School Lunches

Over the course of my school career I have heard many complaints, and one of the most consistent ones, was about the school cafeteria food. I never started thinking about the complaints until recently when I saw an article about school lunches and how the nations school lunches remain below standards and that some kids are even getting sick from the lunches bought at their school. We are blessed to go to a very wealthy and prestigious public school, but even are school lunches would be called mediocre at best, apart from the spicy chicken of course. The article says that from 1998-2007 over 7,500 kids became sick from their school cafeteria food. Along with this over 8,500 schools failed to have their school kitchens inspected even once in 2008. How can institutions which are supposed to be providing a place of haven for these kids and prepare them for the future, do so poorly on one of the simplest of all things, food. Here at New Trier we have alright food that at least gets us through the day, but what would it be like to go to a school that didnt have as much money? What would their food be like in comparison to ours? As a principle we should at least feed the kids who will be the future mediocre food that is not below national standards and will not make them sick. What do you think? Do you think that school food is alright as it is or that their should be a change?

Iraq war Opposition

In class we have been discussing civil liberties and how the government should include the public opinion when limiting the rights of their citizens. This should also be the same with war, but interestingly enough I recently came across an article in which our former Vice President Dick Cheney shared his view that it does not matter what the public thinks, that the public are in fact irrelevant and he does not care what they think. When told two-thirds of America does not support the war in Iraq his only response and a blunt one at that was, "So?". This leads to me to question our country and how our "democracy" actually works. President Bush was elected....sort of... in 2000 by an extremely slim margin. Even though over 50% of the U.S did not want him as their President, for the next 4 years he made almost every major decision for the United States. This included going into, what many now consider a bogus war in Iraq. In our system shouldn't the government take into consideration what the public views and even base their decisions off of how the public views a certain topic? Why does a man that almost half the country disagrees with get to decide that we will wage war on a country that half of America doesn't agree with? What is wrong with this picture, when a man who is supposed to be in charge of a country is only thinking about his opinion and not paying attention to all of those around him who also have very good ideas that at the very least he should consider. I find it ridiculous that in our supposedly great nation we can have leaders who don't even consider the public opinion, as Cheney says, "No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls." However when the public polls were in favor of him and the Iraq war he used the polls to support his war. Only when the polls are against him are they irrelevant. What do you think about this issue? Do you think the president should be able to do whatever he wants?

BCS Bowls:A rip off?

Since the beginning of the BCS or Bowl Championship Series system in 1998 there have been calls for a change of the system in college football. But not until recently have the protests become serious for a change to a playoff system. This year 5 teams ended up undefeated but only 2 will be playing for the National Championship on January 7, which of course are Alabama and Texas. Although I am confident this will be an unbelievable matchup, it is not the championship game I want to see at all. I would much rather see one of the other 3 undefeated teams get there shot at the title, even though only one of them is in a BCS conference they are all very good teams which deserve to get a shot at the title. This is why I agree with those who say that there not only needs to be a change in the system, but also that there needs to be a 8 team playoff system to determine the actual national champion. If this means 1 less game during the regular season so what, it will be so much better for college football and their fan base. This will also create much more excitement and more games for the best college players to be showcased against each other. Of course, BCS refuses to change the system, and the main reason, although they never state it, is of course money. The system rakes in millions of dollars for those in charge and next to none for those who participate, but are not a BCS conference, as stated in this article. As so many other systems in the U.S., the "lowly" are being screwed by the rich executives, even though they are as good as if not better than many of the big "BCS" teams. Even in college football which is supposed to be fun and a great experience for amateur athletes who are still young adults. This system is clearly flawed and although I will still watch the championship game, I will be thinking about what could have been if Texas Christian University had been in the game instead of Texas.

Darwin Awards

In recent years many of us have become aware of a new award that is giving out to a select few people, or the Darwin awards. This award is given out only to people who have either died in very stupid way, or lost the ability to reproduce, thus taking them out of the gene pool. The awards have gained tons of popularity and have multiple books as well as this website. Of course I enjoy these stories and laughing at the stupidity of others, but this presents a problem, morally is it right to have a entire idea based upon the unfortunate situations of others? I know it is all in good humor, but is it disrespectful to those who have been hurt is the real question. It may be insensitive to the family members or friends of those lost, without the consent of them. My personal opinion is that I do not think the awards are that bad and really like the books and website. But i also have no personal connection to anyone who has been in the stories or really who has died in an unfortunate way. What do you think about the awards? Do you think that they should be allowed to share these stories without the consent of the family?

