaurants would go out of their way to hide things by not putting them on the menu but still be willing to sell them. These restaurants ranged from Starbucks to Subway and included everything in between.

 

Personally, I think putting more items on your menu could bring in more customers because it gives you more of a variety of choices. My favorite example is Jamba Juice. What if you get there, but then realize you aren't in the mood for a fruity smoothy? No worries. You can just order a candy-based smoothy!! I love Jamba Juice, but I never would have thought that they sold candy-based smoothies because it's never on the menu and it screams fruit smoothies to me, but who knows?? Another restaurant that I found particularly interesting was Popeye's. Ever heard of 'naked chicken'? I didn't think so... but it exists, so next time you are feeling like unbreaded Popeye's chicken go ahead and ask.

I suppose I can understand taking something off the menu if it unhealthy, but if it's something you aren't proud of offering then why not get rid of it altogether? Why do restaurants even hide items in the first place?

Is one enough?

During Obama's speech about health care this past wednesday, Republican Joe Wilson shocked everyone when he yelled "You lie!" in the middle of Obama's statement about whether the plan would cover illegal immigrants. Telling the president that he is lying in front of the entire nation watching the broadcast on TV is bold, and probably pretty irrational. Almost immediately after the speech, Wilson issued a statement apologizing for his actions and he called the White House that evening as well; Obama accepted his apology saying Wilson "apologized quickly and unequivocally, and I'm appreciative of that." Although Wilson said "sorry" directly after the speech he refuses to say it again. As of late Sunday afternoon he told CNN that he will not apologize again for yelling out.

This is what surprised me. It is an unspoken rule in American culture that you don't call someone a liar to their face (especially the President himself), but it is a whole other thing to make one simple apology and then refuse to do it again, as he is doing right now. The House Democrats want him to apologize on the House floor this week, and plan to censure him if he does not. The fact that he refuses to make one more simple apology surprises me because he has already put out a statement and made his direct apology, so why not one more? It makes me wonder...

Was Wilson truly sorry about what he said or did he only apologize because he knew it was the right thing to do? Is saying sorry once enough or should he be more willing to express his apologies to other people (such as the House Democrats)? Is this true in all cases or just this one?

Do you want to be an organ doner? What if someone payed you $20,000?

I read an article the other day on CNN titled "Donor says he got thousands for his kidney". I was intrigued by the title, which had appeared on the home page, and decided to read the article. Nick Rosen, a young, Israeli responded to an ad in a newspaper labled "Organ donor wanted" so he flew to New York and had his kidney removed at Mount Sinai Medical Center. It may sound absurd, but he didn't just do this on a whim, he was payed $20,000 dollars to donate his kidney. Many of the people who are donating their organs for money are from Eastern Europe, and their reasoning: they need the money. Almost all of the patients were poor and simply needed the money. Rosen's story is only one of many that have been uncovered in a recent investigation about the black market for human organs. What Rosen did, however, is not a unique situation. Recent studies show that about 10% of transplants are illicit. This number amazed me. What also amazed me was the extent of the underground traffiking.

I mean, what compels people to bribe others into selling their organs? Why is there so much underground traffiking, and where did it all get started?

St. Paul Virginia power plant- good or bad?

During my first visit to St. Paul, Virginia the scenery and the views from the winding road that runs through town were the things to remember. This summer, however, there was something new: the skeleton of an enormous power plant. Dominion Virginia Power is building a coal-burning power plant that will earn about $5 million in tax revenues each year, and will net about $300 million for the economy overall. In such an underprivileged area many would say "go for it, we need the money." Opposition to the project, however, is based on the fact that the project is ecologically dangerous. People are specifically worried about the pollution to the air and water in the area. The plant would release enormous amounts of smog and mercury into the air, and the fly-ash waste has the potential to pollute the Cinch River, a source of drinking water for many in the area. Many of the streams and rivers have already been polluted by mountain-top removal- a coal mining process that involves removing trees and shrubs from the top of a mountain, then using a series of explosives to make coal streams more accessible. In the process, however, pollutants get into the water making entire rivers and streams unusable for drinking water.

A stream below a mining site, orange from pollution

Due to the fact that they intend to use coal from Virginia, the number of mountaintop removal sites is likely to increase once the plant opens. However, according to many people in the area, they were under the impression that the coal was being imported from other states such as nearby Tennessee and Kentucky. Though many are against the project, it is hard for some to deny that the plant wont have it's benefits. According to Mid-Atlantic Construction the plant will produce enough energy for 146,000 homes. The plant will also provide jobs for a number of people.

Is the power plant good, bad, or a little bit of both?