Cultural Fear

        In the country we live in today there is a profound amount of cultural fear built into the very fabric of our society, and in the book Zeitoun we are shown this many times.  Zeitoun by Dave Eggers tells the story of a Muslim families experience of life after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.  In one particular passage it talks about the moment Zeitoun and his friends were captured by FEMA hired agents who found them in Zeitoun's apartment building after a mandatory evacuation was put into place.  They were asking the soldiers why they had been taken into custody, and one of the soldiers tells them that they are al Qaeda.  Eggers continues to write showing us an idea of how society's discrimination in America has brought about a cultural fear when he writes "Zeitoun had long feared this day would come"(212). In this quote it shows something that Zeitoun had always feared while living in the USA after 9/11, which is being branded a terrorist unjustly.  This idea of cultural fear, which is the idea that you would be treated a certain way based off of your culture, or even the fear of a particular cultures practices is prevalent in this quote and throughout the book.  Another portion of the book that shows us that cultural fear is alive and well is in a passage that talks about Kathy, Zeitoun's wife, getting ready to go the grocery store.  As she prepares herself to go to the grocery store she fixes her hijab and is thinking that there was a chance for her to be treated poorly when Eggers writes "but any trip to the grocery store or the mall presented the possibility she would encounter some kind of ugliness"(45).  This is a another example of cultural fear present in this book.  Kathy fears that her wearing a hijab because she's Muslim would somehow provoke an unjust act towards her because of how Muslims are portrayed in this country by the media and some people's prejudice based off actions of a select few.  This is an important idea because it shows on both ends how people are afraid of Muslims without even knowing them, and how Muslims are afraid on what seems like a daily basis just to be themselves.  Furthermore this shows how the country will take advantage of a horrible situation to carry out hidden agendas based of this cultural fear that they have established for Muslims.

Zeitoun and discrimination

        I feel that in the day and age that we live in there shouldn't be a reason as to why we discriminate against anyone differently than us, especially in this country.  With all the information that is available to us right at our fingertips it is hard to even consider that people still carry on this way, but sadly discrimination is alive and well in this country.  In the book Zeitoun by Dave Eggers it explains from one families point of view of events that took place prior, during, and after Hurricane Katrina.  In a passage on page 45 Eggers gives us an example of the potential discrimination that still exist when he talks about Kathy Zeitoun getting ready to exit the house, and how the potential to be discriminated on exist every time by writing "any trip to the grocery store or the mall presented the possibility that she would encounter some kind of ugliness" (45).  In this quote it shows us that the chance for a hate crime or discrimination to take place is always present for someone like Kathy, who is Muslim, in a country that is primarily non-Muslim.  This is important because it shows how society in America is, in terms of their treatment to those not like them.  This also shows us the perspective of a Muslim and the potential problems they encounter on a daily basis.

Keywording

    Hello my name is Jeremy Soto and I will be discussing New York's response to Hurricane Sandy. I feel the way that New York City responded to Hurricane Sandy was very adequate because they kept many big corporations out of the rebuilding process.  In a chapter called "Blanking the Beach" from Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" she speaks about how private companies try to purchase different areas of disaster affected places, and potentially use them to turn a profit when she writes " At the time, many of the key privatization schemes had not yet gone through, including water and electricity"(Klein 74).  In that quote Klein is explaining how private companies were not able to get their hands on the electricity or water contracts in Sri Lanka to fulfill their plans to privatize that sector, thus giving us the idea of privatization schemes.  In terms of New York City's response to Sandy and how this idea of privatization schemes comes into play, I feel NYC avoided a lot of potential privatization schemes by not handing over our subway system and bridges to private companies in order to get quick, fast, and low to no cost relief after the storm.  If they would have signed contracts to these private companies there's no telling what we might have witness.  Potentially, we could have seen toll booths left in place as the relief efforts were done and the companies would at that point dictate how much it cost to cross that bridge and turn a profit off of it.  Perhaps even taking our subway system and repaired it while severely raising fares and putting people out of jobs because they want to make money and cut cost.  Some would argue that if the MTA was privately owned we would pay less in taxes since it would no longer be funded by the city,  but the potential damage that can cause to millions of peoples everyday lives would be dramatic.  Thankfully NYC took the relief into their own hands and avoided any privatization schemes that might have been out there waiting for it's chance to launch.

