The Fear of H1N1

I was watching the news the other night and  the section about the H1N1 flu. The vaccines have recently come to the public of Illinois. And an amazing amount of people showed up to receive the vaccine. Many more people showed up then they has supply. Parents with young children and really scared and want their child or children to get the shot as soon as possible because it is more dangerous to the youth of the country. So how are the states going to control the spread of the vaccine and how to distribute it. But many states are far from figuring out how they'll distribute the 251 million doses headed their way. There are a number of children with this type of flu and there are some results and stats of this here.
Should people be as scared as they are right now?
I think that they shouldn't be freakin' out because this is just another flu that is more harmful to children then the elderly. Millions of people get the flu every year and yes a fair amount of them die but the only thing you can do is get the vaccine. Once you get that there is little that you can do.
My advice to young parents is to try to get the vaccine as quickly as possible.
Although H1N1 is very contagious, it is no more dangerous then the seasonal flu.
Please let me know your thoughts about the H1N1 flu.

Is the Constitution a Living Document Today?

“Living” documents – putting into use documents written hundreds, even thousands of years ago.

So many people have heard of and used the phrase “living document”.  To define it for those who may not be familiar with the term, a living document (as defined by Wikipedia) is “a document which may be continually edited and updated by either a limited or unrestricted group”. An example of a document that should be represented as a living document is the United States Constitution. Our Constitution we would think is the idea of a “living document” but it is not at all because the Constitution itself cannot be altered.  At all. The text within the Constitution is the same as when it was written by the colonies in the late 1700’s. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights have not been edited, but reinterpreted.  And depending on the Justices and the make up of the Supreme Court, it has been reinterpreted by many people over the  200+ years of US History. It's  considered by many to be a living document.  I, personally, believe that it kind of has to be a living document.  We have shown that it cannot be interpreted based only on the words written in Constitution because it was left some what vague in certain areas.  For example: The rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are guaranteed and are very important, but you are going to have arguments on what those words mean. Some others are also vague and the meanings of them have to be interpreted in order for them to apply to the population today.
So is it really a "living document" or not?
Please let us all know how you feel.

Is the Solution to Health Care that Easy?

Steven A. Burd is the president of Safeway. Safeway is on e of the largest grocers in the world. Steven A. Burd has established Safeway as the company with the ideal health care system for their employees. According to Mr. Burd that there are two things that the health care reform must do 1) It must secure coverage for all Americans, and 2) it must dramatically lower the cost of health care. Health-care spending has outpaced the rise in all other consumer spending by nearly a factor of three since 1980. At Safeway they believe that well designed health care reform, utilizing the market, can ultimately reduce our nation's health-care bill by 40%. The key to achieving these savings is health care plans that reward healthy behavior. As a self insured employer, Safeway designed just such a plan in 2005 and has made continuous improvements each year. During this four year period, Safeway has kept their per capita health care costs flat, while most American companies' costs have increased 38% over the same four years. As much as they would like to take credit for being a health care innovator, Safeway has done nothing more than borrow from the well tested automobile insurance model. Every employee has to take a test based on four main groups which are tobacco usage, healthy weight, blood pressure and cholesterol levels. And if their tests get better then they get rewarded and if their tests get worse then their premium goes up.
Burd was planning on going to the White House and present his case to Obama. He believes that this would be a logical way to fix the health care crisis and this would help the health care debt and decrease it by hundreds of millions of dollars.
Many people are talking about Burds way of insuring his employees and that he should go to the White House and do something about because his way could work.
Do you think that this is a good way to have the heakth care system? Please let me know what you think.

Are Grades Any Good?

Throughout our class today we discussed grades, and how grades aren't the most important thing in a class. If you are learning and trying your best then the grade shouldn't decide your future.

Every parent wants to boast that his or her child is “a straight A student,” “at the top of her class,” or “on the honor roll.” What generally determines this? Grades of course. Report cards are the first means of measuring a child’s progress through school. Doing “well” in school is measured by a series of letters on a piece of paper: A is great, B is ok, C not so great, and D or F? You’re grounded! Some parents reward children for good grades adding additional value to each letter. 

Are those letters that meaningful?

Studies have shown that there are three main effects of giving students grades First, their interest in the learning the material is lost. Second, they come to prefer easier tasks. Not because they’re lazy, but because they’re rational, and are focused on the grade and not weather they like the material or not. After all, if the point is to get an A, your odds are better if you avoid taking risks. Third, students tend to think in a more grade oriented, and forget what they learn when grades are involved. Students who are lucky enough to be in classes where they don’t get letter or number grades are more likely to want to continue learning the material, more likely to want to challenge themselves, and more likely to think deeply.

In our class: An American Studies I'm not sure how the grades work yet, but from what we have had so far our teachers unlike many others at our school (New Trier) are not focused and concerned about our grades. The two teachers are interested in us learning the material and wanting to See, Think, and Wonder about everything that we talk about. 

I believe that having a class like this is an advantage because at New Trier every student is always worrying about their grade and other people’s grades. No one really cares about what they are learning anymore all we care about are the letters on the pieces of paper. And being at a high school that is so competitive and very grade oriented it is hard to enjoy what you are learning. It is safe to say already that I have learned more in this class so far then possibly all of my other classed combined. 

Why have grades? Do they help or hurt the students?

Please let me know what you See, Think, and Wonder...

Olympics: a Test of Athletes or Politcal Power

As we all know Chicago is not the host for the 2016 Olympic games. :( We all are so sad and bummed that our city is not going to be the home to thousands of athletes in the summer of 2016. Why didn't we get it? It seemed like all Americans were shocked to see Chicago get knocked out first. Weather of not if you wanted the games here it would have meant so much to only the city but our country. But I feel like us the Chicagoans took being a option to host the games for granted.
The fact that the President of the United States Barack Obama is from Chicago we all thought that we would for sure get it. Was his speech to authoritative? to listen to his speech click. Did we really think that we would get to host the games just because the president is from our city. What about South America they have never had the games and they wanted to give them a shot.
Rather then seeing that and thinking that its a good we assumed that the whole world was out to get us. And that politics get in the way of an event that is not meant to be political but it is suppose to consist of athletes representing their country.
If Obama didnt represent Chicago and Michael Jordan did instead would we have gotten the Games? Most likely not, the voters wouldn't have change who they voted for. Maybe one of the best athletes of all time would help our cause. Now we can look forward to another race for the games maybe the 2020 or 2024 games.