And Best Director Goes to...

When watching the Oscar's tonite before they start the dragged on process of the award giving for each category before they go into a large process of seeing a movie with past works and past award winners. And during the Best Director one i could not see one female winnging ever. And as seen here the BEst Director Oscar has never gone to a woman. This ties back to our theme Woman and Children and i believe that this awards is second to last which gives it one of the most substantial positions and rank but then why has a woman never once in all 80 years of the Oscars never won and this raises the question if woman are alot more powerful in todays society can they still get any farther or for that matter are some things never going to change? Just liek the Agustun Golf Cource political cartoon that was brought up in presentations on thursday.

Age Limit for Kids in School

Something that I have been torn about since our childhood survey last week was the issue on what age kids should be allowed to legally quit school. And some people were saying 18 years old and some people were saying 12 years old and to be honest i almost agree with Joe's response of saying 12 years old because the less kids that are in school the more the kids who are in school will thrive. I mean think about it, if all kids were able to quit school when they were 12 first of all i believe that the majority of parents would have them stay in school but for the ones who did quit i would feel like i had so much more of a fighitng chance to be succesful. For example if there were less kids in a class we could get more attention on us and how we are progressing and there would be less competition for college and who is getting in and also later on in the job market if someone see's that you have a college degree or even a high school diploma you would be taken for that job over the kids who did quit school. So really i think the class was being kind of naiive when saying that kids should stay in school when even though if it is selfish i would let everyone drop out because i know my parents would make me stay in school and evidently i would in some ways be more succesful in life.

I know that i did neglect to think about if all these kids werean't in school would our crime rate go up or would college be even more expensive and all the cons of having kids drop out so i guess i will never find out if it would be a good thing or bad thing.

Are Pennies Needed???

Tonite when i was watching a little bit of "60 Minutes" there was a special with a biochemist at MIT and he has been fighting for getting rid of the penny and that 2 and 1/2 seconds are averagly wasted duirng american transactions becuse of pennies being handled. And on average EVERY person in america wastes on average $41 worth of pennies per year searching for pennies and putting them in a cup and with all the population we as america waste about 10 billion dollars a year on wasted time with pennies. And i would just like to know how everyone really feels about this and if we should get rid of the penny. I personally think its bogus and we would lose more money as an economy because of all the american jobs lost from people who made pennies and that getting rid of pennies just seems kind of ridiculous and i would like to know some of the long term affects on currency and just the price of things without the penny would be cheaper or more expensive.

Disney Tokenism...

During the SuperBowl while watching some Disney Channel with my little cousins i saw an add for Snow Buddies a new movie about a bunch of golden retriever puppies making a snow sled and racing it in Alaska and this is a sequel off of Air Buddies which is the same concept but the puppies play basketball and one of the charecters is called "B-Dawg" and he wears a "bling" chain around his kneck and has sunglasses. And i think that this obviously is making a charecter to be parralel with the omni-presenet "ghetto" society in our culture today. And i think this kind of parralels to the N word we have been discussing with Huckleberry fin and when i went on the website you can read each charecters profile and the terms used i think are really kind of crude and mocking and i think this gives kids a connotation of wanting to seem gangsta today which could lead them to bad things in their future and i believe it also gives kind of a secret message to the fact that it almost adds to an ongoing stero-type which i believe sumbitting this to a target audience of young impressionable kids is a really bad thing. For Example in B-Dawgs profile it lists his likes as "Basketball, bling, and rap" and in his snow buddies profile it says "B-Dawg is a hip-hop home pup, don't let it go around or it could ruin his street cred! and Yo, thats whats crack-a-lackin! (which apparently is his key phrase) BUt i just think this gives bad credit to black people in general when there being sterotyped as being only gangsta.

i tried to put the links in to these profiles

http://adisney.go.com/disneyvideos/animatedfilms/airbuddies/index.html (Air Buddies)

http://adisney.go.com/disneyvideos/liveaction/snowbuddies/ (Snow Buddies)

Pregars Parking???

Recently when going to new malls or new parking compelex's I've started to notice more and more that there are signs that say "Parking for New and Expectant Mother Only" next to or near handicaps spots. I don't know exactly how to feel about them yet because I understand that getting the stroller out and carrying a baby or being pregnant is very hard yet with our new theme of woman or children I thought this could be a parralel with woman being unequally treated or maybe a bias towards woman. But for some reason in my gut I feel that this is kind of wrong because for decades woman have delt with a baby and know that when traveling with a new baby or traveling when you're pregant can be sometimes very difficult but in this case i don't really feel that it's right to give them special parking where if one is handicapped i can understand but in now way do i feel that a woman with a new born or an expecting mother is handicapped. But i still don't really know what to feel and i would love to hear some feedback on what other people feel about it and not having first hand expierence with a new born or a woman that is pregnant i understand that i could be seeing somethings from the wrong perspective.

Why is our youth not voting?

I recall that during the last presidential campaign many influential and younger celebraties joined a cause titled "Vote-or-Die" and there point was to try to raise the percentage of eligiable voters from 18-24 to vote. Many celebraties from P-Diddy to Paris Hilton were involved in the campain cause and by the end of the election still less than half of our youth (18-24) was not voting and even Paris Hilton didn't "get around" to voting. Seeing how about half of our class can vote in the next election when talking to my friends on if they're going to vote or not most of them are either unsure or do not want to go through the miniscule task of registering and voting but then this raises an important question of if we the people of America have really the right to critisize George Bush or any other president when it is almost kind of our fault that we were the ones who put him in office or we were the ones who didnt vote.

Why don't we celebrate the holidays after the 26th...

Leading up to The Holidays this year and watching the news from time to time and ALWAYS hearing about the sales forcast about how you know Jc Penny's is nervous this season won't turn out to be as profitable as we hoped or today the sales of stores is lower and some department stores are nervous that this seasons forcast could run them out of buisness. And it just bugs me that it's kind of implying that the holidays are all about getting gifts or the first thing people ask you after the holidays is oh what did you get?Not like oh did you celebrate christmas with your family, did your relatives fly in, did you spend some fun times with your parents? It just seems that as the years go by families have just started to grow more and more apart and during the holiday season all anyone cares about is the presents and what to get people and all the worry and anticipation that goes into the holiday and my uncle was telling me actually how much he hates the holidays and that his kids are just always disappointed on christmas or that you know on christmas eve or the day before or the day before Chanukah starts everyone is just worrying about if they left anyone out or if they were able to get that one special gift or maybe they could spend just aother $50 on somehting nice for the kids. I mean the older and older i get the more i seem to dislike the holidays. Or how the day after Thanksgiving when everyone should be hanigng with the family or eating leftovers; people serioulsly get up at 4:30 a.m. to make it to Kohls at 5:00 a.m. to hit the good sales. Or also the days after christmas or new years you always see that every store is trying to have a sale and get rid of there merchandise fromt eh holidays and start fresh. For example i was at Sharper Image a couple days after christmas and i saw the exact same neck massager i bought my dad for half-off. I mean its all kind of a scam that you'll buy things full price and literally 3 days later there on sale. Or for example the first people to get the i-phone paid something around $700 for the phone but then somehting lik two weeks after its debut it went down to aroud $500 and how upset everyone was and just what a scam everything is or how the i-pod has had so many new updates that for people who bot the first one two years ago would be frowned upon todya for having it still. I mean just there's always something new to want and how my uncle said no one is ever happy i mean sometime the holidays and the society we live in get to me.