Rich and Poor (Final Exam)

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.

Can you study too much?

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.

Abdullah Brothers Expanded

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.

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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.

Sell Out Bowl Games

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.