Assignment 16: Horray for Hollywood

It's not quite Oscar season, I'm sure we'll get to that though, it is however that time when movie studios parade out their Oscar contenders.  So for this post I'd like you to go to the movies.

Actually you can just watch at home but I like the idea of you telling your parents that you HAVE to go for a homework assignment. 

Please pick one:

1. I'd like you to pick a genre or director and watch two films by that director and then compare/contrast the two in whatever way you deem appropriate.

2. Go see a film and submit a review of that film on rotten tomatoes.  Once you post, link the post in your blog so I can read it.
 

Minimum of 150 words - due Sunday, January 11 at 11:59 pm

Persuasive Speech-Tora Sellers

As much as I'm sure many of you hate to admit it, most, if not all of you see an Asian kid in front of you; in other words, you see somebody of a different race than yourselves. This is ironic because, if I go to Japan, I am treated in the polar opposite way- I am white. This makes me a foreigner to everyone around me, no matter where I go.

            In the United States, there has always been racism and there has always been ethnic conflict. But that has shaped the nation into a more diverse and more accepting place. Of course, there racism is still a major issue that must be corrected, but I would rather have this than the alternative. Countries like the UK or Japan have it much worse. Because racism was never a major, game-changing topic in either country's history, prejudice seems more accepted than diversity.
            In psychological experiments done by Jane Elliot, racism was turned against the historical oppressors: white people. Most countries, like the US or South Africa or Australia, were very responsive to the exercise, and the white people, through being persecuted themselves, realized what racism truly is and how they could make themselves more accepting people. But in the case of the United Kingdom, the white people refused to recognize even the mere existence of racism, and even went on to believe that society persecutes white people as much as it does with minorities. This same phenomenon was seen in a vice documentary on the unrecognized white student union at Towson University in Baltimore.
            Japan, my nation of birth, is probably one of the worst developed nations in terms of racism, sexism, and homophobia. It could be the history with rigid social structure, it could be the prewar fascism, or it could be the ethnic homogeny; its most likely all three. The nation's media is content with portraying ethnic minorities, genders, and minority sexual orientations as humiliating caricatures, and the citizens accept it. I was watching a Japanese talk show, and in one episode, mixed-race comedians were brought in as guests. They talked about past experiences with being ostracized, and their struggle with accepting their own race. But the way they did it by making them into jokes and trivializing their traumas. When I saw it, I thought to myself that that must be the only presentation of the topic that Japanese people can accept.
            Despite the fact that I am equal parts American and Japanese, people always see me as the minority, and judge me as such. I have endured my fair share of prejudices. People were surprised when I was halfway decent on the track team, even though I never gave any indication that I wouldn't be other than my outward appearance. My middle school also called me, and me alone in to the office to discuss my "radical" and potentially "terroristic" opinions on the United States government, despite my friends having nearly identical views. But in the United States, after the initial realization that's race doesn't define me, most people are willing to accept who I am. In Japan however, it is a whole other story.
            In Japan, bigotry is the official state language when the topic is about race. People are not willing to accept that I can speak Japanese fluently. People are not willing to accept that I understand and live the culture. People are not willing to accept that I can be just as intelligent as everybody else. There, people see me as an ignorant, white, gangster. Even my closest friends today used to avoid me because they saw me to have the capacity to harm them-they were afraid of me. And this portrayal of me as a gangster hurts me.
            That, is why I hate racism. The United States has it bad, and some countries have it even worse. It is illogical, entirely arbitrary, and it is simply hurtful. That's why I believe that (and this is the same for everybody) if you look at me and you see an Asian, you're looking at me wrong.

Speech - Thomas Kenny

            Anonymity On the Internet 

           Christmas time is here, full of merriment and cheer. There’s a lot to do this holiday season, like going out to dinner or seeing a show. If you’re a fan of comedy, you might be going to see “The Interview” on Christmas day. That is, unless you’ve already seen an illicit version of the film published by the hacker group known as Guardians of Peace. This group has made it quite clear that cybercrime is a real threat to our society in the Information Age. Nowadays, it’s incredibly easy for a person or a group of people to work around the law for their own nefarious purposes. It can be as complex as a corporate data breach or a simple as a harassing message over social media. What makes the internet different from real life is that it’s incredibly difficult to hold people accountable for their actions. The internet as a whole needs a uniform method of making people feel responsible for their actions.

          When you open up a web browser and sign in to a website, chances are you are not going to be using your real name anywhere except a profile page. Upon signing in, you hide all of your defining features under a screen name. Unlike a face-to-face conversation, the person or people on the other end can’t immediately tell what race you are, what gender you are, how old you are, or what you sound like. When this occurs, the “online disinhibition effect” (conceptualized by John Suler) takes hold in an internet user.  This effect states that when a person hides their identity, they also do away with their usual behavior checks. It becomes a lot easier to throw out an F-Bomb or a racial slur when the only voices around to demonize you are faceless screen-names. The fear of embarrassment that is present in face-to-face interaction is absent in online settings.

