tdm001's blog

This weeks reading was about a the protestors at the Occupy Wall Street movement. The articles explored the different views and opinions of the people that are taking part in the movement. There seems to be a consensus of why these people are protesting, which is economic imbalance. The other article talks about the chain reaction of these movements in New York. Movements around the world from Chile to Germany have sparked more uproars. From a couple hundred, to thousands, each movement is having their voices heard.

After reading the first article about the world movements, it amazes me what just a few people can start worldwide. Many of these people are just ordinary citizens annoyed by the greediness of corporate or government officials.

While reading the second article I realized that out of the seven people that were interviewed, I would say only one of them truly have demands and reasons why they are taking part in this movement. There maybe is a second one if you define demands as things that will help this movement or demands that are ignorant like Christopher Geist saying “I demand that my brothers and sisters get together to create a general strike worldwide.” I don’t believe that the people that are part of this movement even know why they are there. Four of the seven say they either don’t have any or play the question off by saying the people who the demands are aimed at already know what the protestors want.

The movement is supposedly fighting economic imbalance; how many of these people sitting out there who are poor have attempted or tried to get a job? I’m not saying that they all are unemployed or havent tried, but really in this day and age how many people are unemployed and just live off the welfare and unemployment with out attempting to get a job or taking in as much “free” money they can. If this whole movement is about the poverty and economic injustice then, instead of sitting protesting something that has always been and most likely will always be, I would be out searching for jobs or anything that is productive. Once again I’m not saying that this is what these people are doing, but that was just a thought that went through my mind while reading this article.

This weeks reading is about the arts in schools across America. The article goes into the issue of math and sciences taking over schools and their funding. With the economic times that we are in, many schools have had to cut budgets by huge amounts. This caused many schools across the country to find ways to save money; many started cutting funding to the arts. I have never been into the arts, but I know many people that are. The arts allow people to express themselves and give students another way to be involved.

If there were not arts in the school system, todays students would not be the same. School would be an endless game of memorizing and regurgitating facts. I was never involved in the arts other than the one art class that I was required to take in order to graduate, but I do think that schools should incorporate art in the curriculum.

This weeks topic was about hitchhikers. Hitchhiking is not something that you see very often anymore. Many people say it is unsafe and crazy to take that risk of getting in someones car that you have no idea who they are. I agree. I would never put myself in a situation where I was getting in a car with total strangers.

Most people I think would agree with the statement that it is not safe, but some people still take the risk. There are not that many cases of violence with hitchhiking these days but I believe it is because the few numbers of people actually standing on the side of the road holding their hand out waiting to get a ride to anywhere.

In the article he uses a story about a women who was kidnapped while hitchhiking to try and show this is what scared people from hitchhiking. I don’t think that this is what caused the decline in hitchhiking, I believe that it is because the ease of using public transportation. Virtually everyone is able to get around one way or another with out hitchhiking these days.

This week we were given an essay about the origins of Christmas. Bruce Forbes, a religion teacher here at Morningside, wrote the essay called Christmas Was Not Always Like This: A Brief History. He writes about how the traditions that we see these days during Christmas have not always been there. He tells about the old customs of Christmas and how the nativity scene cam about. He also tells about how the date of December 25 came to be Christmas Day and the correlation of the winter celebrations and the date December 25.  His essay shows that many of the customs of Christmas that we thought had been carried out from the very beginnings were not always true.

After reading this essay I was very surprised. I am not a religious person and know Christmas as a time to give and get presents and be with family. I obviously know about the religious ties of Christmas but we never celebrate it as that. So reading about how all of the traditions came to be was very interesting. It almost in some ways makes me think that Christmas was made up. Not to offend anyone, but if the date of December 25 has nothing to do with the birth of Jesus, then why is it celebrated as the birth of Jesus? Is it because of the way the tradition was handed down and maybe it is just the way it is.

Over the past weeks we have read a few articles and watched a couple videos. Many of these readings have connections, but the connection that stands out to me the most is the common theme of discrimination. The articles that make this connection are Liking What You See and the readings about the sports announcers and gender. Both of these articles shine light on discrimination but in different lights.

In the article Liking What You See, a procedure called calliagnosia is explored. The object of this procedure is to get rid of the discrimination by appearance. The author explores the issue of “lookism” and the way it affects people. In the article about the sports and gender, the issue of discrimination by gender is explored. The article goes into discrimination by gender. It talks about the way women are less likely to be sports casters than men are. Both of these articles dive into the issue of discrimination.

This week we read Kurt Vonnegut Jr’s earliest speech and latest speech he wrote. When I started reading the speeches I thought it made no sense. The speeches kept switching points and ideas without any warning. It’s as if he didn’t care that the people that would be hearing his speech could follow or make sense of the order of his speech. Many of the ideas that he switches back and forth from are of serious matter, while others seemed to just be put in the speech randomly as if he had just written what he was thinking about at the time.

Although his speeches had a weird and nonsense order to them, some of his points were still valid. He talks about the fact that these days, people are very selfish and don’t help out each other as much as we should. I agree with that 100 percent. Everyone today wants what is best for himself or herself and don’t always think about how it will effect other people. We need to try and think of others while still trying to do what is best for ourselves. We need to help each other out as much as we help ourselves out.

