Murders and TV

According to the United States Department of Labor, the average American watches about 21 hours of television a week. Surely it is not just lack of anything better to do that people tune in everyday: it truly the enticing nature of the programming that attracts people to the screen.

In Thursday's Chicago Tribune, there was an article that discusses one idea of trying to combat homicides in Chicago: by making television shows about them. This weekend on a show called 'Crime Stoppers Case Files: Chicago', the Chicago police hopes to gain more evidence about a 21 year old cold case of a young mother stabbed on to death in her home in front of her then 4 year old son.

Police Commander Jay Parrott of the Evanston Police Department hopes that shows like this can spread awareness about the issue. He says, "It's a cold case, but it's not so old that people are not going to remember it. Hopefully we can make some developments on this." I wonder to what extent the show will come across as a hybrid between crime show like CSI and a reality tv program. When the officer said that the case 'not so old', I wonder if that crosses a line between still classified evidence and familial privacy.

Shows similar to this have aired before; it reminds me of '24 Hour Murder Mystery' or even ones about prison lockups. What do you think of this idea of a program? How successful do you think it will be for providing 'more developments' as the officer said?

#newpope

via CS Monitor

Earlier this week, the world was hit with big news: the Catholic Church/the Vatican elected a new pope: Pope Francis I. This story was especially unique because he was elected after the previous pope, Pope Benedict XVI, resigned due to unclassified reasons, most likely his old age (age 85) or health problems.

For all of these reasons, the news was very intriguing. In this day and age of technology, anything can be put in multiple forms of Internet-based multimedia with an audience of literally every person on the planet. 

Suddenly for what I think is first in their history, the news of a religious group picking their new leader went not only viral, but incited such a reaction that many news sources reported a website crash due to the number of people trying to access the information at the same time. I was checking www.msn.com for a Chicago Bulls game score, and instead at the top of the site read a flashing red banner: BREAKING NEWS: WHITE SMOKE EMITTED FROM COLLEGE OF CARDINALS. IDENTITY TO BE ANNOUNCED SOON. After what seemed like days of 'black smoke' (a failed consensus to decide the papacy), the world media was literally chomping at the bit to get their story: tv news networks had experts onsite in Rome weighing in, newspaper articles sprouted out of everywhere, bloggers were abuzz, the hashtag '#newpope' had over 12,000 photos uploaded in the span of a couple of hours, and even gamblers in Las Vegas were taking bets on the odds of the new pope's identity.

The truth of the matter is that (at least in America), a lot of news serves solely as a means of entertainment. Stories come and go without much significance because all their after is a constant stream of it. In this particular case, the new pope's identity had not even been released and the horses were out the gates with opinions in their minds and pens in their hands. Just prior to writing this post, I checked the same website, www.msn.com , to see what came up and found no stories about the Vatican or Pope Francis I within the eight headlines or front page. To what extent is all media just entertainment? How will it affect reporting and news in the future?

Prison Industrial Complex

AP Images

Last week, I posted a blog on Prison Incarcerations: By the Numbers. Here is a follow-up on the same theme. In today's Chicago Sun Times, an opinion piece entitled Longer prison time won’t make city safer by John Maki also touched on this issue (to read the article, click the attached blue link above). Maki is the executive director of the John Howard Association,  a 'prison watchdog group'.

The opinion piece dealt with the consistent problem that is gun violence in Chicago and what Mayor Rahm Emanuel plans to do to combat it. One of the proposed ideas presented in the piece is the lengthening of prison sentences in hopes of "deter[ing] people from unlawfully carrying guns and using them in shootings," While the author, Maki, completely disagrees with the idea because it is 'unlikely' to succeed, I do not completely disagree with Emanuel's proposed legislation. Maybe the harsher the consequence, the less likely someone is from breaking the law and the more they will be 'deterred' from 'unlawful' actions.

This directly connects to the topics discussed in my previous blog. According to the same article, the increasing of "long-term consequences" would "overwhelm the ever increasing Illinois prison population". The 'ever increasing' prison population is really a testament of a larger idea often referred today as the "Prison Industrial Complex". Taking offenders off the streets for 'a few extra years' really wouldn't make much of a difference because the prisons are already too crowded for their maximum intended capacity. According to Maki, one prison has "49,000 inmates in a system designed for 33,000".  The over-population of this prison presents a larger issue I am trying to get at: Why it is that the prison population keeps going up yet the amount of violence is remaining constant, if not increasing? Emanuel's legislation should attempt to make this connection an inverse, where one goes up and the other goes down and not a direct, where both steadily increase. How do you think Emanuel should combat gun violence and over-crowded prisons?

Prison Incarceration: By the Numbers

Prison populations have been ever rising. Some have called certain time periods a 'prison boom'. The term, "Prison Industrial Complex"  is used because the number of people behind bars has continually increased at an alarming rate.  Could there also be a level of racism in our Judicial system that is contributing to the rise? At first, I didn't want to believe it, but after a quick look at the numbers, it seems plausible. While prisons are definitely necessary, if one looks critically enough, they can see there are certain troublesome trends.