Having an anonymous persona on the web also leaves the door wide open for cybercriminals like identity thieves and hackers. Even upon going into databases and looking for attached e-mail accounts or IP addresses, there are ways around these fail-safes such as IP spoofing and session hijacking. Imagine a version of the Wild West where the outlaws have cloaking devices and teleportation. The motives that drive hackers vary greatly from person to person. Some people are troublemakers who just want to make a scene; others could be disgruntled at a business or group and want revenge. Others still are compensated for their work, making “hit-man” a better metaphor than “cowboy”. In her paper titled “Anonymity on the Internet Must be Protected”, Karina Rigby writes that hackers are attracted by the ease with which they can avoid responsibility and accountability for their actions.” In a space where there is no need to worry about the consequences of one’s actions, it is harder to avoid breaking the law than to follow it.

The unifying theme of the aforementioned problems is clear: there is no body or force on the internet that requires people to be held accountable for what they say and do. This leaves two fundamental questions that are necessary to solve these problems: how can we make people take responsibility for their actions online, and how can we enforce the resulting statute(s) on a global scale. The emphasis on globalization is indispensable because of how accessible the internet is. World-Wide-Web isn’t just a catchy phrase in URL’s; I’d be willing to bet that at least a few of us have downloaded something illegally from the Swedish website Pirate Bay. An obvious solution is to require any internet user to broadcast their full name for anyone to see, thus creating the sense of accountability that one would feel in a real-life conversation. However, in many real-life scenarios, there is nothing that forces you to disclose that kind of information unwillingly. This tactic is highly invasive, and will likely be met with immense public backlash. I propose that a universal account service be created that will require every internet user to have a single account that functions across all services, giving a people a known persona. People will be able to judge one’s character based on their previous conduct on their account, making it easier to make the connection between a person and a screenname, even though they can’t definitively say who that person is unless it is intentionally revealed to them. This service will be regulated by a single organization, such as the United Nation or another affiliated group in order to make regulation as efficient as possible. Perhaps with a system of this sort in place, one will think twice before harassing a Twitter user because of their sexual orientation or trying to steal files from a company’s database.

Sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ny4mgc1nlY Documentary

http://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1178&context=bise Interview

http://www.comptechdoc.org/independent/security/recommendations/secattacks.html

http://www.crucialp.com/resources/tutorials/website-web-page-site-optimization/hacking-attacks-how-and-why/

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/student-papers/fall95-papers/rigby-anonymity.html

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-psychology-of-online-comments

Assignment 17: Speech

Post your speech!

Last blog of the year! Huzzah!

Full text of speech - due Friday, December 19th at 11:59 pm.

Speech - Mia Alexander

Gullible and Passive, yet Full America

Remember a few weeks ago when we were editing essays and I asked Mr. Logsdon which essay we were editing? He responded by saying we were on the next one. In my head, I knew we were on the one I assumed but I still believed him. I can be gullible that way. Gullible? Why does that matter? I am not the only gullible one. Most of America is willing to passively believe whatever someone tells them to believe about the food with which they fuel their one and only body. With the long journey from the farm, factories, and/ or laboratories to our plates, are the vegetables and fruits we eat even safe? The real question is do we care? As long as we are no longer hungry, for however long, there is no problem; we are all happy (oblivious) campers. Can we really blame any corporation or even Mr. Logsdon for our own easy to fool nature? The way the economics of our food is set up, it is easy to see where the habitual self-poisoning came from, something has to change. Take accountability and pay attention to what you consume.  

I have heard numerous stories about the ingredients in McDonald’s food, but I still find the time to have an 85 cent hamburger from there at least twice a month. If you have Twitter you probably see the popular Buzzfeed on your feed (they typically receive a lot of retweets and favorites). They posted a video in which they exposed 15 secrets of processed meats in less than two minutes. One example, the FDA allows up to four rodent hairs for every 100grams of processed food. My favorite is that hotdogs are “made with trimmings of fat and starch or ‘cereal filler’.” Delicious. Why are majority of the pigs in the United States grown with ractonine while it is illegal in many European countries like Russia. Evidently, we have passively been fed trash almost our entire lives. Instead of settling, we should look for alternative snacks like locally grown fruit, seeing as it is not likely we will all buy cows and treat our meat the way we want. Yes, it’s an 85 cent hamburger; I have gas and clothes to pay for. There’s a price to pay for choosing quantity over quality; that could be bigger jeans today and then congestive heart failure later.

