Iceland's New Comedic Mayor

After a long time away from the blog enjoying summer, I just couldn't resist posting about this:

Remember the 2006 movie called Man of the Year? In it, a satirical comic (played by Robin Williams) runs for President of the US as a joke. Shockingly, he is actually elected and has to rise to meet his new responsibilities. An implausible plot, at best. 

     Or maybe not. A satirical, self-described anarchist and comedian was recently elected as the mayor of Iceland's largest city. Jon Gnarr created the "Best Party" and won what the New York Times called the protest vote. (I suggest that you read their full article.)
     This story made me wonder why I find the concept of someone other than an official "politician" holding office to be so strange. I mean, who decided that only the select few people who can afford to do nothing but campaign. I started to consider the roles that people try to fill in their lives and the limitations that our society places on people in those certain roles. I think that it is dangerous to believe that only a certain type of people can hold political office. Then, the government is no longer truly "by the people". (Although Iceland never made that claim.)

More from the Great State of Arizona

Illegal immigration policy is not the only thing for which the state of Arizona is being scrutinized. In recent months, the state has begun auditing teachers who have accents. (Watch the CNN report here.) The thought behind this is that teachers with heavy accents should not be allowed to be in contact with students who are still in the process of developing speaking styles in their native language, English. Of the staggering 1500 teachers who were audited, 25 were found to have "issues" with pronunciation or grammar, resulting in a loss of teaching privileges. 
       For obvious reasons, these audits have come under fire. Assuming that the state of Arizona truly has its students' best interests at heart and is not merely trying to discriminate against immigrants (which may be a big assumption, given recent immigration laws), the method behind the policy is simply flawed. These audits are clearly not the best way to determine whether someone is fit to teach. They might have perfect grammar and pronunciation, but if the students are not learning anything, it does not do any good. And who is responsible for judging which pronunciations are correct? As Irish teacher Ian Kidd states, "There is no one correct way to pronounce anything in America". A less subjective test of teachers would be to test the students on what they have actually learned.
       Some of the best teachers that I have had speak with heavy accents. This does not make them worse in the classroom. If anything, it adds much-needed diversity and better prepares students for people they may come across in the real world who don't have perfect OED-approved English. Most people in the country, myself included, fall into this "lesser" category. 
       One school's superintendent says, "You can have a diploma and still be a bad teacher". Now, I completely agree with this statement, but it relates to a totally separate issue. You can also be an excellent teacher and not have a diploma. He supports the audits on the grounds that children will miss out on important education if their teachers have accents, which is understandable. However, any teacher with a teaching certificate has already been evaluated and approved. Why can the state change its mind years later? Also, according to the video, studies have actually shown that non-native English speakers make better English teachers.
      More and more, I feel as if I am living in a deeply racist and biased society that preaches equality and practices discrimination. This latest development only solidifies my opinion.

Conquering the Land

In class, we watched Working in a Coal Mine, an episode of Morgan Spurlock's documentary TV show, 30 Days. In this particular episode, Spurlock voluntarily descends into a coal mine to do hard labor every day for a month. After watching, we had a class discussion about why we mine coal. 
     The relatively obvious reasons of financial gain and having few other options came us pretty quickly, but then a factor that I would never have considered was brought up: Many of the miners, despite all of the safety risks and terrible working conditions, actually enjoy spending their days down below the surface of the earth and could not imagine a life for themselves where they do anything else.
     Sitting in a comfortable classroom, I could not fathom how anyone could actually think this way and want to support themselves by mining coal if they had any other options.
    Then, on Saturday morning my perspective changed and I came to understand these coal miners on a new level. For extra credit in biology, my class went to cut down Buckthorn trees, an invasive species that chokes out the local forest. After working for about three hours, we were all able to look around at the new clearing we had made and feel a real sense of accomplishment. Even though it was simple labor and did not require much thought, there was something refreshing about having "conquered the land".
    Finally, this all relates back to The Kentucky Cycle. The Rowan boys are always going on about how much they love owning and farming the land. They feel a bigger connection to it, as Patrick says, "IT AIN'T JUST DIRT! It's land" (Schenkkan 92). He truly sees a deeper meaning in it. 
     After my Buckthorn cutting experience, I am convinced that every human has a deep desire to make an imprint on their surroundings and leave something behind for future generations. That is why the Rowans love their land and that is why coal miners are willing to venture into the earth every day.

Men Who Hate Women and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

S

Ah! The first non-junior theme blog in over a month!

