Newspeak

Orwell has, yet again, proven himself.
In 1984, his imaginary world has a language that is becoming more and more simplified each year, as the authorities replace words with bad connotations with the opposite of words with good connotations.
Wikipedia has a new function where one can actually change an article into "simple English"-- English without "big words". Here's the link for the descriptor page.
Wikipedia says they designed this for "people with different needs, such as students, children, adults with learning difficulties and people who are trying to learn English." I understand that Wikipedia would see the need for this, but at the same time it alarms me slightly. I have always been taught that you never learn by having things be easy for you, but the case about people with learning disabilities and those trying to learn english really struck a chord with me.

What do you guys think? Have you ever encountered a Wikipedia page where you weren't able to understand it because it was too difficult?

Metaphysical blogging and the Power of the Media

I've never really been a fan of blogging (before this class, of course). There's something weird about it to me-- I'm just a high school junior, and very few people seem to care about what I have to say. So why would I blog?
According to several statistics, there are well over 100 million blogs, not counting China's near 73 million figure. That's a lot of blogs. CyberJournalist reports that there are approximately 18.6 posts per second. So who reads all this? I watched a video on Youtube about blogs, and one of the most interesting things that came up was "Blogs make the news a 2-way street." People comment on other people's blogs, of course, but why? Another point that came up in the informative video, aimed at people who were not aware of what a blog was, claimed that blogs give you "the Power of the Media." (I feel like this deserves capitalization, as it sounded decidedly profound). But how many people out there are actually posting news stories? And are these stories credible in anyway? Having skimmed through the "Next Blog" button on a classmate's blog, I have come to realize that there are several main types of blogs: People tracking someone with an illness, sports, celebrities, and those few people who think everyone needs to know absolutely everything about their lives.


While searching for statistics on the numbers of blogs, I came across this great article, written very much in the style of anAmericanStudies. Specifically, the article deals with the maturity of blogs. Blogs are relatively recent, and only lately have they reached any sort of legitimacy. There are also some great quotes from a Wall Street Journal writer, making an excellent point about blogs

       "First, let’s step back and consider why we’re counting blogs at all. You no longer see articles that attempt to demonstrate the legitimacy of the Web by stating how many Web pages there are. But blogs are still in the process of entering mainstream consciousness, so numerical credibility is important; bloggers themselves cite the statistics a lot."          

I, through anamericanstudies, have decided blogging isn't so bad, but I still think that people are starting to overestimate their importance and how much people want to know about them .


So, fellow bloggers-- would you blog if it were not a requirement for school? Why or why not? Has blogging through school changed your mind at all?

Media in real life.

Bolos and O'Connor have mentioned many times how they read the newspaper on a daily basis, which always makes me feel a little guilty. Unlike them, I do not read the newspaper. Worse, I don't even use the little button on my iGoogle that shows top headlines. On occasion, I half-listen to the radio on my way to school, but I am definately not functioning at that hour of the day. So where do I get my news?
The answer is pretty vague: I rely on my friends and mom to let me know when anything note-worthy is occuring. Even as I type this, I am aware of how bad this sounds. I should become more proactive, and go search for information--but, as the whiney and obnoxious voice in my head says, why?
State of the Media.org declares that the percent of people who read newspapers on a daily basis is dropping significantly, as is the number of newspapers in the country. This came up in class--newspapers are now buying each other, making the same stories appear in several newspapers, with the same spin on things.
If you scroll down on the State of the Media link, you'll see a chart with the ages of the audiences that read a newspaper. (My blogger isn't letting me post the image, but it's a little more than half-way down the page) The data only goes to 2003, but it's clear that my generation sucks at reading the paper, Sunday or weekday.


Is this bad? Of course, for anyone pursuing a journalism career it's not the best news. But are there enough media "outlets" where the nation no longer needs to rely on newspapers? And how informed do we have to be?

Deadly Lines

Today in class, we discussed the death penalty. As I was driving home, listening to the radio (AM 780) they were talking about Brian Dugan, who, after spending 20 years in jail would now be going on death row. Click here for the text version
Dugan is charged with the murder and rape of a 10 year old girl in 1983, as well as two other murders of under-12 year old girls.  While this is a horrific and disgusting tragedy, what stuck out the most to me is that one of the people they were interviewing said that Dugan was "incapable of feelings, so we don't really know how he feels about this." If you follow the link above, you'll see a picture of Dugan. He looks like the typical creep, with his wierd, almost smiling eyes. But is any human truly incapable of feelings?