Organic food, it has a mostly negative connotation. People always think of organic as more expensive for the same product but in actuality consumers receive many benefits from certain organic products that conventional products lack. “Organic milk contains about 60 percent more heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids than non-organic versions, a benefit that also extends to cheese and yogurt,” according to Washington Post. Organic food such as organic meats, are foods without hormones and toxins such as in meats in which the animal ingests antibiotic-filled feed. As it becomes more known, the USDA has made more regulations on organic food. Certified organic products have green and white seals on them. Yes it is a little more expensive because it takes more labor to make organic food. I would rather eat food that has been cared for and been through safer processing than just rushed through to get a quick dollar. According to Robin Parnes of ‘how stuff works’, “Production costs for organic foods are typically higher because of greater labor input and because farmers don't produce enough of a single product to lower the overall cost. Just because processed food is cheaper, that does not make it any better for you. You get what you pay for. I am not saying to never buy a juicy over processed burger here and again and then go to your local Whole Foods. But why not try saying no to a deep fried Oreo at the fair this summer for starters?

We claim to be an individualistic nation but we fall in line behind big companies that own monopolies over our food. In the documentary Food Inc. the idea of how these big companies in charge of our food are overtaking small farms is investigated. Wenhoah Hauter also comments on this change in our agriculture. Both serve to illuminate the under the table scheme of processed food in our nations. Everything is either covered up or embellished. In the documentary certain companies refused to comment, evidently turned away by possible bad press. Even worse, at a pig farm owned by Smithfield, a pink lagoon was found. Sound strange? That is because it is; it is not normal to have a pink lagoon, where pig waste is dumped. The culprit being the many antibiotics and “money makers” the pigs were stuffed with. Pun intended?

You may say, they have yet to prove that antibiotics are ultimately harmful, but just because it is yet to proven, doesn’t mean it is not still an issue. We should be aware of everything in our food. Back when everyone and their mother smoked cigarettes, people thought they were either harmless or beneficial, now we know that they are life suckers and “cancer sticks”. Do not be fooled into thinking the processed foods are anything other than what they really are, products. According to Smithfield, “A pink lagoon is a healthy lagoon.” Are you gullible enough to fall for it?

If someone were to ask me what my favorite thing that I cannot live without, I would respond with my phone, and then quickly after I would reply with good food also. Gullible, we have all wanted to believe something told us, simply because we feel they have some authority in our life. When it comes to food, however, we put it in the ONE body we have and will ever have, so why would we take food so lightly? Overnight is impossible, but maybe a shift can occur over generations. We are charged with the choice to make the future how we want it to be like. We will be told this all the way up until we graduate college and become the same adults we think we resent. One way we can change the meals in our grocery stores, on our plates, is appeal to the organic/ whole foods. Help change the prices. Hope off the fast food bandwagon and be different, try something different. We can change the standards the FDA thinks are appropriate, unless you prefer exactly four rat hairs in your steak. Have it your way.

 

Works Cited

Buzzfeed Video

“15 Horrifying Facts about Processed Meat” by: Video Producer Micaela Mielniczenko

Washington Post Article: “Organic food costs more than conventional food. Is it worth the extra money?”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/organic-food-costs-more-than-conventional-food-is-it-worth-the-extra-money/2014/07/21/a80f93ea-aac6-11e3-98f6-8e3c562f9996_story.html

Food Inc. Dir. Robert Kenner. Perf. Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser.  Magnolia Pictures, 2008. DVD.

Hauter, Wenonah. Foodopoly: the battle over the future of food and farming in America. New York: The New Press, 2012. Print.

http://money.howstuffworks.com/personal-finance/budgeting/how-much-more-does-organic-food-cost-and-why.htm

 

The Failing Education System, Charter Schools, The Tenure System

English First Semester Final Speech

The Failing Education System, Charter Schools, the Tenure System

How scary is it to think that there is no one coming with enough power, to save us. Us? Who is us? Save? Save us from what? What’s really going on and who is going through it? From the day we were born we've been learning. Learning to live and breathe and speak and eventually to calculate the square root of 64. 8. The answer is 8. But it’s all not that simple. Yeah, on a math test if it had the little radical sign with a littler 64 inside and you wrote down 8, you would get it right. You would get the points. Because that’s the answer. Schools in America teach us things that we don’t need. And maybe it’s teenage angst and the hate for homework that you think I’m just honing in on right now, but think for a second. This sucks. It all sucks a lot. 13 years of our lives spent getting an education. We learn about ethos and logos and pathos and calculus and anatomy and things that don’t actually help us become better people.

