LIT-SEE, LOT-SHAH

This would be my AP Language and Composition: Writing for Social Change blog. This is an abbreviation of my personal's URL, with my last name/nickname attached to the end of it, if you're interested in my personal (and my whining) just ask I guess. Well yeah. The name's Sasha and I'm writing for social change.

[hightowertealights]

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this is the end.

this is the end of this blog. I'm not going to deactivate it, but I'm not going to be making any more posts. It was real.

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Signing Gets You a Cookie

of the digital kind, of course.

http://www.change.org/petitions/sentencing-commission-office-of-justice-programs-increase-the-jail-sentence-of-rapists

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Me and Cara Hammel

Back on Change.org, we realised that a lot of the petitions used of a lot of pathos and not as much logos. This varied from petition to petition; however, it gave me a good idea on what to think about when writing a petition against rape and the rape culture. Slap on the pathos. But what to focus on? There are a few options:

The victims

-What can they do? Propose more ways to help rape victims

The rapists

-More jail time. -Do not allow jail time to be less than that of people who are put behind bars just for having weed.

  -do not allow rapists to get out on good behaviour. Though deciding whether or not to create a petition against rape or making an essay describing what happens to victims and rapists after the act is still iffy... it's harder to find already made petitions, if any, so that may be a good outlet.

audience: office of justice programs, sentencing commission

types of rape to focus on: corrective, gang, acquaintance, child

medium: petition

proposal: rapists deserve more than a two year sentence

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No Coins, Just Change (dot org.)

Click, click, scroll. Click, click, scroll. This is me on change.org, browsing the petitions. Sometimes there might be a typetypetype of me signing the online petitions, but mostly, I'm just scrolling, checking out how they're written. And here's what I've noticed.

Most of the petitions have multiple audiences, are written in lamen's terms (which could actually lead to a simplification of a complicated thing), and they usually go into the story about why the petition was written. Many of these stories include already made appeals to their audience that left them with no response, like in Bailey and Stephanie's petition to LEGO, where they say, "on December 20, we began our effort to pressure you to change your marketing strategy.  We blogged, Facebooked, and tweeted our concerns, and then we launched a petition with Powered By Girl and SPARK."

All of the petitions I've read use a lot of pathos, and use bold lettering to emphasize the pathos they want us to feel, or to highlight the most unjust part of what they're fighting against.

I've noticed that there are twelve "top causes" that each of the petitions fall into: animals, criminal justice, economic justice, education, environment, gay rights, health, human rights, human trafficking, immigrant rights, sustainable food, and women's rights. The category the petition falls into really gives it a predetermined group of supporters; for example, the women's rights category appeals to feminists, the gay rights category appeals to the LGBT crowd and allies. But maybe if most of the petitions fell into just the human rights category, they'd have more supporters, since most of the issues are issues of human rights.

Many of these petitions additionally include a proposal to their audience about what they should do, which is good because people and companies can be so clueless. This form of online petitions has proven to be effective, as some of the petitions have led to victories. Change.org can instill change.

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AP Test Practice-AWFUL-Synthesis Essay (Global Warming)

When leaders are making policies regarding global warming, they should consider that the U.S. reducing CO2 emissions is key.

In Source A, we find out that the United States and Australia account for 1/4 of the world's greenhouse gas emissions together. If just one of those countries stopped combusting fossil fuels so much, we could greatly reduce the CO2 emissions being put in our atmosphere. Or, if one country restored the forests,  it could offest up to 20% of CO2 over the next 50 years.

Source C tells us that eighteen of our states set requirements for renewable energy. Using renewable energy would curb greenhouse gasses.  Even if just all of the states set requirements for renewable energy, our CO2 emissions would be greatly reduced.

The fact that our CO2 emissions have already risen 12% between 1990 and 2004 (Source E), is terrible. This needs to be changed considering that this article estimated they would rise more than 30% in this year.  We should spend more than just 2% of the World's GDP to protect our future generations.

With spring rushing forward and our oceans rushing upward, global warming is a serious problem. We can't afford to be wrong on this. We have to protect our future generations, and it is so easy to make our policies to have us reduce our emissions.

