• Log In
  • Log In
Science Leadership Academy @ Center City
Science Leadership Academy @ Center City Learn · Create · Lead
  • Students
    • Mission and Vision
  • Parents
  • Community
    • Faculty and Staff
    • Lit Talk: Ep1
    • Mission and Vision
  • Calendar

Raz Reed Public Feed

The Insanity Plea

Posted by Raz Reed in Science And Society - Best - Y on Sunday, June 5, 2016 at 10:22 pm
For this project I recorded a podcast.

Transcript and bibliography
Neurolaw Assignment
Be the first to comment.

Raz's Capstone

Posted by Raz Reed in Capstone - Jonas - Wed on Thursday, May 19, 2016 at 6:10 pm
​ For me, coming up with my capstone was easy. Last summer I took a course in web development at the New York Code + Design Academy. I really enjoyed it and once I completed the course, I had a strong feeling that I wanted to find a career in web development. It’s a really interesting field and it’s growing more and more as years pass. So, I decided to focus my capstone on improving my knowledge and experience with web technology.
Learning by practice is the best way to learn, so that’s what I did. I started a website, and roughly every month of 2015-2016 school year, I made projects and put them on my website. These projects were mostly just web games, written in the standard web languages: Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and JavaScript. I devised these projects with the help of my mentors, Mr. Miles and my dad. The process of making each project was designed to teach me some aspect of web development. For example, one of my projects was a jigsaw puzzle game called “Jigsaw Joust” that used a leaderboard to keep track of top times. For this, I needed a database, and that’s the area of learning that that project covered.
My website has more than the projects -- I am in Senior Computer Science and I wanted an easy way to keep track of the assignments I completed, so I put them on my GitHub account. I have provided a portal to my GitHub on the website as well as a page detailing some of my favorite projects I’ve done for the class. I also have a blog on tumblr where I have kept track of my capstone’s progress over the months.
The final product is online at http://raz1.com/.



Bibliography

NOTE: some of these sources I did not cite in MLA format because I was citing the entire website as a source.


Stack Overflow. http://stackoverflow.com/

Stack Overflow is the most popular branch of the Stack Exchange Network. Like all Stack Exchange sites, it is a question and answer forum. Stack Overflow specifically is centered around programming and coding topics. It has a system that allows users to vote for the best answer to a question, assuring that the original asker and any other viewers with the same question are answered as completely as possible.
Stack Overflow is a popular option among web developers and has been extremely useful for me over the past several months that I’ve been working on my capstone. Its voting system combined with a round-the-clock team of moderators (who are mostly professionals in computer-related subjects) makes it a very trustworthy source of information. If you have any sort of programming or coding question, chances are it’s already been asked and answered on Stack Overflow.


W3Schools Online Web Tutorials. www.w3schools.com

W3Schools is the largest online web developer information website. It offers tutorials on all the following web languages: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, SQL, Bootstrap, and jQuery. It offers quizzes and exams on these languages. It also has a YouTube channel with guides on making websites. It also offers the very useful “try-it-yourself” webpage editor, which contains examples of how a certain functionality in one of the languages works and allows the user to modify these examples and observe the result.
W3Schools has been criticized for making its content too simplified for users who are new to web development. I think this criticism is accurate but I think its simplicity is helpful -- when learning a new concept or trying to wrap your head around object-oriented programming the easy explanations and basic examples are conducive to “getting it.” For the more experienced developer, Mozilla is probably a better option.


Mozilla Developer Network. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/

MDN, created by Mozilla, the same group who made the Firefox browser, is a community-maintained resource for web developers. It offers a thorough and detailed explanation for all functionalities of web languages such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript and NodeJS. MDN’s web APIs (application programming interfaces) are especially helpful because of their comprehensiveness and organization.
MDN is useful for the above reasons, though its guides often lack examples. Despite this, it always provides solid explanations -- for some JavaScript functions it will even show the user how the function is written (as in, it shows what the code does with more code). I believe it is best used in conjunction with W3Schools because both sites have strengths in different areas.


Firebase Web API. https://www.firebase.com/docs/web/api/

Firebase is an online application that does cloud service providing and data management. It is integrated into JavaScript as a library that allows the developer to read information from and write information to one of its servers. It was acquired by Google in 2014 and just this month underwent some big structural changes.
One of the projects I did required the use of a database. I thought that learning SQL (Structured Query Language) or one of its variants would take too long and probably delay progress on other parts of the capstone, so I tried using Firebase. I think I made the right choice in using it because it’s fairly easy to comprehend for someone who has experience with JavaScript (which I do).