Teachers today, teach to the test. They shove information in our faces and then have us vomit it all up onto a page in a week, and then they expect us to remember it for the final 4 months later. Seriously? Sorry to anyone who has found a PowerPoint effective, but that’s not teaching. Teachers don’t have to get the information across these days. They get by for two or three years until they become protected by the union and tenure and the stupid system that focuses on the teachers before the students. The students. Tenure was originally developed at universities to protect them from arbitrary reasons of being fired, and even then it wasn't granted until they had been successful for 7 years, and then they had to apply and go through a grueling process that sometimes wouldn't even work. Now, in the government run public school system, it’s just given away.

The dance of the lemons. Teachers that have acquired tenure, but suck, are known as lemons. And at the end of every school year, school administration does the dance of the lemons. The schools in the district trade lemons and attempt to make lemonade with the equally horrible teachers they get in return. In the state of Illinois, there are 876 school districts. Only 61 have ever attempted to fire a tenured teacher. 38 were successful.

Unions are good, I guess. Teachers unions though, suck. There are currently 23 steps to firing a tenured teacher, and if you miss just 1, you start all over again. And if a teacher is totally just kicking ass, and being the best teacher you have ever seen, you cannot pay them more. You cannot. That’s ridiculous. Under the rules of the unions, teachers may not be paid more or less dependent on their performance in their jobs.

When a teacher is awaiting a tenure trial or a disciplinary hearing, they are often put into rubber rooms. Rooms where they sit playing cards and watching TV for years while they await their trials for actions ranging from extreme tardiness, to sexual abuse on their students. They sit in a room for 8 times as long as a law trial, earning their full salaries when they aren't even allowed to teach. They aren't allowed. But we can’t fire them. Rubber rooms cost the state of New York over 100 million dollars every year.

One in 57 doctors will lose their medical license after a disciplinary or mal-practice hearing. 1 in 97 attorneys will lose their law license after a similar issue. 1 in 2500 teachers will lose their credentials after a trial. That’s staggering.

Michelle Rhee was a 37 year old woman with no prior administrating experience who was placed as the chancellor of the DC public school system a few years back. She was the 7^th superintendent in 10 years. And she decided to get stuff done. She fired 25% of school principals, she closed 23 schools, and she cut 100 people from the central office. She pointed out that the whole issue is a lack of accountability. Her teachers, were pushing kids through the system and not realizing the damage they were doing, or maybe they just didn't care. “I get paid whether you learn or not.” Excuse me?

68% of Pennsylvania inmates are high school drop outs, the average cost of taking care of one inmate per year is 33 grand. Average sentence, 4 years. The average private school is 83 hundred dollars a year. Sending one person through the private school system for 13 years for that amount of money would be less than paying for their 4 year sentence, and they would have over 24 grand left for college. Improving our education system could very well bring down the amount of prisoners we have, as well as save us an incredible amount of money.

Just to get some perspective, America is ranked 8 out of 8 for math scores in countries who are developed with “good” education systems. But our students, rank number 1 in confidence in their math skills.

If we were able to eliminate the bottom 6-10% of our teachers, our scores would be projected to exceed those of Finland, who currently holds the best scores in the world. But we can’t. Because of the unions.

Magnet schools were created a while back as an alternative to the normal district area school, and they worked for a little bit. Though, they were rare and very hard to get into. And even then, the unions took over and bad teachers still got their way in. They stopped working, or at least working well enough.

Charter schools are what we need. Charter schools are funded by government money but they are run completely independently. There is a lottery to get in, because prior knowledge and test scores don’t mean anything. Charter schools are founded on the idea that there is a no child left behind policy, but they follow it. There are no advanced or remedial classes at a charter school. Every student is on the same track, and they all graduate with 100% the credentials they need to go to a 4 year university. The system works. And maybe we don’t like it because we are all supremacists and we want our kids to be the best and be in the best classes. But honey, that doesn't work.

The top charter schools in America send over 90% of their kids to a four year college, and those students are placed immediately into college level classes. They are ready and they are prepared and they succeed. Students who were in the 32% in reading and the 40^th in math, were up to the 60^th and the 80^th after just four years of chartered education. We don’t get those numbers anywhere.

So what’s the end game? What’s the solution?

 We completely restructure teachers unions, or abolish them as a whole, we outlaw a tenure system, we pay our teachers more when they kick ass, and we fire them when they don’t. We form charter schools, and a lot of them. We fix the laws that allow the state and federal government jurisdiction over schools. We get stuff done. It starts with activism, not throwing money into the issue. Be aware of what we wake up at 6 am every day of the first 18 years of our lives for. Then work to fix it.

