A blog post I just read by Colin McCune got me thinking. The post, titled "Memorializing Who?" talked about how many Americans completely disregard memorial day and fail to think about what it is supposed to be recognizing. I agree with Colin that it would be nice if people were more mindful of this quite patriotic holiday. But why is it that people have such a lack of appreciation for memorial day?
I found one possible answer in an article from the Washington post called "U.S trails Europe on paid vacation time". The article explains how the U.S. is the only major country with no legally required vacation days. All other wealthy countries require at least 10 paid vacation days to be given by all employers.
Colin made a point about how many people go to work on memorial day. I think working on a holiday means that you have less time to actually observe the holiday. It's interesting that the American government wants a day for people to honor America's heroes but doesn't actually require that people are given time to do this.
I think people would be much more likely to pay more attention to this holiday if they were guaranteed to get the time off work.
I just read a fascinating blog by Gabriel Levine-Drizen entitled One and Done. In the blog he talked about how bright basketball prospects are effectively required to play one year of college hoops before they are allowed to play in the NBA. Gabe talked about this rule mostly from the players' perspective, and came to the conclusion that players should be able to skip college completely.
I think the conversation changes drastically when you begin thinking about the rule from the perceptive of the NCAA and the success of college basketball. I think it would be a massive loss to college ball if players were allowed to go straight to the NBA.
In 2012, five of the top ten players drafted out of college were freshman who had only played in college because of the requirement. Imagine if half of the top players in the country completely bypassed playing in college. The overall skill level in NCAA play would be severely diminished.
There are also entire programs built on taking one year players. Take the Kentucky team for example. They won the 2012 NCAA championship with a starting lineup of only one year players who were all drafted into the NBA shortly afterwards. If the one year rule was not in place every one of these players would have gone straight to the NBA and this historic team would not have existed.
I personally think it would be sad if the quality of college basketball went down, it is something that many Americans love to follow, and would be hurt if players were allowed to go straight to college.
So the seniors are gone. Their last day didn't bring any major surprises, they acted pretty much how I would have expected them to. A some of yelling, a lot of pretty hilarious costumes, and an apathy towards KW class that bordered on aggressive. What did surprise me was something I saw from a group of fellow juniors.
As the bell rang to dismiss all of the seniors I was walking through the cafeteria and observed a group of my classmates jumping and yelling:
"yeah we're the seniors now!"
"seniors 2014!"
"we run this school!"
When I kept looking I realized that this hadn't just been an in the moment joke. Someone was distributing shirts with "SENIORS 2014" written across the front.
Really? Nothing happened in any way that made us seniors already. I guess some people just couldn't bear another week of junior year. It seems like there's something about the title of being a senior that appeals to people even when it isn't attached to the actual qualities of being a senior. I personally find it funny and somewhat ridiculous that these kids are calling them seniors when they still have junior finals in front of them and another summer and full year of school before they can graduate.
I wish I had a picture of what I saw a few days ago. The scene was perfectly laid out as I walked into a subway attached to a gas station in Holland, Michigan. Standing behind the counter were three white males, one looking to be in his late teens, one in his early twenties, and the other middle aged. All slightly obese.
For me it was a haunting reminder of our class discussions about cycles. It was as if all three were representing progression through one person's life repeated three times. It seemed to me like they were all trapped in a repeating cycle in which they start with nowhere to go but a low level job and because of this are forced to stay in these types of jobs for the rest of their lives.
The counter also seemed to separate them from the higher class people who came in to get food. This reminded me of in our discussion in "social class station" when someone made the observation that the lower classes always stayed separated from the upper class because of the direction they usually ride the train. Do you think I'm being to cynical about the young worker's prospects? Do you think he is trapped in this cycle or do you think he has more opportunity than that? Please comment.
Last week in class we talked about how Wolf Blitzer asked a victim of the Oklahoma tornado to thank the lord on camera. I think it's pretty obvious that this is breaking from impartial truth seeking journalism. What intrigued me though is that Wolf Blitzer has a huge amount of experience as a journalist. So why would he have done this on the national stage?