Udacity Nanodegree. https://www.udacity.com/

Udacity is an online classroom offering “nanodegrees” in web development. These “nanodegrees” are certificates that one has completed the Udacity course, which takes roughly 6 to 8 weeks with a few hours spent learning per day. It was founded by Sebastian Thrun, a former Google VP and Professor of Computer Science at Stanford (read: really smart guy). Udacity also offers courses on other computer-related subjects, such as building robotic cars.
Once I’m near the end of the year I plan to start the Udacity nanodegree in web development. The goal of my capstone is to learn as much as possible this year to prepare myself for a potential career in web work, so though I have not used this source yet, it will be useful in a few months. I am waiting for the end of the year to start it because I will have more free time then to complete this fairly demanding program.


Ellingwood, Justin. “How To Launch Your Site on a New Ubuntu 14.04 Server with LAMP, SFTP, and DNS | DigitalOcean.” DigitalOcean. N.p., 13 May 2014. Web. 12 Jan. 2016. <https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-launch-your-site-on-a-new-ubuntu-14-04-server-with-lamp-sftp-and-dns>.

DigitalOcean is an online cloud infrastructure that provides developers with online servers. Basically, it’s a website hosting program. It’s the one I chose to host my website. This article I found on their forums is a guide on how to launch a website on an Ubuntu server using their service.
This source was very helpful as there isn’t a guide for this particular process anywhere else on the internet. It’s accurate, readable, and isn’t too technical. It does rely on the user’s knowledge of other process required for the launch such as installing a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack, but it provides links to guides on these processes.


Carranza, Pablo. "How To Use Filezilla to Transfer and Manage Files Securely on Your VPS | DigitalOcean." DigitalOcean. N.p., 17 October 2013. Web. 12 January 2016. <https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-filezilla-to-transfer-and-manage-files-securely-on-your-vps>.

DigitalOcean is an online cloud infrastructure that provides developers with online servers. Basically, it’s a website hosting program. It’s the one I chose to host my website. This article I found on their forums is a guide on how to transfer and manage files using Firezilla.
This article was super useful because transferring files from my computer to the server is roughly ten percent of the time I spend working on a project. In order to make changes to my website, I have to modify its files on my machine and then upload them to the server. This process is especially necessary during debugging, when I need to make changes and until I fix whatever problem I’m having.


Ellingwood, Justin. “How To Install Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP (LAMP) stack on Ubuntu 14.04 | DigitalOcean.” DigitalOcean. N.p., 18 April 2014. Web. 14 January 2016. <https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-linux-apache-mysql-php-lamp-stack-on-ubuntu-14-04>.

This is another guide I found on DigitalOcean’s site that I used to launch my website. This article specifically explains how to install Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP (LAMP) on an Ubuntu server.
This article was useful to me because Linux and Apache are, for my website, necessary components. In order to manage the site’s files I need control of the terminal, which is provided by the Linux operating system, and in order to actually host the files I need a web server, which is provided by Apache. MySQL is a database language and PHP is a dynamic content language, both of which my website has alternatives for.
The guide itself, like most of the other DigitalOcean guides I have found, is very clearly written and not too technical or abstruse. It can be a little intimidating to someone who has never used the terminal before and the guide doesn’t completely parse and explain the lines it tells you to run, but it’s reasonable since the audience of this source most likely has at least some experience running shell commands.
Be the first to comment.

Bacteriophages

Posted by Raz Reed in Science And Society - Best - Y on Wednesday, May 18, 2016 at 11:40 am
A bacteriophage is a virus. A virus is any pathogen that can only replicate in the living cells of other organisms. They are not considered "alive" by most scientists because of their relatively simple structure compared to even the simplest life forms. In fact, some viruses have as few as 1300 nucleotides -- whereas humans have 3 billion. They say that all the DNA in one human cell, when stretched out, would be roughly 6 feet long. For many viruses, that length could be measured in micrometers.
Viruses only do one thing: make more of themselves. Many viruses, such as bacteriophages, do this by consuming their host. The word "bacteriophage" is derived from "bacteria" and "phagein," which is Greek for "devour." The below image shows the anatomy of a bacteriophage.
bacteriophage-diagram
bacteriophage-diagram
​ In order for a bacteriophage to reproduce, it must first find a cell. It has no way of propelling itself so it must float around until it comes in contact with a receptor on the surface of the cell. Its tail fibers attach around the receptor and flex to bring its base plate closer to the surface until it is bound there. It is able to do this because of ATP in each tail. Then, the bacteriophage's genetic material in its head is pumped into the cell. Once this occurs, the bacteriophage is, for all intents and purposes, "dead."
But that's not the end of it -- the cell's ribosomes start translating the viral mRNA instead of cell mRNA. As a result, instead of doing normal cell things such as synthesizing proteins, the cell starts making copies of the bacteriophage using the mRNA as a blueprint. The cell ceases all normal function and only makes these copies until its membrane collapses and many new bacteriophages are released.
Here's a video of the process.