NYT Quote Sandwich

          New York is not ready for climate change,one particular reason is that we are a coastal city and any rises in sea levels can harm us exponentially.  I read in a New York Times article that NYC is above sea level but we still have a lot of people living less than 4 feet above sea level at high tide, the article states " nearly 200,000 New Yorkers, according to the research group Climate Central" (Navarro). With only 200,000 people living less than 4 feet above sea levels at high tide, this is a major concern.  Since sea levels have been increasing year by year it's only a mater of time before these people are living in a lake or have to move because they can't live there anymore.  Even though the city is taking certain steps such as adding rock barriers, laying down salt resistant grass, and sidewalk bioswales in order to soak up the water a storm may bring.  This still doesn't help us stop rising sea levels which will make common storms have the damaging impact of rare big storms.

Peer Review Feedback

Today in class I had my peer review for my first essay assignment.  I feel really good going in to this assignment after the feedback I received from Carmen and Wanda.  They really liked what I had to say about the topic and how my letter was coming along.  The one thing they said I need to work on is maybe sound a little more like myself when explaining certain things in the opening of my paper.  Later in the paper when I start critical thinking that's when I do sound like myself.  I will however try to tweak the paper a bit and make it sound more human without compromising credibility.

Interesting Graph

Hey there,

        My name is Jeremy, and I found something very interesting as I was reading and a book for my ENG 101 class called "The Climate Casino: Risk, Uncertainty, and Economics for a Warming World." by William Nordhaus.  On P.46 of this book there is a graph showing the global temperature trends since 1850-2012 calculated by 3 different research groups.  The results for each of their findings were recorded all on the same graph using different lines to indicate the data and whom it belonged to.  The interesting part about this graph is that they all recorded different exact numbers, but their numbers were so close to each other that it was almost identical.  Secondly all of their findings showed the same resulting trend.  That trend is that since 1850 til now global temperatures have been rising.  To see 3 different groups come up with the same conclusion is pretty compelling to say the least.  It also tells us that the issue of climate change and global warming isn't just a fad or something that we should brush off since we are experiencing abnormal weather occurring throughout the world.  As a fellow Lagcc student I would recommend that you take a look and see for yourself if you get the chance.  This is an issue that affects us, and not only us in this generation but the next one that we pass the torch to.  To make this world a better place we need to look at information like this and see how we can do our part to help.  I do understand how someone can be skeptical about something like this especially since the data is not exact for all 3 groups.  However it is a pretty solid source considering that all 3 groups research resulted in the same outcome, which was global temperatures are increasing.  I just saw this information and wanted to share it with a fellow classmate.  I hope this information find you well.

Response to a passage in "Climate Casino"

                   I'll be talking about a certain passage I read from the book "The Climate Casino: Risks, Uncertainty, and Economics for a Warming World" by William Nordhaus, that I found interesting.  In that particular passage he talk about externalities and how it works.  He uses an example of lettuce and the cost of lettuce is determined by the cost of it's production.  For anyone that isn't familiar with externality, it simply means that the by product of an activity that we partake in has its affects on those who did not.  He brought the example of lettuce production back up explaining that in that price of lettuce they are not factoring in the emissions that came from the machine that had to irrigate the lettuce, or the truck that had to transport the lettuce to be sold.  These situations would be considered externalities.  I found this particularly interesting because a lot of the time as humans there are many activities that we participate in without thinking of the externalities it may have.  It can range from anything as simple as going to school and the gas we may have used to get there, or ironically something as complex as building a piece of medical equipment in order to save lives, where its by product will ultimately just shorten all of ours.  It was just something I found to be quite interesting and made me a little more aware of what I do in my life.  Hope you found it just as interesting!