Body Scanners: a breach of our freedom?

The idea of perilous times has been over full body scanners at airports, I think that people are taking this issue way too far. In case you haven't heard about the full body scanner debate, read about it here. In New York's airport they have installed full body scanners as means of security. Many people think this is a breach of their freedom because body scanners can see the outlines of peoples "private parts". Here's a photo:

The ACLU or American Civil Liberties Union's stance on the subject is that they should be used but only if a person is a "security risk". They say that, "Passengers expect privacy underneath their clothing and should not be required to display highly personal details of their bodies such as evidence of mastectomies, colostomy appliances, penile implants, catheter tubes and the size of their breasts or genitals as a pre-requisite to boarding a plane." Personally I see where they are coming from. But how do you characterize someone as being a higher security risk? 

This idea comes down to what we have been talking in class: can an individual's right be restricted for the safety of the country? But then we have to answer the question, is it our right to refuse a body scan?

I would have to say no. Personally I think that in this case it is safer for the whole for body scanners to be used. People feel violated because they think that the person running the machine are looking at them naked. Not true. The images are only seen in rooms far away from the scanner and the images aren't kept and cannot be leaked. I think that it is a little self centered to think that your body is so amazing or has something about it that would set it apart from the other 1000 people who would go through that scanner that day. I realize that the thought of someone seeing a naked picture of you seems kind of scary/creepy but I think that in these "perilous times" we are just going to need to get over it. I'd rather go through  body scanner that have a plane blow up.

Perilous times: Walking Alone at Night

In class we are starting a unit on "Perilous Times" in United States history and recently I came about an article that talked about Americans' fear of walking alone at night. Read the article here. It said that nearly 4 in 10 americans are afraid of walking alone, at night, within a mile of their home. Personally I think that this is a very high number but according to the article, 48% of people were afraid in 1982. Were the 80s more "perilous" than 2010?

The article states that as crime rates go down, so does the number of people afraid to walk alone at night however the crime rate has fallen much steeper than the fear rate. Even though the crime rate is the lowest in recent history, the fear of walking alone rate has not followed it al the way down. Personally I think that this means that no matter how little crime there is, there will always be a certain percentage of people that will be afraid.

Another idea of "Perilous Times" is that maybe times are more perilous for a certain gender. Check out this table from the same article:

The percentage of women who are more afraid of walking alone at night is more than double that of men. However, I could definitely be wrong, saying that times could be more perilous for a certain gender. Women are generally smaller and not as physically strong as men so I can see how a larger number of women would be scared of walking alone at night. What do you think?

Good News!

So you may or may not have read my blog post "Slavery in Modern Day America", but today in the news I saw an article saying that in the past few days, 69 child prostitutes have been rescued and 99 pimps were arrested. Read it here. It's nice to see that child prostitution is is slowly being tackled. But now the question is, what will happen with the 69 kids?

North, South, East, or Race: Teen Pregnancy

 SIDE NOTE: I'm sorry this blog post is long. But as Mark Twain once said, “I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”

In class this week we had a guest speak to us who just so happened to be a New Trier graduate. He talked about his work as a teacher in Arkansas and mentioned how the teenage pregnancy rate is extremely high in the area. In a recent ABC News article, they said that the southern states contain the highest pregnancy rates in the country. (Read the article here). The article cites socioeconomic factors, sexual activity, contraceptive use, and social norms as some of the causes of the disparities of the teenage pregnancy rate in the country. One of the reasons that was discussed in class was the idea of the cycle: the cycle of teenage moms having children who become teenage moms, whose kids then go on to become teenage moms. Places then becomes full of 32-year-old grandparents. Another cause of a high teenage pregnancy rates is that the South is generally known to primarily preach abstinence as the primary way of contraception.
One factor that the ABC article didn't talk about was the differing rates of teenage pregnancy among different races and they regions that high teenage pregnancy rates are highest. These graphs are from a National Center for Health Statistics document. (Read it here. Its really interesting!)

Overall Teenage Pregnancy Rate

Pregnancy Rate Among the White Population



Pregnancy Rate Among African Americans

Pregnancy Rate Among the Hispanic Population




 The document also says that the Hispanic population has by far the most teen pregnancies. Because there are many Hispanic people living in the South, maybe that is the reason why the south has the highest teenage pregnancy rate. It makes sense that the states with a higher Hispanic population have a higher teen pregnancy rate.  But why do certain regions have higher rates?

A lot of southern states have high teenage pregnancy rates but as seen in the graph for African Americans, a lot of the states are in the northern Midwest.  The states with the biggest rates for each race are:

Arkansas had the highest pregnancy rate among non-Hispanic white teenagers (67 per 1,000). The states known to have the highest pregnancy rates among black teenagers were New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota (132–149 per 1,000). The highest pregnancy rate among Hispanic women aged 15–19 was found in Alabama (228 per 1,000).