I don't believe it was because of Blitzer bringing personal bias into his journalism. He is actually Jewish, and the phase "thank the lord" which he uses is much more Christian than Jewish. I think instead, the reason relates to a blog post by Colin McCune. In his blog "flight 93", Colin remarks how in the movie "Flight 93", there is a scene in which characters spoke the "Lord's Prayer", seeming to put American Christianity up against the flight's problems. In Colin's opinion, the media was forced to stick to the "official narrative" in which Christianity is the dominant religion.
I think this also applies to what Wolf Blitzer did. I believe that as a reporter for a network trying to attract as many viewers as possible, he is forced to do what he thinks the majority of people will accept. Especially considering how predominantly Christian Oklahoma is, I think that Blitzer asking this woman to thank the Lord was his way of appealing to the popular narrative of Christianity being the belief system of the U.S.
Our recent class discussion about tobacco got me thinking about how it is related to the soft drink ban proposed by mayor Bloomberg of New York. The ban, which was rejected by New York city council in March, would have prohibited the sale of soft drinks larger than 16 ounces.
The ban faced a lot of public scrutiny. Many people said that the government has no
place in trying to protect people from themselves. However, Bowdoin professor Sarah Connelly
said in a recent New York Times op-ed that the belief that people can make healthy
decisions amid all the marketing of our world is “clinging to an
illusion”. She believes that it is the
government’s job to help people with bans like the soda ban in New York.
Smoking used to be a much bigger problem in the US then it
is today. The percentage of adults who
smoke is less than half of what it was in the 1950s. Much of this is because of government action
in the form of taxing. Hannah DePorter
found in a recent blog that it costs less than a dollar to produce a pack of
cigarettes, but the government takes $4.66 in taxes for every pack sold. It seems to me like this huge tax has had
positive effects on the general health of Americans.
Right now 35% of Americans are obese while less than 20% are
smokers, and a lot of the blame falls on sugary drinks. I think it would be a great idea for the
government to step in to help people make healthy choices on things like soda,
but maybe instead of the ban that mayor Bloomberg proposed, we could take a
lesson from how successful the government has been at diminishing smoking. Maybe if soft drinks were just made more
expensive, people would be more likely to make healthier choices.
Today I got the opportunity to look around at what some seniors have been doing on senior project. One booth particularly caught my eye. Several student had done a project on designing T-shirts. The reason I was drawn to the booth was one design in particular, which had giant letters, shown as cutouts of a $100 bill, saying "live like the 1%". Below these words is a depiction of a sailboat and a golfer.
In my opinion, wearing this shirt would be an incredibly disrespectful way of flaunting wealth. "Live like the 1%" implies that living in any other way would be wrong. It's going so far as to say that they way 99% of Americans live is incorrect because they don't have as much money as the 1%. The wearer of this shirt would be conveying the message to me that he sees himself as better that everyone who doesn't fit into the same elite group that they do. And if you do happen to live incorrectly, like almost all of America apparently does, Benjamin Franklin's eye will be watching you judgmentally from behind the "K".
The fact that the shirt says "1%" instead of something like "the wealthy" also heightens the elitist nature of the shirt. If someone begins to live their life "correctly" and moves up into the 1% of the population that does, then whoever was at the bottom of the 1% is kicked out. Its as if the way you live your life is not as important as the fact that you live better than 99% of people.
I also think the images they chose to put on the bottom are fascinating. Golf and sailing. It's strange to me that this is what they chose to somehow represent what living like the 1% is. Neither of these things have very much to do at all with acquiring money, but isn't the 1% based solely on money? This to me highlights the negative stereotypes of people in the 1%, that they don't really work for their money or contribute to society and only partake in leisurely activities like golf and sailing.
I sincerely hope for all involved that this shirt never comes within a mile of any occupy protest.
Earlier today I went out and saw this new movie called "The Great Gatsby". Overall I liked the movie, which in terms of plot stayed pretty close to the book. However, Baz Luhrmann made one choice in his adaption of the classic that I thought was strange. In the book, Nick Carraway could very reasonably be considered gay. He leaves a party with Mr. McKee and then suddenly regains memory next to his bed while he is clad in only underwear (38). In the movie, Nick ends up with a woman at the same party, then wakes up alone at his own house.
