The Power of Podcast

Today I went to see one of my dance teachers perform with Inaside Chicago Dance Company. In this production, my teacher danced in a duet about the contrast between the ego and the higher self. They danced to clips of a couple podcasts, called 101 Ways to Transform Your Life and Spoken Word, both by Dr. Wayne Dyer. Seeing this reminded me of the Radiolab Podcast that we listened to last week. In this podcast, the guest on the show states,"I think of myself as a string of memories..." This quote stood out to me becasuse it was the first time I had heard of someone defining themselves as their memories, rather than their past or how they percieve themself. It was especially impressive, because it seems to me that most people are constantly in search within themselves of finding their higher self. At the end of the dance the music looped around and around, to the voice of Dr. Dyer uttering "I just feel so alone..." but in retrospect, you're never truely alone unless you've reached your higher self and you still have your thoughts to rake through in search for this ultimate being that has always been within you, or is that person just alone within their thoughts?

Lead Paint Scandal

Many parents try their hardest to provide the best childhood they can for their children. They do this out of pride, out of love, and out of the pure joy they feel from having a child. Parents childproof their entire homes with the hope of giving their son and/or daughter a secure place to live and play....but what if their home isn't as safe as they think it is.
Recently, there was an uproar in the childrens toy industry involving lead-laced paint for many products made by well-known and trusted toy companies, such as Mattel (TM) and Fisher-Price (TM). Millions of popular toys produced by these companies were recalled. There are serious quality control issues in China that need to be addressed. Hopefully this scandal will raise awareness and get a few laws made for the well-being of our ever-growing "Made in China" world.


UK STORY:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,,2147906,00.html

US STORY: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/23/business/worldbusiness/23suicide.html?ex=1189828800&en=4b163b1c742c0bab&ei=5070

Israel Helps Out Darfur

This afternoon I was reading an article in BBC World News about Darfur and two countries that are reaching out to the refugees. About 2,800 refugees entered Isreal illegally from Egypt, many of which were deflected by Israel and were accepted back into Egypt. Israeli Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit pointed out that "Israel, with its history, must offer assistance. It can't stand by and shut its eyes...". Therefore, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert signed an agreement allowing a large sum of Darfur refugees who entered Isreal illegally may remain in the country illegally. I was impressed by the actions of the leaders of these countries for taking in the people that are in dire need of their assistance, especially the actions of Isreal. The Jews had help durring the Holocaust, and though Israel is not necessarily helping those who helped them, the refugees are in a similar situation. This occurrence reminded me of the movie, Pay It Forward. In this movie you do one good thing for three diffrent people, who do one good thing for another three people, and the chain continues. Sadly, at this moment, it's not very realistic for a chain reaction of kindness and assistance to other countries in need, but it is definately something to strive for on a local or even global scale in the future.

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Upon reading the excerpt from the Textbook, I became very confused with the word choice of the author. Instead of referring to the Native Americans as Native Americans, he or she referred to them as "Indians". This made me wonder how long ago this textbook was written because it is currently politically incorrect to refer to them as Indians. Later on, Mr. Bolos and Mr. O'Connor infromed the class that this was from an earlier version of the textbook that we use now. This makes me question how much we should depend on what we read in our textbook this year. This reminded me of how often we find things around us that we don't take a second look at where the information comes from or how acurate it really is.

Teen girls worship magazines filled with juicy gossip like Teen People and Star Magazine, even websites like http://perezhilton.com/ . Each of these are sources of information, but how acurate is this information? There are people who disreguard much of the information they obtain from these sources, and others who believe it. No matter what, in the back of their mind they're still thinking about it, maybe accepting the information as true. There's always a chance that they will second guess their doubts or beliefs. The fire was started, and it is up to the reader to put it out.

The fire of calling Native Americans "Indians" was started when the explorers who found America confused the Natives with people who lived all the way in India! The inacurate name was left uncorrected for far to many years that people have just come to accept "Indian" as these peoples' true identities. In many situations, it has become easier to refer to Native Americans as "Indians" to avoid sounding too politically correct. Various Native Americans even refer to themselves as "Indians". This could be to lesser confusion or tension in order to speak more comfortably in a situation. On the other hand, it's just too bad that people from India have to be referred to as "South Asians" for the sake of being politically correct because of this mix-up!