My Favorite Meta Post

My favorite post this quarter was the The Linden L Station. It best exemplified what I tried to do with my blog; take ideas from class, and do something original with them, and to explore their significance beyond just what we do in class. I think that this post worked the best out of any from 4th quarter, because of the research I found, and the way that information seemed to parallel the story of the big ditch from class. I think I successfully used these parallels to come up with ideas about the ability affluent communities have to prevent outsiders from entering, a topic that was new, but also related to issues of class we had been discussing.
       With this post especially, I took a personal experience, and connected it to a topic we discussed in class, which was pretty satisfying. It was exciting to find a historical newspaper telling a similar story that my dad had told me when I was younger, and it was surprising to find a use for proquest so soon after finishing the Junior Theme. This post also addressed one of the issues I mentioned in my first Meta Post, that my blogs weren't personal. I think I made this post personal, but in a way that still connected to the themes of the class.
       It was interesting to realize that I don't even think this is my best written post this quarter. Looking over it now, I think I could re-write the post, and make it flow and sound much better, and I think many of my other posts had cleaner writing. It's weird, but I'm not sure that having perfect writing on every post matters. I think it's important to write about original ideas, and that as long as you have at least a certain standard, it's okay for the writing to be imperfect.

Just a Pair of Arms?

              

Last week we watched a movie called El Norte in Spanish, about a pair of Guatemalans who cross into the U.S. illegally, and attempt to make a life in the U.S. The movie mentions a lot of the mythology we have discussed. Multiple times characters talk about how hard work is needed to do well in America, and the role that workers have in both the U.S. and in Guatemala is explored. One pair of scenes in particular really struck me. At the beginning of the film, in Guatemala, the main character, Enrique, is told by his father that (translated) "to the rich, the worker is just a pair of arms." Later, at the end of the movie, after Enrique has moved to the U.S. and faced a range of challenges, including the death of his sister, a man approaches a group of illegal immigrants and asks for "strong arms to work." The main character, desperate for a job, hesitates only momentarily before yelling "pick me, I've got strong arms!" (clip above, 1:53-2:25). The message of the movie seems to be that it is an inescapable fate for the poor to do bad jobs, serving as a "pair of arms" for the rich. Despite his best efforts to escape poverty in Guatemala, the main character ends up doing almost the same thing, just in a different country.
       I recalled this scene after reading the Kentucky Cycle play today about the coal miners. The mine chief accepts hires Abe without knowing anything about him. He demands that "you load your ten a day, six day a week, keep your head down and your nose clean," but other than that he couldn't care less about who the new worker is. The only thing the mine boss cares about is that Abe does his work.
       That same sort of attitude to workers plays out in these two very different times and places conveys a depressing message about the place in society of the men doing the "necessary" jobs. It seems almost unavoidable that the worker is important only for his work, that a low wage laborer is "just a pair of arms."

Borderlines

       Yesterday night I was at a friends house. He lives on the north side of Isabella street. The border between Evanston and Wilmette runs down the center of that street, and I realized as I was driving home that if he lived on the other side of the street, I never would have known him. He wouldn't have gone to WJHS, and he would begoing to Evanston High School instead of New Trier, and we would never have met. It was interesting to look down the street and know that someone my age living to my left has a similar life to mine, while someone living to my right has had a totally different set of experiences. The situation reminded me of the field trip we took last November, when we passed the large park (I can't remember the name of the park) and went from a fairly affluent neighborhood to a run-down, more impoverished neighborhood. There too an invisible border separated people with two different sets of experiences.
       It dawned on me how much impact location has on everyone's life. Americans separate much of public life geographically, so that in many cases which side of the border you live on can be destiny. This isn't just for schools, like the NT and Evanston High School border. As we saw in Chicago, economic success can depend on the neighborhood as well. If you were planning to start a business, which side of the park would you want to be on? And what would you do if you couldn't afford to be on the "right" side?
       Something important that I'm not sure many fully appreciate, me included, is how close the north shore is to areas that are vastly less wealthy than we are. A few miles and the township border is all that really separate New Trier and Evanston.

What do you think about the effect of borders on life?

