Apple Moves Manufacturing to US

Last week when we were talking about slave labor and how that transitioned into today, it interested me when I heard that Apple would start making their products in the US, when they are known for using cheap labor in China. I wondered exactly how much of their manufacturing would be done in the US, and if it really is how it sounds. I found this article explaining about Apple's plans for moving their manufacturing over here. It turns out that Apple will only be making their Mac computers in the US, not their whole line of products.

 I understand that moving their whole entire business for manufacturing in the US would be a huge amount of money for them, and their computers are a huge part of their business, so it is a big step forward for them. However, they fact that they only moved one of their products to be made in the US makes me wonder: how much of this change is actually to benefit the workers in China? Having this story be big news in the press could just be for publicity, and to give them more of a humane image. Leave in the comments: do you think this move was more to benefit the workers, to more to help their image?

Veteran's Day Irony

As today is veteran's day, there was a lot of support for the troops through many different types of media, such as Facebook, Twitter and the news. It was really nice to see all this support and love going out to the men and women who are fighting, risking their lives for our country.Today, everyone was focused on showing veterans how much the country cares, and how supportive we are  of the troops.

Not to be cynical of such a positive, patriotic day, but it seems to me that the only time this country is ever paying much attention to the veterans and troops anymore is on veterans day. After listening to all of the perilous times presentations, it was kind of weird to think to myself that we're in a war now as well. In the time periods discussed in the presentations, those wars pretty much were the main focus in the US, but the war we're in now doesn't seem like its getting much attention at all. Of course bringing the troops home is a high priority for the government as well as much of the population, but I would expect it to be higher. On this CNN list entitled "Your top election issues of 2012", you barely see anything about war or troops being sent home. The war could fall under the category of "state of politics", but still it's way too far down the list of people's priorities, considering it's an actual war.

Another issue that's been getting attention is that veterans aren't always getting treated as well as they should once they return home. In this report done by the US National Library of Medicine, it was revealed through a number of studies that millions of veterans didn't receive health insurance, neither did they receive ongoing care at the Veteran's Health Administration (this administration runs many medical centers and long-term healthcare facilities for veterans). Way too many veterans are uninsured, and report facing problems obtaining health care. For all the emphasis put on honoring our veterans, its pretty ironic that not enough attention is being payed to the well being of these people.

It seems like a great thing to be supportive of our troops and veterans on veteran's day, but shouldn't we be showing this support as a country all 365 days of the year, not just this one day? I think we as a country are very supportive of our troops and veterans, but this talk needs to be put into action more, by the government and the people. People need to remember that even though the war doesn't seem to be as big a priority as it should be, troops are veterans are both in need of help, not just oral support.

What is it Worth?

Recently, one of my friends decided she wanted to quit a sport she's been doing for a while, simply beacuse she didn't really enjoy it anymore. However, her decision making process wasn't always just based on what she felt like doing. Her parents were really pressuring her to stay in the sport because it would look good on her college applications, while quitting junior year wouldn't look so good. She had a difficult desicion to make, but ended up listening to what she wanted to do and quit. Unfortunately, her parents still don't approve of her decision, simply because of the way her college apps will look.

There is so much pressure on kids to do and participate in certain things for college. I can't tell you how many times I've heard a phrase that had something to do with "this will look good on your college apps," or "this won't look good on your college apps." Doesn't what the actual kid wants count for something as well? What is a "good" college app anyway? Is its purpose showing off to colleges the things you truly are are passionate about, or is it just an incentive to pile on as many activites as you possibly can, whether you enjoy them or not, just to show what a "well rounded" person you are? I think this is a very relevant problem for teens, espcially our age in this particular grade. So much pressure is put on kids to make themselves look the best for colleges, that they forget sometimes what they want to do and what will really make them happy. To me, the main purpose of high school isn't just to impress colleges. The more important thing is to discover your interests, and have fun along the way. That will take some trial and error, and everything you try won't end up being for you. So what if you decide a certain activity isn't for you? More parents should understand that ultimately, their child's happiness during their high school years counts for more than whether a college is impressed with an app or not. I know it can be hard for people to agree with that, especially in a school like this where success in all forms is extremely stressed. However, parents should always be supportive of their kids in these situations, and not make them feel bad with threats of how they will look to colleges.

