My Brother is Seth Green's Next Pet Project

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(Tristan)

For better or for worse, my brothers and I lead charmed lives.  We've all been in very unique situations--both good and bad.  This time it is my brother Tristan's turn to have something unique happen to him: He's been selected to play the role of the protagonist in Seth Green's new interactive reality experiment "ControlTV."  It is a show that allows the audience to control my brother's every decision for six weeks.  He will be 'on air' for eighteen hours a day, seven days a week.  The show will stream on the Internet.

(Me and Tristan)

My brother has never had any aspirations to be an actor.  He's never strived to be in the spotlight, which is something especially unusual for someone living in Los Angeles.  His friend convinced him to try out for the show, and by chance (or likely because of his charisma and good-looks) he's been selected as the protagonist for this experimental show that Seth Green has cooked up.  He turned 25 a few days ago and has been living in Los Angeles for about two years now.  I try to persuade him on a regular basis that New York City is the better place to live of the two cities, especially because he's always wanted to go into finance.  It was extremely difficult for him to decide to take this opportunity. We spent hours going back and forth with eachother evaluating the nitty-gritty pros and cons.

(Josh and Tristan)

It will be an interesting road ahead for him and I'm eager to see him walk it.  I just hope he can stay sane.  I can't imagine what it would be like to be filmed eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, for six weeks--and not even be able to make decisions for myself.  I suspect he'll be just fine, though.  Tristan has never been an automaton and won't take orders lying down.  He can be very persuasive when he wants to be.  I'm confident that his efficacious personality will bend the audience's will to his own desires. It's so exciting to hear about his photo shoots, the famous people he's meeting, and the places he's being interviewed.  I have been on pins and needles all week anxiously awaiting his phone calls and gchat messages to hear his latest updates.

I think what I am more excited about than anything (dork that I am) is that this experiment could be studied for years to come by media scholars.  Audiences and media producers alike have long been fascinated by the idea of total invasion of someone's life.  For the first time we will get to see  "EdTV" or "Truman Show" in practice, not just in theory. Will the audience be engaged? Will my brother crack?  Will media start shifting to web-based content rather than television viewing?   Is interactive media viewing the way of the future? Will this start a new era of reality telivision?

These are just some questions that come to my mind.  We'll just have to wait and see...

Links (I will post more as they become available):

http://blog.moviefone.com/2010/09/27/the-truman-show-becomes-real-thanks-to-seth-green/

http://javazero.com/the-truman-show-becomes-real-thanks-to-seth-green/

http://amazon.imdb.com/news/ni4582363/

...Teaser!

Sorry everyone! I will repost today's blog post next week! Thanks for your understanding and stay tuned.

WIHS Students are AWESOME: Sobeida Peralta

 I'm taking a little hiatus from writing for the week (the school year has started, so I have been pretty busy), but I wanted to highlight another phenomenal WIHS Student.  Sobeida Peralta was recently named ESPN's Rise Above Student Athlete of 2010.

I am so proud of how far she has come.  Check out this video and the article that was written about her. 

Click here to see the video


Click here to read the article

I  met Sobeida when she joined Washington Irving High School's Mock Trial team her freshman year.  Sobeida's determination became quickly apparent as became the team's star lawyer almost immediately.  She became my mentee during her sophomore year.  As you can probably gather from the video, Sobeida is a very busy lady so we have not been able to meet on a regular  basis since her sophomore year, but she still stops by to see me and some lawyers at Cleary from time to time, and she plans to take our SAT crash course we offer through the month of October.  I am very excited to get to spend a few weekends with her soon.

 I got the opportunity to bring Sobeida to Cambridge during the Spring of her sophomore year to look at her dream school (Harvard).  It was a trip I'll never forget, and I hope it gave her a vision to go along with her dream.  (Perhaps I'll save the story about our trip for another blog post.)

Congratulations Sobeida! You are amazing and you inspire the people around you on a daily basis.

How do We Teach about Park 51?

