Blog Entry 1: Issues raised in the videos in Part 1 regarding cyber bullying

The harassment attacks are a common issue in these days because it is particular easy for perpetrators to hide with nicknames and use public domain computers. I believe that the actions taking by Carla Franklyn will present a preview example for new legislations on cyber bully and cyber harassment as well. There is a need for politicians to address this issue and enforce the law to prevent more of these cases, since the law has not had a precedent rule to establish these issues, this case will be an excellent choice to set new laws in this matter.

Source http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/harassed-woman-seeks-answers-safety/

Harass Woman Seeks Answers, Safety. August 23, 2010

Source http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yha7oa21YM&feature=relmfu

Cyber Bully Victim vs. Google

The cyber bully experience is one that has rise notable media attention, since the outcomes has been devastating for the most vulnerable kids which are losing control of their personal life. The famous posting sites are the perfect excuse to solicitude sexual encounters, and the worst part is that perpetrators are looking for young adults to master their evil plans. Some other aspects that we can find online, is the anorexic circle around them basically very young girls deteriorating their bodies to look more alike top models. The anorexic media is taking the precious life of young girls to mimic them into one type of woman to be like by their mates.  The drug abuse and the partying scenes showing in videos are now pretty much a routine. Even though parents will find their activities one way or the other, teenagers are posting their life without hesitation. Parents whom are not involved in the social media will not be able to get in touch with the activities that their kids are taking part into it. Bryan case of bullying ended as the worst case scenario, unfortunately he killed himself and the negative part of this is that there is not a serious implication of who to blame. His father tracked down the kid that went hand to hand with Bryan and there were not reaction from the family. Some people just don’t care and they don’t look after their kids. The internet is massive weapon to demoralize someone life. Public life is just a torment storm of words and expressions to hurt people, we need to control their access to the media and teach the young adults that life is not square in a monitor or screen, there is simple meaning of life as talking face to face, sharing with others simple moments, or playing sports that require physical contact. Life is much more that sitting in front of a computer or device with internet access. Be human, and most importantly stay human.

Source http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/view/

Frontline World.

Final Project

B. Film: Rent ONE film from the list below (some are available for free online). Watch it. Then,

 

Capitalism: A Love Story.

The main topics of the film are;

Contemporary reality is produced by the significance changes of time in which society is currently living, and the effects that bring us to this moment from the last few decades. It is mostly based on facts, in which we identify ourselves with actual movements of lives. Realities can be found in many prospective life experience as the ones encounter on TV shows, or the type of documentary that aware us of social issues. For instance, in the movie, “Capitalism: A Love Story”. It shows us the cause and effect of our system being devastated by many adjustments to the law; as showed in the movie the cut break taxes from the government of Ronald Reagan to the American corporations and its outcomes after he left the presidency, a system that slowly declined to fall apart into the actual recession that our generation is facing. The producers of these realities are thoughtful encounters that persuade people of an idea being shown to the public with real facts, those facts are taken from life experiences in which it can be simple demonstrate that those issues are affecting our society. Therefore, these realities focus their storylines on issues that affect entire communities to give a sense of reaction among the victims, those who suffers from real life experience. The message sent by any reality could be a metaphor to begin a positive change in what is being shown as bad or wrong. If we think beyond the actual issues on the clip, we might get a solution in which all the parts involved can benefit from it. Even though some people do not want to sacrifice some personal assets to provide an equal society, we must demand an equal society that fights for the whole well being of our society. We need to stop the indiscrimination of social classes to enhance our future.

Select three (3) web images, web videos, or websites that you think speak to or represent the topic. Keep track of the websites where you got the images or videos.

