We Need a Needle Exchange Program

Americans have a history of making decisions based on their individual lives rather than on the lives of those around them. This ideal stems from our American belief system in the individual and our dependance on the "American Dream." In many cases this works but in specific cases--medical problems being one of them--it is better to think of the whole country, not just what is immediately around you.

Recently there has been an outbreak of HIV, Hepatitis C, and other needle related diseases in predominately red states that have been against needle exchange programs in the past. Now that their has been an outbreak in the red states, congressman that helped ban federal funding for needle exchange programs are now going back on what they had said in the past. Though the congressman may have saved their districts some money by preventing health programs that help prevent the spread in use of injected drugs and HIV, they are now seeing how much these programs are needed when there is an outbreak.

One of the best examples of these outbreaks of needle borne illnesses in a rural area is Scout County Indiana. This sparsely populated Indiana town had the largest HIV outbreak the state has ever seen. Though in the past the Indiana governor Mike Pence was against using tax dollars for medical needle exchange he started a program in Scout County and had astounding results. If congress had been funding programs in blue states that had formerly been the source of HIV outbreaks then hundreds if not thousands of people in big cities could have been kept from the virus that will likely end their lives.

Scout County is a perfect example of the effects of short-sightedness for medical emergency that an obsession with individual success can cause. Political differences and limited funds should come second to protecting American citizens, whether in blue or red states, from diseases. Greg Millet, vice president of policy at The Aids Foundation put it beautifully, "The virus doesn't know any politics." Health care should transcend class and political differences, if America can't keep its citizens healthy then what else matters?

How Much of a Distraction is a Smart Watch?

With the recent release of the popular apple watch it leaves the question of what should the smart watch be classified as by law. Recently a Canadian man was fined 120$ for using his apple watch while driving under the pretense that it was a handheld electronic with a cell phone function. This case leaves the question, should people be able to use smart watches while driving or are they a distraction similar to cell phone usage?

I don't own a smart watch myself, but having used one I don't think I could drive while looking at the watch screen for its "smart" functions. That being said, the watch can just be used as a normal watch face to tell time so there is a large grey area. I think because of this ambiguity the law regarding smart watches should be based on what function the watch is serving. If apple introduced a driving mode where the watch logged past actions then a police officer could see the log and base his or her decision on this log. This limit could keep drivers from being distracted by watches, but at the same time let them use the non-distracting functions and not be ticketed for them. How do you think driving and using a smart watch should be monitored by police?

What Exactly Does Police Brutality Mean?

Last month an Arizona Cop, about a half hour from Tucson, a man carrying a gun was rammed by a cop car. The dashboard video of the intentional hit received a lot of criticism. The video can be seen here at about 55 seconds into the news report. The main criticism of the police officer are the many people saying that hitting a man with a car is too much force. It begs the question of how far is too far in what situations for the police.

In the case of this ramming I believe that the cop was in the right because the man was in fact carrying a gun, and he was reported to have used the rifle to commit a robbery. The man had many chances to give up the weapon and was walking into a heavily populated area and he was a danger. As graphic as the video is, ramming the man with his car was the police officer's quickest way to incapacitate him and protect the community. If a cop had shot this man it would not have made the national news, he was a danger to the public. I applaud this officer's initiative to forgo protocol when the community is in danger.

Recently the nation has seen many unjust actions from local law enforcement. Racism has been seen in some police but it is important to recognize that the police risk their lives everyday to save the community. I feel that the U.S. has gotten into the habit of assuming the worst of law enforcement when the fact is that the majority of cops just want to protect people and help their community--with no corruption or agenda. This Arizona cop may have colored outside the lines, but I still think he was just trying to do his job, not taking advantage of his position or being overly violent.

Why Have a Spelling Competition?

The National Spelling Bee takes place annually at the end of May. Every year, surprisingly young children spell surprisingly sophisticated and obscure words. Although the ability the kids have to memorize thousands of spelling patterns and thousands more exceptions to these rules-- you have to ask the question, what's the point?

Even as I type in blogger I will mistype words and correct them immediately using spell check. In the world of computers and instant spelling fixes on almost everything that people write--do people need to know how to spell words like feuilleton stichomythia (the winning word at last years competition)? The spelling competition is seemingly obsolete. Having said that, I think there are many important skills that the Bee reenforces, such as understanding the origin of words and even learning their definitions.