Ian Harrison persuasive speech

Internet Piracy. If you’ve ever seen a movie, you’ve probably heard about it. You’ve probably seen that big FBI warning or one of those god-awful PSAs. Would you download a car? I know I would. Currently, piracy is illegal under copyright laws and is frowned upon by corporate America. But why do so many people still do it? Why is it so widespread if it’s such a crime? Why do people even go so far as to defend it in court?

Many people will tell you it’s theft, and with good reason. Normally, you would have to pay for whatever it is that you’re downloading. However, what if this is the only way you can get ahold of this content. Speaking from experience, it can be very difficult to find foreign movies for purchase, digitally or physically, here in the United States. What am I supposed to do? Sometimes it can take years for independent foreign films to be released here, and that’s if they are at all. Sometimes, piracy might simply be the only option.

However, obscure movies are obviously not the only things people pirate. It’s widespread, from music to movies and even to video games. Studios, labels, corporations, and other distributors of these products are constantly after thieves who would dare distribute their product without their consent. A lot of people agree with them, but let me present to you a scenario. Say you have a very large collection of movies on DVD and Blu Ray. Say you frequently loan out your movies to friends for free, cause you’re a generous person. According to current pricing, that means your friends have saved at least $20 and at most $50 to $60 each by not purchasing their own copy but simply borrowing from you. All of that eventually will add up to a lot of money saved. Now let’s imagine another situation. You own a movie and put a copy on torrenting site, which is where most people get their digital copies of pirated material. A lot of people download your copy. What is the difference between this and loaning a copy to your friends. Now, I understand the immediate response to this is that there are going to be much more people downloading your copy then there would be friends borrowing it. But don’t we live in a digital age where everything and everyone is connected? Isn’t nearly everything we as the human race do now done on a much larger scale? This is simply lending 2.0, for a bigger, more interconnected world.

Of course this also means that money is going to be lost by the creators as well as the original distributors of all of this media. So how do we finance their work? How do we pay these people whose art is their living? Well, the technology that brought us the internet and piracy can also bring us a solution to this dilemma: a little thing called crowdfunding. It’s becoming immensely popular among artists as a way to finance their projects. Most recently, Zach Braff used it to fund his latest film. What this will also create is a much more consumer-friendly artistic marketplace. It will cut out the middle man of oppressive studios, who sometimes take advantage of the artists they so graciously offer their money to. Nicholas Cage’s most recent movie, Dying of the Light, was a debacle that happens to be a great example of this. Because the studio didn’t approve of the director’s original cut, he was locked out of the editing room and his vision for the film was ruined. Many directors maintain great relationships with studios, but all too frequently do the studios have full control of the final cut. What’s to stop these studios from completely changing an artist’s vision into mass-marketed and “universally appealing” bilge? Crowdfunding and piracy mean that the corporations (who currently make the most money off of artistic licensing) are completely cut off, and the artist, who deserves all of the money that their art brings, benefits the most from their hard work.

Speaking of attention, another useful thing that piracy brings to the world: the ability to spread good art like wildfire. Bootleg copies used to be the way to go if you were a big fan of obscure underground music, but now, piracy allows you to find whatever you’re looking for at the click of a button. The widespread attention that piracy can bring to an artist could end up reimbursing them, through merchandise, live showings/performances, and even donations in some cases. Heck, some people might become loyal fans they choose to purchase a copy anyway.

Back to the issue of corporations. They currently control all of the money. It’s very difficult for a filmmaker or musician to get their work released or sometimes even made in the first place without “selling their soul.” These companies control the artistic landscape. They decide what gets the most hype. They decide what gets released in the dead zone of January and February and what gets released in the highly lucrative summers. The artist and the consumer are no longer getting what they both want, quality content. Instead, it’s become a game of money, in which no risks are taken and only the safe bets are placed. This is keeping a lot of undiscovered talent out of the market. The large network that piracy creates allows for discovery and revolution.

So I realize I’ve spent most of this complaining about these corporations and how they’re oppressing us bla bla bla, heard it all before, right? What if I told you we could fix this broken system? It’s simple really. I mean it’s the subject of this whole spiel. Piracy. Now, this is going to sound completely insane and will probably never happen, but just bear with me here. This slew of piracy clearly has these executives running scared. Hopefully, at some point, people are going to realize that this system is just not working. Piracy, to me, is a small act of rebellion against those who would destroy the artistic landscape and take advantage of hardworking musicians and filmmakers for their own monetary gain. I know I sound crazy, but aren’t you getting kind of tired of all this franchised crap? I love Marvel movies as much as the next guy, but they’re by no means great. I’d much rather see something as ambitious, new, and different as Interstellar having millions spent on it than whatever Michael Bay is doing. If these studios begin to lose money, they might be forced to listen to the demands of the people, and thus make it better for all of us. Instead of having to decide which movie to see at the theater, wouldn’t you like it if you could be involved on the ground level, and decide what gets made in the first place? That’s the end goal here.