This is the website for this picture; http://www.artdiamondblog.com/archives/houston/

This is the website for this picture; http://www.energybulletin.net/node/53705

This is the website for this picture; http://inthefray.org/content/view/129/39

Now write your final blog entry:

1. Begin by introducing the film by mentioning its director, its title, and describing what the film is about in one or two lines (in your own words, please--no quotes from Wikipedia).
2. Then write 400+ words explaining how the three web images, web videos, or websites you have chosen "speak to" or "speak about" the film.
3. Your images or videos should indicate where you got them from via a link to the appropriate website. You may place these links in the caption under the photo or at the very end of the blog entry.

In the film “Capitalism: A Love Story”, directed and produced by Michael Moore. There was a conception of whether Capitalism is evil or not. The movie was focused to address the current issue that the system is facing, and how it was originated by the government selling the power to corporations. Also the film shows us the humanity side of people who are suffering because of the economy turned down.

I had chosen three pictures which are very common to the end of capitalism. In my own point of view, the system is in its final moments of existing and ruling the world as we know it. The acceleration of technologies, and the new changes in society will demand a different role in the consumption of how people will behave in the world, and therefore, react against the system exploitation of labor, inequality, and instability. In the first picture, we can see how the capitalism is being compared as the new communism; this can be seen on the flag as the Wall Street banks are in bankrupt. Through the movie, Michael Moore tries to get responses from the bank executives on Wall Street; however, he never got an answer of where is the money? The same money that was given by the government to support the house market and alleviate the suffering of many fellow Americans, and instead of serving this honorable purpose, they used for their own good. In the same picture we can draw the end of private enterprise. As a contrary reaction from capitalism advance in technology, even though I am a big fan of technology breakthroughs, I have included a picture from Cuba labors because I believe that the super advance reach in technology is affecting us, the middle class people. For instances, the easy access of transferring information over the internet is outsourcing many jobs that used to feed our families. This business maneuvers to minimize profit is leaving the working class behind, hopeless, and frustrated. Therefore, I have posted this picture to go back in the future and eliminate this maneuver of capitalism taking our jobs away from us, and bring them back to the present. My last picture clearly indicates a statement from the movie, is capitalism evil? In the film, Michael Moore went to the priest to get a response of whether it is or not, he finally ends it by stating; I lost the part of the bible when Jesus became a capitalist. This reflection makes me believe in all the incorrect manners that the market magnates are processing, and in some point of our era, they are going to pay for their mistakes. In my conclusion, I do not believe in capitalism as evil but the indiscriminate practices of taking people properties, jobs away from them, misusing government money to personal satisfaction, yes the same money that came from our taxes, laws that benefit the richest and smash the poorest of our country, that has to be considered the evil force of our era, and it can not be tolerated by the hard working class.

Cat practice Sleep Dealer

In the passage written by Jason Silverman, he explains that the Sleep Dealer movie introduces us to the future were technology is taken over the system, and it is affecting overseas countries where the United States get all of its labor, and natural resources. In my opinion, this statement is already happening since the United State’s corporation is extracting the natural resources, exploiting people labor, and destroying their land.

Nowadays, it is so usual that the United State’s corporation extract natural resources from others countries to produce its own goods. Even though those natural resources were in another country, they did not belong to the population in that country. As it was shown in the film, Mexican villagers are forced to buy water for their crops from an armed robot. A similarity can be drawn from the crude extracted in Colombia. The major part of the crude, which is used to produce gasoline, is being sold to the United State Corporation at a low price, and the remaining is resold to Colombia at a high price.

Another topic that is discussed in the movie is that United States is exploiting people’s force of labor by paying very low salaries. In the movie, it was shown that the system uses an overseas labor to do general works in the country. In the present time, corporations send their workload overseas to reduce their expenses. Companies as; General Motors, Nike, Ford, and so on, have been sending their factories to several countries outside of their main offices to minimize the cost of labor. Someone who could be paid here in the country for the same type of work in Mexico is not working at the present time, and this cost our society to struggle.