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Change Your Life or the Planet will Change it for You!

From what we watched in An Inconvenient Truth, our CO2 emissions have been accelerating a lot since the 60's. SO, let's just take shorter showers and reduce our CO2 emissions by 15.3 lbs each month! And everyone else can see us do it and do the same thing! Right? Wrong!

We've got to change our lives more, as long as we want to keep them, that is. Without making drastic changes to our daily lives, our planet may not survive!! I mean, we can either have long showers or a healthy planet, hybrid cars or a sickly planet (filled with toxic waste). We have to stop trying to protect ourselves from mosquitoes, beetles, and other insects, because the DDT in the insecticides will kill our children.

Is this global warming thing such a threat? That depends on how you look at it. But if there's another way you can look at melting glaciers, please show me. Once Greenland melts, which will be soon, the ocean conveyor will STOP, throwing us into planetwide heat at insanely high temperatures.

I know you may be thinking, "this can't happen to America because America is one of the richest countries in the world." WRONG! America is one of the only countries that didn't sign the Kyoto Treaty to reduce emissions of CO2. No biggie, though, we can just bail ourselves out of this mess of a hot water world.

Who wants all the lovely coastal cities underwater? No more shopping in Manhattan, no more sightseeing in San Fran; unless you've got some scuba gear. So hop on the bandwagon and change your life before the planet takes it away from you! Take two minute showers, shower with friends, make your hybrid car your new best friend! Just change your luxury--for the sake of the world.

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Civilised

I've chosen the word "civilised" to be the most important word in chapter seven ofSilent Springby Rachel Carson (Needless Havoc.) She brings up both the tangible and intangible aspects of the word. Most specifically, on page 99, she uses it in the sentence, "the question is whether any civilisation can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilised." This is an incredibly powerful statement, because after all of the facts she presents, it really makes one wonder how we can simply try to poison out the bugs and weeds we don't want and let all kinds of creatures suffer, and yet we still think that we are the civilised ones!

In the first paragraph of the chapter, she brings up how man is constantly trying to reign supreme over nature, though we have a record of destruction on our planet and the creatures we live with. Yet we think that we can still conquer nature because we are the "civilised" ones. At first read of this paragraph, we're caught up in her guilt inflicting tone with such phrases as, "conquest of nature," "destruction directed against the earth," "slaughter of the buffalo," and "massacre if the shorebirds." But at second read, after reading the whole chapter, it's the perfect example of how we so unfairly to the rest of the world consider ourselves the superior ones because we think we are civilised. Her second paragraph is meant to induce more guilt by mentioning that there are casualties from the poisons that no one cares about.

She goes on to offer us an ultimatum, we can either accept the fact that the losses have been severe, or we can believe that nothing gas happened. This is an interesting rhetorical technique, and works well with her use of a rhetorical question. And it brings up an interesting point, because people often consider others uncivilised for denying the truth.

For the next few pages, she shows us a plethora of examples of how we've managed to kill many, many creatures by the poisons we've used in our quest tocontrolnature, and specifically insects. The implied ideas that I get from most of these pages are that we humans are absolutely disgusting with what we are willing to do to achieve our comfortable standard of living, and that there is no way we can consider ourselves civilised if we are okay with the things we are doing and the things we are harming.

Carson goes on for a few paragraphs to talk about how we can't even use selective poisons and how we harm innocent and pleasant forms of life. Her last sentence of the chapter is completely perfect, "by acquiescing in an act that can cause such suffering to a living creature, who among us is not diminished as a human being?"  This last rhetorical question brings back the importance of the word "civilised." If we're diminished as a human being, doesn't that make us less civilised?