My question is, what is it worth to participate in something you don't want to do, just for the sake of looking like someone your not to colleges? Of course academics and involvement in extra-curriculars are extremely important, but if there's something you are starting to feel obliged to do, whether to impresss you parents, friends, or a college, its a waste of your time. We should be focusing on enjoying our last two years on high school, instead of living a life based on what colleges will approve of.

Going, Going, Gone

Most of you have probably heard about the crisis of deforestation. This is a problem that's been in the public eye for years and years, yet through all the effort, little change has actually taken place. Because of the rising demand recently for palm oil, the forests of Sumatra are being slashed and burned at an alarming rate. The loss of the forest is having detrimental consequences on a certain species that resides here. Orangutans have been engangered for a while, but this new demand in palm oil is bring the issue into notice again, as shown through this article. Companies are illegaly and swiftly cutting down this forest to make room for palm oil producing factories. In 2008, a survey showed that there were less than 7,000 orangutans left in the wild. With this renewed need for large amounts of space and nowhere to build factories, this number is going down. Indonesia is the world's biggest palm oil supplier, and factories needed to product this resource take up a lot of room. The reason palm oil is in such high demand at the moment is because it is edible, and is included in countless foods you can find at a supermarket here, as well as an important source of fat for people in other countries. Also, it is technically a renewable, clean resource (although it takes a pretty long time to renew), so it is being turned towards as an alternative to burning fossil fuels. It seems ironic because while using palm oil for energy won't directly pollute the air as much as fossil fuels, it's just as damaging to the environment and the animals that depend on that environment. The laws against deforestation are there, but they aren't being enforced. Indonesia isn't the only place this is happening. Forests all over the world are being chopped down at an alarming rate to make way for factories and agriculture. This damages the lives of all animals that depend on that habitat. You can google something like "organizations to stop deforestation" and I'm sure a huge number of different organization in support of forest and animal preservation will come up. All of these are for a great cause and are doing what they can, but they can't solve the problem. With the amount of energy and emphasis placed on environmental conservation today, you'd think there would be more progress. The problem is just that not enough people care. These companies have to earn money and take care of their buisiness, and they just don't care enough to make a change. Most people know that when these resources and habitats die out, it will cause a huge number of problems. Why is it, then, that the progress towards saving these environments has been so small? Do people just take these resources for granted? What are they expecting to do when it all runs out?

Different Does Not Mean Less Than

Recently an article on NBC news caught my eye that was about a girl named Whitney Kropp, a sophomore at a Michigan high school. Sadly, she had always been bullied at school for being "different" than everyone else, yet this year, she was elected to be on her school's homecoming court. At first she was surprised and pleased. That was until she realized it was all just a prank by her classmates. They thought it would be somehow funny for her to win this title, highlighting how opposite the other kids thought she was from someone who would ever actually win this title. This really shocked and saddened me because something that seemed like such a nice thing, electing a bullied and unpopular girl to be in the homecoming court, turned out to be such a mean spirited and terrible prank, with no design but to make fun of the disparity between her and her more popular peers. Fortunately, once people got word of this prank, a huge amount of support began to come towards her. A Facebook page in her honor began getting thousands of likes, students made posters and hung them around the schools with slogan such as "We Look Up To You Whitney", and a local company made T-shirts in her favorite color that said "It's not cool to be cruel." At the homecoming game when the whole elected court stood on the field, she got an overwhelming amount of support and cheers.   Listening to her talk about some of the things she's had to go through in the past make me feel so sad that anyone could be that cruel, but more so are my feelings of admiration that she got through all of it, and is still such a positive person. Even though it began as a prank, she still attended the ceremony, and turned the whole negative experience into a positive one. While being interviewed, had such an inspired and upbeat mood about the whole situation. She took this as an opportunity to bring bullying to light, and give advice to other kids who are targets. She believes that you should always stand up for who you are, and never change just because some people don't like it. This whole story made me wonder again why people as a whole don't like difference. Like she said, people targeted her because of her hair, her clothes, her height, and just the fact that she was a unique person. If you ask individuals whether they think that being different is a bad thing, most people would say no. Why, then, do people spread so much hate as a unit when they see that someone doesn't want to be exactly like them? When you think about it there really is nothing wrong with being different, yet it's such a common thing to pick on someone about. Why should anyone be penalized for being themselves? From our childhood we have heard the phrase "different does not mean less than." Now, in our high school years, it needs to be taken into action much more than it currently is.