Image Credit: http://cnsnews.com/image/mexico-border-4

Rupert Murdoch and the Power of the Media

       Mr. O'Connor mentioned Rupert Murdoch, the man who owns Fox News. I've seen his name in the news about a phone hacking scandal in Britain, so I did some research. I was surprised by how much he seems to resemble Charles Kane's . It turns out that Rupert Murdoch is almost a modern day Charles Foster Kane; they both are massively rich media barons, and both of them suffered a downfall because of a scandal. The most interesting part of his life to me, though, was how he used his wealth to affect politics, specifically by helping create Fox News.
       It is common knowledge that Fox News has at least some bias towards the right end of the political spectrum; they employ or have employed many former republican politicians and right wing figures, such as Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and Glenn Beck. The news station Murdoch founded was at least more supportive to republican rivals than some of its rivals, such as CNN and ABC, and that must at least partly be attributed to the man himself.
       The support Murdoch's Fox News lends to Republican causes is mirrored by the influence that Charles Kane and his real life analogue William Hearst had over the politics of their time. The ability of those two figures to create public support for a war with Spain is similar to Murdoch's ability to create support for conservative causes through Fox News; all three figures slanted their news coverage somewhat to shape public opinion, though for radically different ends.
       The continued existence of people with such control over media, like Rupert Murdoch, is interesting because news organizations are usually seen as institutions; the power that the few people leading them has is often ignored. We all have heard of "yellow journalism" from the early part of the 1900s, but not everyone realizes that there are individuals around today with influence similar to that of newspaper owners like Kane or Hearst. Is individual control of news an issue today? How can media shape politics?

Image Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_News_Channel

The Linden L Station

       After we talked about the L on Tuesday, I remembered a story my dad had told me about why the L line ends in Chicago. I don't remember when, but at some point he told me that the original plan was for the L to end in Evanston. The owner of the railroad company lived in Wilmette, and he wanted the L to be accessible to him, so one night he ordered his crews to extend the line without the knowledge of the government. I thought that this story might parallel the story of the big ditch; a community benefiting because of its influence and the power of its inhabitants. It turns out, though, that the real story is a bit different.

       By looking up the Linden L station on Wikipedia I found the name of Chicago Tribune article from 1912 with the story; "Night Raid Puts "L" in Wilmette" I found the article using ProQuest (Junior Theme!). It turns out that the basics of my Dads story were right. The tracks were extended overnight, but over the opposition of the community instead of because of it. Most residents of Wilmette were opposed to having the L in their town because they were afraid that having the line would lead to groups of partygoers coming from Chicago during the summer. The railroad company owned the land, and wanted to extend the tracks for years, but when they decided to go ahead with the project, they were forced to do the construction in secret, because of the resistance from the community.
       I found the story to be interesting because of the amount of influence Wilmette had over the railroad. It doesn't directly match the story of the big ditch, but the fact that the community was able to prevent the tracks for so long still reflects the amount of influence wealthy towns have. The town showed a sort of protectionism; they didn't want "less desirable" crowds to have access to their town.The ability to protect the status of a town is a very good marker of class; the people in Wilmette had both the desire and the power to prevent an influx of  outsiders.I haven't really been following the Winnetka affordable housing debate, but I wonder if a similar strain of thought motivates some of the opposition to that proposal. Do you agree or disagree? Do wealthy communities try to exclude outsiders?

Image Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linden_(CTA_station)

Class Barriers

       Last week we watched a video about class distinctions in America. The most interesting section to me was the part where the middle-class woman hires a coach to help her appear upper class. The video made an interesting argument, that even if you have money, to truly fit in with those of a higher class you need to learn a complicated set of social customs and rules. The point was that at the highest level, social ability is as much a marker of class as wealth, and to advance one's class is more complicated than simply finding a good job. When I watched the video, I wondered whether this also applied to class changes lower on the spectrum; rising from a lower class to the middle class, or between different parts of middle class society.
      I don't think the social barriers are as high between changing between lower classes as they are with advancing into the upper class. The world the video shows, of fancy parties, is much more unforgiving than the world in general. The amount of attention to detail the woman needed to even attempt to appear natural in the new setting was pretty stunning, but I'm not sure we can apply the same principle to other strata of society. I'm speaking mostly from personal beliefs, but I can't believe an engineer or other high-end blue collar worker would judge someone for not wearing the right clothing the same way those at the party would have judged the woman if she was not wearing a 3,000$ outfit.
       Because of the severity of social situations in lower classes is significantly less, I believe the barriers between advancing from the lower to middle class are mostly educational or monetary. A construction worker can advance his status  if he is able to go through a vocational program and become an electrician, or another specialized job. I don't think there is a strong difference in customs between segments of the working class, and his increased income as a result of his better job would be enough to say he has raised his status.
      What you think about the barriers between classes lower than the upper class? I mostly am basing this argument off of personal belief, so I'm interested what others with different experiences have to say.