So this afternoon I saw a Swedish film at the Wilmette Theater. It's English title is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The direct translation of the Swedish title, however, is Men Who Hate Women. (Thanks to Therese, our Swedish exchange student, for bringing this to my attention.) This second title is quite fitting, since the plot has a lot to do with sadistic rapists. 
I found the change of title very interesting, mostly because it never occurred to me that the titles of foreign films would be changed for American releases. After my initial surprise, my American-Studies trained self began to wonder why the title would have been changed.
Seeing as the purpose of the movie industry is to produce art and to make money, I imagine that the change is due to one of those factors. The author of the original book from which the screenplay was adapted is now dead, so it could not have been due to his artistic wishes. (Although, interestingly enough, the book is called The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in both countries.) This leaves the financial reason.
I do not believe that a movie released in the US with the title Men Who Hate Women would do very well in the box office. Someone out there, however, thought that such a title would do very well in Sweden.
Maybe the concern was that such a male-driven society would not tolerate such a title, and that no one would go to see it. 
Under any title, it was a very intriguing movie with an interesting plot and very well-developed and complicated characters. I would highly recommend it.

"So by the way, it's due in a week." (yikes)

So about five minutes ago we learned that the junior theme is due next Friday, May 7th. This means that we have exactly seven days to put the final touches on our papers, annotate our bibliographies, and dream up creative titles. I am personally feeling a little bit pressed for time, but my intro revisions have finally fallen into place and I think that I am nearing the conclusion of my research.
      In the time that we had off of school yesterday I called Lenore Skenazy, my interview subject, but she was unfortunately not around. Hopefully I will be able to talk to her over the weekend. On a slightly more successful note, I just completed my "fellow scholar" interview with none other than Nick Steen. His topic is American cars and the auto industry, which may not sound very similar to the topic of internet privacy. But we did find a connection that served both of us well. Part of his topic has to do with bumper stickers and the tendency of Americans to broadcast themselves by means of their beloved automobiles. We talked about why Americans feel the need to do this, and the effect on interpersonal reactions. I have a few good quotes from him that I will be including in my paper. (Although it just occurred to me that I might want to give him a copy of the paragraph that his quotes will be included in, just to make sure that I am not putting words in his mouth.)
      The one other thing that I have to do is annotate my bibliography, which shouldn't take way too long. I do have to make sure that my annotations are not too generic and "cheesy" though, since that seemed to be the main concern of our teachers.
      I have quite a bit of work to do this weekend, which will be challenging, seeing as I am going to Grosse Point for a regatta. I am going to have to put in some serious work during the five hour car ride there and back.....and probably after racing on Saturday night. I am confident, however, that I can get it all done by Friday.
    

"There can be no success without failure" --The Junior Theme Story

A brief update on my junior theme progress:
    I have emailed Lenore Skenazy requesting an interview and she very kindly responded promptly and positively. I am in the process of narrowing down the actual questions that I am going to ask her. Doc Oc helped me with that during class today. Almost all of my questions were way too broad and therefore would not have helped me learn information specific to my topic. I also spent a long time today grappling with freeconfrerencepro.com, which is a service that is supposed to allow you to record an conversation (in this case, an interview) online. I am not sure that this will end up working, so I may have to resort to asking the questions over email or finding another way of recording the exchange.
     Today I also finished up my very, very rough first draft of my introduction. Since I will not be in class tomorrow, I am going to meet with Mr. Bolos second period to discuss the intro. Hopefully I will get some good tips and insight from the meeting. 
     All in all, the stress level regarding the paper is not way too high. Maybe I would call it about a code yellow.
    I wonder what our final due date will be?

Junior Theme Update

So it's a bit after three on a beautiful Friday afternoon. As might be expected, the old work ethic has been somewhat hard to find today. I am going to plan out my research via blog to direct myself and budget my time over the weekend.

     The first order of business is to lock in my interview subject. I think that I am going to try to get an interview with danah boyd, as I have been reading her blog and latest book, but according to Mr. Bolos and common sense, she will probably be a difficult person to get an interview with. One of my friends suggested the founder of the website Zillow.com, which is a site that helps the owners or prospective buyers of homes check how much the home is actually worth. This ties in to my theme of privacy very well. One other candidate is Jesse Schell, the speaker in a DICE conference video that I watched. The video had a lot to do with gaming, privacy, and the future of technology.
     The next thing is to finish reading my book and pick out the most important passages and sections to use in my paper. (This task takes much longer to complete than to type out in my list.)
     After that I am going to finalize my thesis and write my introductory paragraph. Neither of these will be in their final form, of course, but it will be good to finally get something written down on paper.