In my opinion, I think Dugan deserves the death penalty because it is clear that he is guilty of a heinous crime. But I thought the death penalty was illegal in Illinois-- in fact, WBBM's website has another story dating from January about the expensiveness of the death penalty, which I know Maeli brought up in class today. The reasons given could have been for anything-- it was about the economics, not the morality. I read in one book (I think the Count of Monte Cristo) that it is morally unjust for people to assign the death penalty, because of religious reasons-- we are not God.

So when is the death penalty okay? Where can we draw the line?

Tot tot-ing teens

Tot--- too old to-- Trick or treat?

The Chicago Trib had an article this week that my mom un-subtly put on the kitchen table where I was doing my homework (thanks, Mom.). It discussed when you are too old to "go door to door, begging for candy." First off, begging is a little harsh. It's more of asking, in an obnoxious manner and tone. 
I love trick or treating, mostly because I love candy. But when my friends and I went this year, we didn't act as most people expect "hooligan teenagers" to act--if there wasn't enough candy for everyone, we skipped that house. And we never took more than what they said.  We stuck to the parameters of the times set up by the Wilmette Park District.  So if we weren't the bad kids, why can't we trick or treat? At what age is this not okay? We talked in class about the developing brain-- is this something too "immature"-- asking for free candy? Seems pretty smart to me- very little risk involved, awesome costumes... So I say why not. Why don't we go trick or treatin

blink!

As my family and I were driving back from Michigan this weekend, I borrowed/stole my brother's book, Blink by Macolm Gladwell. Gladwell's mother is black, and father is white. Gladwell metioned taking a test from Harvard known as the IAT, or the Implicit Association Test. The whole point is to determine how you make connections, and why.
Here's the link for the test.

IAT

If the link doesn't work, click on their link for the homepage and click on demonstrations. Or, you can sign up for the test
If you click on the "Take a Demo Test" it will give you several options. The book deals with the Skin Tone IAT, about six or seven from the top.
Please take it, and post comments about either the skin color or other demos.
The IAT in the book is Work/Family, where you the catergories are female/male names and either words relating to work (corporation, executive) or family (cousin, domestic).

Though of course we'd all like to think of ourselves as color-blind, this test really surprised me. Don't feel obligated to post what your results were, but, having grown up on the North Shore, I did not find it surprising that my results came back as a moderate automatic preference for light-skin compared to dark skin.
How much of this is conscious? And is that a question anyone can ever answer? Also, in what ways might this test not completely identify our subconcious?

Reali.tv

A couple weeks ago, I saw the Truman Show for the first time. What caught my attention the most was the following that the show collected: Why was Truman a symbol of hope? What else was going on that he was "necessary"? And why did people care so much about a vaguely realistic person's confinement, over their own lives? By the end of the movie, I admit that I was more than a little disgusted that, even though I knew it was fake, so few people stood against confining Truman on an island and making his dad "die." There is also a good deal of fright: will America ever become so obsessed with "reality" that it fails to realize reality is not what is on the tv set, rather what is going on in the "real world?"

I've never been much for reality tv. It never seems real. Every emotion seems fake unless the shot is taken with a shaky camera and there's a lot of swearing going on (In Say Yes to the Dress--slapping, too). Reality is not what is on tv, so what is reality tv? Dictionary.com defines it as "a genre of television programming in which "real life" people are followed in a situation, game, etc." Of course people are real life-- very few actors can completely recreate themselves as a character. And all these shows, like Keeping up with the Kardashians, and the Lama one-- reality tv stars are proven to just be weirdos who happen to like having cameras in their face. This is bad news-- being a drama queen is now a profession.

the Trevian Manifesto!