What's interesting about all of the graphs is that the highest pregnancy rate states are all in the same region. You don't see the dark blue very spread out in any of the graphs. The dark blue states are pretty close to all touching each other. Personally I conclude that it is because of the cycle discussed before. Once the cycle is started, its hard to stop. Just a few people who have become pregnant as teenagers can start it and if their kids have kids when they are teen, the population of teenage pregnancies spirals, getting larger and larger.

There could be many answers to this question. What do you think?

truthful

In AS class, we discussed which of these photos is more truthful. This one:

 Or this one:

Which one is more truthful? Personally I think that this is an easy topic to argue but also I think its impossible to argue. If a person was standing and seeing that event from two different positions, they be getting different, more or less cropped view. But isn't everything we see cropped? A human doesn't have 360 degree vision. Therefore rendering it impossible for someone standing 5 feet away to see as wide as someone 10ft away. Personally I've never thought that the closer person is seeing something less truthful, or more truthful for that matter. Some people may argue that the closer view gives more truth because there is more detail that can be seen. Others may argue that the bigger view is more truthful because you see more of the scene, the context that it's in. Personally I think that it is impossible to determine.

Does someone who has weaker vision get less of the truth? Is someone who is colorblind get less of the truth in what they see? I guess it depends on how you define "truth".

Meta-Blog

Blogging has definitely become easier for me as a writer. I find it easier to establish an idea and expand on it throughout the entire blog seeing that I no longer need to talk about myself as often. In my first 3 blogs, it almost seems as if I am trying to fit my writing into a template. In my first blog, I talked about what we did in class, the news article that relates to the class topic, and then connecting the story somehow to my life. Also, in the first 3 blogs I relate everything to myself! I cannot believe how self-centered I was writing! In my blog post titled "Life graphs" I ask two questions: "But should I be aiming to better my life?" and "what does it mean if my life graph is a straight line?" These questions do not make a reader want to give their opinion because all I talk about is my life not anyone else's. And in the next blog post about StoryCorps, I use the pronoun "I" 6 times within my last 3 sentences. Fortunately, in my last few blog posts I have not used my own stories but have instead expanded further on my idea. And it shows because I've gotten more comments. In my last post, I am able to simply talk about one topic without needing to add my own pointless stories inside.

My writing has also expanded in the sense that my blogs have become less and less exactly related to what we talk about in class. My first 3 blogs were about deciding whether something is a fact, life graphs, and StoryCorps. All 3 of these idea's were directly taken from our classroom discussions. I've found that in the past 3 I have taken what we've discussed in class and blogged about something related but not directly the same idea. For example, in my blog about "The Real Housewives of...", I discussed how media has an influence over us by using the reactions of my classmates as an example. I say, "Now I don't blame these reality TV women for changing our class's view on the word "housewife", but I do think that the media can be held accountable in these situations." I could have simply talked about whether or not I believe "housewife" has a negative connotation. Thus, it has been easier for me to blog because I no longer keep myself talking about exactly the same topic as discussed in class.

What I found particularly surprising when I reread my blog posts is that I actually liked them! I found it very enjoyable to have a place to look back and see my writing. I honestly I am not sure if I would blog consistently if I didn't have to, but I've found that it is a great way to make a point that I didn't get to talk about in class!

( Please grade "The Real Housewives of..." post. Click here)

Slavery in Modern Day America

I've always thought that slavery had been abolished in the United States. But what this is unbelievable untrue. What is human trafficking? It's the recruitment, transporting, transferring, harboring, or reception of people for the purpose of exploitation through slave labor or prostitution. Exploitation is defined  as forcing, people mostly women and children into prostitution and other forms of sexual exploitation or slave labor or indentured servitude through the use of fraudulent and deceptive means. Traffickers set up immigration agencies that falsely "help" women get into the country but then strip then of their legal papers and force then to work as prostitutes. Language barriers usually keep these women from getting aid and so they become trapped in a world of forced prostitution. Approximately 50,000 people are trafficked into the US each year, 80% being women, and 70% of those women are forced into prostitution. Read more about it here. If you type into google, "when was slavery abolished in the US?" you'll find that most cites say 1865. But how can slavery be considered abolished when there are people into the United States and forced into prostitution?

The Real Housewives of...

In class this week we were discussing what "housewife" meant when it was used to describe Florence Scala, an activist in the movement against using the Harrison-Halsted community as the site for University of Illinois in Chicago. Most people in our class thought that without doubt "housewife" had a negative connotation. After a long discussion, Mr. O' Connor pulled up the Oxford dictionary definition of housewife; usually a married woman that is in charge of the household. There were no definitions that suggested a negative meaning for housewife nor had the word ever been used negatively in the past. In fact, in the 1960's women only made up 35% of the workforce meaning that the majority of women were in fact housewives. So why did most people in our class think that the word "Housewife" had a negative connotation?