UC Tuition hike

Recently in the news there have been many articles, such as this one, about the University of California and the 32% tuition increase that they passed recently. After the annoucement there were protests around California as the students were understandably mad at the Universitites for the tuition hike. Many of the students cannot afford the new tuition which is raising over 10,000 annually starting next year. This is a drastic change for many students, and may result in a dropout of many students, who could formerly pay the tuition and were enrolled but now cannot afford the tuition. With almost no financial aid given out to kids outside of California this leads to the UC system elite schools to have either only California kids or very wealthy kids from out of state. This is an absurd amount to raise the tuition suddenly as kids are scrambling to afford the education that was once available to them. As one student said, "Before it was a question of how smart you were. Now, it's do you have enough money to pay for school". What do you think about the education crisis? What do you think the UC schools should do?

El Clasico

This weekend one of the biggest sports rivalries in the world happened, and almost no one in our school knew about it. Im talking about the long rivalry between F.C Barcelona and Real Madrid C.F, an always exciting game which this year was one by defending Spain champions, Barcelona 1-0. This game brings up the old argument of whether it is fair to buy all your players for millions of dollars, such as the case with Real Madrid. As many of you may know they spent a record amount of money this summer to buy the majority of their starting line up. Whereas Barcelona has developed many of their players since they were young in their youth systems. Players such as their captain Carles Puyol and others have been through their entire careers with Barcelona and have not costed them millions of dollars, but rather were completely developed by the Barcelona coaching staff. The idea of "buying" championships has been a controversy throughout sports with teams such as the New York Yankees spending obscene amounts of money to bring back a world series title to New York. But is this fair to everyone else who cannot pay that much money? Does that not ruin the fun of the game where developing your own players is better then going out and buying them for lots of money?

Black Friday, True chaos

This Friday for the first time in many years I was not a participant in the histeria of Black Friday. This is because for the first time in a while I did not visit my family who lives in southern Illinois. Every year they wake up at 4 in the morning already having plotted out which stores they will go to and what they are going to buy, to join the ranks of thousands of people out to save money on the appliances they need for Christmas. I always thought it was nuts the way that people fight and push over the savings they will perhaps receive but truly found out how horrifying it is last year when the man was killed in New York trying to contain the crowd. If this wasnt bad enough this year hundreds of articles like this have come out talking about the scams that places such as Walmart have come up with to attract customers to their stores on this day. This day perfectly reflects our society and how our consumer market works. We are gullible enough to buy into these companies pitches about savings and literally go crazy over them the day that they happen. This paints a sad picture for our country and how we are perceived by other nations. What do you think about black friday?

Right to bear arms

As many of us know, today is the day that the DC Sniper John Allen Muhammad faces the death penalty. With his death brings up a very interesting topic of the gun laws in the U.S.. Muhammed and his accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo terrorized the Washington DC area for almost a month with guns that they obtained illegally. With his sniper he effectively terrorized and shut down the DC area for almost the entire month of October. People were afraid to leave their houses and they did it all with only 2 people. This shows the power that an effective plot and a couple of guns can do to the nation. With our extremely relaxed gun laws making it easy to obtain not just one but multiple firemans we endanger ourselves greater than we do protect ourselves. We make it extremely easy for homicides to occur and they do extremly often. As opposed to the UK which has extremly strict gun laws. This shows in the stats where the UK had .1 illegal gun deaths per 100,000 people, whereas the U.S has 2.97 per 100,000 people. I understand the second amendement and the right to bear arms, but at what point are we also endangering ourselves? At what point do we need to make our laws to possess and use firearms stricter? What do you think?

All men created equal?

Last night I watched a very interesting clip from the Colbert Report about gay marriage. This led me to think about our in class discussions about civil rights. As we have discussed in our modern times everyone has equal rights now, but do they really? Clearly gays in our country do not have the same right as others, they are not allowed to marry and people are openly hostile to them as an existence. Regardless of whether it is a choice or not, (which is a whole other issue), gays should have the same right as all other types of people. It was not until last week that hate crimes legislation covered hate crimes against gays. To me that is ridiculous, how can a clear minority such as gays, not be covered under the hate crimes? Where so often in the news we hear about these attacks on gays throughout our country. In the show, Colbert talks about how in the state of Washington where gay civil unions has been passed, a group of people have started a petition to change the law. However these people refuse to produce the list because they do not want the people who signed the petition to be outed. As Colbert says about these people, "I don't believe it is a choice, I believe you're born thinking gays don't have the right to get married or even be joined in union. And folks, the gays have no right to out those people". In his sarcastic tone, Colbert describes these people perfectly. These people are making decisions for others which have absolutely no direct effect on there lives what so ever based on either a religious preference or the fact that "they just don't like gays". Who gives these people the right to take away civil liberties from others that they are granted? This also leads me to the point that, should religious preference have a say over our judicial system? Should these people be able to pass laws taking away civil liberties based solely on their religious preference?