I am looking forward to my first Model United Nations (MUN) Team meeting with my students today.  As a former United States History teacher and a current MUN coach, I am often faced with the dilemma of presenting a politically or socially charged issue to students and at the same time trying to keep my opinion out of it so they can arrive at their own conclusions.

It's not always easy to do this; I taught the Civil War in a West Philadelphia school.  The entire student body was black.  It was difficult to convince some of the students that I, at that time a 22-year-old white female from the Connecticut suburbs and straight out of the bubble of Boston College, had any authority on the issue.  Some students felt that it was not right for ME to be teaching about such a racially charged historical issue.  It was a great lesson in how important it is to handle these topics delicately.

The group of students I work with now are older and much more diverse, so I am not as worried about them questioning my identity in relation to bringing up the issue of Park 51.  However, I do question my ability to keep my opinions and biases out of this issue.  It is important for the students to come to their own conclusions about the controversy.  I imagine that most history, civics and government teachers face similar dilemmas on a daily basis.

Starting today and over the next few weeks, I will use this curriculum to guide the MUN students through  thinking about Park 51.  It will be a great warm up activity for thinking critically about other issues they will examine through out the year.  At the end of the day, I think it is most appropriate to teach a curriculum that promotes a "multi-cultural/coexistence" approach.  This is especially true for student living in New York City, one of the most diverse cities in the world.  Further, one of the main points of the MUN club is to give students the tools they need to understand controversial issues from an array of perspectives.

I will do my best to teach this subject, but I worry about the rest of the country as the school year starts.  The content of history text books is usually determined by the Texas State Board of Education (Texas is the largest purchaser of history text books, so often whatever they determine should be in texts books is what the rest of the country typically gets).  Now Texas starting to think about the way they teach Islam.  Texas' Board of Education is known for being socially conservative, so I worry about how they will chose to present this information.  Educators (especially those teaching history, civics and government) have a responsibility to show all sides of an issues.  I hope Texas will handle this issue appropriately, but I have my doubts given their previous record.

September 11, 2010

This is my favorite picture from today.

I did not really know what to expect to see at today's September 11th events.  I knew there would be a protest, but I was unsure about how big it would be or if it would draw violence from either side of the Park51 controversy.  I was certainly a little sad that the protestors decided to protest today.  It took away from what today is really supposed to be about.  On September 11, 2001 New Yorkers and Americans all over the country came together as one and supported each other.  This September 11th was about a country divided.  It was sad.

The protests themselves were a bit anticlimatic.  Far more people were a out last night for Fashion Week's "Fashion's Night Out" a little further up West Broadway than turned up for the protests.  You would never guess this though with the immense amount of media coverage given to the demonstrations.

Below I've posted some pictures from today. Unfortunately, because of a lot of strict security in the financial district this morning, I was not able to get a lot of photos of the commemoration service in Zuccotti Park. Please read below the photos for captions!

Photo 1

A painting near Zuccotti Park

Photo 2

View of Zuccotti Park from Cross Broadway

Picture 3

One theme that ran throughout the day was the confusion of who stood for what.  In this picture, the gentleman in the  center of the photo was speaking out against the Ko'ran.  The EDL seemed to have mistakenly taken him as a pro-Mosque advocate...


Photo 4

Back of an EDL person's shirt.


Photo 5

There are so many things wrong with this sign (spelling, grammar, idea)


Photo 6 

 Rally location, 12:00 PM


Photo 7

Rally location, 2:30 PM



Photo 8

More Rally


Photo 9

 
(speaks for itself.)



Picture 10

Another section of rally space that wasn't filled at the beginning.  It got filled later with more tea-partiers and many Mosque supporters later.



Picture 11

Rally


Picture 12

Rally


Picture 13

Picture 14

A Muslim man speaking to an anti-Mosque protester.


Picture 15

Rally


Picture 16

Picture 17

 Picture 18

Picture 19

Photos of Ground Zero and the Surrounding Neighborhood, September 10 2010

Around midday, I stepped out to snap a few photos of Ground Zero and the sorrounding area.  I want to give my readers a better idea of what the neighborhood looks like both before and during tomorrow's commemoration events--so please return tomorrow for more photos!

