Minimum Wage

                                                                                                              May 1 2015

Minimum Wage
Grannt Epstein



       The last time the federal minimum wage was raised was back last increased on July 24, 2009, when it rose from $6.55 to $7.25 (according to the website which linked here). That was  six years ago. Six years. To put that in perspective six years ago teenagers who just entered High-school as a nooby Freshmen are now out of collage looking for a job on the still struggling market, and yet I sit here today with the same $7.25 per hour, 
      
      In the article "Why We Should Raise the Minimum Wage" by CNBC says that raising the minimum wage from $7.25  to $10.10 will lift "900,000 people out of poverty" which is an extraordinary thing to accomplish. That is nearly one million people. One million people is one and every three hundred people.  This effects more people than you might first originally think. It has even effected me.

      My friends father first graduated collage in the late 80's and had to work for a minimum wage job while he was looking for a job that fit his degree. It was like he was a leaf blowing in the wind, and he couldn't stop. He struggled. For a few years. Do you think that if he had an extra three dollars every hour, that maybe he wouldn't have to live on the borderline? Because that 900,000 would deferentially need it. But that is mainly what this article leaves out. 

      That people are people. All 900,000 is is a number. But to hear a story is different, which is what the article does wrong in my opinion.
  
      The article also mentions that there are some successes as well as fails. This is true in my life. I feel like many times it doesn't necessarily need to be the big victory, rather it can be a gradual change. You don't have to move a mountain all at once, rather you can move a pebble at a time. 

     The article shows these small victories when talking about things like how "Seattle, Washington.....[showed] that the minimum wage could be raised to as much as $15 dollars an hour". This is like how I was able to reach my goal. I wanted to run a 5k in less than 20 minutes. I did this not looking at the 20 every race and trying to brake it, rather I would go every race and try and take 10-30 seconds off. Guess what? It worked.

     Although it took me a while, I finally did break 20 and got 19:32. It was because like the article said to look at the small steps which will lead you to concur the mountain.

Nuke Deal

         

     Grannt Epstein
    Article: Obama Fights back against Israeli Criticism over Nuke Deal

     Prompt: Make a text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world connection to the book 

    This past week President Obama has made a historic deal with Iran. It is truly amazing. The group of nations, now on the cusp of 7 years working on the deal, have finally reached a deal. That is not what this article is about, Obama Fights back against Israeli Criticism over Nuke Deal.
 
   This article is about someone who didn't go to fight over a serious issue rather the two talked about the issues like mature adults. Even though there were some parties who didn't want to see this spectacular deal go through. Which is even a larger reason to praise the deal.

    In spite of all the odds. All the pressures from both side. Mature talks occurred. This reminds me of when I was about twelve years old and discussing something very important to me. My Bar Mitzvah..

    I was twelve years old and began my own negotiations with an opposition at the time. My parents. They had wanted me to have a more traditional style of party. What I had wanted wasn't what they had wanted for me. I wanted to go at Dave and Busters and have a huge party, with lots of people, and food.

    So what did we do? We did what mature people do. We sat down at a table and came back and forth discussing the issues. It took weeks, to me it was as long as seven years. We saw the different pros and cons for both of what we wanted. At the very end, we reach a deal, just like like with the nuke deal.

   In the end, I didn't get all I wanted, but neither did my parents. That is apart of life. You don't get a hundred percent of what you want. Rather life is a road filled with bumps, and you choose how they affect you and those around you.

   This article talks about how right wing Israeli leaders came to tell us why to go against peace. Thank goodness we didn't take the bate. Obama stood his ground and we got a fabulous deal. This means a lot for American-Iranian relations as well.

  Just like with me, good things come by talking and that is the most important thing to take away.  

    

Theme statement: Individual Self-Expression Is Important

Theme statement: Individual Self-Expression Is Important

Group Members: Marina Walters, Rebecca Shu, MacKenzie Miller, Grannt Epstein, and Anthony Lev

Bell 4

Three specific textual examples from the book that show how this theme is developing:      

1. “‘ It doesn’t think anything we don’t want it to think.’”

Bradbury, Ray. "The Hearth and the Salamander." Fahrenheit 451. New York: Del Rey Book, 1991. 27. Print.

2. ‘ Nobody listens anymore. I can’t talk to the walls because they’re yelling at me. I can’t talk to my wife; she listens to the walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it’ll make sense. ‘“ (pg. 82)

Bradbury, Ray. "The Sieve and the Sand." Fahrenheit 451. New York: Del Rey Book, 1991.

82. Print.“

3. “...and if the men were silent it was because there was everything to think about and much to remember. Perhaps later… when the sun was up and had warmed them, they would begin to talk, or just say the things they remember...’” (pg.164-165)

Bradbury, Ray. "Burning Bright." Fahrenheit 451. New York: Del Rey Book, 1991. 164-65. Print.