The government is playing a high role in the corporation rush of making profit by destroying entire communities. In the movie, we saw an evil scene were the village of Memo was destroyed. In reality, those scenes are currently occurring in Iraq, and Afghanistan. The video that are being revealed by Wiki leaks in the past few months, it shows us a Jet from the Army, killing suspects that later on were only civilians. If they were not sure about of those people were terrorists, how could they killed them all, as if they were animals.

In my conclusion, movie as the Sleep Dealer are a great form of criticizing the system of corruption that our country is heading to. Therefore, we need to take action to change our reality and enhance our future.

Blog entry 21

A. Go back through your blog entries for the semester and choose three (3) that you consider your best work. Write a paragraph explaining why/ how these blog entries reflect your best work.

I consider the blog entries 15, 16 and 17 as the most interested section of the entire course. All of them were part of the food section. The blog entry 15 was an essay in which we responded to the Meatrix film, in this assignment I felt surprised by the circumstances in which employees and animals were treated in the meat industry. I was not aware of the holocaust that those corporations have perpetuated to make profit out of the workers and animals. I hope that someday there will be positive changes in the industry to avoid the cruelty of the meat factories. Blog entry 16 was about the cat practice, ‘Let them Eat Fat.’ I really enjoyed writing my essay about that passage, because all the facts behind the fast food corporations were revealed to me. I used to be very addicted to fast foods restaurants, especially Chinese restaurants and MacDonald. At this time I have changed those habits of eating there, and I have started to eat at home, which it was something I stopped doing since I moved to New York. Lastly in blog entry 17, I presented my comments about the food section in which I was really interested to complete due to my reactions against the negative exposure of the meat industry. Therefore, these three blogs are the ones I consider to be my best work, because it directly motivates me to overcome many issues relate to my food habits. I was emotionally involved in this section of the course.

B. Next, consider your online experience this semester and write a second paragraph that answers the following questions:
Was writing online different from other writing experiences you have had in the past? If yes, how so? If not, what was the same?
Did writing blog entries help improve your writing ability? Please explain why or why not.
Did you feel that the online work was a shared experience or an individual activity?
Did you read other students’ online work? (Never/ Only when Assigned/ Sometimes/ Often)
Did you get the impression that other members of the class or the network read your blog? (Never/ Only when Assigned/ Sometimes/ Often)

Writing Blogs was a different experience as I was not used to do it. Before I have attended the ESL classes at La Guardia but I have never been in a class where all the assignments were presented in blogs. I believe this method of keeping track of assignments online, it is really useful to save time and in my case, I feel more engaged to the class since all the assignment were posted prior to class. Also, writing blogs have been interesting for me. I have never done a blog in my life, and with this one I have noted that my English is improving much more than the previous classes. In addition to this, sharing thoughts and giving feed back to my classmates has improved my knowledge of English as well. We can take a look into everyone’s blog, and it really helps to in some way improve our knowledge by comparing our writing style to the students with different backgrounds. I constantly read other students’ blog a lot, to look for ideas of how to start my essay, and to look for examples of writing styles. Some of the students were looking through my writing, some of them let me know that they were, and make comments about it, that was really helpful for me and I told them that I really appreciated them for taking the time of doing so.

C. Finally, consider you overall experience in the class and write a third paragraph that answers the following:
What lessons will you be taking away from this class?
Is there something you would have liked to discuss that we did not get to? What is it and why did you want to discuss it? (Or, what did we not cover in depth that you would have liked to cover in depth and why?)
Do you feel that you are leaving this class with a basic understanding of writing strategies? Why or why not?
What was the most memorable moment, assignment, interaction, or experience you had in the class? Please explain why.
What recommendation(s) would you give to a student that plans to take this class next semester?

