Open Post!

Hey everyone! Today is December 6th, which means that tonight is Jingleball! (It's KDWB's holiday concert.) This year's lineup is fantastic - Justin Bieber, Jordin Sparks, Boys Like Girls, Pitbull, 3OH!3, Colbie Caillait, Jay Sean, and Owl City - and I can't wait! I'm going with Jackie, Elana, and Tayler (from up north). Oh my gosh but we have no clue what we're going to wear so that is a HUGE problem. Anyway, that's all I have to say about that.

Right now my fingers are covered in green marker because I just got back from teaching Sunday School and we had to make ornaments. So, naturally, I had to do all of the tracing, all of the cutting, and most of the gluing for my entire class of 2nd graders. But it was fun and they were better-behaved today than they've ever been in the past.

The main topic of my blog, though, is Tara and Leah! They're two of my closest friends and I promised I'd write a blog about them. I don't really know what to say about them except for that I love them immensely! I hung out with them on Friday night, along with our friends Scott and Andrew. We played Pictionary and Extreme Spoons, plus some ping-pong. But I hate ping-pong because I'm really bad at it, so I mostly just sat there on Leah's exercise ball. Anyway, some fond memories I have of those two would include: 7th and 8th grade musicals at EMS, science class with Tara and Ms. Misuraco (and her pigtails...), health last year with Leah, American Lit with both of them, going to the State Fair, going to the Walker Art Museum (my favorite place in MN), and just hanging out. They always help me with every single problem that I ever have, even though it probably gets really boring to listen to me complain all the time. They say that I'm really negative, which is sort of true.

Anyway, yesterday I took the SAT (and I must say that APUSH vocab was actually helpful... two words were on there and it really helped a lot) which was so boring but useful. I bought my mom a birthday present, too, then went to study math at Karin's house. I didn't really do much studying because I was pretty brain-dead, but I think everyone else got a lot done! After that I went out to Kobe with my family for my mom's birthday, then went to my friend Michelle's house and we just kind of hung out with some of our other friends.

So that's pretty much it. Now I'm going to go do all of my homework for this weekend and for tomorrow, because tomorrow I'm going to bed right after I eat dinner. Happy 19 days until Christmas!

Thanksgiving!

Seeing as Thanksgiving is coming up (and also seeing as how this was assigned), I've decided to blog about all of the things I'm thankful for!

First of all, I'm thankful for all of the people in my life: my family, even though they can get pretty annoying; my friends, without whom I would be nowhere; my teachers/coaches because I actually wouldn't know what to do without them. I love being around people and so it's great that I have so many wonderful people in my life!

I'm also thankful for swimming! As anyone who's ever met me knows, swimming is basically my whole life. 99% of the time that I can't do something, it's because of swimming. I love the sport so much because it doesn't involve running (which I can't do) and because I'm not bad at it (because I pretty much stink at every other sport.) Swimming is really rewarding because it's easy to see the times improving and also because it keeps me in good shape. I can eat pretty much whatever I want to and it usually doesn't have any consequences! Plus, most of my friends are from my swim team, so that's another thing I'm grateful for.

I'm thankful for my pets, simply because they make me so happy by being so nice! I love that animals don't really get angry... they just always seem so happy about everything. My dogs are especially good for that. My fish makes me happy, too, because its fun to watch him swim around in his tank.

I'm thankful for all of the founders of our country (duh) because I live here and love it!

And that's pretty much it... I guess I'm thankful for this blog because it saves me from having to write a bunch of formal papers and I'm allowed to use first-person and write run-on sentences like this with incorrect punctuation and probably incorrect grammar. So thanks, Blogger!

Have a good Thanksgiving, everyone (if there's even anyone) who's reading!

Visual Essay

When most teenagers think of McDonald's, they think of food that is horrible for them but, regrettably, tastes good. When parents think of McDonald's, they see an easy alternative to cooking dinner and cleaning it up that takes much less time and makes the kids happy. And when kids think of McDonald's, they think of bright red and yellow, free toys, yummy food, and fun characters. The reason that kids love McDonald's so much is that McDonald's preys upon their innocence. Kids like bright colors, so McDonald's uses red and yellow as its theme. Kids are attracted to mascots, so McDonald's has Ronald the clown to interact with them and tell them all about how great McDonald's really is. Kids like playing, so there are Playplaces that they can have fun in after they enjoy their meal. And kids like burgers and fries, so McDonald's knows that it's the perfect place, selling an "all-American" meal that tastes great. The corporation knows that selling products to children is the best way to make a profit - what parent can say no when their hungry little Sally is begging for a Happy Meal? Executives attend national conferences about how best to appeal to children and tailor their advertisements and techniques to fit the desires of kids.

But kids don't realize the negative consequences that eating fast food can have for them. What I focused on in my essay was the nutritional aspect. A McDonald's Happy Meal contains anywhere from 380-700 calories and 12-27 grams of fat. Eaten rarely, foods like these are fine for kids to eat. But when they are eaten in large amounts, which happens a lot, they can lead to long-term health consequences. Plus, when children learn to associate fast food with happiness and fun, it can wreak havoc on their future nutritional decisions. Obesity is a rising epidemic in our country, and the fast food restaurants of today are doing absolutely nothing to stop it.