Timeline of Theme

Part 1:

• Montag, in the beginning showed his patch to others to show that he was a fireman. (Firemen were those at the time lit fires instead of extinguish fires) The salamander was had thought to have lived in fire and wasn't affected by it. This was also given to the name of the firetrucks to “show the flame.”

• A woman in the book burnt herself with her books to symbolize that she would rather die than let firemen burn them. It states, “The woman's hand twitched on the single matchstick. The fumes of kerosene bloomed up about her.” (Page 49) Guy also shows his curiosity (his true self) by stealing a book and hiding it in his coat to read later.

 Part 2:

• Towards the middle of the book Montag had started to be more open with his thoughts about the burning of books. He was standing up for them and putting himself out there to try to save the books to show the society how important they really are. He believes that if he starts to show his feelings for the books then he could possibly make a change in making a more perfect society.

Part 3:

• In the middle of the book, Montag and the people in his society are censored from the government if they have books, this is a part of self-reflection. Though throughout the end of the book, things begin to change when the war starts. When the old government is destroyed, the men who will bring their own self-expression start to head towards the city. In the end of the book, when the “men were silent it was because there was everything to think about and much to remember”(pg164-5) shows how the theme had evolved throughout the book. At this point the people are now free from the government's control. Now that they are free from the censorship, they can be more open to self-expression.   

Individual self expression allows Montag to make changes to the world and create a different way of thinking for the people in the city, by the end of the book people are memorizing whole books about self expression without the self expression nothing would have changed.

Individual self-expression can be seen in our modern-day society when we look at the tv show “Modern Family” when individual characters such as how Cam chooses to express himself by trying to go back into teaching again, this is important to the theme by showing it in a modern contexts.

e-mail

Prompt: Discuss why you were interested in picking up this article.

           Here is a link to the article about Clinton's email  . I had heard about what had happen, and let me sum it up. What happened was is that when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, which was from 2009-2012. During this time she had been using a non government email. This means that anyone who wanted to see her emails couldn't as easily. She had said that it would have been too much work to have two phones. What is stating in the article is how this may ruin her chase for 2016, and how she it is going to effect her negatively.

           This first of all, isn't illegal like most people say it is. Under the guidelines, there is not specific penalty for using the private email. Also, Secretary of State's before Hillary also held a private email. Which shows the hypocrisy in the opposition who say this is a terrible thing. Even though they did not criticize previous Secretary of State's who did this before Hillary ever stepped foot in office.

         I think that this is a very minor thing that Hillary Clinton had done. This is just early Presidential politics talking. People who want to find, or create dirt on Hillary Clinton before she starts her campaign in 2016. This shows how weak the opposition is to Hillary. The best thing they could find was the fact she didn't use the government email she was given. It shouldn't be that big of a deal to people. If this is the strongest case against Hillary, then she is very likely will go on to do great in the Primaries. If she is lucky, she may do well too, in the General Election.

Fahrenheit 451

      In the book Fahrenheit 451, the use of fear is a large part of what happens in the book. The use of this fear can contribute to many of the things wrong in the book. Such as a society which rejects the knowledge of the past. So much so that a person who dares challenges this society will loose there house. I feel that the book was used not to spread the idea that Communism was bad, rather that a totalitarian society is wrong. Also that people need to change society, they don't need to be special. This can be seen when Faber takes it to himself that he should be the one who fixes the world by starting to print books again.
      This shows the multiple perspectives in the book, such as the fact that in the book Faber lives a life of fear, while Montag just wants to change things and doesn't care how. It seems that throughout the book, others who may appear as a 2D person, may actually be more than just that. Such as the head of the fire department, he seemed just to be a man who was doing his job, but in the end, he seemed different. He seemed to know that what he was doing was wrong, and didn't know what to do.

Fat Boy Chronicles

·       Book: Fat Boy chronicles 

      Prompt:   Write a post about predictions where you suggest future plot events and/or ask questions you have about what you have read so far.  

                    In the book The Fat Boy Chronicles Jimmy is a freshmen in high school. He is being bullied because he is over weight, and it is based off of a kid who went to Mason High School. He wanted a weight lifting set for Christmas and has just gotten it. So I think that Jimmy will start and loose weight by using the gym set, even though it seems like he is beginning to loose interest in trying to loose weight. Paul is one of Jimmy's friends and his father tears him down. I also predict that Paul, Jimmy's friend will begin to stop talking to him over time because his father is pushing him over the edge, and will cut himself off from the rest of the world. 

              In the book Allen (another over weight kid) and Jimmy are picked on so they go to the principle and talk to him (Mr. Gardener) about what is happening. I have is how come the Principle hasn't done anything even though he promised he would keep an eye out for Jimmy?In the book, a kid named Spencer is a friend of Jimmy's and had made the JV soccer team (he is a freshmen so it is a big deal to him) and is starting to sit at the "jocks" table, though he still sticks up for Jimmy. I also am curious about weather or not Spencer will still stick up for Jimmy even though he is becoming more and more disconnected with Allen and Jimmy. If you are interested in reading The Fat Boy Chronicle then you can click on the hyperlink.