SKULL and BARS

This week’s blog is a picture drawn by Michael Hogue it is about the death punishment. The cartoon is on page 360. The picture was first shown in The Dallas Mourning News The picture shows four squares that are black and white in the the top left box it shows a keyhole. In the top right box it shows a needle. In the bottom left box it shows a thumb pointing down. In the bottom right box it shows a thumb pointing up. In the middle of the top two boxes it shows a skull. It is showing the dessions on were a person may stand on the death penalty.

            I like the picture because it is not bias on were the artist stands on the topic of the Death penalty. It more or less just shows people a quick idea of where some people stand.  The odd thing about it was that the picture was introduced to a TX magazine one of the few states that still dose the death penalty.

 I take a very different stance on this subject. I think the death penalty should be offered to a person. I understand some people are not mentally stable in some people’s eyes. I don’t think that it is right if a person’s life is held into another person’s hands. I believe if they feel so wrong about what they did they should have the right to choose if they want to die now or rot in a cell. My stand point is that I would rather die now then spend the rest of my life in a cell.

SURGE it Back

This week I wanted to do a blog over this old discontinued soda called SURGE. I remember this soda when I was a kid and just recently found out that there has been a petition online since 2002. The reason I thought about this soda ten years after it was discontinued is because Coca Cola just recently in December of 2011 discontinued a soda called Vault.

            Apparently a lot of people who like SURGE thought Vault was the closest thing to SURGE since 2002. Unfortunately they also got rid of Vault. Which I personally did not think tasted the same. On the website savesurge.org you can sign the petition and they also have recipes for what some people think SURGE tasted like some of them are surprisingly good. Some people put anything from lemon juice to other sodas in their drinks.

            Another pretty cool thing about trying to bring back SURGE is that it won’t even take you but five seconds to type your name and why. Unfortunately it may not seem like it would make a difference because it has been dead for ten years. Like I said before since Vault got discontinued in 2011 the whole Surge petition got picked back up again. Vault was like coca cola’s way of saying oops we messed up. You can go to savesurge.org and or facebook.com to sign this petition. Since January of 2012 on Facebook alone people have gotten over 40,000 signatures online.

To See or Not To See

For the week nine blog I chose to do it over a political cartoon on page 380. The cartoon is focusing on gay marriages. The argument is that forty years ago we were complaining about inter- racial marriages. Now we are complaining about gay marriage. In the cartoon it shows in one panel label 1960 a large white man holding a picket sign label No inter- racial marriage. The man in the 1960 box is saying “We’re just protecting’ the sanctity of marriage.” Then in the other cartoon panel label 2000 it shows another large white man that looks almost identical to the man in the 1960 cartoon panel. He is in the exact same spot as the man in the 1960 panel, but instead of saying we are protecting the sanctity of marriage it just shows the man pointing at the man in the 1960 cartoon panel  just stating “…What he said.”

            I enjoyed reading this cartoon because the way I viewed it was what the cartoonist did not focus on. Not that I am against gay marriage or anything. Though it may be similar to the situation that is shown in the 1960 panel about no interracial marriage I feel the cartoonist should have focused on the main problem of why the government has a problem with gay marriage is because all states must recognize contracts no matter where they are from. Unfortunately some of states won’t recognize gay marriage. The reason that causes a problem is because they may not recognize one contract they could start saying they do not recognize other contracts like rent or business contracts.

Traditions

I wanted to do this week’s blog over the importance of tradition and how we are slowly drifting away from a lot of or traditional roots. I feel that over time yes you should be able to change different traditions, but none the less you need to keep some sort of tradition going.

                Part of the reason I feel so strong about tradition is because of my family. It is wrather complicated and annoying so I will not get into detail about it. My family is split into three separate branches. We all share different outlooks but keep traditions. Although they may not be the same traditions or just little ones. We still have them.

                For one of the traditions that my part of the family dose is we hold a family reunion every year and our family sport is old school kickball. Just a small little thing that my family has kept for about one hundred years. I feel that as the people start to grow older they lose this traditional outlook. This is sad. For me it gives you a sense of pride and a family bond.

                I would like to say this does not even have to relate to family traditions this could relate to anything culture, religious, even personal traditions. I would like to believe that if a person really wanted to they could even create their own traditions to pass on to family or friends. I feel like it is a lost bond between people in today’s world.

Excitment App

I picked the ad called “PowerPoint: Killer App?” for my text response this week. I thought overall this was a pretty interesting article. It makes some good points about Microsoft PowerPoint. I like how some articles or even other forms of media will grab your attention by starting out with some wild crazy story about how to completely different things are connected. Such as in this article it says one of the reasons that NASA did not see the safety defects in the space shuttle the Colombia was because there were too many PowerPoint presentations.

 Which I could understand if people are not fully focused on seeing the same style of presentations all day it could make anyone brain dead.  Although I do not agree the reason they missed the safety defects on the space shuttle Colombia because of PowerPoint seems a little rash. We had plenty of mishaps when it came the space ships long before PowerPoint was even thought of.

Though I love the style of this argument the way the article gets a persons attention by something that sound as I said so rash. It is something you cannot say is not true but it just sounds so unreal. I find it very interesting they way it says that the same presentations over and over again will make a person brain dead which I completely agree with. How can you pay attention to the same thing being told to you so many times.

The Testie Syndrome

I found a really awesome cartoon to do this blog on. Though my last blog and this blog are talking about school I do not plan to do all of my blogs on the wonderful topic of school budgets. I am an addict to cartoons. I read them all the time. They leave such an impact on me because to show one’s idea in just a few panels is beautiful.

               The cartoon is about a job interview with a high school. The boss asks “How has high school prepared you for this job?” the high school student thought of an SAT test. This argues the point of the No Child Left Behind program. It shows that the No Child Left Behind program forced schools to focus on test rather than an education.

               I completely agreed with this cartoon and I thought it left a valid point. I mean honestly anyone can fill in a dot. (Well most people) I also believe that not all of the education is schools responsibility. If a kid want to learn they will if not they won’t. Also why make everyone suffer if not everyone is great at taking test, not that bad test takers are wrong. Shouldn’t grades be enough?

               I did a blog on this because there are so many different learning styles you cannot narrow it down to just one test. With the many strong feelings I have about the school systems I can’t sum them up in one blog. The nice thing about this is that just last week they got rid of No Child Left Behind.

Art Budget

With the many things to argue about it is hard to choose one thing to talk about. I have decided to talk about schooling. As if you do not hear enough about school. I feel very strongly about this. Should the fine arts programs be cut so drastically compared to all of the other subjects? I would say no there are so many benefits to fine arts.

        For starters it is one of the best ways for talented and regular people to express their brilliant ideas and feelings through more ways than just writing. It also helps troubled people find an outlet or different way to release their trouble no matter what it is. The fine arts can also show people different culture and history from all around the world that may not be focused as much in other classes.

        All over the news and many online websites it states that school who lose the most in these budget cuts are school that do poorly. I find this wrong it shows that a well-funded school would have a better chance at funding. So if they get it were does that leave the poor and low income schools, in the dust. This prevents so many children and people from being able to experience such and education through music, arts, and styling.

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

 James Baldwin