Recycling Plastic

I chose to blog about the TED talk on recycling plastics. This talk immediately grabbed my attention because I spent my high school career working for a dumpster company, so recycling was part of my daily life. The video touches on Mike Biddle’s stance on recycling, and what he thinks could be a boost for the green movement. We have been wasting immense amounts of plastic by dumping it in the landfill with all of the other invaluable trash. Only ten percent of our plastics end up being reused. Seeing entire recycling dumpsters of plastic and paper being dumped in the landfill was a daily occurrence working for a dumpster company. Plastic is a very abundant and valuable material that is not being reused nearly enough. With basic sorting and melting processes, we can recycle plastic for reuse. It is more cost efficient and energy efficient to recycle used plastic than it is to make new plastic. It would also save us a large dent in the environment. There is less CO2 output by using the recycling process. If the United States could implement this stance on recycling plastic, we could save our selves money, energy, and the environment.

http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_biddle.html

Library Studio

The Role of Women in Iran

The part of the video we watched in class that stood out most to me was hen the young girl watched the older woman get yelled at by the man in the parking lot. The context of the scene is what is most important. The environment that women deal with in Iran is much different from what we have in the United States. Although times are getting better, and women are gaining more rights, Iran is far from the United States. The scene immediately reminded me of the book A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. This book is all about the life of a young woman growing up during the revolution in Iran. If any of you have read The Kite Runner, it is essentially a female perspective of that book. Throughout the novel, the girls go through arranged marriages, which were in no way consensual, beatings from husbands for disobedience, and the trouble of having to hide their faces whenever in public. The book gives the reader a great perspective on the life of an Iranian woman and shows the struggles they deal with on a daily basis. It is an excellent book and I would recommend it to anybody, male or female.

Marine Confronts Police About Brutality

This is a video of a man named Shamar Thomas. He is a 24-year old Marine veteran who did two tours in Iraq. The video shows him screaming directly at several officers working the occupy Wall Street movement. After seeing several acts of police brutality, Thomas began to individually address police officers and made it very clear that what the police were doing was wrong. This video is a breath of fresh air in the news. It seems to be every night on the news is nothing but negativity and seeing people killed and robbed. This video shows a stroke of hope that there are people out there who are not afraid to stand up to authority. I believe the police force has gone in a downward direction and is coming closer and closer to corruption. In no way is every police officer corrupt, in fact most of them are not, however there is an alarming amount of police officers that overuse their power and authority. I have spent a lot of time in downtown Louisville, Kentucky (my home town) which at times is a very rough neighborhood. Police do not hesitate to use violence to subdue suspects, and they often go overboard with their force. This video perfectly shows the feelings and opinions of those oppressed by police brutality. Once again I would like to emphasize that I believe the majority of police officers are working to serve and protect us, but there is a number or police who practice corruption and unnecessary violence on a daily basis.

http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/video.php?v=wshh7475FAFF0g9E91d2

Mark Cuban's Patriotism

This blog post by Mark Cuban is an excellent piece of writing. Mark Cuban is the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our era. In this article he speaks about the economy and an idea on how to improve it one person at a time. Cuban claims that the most patriotic thing someone can do is getting extremely rich and starting his or her own business. His reasoning behind this claim is that when someone makes a lot of money, you pay a lot of taxes, which will benefit millions of American citizens. The next step is to start a business. By starting a business, one can create thousands of jobs, thus feeding thousands of families. By getting rich and starting a company, anybody can change their community, state, country, or even the world. I think this is a great approach and has some great rhetorical value. Mark Cuban is one of the biggest role models in my life, and I respect anything he has to say about making money and being successful. 

http://blogmaverick.com/2011/09/19/the-most-patriotic-thing-you-can-do-2/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogmaverick%2FtyiP+%28blog+maverick%29