I believe that one of the reasons comes from the media. There are many different series' called "The Real Housewives of _______". After looking through my TV guide I found out that there are actually SEVEN different shows based out of Atlanta, Beverly Hills, Washington D.C., New Jersey, New York City, Orange County, and Chicago. (Personally I find it frightening that there is a big enough audience for these shows that they have to have seven.) I've never actually seen an episode but I've seen countless previews and they seem to speak for themselves. (Watch one here.) These shows follow a few "housewives'"in a certain city living their "lives". The show makes someone's average life into an over dramatic TV series. These women are all over the latest entertainment gossip and plastered on covers of trashy magazine. Is that what a "real" housewife is? 

 

The average American watches 5 hours of TV and is exposed to countless hours of magazines and the Internet. If this is the image of a "housewife" that people are exposed to, there is a definite chance that they might think that the term housewife is a negative term. The media does not only show real housewives, they show desperate ones too! Now I don't blame these reality TV women for changing our class's view on the word "housewife", but I do think that the media can be held accountable in these situations. If we see the term "housewife" to describe these types of women, I can see how someone might think that "housewife" has a negative connotation.

Racial barriers: where do they stem?

In AS class in the past few weeks we've been discussing racism and slavery. We were asked the question: Do you think slavery is to blame for the racial inequality that still remains today? This includes standardized test scores, wealth, health, incarceration, etc. At first I answered yes! "Of course it's traced back from slavery!" I thought. In my head I argued that not all walls have been broken down and couldn't have been broken down in such a short period of time. Also, African Americans started developing way after white Americans, having been trapped in slavery for all those years. But then it hit me: we are keeping the walls up. 


I've always been under the presumption that advertisements that include people from many different races are making sure that they are advertising to everyone. After "critically thinking" about this, all it really does is put up racial barriers. Why should a company need to advertise to each "race"? Why aren't advertisements reaching out to the "American". Not a white American, not an African-American, not an Asian- American. Just a plain, simple human. By advertising to specific groups of people, these advertisements make a person believe that they belong to a certain group keeping up the barriers that were established with slavery instead of letting them fall.

As discussed in class, people don't talk about race. I think its our society's biggest taboo. If we don't talk about it, we are keeping up the barriers and so racial inequality isn't eliminated.

Why are the majority of Disney Princesses white? What kind of message does that send? We generalize the races so much in all of our media that we end up fitting ourselves into certain groups, into certain stereotypes.

Another example: Black History month. Believe me, I think its great and very important that African Americans are being recognized for their part in history. But why one month? Why do we have to recognize them this way? It's almost like we made another barrier among the races. Couldn't we have come up with another way? In our society we are keeping up barriers that separate races. They restrain us from moving forwarded and breaking the walls that slavery had originally built up.

We aren't organized, We organize ourselves

In AS class this week we talked about how the different area's of our community and cities are divided. Whether it be because of a railroad, a river, or a highway, there are divisions everywhere. Did people plan it to be that way? I know that in Wilmette, there are certain barriers that separate people such as the railroad. When I was little my elementary school was determined by which side of green bay road I lived on. When everyone was combined into middle school we all knew which area of Wilmette people lived in based on which school they came from. They were minor but barriers nonetheless.

The barriers are not specific to any region, they're everywhere. I visited Peru this summer and while I was in Lima, there was a clear line of where it was unsafe to go. We were in the city center which was right along a river. The bridge across the river had militia on our side, the side that wasn't covered in graffiti and smeared with dirt and trash. Why was it that 100 ft across the river was an area where no tourist could ever step foot when it was squeaky clean and 10 times safer where we were standing?

This is a photo of the militia by the bridge.

In class we discussed city planners being somewhat responsible. Personally I think that they have some part but that it mostly comes from people themselves. I feel like people make a connection to a place and bring their friends with them. That's why there's "segregation" in the different parts of Chicago. Like China town, for example. People move themselves with people they know and then it doesn't change. The children of the original people that moved to Chinatown didn't have to stay there. Other Chinese didn't either. That is when the barriers begin getting built, even though subconsciously. People start living in the same location. When there is a break in the normal pattern of streets and roads that sits near the edge of that location, the barrier is made and people stay within the same area,

In my math class, at first we were assigned seats but last week we were able to choose. Where did I go and sit? Right in the same desk as before. A lot of the girls came and sat in the same area, the boys in back, and the sophomores in there own little corner. Now everyday each person sits in the same seat. But can't we sit wherever we want? Yes. But would I now go and move to the other side of the classroom? Probably not. I've placed myself in "my" area and I wouldn't want to move even though I have all the right to. I've barricaded myself into sitting in that desk day after day after day....