I think that instead of spelling being the focus in school curriculums and competitions, the school would better spend their time growing students' vocabularies. There is a benefit to parts of the National Spelling Bee, but maybe it could be changed to keep up with the current times.

Classism From Hospitals to Schools

While reading an article written by Alexandra Robbins to promote her her book The Nurses: A Year of Secrets, Drama, and Miracles withe the Heros of the Hospital, an investigative report on hospitals through the eyes of the nurses, I drew a parallel to our recent study of classism in my American Studies class and even to a discussion in class about the destructive nature of the seniors last week at New Trier High School.

Robbins book acknowledges the large gap in respect between nurses and doctors in a hospital environment. Despite nurses often having longer tougher hours and spending more time with each patient individually doctors tend to get more respect from patients because of their high class and authority jobs. This judgement is often unfair, and is a perfect example of the mentality of Americans that makes us disrespect those we perceive as lower class.

I saw the same mentality in a group of senior students that had a pillow fight in the hallways of my school during their last week of school. Down from the pillows was everywhere but what the students didn't likely think of was who had to clean up. The janitorial staff, the lowest paid and often least respected staff of the school were the people that had to deal with the mess. A prank that was in good fun failed to affect the teachers or administration--it was aimed at the lowest class members of the school staff. 

Whether in a school or a hospital Americans are affected by their classist mentalities. The lower class is either irrelevant or not worth a little respect. Americans need to rethink this mentality because without nurses or janitors we might have to start doing the hard work.

Importance of the Americn Dream

Tonight, my dad spent time at his student's graduation at Northeastern University. Northeastern is a state commuter college that is often a choice for people that want education but don't have the money or time for a private university or more notable state school. Northeastern doesn't produce prominent political figures or field defining scientists, but what it does do is produce graduates that are better prepared for the professional world--the majority coming from lower to lower middle class families.

When my dad came home my mom asked him why he spent so much time watching graduation twice a year when many of his colleagues do not. His response was especially interesting: "That graduation is more notable than any Ivy League School graduation every has been." He went on to say that 60% of the graduating class would be the first of their family to graduate college and to have a good chance at raising their position in the professional world and move up their socio-economic status. 

The interesting question is not if either graduation (at an Ivy League School or at Northeastern) is important, the question is which is more significant. In American Culture is it more important that a large graduating class may be bringing themselves and their families and their kids up from lower class to middle of upper class, or is it more important that the wealthy and privileged majority of the high ranking private university stays wealthy and privileged? Out of an Ivy League School's graduating class could be a future American President but is it that notable that the powerful stay powerful.

What do you think matters more in the general scope of Americans?

How do Airlines Screen Pilots?

A Germanwings flight crashed in the French Alps on March 24th while flying from Spain to Germany. The alleged reason for the tragic accident is that the copilot crashed the plane in a particularly bad instance of depression that had effected him his entire life. Many are questioning the fact that this pilot was allowed to fly a passenger jet with this mental illness, how was this problem left unknown, how did he get his job or even his license to fly passenger flights if he had had problems with severe depression?

These are all reasonable questions, and many have been answered in many news articles since the crash. The question I have not seen answered is as follows: how loose is the screening for pilots in the modern airline industry?

If this very sick man was allowed to fly a commercial jet then who else could get one of these licenses? Airline passengers go through fairly strenuous security to even travel by air but this incident has me thinking about the pilot's screening.  In the case of this flight 150 people died because the pilot made a selfish act, but what if it had been worse than selfish. It is little comfort to the families and friends of those lost, but while the pilot had control of the plane he could have taken that plane and run it into the middle of a town, or even a major city. If this man had been malicous rather than depressed then this situation could have been much worse. Should we require more screening for pilots, mentally and physically, to make sure this never happens again?

Is it Good We No Longer Give Lethal Injection?

Many states are having to abandon the strategy of lethal injection as a way of carrying out capital punishment because they can no longer get the necessary drugs from European pharmaceutical suppliers. The reason that States can no longer buy the drugs is because European companies that are opposed to the death penalty don't want their medicinal product to be used for murder.

