I chose to do my rotunda blog post on the poster about Starvation in America. It caught my eye with how well it was decorated and I was instantly intrigued. As I began to read, I was shocked with the statistics it displayed. More than 48 million Americans struggle to put food on their table, including about 16 million being children. 48 million people are barely making enough to eat. this number is huge, 48 million is 13 MORE million than the population of Canada.
According to the poster, this means that all these people are being affected mentally and physically with the effects of hunger. Starvation has been killing more people every year than AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria combined. Personally, I didn't know it was that big of a problem. This poster made me realized that not everyone has the opportunity to eat everyday or provide their families with food to get them through the day. People just think eating is apart of everyday life and comes easy, just go in the refrigerator and choose what you want to eat. But, when you change your perspective, you will realize that providing food can be a struggle, and currently is for millions of people just in America.
http://countryeconomy.com/demography/population/canada
Caravaggio, The Taking of Christ, 1602
Tenebrism
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Rotunda Response on Bias
My response is directed towards Laura's project. For those of you who don't remember, hers was called "Get the Facts" or something along those lines. And honestly it was by far one of the most revealing projects, which really is saying something being that I thought multiple were extremely interesting (I was going back and forth between this and the Iraq War poster) But there's a reason the Get The Facts project resonated in me the most, and it was in the subtitle. "Opinions of Honor Students." Then when you're eyes scroll down the page, you get a feeling that I'd describe as a cross between laughing in disbelief and a getting nauseous over nervousness for the future. These students, honor students at that, summed up an issue in our society that's likely to tear us apart, without even knowing it. The issue is more than just misinformation. It's opposition to information. It's holding on to your own misinformation, playing dumb to any and all contradicting facts or evidence, simply because it's yours.
I'm not going to claim to be unbiased, because I'm not whatsoever. To get it out there flatly I'm pretty obviously left-wing, even though I try to see the merit in other political ideologies. The problem is, not only is that something rare to come by, it's increasingly difficult. Obviously political polarization is at it's peak right now. You have Fox News and MSNBC peddling whatever news they're political sponsors pay for. And you can tell people this all you want, it's not going to stop them from preaching it at every opportunity. Because who cares about a bias, if it's your bias, then it must be the right bias. But the real problem, the shockingly dangerous problem, lies in the implications of holding onto bias in the face of fact. The poster displayed this better than anything.
Believe what you want. But take fact into account. It's increasingly difficult for me to sit still at the systemic ignorance Fox pushes, that should go without say I guess and you can entirely disagree if you want. But when it's an issue that will harm us, everyone, if the ignorance towards it persists, it hard not to point out the bias being taken to an absurd extent. 50% of honor students believed global warming does not exist. Period. Now had they been informed by anything other than the selective reporters on Murdoch's payroll, they probably would have known that that issue has already been compromised. Even the Republicans now admit to global warming. The cause of it is now the debated area, but that doesn't matter. I'm not blaming anyone for not believing in it, I really blame the source the misinformation knowingly comes from, but there's still an amount of personal responsibility that comes with holding/preaching an opinion, especially if that opinion is rooted in Big Oil's pocket-politicians anti-intellectual propaganda.
It's not difficult to see this trend in history. Whenever there's progression, there's backlash. For every action there's an equal and opposite reaction, etc. It's fairly easy to look to scientists, the people in the world we should trust more than anyone, and come away with the realization we're harming our planet. It's easy to see we're living in an equivalent of a widespread SCOPES trial. Even further, it's easy to look at undeniable facts surrounding global warming (Carbon levels, tree rungs, sentiment analysis, ice caps melt rate, temperature charts, comparisons with the "natural cycles" of the past, ect ect.) that 97% of climatologists agree point to human causation. To put that into perspective, and this is the real kicker here, that's literally the same percentage of scientists that agree on evolution over creationism.
So why, in the face of fact, do many still view global warming as a 50/50 debate? Well technically if it didn't interfere with the business of Big Oil that runs this country and it's politicians the information age would have put it to rest long ago. But that's unfortunately not the case, and the longer we promote anti-intellectual thinking through bias the more harm we'll cause to ourselves and generations to come. Politicians are bought and paid for, Inequality for All proved that in our own class. They pay for the news. The news will pedal whatever the politicians want, who will pedal whatever the money wants. That's only one step of the problem though. Blindly repeating and following whatever they say as fact because of your bias, I don't care what issue it is, perpetuates this state of ignorance in our society that's starting to feel unavoidable. It can be stopped, but that would take realizing and consciously acting against our own bias. And that's not something most people would think to do, let alone even want to.