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To Connecticut Department of Health:

All schools around Connecticut have been experiencing problems with the sanitation and safety of the food they serve to children. This is a problem that needs addressing. If it is left unaddressed, the ramifications may be severe. This problem stems from a few places, the obvious one; unsanitary conditions and the more subtle problems come from schools passing inspections with critical violations. Though the school cafeterias obstructs many hygiene laws that are set by the FDA and the health inspection agencies, they still seem to receive passing marks. How do school cafeterias pass when they have rodents, workers with poor hygienic practices, and cooking utensils that need a “little” cleaning? Even though our school district of Norwalk has received good grades on inspections, it would be strongly suggested that school cafeterias should require stricter, more detailed, and more frequent inspections. By improving upon regular health inspections, it would improve the accuracy of the health inspection rating system, and parents would have the peace of mind that the food their children eat is safe and healthy.

This is a very serious problem because it affects so many kids every day. The schools system have a responsibility to the kids and their parents but when they fail and students are being served where critical violations are found the CT Department of Health must step in. Connecticut has some of the worst school cafeterias in the country. In a 2007 Hartford CT scored lowest (37 out of 100) in a 2007 school cafeteria inspection done by Center for Science in the Public. Many of us eat school lunch everyday and should not be worried about the safety of their food. For example, a girl in the Brien McMahon high school cafeteria unsuspectedly picked up her “Cream-O-Land” chocolate milk and ended up spitting out a mouthful of maggots. That is not the 94% grade for inspections that our high school received in January of this year. Cafeteria lunch is the only option for a lot of kids at school, and we don’t want to find hair camouflaged in the cheese of our nachos--yet we still do, and poor hygienic practices are a violation of health inspections that are just passed over by the inspectors. In Meridan, CT, rodent droppings were found in Maloney High School’s cafeteria in 2010, but inspectors didn’t go back the following year to check if the problem was still there, even though rodent infestation can lead to contaminated meat. In Stamford, CT last year, nine out of thirty-two schools never got inspections.

We need stricter, more frequent, and more detailed inspections. We propose an increase in number of inspections per year, a bigger penalty for critical violations, and more detailed inspections. If these went into effect schools would  not be able to score a 95 with “Compactor leaks and garbage food residual is draining across.” As Burns Elementary School, a School in Hartford, did in 2010. All parents want what is best for their children. These simple solutions would not be hard to implement and would help greatly improve the safety of schools all over Connecticut.

Thank you for your consideration, Sasha Perrin, Caroline Hammel, Erik Chiodo, Ethan Rappaport Brien McMahon High School

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Pre-posals

School cafeteria health inspections gone wrong! Specific problem:

There are rodent droppings and bugs in school kitchens that aren’t being inspected or have been inspected once and not followed through.

Kids are getting sick (us included)

School Cafeterias are dirty and are still operating

·    Why do we care?:

Cafeteria food affects students every day (besides weekends), if they don’t know where the food they’re consuming is being kept, it becomes unsanitary and unsafe.

School lunch is the only option for many kids

the food from the day before gets put on our pizza the following day which could possibly be unsafe (french fry pizza, mozzarella stick pizza, chicken pizza)

(Caroline)- I eat cafeteria lunch every day so it concerns me when I hear that many schools aren’t being inspected properly.

(Erik)- I eat lunch from home, but sometimes I forget to get my lunch so I have to buy school lunch...

We have the chance to eat cafeteria food everyday and some of us do. We would like to have the peace of mind to know when we do eat the school lunch it is safe and will not make us sick.

Hartford CT scored lowest (37 out of 100) in a 2007 school cafeteria inspection done by Center for Science in the Public

What you think should change/not change: -we need to start at a very general level by inspecting the trucks that transport the food.

What inspectors look for

A more detailed inspection that goes beyond what is easily visible

How many annual visits inspectors make a month/year basis

We would like to see an increase from two inspections per year to four until the condition improves

Several realistic solutions: ·    Increase the inspection rate to four inspection for cafeterias that have failed in the past 3 years ·    Surprise inspections for school cafeterias Identify ways to make the solution happen: ·   Adding a checkpoint that checks the temperature of the trucks and the meat in the trucks ·   The checkpoint could give out a certificate that proves the truck was operating at a safe level and this could be shown to the restaurant the meat is delivered to A slight reform to the health inspection process         Adding an unknown inspector who checks the main inspector’s grade

-Have inspectors go into cafeterias on pre-planned days unknown to the faculty

Specific audience: Our audience is the Connecticut Department of Health Genres: Letter

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Naked and Revisited-Fifteen.

