Alternate Energy Incentives

After researching for our company Sun-Glo, I realized how clever some state governments are being in increasing the amount of alternate energy use in their specific states. New York for example, is offering several financial incentives to it's citizens if they use more solar power.

Citizens can get cash incentives for installing home solar systems(which according to some articles can be up to 2,000 dollars!) They can also receive tax credits and property tax exemptions. The state of Connecticut has initiated a Connecticut Clean Energy Fund that offers grant money to businesses and schools that go green. This fund also creates the Solar Lease Program which plans to provide 100% financing for the installation of approximatley 1,000 home solar systems over a three year period.

In my opinion, state governments themselves taking the initiative to help this country gradually become independent of nonrenewable resources is great. Using financial incentives is a great way to increase the amount of people using alternative energy. Now, not only is alternate energy more sensible but it's also more/equally financially sound. :)

Swine Flu... A Big Deal?

Swine flu is the recent epidemic that is rapidly spreading across the nation and the world. According to the CDC there are a total of 64 lab confirmed cases as of April 28th. But people....is it as big of a deal as it seems? Or is this just a up close and personal exposure of the media's power to manipulate a news story? Let's look at the facts:

For one, did you know the normal flu strain causes roughly 35,000 deaths a year?

This swine flu for the month or so it has been going on has only caused 26 deaths since it began. According to the Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano, this swine flu strain is moderate but will spread. Yet somehow, the media initially portrayed it as a huge deal. This flu kills less people than the regular flu yet for some reason the entire Huntsville school system was shut down for up to seven days when an elementary school child was found with the swine flu. Trussville's band was quarantined because they just got back from a trip from Mexico. So, if I make a big deal about......strep throat.... will people quarantine themselves and stop going to school? With the media's help, I bet you it would work.

Science of Fear

This past weekend I flew to San Francisco and back. With Mr. Beitelman's lecture on the science of fear fresh on my mind, I actually for the first time felt a little scared when the flight took off. I never get scared when flying but for the first time, I imagined the plane losing control and plummeting towards the ground. I thought about dying because I was blown apart by the force of the plane hitting the ground. Whew, believe me it was not a pleasant thought. It's funny what thoughts of death can lead to. I began to think about which one I would prefer: instant death or prolonged death. Who knows. Through instant death you can die with the pain of an instant rather than a century. However, you can't say bye to the one's you love or accomplish those last minute necessary tasks. Prolonged death allows you to do that, but what would life be like if you were constantly reminded that it was soon going to end? Those of us who don't know when and how we are going to die live without accepting the reality of death. And one day, it hits us that at some point all that we have ever known will vanish. It's scary!

Haha, I cannot believe I went through all of this within those first 10 minutes of the plane ride. Eventually, my conclusion was: thinking about this could drive a person insane. So I shoved it from my mind.

On a side note: Ironically, on my back to Birmingham, I sat next to an Air Force pilot who was talking about how his worst flight was the flight he took right after learning about all of the malfunctions that could happen with a plane. :)

Youth for Western Civilization

So I was recently accepted to Vanderbilt University. I recently attended a multicultural accepted students recruitment weekend and absolutely fell in love with it. However, last week I encountered some startling news. Vanderbilt has recently approved a new student group, entitled Youth for Western Civilization. The group's motto is to preserve Western culture. In Clint's terms, it's a white pride group. Which, technically is not a bad idea. However, I believe this group has become an excuse for racism. According to one article, the group "sponsored a ‘Koran desecration contest,’ jokingly threatened to distribute small-pox infected blankets to Native American students, posted 'Gays spread AIDS' fliers, and called Latino students and faculty members ‘savages". Now that's not right.

Clint and I discussed this... in depth, and well basically in my opinion, white pride groups should be allowed. if there are Indian pride groups and black pride groups and all sorts of other pride groups, why can't there be a white pride group? The problem with this, is that, in all honesty white pride groups come off as racist because...well white people have historically been blamed for being racist (while all other racist people have somehow been overlooked) and the majority of them actually are racist. I also....I know I'm beginning to rant, but hey this stuff is interesting...started to think about the definition of white culture. We all know about black culture which isn't dependent on religion at all, and I for one know of a whole lot of Indian culture that isn't dependent on  religion. What is white culture? I'm sure it exists, but somehow I feel like it's never promoted in any way. Interesting question, in my opinion. Honestly, in conclusion, I feel like white culture is always demoted in the efforts to "equalize" other races/cultures/religions. Stuff like affirmative action in current times, or random lawsuits for supposed "racism" are all signs of reverse discrimination in my opinion.  The word racism is definitley taken advantage of nowadays. And yet it's hard to picture people protesting for "white rights...". hmmmmmmm....

