Second Semester Meta Post

Here we are, at the end of the school year. And as always, looking back proves to be both unnerving and exciting as I see, one last time, how weird the year has been. Fortunately, there are always good experiences to hold on to and bring with you, and this years has had many.

In my own blog, I have seen better and worse, but there is just one example that I feel really summarizes my writing this past quarter/semester. Of all of my writing, I feel my efforts are best seen in my blog, A Tall Demand for Education.

For me, this blog covers the key things I try to achieve in writing a good blog post. I always try to, not always with success, keep the topic relevant and contemporary. In this particular post, I write about a recent event for a very well known figure, Shaq, when he got his doctorate in education. Furthermore, with a topic of education, it was very relevant to some discussions about college that we were having in class at the time of the post.

Additionally, I tried to keep the post clear and concise. The post was relatively short, and I don't feel like I repeated myself or made things redundant at all. With the exception of a highlighting glitch, it reads easily, is attractive to look at, and things are visually emphasized when needed.

In many of my posts this year, I tried to keep things focused on more critical issues, and pressing matters in the status quote. In talking about educations' importance in America, I feel like the post about Shaquille O'Neal is just one of many examples of when I talked about importance issues that trends all across of America. More importantly, I feel like I have addressed issues in addressing issues, such as general themes of correlation vs causation and  alternatives.

A Little Closer

Often times in not just my blog, but in many of my fellow class mates, bad news, social conflicts, and general negative critiques are written about, all with there own just dues. But for now, I bring good news, good news that might impact thousands of lives of American's and people across the world.

A recent ABC News article reports of one drug that shows promise in the medical world. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine gave some very positive results of a new drug intended to shrink the size of cancer tumors. Yes, the study reports that in 18% of the patients on whom the drug was tested, at least a 30% reduction in cancer size was witnessed. While it may seem like a small benefit, in this field of science and medicine, these results are quite good, especially with the fact that these were patients whose condition's weren't improving with standard chemotherapy treatment. The article adds, "Cancer specialists said the fact that the drug caused tumors to shrink, rather than simply to stop growing, is an important measure of success."

 And here is  where you would expect the reports to drop the bad news, saying that in 50% of the patients had added heart problems and fatality, but that is not the case. Despite the small sample size of 240 patients, relative to other medicines, "14 percent of patients in the trial reported conditions such as skin rashes, diarrhea or breathing problems." Compare this with the ads you see on TV which warns that their product might induce heart failure, etc. these results are far in favor for a cancer-preventing, life-saving drug.

So while this new drug certainly can't be claimed to be the end of cancer, it marks significant progress in the medical field, and promises more good news to the families whose lives have been changed and afflicted by cancer.

Oakland: The Next Wild, WIld West?

The Occupy Wall Street movement was the first to reach media publicity, and after that other 'Occupy' protests and marches followed.

For us in the Chicagoland area know the of the Occupy Chicago protest, one which held the same basic values of the Occupy Wall Street, and kept the same non-violence as its predecessor. Up until now, I have no problem with this kind of act. It is for the most part legal, people voicing their oppinion, and while I personally think that their demands and intentions are very hazy and poorly operated, I must still respect their actions. However, recent Occupy Oakland events have me startle. As I read in this BBC Article , what started as a fairly peaceful 'Occupy' initiative turned into what I would consider a full on riot.

As the article reports, "Protests on Wednesday were largely peaceful until around midnight local time, when some of the protesters reportedly set a barricade on fire."

However, the protesters did not stop there, BBC quoted reports  the police saying they gave the order to fire tear gas and bean bags "following repeated orders for the crowd to disperse" and in the face of "continued assaults by rocks, lit flares, roman candles and bottles" While no formal number was provided, the primary damage estimates were valued to be around one million. Also, human damages were also listed-around five protesters were hospitalized-including an Iraq War veteran.

While many public officials were upset with the protest-turned-riot in Oakland, other members of the 99% movement said they, too, were disapointed. Comments like, "I think it will allow detractors to criticise the movement," and, "It's messing with our movement," are not far from earshot.

I'm all for freedom to assemble and right to free speech, but when people take and abuse these priviledges and use them to incite harm and violence, no matter what they are saying, I'm not sure if I could ever support something like this incident. What do you think? Is there any justification for these actions? Did they take it too far?

*Note* This was originally published in November. Reposted in addition to recent protest blog. 

Illegitimizing Protesting

A lot of talk has been going around about the NATO summit last week, mostly about how effective the Chicago police were from the news outlets. In our American Studies class, we talked about this sort of
construction, and how many sources failed to adequately report on the actually 'demands' or reasons why the people were protesting. This, our class called unfair.