Are "Good" Neighborhoods Really that "Good"?

Our discussions in class lately about different areas of Chicago and how abnormal the part of the city we live in is got me thinking whether the North Shore, in Mr. O'Conner's words, is such a "nice" area to live in after all. Of course there are endless things I really enjoy about living here that give it the label of being "nice". Everything is so close and easy, the streets are a really pleasant place to be with all the old trees, and most importantly I have never felt threathened or unsafe in any part of this area. Basically we have everything we need in this little bubble of space. You could have a very comfortable life without leaving the north shore once. However, I think that's exactly the problem. Many of us, with our busy schedules, don't really get out of this area very often. I'm sure we've all been able to travel and experience other surroundings, but on a daily basis were pretty much in this sheltered area. Once you get out of the North Shore and interact with others that don't live here and don't have the same kind of life, thats when you truly understand how lucky we are. But what I've found is you also realize how little you actually know about a life other than yours, and that's not a good thing. Two summers ago, I went on a trip to Europe with an organization that takes high school kids from a certain area to places around the world. My two friends and I went on the trip with kids from all over Chicago, and we were the only north shore kids in the group. I never saw this coming, but it was actually a lot harder than I thought to "fit in" with everyone and make friends with the other kids. Once they found out we were from the North Shore, we were automatically labeled the rich kids and no one really looked at us in the way they saw each other. At the beginning, they saw us as these people they couldn't relate to in any way, and the thing that bothered me is that in some ways, I felt I couldn't realte to them about many things either. It amazed me how hard some of these kids and their families worked to save up the money for the trip. Many of them had fundraisers at their school and community. One boy hosted multiple pancake breakfasts at his church to save up the money. My two friends and I didn't really bring up costs at all with our parents, because we never needed any help with it. At times I felt a little like a fish out of water with that group, because it was so far from the New Trier type of experience I encouter day to day. Of course there were many nice people that I ended up making friends with, but in general, we were highly judged because of where we came from. Looking back on that, it made me realize that no matter how cultured and intelligent we think we are at New Trier, living here just blocks us from experiencing a life anywhere outside our own. Sure, New Trier is an awesome school with huge academic success rates, but when it comes to relating to kids that aren't from anywhere like the North Shore, we struggle. Many kids who live here don't really know what it feels like to not fit in, because so much is provided for us. In my opinion this is a problem, because when kids like us enter the "real world," and interact with people outisde the North Shore that live a completely different lifestyle, we won't be fully equipped to relate to other people. We have been so conditioned to think in a mindset and act in a way that is perfectly acceptable for life here, but makes it hard to succeed socially and in other aspects in the outside world.

CPS Strike

It seemed like it was a pretty good ending to the Chicago teacher's strike. Both sides earned some victories and they were able to compromise. However, now that it's over, there are still a lot of articles coming out on how there are lasting implications, and that its not compltely resolved. Something that caught my eye was this article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/20/chicago-teachers-strike-i_0_n_1900087.html. It was basically talking about how there are still questions relating to the public school and the union. B. Jason Brooks, research director at the Foundation for Education Reform and Accountability, said that it was a trimph for unions nationally because they "were looking for something to claim as a victory, and I think this gives them what they looking for. But as the country looked at this, it might have reinforced the notion that unions are standing in the way of turning around the lowest-performing schools." This really made me think. I wasn't really sure how I felt about the strike when it happened, but this article has made me more opposed to it than supportive. I don't think the strike was the right thing for the teacher's union to do. In the long run, it just created more problems, and, like Brooks said, was just another distraction that will make improving public schools harder. Right now, people need to be focusing on the actual schools and the children that attend them more than the fact that they feel they should be paid a little more. I'm not saying the teachers were being exactly selfish, because I'm sure they had good reason, but I feel the students and improving the school should take more priority. For some of these kids, the only meal they get is at school. Many kids can easily get caught up in trouble in their neighborhoods when they're not in school. Some kid's parents are never around to watch them during the day because they're working. Basically, for many of the CPS students, school isn't just school for them. They depend on it so much because it's a place for them to go to have structure in their lives. I feel that this strike, as well just keeping the kids out of school for a week, in general just created another distraction from the main goal: to improve these struggling school so that the students can have a better chance at education and success in their lives.
What do you think about the strike? Now that it's over, do you think in general it was a positive or negative thing?

