Becca’s Blog

The principal of Rio Grande High School could be in trouble for taking one of his students to a barber shop without permission of the pupil’s parents.Al Sanchez could face disciplinary action, Albuquerque public school district officials said.”Students should not be taken off of campus by any staff member without parental permission,” said Rigo Chavez, district spokesman.

Haircut may get principal in trouble – Education – MSNBC.com

    This article is about a student in an Albuquerque high school who had a 505 and a Zia symbol shaved into the back of his head. The kids principal thought  the boys haircut was some kind of gang sign, so he offered to take the boy to a barber to have his hair fixed. The boy’s only other option was suspension. The boys parents were angered because the principal took their son off campus without parental permission.

    This story is very odd. I was most surprised by the fact that the parents of the boy were upset over the principal wanting to change the boy’s haircut. The father claimed that he had the boy get the special designs in his hair because the father is a boxer and wanted his son to get the designs to show his support. Personally, if I were the son, I would have been more than willing to get them removed.

    I think that the principal truly had the student’s best intentions in mind. I can fully understand that the designs in the kid’s hair were probably distracting to other classmates and may have caused a problem. I think that the parent’s over reacted to the situation. By making such a big deal over this issue, the parents are teaching their child that teachers and principals have no authority. How are educators supposed to do their job if parents are teaching their children to undermine the authority of educators?

. “‘You want my license? I’m going for pancakes, I’m not buying the Hope diamond,’ and they refused to seat us,” Russo said, recounting his experience this week at the Quincy IHOP.

IHOP changes policy of asking for IDs – Yahoo! News

    This article is about a man who went to a California IHOP and had to leave his license in order to be seated. The man refused to do so because he had been a victim of identity theft. The restaurant claimed that it began the policy of taking licenses, without management approval, to discourage people from leaving before paying.

    At first this story seemed pointless, but after I thought about it, it actually scared me a little bit. I can honestly say that if I went into a restaurant and someone asked for my license, I would probably give it to them. I wouldn’t think about identity theft or all of the personal information that is on my license. You really have no way of knowing who you are giving your id to . Even if the person is a valid employee, it’s not like the IHOP is an exclusive establishment. You don’t know the background of the people who are working there and you don’t know their present day circumstances. They may need money to support their family and not have anywhere else to turn. Not everyone would steal another person’s identity, but the fact that some people would means you have to suspect everyone.

    It is kind of sad that you can’t even go to the IHOP without having to worry about your safety and security. As meaningless as I found this article at first, I did open my eyes to who I give my personal information to.

“When someone works for less pay than she can live on-when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently-then she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has given you a gift of some part of her abilities, her health, and her life. The “working poor,” as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philantropists of our society.”

p.221 Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich

    Barbara Enrenreich’s book, which is an expose of sorts on working for minimum wage, is different from what I expected it to be. I expected the large majority of the book to be a well to do woman griping about having to do work that other people do daily, without complaint. I was surprised to see that Ehrenreich took working for minimum wage seriously. She treated everyone that she worked with, or for as the case may be, with the utmost respect.

    The passage that I quoted is from the very last page of Enrenreich’s book, where she evaluates her experience and tells some of the things that she has learned. This passage made me realize how powerful the lower class could be. If a large number of the lower class were to strike, we would be thrown into choas. In a sense, it’s these barely paid workers who run the country. They make everything happen “back stage” so that a good front is presented, whether it be in someone else’s home, a restuarant or a store.

    While going on strike would hopefully result in better pay and working conditions for those working for minimum wage, that’s a chance most can’t risk taking. Yes, it would be nice to eventually have higher wages and a civil work environment, but children’s stomachs don’t stop rumbling because you’ll get a pay raise eventually. It’s sad that people who work extremely hard and are dedicated to their job, can’t even afford to stand up for themselves. Sure this is America, they have the right to stand up for themselves, but they have been forced into such a terrible economic position, that they don’t have the ability to stand up for themselves.

A court ruling which ordered a gynecologist to pay child support for up to 18 years as compensation for botching a contraceptive implant was condemned by the German media as scandalous on Wednesday.

Doctor ordered to pay for unwanted baby – Yahoo! News

    This article left me speechless. It is about a woman who sued her doctor because she had a child after she had some type of contraceptive implanted in her. The woman won and now the doctor has to pay $769 a month to the woman, for up to eighteen years.

    I don’t understand how the woman won this case. From the way that I understood the article, whatever was implanted in her just disappeared. This would lead me to believe that it didn’t react the way it was meant to with her body. If this is the case, I don’t see how a doctor can be blamed for her having a child. You wouldn’t sue a doctor if your own body rejected a transplanted organ, why sue for this?

    Also, I feel bad for the child. It’s going to be kind of hard to hide the fact that he was a very large accident. What kid wants to grow up knowing that their mother was so distraught about their birth that she has to sue the doctor? This woman seems overly selfish to me because she would rather have some money than have her child grow up thinking he was wanted and conceived out of love.