These companies may have the goal of ending capital punishment but they are not succeeding. The death penalty continues, except states have now reverted back to executions by firing squad. Though I don't agree with capital punishment, if criminals do get charged with a death sentence I would argue that the companies are doing the Nation a favor. I would argue that if capital punishment has to happen, the firing squad is actually a better practice.

Firing squads are a simpler, more efficient solution. As awful as it is to call one murder better than another due to efficiency and cost effectiveness, if criminals have to be executed by law it is better to make it faster and easier. Both the executioners and the prisoner benefit from abandonment of the lethal injection. The executioners in the case of a lethal injection walk away knowing that they have murdered, in the case of a firing squad one out of the 5 marksmen shoots a blank so there is always a chance that you didn't fire the lethal shot.

Criminals in the case of both executions are allowed their last words, standing up. In both cases they get to see who is killing them. In both cases if everything goes right the criminals die very quickly and supposedly painlessly--but lethal injections more often don't meet the last condition. If the executioner misses the correct vein the prisoner will die in a very slow and painful way. A firing squad will almost never fail, and if a criminal has to pay with his life, it is done better with a firing squad.

Is American Culture Becoming Central?

Since the United States is such a young country compared to some of the other superpowers it sometimes seems that we don't have as rich of a culture. France has the largest cycling race in the world, Germany has Oktoberfest. America is a melting pot so we celebrate and recognize all cultures, but it also feels like Americans should have an event to call their own.

This year I realized that March Madness has become a cultural phenomenon for Americans. The tournament brings people together in a way nothing else can. Due to the brackets, people can come together behind teams that they would never root for, or even watch. I also think that it speaks to our focus on educational success as well since the tournament is made up of college teams rather than professionals. March Madness lets Americans cheer for their favorite teams, the teams they wagered money on, and on a different level--the up and coming generation.

As Americans come behind the common enemy, root for the underdog, all focus on the same event--the country comes together. America has always been famous for its mix of cultures, the melting pot idea is central to U.S ideology, but I think every nation--on some level--has to be a complete piece. As our country ages it gains tradition and history. March Madness, for better or for worse, has become a huge part of American culture, and it's here to stay.

Two Truths and a Lie

Recently in Photography Class we did a project mimicking the ice breaker game "two truths and a lie." For those of you who haven't played the game the premiss is a person says 3 facts about themselves and the other people playing have to guess which one of the facts is a lie. The game is fun, especially with people you have just met, but as a photography project it was especially interesting. The theory was that one picture in a series of 3 would be manipulated, and during a "critic" with the class the other students had to guess which was the manipulation, or the "lie."

At face value the project seems kind of dull, a guessing game with no real value. However when a little more thought is applied to the project, it is an interesting criticism of our modern society. The point is that the class cannot see what you have changed. The criticism is that it is so easy to fabricate events through photoshop, or even with darkroom photography; that people today never truly know what happened and can never know what is a lie. In the modern media, ideas, events, and outcomes can be changed through photo and audio editing--does this mean that the public cannot trust what we learn and see?

The idea is a frightening one, but once the class reached the end of the project, most people could see what was manipulated. Since the class was told to think critically about the 3 pieces and determine which was true and which was false, the fabrication was usually picked out. I believe the comparison of this project and the modern media holds true. If the public knows to think critically about the what they see, then they will not be convinced of false information. Nothing should be taken at face value, whether it be art or news, never be sure that something is not fabrication--is not "the lie."

Dying the River

Every Saint Patrick's Day weekend in Chicago, the Chicago River turns green. The famous tradition started when Mayor Richard J. Daley held office. He originally wanted to dye the lake, but had to settle for the river. The dye is 100% environmentally safe but I would argue that dying the river is still perilous for the Chicago River.

A river of bright green water makes the Chicago River seem like something out of fantasy, it does not show the river for what it is: an ecosystem. The idea green water reenforces is that the only relation between living organisms and the water is the waste that humans dump into it. What a lot of city residents don't realize is that there is life in the Chicago River, and despite the green dye not being dangerous it puts citizens of Chicago in a dangerous mindset.

Along withe green dye, trash gets thrown into the Chicago River. The majority of life in the river was killed when the direction of the flow was changed, and when the river pollution was at its peak. Since then the river has become clean enough to be home to beavers and even some rumored otters. The river dying is a great tradition but it is important to remember that there is life in the river, no matter what color it is.