Image Credit: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/black-tie-event.html

White Noise and Selective Abortion

       While working on my Junior Theme, I originally planned to have this section in the paper. However, I couldn't find a way to integrate my connection to white noise that didn't totally kill the flow, so I decided to put this section in as a blog post. The style of writing is different, as a result.

       One of the most common forms of genetic engineering as I defined it in my paper is prenatal genetic testing combined with selective abortions. Some parents choose to have the genes of the fetus tested for genetic defects which cause diseases, sometimes through noninvasive blood tests. Often, if the tests are positive, pregnancy is aborted. There are parallels between the attitudes that cause this practice, and the attitudes of the people of White Noise to disease.
       The people of Delillo's America do anything to avoid illness of any type. This is evidenced by the grocery list of medications in Jack's household; "Blood pressure pills, stress pills, allergy pills, eye drops, aspirin. Run ofthe mill." Each pill staves off another ailment. Any possible health issue needs an answer, and the result is a massive pile of pills. It is eventually revealed that everything Jack does is because of his overwhelming fear of death, and the urge to cure every problem, real or imagined, is one of the primary manifestations of that fear.
       The reasons for terminating a pregnancy are similar to the motives of Jack with his pill obsession. As Erik Asch, an ethics scholar who has written on the issue, put it; "the idea is that prenatal testing," usually used for selective abortions, "helps prospective parents have healthy babies." Quite simply, the use of these tests allows parents to "solve" a health problem of their child, to get rid of an illness before it even begins. Like Jack's pills, the promise of fetal testing is to eliminate any possible health issue, and the motives of the two groups are parallel.
       I've tried not to either endorse or condemn the actions of those who use such procedures, both in this blog and in my paper. Mentioning abortion tends to provoke strong reactions, but regardless of which side of the debate you are on it is helpful to understand the motivations of those who use genetic technologies. White Noise provides a good illustration of these reasons.

Genetic Engineering

       I've been meaning to write this post for a while now, but with junior theme work I haven't really been able to get around to it. It's a bit late, but here's an introduction to my topic.
       My junior theme is about the idea of genetically modifying humans, either to eliminate diseases like cystic fibrosis, or to create children with better intelligence and strength. There are several ways this can be done. The simplest is to undergo an IVF procedure, and test the embryos for certain characteristic, for a mutation which would result in a disease, for instance. The embryo with the desired characteristic is then implanted. This is already done on a small scale; many IVF clinics allow their clients to choose the sex of their child. The more extreme method of genetic engineering is to introduce new DNA into the embryos. We have already done this sort of genetic engineering with bacteria, plants and a few animals, to create crops with more yield, or fruit that grows larger. However, it's never been done before in a human. Theoretically if we refined the technology enough, we could modify many characteristics of an embryo at will. That sort of possibility is probably more for science fiction than an imminent danger, though, since the DNA of a human is much more complicated than corn DNA, and much more difficult to modify reliably and safely.
       My paper is about why some Americans support such technologies and the broader idea of physical perfection, but much of the research I have done is about a related question; whether it is even ethical to use genetic technologies. The potential to eliminate debilitating genetic diseases is extremely alluring, a point I discuss in my paper. Many concerns have been raised, however, that technologies that enable the elimination of diseases will inevitably lead to non-medical modifications, to increase the strength or intelligence of people and to create a "perfect" human. I don't address that point in my paper, and I'm curious what other people think about the idea. Should we try to eliminate genetic diseases? Is it okay for a parent to, theoretically, alter the genes of their offspring to make them "better"?

