GloZell

I came across a video commenting on Rebecca Black's "Friday" music video by GloZell. For those of you who do not know who GloZell is or have never seen any of her video's, she is a comedian who has posted over 1000 videos and her most popular ones are commentaries on popular music or people. Watch a funny video of her commenting of Kesha's "Tik Tok" here. Recently I saw a link for her newest video about her "Friday" video and in it she points out that Rebecca Black has a token black rapper in her video. Glozell talks about it roughly from about 3:23 to 4:05. Watch it here. Its interesting that even in music videos there are token characters.

Resources Resources

Even though I've been dreading Junior Theme, this week it occurred to me how lucky we are to be able to write such a complex paper and the resources we have to write it. I'll start by pointing out the obvious: we have computers. I don't know about you but I remember when we had a former student stop by during class first semester and tell us that he is teaching in a place where there is only one computer in the entire town. If I had to guess I'd say that we have close to 200 computers and laptops for students to use (but don't quote me on that). It would be pretty hard to write a 5-7 page paper by hand and then revising that paper. 

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 But even with a computer we would need books and that is where the library comes in. Our library is one of the biggest of any schools in the area and I don't remember the number (I'll post it after I ask) but we have a TON of books. While I was trying to find a book to read on my topic I found a good one but we we didn't have it in our school library. Ms. Gressel asked me give her the name of the book and she ordered it for the school library (too bad it won't be in time for me to read it). Just like that it was done. This is a harsh contrast of some of the schools even just 20 miles away. I found this article from a newsletter in the Austin area of Chicago (its a very very poor and dangerous part of the city) and it says that "164 Chicago public schools lack a library " . That is an incredibly high number and could you imagine how we would write or Junior theme without a library or the help of a librarian? And even if a school has a library it is most likely not funded well. The article says that some schools might have a library but not one librarian to work there. and that "Spending on school libraries in high-poverty areas has dropped 25 percent in the past year, from an average of $13,935 in 2009 to $10,378 in 2010."  Now here comes the most shocking part. Ms. Gressel informed me that our library spends $50,000 on databases, ebooks, and online encyclopedias alone. It just goes to show how lucky we are to have the resources we do. If we didn't have them, who knows if we'd be doing Junior Theme.

Junior Theme: Part One

This week in AS we started junior theme. For me it was very very very difficult to pick a topic and it took me 3 days to finally settle on one. Going through all of my potential research topics I realized that there is so much information about current issues that I have no idea about. My list of questions reached almost 25 in total and I'm positive that there were millions of other questions I could have come up with. For a teenager who thinks she know everything (like most other teenagers)I just thought it was almost a wake up call for me to learn more about current issues. I am now really excited to read my fellow classmates' papers.

The topic/ question I decided on was: Why has the number of Americans on prescription drugs increased so much in the past decade? It is a surprisingly interesting topic and it has been really easy to find research. Now my only problem is narrowing it down. There are too many medicines to generalize the use of them because consider Viagra: it has only been around for less then a decade so shouldn't its number be increasing? And do I argue that the increase in number of people on antidepressants has increased because of advertisement or that diagnosis is much better? So at this point I am confused as to which way to start to narrow my topic. And it needs to be done because after all, we can only have 5-7 pages.

Tokenism:An unanswered question

Before our class presentations started Mr. Bolos and Mr. O'Connor posed an interesting question: is tv tokenism a problem? Recently I've been thinking about this and have not come up with a clear answer.

After seeing many people's presentations it was clear that the token black character gets little screen time and is not a developed character. Personally I think it would almost be better if the black character were not in the authority position but instead tv shows gave a more realistic approach and showed the view a deeper side to the black character. I do not want to sound like I am saying that blacks cannot achieve high level positions but did you know that over the course of history that there have been only 8 CEO's of Fortune 500 companies? and only 6 African American senators in history? I feel like tv stations are doing a disservice to stopping racism and stereotypes by portraying so many blacks in unusual positions. TV tokenism in this sense is bad. If a show wants to have a token minority character why not show a hard working mom or a family having trouble adjusting to living in a primarily white suburb? Basically my point is that we should be showing the opposite of the stereotypes not special exceptions. Sure showing a black CEO is great but that doesn't really break down any stereotypes because I don't think that there are any stereotypes about black CEOs. In my opinion it just make me think how rare they actually are.

Faster than the speed of news

It seems like nowadays news comes and goes in the blink of an eye and then is never approached until something major happens again. When I first saw the news about Japan and the devastating earthquake/tsunami I was shocked and then I thought, what is going on in Haiti? 


But anyway, in Japan right now  hundreds have been found dead and authorities expect that close to 1,000 people are missing but the number could definitely rise. Almost all news stations are saying the same things and HERE is an up to date article for the moment. According to many sources this could be one of the costliest natural disasters ever and danger is still looming as nuclear power plants are unstable and there are continuing aftershocks. I pray that Japan emerges ok.


Nevertheless back to my original point. What's happening with disasters like the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and what i'm about to focus about: Haiti?


Cholera has infected 252,640 people in Haiti as of today. I has killed 4672. Depending on the source, only 5-20% of the rubble has been cleared. Approximately 1.2 million people are still living in tents. One third of people do not have access to clean water and a quarter do not have access to a toilet (this is especially bad because one way cholera is spread is through feces). Most of these facts came from here and here. So why has this not been one of the centers of attention in the news? Sure there are other things going on in our country but it seems as if there is never a news article about Haiti rolling across my yahoo homepage even though they are still in a dire situation.


I think this speaks to how and what news is delivered to us as Americans. In our society today everything is so quick and fast pace that it would seem logical that what captures our attention has to move quickly also. One, to the next thing, to the next. What is happening with the oil spill cleanup? I'd be surprised if the estimated 5 million barrels of oil was cleaned up already. But the oil spill is long gone to a lot of Americans and the news stations that choose not to report about it. Our attention has run out.


So I'll leave with one final question: how long do you think it will take for the tsunami in Japan to become old news?