Nick at the party sitting with two girls with no sign of McKee
I think F. Scott Fitzgerald had to make this scene very inconspicuous because of how looked down upon homosexuality was in the 20s. But to me, the fact that he included this scene even with all the negative views of homosexuality means he thought it was very important to the overall book. Noah Berlatsky, writer for The Atlantic, says in a blog that Nicks homosexuality could help him connect with Gatsby in that they both need to deceive others to be seen how they want.
Given all of this I think its weird that Baz Lurhmann cut this from the movie. I think our society today is much more accepting of homosexuality than it was when the book came out, so doesn't that mean it should have been even easier to use Nick's homosexuality to help the story? I think they way Fitzgerald snuck in this homoerotic scene was pretty genius given the time in which he was writing, and I think the movie should have honored that much more than it did.
Recently there's some talk within high school sailing that's gotten me thinking about what high school sports should be focused on. The debate is on whether or not small schools should be allowed to compete in combined teams to increase their success and make them able to compete in bigger events. Some people believe these joint teams should be allowed because they give students at small schools a more equal opportunity to compete. Others don't believe joint teams should be allowed because they are unfair to the bigger schools who can field successful teams by themselves. So which one is more important in high school sports, giving every individual an equal opportunity or rewarding the "best" teams.
As a member of one of the largest teams in the midwest, it's certainly better for me and the success of my team if joint teams are not allowed, but I also have some friends at much smaller schools. It seems somewhat unfair to me that just because of their location and the way their school is organized that they get different opportunities in competition. At New Trier, if you are one of the top sailors, you are pretty much guaranteed an opportunity to compete every weekend, but some friends from a smaller school were telling be that they are struggling to get enough people to be able to enter the next regatta.
While the current system without joint teams means I can have a lot of fun competing, thinking about it from other's perspective makes me realize that maybe it's not the best option. I think high school sports would be more fair if they focused on everyone being able to compete instead of finding out which school is the best.
All the way back in first semester I wrote a blog relating football in America today with gladiator fights in ancient Rome. I said that only a significant change in morals would be able to cause change in the violence of football, relating to how it was the general acceptance of Christianity that ended up dooming gladiator fights. After some recent events I'm starting to think that this is not entirely accurate.
The NFL recently instituted a new rule, the "helmet rule", which can be read about it more detail here. I wouldn't consider this a rule change that will be remembered as a turning point if football or one that will have a large impact on game play, but I do think it shows a larger trend. In twenty years, I think that we're going to look back and think how crazy it was that these little rules didn't exist. Just like right now it's generally accepted that playing professional football in leather helmets with no pads would be crazy. The game hasn't really been affected by one specific change in thinking, there have been small rule changes throughout the years that cause it to evolve.
So my opinion now is that violence in American football will eventually end, but it wont be because of some major change in public beliefs. It will happen slowly over a long period of time because of small rule changes like the new helmet rule. Maybe still someday people will look back on today's NFL and see its violence like we see the violence of the Roman gladiator fights.
So I was filling out my bracket this morning and got thinking about how people pick upsets. Every year there's a few surprise teams that shock everyone and win a few games, and if you can be lucky enough to pick the upsets correctly, you're looked at as a college basketball genius. I use the word lucky here very purposefully, because I honestly think there's way more luck involved than skill in picking the right underdogs.
Talking to people about their brackets, I hear things like "Bucknell is gonna pull of the upset victory, I'm sure of it". Really? You're sure? When people say thinks like that it sounds to me like there saying they think they're smarter than the selection committee that watches these teams all year puts hours of work into deciding which teams make the tournament in which seeds. Personally I think this is a little ridiculous.
Now I do pick a lot of upsets in my bracket, but when I do so it's not because I think I'm smarter than the selection committee. When people pick upsets I think it's more reasonable to understand that your going out on a limb, and that your team probably wont win but it would be cool if they did.
I recently was on an airplane when this public service commercial was played on the TV. In general I like the Values billboards and commercials, but I cringed at this one the first time I saw it. Now, I'm all for optimism, I think it's one of the things that makes our country strong, but personally I think this video is more representative of delusion than it is of healthy optimism.Optimism is defined as hopefulness and confidence in future success, but this kid keeps saying "I am the greatest". Not "I can be the greatest" or "I will be the greatest", but I "am" the greatest. There's nothing future about the word "am". This kid isn't being optimistic, he's just dreaming in his own little fantasy world, which isn't wrong, but certainly isn't a core value I would want to advocate. The phrase "the greatest" also bothers me because only one person can be "the greatest". If optimism is confidence in future success, then it seems like this video is equating success with being "the greatest". The fact that this boy's inability to be the greatest hitter causes him to fall back on being the greatest pitcher makes it seem as though he has to be the greatest at something. If we pass on the value to 300 million people that they have to be the one greatest to be successful, we can pretty much guarantee that most of them are going to end up disappointed.