Jamie Oliver, also known as the Naked Chef, started an awesome program called Fifteen for unemployed young adults to become professionally trained for restaurant work. The young adults are between eighteen and twenty-four, and Fifteen also gives them a chance for a better future that lets them forget their past. Fifteen is another program that Joliver should bring to America.

Fifteen could do so much good for a lot of the eighteen year olds in America. Lots of people eighteen to twenty-four in the U.S. are lost and confused about what they want to become, especially if they're not going to college or are only going to a local community college. They end up getting into trouble, and becoming an apprentice at a restaurant would be a great way to keep the youth of America out of trouble. Within a year, the apprentices are qualified to be professional chefs. Many of the teenagers now want to become something without having to go to college for four years or more for it, and this is a great alternative, especially for the underqualified.

Learning to cook is something that can apply to anyone. The skill would be useful for any of the youth who were used to having their parents cook for them and are finally setting off on their own, and would also be useful for young single men so that they don't think they can depend on a woman to cook. In fact, a man who can cook is a definite attraction for ladies.

Joliver believes that Fifteen will help young people believe in themselves. Realising that you've cooked something that makes people happy is a huge ego boost for the young chefs, and it would make them believe in themselves. If they believe in themselves, they'll be more comfortable with being themselves and with their job qualifications.

Joliver also thinks that the youth has "untapped potential," and by introducing them to cooking, they could come up with even more delicious way to eat healthier. The youth would probably have an easier time coming up with ways to form the freshest ingredients into tasty creations. More balanced dishes created by youth would also appeal to youth more than the tried and true dishes created by an older generation.

All of these things would be great for the American youth, and the healthier options would possibly reduce the obesity factor as well.

Works Cited

http://www.fifteen.net/about

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Only If You're Playing Naked Chef- Thanks, Vancha.

The first time I heard about Jamie Oliver was when my friend Vancha Ayris (you may have heard of him if you're a Demyx Time fan) jokingly made the comment that I got my title from, around this time last year. Then I found out that the Naked Chef is not actually naked. Bummer, right? But why not keep researching about him? And how cool is it that he's an activist? Way cool. I believe in Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, and he should bring it back over here soon. We could use the help.

The Food Revolution. Log on to Joliver's website and it'll ask you if you want to sign the e-petition in support of the schoolchildren needing more health prospects and to "keep cooking skills alive." How many of you would sign it? I would. I know firsthand how unhealthy the food in schools are; I watch my boyfriend scarf down the yesterday's-food-is-today's-topping-pizza every day at lunch and I don't know how he does it. The school lunchesneedhealthy alternatives, or at least better options than mozzarella stick pizza. 

Joliver believes that, "food is one of life's greatest joys yet we've reached this really sad point where we're turning food into the enemy, and something to be afraid of." He's totally right. We don't need to think that the only way to eat healthy is to not eat. We need balance and variety in our meals. I think that finding the balance and variety is hardest for children and teens, especially when we don't always have the access to a wide variety of food. This is exactly why the Food Revolution would be good for us, to broaden our horizons to new foods that are better for us, or even just fresher. Not many teens will pick fruit over chocolate, but maybe they'd be more inclined to choose a light, fresh meal over starchy pasta or pizza if they were more aware of what they could have.

I picked Jamie Oliver to write about for the next two weeks because he affects me personally on two levels. On one level, I like him because he's from Essex, he's from my motherland. All jokes aside, I know so many people on that side of the pond. I'd love for his foundations to affect my cousins in their schools. Make the children eat better. Make the children I know eat better. If it starts in schools, it can continue at home. AND, Jamie cooks traditional British cuisine as well as Italian, and the world is in need of real British cuisine, some people have even forgotten that we English have our own special foods.

On the second level, it goes back to the American Food Revolution. Make our schools eat better. Like I said, if it starts in schools, it can continue at home.

Works Cited

"Food Philosophy | Jamie Oliver." Jamie Oliver. Web. 21 Mar. 2012. <http://www.jamieoliver.com/philosophy>.