So, in conclusion, I believe piracy is a means to an end. It’s a message to corporate America, saying we don’t have to deal with your crap anymore. No more ridiculous sequels, no more terrible remakes, no more music from artists who got old and bad years ago. We want content decided by the people and funded by the people. Call me a crazy rebel, but I think it’s time for a change. So yes, I guess piracy is theft, but what I want you to really think about who’s really being stolen from and what that means.

Works Cited

Lessig, Lawrence. "In Defense of Piracy." WSJ. Wall Street Journal, 11 Oct. 2008. Web. 14 Dec. 2014.

Speech - Jacob Faulkner

War on Pollution

Do you enjoy living? You know, good ol' life on planet Earth? Course you do. Do you like life as it is right now? Well you shouldn't. People suffer everyday, and other people get away with making them suffer. Maybe your life in America isn't that bad, you have a nice swell life, and you're pretty happy. Christmas is coming up, and your folks plan to get you a car, what a total snag. You yourself, have a very lucky life. Some people aren't as lucky. For example, everyone in the Amazon. Corporations come into the Amazon, and take away the trees, pollute the water, and destroy the land. Legally. No one talks about it. It's just something that happens, because money can cover up all of the real facts. The facts that, if everyone knew and understood what the facts meant, would completely destroy corporations like Shell and Exxon, who have no disregard for the people of other countries, or all of the earth in the long run.

When people think of the Amazon, a good amount of them immediately think of the Amazon rainforest. The Amazon rainforest is the number one producer of oxygen on Earth, and helps the Earth's ozone protect itself from the sun's rays. That's not gonna happen for much longer. Many American corporations cut down acres of forestry a day, killing the ecosystem, killing the land, and killing the ozone. A quote from rain-tree.com says, One and one-half acres of rainforest are lost every second with tragic consequences for both developing and industrial countries." Why? Money. You can sell those trees for money, you can turn trees into so many things. Exponentially increasing your money is more important on the future of this planet, and the life on it.

The second thing people think of when they think of the Amazon is the Amazon river. That river is used by the people of the Amazon for fishing, the number one source of both income and food for the people. Documentary, "The End of Amazonia," says, "The hunters are so good at what they do, they are able to determine whether the specimen in their grasp, still unseen deep in the mud, is a male or female," because the economy is so dependent on fishing. Unfortunately, oil companies like Chevron dump oil into the water and destroy the river and the fish in it. People that eat the fish that have been poisoned by the oil get cancer. Fishing in the Amazon is coming to an end, ending both species of fish and lives of the people.

How do corporations get away with doing all of this? With money in the bank. The corporations screw over the Amazon, then go back to America and get money for it. Brazil recently passed a bill named REDD, which stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. It allows deforstation if the people residing in the area allow it. This doesn't actually stop deforestation, it just lets it continue legally, along tearing away the land for mining and fracking. Corporations either pay off or kill the people there to continue this. It also makes fishing, farming, or hunting in these areas illegal. In an interview, Chief Ninawa Huni Kui, president of the Federation of the Huni Kui, says, "I respond to those that say that it’s a solution, that REDD is not a solution to climate change. It is a false solution to climate change. And furthermore, indigenous peoples are not the ones that are causing climate change. In Brazil, in Mato Grosso, the biggest soy baron is receiving funding and subsidies from the Brazilian government to cut down forests."

People might say, "That's the law of Brazil, it's then ethical and doesn't need to be changed." The people of Brazil were not asked if they wanted this. It was something that Brazil as a government enacted on it's own, probably because other countries pay them to do so. For example, Democracy Now! states that, "in August of 2014, Germany gave the government of Acre $280 million reais to do REDD." The citizens and owners of the land are then paid off with small amounts of money that they don't know came from, and the ones that protest against it are killed. If you think that's still ethical, you probably think that 1984 is ethical because it's, "functional." Even if it was done by moral means, the end is still that Earth as a planet gets screwed over because it takes away the ozone, it gives gas companies money which allows them to continue melting the ice caps, and makes our planet barren and unable to sustain life. There is no smart counterarguement to saving the Earth.

The Earth needs the Amazon. Life is dependent on Amazon, and destroying it by deforsting, water pollution, and land destruction is erasing the Amazon from Earth, following with it the rest of life as we know it. When will we learn that for Earth to provide us with life, we need to provide it with respect?

Sources: 

1. Taylor, Leslie. "Rainforest Facts." Rainforest Facts. N.p., 22 Feb. 2013. Web. <http://www.rain-tree.com/facts.htm#.VI5gWyvF-T9>.

