Evil Plans to Get Trick-Or-Treaters Healthy

Halloween is coming up and almost everyone is looking forward to collecting bagfuls of candy while trick-or-treating. I always end up eating way too much candy and feel so unhealthy afterwards. Halloween always makes me think about childhood obesity here in America and how unhealthy our country has become. I have to admit, sometimes it is embarrassing  to live in one of the world's fattest countries. It seems like people are starting to let themselves go and not care as much about health. For people that are trying to get healthy, I'm sure the abundance of candy around Halloween time isn't helping. 

I babysit for a very health-conscious family. Instead of giving out candy to trick-or-treaters, they are giving out little bags of almonds and dried fruit. I thought this was a very good idea and would make Halloween slightly healthier for the trick-or-treaters. This pack of almonds and dried fruit might spark the motivation someone needs to get healthier. If other people starting catching on and making small changes like this, we will see the obesity epidemic decline.

 

I heard a story about a woman who took "getting people healthy" way too far. On  She had a basket full of candy and a separate basket full of letters telling kids and their parents (in a nice way) that they should get healthy. As each trick-or -treater came by, she would let them pick from one of her baskets depending on how fat she thought they were. I agree with her that our country needs to be healthier, but I think it should be done in a way that won't target specific people and demoralize them. The mental health of America is just as important as the physical health.

Are Other Races Being Given Advantages?

Affirmative Action Blog Post

After hearing aboutIt seems like colleges have been placing more and more emphasis on ethnicity during the application process. They keep wanting a more and more diverse student body. On applications they request that you state your race and religion, which I don't think should be considered at all during the application process. I think that scholarships should be given based on merit, not on race. By accepting more African Americans, Indians, and Asians just because they are diverse, colleges are making it increasingly harder for Caucasians to get in. I think that if one student is more qualified than another, they should be accepted rather than the less qualified student. If colleges accept racially diverse students over white students even if they aren't as smart, all they're going to get are African American, Asian, and Mexican students doing poorly in their classes. Students that weren't qualified to begin with are going to have a much harder time handling the workload and learning the material.

I don't think race should be considered at all in the applications. However, I do think that income and residency should be considered, which could in turn give blacks who might live in a poor neighborhood a better chance of getting in. I just don't think it would be fair to accept a black student whose parents are lawyers and make $200,000 a year instead of a white student whose parents didn't go to college and live in a trailer park. I think it's great that colleges want different races to be equally represented on their campus, but I don't think that students that aren't white should have an easier time getting in.  

Gender-Specific Toys Draw Boys and Girls Further Apart

After our discussion of gender roles in class the other day, I began to think about where these gender roles start to make their appereance and when kids start to accept them. I think it all begins with what parents instil in their kids at a young age, specifically the types of toys they buy for their kids to play with. By purchasing toys that are geared towards one specific gender such as Barbies or Nerf guns, parents are showing their children who they should be and what they should like.

In an article titled "Guys and Dolls No More?" about gender-based toy marketing the author says that more and more toys have become gender-specific. Nowadays it is very hard to find a toy in a magazine that isn't geared to a specific gender. Parents buy these gender-specific toys because they don't want their child to be different; if all the other little girls like Barbies, they think their daughter should like Barbies too so she has something in common with the other girls. Interstingly, parents are less likely to buy their son "girl toys" than they are to buy their daughter "boy toys". They want their son to appear more manly and not to cross over into the "pink zone" possibly to avoid harassment for seeming gay. Parents think they are doing their child good by buying them toys that will keep them "within the lines", but really they are just adding to the inequalities between men and women. It makes it harder and harder to cross this "line" because children experience more peer pressure to play with the toys that are specific to their gender. I think that having gender-specific toys is a step backwards in terms of equality between men and women.

Should Technology Really Be Top Priority?

The release of the new iPhone 5s got me thinking about how much technology - specifically Apple - has affected not only my life, but the lives of almost everyone in the US. I read Carolyn DeLarm's blog post about how everyone seems to be craving the new iPhones, and I totally agree. Our country has welcomed Apple technology into its everyday life: print newspapers are being replaced by online newspapers, schools like New Trier are using iPads in class to help the students learn, and texting or iMessaging seems like the most used form of communication. To me, we seem to rely on it more than we should.

Every year, Interbrand, a brand consultancy, makes a chart of the top 100 most valuable brands based on criteria such as how much money they made and how quickly they're expanding. Last year, Apple was ranked number 2 on that list under Coco-Cola. This year, Apple trumped all and became the most valuable company followed by Google, then by Coco-Cola. In fact, out of the top 10 brands, 5 of them were technology companies: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, and Intel.

This did not surprise me because I have an iPhone and I basically rely on it. I use it for virtually everything from getting directions to looking up definitions and I feel naked if I am missing it for even one day. Although there are some obvious benefits of having readily available technology in our personal lives (I'm not talking about technology used for powering cars or launching rockets), I think the effects of it are bad for the most part because we feel the need to spend so much time staring at a screen; it's entertaining, convenient, and informative. Spending so much time on the internet makes people much lazier, weakens our real-life social skills, and distracts us. A boy in my Latin class spends the whole period every day playing games on his iPad. His iPad has become such a distraction that he thinks it is more important to play his games and entertain himself than it is to learn.

My mom always reminds me that the best moments of my life are not going to happen over text or on the internet. I think personal technology has its benefits, but people need to understand that they shouldn't spend so much time using it.