Is Higher Education a Business?

President's Day Weekend is a time of year that many high school students visit colleges, touring the campuses to help them make a decision on where to go. This year I joined the group, traveling from one college to another in North Carolina. I saw 3 very different Colleges: University of North Carolina, Duke, and Elon. The first is a large state school with 18,000 undergraduates, the second is a medium sized private university with around 7,000 undergraduates, the third is a small private college with about 5,000 undergraduates.

Each school was in a different town, with a different kind of student attending them; what was remarkable was the how much each tour mimicked the other two. It seemed that each school boasted all the same traits. Each tour mentioned how many clubs it had, and the fact that students could start their own clubs based on their own unique interest. Each tour mentioned one card that could be spent on stores and restaurants around campus as well as used for laundry. Each tour mentioned their many different options on how to find the perfect roommate.

These similarities made the schools seem like competing companies rather than educational institutions. The mention of the same features sounded much like Samsung and Apple comparing cell phones, or like McDonald's and Burger King trying to make theirs the fast food chain of choice. Rather than try to present the school in a way that showed what student life would be like the schools seemed to just be checking off boxes that matched them to the competition. When one school builds a new fitness center, the rest build a fitness center and a new dining hall. The escalation takes the education that a student is getting secondary and the facilities and programs outside of studies the primary concern. These tours don't focus on academia, instead they try and compete for student attention; the schools try to one up each other rather than really show a student what it is like to attend the University.

What is the point of touring if all the schools say the same thing? Schools aren't corporations, so they shouldn't act like them.

The Unfortunate Changes to Sports Journalism

In my last blog I wrote about the over-blown reporting on the deflated footballs in the recent AFC Championship Game. My point in writing it was to accent the blurred line between news stations advertising and news stations reporting the news. Some would argue that the football scandal isn’t important news, but what I found interesting was how sports news is reported today and how it has evolved over time.

Sports writing seems to be a lost art. Today we see sports news that is over-simplified, written to provoke reactions in readers and viewers, when there was a time when sportswriting involved thought-p-provoking analysis and apt comparisons of sports to other aspects of culture. One of the finest examples of this art was the work of the master sports writer, A.J Liebling, a writer for the New Yorker magazine in the 40s and 50s who specialized in boxing. In a recent piece about Liebling’s work called, "What Boxing Writing Can Teach Us About Everything: A.J.Liebling on Moore-Marciano," Carlo Rotella detailed the journalist's work on one specific fight. In the article Rotella praises Liebling’s ability to reach the lower and upper classes, and his ability not to just recount the fight in detail but to provoke thought about the nation and the athletes while doing so.  To Rotella, "contrasting the variety of ways of seeing becomes the point of [Liebling’s] piece, dramatizing the process of making sense of what would appear to most readers as opaquely chaotic violence."  Who would use such language to describe even the most ambitious stories reported on Sportscenter today?

 

A.J. Liebling

While the purpose of Liebling’s writing is to make the reader see boxing as more than a fist fight, even as a metaphor for American life, modern sports reporters are not critics, nor are they artists; the aim of sports journalism today is to provoke a reaction or to boost viewership. Rather than "contrast a variety of ways of seeing" reporters present a one-sided view of an issue and repeat it over and over again. Rather than focus on strategy in football, reporters try to bring out the violent nature of the sport to promote their networks and raise Nielson Ratings. Rather than focus on the sport itself, sports news has abandoned stories about sports for sports as scandal. Athletes are no longer sportsmen; people care more about what they do off the field than on it. Cheating scandals, domestic violence and how much money the coaches and players make have become top stories, replacing the actual game. Months were spent on the Ray Rice issue, on stations like ESPN and magazines like Sports Illustrated rather than on the game of football; more focus is put on mistakes athletes make than on their plays.

Above all, sports news has also been over-simplified. Rotella cites an article Liebling wrote characteristically entitled "Ahab versus Nemesis." Just the title is a literary reference to Moby Dick, but Rotella finds references to culture beyond the title in the article itself, which contains analogies to Euclidian geometry, opera, and Aristotle's Poetics. Liebling had a skill to bring critical analysis to the world of sports; rather than focusing on deflated footballs or a man unjustly beating his wife, he wrote about the beautiful style of one boxer being beaten by a thug; then asked the bigger question, what does that mean about our values?