2. Huni Kui, Ninawa. "Brazilian Indigenous Leader: Carbon Trading Scheme "REDD" a False Solution to Climate Change." Interview by Amy Goodman. Democracy Now! Amy Goodman, 10 Dec. 2014. Web. <http://www.democracynow.org/2014/12/10/brazilian_indigenous_leader_carbon_trading_scheme>.

3. Rachel, Chantelle, and Abbie. "Amazon River Pollution." Prezi. N.p., 17 Dec. 2013. Web. <https://prezi.com/cqrnxc4zmlup/amazon-river-pollution/>.

4. The End of Amazonia. Dir. Jorge S. Gallo and Ramon Salgado. New Atlantis Documentaries, 2002. DVD.

Speech - Thomas Stokes

 Powered by Change

Change affects everything. It comes to us in many different forms. For some of us, it was coming to high school, for others it was getting that driver's license. Change came to me pretty rapidly when I moved to Lexington. It seems to be some unstoppable force in our every day lives. Not only does it affect our daily lives, but also the world around us. Day after day changes are made everywhere, and in our modern day society, changes in technology are huge.

One of the most recent changes in today's technology is "Cloud" storage. Cloud storage introduced us to a change in how you store memory for a device. For the first time, you didn't need the data on your device. I'm sure you all know how this technology works. It allows you to remotely store your information on a remote network, so it's only on your device when you need it. This change meant that user's of a device could store as much data as their cloud owner would allow, instead of being limited by a device's physical capability. Many people were reluctant to trust this method of storage, they were afraid of having information stolen from them since it wasn't with them at all times. I was also afraid of change when I had my first day of school in Lexington, but over time I grew used to my new school. People grew accustomed to cloud storage in the same way.

By growing accustomed to this new method of "Cloud Computing," people like you and I have opened ourselves up to even more change. The Cloud has brought a great way to create new technologies. These new technologies don't have to be reliant on hard storage, but can instead utilize the cloud to it's fullest and utmost potential. Google's project "Glass" is the paragon of embodiment for this ideal. Now I'm sure you've all heard of Glass; It's the fancy pair of glasses you wear but they're capable of things like GPS, accessing the internet, even connecting to your data on Google's version of the Cloud, but most importantly, Google's search engine.

Many of you may be wondering, "My phone can do all of that!" or "Why's it so special?" The fact that makes Glass special is that it's a culmination of some of the most recent advancements in modern technology. Glass really makes you stop and think. It makes you really see how far we've come since 1943, when ENIAC was built. ENIAC was considered to be the "grandfather of digital computers" Since then we've moved from two-tons heavy and room-sized computers to having a telephone-computer-gps hybrid device that we can wear on our faces! Glas truly shows people that we can strive to become better and better and better, no matter how good we already are. We can always change.

As we move forward we will always be changing. Both in our technology and as people. Change in one may even be the cause for change in another. Glass shows us that changes in our technology are incredibly beneficial to us. Earlier this year, Nepal even decided that Glass was such a strong technology that their military would use it to help prevent poaching in the region. "If successfully implemented, it could revolutionize our work,” claims Sabita Malla, a senior researcher at World Wildlife Fund of Nepal. These kinds of changes in the way we are making in our technology are being used to save endangered species, and promote a better envinronment for everyone.

Sometimes these kinds of changes can be hard to accept. Sometimes you feel worried that change may be harmful, or toxic to us. These changes are powerful, but people like you and I benefit from moving forward with this kind of technology. In our every day lives, people live with changes being made in their technology. Your smart phones are probably on cloud storage, and you may have been using that very phone to go over your speech one last time, and I've probably been using mine for that same reason. Our technology is what's helped us be here today, in school in Lexington.

Works Cited

• Pandey, Avaneesh. "Google Glass And Drones To Assist Nepal In Fighting Poachers In Protected Areas" International Business Times, 2014. Web. Dec 8, 2014.
• Kim Ann Zimmermann. "Computer History." LiveScience, 2012. Web. Dec 8, 2014.
• Don Cambou. "Thinking Machines: The Creation of the Computer" Video. Dec 6, 2014
• Frederick Winterbotham. "The Ultra Secret"  1974. Text. Dec 4, 2014

Speech--Amir Abou-Jaoude

Rated C for Censored

Amir Abou-Jaoude

Stanley Kubrick’s quixotic project on Napoleon had finally fallen apart. Funding had run out, and now, the famed filmmaker of 2001: A Space Odyssey had nothing to direct. However, one of his assistants gave him a book by Anthony Burgess. It was called A Clockwork Orange, and it wasn’t long before Kubrick decided that it would be the subject of his next film.

