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I was reading The Onion the other day, when I saw somehing that cought my eye. That something was a tiny box on page that said Black Presidents History Month. Natrually it talked about president Obama. It started by talking about true statments abou Obama, and then it had four not so true facts.

- In 1969, fellow second-grader Leon Hoyt became the first person to make fun of Barack Obama's name, referring to him as "Buttock" Obama for the entire school year.

-In High School, Obama had a special spot for making out that had the most breathtaking view of a voter-registration drive.

-Barack Obama is an admitted smoker who once set a world record by jamming 162 cigarettes into his mouth

-In addition to his many other firsts, at a preinaugural concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in January 2009 he became the first black man ever to watch Garth Brooks perform.

OK, The main thing I notced from that box of information was the line "In addition to his many firsts." Because the Onion people used that line it made me come to the conclusetion that they were poking fun at the Myth of firsts. I found it interesting that a paper use to make fun of current events, has picked up on the American myth of firsts, something that we have anylised countless times in class. With the state news papers are in I would say The Onions news is more relialble and fair then any other news station around.

Natural Selections

So I was watching the 133rd Westminster Kennel Club dog show, it is the 2nd oldest continuously held sporting event in the United States (the oldest is the Kentucky Derby). Only one Dog from each breed (Recognized by the AKC) can be entered. There are approximately 160 breeds of dogs, and they are divide into Groups; the winner of each Group moves on, and a Best in show is chosen between them. This idea of different Breeds, and different Groups reminded me of our discussion of Race in class. In particular the concept of "Best In Show" reminded me of the idea we left on in class, does race affect athletic ability. The movie we watched clearly pointed out that African Americans, have more natural athletic ability then Caucasians (example100, 200, 400 meter dash, and the mile 2 mile and Marathon). If you look at the 2008 Olympics you see a great examples of this, such as Usain Bolt (Fastest man alive holds world record for the 100 and 200). This holds true to longer distances too, if you look at the marathon world record holder is Haile Gabrselassie (Ethiopia) and then 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th fastest times are native Kenyans. I think this dominance in athletics is due to this idea of natural selection. Natural selection is the process by which favorable heritable traits become more common in successive generations. Organisms with traits that help it survive are able to pass on its genes; that means if you have two groups of the same organism are put in two different environments one with more limiting factors in it. The organism in the one with more limiting factors, will develop traits faster and better for survival then the other group. I believe this is a reason why, African Americans often posses more talent in athletics then Caucasians. Because Caucasians have always had the best living quality, and medical care, available (at the time) natural selection had less of an effect determining who dies and who lives, unlike in Africa were many nations are impoverished, which in turn cases a higher rate of natural selection. Thus often making African Americans athletically superior because they have better genes.

Feb 11, 2009
Today in class we finished the video, and it made me change my opinion of what i said in this Blog post. Instead of having better genes, its because of the Geography of were they come from. There is also non-Concordance between Athletic ability and skin color. Race is simply just a Social Fabrication, used to falsely classify people. Race is also not determined by genetics because we are too closely related.

The Best Around

In class we have talked about the "Myth of firsts" (being the first person) but there is another Myth that i think it goes hand and hand with "The Myth Of the BEST." Americans have a strong sense of patriotism towards their county, but I also think that they have a strong belief that the U.S.A is the best at whatever it (USA) sets out to do. Because of this notion that we are the best, Americans idealize those figures that lead them to glory. If you look at Michael Phelps, he is considered to be the BEST swimmer ever (14 gold medals and 7 world records). He has been heavily criticized, but the fact is that because we are infatuated over him so much shows that we idealize him. Another example is President Obama, everywhere I turn theres something to buy with his image on it weather, its a mug, plate, pencle, or even a shirt. Americans have an obsession with being the Best.

Manifest Destiny

Today in class we watched the beginning of The American Future Part 1: American Plenty (A history by Simon Schama); it reminded me of this term Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny is this belief/concept/Myth that the United States had/has a divine right to spread its values, and its people across North America.
Manifest Destiny was used to justify the Westward expansion and the slaughtering of any people group who got in the United States way. Many people believed in this "Manifest Destiny", they not only believed it was there destiny but that it was righteous or it was the right thing to do. One such person was John L. O'Sullivan (coined the term manifest destiny) in his paper, New York Morning News, he used Manifest Destiny to argued that the United States had the right to the Oregon Territory, "And that claim is by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us." (December 27, 1845) I believe that Manifest Destiny was once (and still maybe) one of the United States most widely believed in myths. Manifest Destiny was (is) the American myth that, we have to expand West, share our values, and most importantly we need to spread and protect DEMOCRACY.

"I think we all realize that the day has come when Democracy is being put upon its final test. The Old World is just now suffering from a wanton rejection of the principle of democracy and a substitution of the principle of autocracy as asserted in the name, but without the authority and sanction, of the multitude. This is the time of all others when Democracy should prove its purity and its spiritual power to prevail. It is surely the manifest destiny of the United States to lead in the attempt to make this spirit prevail." Woodrow Wilson "The world must be made safe for democracy."

Tokenism

So we have been discussing tokenism in class, and the big question is "Is tokenism real, and if so is it a problem." First off believe that tokenism is realm, but it is not as big of a problem as it should be. I think that it is not as big of a problem because as kids we watched T.V. that had a large amount of tokenism. As a child you do did not watch T.V. critically at all. I think as a child you just absentmindedly absorbed what you watched. And in turn I think that this absentminded absorption, led to a distortion that tokenism is OK. Now that I look at T.V. more critically, I see that this tokenism is not OK and needs to be changed.

In The Tribune

So as usual i read The Chicago Tribune every morning, or at least glance at it (I most of the time just glance at it). I noticed at the top of the front page they added something. There was an announcement at the top of the front page Recession Survival Guide (starting today and continuing this week. So I naturally flipped to it. After reading it through, I was pleasantly surprised to find it was there first marginal thing I have seen since the paper tanked. Is the Tribune starting to turn around, or have they just gotten lucky and found away to make money off the Recession.

Last Post of 08

I found myself perusing (National Public Radio) On the Media web page. This segment talked about medical journals and how most studies published in medical are either exaggerated or just plain wrong. There is an example in the segment that talks about a study that was done, were half of the groups found positive results and the other half found negative results. In the Medical Journal only the positive results were published. I think Medical Journals need to find away to publish only studies that have data from everyone. It may not seem like such a big deal but the repercussions can be great.
The segment talks about this thing called herding. Herding is when a study is published that says this chemical has been found to eliminate Cancer. All of the groups working on Cancer prevention spend time, man power, and most importantly money on a new chemical that is later proved to only prevent Cancer .5% of the time.