Also, look at the kid's expression, along with his "wow" at 45 seconds, right after he strikes himself out. His eyes open wide as if he has just been enlightened. As if this truth has just washed over him. To me it seems as though the video is trying to say that greatness just miraculously comes to you. And that you can just realize you're the best without any consideration of the lifetime of work it would actually take to get there. I would consider anyone who actually thought like that to be severely delusional.
On a final note, the music at the end: Celebrate Good Times? Really? Has there ever been a reasonable parent who says to their kid at the beginning of a school year "I'm optimistic that you're going to get straight A's, so lets go celebrate now"? You don't celebrate being optimistic, you celebrate later after you actually put in the work and achieve success. If you agree or if you think I'm overreacting please comment.
Last night I watched and cheered as 8 seeded Robert Morris closed off an upset victory against 1 ranked Kentucky. I also saw a barrage of Facebook statuses praising the Colonials for taking down the Wildcats. Why is it that people liked the underdog so much in this game. It seemed to me like even more than usual, the little guy was the fan favorite.
I think that a lot of this bias comes from the difference in how these two teams are constructed. The Kentucky basketball advertises itself as the place for talented high school basketball players who need to get one year of college in before they go pro. This means their team is generally full of extremely talented but also pretty young players. It also means that pretty much every year all of their starters leave and they have to completely rebuild their team. The Robert Morris team on the other hand is made up of much less individually talented players, but much of their team has been playing together for four years.
I think we generally like teams similar to Robert Morris better than those like Kentucky because they fit in better to American values. It's like following the American dream; players on Robert Morris aren't anything exceptionally special when they join the team but through four years of work they build themselves into a successful group. Members of the Kentucky team, while I'm sure they also work incredibly hard, don't have to build themselves into anything after they join the team, they already have most of it.
Last weekend I had the privilege of being able to go to Dallas on a school trip. For some of out trip we were on a bus with a tour guide that was helping us get around the city and giving us short tours in our spare time. I remember the first thing she said to us when we all got on the bus for the first time was, in a heavy southern accent, "Howdy y'all, I'm Alice, you can call me Alice from Dallas". I almost laughed at how much of a stereotypical southern response this was. For the entire weekend she continued to speak simply in her southern drawl. Near the end of the trip someone in my group found a video that showed her, apparently the president of the tour company, speaking very academically with almost no southern accent while receiving an award for success in entrepreneurship. It made me think that maybe she was very purposefully acting like the stereotypical Texan that many northerners would think of. On the All In One Tours website, they make a point of providing "Texas Friendly Hospitality". I think that "Alice from Dallas" and her tour company realize that as northerners we have such strong stereotypes of about people from Texas that it would be weird for us if our tour guide did not fit them. To get a tour guide that spoke academically without a southern accent might even be a disappointment. If you disagree please comment, but it did seem like our tour guide was certainly going out of her way to give more that the usual Texan accent.
So by now the new song popularity rush for Macklemore's "Thift Shop" is pretty much over. I think it's effect however, is still very visible; Going thrifting is still a popular activity for a lot of New Trier kids. This past weekend, a few friends and I decided to drive out to Rogers Park to go to a thrift store we had heard about. And just like the song suggests, we got some absolutely ridiculous clothes for almost no money.
The song suggests that getting old clothes will make you even cooler that spending a lot more money to get some designer brand. All admit, I did feel pretty cool rockin' my two dollar bright green blazer, but as I looked around the store I noticed something interesting. The vast majority of shoppers were not there to try to get something cool and funny, like the song talks about. Most people seemed to be there because they really didn't have any more money to spend on clothes. This got me thinking about what kind of message we were sending as eight wealthy white kids holding our smartphones and laughing at the clothes as we shopped. I started to feel almost guilty. After this I think wearing thrift shop clothes to be cool may be a way of flaunting your wealth even more than designer clothes do. If you have a 50 dollar Gucci T-shirt, all that says is you have 50 dollars to spend on a T-shirt, but if you're wearing some ridiculous second hand coat, I think it sends the message that you're so wealthy, when you wear second hand clothes people will know its a joke and think its funny.