Image credit: http://blog.thomasecon.com/discrimination/genetic-discrimination-is-a-genuine-and-growing-problem/attachment/dna/

My Problems with Post-Modernism

       Last Friday we had a speaker from IGSS, Mr. Markham give us an interesting talk that really summed up a lot of the ideas in White Noise, and related them to a specific philosophy, post-modernism. I was interested particularly by the topic we discussed in the second period of the class, the interaction between objects and personal relationships. The speaker presented the idea of a progression of what is "real" in American culture, from person to person relationships, to objects, to an obscure endpoint based off of irony. However, I believe his argument was flawed, and based off of assumptions about the interactions of humans and objects that aren't true.
       Mr. Markham greatly overstated the impact of objects on person to person relationships. It is undeniably true that the number of products in human society is greater now than at any time in the past. It is also true that those objects play a greater role in interactions on a day to day basis. But I'm skeptical of the speaker's assertion that the growing importance of objects somehow means that people are less "real." I believe that objects can be understood not as a replacement of more traditional relationships, but as tools or facilitators of those relationships.
       One example of this is clothing. There's no disagreement that there are more types of clothing today than in the past, or that your choice of clothing communicates messages about you. However, clothing choices can better be understood as context for relationships instead of a replacement for them. You choose your clothes based on who you believe you are; what you believe your place is in life, and not the other way around. The vast number of choices enables self expression. What you where certainly plays a part in how you interact with others, but serves to supplement instead of obscure, by creating another way to communicate who you are.
       A more concrete example, and one brought up during class, discussion was the cellphone. A phone seems like the perfect example of objects gradually replacing traditional social structures. I would argue, though, that the cellphone actually helps relationships. Most times when you text, you're between classes, at home, or in other situations when you wouldn't be able to talk with friends anyway. By making communication easier, cellphones improve friendships, and allow people to maintain relationships that otherwise would have faded. The counter-argument is that there situations in which people use their instead of talking to a friend they're with, but I believe the net effect of phones is positive.
       Humans don't exist in a vacuum. We are surrounded by both other people and objects. I believe Americans today are still fundamentally focused on relationships with others, and objects facilitate those relationships, instead of damaging them.

Image Credit

Solitary Confinement

       This weekend I noticed a story in the New York Times about a subject we have discussed in class, the U.S. prison system. The article is about the use and history of the practice of solitary confinement, in which troublesome or dangerous prisoners are imprisoned in cells isolated from almost any human contact. The practice poses many ethical questions, as it is damaging to the mental health of prisoners, and as the article discusses, both expensive and overused.
       The piece is a pretty moving description of problems at the edge of the criminal justice system; at the margins of the margins of our society. It's definitely not a part of America we think about often, and it was startling to read about how bad things can get that far from the core of society. It's also encouraging to hear about efforts being made to improve the situation. Many of the problems we have discussed in class are fixable, and it's important to remember there are people working to improve our country.
       In addition to the discussion about solitary confinement, the article touches on the causes of the prison boom, and the increased harshness of the prison system that accompanied it. We haven't discussed causes in class, but the root of the prison boom is the crime wave of the 1980's and early 1990s (A really good story about that part of U.S. history is Freakonomics). The story behind the rise of the prison system is an interesting cause-effect relationship, and a good example of how much public opinion and perception can shape American culture.
       On a personal level, I made a connection between the conditions described and the portrayal of  in many prison movies. In "The Shawshank Redemption" especially, the main character is thrown into a solitary cell for months as punishment for questioning his guilt. His condition in the cell was terrible, alone in the dark with occasional food deliveries as his only contact with the outside. It was one of the most emotional portions of the movie, and the memory of it was why I paid so much attention to the story in the first place.

Prisons Rethink Isolation, Saving Money, Lives and Sanity

The Lorax and Mazda

The Colbert Report
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       Throughout our discussion of White Noise, ads have been mentioned several times as an example of cultural "white noise." I was watching the Colbert Report, and I saw the segment above about how the movie "The Lorax" has dozens of advertising tie-ins (skip to about 1:10 in for the important section). I had seen the Mazda commercial he mentions before, and I remember thinking how strange it was that a Dr. Seuss movie about the environment was advocating for a car.
       I think this is a really interesting example of a lot of the phenomenons we have been discussing in class.  It's a great demonstration of the way large companies prioritize advertisement, and the income it brings in. Colbert does a great job pointing out the hypocrisy of using a story with a strong anti-corporate and environmentalist theme to help promote corporations and consumer products. It's an interesting parallel to the culture of white noise. The movie itself is surrounded by the countless ads. It gets to the point where, to the company at least, the actual movie and its message is less important than the advertising opportunities.
       To be fair, the Mazda being advertised, despite being an SUV and not a hybrid, gets 35 miles per gallon, making it the most efficient SUV in the U.S. so the Lorax's advocacy for it is based on something. That doesn't change how strange it is to see a car receiving the "Truffula Tree Seal of Approval."

