Photoshopped or Not? A Tool to Tell

         Has America become to obsessed with achieving perfection? My answer is yes. Who cares if you skin is not perfect or you are aging? People are becoming obsessed with their looks and achieving perfection when it is impossible and these people are wasting their life worrying about the little things. Photoshop is creating" images, research suggests, [that] contribute to eating disorders and anxiety about body types, especially among young women" (Lohr). For the advertisment business, Photoshop has become one of the most important tools that is used on a daily basis. Now there are new groups, mainly feminist groups, that created a system that can detect if an image has been altered on the computer. It would be a tool to remind people that they do not have to be Photoshopped to be beautiful and all that they see is fake. 

        I enjoyed this article very much because I do not support Photoshop. Though there are things that I would like to change about myself, I am a realists and there is not point to change photos if this is what I look like in person. Steve Lohr is against photoshop and makes it very clear. He supports people who want to set regulations for advertisement firms, so that they cannot Photoshop everything that they produce. Lohr provided great evidence to support his argument against Photoshop. As technology advances, so will peoples quest for perfection and I will let them waste their life away searching for the Fountain of Youth, while I enjoy my glorious life and accept what is.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/29/technology/software-to-rate-how-drastically-photos-are-retouched.html?src=me&ref=general

Obama to pardon two national turkeys for Thanksgiving

       "It’s good to have friends in high places. Especially when you’re a turkey. On Thanksgiving.", this was the perfect "grabber" to start off the light-hearted artcile. It made me laugh and keep on reading the rest of the article. I find it a useless tradition though, why does the President need to pardon two turkeys? Shouldn't he be fixing the budget defecate or bringing home troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. Even though his time could have been used to accomplish more important things, it is an interesting tradition that recently officially started with President George H.W. Bush in 1989. Maybe more turkeys could be donated to the local food bank besides the two that were this year. I think it is a great tradition that could be expanded so it is helpful to the needy, not just for entertainment. 
      Writer, David Nakamura, finds this new tradition very comical and shares his thought with everyone. He writes with everyone in mind, keeping it simple, short, and enjoyable to read. Nakamura informed the reader of every aspect of the tradition and even the  names of the turkeys that were pardoned.  In the short, but sweet article I learned everything there is to know about this silly tradition. I enjoyed this article and would love to read more of Nakamura's pieces. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/44/post/obama-to-pardon-two-national-turkeys-for-thanksgiving/2011/11/23/gIQAcWmbnN_blog.html

What’s in a Name? Ask Google

        Picking out and deciding on a baby name can be one of the most important decisions in life, so why not ask Google because now a days Google has all of the answers. Parents want a name that is unique, but not weird, classy, but not elderly and young, but not trashy. There are many aspects to think about when coming up with a name and Google can help make the decision easier. Google is the go-to spot to make sure that your baby has a beautiful name with no underlying meaning that might be inappropriate or embarrassing for the child. Now, "a small survey on LilSugar, a parenting and pop culture site, found that 64 percent of respondents had Googled their baby’s name before settling on it", so forget those multiple naming books and just create a name then Google it. Uniqueness is now becoming a competition among parents and Google makes sure that no one else has their child name. 
      For someone who likes to imagine their life ten or fifteen years from now, it is fun to think of baby names, but soon you will discover a new name and you will forget about all of the others that you have come up with. Writer, Allen Salkin, has fun writing this article, asking many parents about their adventures when deciding on a name. There are many first hand accounts of parents picking the wrong name or liking a name and Googling only to find out that a sex offender or serial killer has the same name. This was an interesting article, mainly aimed towards pregnant mothers in the process of picking out many different names. When picking a name that your child has to live with for the rest of their lives, you do not want to take any chances, so just Google it before putting it on the birth certificate. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/fashion/google-searches-help-parents-narrow-down-baby-names.html?src=recg

How About Better Parents?