Genetically Modified Foods

GMO's are definitley intriguing. They seem to be the perfect solution to the world's problems, yet a lot of people completely disagree with the concept of GMO's.

In my opinion, if we can make plants retain more water, produce bigger fruits, etc, why not?

Several people have a problem with destroying the "natural qualities" of the plant. I'm pretty sure they're not going to have that problem when food shortages become a problem.

We've abused too many of our resources before, only to realize the problems now. Water and Coal are just a few. Do we really want to mess with food too? Why can't we realize the problem in advance and fix it?

I was wondering what some of the costs of GMO's were, so I looked it up. The article below gives a whole list. Besides the safety issues, the others seem like bogus to me.

What do you think?

http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/gmfood.shtml

5 ways People try the save the World that Don't Work?

http://www.cracked.com/article_17084_5-ways-people-are-trying-save-world-that-dont-work.html

Please read this article.

I found this article both interesting and amusing. I don't know how accurate he/she is, but I definitley do not agree with him when it comes to recycling.

According to the author, recycling is bad because it requires more labor to do? But isn't that a good thing? We always need more jobs. Furthermore, he says that recycling is not necessary because we're increasing the amount of trees on the planet? I'm glad the number of trees has increased, even though I don't know if that's true, but I don't think that's a reason not to recycle. It's always helpful to have more paper, that way we don't have cut down all those trees we plant to make up for the trees we cut down earlier.

As for the organic food, I don't know what to think. What do you think?

Westboro Baptist Church

I'd say one of the biggest challenges of all time has always been acceptance. People just cannot accept it when people believe differently from them.

One of the biggest examples of this is the Westboro Baptist Church.

This church is the proud founder of the two sites: godhatesfags.com and godhatesamerica.com

They stand outside of soldier's funerals, picketting and celebrating the deaths because they believe those who die, deserve it because their sin.

They believe because our nation allows homosexuals, stuff like Hurricane Katrina and 9/11 happen.

this youtube video is probably the most enraging thing I have ever seen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9dD9v2cIMU

All I have to say is it's very important to accept the beliefs of others. Respect for other cultures is just a must. You don't have to believe what they believe, but you have no right to abuse them for their beliefs.

Water, Water, Water

Although I love taking long,warm, steamy showers every so often(usually every day), it's something that I confess I should not do. After this week and the other lectures I've heard on water from Mr. Reardon, I'm slowly beginning to realize the benefits of being efficient with water use. First off, water is essential to life. Secondly, water is either slowly going away, or it's quality is undrinkable. So it is obvious we need to start changing the way we use water. We've been taking our resources for granted, and now we're going to have to change our methods fast before ultimate doom(not to be to dramatic).

Besides the fact that we will ruin the world if we keep using water inefficiently the way we are right now, using water efficiently is also smart financially. One of the LEED schools my group and I looked at during our research had saved $11,500 dollars on water costs annually since they became LEED certified. Moreover, they only had 37 LEED points, which is about half of the maximum points. So, in conclusion, becoming green is probably a good idea and just a tad bit necessary for our survival.

More on Branding

After today's discussion, I feel compelled to add more to my comments on branding. To me, marketing and advertising are necessary for any company's survival. As Clint said, if people will not buy the "sugar free" Trix, why should we expect General Mills to produce it? It's not the company's fault, it's ours! If we don't buy healthy food, no company is going to produce it. I don't think it is written in any company's goal's "list" to make people unhealthy and obese. It makes no sense. They do what they have to do to make their company survive. Can you blame them? Sure they use "pathos" to make people buy their goods. Have we ever thought that maybe they put "good source of calcium" on the Trix box to make people feel better about buying foods they wouldn't buy if the foods were actually healthy? This is a societal problem, not a marketing problem. If you have a problem with a company's marketing methods, you have a problem with the society that forces them to make money to live. Marketing isn't something that's going away anytime soon. It's the mindset and tastebuds of society you need to change, if that's even possible.