    I believe that everything happens for a reason. So, if this woman had a child, she was meant to. If she really had no means of supporting the child, then she should have given it up for adoption or had an abortion. I don’t see any point in raising a child if you do not truly want and love that child.

A Delaware judge on Friday ordered a man who twice exposed himself to a 10-year-old girl at his workplace to wear a T-shirt with the words: “I am a registered sex offender” in bold letters, a prosecutor said.

Man ordered to wear “sex offender” T-shirt – Yahoo! News

       A man with at least ten convictions for exposing himself to children was sentenced to sixty days in jail and, upon his release, has to wear a shirt that clearly states he is a sex offender. The man has to wear the shirt for a little less than two years.

    I think this is a very good sentence. The man has convictions that date back to the 1970’s. Obviously what ever his previous punishments were, they did not work well. The shirt by itself doesn’t seem like a huge punishment, it almost sounds like something you would find in Spencer’s or something, which doesn’t say much for our society. The shirt allows the community to deal with the man’s punishment. The article says that the man runs a gardening business with his wife. It is beyond fair that customers know who they are dealing with. Customers should know that if they are bringing their children to this place, they could be placing them in a dangerous situation.

    The man was diagonsed as a ‘complusive exhibitionist’. First of all, I don’t think I fully agree with exhibtionism as a disease. I think if you are risking the well-being of the community, especially children, you should be in some kind of treatment. I don’t know what treatment someone with chronic exhibitionism would undergo, something with lots of buttons and zippers I would assume.

    I think that all sex-offenders should have a shirt, or a hat or something that warns people they could be in danger. I understand that for some sex offenders, it truly is a disease and they don’t have control of themselves. No matter what the cause, they are still a risk and a danger to the general population.

“One might conclude that the Smokehouse serves the same function that neighborhood yards and porches once served before working-class White moved out from urban centers. That is, is is a physical and symbolic agent of the local, a repository of folk histories and originary tales.”

~Julie Lindquist Class Identity and the Politics of Dissent : The Culture of Argument in a Chicago Neighborhood Bar

    Julie Lindquist acts as a bartender for a few months so she can analyze the class structure that  exists within a Chicago bar. She claims that though the patrons of the bar are working class people, they won’t admit to it. In contrast, they take pride in being hard workers. While the article was supposed to be about ‘the culture or argument in a bar’, I couldn’t get passed the way Lindquist interacted with the patrons.

    This article hit a nerve with me because I grew up in a community that seems very similar to the one that Lindquist describes. She seemed as if she thought of herself as being miles above the patrons of the bar, as far as class is concerned. From my interpretation of the reading, she treated the patrons as lab rats. Maybe I would get a different impression if I read more of this work, but from this excerpt, it seemed that she only interacted with these people for her own research purposes. I work in a small restaurant, and I’ve gotten to know some of the regular customers pretty well. I’ve found that my first impression is almost always wrong, in fact the customers that I couldn’t stand at first are the ones that I most enjoy talking to now. I’ve also found that, usually, the people who you may think are the most “middle-Class” , are the ones with the most interesting stories that you can learn the most from. Also, they are the most polite. I’ve found that people who appear to be from the “upper-class” are very rude and can’t be bothered to treat you as a human being.

    What bothered me most about this excerpt is that Lindquist didn’t really get to know these people. Yes, she knew their political views and conducted her research, but something seemed to  be missing  for me.  In the way that I read her piece, she seemed to look down on the patrons as menial workers, who spend every free moment in the bar and think that they should change. While they truly may be working class alcoholics, I don’t think that necessarily makes them bad people that should be looked down upon.

“When you dedicate your life to something and the dream comes true, it is wonderful,” the 25-year-old said. “If you don’t give up, anything can happen … I feel so blessed and so fortunate that I feel really humbled.

Rossi error gives Hayden title – Motorsport – Sport – theage.com.au

       Over the week-end Nicky Hayden won the MotoGP Chamionship, by finishing well ahead of Valentino Rossi. MotoGP is an extremely popular sport in Europe, and pretty much everywhere in the world except for the U.S. The final race for the 2006 season had all the makings of a historical battle-Hayden’s teammate had taken him out in the previous race, causing a large controversy and also putting Hayden eight points behind Rossi in the chase for the title. Though it’s an amazing feat to win this championship, I think the most inspiring part of the story is Nicky Hayden himself.