Photo 1

This picture is taken directly outside of my apartment building, looking onto Ground Zero in the background.

Photo 2

Taken at the corner of Liberty Street and Greenwich Street.  This is where the FDNY is located, as well as the tribute memorial to 9/11.

Photo 3

A view of Ground Zero

Photo 4

Zucotti Park.  Every year they hold the Commemoration Service here.  Taken from the steps of my office building.

Photo 5

Picture of pedestrian traffic at Courtland and Church Streets, right across from Ground Zero.

Photo 6

Another view of Ground Zero

Photo 7

At the corner of Park Place and West Broadway (Park 51 is located on Park Place)

Photo 8

Two Police Officers standing in front of Park51.

Photo 9

Park 51 is the first stoop you see, located next to the Dakota Road House

Photo 10

Park 51

Photo 11

Parking garage across the street from Park 51

Photo 12

Standing in front of the parking garage, looking at Park 51.

Photo 13

View of the remainder of the street (Park Place)

Photo 14

Corner of Park Place and Church Street

Photo 15

This photo was taken from the corner of Ground Zero that is the closest to Park51.  The white arrow points to Park Place.  Park 51, or the "Ground Zero Mosque" is down this street.  As you probably noted from the previous pictures, you cannot see Park51 from Ground Zero, and similarly, you cannot see Ground Zero from the Park 51.

Photo 16

This, however, is what you see directly across the street from Ground Zero.

The Golden Rule?

Since I last wrote, tensions have climbed around the building of the Islamic Community Center, Park 51, or the Ground Zero Mosque. Over the past week, another issue has developed: A religious group in Florida plans to burn Qu’rans in protest of the building of Park 51. Some politicians, like Sarah Palin, have come up with the following argument: If it is within our First Amendment Rights to build a Mosque near Ground Zero, does that mean it’s also acceptable for the group who is burning Qu’rans to do so? Or conversely, if it shouldn’t be right to do one thing, it should not be right to do the other (by application of the ‘golden rule.’)

So the question remains: beyond having the right to build at 51 Park Place, is it a good idea? Is burning Qu’rans is definitively wrong if people also have a ‘right’ to do that?

Under the American Constitution, there is both a ‘right’ to build the Mosque, and there is also a ‘right’ to burn Qu’rans. The Constitutionality of these issues remains undisputed. Our conversation must address the idea of responsible behavior.

Actions can be morally wrong if they put innocent parties in a precarious situation. It is profoundly irresponsible to hold a “Burn a Koran Day” on September 11th, particularly by a religious leader advocating for the truth of Christianity. An act like this buttresses the extremist voices within Islam. It is an act of hatred of one group of human beings towards another and fuels the fires of extremism and irrationality on both sides. It puts everyone in a more precarious situation. For the sake of the American soldiers in Iraq (like the one I have been writing back and forth with), these acts are plainly irresponsible.

However, building a community center a few blocks away from Ground Zero is not comparable to an act designed expressly to inflame tensions. The community center aims to promote religious tolerance. It will help revitalize a neighborhood in need of revitalization. This is not acting irresponsibly or irrationally. It does not put others in harms way. Worse yet, moving the location of the potential Islamic Community Center would validate claims of Islamic extremists that the West systematically persecutes Muslims.

"Taste" and Park51

September 11th is right around the corner.  As someone who lives two short blocks away from Ground Zero and whose office building sits directly across the street from the site, this day means that tourists will clog my neighborhood, memorial services will close some streets down, and a general somberness will fill the air.  This will be my fourth September 11th in the Financial District, and it will be my first time sharing it with protesters.