In 1896, Ernest Hankin collected a sample of water from the Ganges River that cholera bacteria. He noticed that something was killing the cholerae but could not figure out what. It remained a mystery until 1915, when Twort discovered the extremely tiny little entities responsible, bacteriophages. His findings were later confirmed by a scientist known as Félix d'Hérelle who took part in this discovery.
D'Hérelle conceptualized a practical application for bacteriophages, a process called phage therapy. Phage therapy is the use of bacteriophages (and/or other bacteria-killing viruses) to fight bacterial infection. Phage therapy gained support from medical professionals in the US and Soviet Georgia, but in the US its practice was short-lived as antibiotics, considered a better method than phage therapy, was discovered only several years after. However, phage therapy is currently being revisited in research as a counter to anthrax and botulism. Here is a culture of bacillus anthracis (anthrax) awhile after bacteriophages were added.
anthraxxx
anthraxxx
​Bibliography:
- https://www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/~mcclean/plsc411/viral-genome-structures-lecture-and-overheads.pdf
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFXuxGuT7H8
- http://mmbr.asm.org/content/40/4/793.full.pdf
- http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/25/world/americas/25iht-institute.4.5869943.html?_r=0
Be the first to comment.

Gender Identity

Posted by Raz Reed in Reading, Writing And Rising Up - Block - B on Wednesday, January 27, 2016 at 11:45 am
​The topic of our radio piece is gender. We wanted to show how its definition is largely up to interpretation, and people have different views on it. We interviewed teens because we felt that they had a lot of interesting ideas into this topic. Our hope is that the views presented by teens in this piece give the listener a new understanding of gender.

I worked with Alex Wroblewski and Des O'Donovan.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6gaxeTIHQHpQWwyb0pVX05Kbms/view?usp=sharing

Be the first to comment.

Stats Q4 BM Podcast 3

Posted by Raz Reed in Statistics - Miles - B on Friday, May 29, 2015 at 11:13 pm
​Group members present during this discussion: Raz Reed, William Amari, Edgar Pacio.

What your club discussed: During our third podcast we discussed chapters 8, 9 and 10. Sorry there are so many files, we had to keep stopping the recording because there's no way to pause on QuickTime.

How you discussed it: We summarized each chapter and the examples given in them. For chapter 10, which ended the book with a series of questions each person should ask his or her self when reading a statistic, we explained each question and examples of potential answers.

Points of conflict/disagreement during the discussion: We agreed on pretty much everything.

​Questions that came up as a result of the discussion: Now that we've covered the entire book, is there anything that Mr. Miles wants to tell us about statistical manipulation that we haven't heard?
Stats Q4BM Podcast 3 pt. 1
Stats Q4BM Podcast 3 pt. 2
Stats Q4BM Podcast 3 pt. 3
Stats Q4BM Podcast 3 pt. 4
Stats Q4BM Podcast 3 pt. 5
Be the first to comment.

Stats Q4 BM Podcast 2

Posted by Raz Reed in Statistics - Miles - B on Wednesday, May 27, 2015 at 7:18 pm
Group members present during this discussion: Raz Reed, William Amari, Edgar Pacio.

What your club discussed: During our second podcast (which is the combination of all four of these files, sorry), we discussed chapters 4, 5, 6 and 7.

How you discussed it: We first answered questions from our viewers (Mr. Miles), then summarized each chapter and the examples given in them. We incorporated the misleading statistics example from the article Mr. Miles gave us into the discussion and we found our own to talk about.

Points of conflict/disagreement during the discussion: I disagreed with Will and Edgar on which average one should use to compare the students of two math classes. They said that mode is best, I said that mean is best.

​Questions that came up as a result of the discussion: What other types of statistical manipulation are there?
Stats Q4BM Podcast 2 pt. 1
Stats Q4BM Podcast 2 pt. 2
Stats Q4BM Podcast 2 pt. 3
Stats Q4BM Podcast 2 pt. 4
1 Comment

Stats Q4 BM Podcast 1

Posted by Raz Reed in Statistics - Miles - B on Monday, May 18, 2015 at 10:04 am
Stats Q4BM Podcast 1
1 Comment

The Tactics of the Shrewd

Posted by Raz Reed in English 3 - Pahomov - C on Sunday, April 19, 2015 at 9:22 pm

The Tactics of the Shrewd

A comparison of The Taming in the Shrew and Amélie

Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew proves that deception has long been a tactic people use to find a romantic partner. Lucentio is the son of a rich man who has traveled to Padua and is determined to gain the love of young, attractive Bianca. He disguises as a tutor, “Cambio,” in order to get closer to Bianca while his servant, Tranio, disguises as him.