        Instead of blaming things on the bad teachers in our school systems we should also blame the parents. Parents are teachers too, they taught their kids how to read and tie their shoes, they are the children's first teacher outside of a classroom setting. The article informs us that, "Every three years, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or O.E.C.D., conducts exams as part of the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, which tests 15-year-olds in the world’s leading industrialized nations on their reading comprehension and ability to use what they’ve learned in math and science to solve real problems" and America is lagging behind other nations. Now, the O.E.C.D. is also asking the participants how they were raised and what their childhood was like. There were three main findings published including, children who were read to as children had higher scores. Parents who encouraged their children to go to college also scored higher. 
     Thomas L. Friedman's thesis stated, "To be sure, there is no substitute for a good teacher. There is nothing more valuable than great classroom instruction. But let’s stop putting the whole burden on teachers. We also need better parents. Better parents can make every teacher more effective", and I agree. Parents choose the easy way out and blame the teachers when parents should step up and also act like a teacher. Friedman's audience is parents that want to help their children become the best that they can be and he uses simple diction to reach a broader audience. Teachers are a vital part of our country and are hardly even recognized for their work. We should all support teachers and congratulate them on their excellent contributions to children's lives. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/opinion/sunday/friedman-how-about-better-parents.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=general

Facebook Security Breach Raises Concerns

          The Internet is not a safe place and people do not realize that so much of their personal information is venerable to a hacker. There has been recent Facebook hackings that have many worried. There was a, "widespread spam attack on Facebook has caused violent and pornographic images to be posted on some users’ profile pages, representing one of the worst security breaches in the young Web site’s history and raising concerns about its vulnerability to hackers". Facebook is trying to fix the problem, but is saying that no personal information has been taken from the users....yet. Facebook executives promise that keeping their users information private is their top priority. Users were tricked into posting the spam into their browsing bar and clicking "enter", allowing the hackers to log in as that person and post the photos. Now technology professionals are worried that this is not going to be the last attack on Facebook and they could get worse. 
          Writer, Hayley Tsukayama, knows her audience very well, every worried Facebook user in the world and even Tsukayama is worried herself. Facebook is a global company that has many glitches that have been hidden from the public, but are becoming more and more evident. I am worried about my personal information being stolen and I am sure that everyone else is worried as well. All I know is that Facebook needs to fix this problem before people begin to terminate their accounts.

Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

          Lauren Oliver's first novel, Before I Fall, tells the story of Samantha Kingston, one of the most popular girls at Thomas Jefferson High School in Ridgeview, Connecticut, and how she dies. Sam and her three best friends, Lindsey, Ally, and Elody all leave a party only to get into a fatal car crash on the car ride home. Sam dies, but wakes up the next morning to realize that she is reliving the same day, February 12. On the first day Sam just thinks that it was all a bad dream and that she is going crazy, but then she  relives the same day another six times, learning something new each time she wakes up to face the same day. The outline of this frightful day begins with the four girls on their way to school and they are all matching because it is Cupid Day at their school and they are all competing with each other to see who can receive the most roses. Sam's day continues as she attends her classes, having a chemistry quiz where she cheats off of a classmate, and then she skips seventh period to go to TCBY with Lindsey. Her day continues as they all go to Ally's house to hang out before Kent's party. Sam is very nervous about hanging out with her boyfriend, Rob, after the party because he believes that he is going to get "lucky".  The whole night Lindsey tries to calm Sam down with alcohol and loud music. When they arrive at the party Rob is completely drunk and Sam regrets her decision to go. When trying to leave the party the girls come across a confrontation with the classic "weird girl", Juliet Sykes, but they soon leave the party after dumping beer onto Juliet's head. Sam, Lindsey, Ally, and Elody all jump into the car and drive off and the last thing Sam can remember is looking at the clock, then Lindsey yelling, and finally the car flips off the road, but then Sam wakes up to relive this day seven more times.
              Lauren Oliver knows her audience very well. This is a perfectly written young adult book, aimed towards teenage girls. Before I Fall  begins as any other young adult book normally would, with a girl and her popular friends living the perfect life, but soon the novel takes a gloomy turn. What I thought  would be a very predictable book soon became filled with mysteries as each day something changed in Samantha's life.  Once I read up to Sam reliving her fourth day, it became a little dull and I did not know if I also wanted to keep reliving the same day. Each day Sam tries correct a mistake or learn a valuable lesson in the end, but it does not matter because she is dead. Sam's life is made up of a perfect boyfriend, sex, drinking, smoking, and partying and it is the typical protagonist of a story and I wonder how the novel would have evolved if the main character was a "normal student" or the girl that Sam and her friends always made fun of. The novel's storyline is not very creative, making me think of the movie "Groundhog Day" where a man, just like Sam has to relive a day in his life. The moral of Sam's tragic death is to treat people with respect and to die with no regrets about the life that she has lived. Each of her last days is altered because of a decision that she has made. One day, Juliet is at the party with Sam, the next bight Sam stays over Ally's house and Juliet commits suicide. I would recommend this book to any teenage girl wanting a book that is easy to read, but also makes the reader think about their own life and the decisions that they have made. My favorite quote from this relaxing read happens to be located on the last page reading, " I'm not scared if that's what you're wondering. The moment of death is full of sound and warmth and light, so much light it fills me, absorbs me: a tunnel of light shooting away, arcing up and up and up, and if singing were a feeling it would be this, this light, this lifting, like laughing...the rest you have to find out for yourself" (Oliver 470).