           

            The result of Kubrick’s efforts to adapt the book to the screen was unleashed in 1971, and it created immense controversy, especially in the United States and Britain. Particularly of concern to the censors was a scene in which Alex, the main character, and his “droogs” commit violent acts along the Thames River. In the background, stately classical music plays. The censors accused Kubrick of glorifying violence.

            I believe that Kubrick is actually doing something different in this scene. The classical music serves as a stark contrast to the horrific acts. The British Board of Film Classification, or BBFC, the British equivalent of our ratings system, didn’t see it that way. Controversy surrounded the film, and in 1973, an embittered Kubrick withdrew the film from circulation in Britain. Should A Clockwork Orange have been censored? In the next few minutes, let’s examine the history of film censorship, the reasons for censoring a movie, and why censorship may be unnecessary.

            Film censorship dates back almost to the beginning of modern cinema. In the 1920s, there were only voluntary restrictions on the film industry, and notable directors like Ernst Lubitsch and Frank Capra turned out risque entertainment. However, in 1934, the Hollywood Production Code, or Hays’ Code, was implemented, placing severe restrictions on filmmakers. Directors could no longer show sympathy towards “crimes against the law” and had to uphold the “sanctity of the institution of marriage and the home.” Interestingly, the reasoning behind the code was that films were art, and art must be used to elevate the human condition, not debase it.

            The Code stayed in place until the 1960s, when films such as Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot and Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho began to subvert it. Then, in 1968, the Motion Picture Association of America, an advisory board made up of parents and film professionals that would rate films as G, PG, R, or X was created. The MPAA rating system has gone through a few changes in its fifty years of its existence—the PG-13 rating has been introduced, and the X rating has been replaced with an NC-17, but the basic structure and purpose of the organization has remained the same.

            The MPAA has come under fire for being extremely critical of sexual content and nudity in movies, while taking a more lenient attitude regarding violence.  In the United States, a film doesn’t have to be rated, but a MPAA rating lends the film credibility and is essential to making a good profit at the box office. In fact, with a few exceptions, a MPAA rating plays an integral role in a film’s box office performance—a film rated NC-17 is unlikely to turn much of a profit because, as entertainment lawyer Jason K. Albosta writes, it limits the number of potential viewers.

            Censorship exists all over the world, from Britain to China and Iran. Why would organizations be so eager to censor the cinema? The short answer is that films tell their stories visually, and the visual component of the movies worries censors. Won’t someone want to emulate what he sees on screen? If someone sees Alex and his droogs committing violent actions in A Clockwork Orange, won’t they want to commit similar actions, albeit without the classical music? A 2006 study at the University of California examined the link between violent movies and crime. The authors concluded that if there is any correlation between the two matters, it is that crime actually decreases while these movies are playing. The authors hypothesized that offenders are too busy watching the films, so they cannot perpetrate violent crimes, and there are little effects a few weeks later. Therefore, censorship in this regard is highly unnecessary.

            Now to be fair, not every film censored is a bona fide masterpiece like A Clockwork Orange. Most films that are censored or downright banned are pornographic, gratuitously violent, or political. However, the censors cannot judge what is art and what is not. The BBFC censors, for example, could not have known that films like Sergei Eisenstein’s The Battleship Potemkin or Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom would today be considered art when they cut them. These films show the inhumanity of man, and therefore, by revealing the darker elements in our society Film is art, and artists have to be able to express their thoughts freely. That does not mean that ten-year-olds should view A Clockwork Orange, but it does mean that we have to take a more pragmatic approach when examining the content of certain films. Sex, violence, language, and other material that is censored can be vital parts of a filmmaker’s vision, and this vision, in turn, can elevate humanity by providing social commentary or a new artistic perspective. As George Bernard Shaw said, “the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.” Thank you.

Works Cited

Albosta, Jason K. “Dr. Strange-rating or: How I Learned that the Motion Picture Association of America’s Film Rating Constitutes False Advertising.” Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law 12.1 (2009): 115-147. Print.

Empire of the Censors. Dir. Saskia Baron. Perf. Richard E. Grant. BBC, 1995. Film.

Krakus, Anna. Interview with Andrzej Wajda. Cineaste 39.3 (2014): 3-9. Print.

Rayns, Tony. “Heard it Through the Grapevine.” Film Comment Sep. 2013: 30-35. Print.

Rickey, Carrie. “Brutalization of Women is a Constant in Popular Film.” Variety 21 Jan. 2013: 49-51. Print.

Dahl, Gordon, and Stefano DellaVigna. "Does Movie Violence Increase Violent Crime?" Quarterly Journal of Economics (2008): 1-44. Print.