    In my eyes, Hayden is truly the embodiment of the American Dream. He doesn’t seem to take anything for granted. After winning his first race, he told a story about how his parents were so dedicated to helping him follow his dream that they took him racing in Daytona, even though the roof was leaking and they had to put pots on the floor. Yeah, it might sound like a stupid, ignorant thing to do, but I think it proves that if you are willing to make sacrifices and put in an enormous amount of hard work, you can really do whatever you want. I know this sounds like a bad plot for a Disney movie, but I find this story really inspiring. To see a young American guy battling with the best road racers in the world, and then coming out on top, is amazing. The final race took place in Spain and it was so emotional to see Hayden flying around the track with a huge American flag in his hand.

    I admire Hayden because he never makes excuses. If he gets beat, he’ll be the first one to say that he will have to put in more practice and training time for the next race. Even when he won races, he knew that in the larger scheme, it didn’t mean that much. He still had to prove himself and keep pushing.

When she turned her back to get another dollar for a second try, Robert took off his coat and squeezed through an opening in the machine. He landed in the stuffed animal cube.”I turned around and looked for him, and he said, ‘Oma, I’m in here,” Bierdemann said. “I thought I would have a heart attack.”

Toddler gets stuck in vending machine – Yahoo! News

    This story is absolutely hysterical. Maybe I’m just evil and fail to see the danger of the situation, I don’t know. The story is about a three year old boy who wanted a stuffed Spongebob out of one of those rip-off, stuffed animal vending machines. He didn’t get the toy so some how he cilmbed into the machine. I don’t even understand how he was able to climb into in. I have never closely examined one of those stuffed animal machines, but in passing I’ve never noticed a large gaping hole that I could climb through.

    The boy’s grandmother was with him when it happened. She seemed to find the whole thing pretty funny. At least that’s the way I interpretted her quotes. If she was serious I think she needs her head checked. She said, “He stacked up all the stuffed animals and used the screwdriver to open the latch. You should have seen him go.”  I know that grandmas are supposed to take pride in all that their grandchildren do, but I think that should have a stopping point. I know if my nephew managed to contort himself into a vending machine, I would point and laugh and then leave him there to be scooped up by those creepy claws.

    This kind of reminds me of the scene in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when that obnoxious girl gets sucked up in the tube. I am completely in shocked that the kid managed to climb inside the machine. The worse part of the story is the kid didn’t even get to keep the Spongebob toy! That is very depressing, I think the kid should get some kind of award.

“We must leave home and familiar ways of speaking and understanding in order to participate in public life.”

~Richard Rodriguez  

    This piece reminded me a lot of Megan Foss’ Love Letters. Both Rodriguez and Foss used words to overcome their pasts.In this broad theme, the pieces are very much a like, but they were also very different.

    Rodriguez used books and reading as a way to elevate himself and become more educated. Foss used writing and her words to elevate herself in the eyes of society. Foss seemed conscious of her actions while she was doing it, while Rodriguez didn’t realize that he was using books as a way to better himself until later in life.

      Foss didn’t seem to be as ashamed of her past as Rodriguez was. Foss embraced her past because it was was such a large contributing factor in who she had become. Rodriguez denounced his past. Through out his entire piece, he comments on how ashamed he was of his family and this uneducated parents.

    I think it’s interesting that both writers become teachers of English. Both of them admit to, and elaborate on, the fact that they spoke foreign languages. They both were so intrigued by the English language that they wanted to spread it to others.

      The fact that Foss was a writer, where as Rodriguez was more of a reader, seems true to their characters. Foss was more a woman of action with her own strong opinions. Rodriguez merely regurgitated all that he had learned, so it’s not surprising that he read the work of other’s instead of creating his own. I realize that Rodriguez did become a writer, but it seems that he was first drawn in by reading books, not creating them.

The study by researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine in California found one in 8 adults admitted they needed to spend less time online, saying this showed “problematic Internet use” is present in a sizable portion of the population.

Some Internet addicts cover up habit: study – Yahoo! News

    I found this article interesting because it’s not something that I would have otherwise thought about. The internet has become such a huge part of our society that I wouldn’t have thought of it has being a problem. However, after reading the article, I would definately say that we have become overly dependent on the internet.

      The internet has become our major means of conversation. I know that personally, I usually e-mail some one rather that calling them. I find it to be easier and it cuts out the obnoxious “phone tag”. Also, there are people that I wouldn’t talk to if it weren’t for instant messanger. It’s not that I don’t want to talk to them, but instant messaging is less personal to a degree. It allows you to have conversations, but doesn’t force you into having something to say every second.

    I think part of the reason that the Internet can be “problematic” for some people is that it gives you the oppurtunity to fall into another identity. Even if your just instant messaging with your friends, you may tell them things that you couldn’t say face to face or even over the phone. Obviously, chatting with people you don’t know is always sketchy. I know from friend’s and family’s experience that it can often complicate relationships and create a lack of trust. Why would someone need to spend hours on the computer, isolated from their family?

    While the Internet is beneficial to us, I think that it has also made us somewhat of an anti-social society. It has taken away the personal element and the face to face dealings of our daily lives.