"Jamie Oliver." Bio : Chefs : Food Network. Web. 21 Mar. 2012. <http://www.foodnetwork.com/jamie-oliver-bio/bio/index.html>.

"Jamie Oliver." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 21 Mar. 2012. Web. 21 Mar. 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Oliver>.

"Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution." Jamie Oliver. Web. 21 Mar. 2012. <http://www.jamieoliver.com/us/foundation/jamies-food-revolution/sign-petition>.

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It's in the air we breathe, and it's also in the water (Barfblog response.)

At first read, Barfblog.com seems like an amusing blog, full of sarcasm and scandals. But reading closer, the whole blog makesmewant to barf. These people aren't professionals. They're bloggers, just like me, but they're blogging to inform the public of the ridiculous food concerns around the world. I can't believe how many pages there are full of stories on people becoming ill from food or water, it makes me wonder, how does this happen so often everywhere? You'd think we people would learn to keep ourselves healthy!

But no, we consume and we barf, we swim and we barf, we play and we barf... and the media only cares when it happens to kids. Most of the articles are about the consequences of poor hygiene of food handlers. Band-aids in food (that's what a plaster is, kids), roaches in restaurants, dirt in restaurant play areas... These are all things that should be easy to keep from happening. How hard is it to keep your hands washed, the establishment clean, and the meat correctly handled?

Personally, if I contracted a disease like some of the volunteer ice servers mentioned in some of the posts from Barfblog, I would quit my job and tell them what I caught so they know the risks. I serve drinks to children where I work now, I would never want to put them at risk.

As I type this from the hospital, I become increasingly aware of the risks of what could happen to us. While Barfblog does a good job at keeping us updated on the illnesses and food safety hazards, it doesn't offer much insight as to why these things happen and why we haven't learned our lesson yet.

Another thing about the Vomit News is that many of the posts are pretty vague. It seems like the posts copy a lot from articles, and the articles are equally as vague; saying things like, "full food handling protocol is being followed." The author also comments on the vagueness of some of the things he reports on. This is pretty peculiar. Some of the bloggers also make rather obscure culture references, like to Jan Brady, the Monkees, or Chia Pets. I feel proud to understand the references.

Certain areas of foodborne illness reports from the Vomit News hit me personally, and I do mean areas. Whenever there's a mention of the U.K. finding something, I get worried. Add more worry if it's in England. And add even more worry if I know of the city-Brisbane, Newcastle, Carkeel. I got even more worried to find that one of Barfblog's sources was the Plymouth Herald. I've got family over there. Quite young family, too, cousins between the ages of 3 and 10. I don't want to read about salmonella, E. coli, or any other foodborne illnesses in their schools, or I'll be racking up the phone bill calling Aunt Sue and having her make the boys lunch herself.

Keep it clean, ya'll.

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Outshoring/Offsourcing-Japan

It's very hard to find details on offshoring in Japan. That is, many countries offshore to Japan, but information of Japan offshoring to other countries is slim to none. Who knew that when the earthquake struck Japan last year, more than 40% of the world's NAND and 15% of the world's DRAM were made in Japan, and the electronics expected to be most affected by the 8.9 quake that struck include semiconductor wafers used in making microprocessors, NAND flash used for storing music, video, and other content in handheld devices, and DRAM, which is the system memory in PCs (Eyes on Trade)? That's pretty intense stuff. Without all of those things, I doubt I'd be able to be typing this blog right now.

I was able to find that METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry) had some Japanese manufacturing industries relocated overseas, and that the Japanese government as a whole viewed offshoring as a problem, whereas the U.S. really doesn't. (Trade Reform)

However, it may not be as much of a problem as the government thinks. For example, firms expanding offshoring only cut home employment by 2.2%. (CEPR)

Japan is a reserved country, and therefore, information on its business is hard to find. What I could find showed that just like other countries, Japan offshores.