Last year, in my very open minded Modern World class, we did a project called "the Trevian Manifesto" in which were allowed to attack New Trier's approach from all angles. Don't get me wrong, I think many aspects of New Trier are well-thought out and good, however, it was easily one of the most entertaining assignments I've ever had.
One of the main topics my partner and I touched upon was grading, and GPA's. This came up today in class: what is the purpose of a GPA? Humans love numbers, so lets throw some numbers that will somehow signify how smart someone is. What a bad idea. I know for a fact that everyone learns in a different way. For me, it's getting involved in the class through participation and active note-taking. But what about the people for whom fitting into to the educational norm is not the best way to learn? For instance, in my family friend's college course, the students were supposed to turn in their class notebook for a grade at the end of each semester. He was a completely auditory learner, and therefore it made little sense to write anything down from him. He turned in a notebook with a few scribbles and a couple formulas, and yet had done extremely well on all the tests.
So if teachers don't grade based on GPA's, homework, tests, and checking off everytime you raise your hand, how can they grade? What is the best style of grading? Clearly, teachers don't have time for more than one system, so what's the compromise? And what can New Trier do to change their current methods?

Tenure's Shadow.

Mr. Bolos has mentioned several times how he shadowed a student the first year he came to New Trier. This, in my opinion, is an excellent idea and should be used more often by New Trier so that even tenured teachers would have to shadow students from time to time. Any Trevian will tell anyone that cares to listen how stressful NTHS is, but I was surprised that Mr. Bolos didn't make it through the day. For me, New Trier has become a routine, and I accept the fact that I have lots of homework (though, with AAS this year, not half as much as my friends in double APs), and that sometimes I won't get the sleep I need. But isn't high school supposed to be easy? Isn't what were experiencing now supposed to be college?

I've heard from several people that the gap between New Trier and college is much easier than that from other schools. And of course, we hear about being high-performing all the time. But how many teachers recognize the difficulty levels of New Trier? Is New Trier hard, or just fair? And should all teachers, including tenured ones, have a responsibility to have a better understanding of what classes are really like?

Sliding Doors

This is my "Sliding Doors" piece, focusing on an event in my life, 8 years ago.
I didn't fully realize that the point was to ask questions, so here are the questions, out of order but here nonetheless:
Why that day? Why on a day of the Children's Fair? What if I hadn't gone down that hill? would I remember that day?

My eight year old body was flying. My feet rested on the pedals, and my bike wheels soared under me spinning down down down. The incline wasn’t particularly steep, and the dare-devilish stunt's excitement lay in its finish line, where busy Sheridan Road zoomed by. The hill I rode down curved up to the left, past my church, so that oncoming traffic wouldn’t be able to see me until after I was well into the road. My brother was behind me, at the top of the hill, watching.

We rode our bikes from the Children’s Fair in Winnetka, an annual tribute to the end of school, and soggy, muddy grass with water that squished in your shoes. It was overcast, as always. Mid-day, summer. We gloried in that, savoring it as we pumped our legs past our house, tasting freedom again. The second grade was a thing of the past.

This freedom, so delicious in the form of the Sweet Shop’s prizes, gave me the energy and sugar that makes sane children hyperactive, like me. I was going fast at the top of the hill—faster now, and faster! Then, two sidewalk blocks away from the street before the concrete dipped respectively to the asphalt, I braked hard and turned my grinning face up to the hill. Where did William go? His bike lay on the ground. I screamed and ran back up the hill as life started to blur at the edges. I don’t know if I left my bike or carried it, but then time caught up and I was at the top of the hill. My brother had fallen, and, though I couldn’t see it, his helmet was cracked. He was sobbing, eyes squeezed shut as his ten year old skull was hurt. His head rested on the dirt of a flower bed, and through my screams and tears I realized that it was the same flower that we could eat, bluebells with sweet nectar. My mouth tasted sour, freedom didn’t matter. A neighbor came, her son in my second grade class and tasting freedom for himself. She comforted me, and called 9-1-1, asking her mother to help me. Her mother called mine, and repeated what happened. My mother spoke to me, her smooth words trying to erase the shame and anger I felt towards myself. The ambulance came, but I don’t remember. Someone must have pulled me away from the scene and taken me back to my house, only a couple blocks away. I was the baby sister, and again, trying to prove myself to my older brothers, had horribly failed and everything was my fault.

My dad told me and my brother Robert, while William was in the hospital with my mom, that everything would be alright. William had waved his arms, lost his balance and toppled over, bike and all. I couldn’t speak, and the coolness of my kitchen chilled my skin against my hot tears and warm, sun soaked skin.