So, anyway, global warming's just one of many issues to point out our progressing ignorance in this country. It doesn't have to be a left-right issue, in fact it shouldn't, but we're too busy feeding into our bias to see that. You would think the information age would be a cure to this kind of behavior, but bias is what's perpetuating it. And this can go towards a multitude of issues, many of which seen in the poster this is a response to. All the information you could want is in your pocket, but you don't want it.
I want to end this with what I think is a perfect representation actually calling out the systemic bias and selective information that's plaguing America. It's from the Daily Show (Which is left wing, yeah.) I'm gonna miss Jon Stewart:
http://on.cc.com/1Ocmd71
I'm not going to claim to be unbiased, because I'm not whatsoever. To get it out there flatly I'm pretty obviously left-wing, even though I try to see the merit in other political ideologies. The problem is, not only is that something rare to come by, it's increasingly difficult. Obviously political polarization is at it's peak right now. You have Fox News and MSNBC peddling whatever news they're political sponsors pay for. And you can tell people this all you want, it's not going to stop them from preaching it at every opportunity. Because who cares about a bias, if it's your bias, then it must be the right bias. But the real problem, the shockingly dangerous problem, lies in the implications of holding onto bias in the face of fact. The poster displayed this better than anything.
Believe what you want. But take fact into account. It's increasingly difficult for me to sit still at the systemic ignorance Fox pushes, that should go without say I guess and you can entirely disagree if you want. But when it's an issue that will harm us, everyone, if the ignorance towards it persists, it hard not to point out the bias being taken to an absurd extent. 50% of honor students believed global warming does not exist. Period. Now had they been informed by anything other than the selective reporters on Murdoch's payroll, they probably would have known that that issue has already been compromised. Even the Republicans now admit to global warming. The cause of it is now the debated area, but that doesn't matter. I'm not blaming anyone for not believing in it, I really blame the source the misinformation knowingly comes from, but there's still an amount of personal responsibility that comes with holding/preaching an opinion, especially if that opinion is rooted in Big Oil's pocket-politicians anti-intellectual propaganda.
It's not difficult to see this trend in history. Whenever there's progression, there's backlash. For every action there's an equal and opposite reaction, etc. It's fairly easy to look to scientists, the people in the world we should trust more than anyone, and come away with the realization we're harming our planet. It's easy to see we're living in an equivalent of a widespread SCOPES trial. Even further, it's easy to look at undeniable facts surrounding global warming (Carbon levels, tree rungs, sentiment analysis, ice caps melt rate, temperature charts, comparisons with the "natural cycles" of the past, ect ect.) that 97% of climatologists agree point to human causation. To put that into perspective, and this is the real kicker here, that's literally the same percentage of scientists that agree on evolution over creationism.
So why, in the face of fact, do many still view global warming as a 50/50 debate? Well technically if it didn't interfere with the business of Big Oil that runs this country and it's politicians the information age would have put it to rest long ago. But that's unfortunately not the case, and the longer we promote anti-intellectual thinking through bias the more harm we'll cause to ourselves and generations to come. Politicians are bought and paid for, Inequality for All proved that in our own class. They pay for the news. The news will pedal whatever the politicians want, who will pedal whatever the money wants. That's only one step of the problem though. Blindly repeating and following whatever they say as fact because of your bias, I don't care what issue it is, perpetuates this state of ignorance in our society that's starting to feel unavoidable. It can be stopped, but that would take realizing and consciously acting against our own bias. And that's not something most people would think to do, let alone even want to.
So, anyway, global warming's just one of many issues to point out our progressing ignorance in this country. It doesn't have to be a left-right issue, in fact it shouldn't, but we're too busy feeding into our bias to see that. You would think the information age would be a cure to this kind of behavior, but bias is what's perpetuating it. And this can go towards a multitude of issues, many of which seen in the poster this is a response to. All the information you could want is in your pocket, but you don't want it.
I want to end this with what I think is a perfect representation actually calling out the systemic bias and selective information that's plaguing America. It's from the Daily Show (Which is left wing, yeah.) I'm gonna miss Jon Stewart:
http://on.cc.com/1Ocmd71
Rotunda Project (blog # 11)
The rotunda was filled with excellent projects during the month of March, but the one that caught my eye was " Get The Facts" by Laura Kesnig. I found this project to be very interesting and clever due to the fact she asked honor students 5 questions an american should know the answers to but the majority of them didn't, for 2 questions 90% of the people answered incorrectly, for another 2 questions around 90% answered correctly, and the other one was half and half. To be completely honest i only knew the answer to 3 of the 5 questions. what i found funny from this project is that 90% answered incorrectly to the question " why did officer Wilson shoot Michael Brown?" the reason i found it funny is people in the school and on social media kept talking about this incident. Laura is completely right as she stated in her conclusion " don't trust that everything you hear is factual, do your own research and studies". All i have left to say is that it was a well done project and i enjoyed learning the information.