When I first was told we are having a person from the math department coming to lead discussion and decide on the weeks reading, I thought I was going to be in to something really boring. But as I started watching this documentary I was very surprised to find that I was being pulled in to the interesting and awesomeness of the math being used. It’s mind blowing how nature works when it comes to math. The way nature can be simplified down to a reasonably simple math equation is amazing.

One of the things I thought was the most interesting was the relationship of the ratio of the tree branches to the whole forest. This made me really think about how nature has picked this way through natural selection over and over again. Nature has figured out the simplest solution for problems it faces with a simple ratio called fractals. Another thing that really interested was the potential medical use of this discovery. How this discovery could one day be used to diagnose cancer at a earlier stage than what is now possible by finding blood vessels that do not follow the fractals. This video really opened my mind to the multiple uses of math in our society.

Summary: Both the readings for this week focused on the negatives of the sports world. The First reading, “What’s ‘manly’, what’s not for athletes,” talks about the negativity towards athletes. Even for little things that would not matter if an average person did. There were big uproars when Landon Donovan was seeking alimony, Mark Sanchez for his modeling, and Sergio Romo for taking paternity leave. The article says that all these athletes should be able to do the things that they were challenged for. The article also goes into the large amounts of sexism in sports.

The second reading, The Televised Sports Manhood Formula, talks about how televised sports have a negative effect on young boys. The author goes into specific problem areas like stereotypical messages about race, gender, and violence. The article goes into the formula for being a “real man.” It says in order to be a real man one must be aggressive on and off the field by fighting when necessary, play while hurt and take abnormally high risks, and surrounded by women.

The video was a countdown of the coolest, most creative goals in hockey history. They showed the athleticism and focus of athletes when under pressure.

Response: I completely agree with the first article. The public shouldn’t punish the athletes because they make decisions they think will help their family or themselves. Of course there are some decisions that shouldn’t be approved by the public, but the examples that were given in this article were not ones that should be looked down upon.

The second article is a little iffy with me. There are parts that I agree with and there are some that I don’t. I agree with the comment about aggression and fighting. I don’t believe that this shows young boys how to properly resolve their conflicts. With this being said I don’t believe that young boys should not be able to watch sports on TV. Sports instill a since of worth to young boys. It teaches them to set goals and work towards them. With a society where obesity is taking over, sports also gives a path of exercise and strive for health.

Summary: Cicero starts off by explaining his views and beliefs on eloquence and the art of rhetoric.  He begins with explaining the relationship between wisdom and good rhetoric, good public speaking.  He shows in his essay that almost every great moment or catastrophe in the history of man was made by someone with eloquence and great public speaking. On the other side of this, there is a person with great public speaking but does not have the wisdom to go along with it. This person can cause great destruction to our society.

He tells that many good things have come along with eloquent speakers but there is also evil within them. Some speakers have such great eloquence and rhetoric that they can speak about something not relevant at all and a group of people can go along with it. It can be the most ridiculous thing, but because the way it is presented and given, he can pull people in.

The last thing he explains is how to become a great eloquent speaker. He gives different topics to focus on when giving speeches.

Response: This essay definitely describes what I believe when I listen to a speech. Someone that delivers a speech with great eloquence really makes you believe what they are saying. Someone like Barack Obama, who is a great public speaker, got people to go along with some of his ideas when really they made no sense for our country. Others who have wisdom and are great speakers can help our society a great deal. There are many historical events that have been influenced because of great speakers. It is a big part of our society.

I chose to watch the Shuttle “Challenger” Disaster Address by Ronald Reagan. Throughout the speech talks about bringing our nation together in mourning for the 7 astronauts that perished in this terrible disaster. He has a sort of unity message for the country and the way he delivers it makes you believe and buy into it. It makes you feel better and tells the listener that you aren’t alone in your morning. He gives a very good speech and he makes you believe what he is saying.

Summary: Throughout the article Liking What You See, the controversial topic of “lookism” is explored. The article focuses on a procedure called calliagnosia or calli, the ability not to see “beauty” or “ugliness” in a person. This controversial procedure was launched at Pembleton in the hopes that it would be voted into a requirement when attending Pembleton. As the excerpt continues, the author uses others opinions to help the reader form their own opinions.

The article interviews and uses the opinions of students, parents, professors, and advocates for both sides of the issue. We meet a 1^st year student, Tamera, who talks about growing up with calli and how she always longed to turn it off so she could be like everyone else. When that happened she realized that she was beautiful. After talking with a friend about ex boyfriends she decides to try and get her ex, Garrett, back. She convinces him to turn off his calli and tries to show him that she is beautiful and he should come back to her. As it turns out he finds himself unattractive and gets his calli turned back on. After this, Tamera realizes that it was wrong trying to change Garrett’s opinion of her. She ends up going back to calli.

Other opinions are taken from advocates of both sides. The article talks about the lying and deceiving of advocates from both sides. They try to use these tactics in order to persuade people to be on their side. At the end, their fight for making calli mandatory for Pembleton failed.

Response: At first, the thought of wiping out judgment by appearance sounds like a great idea. It is something that I would definitely try, but I don’t know if I would like to have that permanently. I believe people should be able to decide for them selves whether or not they want to participate in this movement. It should not become mandatory. People should be able to have their choice of seeing people by their feelings and personality or see them by their looks and personality. If I were to choose I would choose not to do calliagnosia.