Tokenism Slide

"The Walking Dead," 8 o'clock Sundays on AMC

"The Walking Dead" is a show on AMC, a basic cable channel, about a group of survivors after a zombie apocalypse. There are two minority characters, Glenn and T Dog. T Dog is the only black character in the show, and has a very minor role, but when his character does get screen-time, his personality is fairly complex, as is shown by his complicated interaction above. I would argue that T Dog somewhat is an example of tokenism. He is a minor character, and all the leads are white, and he faces minority issues, but his interactions with those issues are fairly complex. 

An Update on the NDAA

       In January I wrote a brick-like post about the National Defense Authorization Act. If you're a fan of politics or unnecessarily complicated government policies, you can read the entire post here. In short, one section of the law clarifies and expands powers the government possesses under the laws of war, and applies them to the "war on terrorism," giving the power to use the military to detain indefinitely terrorism suspects. The law does not technically expand government authority as both foreigners and U.S. citizens can already be detained indefinitely (though they may challenge their detention in the courts). The issue is instead that the NDAA codifies into law a practice that was questionable in the first place.
       My parents listen to NPR a lot, and a few days ago I heard an interesting story, here, about how the Obama administration is applying the controversial law. It turns out the president was against the provision on detention in the first place, issuing a statement at the time saying basically that he didn't agree with this law and wouldn't use the powers it gave him," and as the article details, Obama has created a wide range of exemptions that virtually nullify the law.
       It's an interesting story, and one that increases my confidence in the president's principles about civil liberties. It's also interesting, however, to see easy it was for the president has to ignore the wishes of congress. Although the executive branch, in principle, is supposed to carry out the legislation and priorities of the legislative branch, in reality the president has a great deal of power to craft policies of his own, like Obama's decision to gut the NDAA detention provision. I'm not sure the power of the chief executive is necessarily a good thing or a bad thing, as it's easy to see situations in which a president could theoretically do something similar to what Obama did, except with less admirable intentions. One example that comes to mind is when Lincoln suspended the writ of Habeus Corpus during the Civil War without congressional approval. In this case, however, the president seems to be moving in the right direction.

Image Credit: http://www.legalnewsline.com/news/216858-obama-citizenship-question-goes-to-u.s.-supreme-court

Fixing Tokenism

       As all of you know, recently in class we have been discussing TV Tokenism, the inclusion of a few minority characters in minor roles for the sole purpose of creating the appearance of diversity. Mr Bolos made a pretty compelling case that tokenism is real and pervasive in our culture.
       Something I've been thinking about, and one part of the issue we haven't discussed yet (but probably will in the next few days), is how to fix tokenism. The problem is that tokenism is not a simple problem to fix. It's a natural consequence of the way TV shows work. The shows only exist to attract viewers for commercials, and they reflect the fact that whites make up the largest target audience of those commercials. People are more comfortable and connect more with characters who look similar to them. It's not a matter of racism but of human nature. Humans empathize more with people who are similar. Shows need to make an impact with viewers to create a following, so they cast whites in the lead roles.
      Because the phenomenon is so deeply rooted in the nature of television and the personalities of Americans, it is not an easy issue to address. Like the social issues we talked about in our reconstruction plans, tokenism is a very difficult problem to solve with government intervention or any type of large scale program. The government can't just force the networks to cast minority leads; to do so would be unconstitutional. It would be very nearly impossible to design a program that would change people's attitudes on a scale necessary to make a real difference. It would also be impractical to try to fix this problem using public shaming,  the methods the NAACP several years ago. It's a lot harder to get people outraged over "the inclusion of minority characters but only in minor roles with simple parts" than it is to create outrage over "the total lack of minorities in TV."
    I believe there really is no practical way to fix tokenism from the outside. There is another possibility, though. Tokenism may be self-defeating; the presence of characters of different races may work away at the subtle biases responsible for tokenism in the first place. Despite not being an optimal situation, the portrayal of race in television has clearly improved over the last few decades. Our generation is growing up in a cultural environment where it is routine to see minority characters acting out normal roles. They may not play lead roles, but largely thanks to tokenism we at least see Black characters and Asian characters and others. I believe the biases we still have are being eroded, and that eventually we will reach a point where tokenism kills itself off.