No Happy Ending???

The discussion we had in class last week about the article written by Kurt Vonnegut really interested me. I felt that the graphs he made really matched up with how story endings really are in different cultures. I was able to relate to this because in the past, I have seen both sides of the spectrum and was able to compare them. When I was younger, my class did a unit where we read a lot of different Cinderella stories, each one a different version from a different country. Obviously all of them had the same general idea, but they weren't all completely the same. Most of them had happy endings when Cinderella ended up with the prince, but I remember the Native American version had the biggest impact on my by far because it was so different than what I was expecting. It was a story called The Turkey Girl, and it was the story of Cinderella adapted from the Zuni tribe. In this version, the main character, the turkey girl, gets help from some turkeys so that she can attend the festival. However, she ends up forgetting the time and loses out in the end. I distinctly remember the feeling of shock I had when I read the last page. I just kind of sat there staring at the last page for a couple minutes, dumbfounded at the fact that a Cinderella story could possibly end that way. I remember that it upset me a little bit, because I was so used to the main character winning in the end. Looking back on this, I think it's a really good example of how modern culture, US culture in particular, has ingrained a kind of expectation for a "happy" ending. Just like in the excerpt we read from Kurt Vonnegut, all the examples of American stories had the graph drawn up at the end, showing that there main character ended with good fortune. However, in the Kafka story, the graph ends going down, into the "ill fortune" area. I find it very interesting that we grow up believing that every story's ending will be a happy end, and even into adulthood we rarely encounter a movie or novel that has a unhappy ending. Have you encountered a story of any kind that ends in ill fortune for the main characters? What was your reaction to it? Were you surprised? In general, do you think this expectation our culture has created for a positive ending to every story is a positive or negative thing?

The Emotional Side of the Election

While looking around the New York Times website this weekend, an article that really caught my eye was titled, "Emotional Ties to Obama May Be Central to the Election." If you want to read the whole article, click here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/us/politics/romney-battles-americans-attachment-to-obama.html?pagewanted=all. Generally, it was talking about how Obama may have an edge on Romney because of America's emotional attachment to our last president. People are much more familiar with him. Many see Mitt Romney as this rich, emotionally disconnected man who hasn't been able to form the same kind of personal bonds with Americans that Obama was able to do so well. According to the article, one of the main obstacles Mitt Romney has to overcome is breaking through the comfort people feel with Obama, and reminding them that in many people's eyes, Obama's presidency was not all it was cracked up to be. However, this will not necessarily be enough to persuade people to forget about him. Many voters are disappointed in Obama, but that doesn't take away their hope in him that he can be more effective the second time around. In the words of Mark McKinnon, a former strategist for Bush, "It may be a bad marriage, but [Americans] still want to save it." The Republican party is obviously trying to paint these emotional reasons for continual support of Obama in a bad light. However, it got me thinking, is the fact that Americans might vote for him again because of their loyalty and hope for him really such a foolish thing to do? When I asked my mom about her opinion on this matter, she said she feels the same way as the people the article is describing. She plans on voting for Obama again because she remains loyal to him, and under the circumstances he faced when he was brought into office in 2008, she believes he can be better this time around. The way these people are feeling aren't just silly emotions like the Republican party is making them out to be. These people still believe in him, not just because of the personal attachment to him, but because they know that he has so much potential to be a great president and that he will reach his full potential if he gets another chance.
What do you think about all of this? Do you think the connection people feel to Obama and the belief that he can improve is enough a reason for people to vote for him again? Or do you think Americans need to look at  this with a more critical eye, and realize that personal connections don't necessarily mean Obama will be any better than he was the past 4 years? Leave your suggestions in the comments!