I suggest you read Rotella's piece and even Liebling's writing, so you can read more into the sports you watch.

News and Advertising, Whats the difference?

The variety and actual substance of news leading up to this years superbowl has really deflated. News of a "controversy" has taken over not just sports news over the past week, but has also taken time away from other current events. In the AFC Title game, Patriots versus Colts, it was discovered that footballs used by the Patriots (allegedly only in the first half) were deflated under the NFL requirments. The issue is not very interesting at face value, but the news coverage of the story seems to say differently.

Rather than talk about the football itself, news and sports sources have focused on this scandal. NBC news, the network showing the superbowl this year, is one of the worst offenders of what amounts to a self reflexive new reporting. It would seem that they are not covering the story to inform people or to help viewers form an opinion (the purpose of press in a democratic society), it actually seems that the network is covering the story to call attention to the game that will be shown on the network this Sunday. Rather than news,  a lot of air time is being allotted to promoting the Superbowl. This begs the question, what is news and what is pure advertisment? Is there any difference in this case? The model that television news uses is stories and content for a period then advetisments and then another cycle of news. Is there not enough ad time on TV already, should some limit be put on the amount that networks can advertise versus inform and still call themselves press?

What Should Treason Entail

There was recently threat of an attack on the capital building. Christopher Lee Cornell is a Cincinnati resident that called the plan "ISIS inspired." He planned to set off an explosive in the Capital Building and shoot politicians in the chaos.

There is no question this intent to kill American leaders and attack the capital deserves major punishment the challenge however is what can he be convicted with. Since Cornell never got to take action and had no co-conspirators that based on the evidence there isn't really a sentence severe enough that can be given to him. Treason requires action so Cornell can't be tried for it. Shouldn't Treason cover more ground, how could intending to kill many people not count as treason especially when it's an attack on the capital.

The Benefits of Costco

Over Thanksgiving I wrote a post about a food drive Walmart was holding for its own employees. This is attested to Walmart's low wages for its workers in order to get low prices for their customers. The question I asked was would America sacrifice the low prices of Walmart for better worker treatment. Recently I decided to check executive compensation for Walmart and some competitors. One of Walmart's biggest rivals is Costco and comparing the executive spending was somewhat telling. Turns out rather than sacrifice the lower ranked employees, the executives seem to be making much less.

Walmart's executive compensation is 77 million dollars while as Costco's is 21 million. The 56 million dollar difference is one factor in the differences between working conditions lower on the totem pole. Costco offers health insurance for its employees while Walmart is notorious for avoiding the extra cost of health benefits by restricting employees hours. I'll revise what I said before, Walmart doesn't need to raise it's prices to improve treatment of workers, the company just needs to shift priorities from the white collar executives to the blue collar workers that keep the company alive.

I am Charlie

On January 7th there was an attack on a french satirical newspaper centered in Paris called Charlie Hebdo. The newspaper is famous for its satire of major political and religious leaders around the world, but some extremists didn't take some of these jibes lightly. The paper has a history of violent retaliation to their publications (a history seen in detail here) however the most recent attack on the paper has been the worst.

January 7th 12 people at Charlie Hebdo's offices were killed including 2 police officers and an editor, likely in response to this cartoon-

The man in white is saying, "I am the prophet Mohammed and the Man in black (supposedly a member of the Islamic State Group) is beheading him and saying "Shut up infidel." The cartoon is touching on the fact that the so called "Islamic State" is hurting the image of the islamic religion internationally by taking that name but not representing the majority of Muslims around the world. The cartoon is not propaganda. If anything it is making an effort to defend Muslims not represented by ISIS's radical views. An editor for Charlie Hebdo, Gerard Biard said in response to the attack, "I don't understand how people can attack a newspaper with heavy weapons. A newspaper is not a weapon of war." Contrary to its evident intention to attack Western ideology, this act of terrorism is an attack on freedom of press internationally. In the attack on Charlie Hebdo in one of the worlds most major cities, terrorists are threatening the press internationally. This attack parallels the decapitation of journalists in September of 2014, also by IS. Even if, like this cartoon, the argument is in favor of the non-violent and the majority, the press is now afraid to slight the Islamic State. The world has to treat this threat as it did before, not with fear but with strenth.