Text Response

This blog is about the article entitled, " The Worst Thing About Gay Marriage" by Sam Schulman.
I found this article to be very interesting. You would think from the title that the writer just bashes gay marriage the whole time and writes about how he hates gay marriage and why its wrong, when in reality he goes in depth about gay marriage and how it affects our society today. He points out how gay marriage has been accepted by the west faster than the feminist revolution or the fight for racial equality. He talks about how gay marriage is a bit more different than a marriage between a man and a woman. My opinion on gay marriage is, if it makes you happy, then go for it. No one should judge you just because you are different than them. The world is changing and bringing new experiences with it. Soon gay marriage will seem insignificant to whatever comes next in the western society.

Text Response

This topic is titled "What Obama's Election Really Means to Black America". This article is written by Steven Gray from Chicago. Many people believed that Obama won the election just because he is black and could become the first black president ever. However the writer argues that black americans were actually skeptical to Obama winning the election because of his upbringing in Hawaii and Indonesia and his unusual last name. Given these things, African Americans considered him not really black. 

I believe the argument this writer makes is both true and false, my reasons being are that people who actually care about the election and this government voted for who they truly believed should become  president and not just based on the color of their skin. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr. people should be based, "not on the color of their skin, but on the content of their character."  I also believe that the people who don't really care about the government but shallow reasons voted for obama just because he was black. In the end I think this article is both true and false. I think people who actually cared about the election actually put thought into the vote and people who did just went for it.

Free Choice

This blog is going to cover the topic of "should kids be able to get smart phones"?

Today kids get phones as young as the age of 6. The main reason kids as young as 6 get phones is because their parents get divorced. The parents want their child to be able to get a hold of them at all times, so they give their child a phone, which most people don't have a problem with but parents can get their child a track phone which lets the parents decide who the child can call. Instead parens are giving their children iPhones and other smart phones that give their child access to the internet which has inappropriate sites, images, and advertisements that are just waiting for their children to stumble onto. 

Parents can put a parental lock on the phone, but children are very smart and cunning, usual most kids can guess what the code is, get around the block, and put it back so their parents don't see whats going on. I know that when I was young, I guessed the parental lock on the my iPod touch that my parents gave me, so that I could watch some music videos on youtube. Kids are getting very tech savvy at a young age and its the parents job to protect them from things they do not understand or are not ready to see at that age. Parents should not give their children smart phones until they have reached a mature age, where they are able to decide what appropriate or not to view.

Text Response

This blog post it about the article called "Whats up Doc? A Bloody outrage, Thats what". This article talks about how violence is creeping its way into our children's tv shows and games. The author talks about how her sons cartoon started killing little animated animals and he did not see anything wrong with that. The author stresses the fact that its getting harder and harder to keep control over what your child sees thanks to creators taking violence once step further. I believe that a parents should thoroughly make sure that what their kids are watching and and playing does not involve anything inappropriate for their age level. you can help control that by putting parental locks on game tablets, TV's, and computers.

Free Choice 5

This blog post will be about grocery stores, since I have started working in a grocery store my opinions have changed on a couple things that happen there. For starters some shoppers can be the nicest people you will ever meet, they compliment your hard work, say thank you, and sometimes go out of their way to go to your supervisor and tell them what a good worker you are. There are also however the other shoppers that have no respect for the cashiers. I am ashamed to admit I used to be one of those shoppers before I worked at a store. These people will hound you if you don't have a coupon for them or fi you are under 21 and have to wait for a manager to come ring up alcohol for you. Just for that purpose some stores have wine and spirits stores or lanes that say alcohol is permitted here or not allowed here, yet customers will do as they please and not follow instructions. As cashiers we always try to make the shopping experience enjoyable for the customer by helping them carry groceries out to their car, find something for them or even helping them with their entire list of groceries they need.

Text Response 4

The article I chose to do this blog over was called " On Facebook, Biggest Threat to Your Private Data Might Be You", by Jacquielynn Floyd. She Floyd wrote about how Facebook is a big part of most peoples lives. People post statuses daily even hourly, which tells the whole world what they are doing that day or week. People post pictures of vacations, dances, dates, outings, baptisms, plays, weddings, really anything and everything. Floyd's problem isn't even with Facebook really its more about how people open up so much of themselves online when so many identities are stolen via online. There was an incident where a woman posted on Facebook that she would be gone for a week on vacation, and while she was gone her place was robbed. Because she posted the specific times of when she would be gone the robbers knew when exactly to rob her house. People don't realize how easy it is for websites to get hacked and steal a bunch of information from them. This article brings that to everyones attention and hopefully knocks some sense into people about posting personal information online. I personally agree with the writer of this article and think people should be more careful about posting personal information online.

Free Choice 4

The topic I would like to talk about today is about celebrities and how social media affects child development. Why should celebrities get to have literally "get-out-of-jail-free" cards. If a celebrity gets pulled over for DUI and is sent to court they get a light reprimand while regular people lose their licenses. Its unfair how if a celebrity gets caught with drugs they only spend a small amount of time in Jail while regular people spend years in Jail.