The U.S. Department of Justice's Federal Bureau of Prisons website offers many interesting statistics to the public. Certain statistics include Inmate Breakdown, Sentence Imposed, Types of Offenses and Staff Breakdown. I found the most interesting information to be that of the Inmate Population: when classified by race, 129,682 (59.5 %) of the people behind bars in 2013 are Caucasian, while 80,811 (37.1 %) are African American. This is especially interesting because African Americans only make up about 13.1% of the population according to a 2012 US Census estimate. I wonder why these numbers are so drastically different. Also, when looking at the Staff Breakdown from the same site, it says that 63.7% of the workers are Caucasian. To me, it seems like slavery all over again in a sense: Caucasian people supervising the time of African Americans. While this is not as widespread as it was in the pre-Civil War American South, there is a slight stark comparison.

What do you think about prison incarcerations by the numbers? How do you think the trends of prison populations and staff will differ in the future?

Slavery and Homework

Today, educators across America are looking for ways to integrate studies of different subjects together. A recent Chicago Tribune article provided an example of one way not to do it.

In New York City, a fourth grade teacher attempted to combine what her students had been learning about in math in conjunction with their study of slavery. While the idea might seem like a unique way to get students to think, it turned into what I think a big mistake. One of the problems on the worksheet, entitled Slavery Word Problems, was, "In a slave ship, there can be 3,799 slaves. One day, the slaves took over the ship. 1,897 are dead. How many slaves are alive?" The problem may be stated in simple English, however given how sensitive the issue is, I think the teacher made the wrong decision to incorporate the two subjects. With wording such as 'alive' it makes the student consider the buying and selling of people as product and property, almost like cattle or clothing.

The desensitizing of the whole realm of slavery is most alarming to me because of the fact that slavery was outlawed almost 150 years ago. Another problem on the sheet said, "One slave got whipped five times a day. How many times did he get whipped in a month (31 days)? Another slave got whipped nine times a day. How many times did he get whipped in a month? How many times did the two slaves get whipped together in one month?" This is a grotesque example of how slavery as a Peculiar Institution has been accepted into society. 'Daily whippings' are in the same format as any other word problem like apples picked or cars washed.  The given information, like in any word problem, is assumed as factual and correct. I think it is wrong that the students are forced to believe that the horrors and abuse of slavery are known and believed as a simple truth.

What do you think this proves about American society? To what extent should the teacher be punished? How widespread do you think this issue is across the country and world? What can we do in the future to get these ideas stopped without infringing on teachers' rights?

Lights, Camera, Error: Lincoln

With the Academy Awards coming up, there are many movies in contention for the Best Picture Oscar. The competition has become fierce. One of the top contenders, Lincoln, based on the life of America's sixteenth president, Abraham Lincoln, has been considered a front runner by film critics all over the world.

With Awards Night less than two weeks away, just now historians across the country are beginning to question the authenticity of the film. While the film focuses on the last few years of the Civil War, Lincoln's second term and his eventual success at attempting to pass the Thirteenth Amendment outlawing slavery, on February 5th, Rep. Joe Courtney from Connecticut said that the film "misrepresented the way his predecessors in the 1865 House of Representatives voted on the 13th Amendment banning slavery". According to Courtney, all four Connecticut representatives voted for the amendment, however the movie depicts two voting against it. I think he interpreted the 'misrepresentation' of the voting results as a negative reflection of the state's history. If a state barely agreed that slavery should be outlawed, it casts them in a bad light today because now there is almost an absolute agreement that it was wrong. He later he asked DreamWorks (the film's production company) for some form of correction because, according to CNN's Gene Seymour, he "merely wants props restored to his home state" and isn't out to "ruin anybody's chances [at winning an award]". I agree that the facts should be set straight, however I find it curious that despite the fact that the movie premiered to the public on October 8th, the error is just being brought up. To what extent does the Oscars being right around the corner have to do with it? Probably at least something.

I wonder worthy if this case is of a challenge. What do you think is more important: the authenticity of the film's historical account or the film's right to thematic artistic license? Do you think this was done on purpose or just because of a lack of research? The film did take a long time to be made and surely it had been thoroughly researched beforehand.

Do Clothes Really Make the Man?

via Faded and Blurred

In an age where commercialism and marketability are key in the fashion world, I always wondered if the old, familiar saying, 'clothes make the man' still holds true today.


I was looking on the Internet and came across a series of photographs by the German photographer, Herlinde Koelbl, from a recent collection of the past year. The project, entitled Kleider Machen Leute,-‘Clothes Make The Man’ in German- explores how people are perceived based on the clothes they wear or the uniform they don for eight hours a day, five days a week, in the average profession's case.

In the first side-by-side, a man is photographed in his work clothes (priest) and in his everyday clothes. When I first see him in his regal red robes and red biretta hat, I think of a person of not only stature, but also one of discipline, strong faith and a dedication to tradition. When pictured on the right, I think if I were to ever see this man on the street I would not look twice at him in his track jacket and running shoes. I wonder if clergyman desire to fit in on the street and struggle with having two personas all their life.

via Faded and Blurred

In the second side by side, a military man is the subject. Similarly to the first set, when I first see this man in his uniform, I think of someone who has a brave and courageous persona, especially since he is clearly displaying his medals and honor pins. However when the man is dressed down and in more comfortable and relaxing clothing, I assume right away that he serves in military man at all. To me, he seems just like a cultured and calm man on the town.

What do you think about the saying, 'clothes make the man'? How do you think clothing affects what a person thinks of themselves?