Separating Classes

We have been discussing social classes in my class and that got me thinking about social class distinctions in my society. On example mentioned in class was how Indian Hill road has a sign that says no outlet but there really is an outlet. You can see the no outlet sign in the picture above.

I went and checked out Indian Hill road to really see if there was an outlet. What do you know? The "no outlet" sign is a lie.
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Above is a video of me driving straight through Indian Hill road and out the other side. So this begs the question, why is there a "no outlet" sign on a road that clearly has an outlet? One answer I can think of is to keep people who don't belong, lower social class, from driving through. It is pretty easy to see from the video that this is an area of wealth. There's a golf course on the right side and large houses throughout are pretty clear signs.

Another answer to why the road has a fake "no outlet" sign is because the residents want privacy and quiet. Both of these things are achieved when people stop using the road for through traffic. Before you clicked on the video did you notice the biker in the road? She probably wouldn't be doing that if the road was really busy. Another perk of privacy I guess.

Taking a step back is it right for the village of Winnetka to put up a "no outlet" sign on a road when there is an outlet? Also, are there any other examples you can think of concerning social class markers on the North Shore?

The Public's Right to Know

I recently read a story The New York Times entitled, "Rare Double Agent Disrupted Bombing Plot, U.S. Says" that really struck a cord with me. The story is that intelligence agent from Saudi Arabia infiltrated the Yemen branch of Al Qaeda last month posing as a suicide bomber who was going to blow up a United-States bound airliner with Al Qaeda's latest bomb that was supposed to be undetectable.

I would have thought that the U.S. would have celebrated this achievement and used it to gain more popularity for the Obama campaign because it shows that he is tough on terrorism. Instead, U.S. intelligence officials were angry that the story got leaked because "they feared the leak would discourage foreign intelligence services from cooperating with the United States" and because leaking the story is "causing our partners to be leery about working with us." I certainly understand the argument that the intelligence officials don't want the methods that they use to become known and also that the U.S. needs to maintain a trusting relationship with other countries in order to better prevent terrorist attacks.

But isn't it also the public's right to know what is threatening their safety? Ignorance is only bliss until something goes wrong. I feel that while the facts about the double agent should not have been leaked to the public, the public should at least know that a new terrorist plot was foiled that involved a brand new harder to detect underwear bomb. How much harm could 300 million extra sets of eyes do? The news has the possibility to cause paranoia but I'd rather be on the safe side when it comes to issues like this.

Dependence

I never really considered how much I depended on technology until my cell phone broke. I didn't consider myself to be the type of person to keep their whole life on their phone but now I'm rethinking that. I guess you really don't know what you have until it's gone.

The obvious effect that my broken phone will have is on my social life. Pretty much all of the plans that I make with friends is through a phone call or a text message. But going deeper than that, a lot of the sports news that I find myself talking about comes in the form of an update on my phone. I update online sports leagues on my phone, and I update Facebook through my phone. If I just had a home phone and I didn't pick up when someone called, they would assume I wasn't home. If I don't answer a call or text on my cell phone, people assume I'm ignoring them and that might make them upset.

Speaking of making people upset, losing my phone will affect my work life. I work as a photographer for a consignment shop and don't have regular hours and what I do changes just about every week from the obvious things like taking pictures to the less obvious like uploading the pictures to an online auction site. The only way I know what to do and when to do it is through my boss texting me. As I'm writing this even, he could be asking me to resend him a few pictures from last week. The consignment shop is small and relies on quickly processing  the items to make the most money. When everything was working how it was supposed to I never thought twice about anything going wrong. Now I have to figure out a way to fix it.

The most surprising reason that I have to fix my phone problem is because of how it could affect my school life. I check my homework for some classes on my phone. Now I know this can be easily fixed be easily fixed by writing the homework down in class but it will still be an adjustment. Also, a lot of the group work that goes on in classes is coordinated through texting and calling. In biology we will start our pig dissection soon and all the work will be done in groups and the teacher suggested coordinating the work by texting my group members about what everyone should do.

After thinking about this I realized that my life was kept, at least mostly, on my phone. This is a common theme that I don't think most people realize. The writing prompt on a recent ACT test that I took asked "are human relationships strengthened or weakened by technology?" The ACT wouldn't ask a question that the test takers couldn't relate to so I guess it just goes to show how much society relies on technology to function.

Thinking About a Change

For the past week I have been pretty set on my "why" question that guides my junior theme being "why do Americans eat so much fast food even though they know the health risks associated with fast food?" I did and still feel that the question is very broad and has a lot of possible areas for me to look into with my research.

Yesterday, while reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, the issue of how cheap the fast food is struck me as another possible topic. Why is fast food as cheap as it is? The book brought up some very interesting issues including government subsidized corn, which is very prevalent in fast food and just about everything these days, and how the cheap corn is good for the consumer but bad for the corn farmers.

The book also explored how even the cows are being raised much faster then ever before. Rich Blair says: "In my grandfathers time, cows were four or five years old at slaughter... Now we get there at fourteen to sixteen months" (52). This remarkable speed can be attributed to the diet of corn, tallow, food supplements, and lots of drugs.

These advancements do have a nasty side. Cows were never meant to eat corn meaning that they are always sick. "Cattle rarely live on feedlot diets for more than 150 days" (59). This is because the cows system couldn't handle eating corn for any longer. The other part of feedlots that disturb me is that the cows have the ground up remains of other cows mixed into their food. This could lead to several diseases in the meat that we eat.

This is what led me to wonder why we as Americans turn a blind eye to some of the darker things happening in feedlots so we can get our food at a cheaper price?