I have learned a wonderful lesson from the food section in which I have changed many aspects of my food consumption. But the most important lesson that I could have learned from this class, was to learn how to organize my ideas when I start to write my essays. I do not think that we had missed anything from the writing process that it was taught by the professor. This class has taught me several strategies to overcome the issue in my writing. In the present, I have accomplished all my expectations in order to face the Cat test. The most memorable moment of the class when we took the cat practices test, I almost felt as if I was in the real one, and I made some mistakes that I believe I have amended those mistakes. The recommendations that I would give to the students that are about to take this class; is that the need to complete all the blog entries, and check back with the tutors to correct any misspelling.

Blog 20: Expanding on one topic in Sleep Dealer

I was assigned to the group 4, I believe that selling memories, or sharing it with others for business purposes is unethical, and it should not be allowed. I completely agree with one of the students in Dr. X class, “back in those days a person could remember 10 numbers or more. However, today if a person accidentally misplaced their phone, she/he might not even remember one. The technology is taking our less complicated and also less difficult, this could be very inconvenience since we become laziest every time a new technology comes out and replace our vital functions. Looking back into my life, I could remember when I have to memorize all the friends’ numbers, it was not easy but I could remember most of their numbers. Also I agree to Jihyun Oh, about the memories of Luz being sold through the system. She explains that; “It is similar to some cases when people upload pictures/videos without permission of people involved in it.”I could not agree more to her explanation; it is not allowed to the show a personal image of someone without asking for permission. This is considered to be a violation of privacy. For instance, this could be shown in TV shows, but in other to do so, both parties reach an agreement to post memories, images, and so on.

Blog 19: Watching and Responding to The Story Of Stuff

I consider the treatment that the system has against the third world as a symbolism of dehumanization. For many years, humans have been though that we have to compete in every step of our life, in the early years of school, in college, and after we graduate from college. We must keep our competitions in the highest level possible against our rivals. This thought makes us believe that we are superior to the rest, and therefore we have these results. People dying from external diseases as a result of the chemicals that the factory’s uses in the production of goods. I believe that we; corporations, consumers, politicians, and people in general are responsible for this tragic. From people that work extracting the natural resources, to those who owns the corporations, or work for the corporations, to the finals consumers, we must stop this proliferation of business breaking apart our home, our planet, the only asset that human civilization has. 

Blog Entry 18

http://www.strayercommunications.com/images/uploads/Outsourcing.jpg

In the movie, “Sleep Dealer”, the outsourcing of labor was one of the issues showed in the movie.  The outsourcing issue has been debated in the nation, and it has been criticized during the last decade. In my opinion, the outsource of labor affects our society for the following reasons; works have been taking overseas, people displacement of jobs, and people are under pay for similar jobs.

People in America have been struggling to find open positions in many fields where they used to be a great source of jobs due to the outsourcing of labor. In the movie, the government did not want immigrants to stay in the United States, but they manipulated them for many different forms of hard labor, but only paid low salaries. This has been happening in the last few decades in many poor countries around the world, such as: India, Mexico, China, and Morocco. For instance, Dell computers outsource their customer service department to India, as well as many other companies.

Many Americans are being displaced of their jobs without a chance to get a new one, because of the outsourcing outcomes in business operations. Some companies sent their workload out of the country to reduce the expenses of its companies, as a result, this cause former workers to lose any hope of getting their job back. This can be told by the many IT specialist that are currently unemployed by the new boom of IT department specialist in India. Even though Indians are very respectful professionals, we have to prioritize our society members to be first in the list of potentials employees, because it is part of developing our society.

The outsourcing is not beneficial for the companies in the long run. Think about all our jobs being done in Mexico as it was done in the movie. What people living in the United States would do to get money? A capitalism economy needs its own people to spend money to survive; this means that the money needs to flow in order to increase value of the economy. Companies cannot just pretend to save tons of money without looking at the final outcome. They need people to have power of purchasing their products which is why they made it to be sold.

In my conclusion, outsourcing labor is not a good option for our society and companies as well. Americans have been traded by the company’s business of making profit out of the need of poor countries to save money. I will try to stop this by making those companies to pay higher taxes, because they are letting their people out of the job market.