Meta-Post

Looking back and reading my past blogs was an entertaining experience. I definitely noticed both changes and common threads in the topics of my posts. There were obvious visual changes as well.

Whereas some of my earliest posts lacked pictures and even titles in some cases, my more recent posts always have a picture and an attempt at a creative title. Not to mention the length of my paragraphs have become shorter. The combination of these changes were undoubtedly an attempt to gain a larger audience. I couldn't help but compare these alterations to those between the different editions of Frederick Douglass' narrative. He adds chapter titles and has shorter paragraphs in his later writing as well. The main reason for this is because we both shared a similar goal of getting as many people as possibly to read our writing.

As for the topics of my posts, I noticed that a good number of them criticize America, something I didn't realize I was doing so frequently. More often than not, my criticism involves comparisons to different countries. In my Stealing Sushi post I claim "Americans tend to draw the line of moral relativism later than other countries." In We're Number One? (the title speaks for itself), I note that the United States is the largest oil consumer and has the highest obesity rate. Even in my Happy Halloween!! post I claim other countries center this holiday more around family and question if we have "gone too far in commercializing Halloween."

At first after revisiting my old posts, I was concerned that I am sending one of those secret messages we talked about earlier in the year. That message being that America is bad country, and I hate living here- none of which are true. In reality, I think America is a great country ("Land of the Free," "Melting Pot," "Land of Opportunity" and all that). Perhaps my criticism is a sort of a tough love for the country because I know we can do better.

Heros in Waiting

Today on the Ellen Degeneres Show I saw a story that particularly caught my attention. About a week ago, a man with three children in the car was driving on an icy road and Utah and the car slid into an icy river and became submerged. The driver was able to escape but the three children were trapped inside. Immediately a dozen people who had witnessed the accident were diving in to help. Thankfully, after a lot of effort the three children were saved.

Ellen had this family on the show, along with the twelve people who helped save them. Deeming them heros, she rewarded them by giving them all the presents from her previous "Twelve Day Give Away" special, valued at over $30,000. What really interested me though was the conversation that took place prior to give away. 

The driver on the car mentioned that something he took away form this experience was that we are "surrounded by heros-in-waiting." This made me think about the conversation we had in class earlier in the year regarding heros. What motivates people act heroically? Does seeing acts such as these being generously rewarded on television perhaps increase peoples' willingness to act heroically? Are we all "heros-in-waiting" (some more so than others)?

[The full video from Ellen's show can be watched here]

Wealth-->Health

Over winter break my family visited a very close friend of ours in California who, I discovered on this particular visit, is now eighty-eight years old. With majority of my grandparents passing away before reaching eighty, it came as a shock to me that she is able to live independently and is still sharp as a tack.

To me she has always been the sweet, old lady who sends me generous checks on my birthday and around christmas time. Putting two and two together, I can't help but suspect that her long life span must have something to do with the fact that she is and always has been wealthy.

Supporting this idea, I found an article from USA Today which talks about a psychologist who has conducted experiments indicating that health is not only determined by your genes, but by "your income, education...address," and even "the status your parents had when you were small. [See article here] This notion makes sense to me because the wealthier a person, the more easily they have access to medical care. Since America is full of plenty of wealthy people one would expect the country's average life expectancy to be a high number. After looking into this, I was surprised to see that in the CIA World Factbook the United States had only the fiftieth highest life expectancy. You can see the rankings here.

Does this mean that in actuality health and wealth do not have a strong correlation? Is one's longevity based more solely on genetics? Why don't Americans have a higher life expectancy?

Occupy What Street?

"We are the 99%" a phrase that every American, even kids my age, recognize and associate with the Occupy Wall Street movement. Although very familiar with the idea of these protests, I think a lot of students (including myself) don't know the details behind the movement. Why exactly was Occupy Wall Street started? Who composes the one percent?

The website OccupyWallStreet says that the point of the movement is to challenge "the richest 1% of people that are writing the rules of an unfair global economy that is foreclosing on our future." According to this CNN article, in 2009 if you had an average income of $343,927 or above, you were considered to be in this top 1%

I had always believed that it took a much higher income to make the 1%. My estimated number was closer to a million dollars. Knowing that the average income of Winnetka residents is well above $200,000, I now think that it is not unlikely that many families living in this area qualify for the top 1%.


My preconceived judgment shows the lack of knowledge there is about the Occupy movement among students. About something that has even begun to take place within a half hour of our homes. Occupy Chicago has been going on for a few months now. We should be more informed about these protests, being that they are occurring so close to us. How informed are you?


In order to help spread awareness, my friend is actually working on a documentary about Occupy Wall Street. Watch the preview and see footage of Occupy Chicago here!