Are Cookbooks Obsolete?

          For a baking fanatic, this made me a little worried. I love my cookbooks and all the stains that they receive from the spilt vanilla or sifted flour. Not all of my recipes lie in a cookbook, some are printed off line and some are in a notebook, so maybe a one stop app for them all could be beneficial. Writer Julia Moskin, begins the piece by describing what ever cook in America will be doing in preparation for thanksgiving. Many of the first cooking apps were more unhelpful than the actual fifty year old cookbook, but then came the tablet. Whether you have Apple of Blackberry's version it does not matter, the cooking apps will soon exterminate the boring, yet extraordinary cookbook.
        Moskin knows her audience very well because they, like her, love to cook or bake. It is an informative  article, listing prices and culinary institutions were their textbooks are now tablets, but it is also persuasive. Throughout the article, I always felt like she was advertising the new apps for cooking or trying to sell her audience the new technology. For now, I will still hold on to my scraps of paper and stained filled baking books because to me they have a lot more character and personality than a iPad.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/09/dining/are-apps-making-cookbooks-obsolete.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=general&src=me

Remains of War Dead Dumped in Landfill

           What happens when you believe that your loved one was going to be disposed of properly by the government, but then you receive a letter that their remains were dumped into a landfill. This is a little sadistic. Craig Whitlock and Greg Jaffe shed some light on this dirty little secret hidden in a Virginia landfill. From 2003 until 2008, partial remains of deceased soldiers have been cremated and then dumped into a landfill. The Air Force defends their decision by telling the Washington Post that they were only partial remains that could never be identified. Before being cremated the Air Force must attain permission from the soldiers families, but the families were never aware that their loved ones would be disposed of in a landfill like they were garbage. Gari-Lynn Smith was "appalled and disgusted" by the way that her husband’s remains were taken care of. Lynn continued by saying, "My only peace of mind in losing my husband was that he was taken to Dover and that he was handled with dignity, love, respect and honor. That was completely shattered for me when I was told that he was thrown in the trash”. Needless to say, thousands of military families are upset and angry at how the Air Force treated the fallen soldiers that dies for their country. The procedure has since been changed.