I watched William walk slowly, completely tired from the car to the house. A short journey, but it didn’t take long for the bile to well up in a pit in my stomach, threatening to rise. I felt sick, disgusted with myself, despite promises that William was alright.

What if my mom kept us home, denied us freedom? She never would, but still… what if he trusted me, was not protective? I always picture him waving, anxious for me to see or hear. What if I had slipped into traffic? Would I be the one the ambulance came for? What if we took a different route—would I still ride bikes like my brother does?

Photography

I love taking pictures, and have seriously considered being a photo journalist. However, many people have made their dislike of journalists very clear. And yet there are so few actual professions, outside of being a full-time photographer, that involve taking pictures on a daily basis. I feel like I'm trapped: I don't want to care about what people think about journalism, but at the same time, if enough people stop reading teh newspaper like they used to, then I don't even have that. Also, I'm sure my parents would much appreciate it if I told them that I wanted to pursue a "real" career--teacher, lawyer, etc.
For me, I am drawn to photography by the abilities it has to change a person's perception of the world. For one person, the photographer, to look through a viewfinder and capture something, sometimes without even editing it, and they almost magically create an image that will resonate with many people. And the editing itself is a whole other world: cropping, burning and dodging-- they all make that 1/60th of a second, often less, so worthwile.The pictures that I take, some at 1/4000th of a second, can take me at least five or ten minutes, thousands of seconds more than how long the exposure was.
There's just something so amazing about pressing a shutter and having something beautiful come out. And if I don't make lots of money doing it, then that's okay too.

Is journalism a trend that will soon fade out? In the future, will photographs be linked to and spread all through the web, with no care for who took them? Can it be considered art at that point?

How close is too close?

I have never thought of my parents as my friends. They are my parents--sometimes friendly, parents who are friends with my friends' parents, but certainly not my friends. And although I often talk to my friend's moms, I have never thought of them as friends. So, when I was hanging out with a bunch of friends at my friends house, and she popped in the first season of Gilmore Girls, I was surprised to hear the mom whine to her daughter that they are "friends" and shouldn't they just tell each other everything about the boys in the Rory's life? I inwardly cringed. Though the show was actually pretty good, their relationship still really bothered me. I have nothing wrong with kids telling their parents about relationships, or school, but I have everything wrong with kids sharing every minute detail about their social life with their frighteningly eager parents. Truthfully, I have never seen this exchange occur, but when I talk to my friends about how little I tell my parents about my life, they seem shocked. I tell my parents whats important, because they are my parents, not my friends. With my friends, however, there is little left unsaid.

little miss sunshine

I watch What Not To Wear, maybe more often than I should. So of course, I often see the times for upcoming shows, like "Toddlers and Tiaras," a disturbing show about the beauty pageant industry, that makes young children, girls especially, act like sluts to win a prize. As disgusting as this is, the girls are also seemingly congratulated for being as bratty as possible, because this gives them an extra few minutes of the limelight on the episode. Everything about the show honestly scares me: if it were a documentary I might be able to swallow it, but the fact that it would be an actual series, seemingly in support of such a downright creepy industry freaks me out. In the movie "Little Miss Sunshine," the young girl Olive strongly desires to become the pageant winner, though her family's problems almost overshadow her dreams. While preparing backstage, Olive becomes hugely self-conscious as she watches the other moms dress their daughters in short, glittery dresses, and apply more make up and hairspray than anyone should ever use. Olive is a little geeky in appearance, with over sized glasses and a bit of baby fat still on her stomach. Yet she is the bravest, because she is the only real one in the entire pageant. She is the only one whose routine is amusing to watch, almost a parody of the others. Her innocence makes all the other girls, who really are a stand-in for their moms, seem fake and plastic-y.
And that brings me to the second most frightening part: the parents. Who could let their children act like this? No one in their right mind, of course. It's one thing if their children model, and see it as an extension of dress-up and play, but its another if their parents actually tell them to look slutty in front of the camera and judges. In the one part of the one episode I watched, every mom seemed to say the same thing, that they were living vicariously through their daughters. That's weird. Who would want that for their children? And moreover, what happens to these children in later life? Once they get wrinkles that make up can't hide, what do they do besides judge other young girls? What kind of life is that?