The picture shown below is an important American artifact because it represents how in America, the lifestyle of the upper class comes at the expense of the lower class. In the left and bottom of the image we see almost entirely dull colors, beige and brown and gray. To me this makes the homeless man seem to blend in to his surroundings, like he is part of the building and not a living human being. This man reminded me of the boy in the closet described in "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas". It is said that this boy "ocassionally fumbles vaguely with his toes or genital", similarly to how the man in the photo is fumbling "vaguely" with the back of his shirt. Vague can men not having clear thoughts, which makes it feel like the man and the boy are thought of as animals, like a dog would mindlessly lick himself.
Speaking of the man's shirt, the most striking part of the photo is the contrast between the man's clothing and surroundings and the three brightly dressed women to his left. These women pop out of the image like the subject of a scene in which the homeless man is just part of the background. If you were to admire these women's shirts, you may notice that it is "Wonderful how the pattern matches perfectly" across the seam, just like the shirt described in Robert Pinskey's poem "Sshhirt". The word wonderful makes it seem as though it is some kind of unexplainable miracle, or a wonder, that the shirt is so perfect. Is it really a wonder though? Later in the poem Pinskey mentions the reality behind the shirt, that it is only possible because of "the sorter/ Sweating at her machine". Sweating sounds like something unclean to me, and the three women in the image have a clean appearance that makes me doubt they have ever sweated at a machine. However, their clothing shows that they certainly have benefited from the sorters work. I think that the way these women are able to live, as shown by their clothing, depends wholly on the work of less fortunate people like the sorter. Just like the rich life and joy of the people of Omelas "depend wholly on [the child in the closet's] abominable misery". "Abominable" can mean evil, and to me, evil is something that comes from someone, which shows that the people of Omelas are doing an evil onto the boy in the closet, like the workers in clothing factories are forced to do their work because of high class Americans who want to buy cheap shirts.
If the homeless man in the photo is so similar to this fabled boy of Omelas, is there some reason that the lifestyle of the rich in America forces this man into where he is? Are our lives only possible because of this man's suffering? In one class discussion that I remember vividly, we talked about how economists agree that an unemployment rate of 0% would not necessarily be a good thing, and the target for the American system to work the best would be about three percent. A theory Doc Oc proposed was that the three percent was there as incentive to the other 97%, that if they didn't keep working hard and trying to climb the social class ladder, they could fall to being one of the undesirable three percent. I know I certainly never want to look like that man on the steps. Whatever the reason, I think this man is one of the three percent that makes life possible for people like the three women. Mr. B also once blogged about his encounter with a homeless woman at a soup kitchen and recalled her saying "I've had it with America and I'm leaving". This reminds me of the boy in Omelas begging to be let out of the closet. The boy and the homeless women and man in the picture and the workers in clothing factories, are really just the background that allows wealthy Americans to live how they do and stand out like the women in this picture.
So today I was eating lunch with a few friend when I asked them what they were doing this weekend. "Studying for finals", simultaneously from two of them. I then asked if they wanted to hang out when they weren't studying for finals to which they replied that they wouldn't have time around their studying.
Lets do some math: if you include Friday after school my friends probably each have at least 35 waking hours in the upcoming weekend. That is approximately a whole lot of time if you really think about it. Now maybe I don't have the attention span that my friends do, but I reasonably can't spend more than about three hours at a time doing focused work. I can sit at my desk for as long as I want but after about three hours nothing gets down on paper and nothing gets absorbed into my memory.
So for me, the prospect of spending an entire two days studying without any breaks for usual weekend activities sounds not only incredibly boring, but really just not a good use of my time. It could be that my brain just doesn't work like some other peoples', but in my opinion trying to study too much in a given time is becomes ineffective after a bit and, honestly, its really just no fun.
I would like to expand a bit on a blog post I wrote a few weeks ago. The first half of this blog can be found below as an individual post. I wrote it after walking past the TV when a section on Rock Center caught my eye. In this section, shown below, Brian Williams discusses the story of two brothers, Hussain and Hamza Abdullah, who left their NFL football careers this year to make the Hajj to Mecca and support their Muslim beliefs.