But I'm not really sure how unfair it was on the reporter's parts. First of all, what were they supposed to say. There were so many different reasons for why people were protesting, with so many nuanced opinion, it would have been impossible for any single new outlet to fairly represent them all. Furthermore, it would have been impossible, I feel, for the newspapers to 'adequately' report on the opinions of the protesters without making some of the protester's arguments for them. In my opinion, it is not the job of media and news outlets to spread the message for them.

The second reason why I feel the decisions made by the newspapers were more or less justified, is an illegitimization of the protests. This is certainly more prevalent in other protests, it can still be seen in some way in this recent example. In the case of many anti-war protests, it's always ironic when protests turn violent in one way or another. The Oakland occupy movement's image was very discredited when general riots, looting and violence broke out across the city. While the NATO summit's protesters were not as extreme as Oakland, any amount of disruption, spray painting, or prompting clashes with the police tarnishes all of the protesters image, and in many people's views, which could include various news outlets, discredits the protester's cause.

While, of course, the news are always looking for the exciting, juicy stories, maybe there is a deeper, more thoughtful, meaning behind the newspaper's decisions of what to write about.

A Tall Demand for Education

Quite recently, basketball icon Shaquille O'Neal earned his doctorate degree in education from Barry University. While this event does not just mark a significant achievement for Shaq himself, we can see an overarching idea across america, a drive for education.

Many blogs I've seen recently talk about the importance of education, and many of them are right. Education is something that near all Americans strive for. College also represents a vast distance between economic and social class, and can be seen as a means to bridge that gap. For many, college is more than just a piece of paper and some letters after the name.

For Shaquille, it was three things, reports ABC news:

 “One, I promised my parents I would [follow my passion for education]. Two, I wanted to continue my education and three, I wanted to challenge myself."

Shaquille O'Neal, a man with much recognition already, stands for what many American's believe in, achieving higher education. While many would have stopped at the bachelor degree or masters, Shaq drives home the point that education is both important and rewarding, with many traveling in his footsteps.

How important is college for most people? What kind of pressures are people facing to go to college? Who else is setting examples as Shaq did?

Causation vs. Correlation

Some may call it overused, some may say it is an important lesson, but either way, the phrase "Causation is not correlation," is applicable in many, many situations.

In fact, I would go to say that this is the most common logical fallacy people make. It comes up everywhere.

I do public forum debate, and for each topic, there will be one argument made at least once every round throughout the topic. For the January topic: "The cost of a college education outweighs the benefits," this argument was causation vs. correlation. In the over 25 rounds that I debated the topic, causation was brought up in every single one.

To be more specific, a common contention was that people who go to college make more money. The go to answer for this was, 'Our opponents have not proven a causal link, simply a correlation.' Now, this was in many cases true, people simply weren't bringing up evidence that had causality. Even though, in this instance, the causal link is rather fundamentally clear (degrees), it was still an important thing to point out to the judge in the debate round.

But more recently, namely the junior theme, I have found causation vs correlation to be a reoccurring issue in many of the arguments written or seen written. For example, for my question, "why is there increased public support for legalizing marijuana," one of my explanations has to do with an increase in positively shown pot on TV. It is true that notably more lax portrayals of marijuana increased with public support of legalization, but that is as far as one can conclusively tie together the two phenoms. It simply is impossible to find anything proving any sort of causal link.

And this isn't the only example I've come across in writing my junior theme, but to explain them all hear would make my paper redundant. To what extent have you encountered such a problem? To what extent do you think it is a common problem in general?

Young, Wild, and Free?

I was looking at an article about support of the legalization of marijuana, which my junior theme is about, and I came across some peculiar statistics. This 2011 Gallup article looked at the demographics of one of their surveys, and the results were more drastic than expected. For instance, "Liberals are twice as likely as conservatives to favor legalizing marijuana." Sure, I expected Liberals to be more, well, liberal with such a thing, but by that much? Really?

Perhaps the second most shocking piece of information, and not too far behind first, was the age differences. Disapproval of legalization increased with age. 18 to 29 year-olds were the second most approving group with 62% approval, right behind Liberals. and even more shockingly, 50-64 year-olds were below 50%, and the 65 and older group were the lowest at just 31% approval. Why does this seem so shocking, you might ask. Well, this was the generation that was supposed to part of the largest druggy movement/population ever. With things like Woodstock, long hair and tie-dyed shirts, this age group should be totally for such legalization, right?

Well, apparently not. It seems that some people aren't young forever, and they grow up and their opinions change. And maybe that age group wasn't as druggy after all, and our perceptions are blurred by a few grossly enlarged events. But still, whatever laws might be placed in the future, and whatever sways in public opinion might be ahead of us, we can see now, that maybe the younger people will always be this way. The free, the careless; they might always be a bit more ahead of their time. They certainly are newer.