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Cancelled After One Season-Outsourced to Air Somewhere Else

Hello, sitcom. In the sitcom, Outsourced, offshoring is seen as kind of the norm, seeing as Todd's entire office was moved to India and his boss acted like it was nothing. Todd was surprised, but sort of went with it, so it seemed like he knew that it happened often. He did seem to have a huge culture shock, though, when he moved to his new call center in Mumbai, India.

The sitcom seemed to present Americans as being entirely clueless to the Indian culture and customs. I don't think that Americans can possibly be as clueless as they make Todd seem, but I don't know why they would know about them unless they go to a school like mine where we learn about other cultures. The sitcom also portrayed Indians as being just as uncultured about America, plus almost all of them wear traditional dress. Especially the women, they are almost always shown wearing saris or other traditional garments, aside from Asha, who sometimes wears regular shirts and jeans. Most of the men aren't seen in traditional clothes except for the Sikhs who wear turbans.

Most of the issues are taken lightly by Todd, like religion and traditions, because he doesn't understand them. Contrarily, the same issues are taken seriously by the Indians, and they also respect the strange American traditions.

For a sitcom, most of these characters are pretty round, because the show makes it seem like they all have actual thoughts. Poor Gupta is the witless, always talking too much, whereas I think Charlie is probably the wannabe wit, always trying to do things the way he knows which isn't always the right way, and Todd is the true with, knowing what to do and eventually figuring out what to do when he doesn't know what to do.

I think the show was probably cancelled after one season for the number of racial and sexual jokes.

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A-U-TO-SO-O-SU (outsourcing in Japan)

This isn't racist, this is legitimate phonetic pronunciation of the Japanese word for outsourcing.

I expected that in Japan, outsourcing wouldn't be a big thing because Japan seems so conservative (even when I was there, it seemed very Japanese) and they DID cut themselves out of trade with other countries for a really long time. Plus, since the islands in Japan are so small, I would expect the Japanese to want to preserve their culture more. I was surprised to find out that similar to us in the U.S., Japan has been outsourcing to make things happen faster for business.

However, "Outsourcing is viewed skeptically in Japan. The idea of handing control of end-to-end services to an external organization, and the idea of employees changing companies as part of an outsourcing transition are ones that are very new to Japan and are perceived with fear for both the businesses and the affected employees." (outsourcing.com) This makes a lot of sense, because letting someone else take care of your business is based on trust, and that's frightening.

A very strange thing about outsourcing in Japan is how they're sending certain jobs over to other parts of Asia. It's not the way you'd think of (which is very, "hello, I am Peggy, in India")-but instead, "hiring Japanese workers to do the jobs overseas — and paying them considerably less than if they were working in Japan." (nytimes.com) It's very sensible, because the quality is better, since they're native Japanese speakers that are just being moved, but it's pretty unfair to the workers since they get paid less.

Even though Japan has begun to "embrace" outsourcing, the majority of companies don't do it, which is good for Japan.

http://www.nli-research.co.jp/english/economics/1997/eco9711c.html Osamu Kubotani, 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/business/global/22outsource.html?pagewanted=all Miki Tanikawa, July 21, 2010

http://www.outsourcing.com/content.asp?page=01b/articles/intelligence/oi_workplace_os_in_japan.html&nonav=true the Outsourcing Institure

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Where's Your "Made in China" Label?

It seems that none of the things I need are made in the USA. The things I use for school are either made in China, Mexico, or India. I've got a bracelet I wear a lot from Tibet, which is basically China until the people get freed. Even my Disney things are made in China or Taiwan, which is rather ridiculous because Disney is viewed as such an "American" company. It all reminds me of the facebook trend, "your car's German, your vodka's Russian, your clothes are Italian, where's the made in China sticker on the back of your neck?" Most of the things I have which are truly made in the USA are things that I bought off of Etsy.com that people have handcrafted. I can't figure out if it's worth the cheaper cost of having products made overseas to have these products be a little bit less high quality. I don't think it is worth it though. For example, the bows I buy off of Etsy are of much higher quality and are much prettier than the premade imported bows you could buy from Claire's (made in China of course.) and I think that's how it should be with everything. Things are made crooked, stickers are on upside down, and they break easier. Is this really the kind of quality we want to be selling? I think not.