         Jaffe and Whitlock are sensitive to the deceased one’s families and support them. The purpose of this article was to inform the public of the government’s mistakes and how they are handling them. Co-writers were disgusted at how the Air Force monitored and responded to the Washington Post’s questions. The persons responsible for their errors were placed under an eighteen-month investigation, but were never fired. This article is packed with emotional testimonies from loved ones, but also is filled with hatred towards the people responsible. These fallen soldiers deserve to be treated with respect and dignity and not just tossed away. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/remains-of-war-dead-dumped-in-landfill/2011/11/09/gIQAz7dM6M_story_1.html

Woman Accuses Cain of Groping; He Denies Charge

         Will we ever see a time in America where a presidential candidate is not surrounded by a controversy? I don't believe so. The most recent scandal involves Republican candidate Herman Cain allegedly groping four women back in the 1990's. My question to these women who all but one have remain anonymous, Why now? I am positive that if he was not running in the election that these women would not have ever come forward. This political article is very informative and its purpose is to inform the public that another women has come forward in this ever growing scandal.
         “Mr. Cain said, ‘You want a job, right?’ ” she said, writers Jim Rutenberg and Michael D. Shear used many quotes from Sharon Bialek, the accuser, in order to show all of the facts. This article is written to inform, but also I find it a little sarcastic. Rutenberg and Shear use simple diction because this article has a very large audience, from a high schooler to a man on his way to work. At this point in time, I believe that everyone is a little annoyed with all of these women and I believe that the past is in the past and should be forgotten about. It has been well over ten years and how do we even know that these women can remember word for word conversation with Herman Cain. 


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/08/us/politics/woman-accuses-cain-of-groping-he-denies-charge.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

The Arts Bloom in Greece’s Second City

        Right now Greece is in an economic spiral, but in Salonika, which is about 320 miles north of Athens, the economy is thriving. There are new art galleries and nigh clubs opening, along with the International Film Festival being held there this month. Salonika is the cultural capitol of Greece and is drawing in the youth to come celebrate its success. The city, " Punctuated by palm trees and relics of antiquity, mazelike city streets open to century-old marketplaces, where ripe produce, freshly dismembered livestock and an extravagance of spices still form the city’s commercial heart", is capturing the hearts of travelers from around the world. There is also the nonprofit Dynamo Project Space, where new artists can go and become inspired. There are nightclubs on every block and the youth enjoys the joyous atmosphere that surrounds them. Maybe the capitol should listen to Koureas Grigoris who said, " “It’s better to have a place full of people who want to be out and listen to the music. Not everything’s about money".
         Writer Charly Wilder wants to show her readers that not all of Greece is in economic turmoil. Wilder's audience is the youth who have only seen the destruction of governments and economic recessions. The purpose of this article is to explore the wonderful city of Salonika and display everything that is has to offer. The article acted like a brochure, explaining some of the city's "hot spots" to visit. Wilder kept the article upbeat and filled with excitement to contrast the many negative articles written about Greece lately.

http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/travel/salonika-greeces-cultural-capital.html?pagewanted=1&ref=travel

Is the Era of the Motorcycle Over?

           I am not a fan of motorcycles; they are loud, unsafe, and occasionally tacky. From the first paragraph I knew that the author was a proud owner of four motorcycles and was certainly going to be biased, but the article took an unexpected turn. Frederick Seidel made the argument that the motorcycle industry is losing its customers to Apple. Motorcycles are now mainly for middle-ages men and Apple, "It’s their operating speeds that thrill. Young people cut a bella figura on their electronic devices". Seidel says that fifty years ago it was cool to own a motorcycle and now they are losing to Apple, so will Apple lose its customers to another product fifty years in the future? I don't think that will ever happen in my lifetime, but Seidel's argument made me realize that in the economy, companies benefit from others losses.
        Seidel's audience would be middle-aged men who enjoy motorcycles, and like him are disappointed by the younger generations loss of interest in them. His article mainly focused on the industry and how it is losing customers to Apple, but also to comment on the new Ducati motorcycle, debuting this week in Italy. His goal through this article is to get the younger generation interested in motorcycles, but for us a motorcycle would not be affected for our everyday lives. A motorcycle is a luxury item, when a computer is now a necessity for today's young adults.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/opinion/sunday/is-the-iphone-replacing-the-motorcycle.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Before I Fall