Park 51, The Cordoba House, or the “Ground Zero Mosque” has brought international attention to my neighborhood.  There is an event planned for September 11th to protest its construction.  My friends and family are divided on the issue of whether or not Park 51 should be built.  Those who disagree with the building of the Mosque usually tell me that although the group has the right to build, it is in poor “taste” to do so.  It’s not just my friend’s and family--the idea of “taste” has entered the vocabulary of the media as well.  

What exactly is “taste”?  Taste is what I talk about when picking out patterns and colors of my bedding.  On the show Project Runway, taste comes into play when judges talk about their personal preferences and prejudices.  When talking about charged political and social issues, taste is a word people invoke to reify their own personal prejudices.  As a philosophy major, I know I can’t use the “taste” argument in any meaningful sense.  Taste caters to feelings, and not to an answer of what is right and wrong.

Let’s take a look at when Taste has been used as an argument in through American history:

• In a New York Times Article “Matter of Taste” written on May 3, 1908, the article states: “We regret to notice the disposition of our Southern Contemporaries to grow hysterical over the recent miscegenation banquet of the “Greater New York Cosmopolitan Society.”  Of course, the whole affair was eminently disgusting, but really it does not concern the South in the least.  It is a matter of Northern taste, though taste most offensive to the very instinct of every man and woman who has a right to be recognized as white, and not a Caucasian degenerate and pariah .”
• In another New York Times Article “Critises Jane Adams” written on August 21, 1912, Charles W. Eliot, then the President of Harvard University said, “Women have no proper share in a political convention.  Never before in our history as a Democratic Nation have we gone so far as to permit women to nominate a candidate for President.  Miss Addams received a great deal of popular acclaim when she seconded Mr. Roosevelt’s nomination. It was a very spectacular proceeding, but it was in very bad taste.  I also understand Col. Roosevelt had the bad taste to publicly compliment her on her action and thank her.”
• In Chicago Tribute article written on June 5, 1920 entitled “Ready To Picket Coliseum: This Debate on Women Pickets is Quite Spicy- "Bad Manners" Vs. "They Can't Think." Leola Allard writes “"Bad manners" and "poor taste" are only two of the things the women taking part in convention preparations said of Alice Paul and her picketing plans.”

And now, of course, what Park 51 is trying to achieve is also “poor taste” according to several commentators, family and friends.   All of these issues are charged with prejudice and demonizing the ‘other’.  What is more scary about this is when the constant media attention about Muslims and their “tastes” filter into our everyday lives, some people start to believe that there is something inherently wrong with being Muslim. There isn’t. I have already seen this misconception materialize in some of my students’ Facebook status updates.  The “taste” argument slides sloppily into prejudice.

Over the last three years, I worked with a student named Hassan through the Model United Nations Program at his high school.  We often practiced on days off during the school year because we could get more accomplished those days.  When practice was on a Friday, Hassan could not easily come to our law office because his closest place of worship was far away.  If Park 51 existed while a Hassan was a student, this problem would have been remedied.

Hassan is Muslim.  He was born in Pakistan and moved here when he was twelve.  He is one of the most tolerant and accepting people I have met.  He’s had coaches from Israel and India that he got along with phenomenally.  He is now attending a Catholic college, and working as an intern in the Financial District.  He has an impeccable record--he was salutatorian of his class, served as police commissioner for a day, and was generally in charge of running most community events at his high school.  He is not an extremist Muslim, and the acts of the terrorists certainly had nothing to do with him.  This is true of the overwhelming majority of Muslims living in the United States  and throughout the world (see this graphic).  Why should someone like Hassan be told that he can’t have a conveniently located place to worship because a small group of radicals that happened to be part of his religion did something ridiculous?  For those of us who are religiously affiliated, nearly all major world religions have histories of violence and hatred. For example, if you are a Christian, would you like to be told that a church couldn't be built in any of the places the Klu Klux Klan performed lynchings?

I do know this: America was founded on the values of freedom, equality and tolerance.  Tastes change, but these values do not.    These values hold up regardless of tastefulness.  Can we live up to those values?  I hope so. The Ground Zero Mosque controversy at the end of the day gets at the same issues that have plagued the America since its inception. 