StoryCorps

Recently in class we have been listening and talking about interviews and now we are in the midst of conducting our own interviews. Mr. Bolos suggested that we visit Storycorps.com, a website that contains different types of audio interviews.  I decided to listen to a few that pertained to 9/11, which we were discussing in class at the time. After listening to only one, I found myself bawling in front of the computer screen (I highly suggest you have tissues in hand if you decide to listen to some of them). Interestingly enough, when I decided to listen to interviews that were about seemingly normal relationships or experiences, I was equally captivated. Sure, the stories about getting sent to the principals office didn't evoke the same emotion as the story of a woman who was talked on the phone with her husband as he died in the World Trade Center. Somehow, each story was evenly intriguing. Somehow, the everyday occurrences seemed so important and were easy to get caught up in.

It might be credited to the fact that people love to talk about themselves and tell their stories. I believe it's much more fun telling a story about yourself than the story of someone else. Because of this, I feel like people put  much more passion into their interviews. They have the sentimental value attached to this story, even if it was simply a father talking to his daughter about how he met his wife. It is the importance that the interviewee puts behind their story that translates effortlessly to the listener. Or is it that the stories are easier to relate to? Personally I find stories about people who had a parent battling cancer only because I've been there myself. Its easier to listen to interviews between parents and children because I likewise have a relationship with my parents that I can compare the stories to. Fortunately, I did not have to experience 9/11. So as heart-wrenching as the stories may be, I have few experiences in my life that could possibly help me relate. 

Life graphs

I've never been disappointed with where my life has gone so far or how I've been raised.  I am perfectly happy and excited for where my life is headed. Of course I have had the occasional low points in my life but all in all the positives overweigh the negatives. All in all, if my life remained like this until I die I would be esctatic. But should I be aiming to better my life? Make my happiness reach a new level?

In AS class this week we read a lecture of Kurt Vonnegut. He was describing the life paths of people/characters using a "life graph". Cinderella's life graph started at the bottom, she worked her way up, it dropped low again, but then she got her prince and the line of her graph climbed straight to the top. This is the rags to riches story that American's are captivated by, the story that we constantly see in movies and in storybooks.  Another situation we read about was that of Franz Kafka, whose graph never led to the high point in his life but instead started, stayed low, and ended at the lowest. Its seems as if most people want their lives to be like a Cinderella story, even if they never start at the very bottom. Her graph became the way it was with hard work and good luck. My question is: what does it mean if my life graph is a straight line?

"Do you know for a fact?"

In AS class this past week we were discussing about when research and evidence becomes fact. Someone in our class asked, "If we have interviews, pictures, and websites all confirming the same thing, can we put it into our paper as a fact?". Our teacher suggested that instead of stating what is thought to be a fact as a fact, we should instead say something like, "according to a, b, and c...". This got me thinking: what if, no matter how much evidence of an event a person had, people still didn't believe it happened? What if there are artifacts, first hand witnesses, photo's, and writings but people still believed that what you believe clearly happened, was a complete fabrication?

Within the past week, a group of Imams visited the Auschwitz, a concentration camp created during World War II. Many people believe it will help decrease Holocaust Denial among the Muslim community considering that Holocaust denial has been increasing throughout the world. Get more information about this trip here. Before a few weeks ago I had never heard of Holocaust denial. To me, the Holocaust clearly happened and there was no doubt in my mind that a mass killing of 12 million people was fabricated. I am not sure why someone would want to deny what seems to be so obvious or what would make them feel as if a massive event like the Holocaust could never happen.

According to Wikipedia, a few key claims of Holocaust deniers include:

• The Nazis had no intention or official policy for exterminating Jews
• The number of Jews killed (about 6 million) is a huge exaggeration.
• The Nazis did not use gas chambers for the mass murders
• The Holocaust was made up by the Allies of WWII to demonize Germans.
• Testimonies from survivors include errors and misrepresentations, hence not trustworthy.
• Documentation (The Diary of Anne Frank, letters, photos etc.) was a fabrication.

I recognize that I do not know a whole lot about Holocaust Denial but I find it amazing that with all of the evidence that the Holocaust actually happened, people don't believe it happened. Maybe I find it more amazing than other people (you tell me) because one of my relatives survived the Holocaust in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. My dad's aunt/my great aunt Hilda and her family were placed in concentration camps and only my great aunt and her mother survived. Her entire family could have survived had they been allowed to enter Cuba after sailing from Holland. They were actually aboard a famous ship, the SS St. Louis, that was denied entrance into Cuba and forced to return to Germany where most of the Jews onboard were taken into Nazi control. You can read more about the tragedy here. After seeing the tattoo of my great aunt's prison tracking number on her left arm, there is no doubt in my mind that the Holocaust was a fabrication. How much more evidence is needed?