The Media and Branding

So when it comes to the media, I'm more of a computer/internet person. I'd like to think that, this means that I'm not exposed to all the commericials and ads as a person who watches TV all the time, but sadly that is not the case. Anywhere you go online, you get ads about all sorts of products. From my yahoo mail box, for instance, I can see ads about Quicken online payroll, Equifax ID control, Ookisa hair products, the University of Phoenix, etc. Something else I'd like to mention is all online video sites, minus youtube. Just yesterday, we were complaining that every video we watched on hulu.com had the same commercial in front of it. Although it seems annoying, it's actually a good method of advertising because it sticks in your brain. So yes. I would leave a link for this but if you want an example of what I'm talking about....go to www.hulu.com or www.nbc.com and watch a video. :)

This Blessed House

I really enjoyed this short story. The alarming difference between Twinkle and Sanjeev is really interesting. Twinkle is a relativist, because she is tolerant of other religions. Sanjeev is definitley a fundamentalist because he is not tolerant at allllll of other religions. Twinkle is able to see value in things other people see value in, and Sanjeev is not.

I'd like to add in my perspective when it comes to Hinduism and this story. One of the main things I've had embedded in me as a Hindu is a respect for other cultures. So I find it extremely interesting that Sanjeev is so disrespectful towards the Christian religion.

In summary, Twinkle is awesome and knows her Hinduism.  Sanjeev is just bitter and needs to get over himself. :)

Culture

I must admit, Mr. Beitelman's lecture on culture really introduced me to a whole other view of culture that I've never really considered. When I think culture, I usually think along the lines of "heritage" or "a way of life." I never thought "cultured" could become a hierarchical(is that a word?) term to distinguish the elite from the not so elite. 

Although the lecture was interesting, I think there are so many challenges that come along with the idea of culture that we did not talk about. For example, what about unawareness of other cultures? Or possibly the unacceptance of different views? Perhaps, the confusion many, including myself, have when it comes to differentiating between religion and culture(mine overlap quite a bit)?

There are some interesting forums on this topic:

http://thisismauritius.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=403&Itemid=73

Enjoy!

Welcome To My Blog, First Things First: Literacy & Education

Hello all! I'm so excited about finally starting this blog. I have a lot of opinions about a lot of different 21st century challenges that I'm ready to share!

One of the 21st century challenges that I have been interested in recently is literacy in the U.S. and around the world. I don't think we are covering this topic in class, but it is one that I think is definitley worth considering. In a developed country such as ours, it's hard to believe that so many people live and work everyday without a proper education, but to me, the lack of education is the root cause of so many other 21st century challenges.

Here are some startling statistics I've come across: 

- more than 30 million people in the U.S. are functionally illiterate.

- of those 30 million, 15 million are part of our workforce!!!! What does that say about the quality of our work?

Like I mentioned before, so many problems arise from the lack of a proper education:

- Unmarried teenage girls are 6 times more likely to get pregnant if they lack the ability to read.

- 90% of welfare recipients are high school dropouts

- 85% of juveniles found in court are functionally illiterate ( can't read or write)

The most astounding problem I've come across in learning about this 21st century challenge is that people who are illiterate avoid medical offices. Now that I think about it, it makes sense! How are we supposed to expect people who can't read to follow prescription instructions? Or sign medical forms? Recently, I've heard so many horror stories involving these situations. ABC news did a story on an illiterate woman who signed off on getting a hysterectomy while she was in the hospital, and had absolutely no idea! My mom saw a new story about a man who almost killed his daughter because he gave her 4 pills in an hour instead of "1 pill every 4 hours" like it said on the bottle.

Anyways, I've written a lot, but my point is still the same. Literacy is a huge problem that isn't easy to tackle. In my opinion, if we can figure out how to solve this problem, so many other big issues in our nation and around the world can be conquered. 

Here is an article I found on illiteracy that I think you all might enjoy:

http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/print_article.php?articleId=8763