Image Credit:http://digthatbox.com/arcade_token_gallery.html

Nostalgia

       For Christmas this year I got my dad a new book by Stephen King, 11/26/23, about a time traveler's attempt to stop the assassination of JFK (and named after the on date which it occurred). After he finished it, he recommended I read it. I started it, and found it was actually pretty good. The book is partly historical fiction, and it touches on a lot of ideas we have been talking about when we discuss the social conditions of life in the 60's. One particular passage struck me as being extremely relevant, both to what we have been discussing recently in class and to a theme I had thought about myself in the past. The author is talking about the restrooms at a gas station in North Carolina:

"The third sign was an arrow on a stick. It pointed toward the brush covered slope behind the station. It said COLORED. Curious, I walked down the path... There was no facility. What I found at the end of the path was a narrow stream with a board laid across it on a couple of crumbling concrete posts.... If I ever gave you the idea that 1958's all Andy-n-Opie, remember the path, okay? the one lined with poison ivy. And the board over the stream."

I noticed this passage specifically because earlier in the book, I did notice how positive King was about almost everything in the past, how he seemed to portray the 1960's as some sort of utopia when  people were friendlier, there was no such thing as airport security, and everything was basically perfect. The very first thing the main character does when he comes to the past is buy a root beer float, which he described as one of the greatest things his 21st century taste buds had ever tasted. It had started to bug me. Nostalgia is part of being human, and people always yearn for the past, but it seems to me that nostalgia often leads to the belief that everything was better in the past; that back in the day, things worked the way they should. Sentiments like that have always bugged me. They simplify events, and rely on cliches as proof. As King points out, there were serious problems with society in which significant progress has been since "The good old days". Root beer floats may have tasted better, but is that important if a chunk of the population can't buy that float from the same counter as the rest? It's my personal belief that, despite worries about climate change, societal decline, swine flu, or anything else, the world is steadily becoming a better place.

American Industry

       My job in my reconstruction group was to come up with a way to remedy the effects of physical damage to the south from the war. One of the more interesting consequences of this problem was the correlation between the damage to farms and poverty of white farmers. Many lower class whites made a decent living off of farming before the war. During the war, however, many of those farms were destroyed; with their farms damaged, many relatives and workers dead, and any money invested with the confederacy gone, white farmers plunged into poverty by the thousands. When I read about their situation in Foner, I was struck by how similar the statuses of poor whites and former slaves were. Both groups were in debt, and trapped doing farm-work that could barely support them. The freedmen obviously were in a worse situation because of discrimination, but both groups suffered from the same basic problem; the total lack of decent work. When I finally figured out this was the problem, I immediately remembered the State of the Union address, in which President Obama spoke on a similar issue with the American job market today.
       I also remembered President Obama's proposed solution: relocating industry from foreign countries back to the U.S. I realized this could work in the south as well. The primary problem with the south's economy was a dependence on agriculture, and the only way to fix that problem was to increase industry. The obvious industry to focus on was textiles, because of the south's huge supply of cotton. I had found my answer: subsidize American textile companies, in an attempt to siphon some of those industrial jobs from Britain, thereby (hopefully) creating jobs for former slaves and white farmers.
       I was surprised at the parallels I found between the problems of the past and of today, and how easily ideas can be applied to very distinct and different times. It is normal to think about learning from history for help with today's problems, but it is very weird to think about learning from today to help solve yesterday's problems. I'm not totally sure what the lesson is here, but it sure is an interesting thought.

Image credit: http://19thhumanitiesschool.blogspot.com/2010/10/pictures-relating-to-industrial.html