Some Sort of Spanglish: The Internet and 20-Somethings

One common generational misunderstanding (and widely discussed topic) of 20-Somethings is the Internet. To state the obvious: The Internet changed everything. Technology is second nature to us. The older generation is trying to learn a new language that we are already fluent in. This causes a lot of inter-generational confusion and misunderstanding.

In the book “Born Digital,” John Palfrey and Urs Gasser take a close look at “Digital Natives,” or people born after 1980, natives to the digital world. They argue that post 1980 generation relates to the world in completely different ways. For example, often times our generation meets online before meeting in person. When I moved into college, initial meetings with future roommates and classmates occured online. We used instant message and examined each other's profiles on our college's directory of people. I even met my boyfriend online before I met him in real life—my cousin introduced us via a Facebook message one day to tell me her friend was moving from Pittsburgh to New York City and encouraged us to ‘friend’ each other on Facebook. The rest is history.

Our identities are completely tied up in the way we portray ourselves online. Most of us have social networking profiles. For many of us, these profiles are the image we wish to project to the world. We chose to show certain pictures and share information as we see fit. This is our ultimate way of expressing ourselves to the world. Our online presence is crucially related to how we perceive ourselves, and how others perceive us.

I would like to take Palfrey and Gasser’s point on being ‘fluent’ in the digital world one step further by saying that 20-somethings have a particular advantage: We learned technology at a young enough age to be “fluent”, but we also had sometime to understand the ‘analog’ or offline world through our early experiences simply because we did not come out of the womb and onto computers. We were born on a cusp. This gives us a leg up--we are able to relate to both worlds --the one of our even more saavy younger brothers and sisters, and our parents’ world. It's a lot like speaking Spanglish--a hybrid language in which people fluent in both Spanish and English switch back and forth between the languages without realizing they are doing it. Our online and offline lives are interchangeable and hardly distinguishable--we'll often get invitations online for "real world" things (like a birthday party), and then take photos at the event, meet new people. The next day, we can solidify our new relationships by connecting with these people online, and we can post pictures of the event. I would suspect that these social interactions are a bit befuddling to most 50-somethings, yet not completely incomprehensible to the more astute.

This is especially advantageous for the more entrepreneurial 20-Somethings. Our ability to connect the online and offline world will be benefit us and others economically and socially. It certainly worked out well for Mark Zuckerberg. A social entrepreneur can do a lot online (such as fundraising , researching, planning), that can make a huge tangible difference in the offline world (like bringing fresh water to countries in need--Google “Charity Water”). As the world continues to develop and more people throughout the world are introduced to the global network of the Internet, we’ll be able to be mediators between old and new.

The Internet has also changed the lives of 20-somethings is the world of work. Jobs have been rendered obsolete because of the Internet-- people can now easily do their taxes online, communication is easier, research is easier. Jobs are being replaced by a few clicks of the mouse. The Internet saves an abundance of resources too (teleconferencing instead of face to face meetings, email instead of snail-mail, Google instead of researching in the Library). Unfortunately, one of these resources is man-power. Many 20-somethings need to keep ahead of the curve and must learn to adapt to the job market at a breakneck speed to keep up with the rapidly changing job market.  We are forced to be more transient than ever before as we move between jobs (that is if we're lucky enough to find one).  Unlike our parents, most of us won't be able to stay in one job for 35 years. In fact, for many of us, it wouldn't be wise to do so. We are required to wear many hats in order to remain employable. We must go wherever someone will pay us.  This makes it more difficult to have any stable commitments (a spouse, a mortgage, a child). Of course these things are not impossible to achieve, but we do face a lot more barriers to making commitments than people did 30 years ago.

Some of this change is good, some of it’s scary, some of it will make us nostalgic. It certainly has helped to change the standards of adulthood (which I'll address in another post). But regardless of all this--the World is moving forward at a rapid pace, and 20-somethings have the daunting task of mediating between the old and the new. Don't worry, we are taking care of it.