IRB Intro #4

For my 4th marking period IRB, I plan on reading The Devil In The White City by Erik Larson.

TOW #24

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/clippers-wear-warm-up-shirts-inside-out-to-protest-alleged-comments-by-team-s-owner-202850099.html?vp=1

It has been revealed that the owner of the Clippers, Donald Sterling, has said racist things regarding blacks and bringing black people to his games. These racist remarks have left millions in shock and in anger regarding the fact that he is still in a position of power over the Clippers team when the league has a zero tolerance policy for racism. The Clippers team, as part of the body representing the Clippers organization, wore their warm up shirts inside out in response to the allegations, so the Clippers logo was hidden from view. They also dumped their Clippers logo warm up jackets at center court, with the logo facing down. This statement made by the players regarding how they feel about the open racism in Donald Sterling's case shows that they know that although they are a basketball team and there is basketball on the court, they have lives, values and feelings off of the court as well, and believe that they needed to do something to protest their owner's tactless comments.

TOW #21

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/17/opinion/the-ugandan-tabloid-that-stole-our-pride.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

Recently, Uganda has passed a law that criminalizes homosexuality. Much like Russia, laws in that country very much align with the religious beliefs of the governing bodies, and this law was passed in accordance with the belief that homosexuality is anti-God. Also recently, Uganda's largest tabloid, the Red Pepper, printed an article about how homosexuality could cause mental illness. The author of this article, Denver David Robinson, describes here how the Red Pepper used one of his images without his consent, and how he is planning to rectify this situation. Not only is he angry because of copyright infringement, but because of the homophobic nature of the article and how they are using his work as a face for their hate. Because of this, the people in the picture that was used have been estranged from their friends and family, and he himself has been called out for being homophobic although he, as a gay man, is not. Issues like this shouldn't be prevalent in modern society, but, however, people will sometimes break the law in order to accomplish what they feel as though they need to. For some in Uganda, religion comes before morality, as highlighted in this article.

TOW #20

Sydney Hale

March 2nd, 2014

This is a picture juxtaposing the plaza in Kiev, Ukraine, before the insurrection and afterwards. Whoever photoshopped this image made sure to merge the same areas of the plaza so that we could see exactly what the whole plaza would have looked like without the devastation that has occurred in the country. The first thing that we see from this image is an obvious appeal to pathos, as we see a man appearing to be quickly walking away from the darker right side of the image. The plaza on the left looks very beautiful, while the plaza on the right and the city in the background is mostly destroyed, black, charred and on fire. On the left, we see people gathering and going about daily life, and on the right there are smoking ruins. Even the ground is torn up, black, and patternless as compared to the meticulously completed design on the right. There is also a contrast between the colors in the two sides of the pictures, with the left side being a more happy, well composed blue and the right being a darker black and gray, which further accentuates the difference between the two sides of the picture. The purpose, to show the difference between beauty and devastation, is clear due to the artist’s attention to detail.

TOW Post #19

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2014/02/20/its-unanimous-facebook-buying-whatsapp-is-the-best-or-worst-deal-ever/

Facebook recently bought the mobile messaging service WhatsApp for $19 billion, acquiring a 5 year old company that was well on the rise towards becoming a popular application that consumers could use to reach their friends without having to go through text messaging. Most analysts seem to agree on the fact that this deal was simply not worth the money that Facebook has invested. According to people like Jon Swartz from USA Today, the deal was "downright silly", and due to Rob Enderle it seemed to be a desperate move by Facebook, who is currently having to deal with a massive slowing of user growth and advertisement growth. The author of this piece, Forbes' own Jeff Bercovici, seems to agree with these points of view. His favorite quote regarding Facebook's purchase was from Henry Blodget, who calls the decision, depending on how it turns out, either brilliant or incredibly moronic. Throughout, the Bercovici uses exemplification, or repeated testimony from analysts, to convey the idea that this purchase was probably not a good idea for Facebook. He uses a lighthearted diction to almost make it seem as though he's making fun of Facebook, or not taking the purchase seriously due to how bad of a decision it was. But due to the amount of negative commentary he added to the article, it appears that he seems to agree that WhatsApp wasn't worth $19 million.

IRB Intro post

The book that I've been considering reading is called Moneyball by Michael Lewis. It's about how, despite having a lot of money to spend on good players, the Oakland Athletics ends up being one of the best teams in baseball in 2002.

TOW #18

http://sports.yahoo.com/photos/quirks-of-sochi-construction-1391548019-slideshow/

Sochi, the site of the 2014 winter Olympics, isn't exactly up to the standards of the visitors who have come to watch the games. To add to the political controversy circling Russia over their treatment of LGBT citizens with the recent anti-gay propaganda law, the town appears to be not quite ready. To give the people who worked to develop Sochi credit, they transformed a virtually unimportant plot of land into an Olympic-ready game town very quickly, but it doesn't exactly match up to the 2008 Beijing summer Olympics with their huge glass dome. TIME Magazine calls it one of the worst Olympics destinations ever. After people get by the hotels that are either in shambles or unprepared for their arrival, they have to worry about terrorism or nonfunctioning equipment in rooms. The visas are expensive, and people are simply not having a good time. The pictures shown in this slideshow help to show viewers exactly what the people are seeing, along with the ethos of the prestigious Olympic games, and adds an irony that is hard to ignore when thinking of the games overall.