Fox News, is it really news?

I recently came across an article about Fox News and its bias. As most Americans do I follow my countries news, I realize that all news has a bias behind it, but believe that as a free journalism country I am still being told the truth. That is until I started reading Fox News. The bias behind this news corporation is absolutely absurd, as White House communications director Anita Dunn says it is "the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party". Everything they broadcast is a Republican based theory and some of which is completely false. Such as take the health care debate the statements that Obama is trying to initiate "death panels" to decide whether the elderly will live or not. A statement which could not be falser, but is still broadcasted by Fox News as a fact and crime that the Obama administration is commiting. They are brainwashing Americans with the frequency of false facts that they put out into the free journalism market and are openly against our current President and his administration. As an American I have to ask, as a country where do we draw the line in allowing our journalist's to state knowingly false facts? Here is the article which I found

131 million dollars, really?

Although this might be a bit late, I feel the need to blog about the absurd transfer fee that the superpower soccer team Real Madrid bought Christiano Ronaldo for. For 131 million dollars they bought the rights to the player and his contract from Manchester United. 131 million dollars, which equals out to close too 211,000 euros a week. The 131 million dollars was just the rights to the player, not his contract as well, which leads me to ask, is any person worth that much money? Espeically in our struggling economic times, how can a club who is already in debt shell out that much money for not just one player, but 5 others who turned out to cost the club 360 million dollars this summer alone. Flooding this much money into the market will obviously cause inflation and Real Madrid now have a debt of 296 million euros. What are your thoughts, is winning worth that much money? Are those players worth that much money? \

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=678183&cc=5901

Brazil still has slavery?

After our discussions about slavery, it reminded me of a article I had previously seen, that Brazil is still releasing some of its citizens from slavery. Including releasing around 4700 slaves last year alone. Almost 400 years after slavery was first started in Brazil, they are still struggling to rid the country completely of slaves. My first thoughts are, how could this possibly still be going on in a country such as Brazil? As the 10th largest economy in the world, how can they still allow slaves in their country? Atleast since 2004 they have admitted that they have a problem and have sent out task forces to track down and release these slaves, I find it ridiculous that since banning slavery in 1888 they have not cracked down to completely eliminate it. As a country that is developing nation they should figure out and eliminate slavery before they are considered a world power, as they are on the way to becoming as one of the worlds largest economies. Here is a link to the article about the slavery.

A big deal?

To follow up on class discussion on whether or not it is right for President Obama to make his speech to the school children tomorrow. Today I found an interesting article with Laura Bush(click link for article) backing the President and his choice to make the speech to the countries school children. She states that he has the right to talk to the children and that it is important for everyone to respect the President of the United States. I agree with her and her views that we are divided between the left and right and are blind of the viewpoints of the other side, no matter what they are. In our democratic process we have elected our leader of the nation, and we as a nation should have respect for our leader. If our President wants to talk to our school children he has the right too and as a country we should be open minded. Of course you have the right to not send your kid, however it seems to be ridiculous. President Obama is talking to kids about staying in school and there responsibilities as students, is that not something you would like your kids to hear? Even if you do not have respect for our President, is it not a good thing to teach your children to respect and look up to our leader, even if his viewpoints are different than yours? In a democratic country we have elected a man, who as our leader has decided to talk to the next generation of our country, and it is shocking that people are getting so upset about this speech. Obama is not trying to control the country and if he was it wouldnt be a bad thing, is it awful that hes telling kids to stay in school and be the best student and most succesful person they can be? If not then why is our country so upset about this speech?

Do todays athletes have class?

Watching ESPN today I saw somehing that struck me as immature and classless, a perfect description of todays atheletes. Of course I'm reffering to the punch throw by Oregons LeGaratte Blount following their 19-8 defeat to Boise St in football. As the Boise St. player turned to leave after an argument at the end of the game, Blount sucker punched the player in the jaw, in front of the entire country. This leads me to discuss the class in sports nowadays, or lack of class. With such players as Michael Vick and Pacman Jones dominating the headlines as they disrespect their organizations and teammates they give an awful example to kids. The majority of athletes nowadays have forgotten about what makes athletes different and how they can utilize there talents. Todays athletes are disrespectful and rowdy people who are constantly getting in trouble with the law, instead of the old time athlete who was a good teammate and a respectable person who knew there talents and showed up everyday to do there job without complaints. Nowadays athletes think of it as their destiny to play the sports and that they are better than everyone else, so they dont have to work as hard, instead of using there positions of power to help the world and be a positive role model to others. Where has the class from sports gone? Why do todays athletes have such different attitudes than before?