Anyway, now I can finally get to the actual analysis of my project. My claim is that fast food companies' advertising to children can have devastating consequences on their health. My intended audience, besides my class, is the general American public, especially parents of young children. I hope that they will see how McDonald's takes advantage of the youth and easy-to-please attitudes of their kids and maybe stop taking them to such places before it's too late.

The images I chose to use and the order I put them in reflects, I hope, the pattern that usually takes place. I started with some pictures of McDonald's restaurants in order to introduce the topic and to show how even the architecture is appealing to children by looking very simple and comfortable, almost like a home. Then I showed the various ways that McDonald's draws children in: Playplaces, Happy Meals, toys and themes from familiar movies, mascots/characters, merchandise, and attractive and tasty food. I showed kids eating with their families in order to make a point that by attracting the kids, the entire family is persuaded to attend McDonald's. Finally, I showed pictures of children who are obese, ending with a picture of two heavy boys eating McDonald's. This is to show the consequences that McDonald's can have on the health and well-being of whom they are advertising to. I closed with a picture of the McDonald's golden arches with a caption that says "i'm lovin' it." This is meant to inspire questions in the minds of viewers - should we really love something that is so bad for us?

Musically, I chose to use the Justin Timberlake version of the McDonald's theme song. It's kind of similar to the example Mrs. Cardona used because it carries the same connotation - do we really love it (McDonald's)? If I had used a different song, I think it would lose some of the irony that I tried to portray. We love McDonald's so much, yet what does it do for us? It gives us cheap, poorly processed foods that are terrible for our bodies, then keeps us coming back for more.

Something needs to change in the way that we see fast food. It's not, as is thought, an American cuisine. The companies don't care about individual customers. They're out for a profit, and the sad truth is that they will do anything to make money.

Thanks to Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation for inspiring this video!

On Entitlement

ENTITLEMENT (n): the right to guaranteed benefits under a government program, as Social Security or unemployment compensation

(dictionary.com)

Entitlement. It's something that we all see every day. Most people, when they think of the word, think of government programs like Social Security that citizens feel entitled to. But I think that entitlement is much more than that. People feel that they have the rights to something every day. For example, everyone feels that, as citizens of the United States, we are entitled to free speech under the Constitution. But what does that even mean? Again, we are all entitled to create our own definition of it. (Unless, of course, there's a lawsuit involved, in which case the court gets the right to decide. But that's beside the point.) Swimmers, before the biggest meet of the season, are entitled to skip gym and relax when they would otherwise be doing something active. I'm entitled to use this blog to write down my thoughts and share them with anyone who cares to read what I'm saying.

When it comes to government entitlement, I believe very much that it is the government's responsibility to make sure that their citizens are entitled to the lives that they want to have. We, as constituents of the Constitution of the United States, are guaranteed the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So yes, I believe that the government should protect our lives and our liberty. The pursuit of happiness is much harder to define, becuase what makes one person happoy could cause another harm. But everyone IS entitled to try and make their own lives as good as they can get.

So I don't really know if I even wrote this post on the right topic, but hopefully I did!

Spoken Argument

So, the spoken argument that I found was an actual argument between my dad and myself. He kept asking me questions about what I wanted to do with some flowers that my mom got for me, and I didn't want to deal with it so I just kept telling him that I didn't know what to do. (I actually didn't, because usually my mom just deals with everything herself, but she was gone at the time so I was in charge of the indoor gardening.) Then my dad decided to overreact a little bit, telling me that every bad thing I do is just accumulating, and when I'm in college and I need something, he's not going to give it to me. So that's the context, now for the analysis.

My dad was standing up, and I was sitting down at my computer, so that gave him a feeling of authority over me. His tone of voice was loud and penetrating, in order to get through to me and to make me feel scared about the future consequences of my actions. He kept repeating the word "accumulate" in order to draw emphasis to the fact that I'm (apparently) rude a lot of the time and that it's not just going to be forgotten each time. His argument, though, was made less effective because he sometimes didn't know what to say to back up his claims. This made me kind of laugh a little bit (but secretly, of course) because I don't get as scared of him as I did when I was a little girl. He didn't have anything specific to threaten me with, but warned me all the same about how the accumulation of my actions will return to haunt me.

Overall, it wasn't a very successful argument. I personally didn't feel too much in response. Maybe that's just because it tends to happen every day. I also just disagree with him - I don't think I was being rude at all. But that's always a matter of opinion, so neither my dad or myself would be really qualified to decide the truth.

McDonald's

So, I think that reading Fast Food Nation for BLA has really gotten into my head. Every time I pick it up, I find something either disturbingly disgusting or morally repulsive. I'm constantly tapping people around me on the shoulder and saying, "Oh my gosh did you know that at Taco Bell in 1978..." or "I'm never eating at Wendy's again because..." So I've decided to write my persuasive blog post on fast food. And I'm probably ruining the whole entire thing by having this little introduction, because it makes me sound unprofessional. So long, ethos.