The Meta Post

       The semester is over, and it's time to get meta. I've reviewed and reflected on my posts over the past semester, and written about some patterns and themes I noticed in my writing.
       The first thing i noticed when scanning my blog was that all of my posts fall into two categories. I write either extensions of discussions or material from class, such as posts on online grades and Clybourne Park, or analyses of news or media, such as posts on an article about Egyptian Christians or the Clash song "Rock the Casbah." Looking back, I realized that I haven't written a single post based primarily on personal experience, with the semi-exception exception of my post on online grading. I noticed that a lack of personal connection pervaded my blog. When writing, I tend towards being analytical. I often write about things I have strong personal opinions on, but rarely on topics that I have a personal connection to. I feel that that is the biggest problem in my writing. I'm good at writing in-depth analyses of topics, like my most recent post on the NDAA, but in the future, my blog could be made stronger by writing at least a few posts about events or themes in my own life.
       Thematically, most of my posts tried to connect to a broader philosophy, and make a larger point, and while writing my blog, I usually had that goal in mind. It is certainly a good thing to attempt to make a broader argument with whatever I'm writing about, but I realize now that not all of my attempts to connect specific material to a theme were successful. Some of my posts could have benefited from a narrower focus. In particular, my post on the Colbert segment about Rush Limbaugh probably would have been just as strong if I had written only about Rush Limbaugh, instead of attempting to draw broad philosophical implications out of his gaffe.
       The last big thing I noticed when I reviewed my writing was how much stronger and more interesting the posts which connected to specific material, especially the two that were based off of a video or a song.  My weakest posts were those that were solely based off of class material, such as the post on Clybourne Park. When i didn't reference additional materials, I noticed that I often wrote shorter posts that were, predictably, much more vague. By contrast, one of my strongest posts, the one about the Clash song "Rock the Casbah" include specific quotes, and made a much stronger point because it was based off of material easily available at the beginning of the post. In addition, I thought the post was also simply more interesting because of the inclusion of a song.
       And that is my first semester of blogging in one post. Thanks for reading.

The NDAA

       Recently much negative attention has been given to a law signed on December 31 by president Obama, the National Defense Authorization Act. The NDAA is an act that has been passed annually for the past several decades, outlining military priorities, policy, and spending. One section in particular in this year's version has drawn heavy criticism, a section about the right of the military to detain terror suspects. Reading some of the criticism, I was struck by how extreme some commentary was, and how little evidence many stories on the topic gave. Many articles made employed dramatic statements that were simply false, such as one Wired article titled "Senate Wants to Lock You Up Without Trial." Since then the criticism has calmed done somewhat, and the real issues surrounding the bill have come to light. The bill, as written, is constitutional and undeserving of much of the criticism directed towards it, but nevertheless raises significant questions.
       The legal issues and implications surrounding the law are extremely complex, but i'll try to give the best explanation I can. Under the laws of war, the U.S. is allowed to indefinitely hold without trial anyone captured during combat. This policy has clear justification in conventional wars; large numbers of P.O.W.s may be taken, and it is impossible and unnecessary to provide due process for everyone. In 2001, Congress authorized the use of military force against those responsible for the 9/11 attacks The supreme court ruled, in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, that the classification of enemy combatant could be extended to American citizens captured in the war on terror, at least in the circumstances of that case, and  thus be detained indefinitely. It is important to note, however, that the court confirmed the accused's right to a Habeas Corpus challenge of his status; the accused still have methods to challenge his detention, though indirectly.
     What the text of the law specifically authorizes is "Detention under the law of war without trial until the end of the hostilities" of "A person who was a part of or substantially supported, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces," or "any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities." The law, as written, falls within the boundaries of the laws of war, as outlined above. The powers that the law codifies were already possessed by the administration. In fact, a section a few lines down from those quoted above states "Nothing in this section is intended to limit or expand the authority of the President." Essentialy, the NDAA takes the existing understanding of the laws of war, and applies it to the "War on Terror," the current conflict against al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and other international terror organizations.
       The bill may fit within the confines of the law, but it is not without its issues. Much of the criticism was rooted in ambiguities in the language of the act, and some language could benefit from clarification. The Obama administration strongly considered vetoing the bill because of language that mandated that the military detain non-citizen terror suspects, preventing the use of the FBI and other civil law enforcement agencies which might be better suited to dealing with specific situations. More broadly, the bill raises questions about the proper role of the military in dealing with terrorism on U.S. soil; the bill makes no geographical distinctions. The most significant issue, at least to me, is whether the application of the standards of wartime is at all appropriate or even necessary. The war on terror is not a conventional war; there is no reason fighters caught could not be put on trial. If the government detains someone, they should have evidence. If the government believes their evidence is insufficient to convict someone in court, they should never have detained him in the first place, or released him when the lack of evidence became apparent. Like we discussed in class, civil liberty questions like this have no easy answers. Overly-dramatic stories based on statements not founded in facts don't help find those answers.