What kind of message does this show kids? That its ok to drink and drive, do drugs, party and give no respect to authority. Our world today is spiraling out of control because of this. I think that if celebrities are caught doing something against the law they should have to pay the consequences like any other person would have to, not get a break just because they have to make a film in the next three months. I believe if kids wont stop partying and doing all of these things as long as "society" shows that it is ok to do them.

Kids are very impressionable and watch a lot of TV now growing up, but TV is not the only place kids see celebrities doing these terrible things. Celebrities cover tabloids of magazines and news papers. There are billboards in every city with pictures of  barely clothed  women and men that give kids inappropriate thoughts. Society needs to clean up the streets of our cities and the minds of our children, and hopefully move on.

Text response 3

This blog is about the article Andrew Sullivan wrote about society being dead as people retreat into their iWorld. Sullivan goes to explain in his article about how people everywhere are losing the ability to communicate with other people, because they spend all of their time in their phones, iPods, macs, and tablets. Sullivan admits that he himself is one of these mindless zombies, instead of acting like other writers who rant about what other people do and acting like they themselves are perfect.

Sullivan is very observant in his article by including the "white wires" tid bit, and talking about how people look and act when they have their headphones in. When people are like this they have an expressionless face and could have no idea whats going on around them. I believe that Sullivan has a good sense of what the world is like right now. People get way to engrossed in their technology they lose the art of communication and interacting with others. The world as we know it is vastly spiraling out of control with this. Kids grades in school are going down because thy bury their faces in games and their phones, little kids at the age of 6 have iPhones! I did not get my first phone till I was 15. If you take a minute to watch the people around you in a room at school or in the work place or even out on the streets while your driving, you will see most people on their phones or game tablets.  All in all i think that Andrew Sullivan has a good point and wrote this article speaking the truth.

Free Choice 2

Im writing my blog about the TV show Duck Dynasty and how the family refused to make anymore episodes because the A&E network wanted to suspend one of the lead characters, Phil Robertson, indefinitely who gave his stance on homosexuality.

A&E wanted to suspend Phil and not allow him to make any episodes for a period time because of his comment on homosexuality based on his religious belief. The family took a stance for what they believed in and backed up Phil by refusing to make anymore episodes. This stance cause a great disturbance with viewers and caused the ratings for A&E to go down, because people loved the show. A&E eventually got rid of the suspension on Phil and let him come back. I think the whole thing was ridiculous because people should be able to give their opinions on anything whether it be bad or good. We have the freedom of speech and their are a lot of other shows on TV that give opinions and stuff like that and there are no consequences for them. Everyone has a view on something in the world, whether it be on homosexuality or religious beliefs. I have no particular view on the subject. I think people should be able to say what they want and give their opinion.

Text Response 1

The article I chose to cover was "PowerPoint: Killer App?" by Ruth Marcus. This article asks whether PowerPoints make information dull, whether it makes it harder for people to understand what is being discussed. They also go as far to blame PowerPoint in the explosion of the space shuttle the Columbia. I agree to an extent on the point the author is giving, but I am also against what she is saying.

 I believe that power points can be boring and hard to understand, but you can fix that. You can draw your audiences attention into the presentation by not crowding a bunch of words on their in small print and making the background and more compliant with the coloring of the words. The author states that people blame PowerPoint for the explosion of the shuttle because analysts could not absorb everything on the powerpoint in regard to the shuttle. The problem was that there were tiles on the wings of the shuttle that could pose some problems, but were not detected due to the overload amount of information on the slides.

The author is correct in stating that PowerPoints can be boring and explaining that you can't get the full understanding and feel of what is being discussed. The author used and example in her article about Abraham Lincoln's speech, the Gettysburg Address. The author phrased the most popular parts of the speech, and when reading how the speech would have been prepared on a slide did not have the same impact as it would, when having it preached to you from someone of authority.

All in all I believe the author makes valid points in her argument and I agree with them to a degree. PowerPoints can cause some strife but its all in how you use it. Microsoft cannot be blamed for something like the space shuttles crash because what caused it was not covered well in a slide. That is the person who designed the slides problem and the engineers issues.

Private School vs. Public School

Private School vs. Public school.

One of the biggest decisions a parent has to make in their child’s life is if they will send their child to public vs. private school.

I have been in both public and private schools that give me a bit of an inside view.

There are pros and cons of going to both public and private schools.

Pros of public schools

Going to a public school means the parents don’t have to pay tuition every year to put their child through school, it is easier financially on the parents and lets the child be exposed to many different cultures.

Con of public schools

Going to a public school also means that you have schools that are filled above their allowance with kids because the government is forced to shut down other public schools due to the economy. When a school has more kids than they can handle it means teachers cant give a more personal teaching experience to the student. When teachers can’t give a more personal teaching experience, students start to struggle in classes and fall behind.

Pros of private school

Going to a private school means a lower population of students and the parents can control what the curriculum is in the school. A lower population also means that a child can receive better attention from the teacher and get the necessary help he or she needs in order to succeed.

Cons of private school

Cons of going to a private school are paying expensive tuition every year to the school. The school can decide if they want to raise the tuition and how much they want to raise it. Another con is most private schools are religious schools. If you are not religious you may not be comfortable with your child attending that school. Private schools can also make you a little close-minded.

I have been in both schools, Personally I think the private school was better for me but every person is different. I liked the close-knit community and the relationships I had with my teachers.