David Sherlock
Blog 11 Rotunda
When I saw this project it instantly caught my eye. It is a creative way to show the poverty across Long Island. As it goes further down the Island the poverty percentage has a significant decrease. The thumb tacks are a great representation that is easy to visualize, it shows the people with a blind eye towards poverty what is happening in front of them. I love the idea of this project it was easy to see and understand. Hopefully this made people more aware to the situation and willing to help.
Monday, March 30, 2015
Rotunda Blog
I chose to comment on Nick Collins' rotunda presentation on genocide for this post. Genocide often seems to be a rare occurrence, with the only two commonly mentioned the Holocaust of the 1930's and 40's, and the Armenian genocide of the 1910's. While these two mass-murders may be among the most deadly, genocide is still occurring in today's world, although it may not be in areas as populated or central to the globe as Germany and Armenia. The murder of over 8,000 by the government of Bosnia in the mid-1990's still horribly bloody, yet I bet many of you readers have hardly even heard of it. I am glad Nick highlighted one of the other major genocides in recent history, the Rwandan genocide of 1994, in which large scores of Tutsi were killed by their government; between 500,000 and 1 million were killed in the 100 day period, beginning in April.
Genocide is a horrific form of murder, made possible only by the most disturbed, deranged, and completely evil beings on the Earth. Taking one life brings a toll on the killer; to be responsible for the deaths of millions, one must be extremely ignorant or inhuman. I wish there were a better way to explain the emotion of the interior but as Joseph Conrad wrote "We live as we dream--alone." There is absolutely no way to fathom the insanity, the blood lust, the heartlessness, or the killing, unless you perform it. Even then though you are ultimately alone, as you are not a carbon copy of one of the famed killers. Although we can not experience genocide, we must indeed understand the horror and evil nature of the act, so future generations will not need to experience this horrible affliction.
Genocide is a horrific form of murder, made possible only by the most disturbed, deranged, and completely evil beings on the Earth. Taking one life brings a toll on the killer; to be responsible for the deaths of millions, one must be extremely ignorant or inhuman. I wish there were a better way to explain the emotion of the interior but as Joseph Conrad wrote "We live as we dream--alone." There is absolutely no way to fathom the insanity, the blood lust, the heartlessness, or the killing, unless you perform it. Even then though you are ultimately alone, as you are not a carbon copy of one of the famed killers. Although we can not experience genocide, we must indeed understand the horror and evil nature of the act, so future generations will not need to experience this horrible affliction.
Rotunda Blog 11
A project that caught my eye was the one done about texting and driving. This is something that not only puts your own life in dangers but it does to anyone on the road around you. I believe that this is something done to often even if it is against the law. People everyday are always looking down at their phones and not the road without care about the danger. Driving a car is a big responsibility and if you chose to be reckless and not care about people obeying the law then you should not be driving.
I have seen people close to me send a quick text at a light or even on the highway but it is rare. If i see my friends doing it i will ask them if they want me to text someone for them and say they are driving. That is always a good solution to stopping them putting others in danger. Another way to solve that problem is to just explain to them how dangerous it could be or just not get into a car with them.
This problem should not even be a thought in anyones mind. Car accidents could easily be prevented if people would just keep there eyes on the road. With all the new technology it is hard but it isnt worth the consequences you could pay for texting and driving.
I have seen people close to me send a quick text at a light or even on the highway but it is rare. If i see my friends doing it i will ask them if they want me to text someone for them and say they are driving. That is always a good solution to stopping them putting others in danger. Another way to solve that problem is to just explain to them how dangerous it could be or just not get into a car with them.
This problem should not even be a thought in anyones mind. Car accidents could easily be prevented if people would just keep there eyes on the road. With all the new technology it is hard but it isnt worth the consequences you could pay for texting and driving.
Blog #11 Rotunda Project Response
For my response, I chose the project done by Vin Stumpo, Shane Dennehy, Hannah Papa, and Dylan Demasi, "Is Social Media Ruining Society?". This project caught my attention due to its very relatable nature in today's day. Kids, teens, and even adults are effected by social media such as Twitter and Facebook every day. These sites, meant to be an outlet for feelings, daily events, and even a source of group communication, are becoming more and more of a place to bully and harass other people over the Internet. As they stated in the project, 95% of teens have witnessed cyber bullying and 33% have been victims. Personally, I have both witnessed and been a victim of cyber bullying along with many other people.
Not only is social media a sorce of bullying, but can be a cause of stress and anxiety for many people. Through comparing ourselves to others and seeing the ideas of a "perfect body", we experience stress and a level of self consciousness that no one should have to undergo.
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