Tag Archive for: instructor-none-2

We are close to the end! Your exam will be open for your review in Blackboard from 0800-1000 Wednesday morning 12/2/15.

Also, office hours are a little different this week due to the simulation finals scheduled throughout the day. I will be available for office hours after class Wednesday (please let me know you would like to meet) or from 1100-1200 Thursday.

Disaster in our life time

When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast in 2005. It flooded 80% of New Orleans. This displaced millions of people and caused the death of 1883 people. This flood water also trapped 100 000 people in the city. Food became scares the water undrinkable because it was flooded with sewage. There was no place to go people got trapped on their roofs or attics just having to wait to be rescued. The rich fled the city and the poor, the homeless and the elderly were trapped. There were significant barriers to providing healthcare, barriers like: people could not be reached or leave because of the massive amount of water. There was no facilities available to provide health care in. Coupled with the country being completely unprepared for a disaster on this scale. The government had to send the National Guard in to render assistance ,because the local community did not have the manpower to do so. But it took the government days to respond and when they did it was not enough because of the lack of experience in dealing with a crisis on this scale. Although FEMA had ranked New Orleans had been ranked as the most vulnerable city in case of a natural disaster nothing was done to prepare for this. This is largely due to economics and politics. Economically the government did not want to put money in to preparing for something that might happen. The top three FEMA directors were all political appointees with no experience. So today ten years later the city is still rebuilding tens of thousands of people cannot return because there no housing or jobs available to return to. I can’t imagine how it must have been a healthcare worker during that time. How to provide care with no equipment or facilities available coupled with completely being overwhelmed by the amount of people needing care. To me it seems like trying to put a forest fire out with a cup of water. This now brings up the question, “are we better prepared for the next disaster?” I personally don’t think so. People tend to forget quickly, coupled with political discourse and having the financial ability to prepare for a disaster. When it comes to finances there is a lot of disagreement about who needs to fund the disaster preparedness. Nobody wants to and in the end nobody is prepared. We can merely try and prepare ourselves and try and help as many as we can when a disaster occurs

Abstract:

Former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill is famous for his often-repeated claim that “all politics is local.” O’Neill believed that taking care of the concerns of one’s district ensured electoral success.  David Mayhew includes credit claiming—providing particularized benefits to the district, pejoratively referred to as “pork”—among the tried and true strategies incumbents use to ensure their reelection. Using the press releases of Representative Bizz Johnson (D-CA) this research examines patterns of credit-claiming activity over his twenty-year career. In particular, we examine the hypothesis that credit claiming increases during election years as Johnson sought to ensure his reelection to Congress.

Recently I attended the 2015 Southern California Conference for Undergraduate Research.

It is a conference that focuses on up and coming student researchers from universities and college all over southern California, to present their work and gain vital presentation experience.

My coauthor and I presented on the topic of representation, and how it can be calculated through the use of credit claims, for example from congressional member Bizz Johnson’s office. Our theory was that the idea of political representation can be calculated through the amount of credit claims a congressional member makes within their press releases. We value these credit claims as money or benefits for a district that the congressional member insinuates they were the ones to bring in governmental money to support the district they represent. We at first hypothesized that the amount of credit claims had a significant relationship with mid-term congressional election years, as the government was under more public scrutiny during these elections. What we found was that was untrue and there was no statistically significant relationship between congressional election years and the amount of credit claims. From our results we knew there as something going on, so we ran another test. What we do notice is, that there is a statistically significant correlation with presidential election years and credit claims.

Happy Friday!

This week we had two readings from Sternheimer as well as animated lectures from Annie Leonard.

The first Sternheimer chapter this week focused on consumption and materialism, topics that tie in very well with Leonards lectures. I found it interesting that Sternheimer (2013)  wrote that “Children continue to be the focus of our fears of hyperconsumption, especially when it appears that children’s consumer knowledge is greater than that of their parents” (p. 247). She subverts this idea by questioning the spending of parents and asking if it is because of their brand name consciousness that makes their children aware of consumerism and brands. I also found it interesting that companies see success based on brand awareness and market shares rather than actual sales (p.260). This definitely has made me question a lot of the ads I’ve seen recently since I now know they are not necessarily after my wallet but after my brain. In this section, Sternheimer also mentioned how companies/brands “…target fashion-forward young people and bloggers who they think will influence their peers” (p. 259). This immediately made me think of YouTube, especially the beauty “guru” community. YouTube recently instated a rule saying that if someone is promoting a product in their video it must clearly be labeled as an ad in the title. However, it is still apparent that companies are paying attention to different creators demographics by the products they are basically advertising or giving away in their video (i.e. curling irons, makeup palettes, stylish water bottles). A few pages later, Sternheimer mentions a teacher who placed ads on their tests in order to have money for more supplies to make tests (p. 263). This instantly made me think of the ad creep advertising strategy we discussed in class!

Anyways, this chapter went along very nicely with Leonard’s lectures. Her focus was mainly on what problems are created by our consumerist society and that we need to work as a society to consume less and place less value on consumption. I actually watched “The Story of Stuff” (Leonard, 2007) in a class last semester, but was not aware of the follow up “The Story of Solutions”(Leonard, 2013). I agreed with many of the points she made in the solutions video, like that we should focus on better rather than more and that we should be internalizing costs. However, I think some of her ideas were a little unrealistic. While I wish people were willing to come together as a community to change the world, that’s just not the kind of world we live in. I think if there was a way that an individual could make more impact acting alone, then her ideas would be a little more realistic. I definitely, definitely agree with her idea of sharing in the solutions film. Hand me downs, thrift stores, libraries, eBay etc. are all great alternatives (and sometimes less costly) than going out and buying new books and clothes. Plus, you never know what odd clothing piece you’ll find at the Salvation Army (I’m thinking some totally outrageous 80s and 90s windbreakers…). I do find the results of our consumerism uncomforting and they make for a very bleak future, but I think the solution(s) need to be more accommodating to the types of people that are able to make changes. What did you think? Is Leonard asking for something nearly impossible or is are her goals realistic?

The last thing I want to discuss is the final Sternheimer chapter. This section was a very nice summary of the points the author has made in nearly every chapter; focusing on poverty, inequality, and placing unfair blame on the media. I liked that she summarized the way the media places blame and what the reality is (i.e. violence due to living in violent communities, not playing video games; limited sex ed is the cause of teen pregnancy rates, not reality television shows on the topic) (p. 278-279).  Sternheimer also discussed lessons we can learn from pop culture, such as looking at the way issues like violence, racism, and homophobia are represented (p. 284). This was nicely tied back to media literacy and that we should focus on how and why things are produced, analyzing the media rather than fearing it (p. 284). To me, this is media literacy at its most basic: taking something we fear and learning to look critically at it rather than turn away from it. Did you have any thoughts on the final chapter?