I thought the way in which this story was portrayed was fascinating. In the first sentence of the description of this story, found on the Rock Center website, it is called an "American dream story". You'll also notice if you watch the beginning of the video above that Brian Williams uses the word "American" twice in the first three seconds. Later in the same sentence however, he admits that it "runs counter to just about every message our society sends out". Personally, I found this juxtaposition very confusing. How can something be American if it goes against the messages of our society? In my opinion, it can't. Isn't American defined by the messages of our society and what we believe? I would argue that what these brothers did was very un-American. They were on the path of an American dream and chose to step off of it.
Why then would would Rock Center be so adamant about portraying this as an American story? My guess is that is was an attempt to make sure the brothers were seen as heroes by the audience. I would absolutely agree that they are heroes and great role models, but I don't see any reason why they can't be heroes and role models supporting un-American values in the US. I am not at all questioning these brothers' loyalty to their country. In fact, if you start watching the video at 5:30 you will see that they call themselves patriots. All I am saying is that their actions, leaving professional football to make the Hajj, are not American, and show that un-American heroes can exist in the US.
I was more recently exploring the Abdullah Brothers' website, created by themselves. The first thing I saw was their official video. I thought it was fascinating that throughout almost the entire video, except for four seconds (0:19-23) which shows them praying to Allah, they show some very American ideas. The appear to wake up and train and run like anyone might imagine an American football player. And also, for much of their video they talk about their "dream". It's a classic American dream story of coming from nothing and putting in heart and struggling until they accomplished their goal.
I think the way their praying is juxtaposed with these other things that seem very normal to our society does a great job at showing how their religion is an important part of their lives but that does not make them unrelatable to the American people. In fact I think that this video does an even better job at portraying the brothers positively to an American audience than the "Rock Center" clip with its contradictions about what is American and what is not.
I was recently flipping through the New York Times and happened upon an editorial entitled "How to Choose a College". Getting into this process myself, I decided to read farther. The article, which can be found here, explains the author's [Frank Bruni] opinions about his niece's quest to find the right college. Bruni's opinion is that kids today get bogged down in advice in the form of numbers. Statistics, test scores, grades. And he thinks that this is an ineffective method at actually finding the best school for an individual.
Although I'm not very far into it, I am in the midst of trying to find good schools for me. From the perspective of the student, I find myself relying a lot on the same statistics which Bruni abhors, not necessarily because I think its the best way to find a good school, but because its manageable. As I write this I'm sitting next to a Fiske college guide, which gives reviews of hundreds of schools in 850 full sized pages of writing. When its a challenge for me just to find time to do my reading for high school, there's no way I could reasonably put in the time to take a detailed look at all those schools. So personally I don't think there is a problem with relying on numbers to get a sense for what you want to look at in detail. As long as you look at some other factors before actually making a final decision and sending in an application, I think trusting some bare statistics and facts is necessary in today's world of finding colleges.
So did anyone hear about what happened in the Franklin American Mortgage Company Music City Bowl this year? No? Well neither did I. Probably because no one really cares. In fact, the only place I could find any in depth information about the game was in a Vanderbilt school news website. This is just one of the many games that it astonishes me are in existence. There's the Bridgepoint Education Holiday Bowl, the Craft Fight Hunger Bowl, The Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas, the Taxslayer.com Gator Bowl. The list goes on and on.
All this takes me back to a Saturday Night Live skit I saw last year on this topic. The skit, which unfortunately I cannot show for copyright reasons, was a fake commercial for things like the "Four Loco Trojan Mini How I Met Your Mother Bowl, which does not exist but sounds scarily similar to some real bowl game names.
I think the skit and the fact that nobody ever talks about the more obscure bowl games highlights an important issue that occurs from having so many games. Each game seems a little less important. Getting into a bowl game is supposed to be a really big deal for college football teams. It seems really strange to be that there can be bowl games that even college football fans have never heard of and don't care about. Even though having so many games is a great money maker, I think it is in general bad for the NCAA. If there continue to be additional games every year with more and more corporate sponsors, it could end up taking a lot of the magic out of being in a bowl game for both the teams and the fans.