The fast food industry is junk. Not just the food, either. The way that business is run, and most of all the way that employees are treated. There needs to be a way for the workers to organize unions and demand benefits that any employee of any business rightfully deserves. However, the corporations that run the restaurants will do anything in their power to prevent unions from forming, in order to save money. Because of this, there needs to be legislation enacted in the interests of employees of fast food restaurants.

Employees of fast food restaurants are discriminated against and seen as simply commodities, easily fired and replaced. The restaurants try to mechanize as much as possible, in order to be able to hire the cheapest, least-skilled workers. These workers are usually teenagers or immigrants, who are then taken advantage of. They aren't allowed to form unions, though some have tried. The corporations will do anything and everything to prevent the organization of workers in the hopes of receiving more than minimum wage or some basic benefits like healthcare or seniority privileges. But every such attempt has failed - in a San Francisco McDonald's in 1973, workers trying to create a union were subjected to lie detector tests, interrogations, and threats of dismissal if they refused to answer questions, and in Montreal in 1997, when workers tried to organize a union, the McDonald's was shut down weeks before the union's certification. To compensate for the horrendous treatment that employees receive, site managers resort to making them feel like they are a valuable part of a team through a technique called "stroking." This allows companies, like Taco Bell, to underpay their workers. For example, in 1997 a Washington Taco Bell was discovered to have coerced its workers into working off the clock in order to avoid overtime pay, forced its workers to wait until the restaurant got busy before officially starting their shifts and to work after their shifts had ended without pay, required them to clean the restaurant on their own time, and compensated its workers with food instead of solid wages. When they were convicted of these crimes, Taco Bell didn't even admit to its wrongdoings! The "fast food mentality" has swept our nation, turning even clothing stores into factories designed to generate the most possible revenue for the lowest price, with no regard to the well-being of consumers or of workers.

Those companies that claim that their actions are perfectly legal and that they wouldn't be able to afford to continue if they gave their workers more benefits are ridiculous. The McDonald's Corporation grosses over 9 trillion dollars in revenue each year (as of December 2008), so obviously allowing for healthcare for employees wouldn't cause too many problems.

Legislation needs to be put into effect that will stop these, and many more, injustices in the fast food industry. Workers deserve, as do employees in any other line of business, to have steady incomes that actually allow them to live life and to have benefits that equal those of other industries.

Wow, I could actually go on for days and days about this issue if I had the time. But I think this is enough information to make my point. I couldn't even think of any rebuttals besides the money one, so that part of my post was pretty weak, I guess. Anyway, all of the information comes from Luke Schlosser's Fast Food Nation and The Wall Street Journal's Market Watch website.

Animal Rights

Okay, so I really hated both essays on animal rights, but I think my hatred for them will make this blog post more interesting than the one I would write about student rights. I feel like all of the people who write about student rights will say the same thing, but we have to admit that we're biased (duh... we're students). So I chose animal rights.

Hearne's piece, in my opinion, was pretty bad. She couldn't objectively discuss animal rights and let her feelings about how much she loved her dog, Drummer, get in the way of her arguments. This made me less sure about her credibility as an authority on the subject. I thought, while I was doing my CRJ about this essay, that maybe she just promoted her views on animal rights so that no organization would tell her how to treat her pets. She claims that she just disagrees with the rights that organizations like the Humane Society and ASPCA try to protect, but maybe all she wants is to be able to be free from what they tell her to do. Who knows, maybe she was snubbed by one such organization in the past or something. I definitely don't know. But I do think that she could be a little bit more objective, rather than subjective, in claiming that rights should protect the pursuit of happiness, not just avoid suffering. I also disagreed with her beliefs about animals in general. I mean, nobody really thinks that animals think the way humans do. And I think that trying to prevent their suffering is a great way to ensure their rights. Pain tends to overrule other feelings - if I were in the middle of running a marathon and got a foot cramp, I would stop because of the foot cramp, even though I would know that finishing the race would feel great and give me a sense of achievement - what Hearne considers "happiness."

I think that Singer also takes his position on animal rights a little bit too far. Comparing a cow to a human infant, for example, seems ridiculous to me. Maybe it's just because of the society I've been raised in, but I still can't wrap my head around how these authors seem to think animals are the same as humans. Just because a mature dog can reason better than an infant does not make it human. And I love animals as much as anyone I've ever met, but it just makes no sense to me how Hearne and Singer can consider them so similar to humans. Treating animals differently than humans is not the same thing as racism, because animals don't see the injustice in the same way that we would. Though, of course, I agree with his indignation at the conditions in which animals on "factory farms" are kept, I still don't think that we should all become vegetarians. I will admit, though, that Singer's argument seems much more valid than Hearne's. He uses specific experimental data, laws, and hard facts to support his ideas. The language he uses manages to be cool and logical while still showing the reader how he feels, much unlike Hearne, who simply poured out her heart through her pen when writing her essay. Even the form that Singer uses - broken up into sections, setting examples apart from the other text - makes him seem like a more reliable source of information than Hearne. And I agree more with the idea that animal rights should protect the animals from suffering than I do with the idea that rights should allow animals to be happy. Because I think that animal owners everywhere know how to make their animals happy. It's the ones that are suffering that we need to fight for.