In Jeunet’s Amélie (2001), Amélie is a very shy young woman who falls in love with Nino, a man who collects and reassembles discarded photos from a photo booth. However, she is too shy to meet him, so she plays a cat-and-mouse game with him, leading him to various places all across Paris and dropping hints about her identity.

There’s a similarity between their motivations, but a difference in their tactics. Though the genders are reversed, Lucentio and Amélie have the same goal: to gain the love of their respective sweethearts. But, Lucentio has to work around Bianca’s father Baptista, who has said that Bianca shall not court any men until her older sister has gotten married, whereas the only obstacle Amélie has to overcome is her own reticence. Amélie and The Taming of the Shrew both support the message that a little deception in a relationship can be a beneficial thing.

“LUCENTIO, as CAMBIO

 Now mistress, profit you in what you read?

BIANCA

 What, master, read you? First resolve me that.

LUCENTIO, as CAMBIO

 I read that I profess, The Art of Love.”

(Act IV, Scene ii, Page 153)

In this quote, Lucentio is disguised as Cambio, a tutor, and flirting with Bianca while it appears that he is teaching her from a book. His line, “I read that I profess, The Art of Love” is a not-so-subtle way of telling Bianca that he is in love with her. Lucentio’s use of a disguise to get Bianca is similar to Amélie’s use of clues in order to reveal pieces of her identity to Nino and eventually meet him: they’re both acts of deception. Their tactics are different though, Lucentio is disguised as another person while his servant is disguised as him, whereas Amélie never actually disguises as anyone but keeps her identity clandestine. This also means that Nino and Bianca, despite the gender differences, are similar in one aspect: they are the targets of the protagonist’s affection and deception.

Here’s an example of Amélie’s deception.

In this scene, Amélie (center) leads Nino (left) across a local park with arrows in order to arrive him at his scrapbook which he had lost when it fell off of his motorcycle, all without revealing herself. She avoids communicating with her partner until it is necessary, unlike Lucentio, who disguises as someone else and then reveals himself later.

“Love wrought these miracles. Bianca’s love

Made me exchange my state with Tranio,

While he did bear my countenance in the town,

And happily I have arrived at the last

Unto the wished haven of my bliss.”

(Act V, Scene i, Page 203)

When Lucentio delivers this quote, it is near the end of the play and he has married Bianca. When closely examining Lucentio’s strategy, it’s surprising it worked. There are many things that could have gone wrong during its operation: Bianca might not have immediately fallen in love with Lucentio like she did, or Lucentio could have been found out by Bianca’s father, or Petruchio could have failed to court Katherine which would’ve meant that Bianca couldn’t marry, and so on. So, even though the scenario where Lucentio and Bianca marry isn’t realistic, Shakespeare chose to write it that way.

Amélie has a similarly unrealistic plan. She creates an elaborate path that will eventually lead Nino to her, but there are also many possible complications: she could lose track of him or he could lose track of her, Nino could lose interest, and so on. However, it worked out regardless and they ended up together.

This shows that both Shakespeare and the director of Amélie, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, had the same idea: they wanted to show that a little deception can improve relationships. The characters they created, Lucentio and Amélie, represent this. As both the play and the movie end, we are left with Lucentio and Bianca, Amélie and Nino, two happy couples who wouldn’t have been without a little trickery.

Works Cited:
- Amélie. Dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Perf. Audrey Tautou. 20th Century Fox, 2001.
- Shakespeare, William. The Taming of the Shrew. New Haven: Yale UP, 1954. Print.
Be the first to comment.

The Self and the Changing World

Posted by Raz Reed in English 3 - Pahomov - C on Tuesday, January 20, 2015 at 11:39 pm
Analytical Essay:

Of the billions of people on the planet, all of them have different experiences. Eventually, unfortunate things happen to them. Something as simple as a new, inconvenient class schedule at school, or something as serious as the death of a loved one. When these things happen, some sort of lifestyle change occurs. Maybe, as a result of the schedule change, a student has to wake up earlier. Or maybe, as a result of a spouse’s death, a man has to live without a wife. People can change, but change isn’t easy. All people have and need a coping mechanism in order to survive their changing world.

In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, Jimmy Cross is a platoon leader in charge of O’Brien and a group of American soldiers in Vietnam during the war. Cross is still infatuated with a his teenage crush, Martha, from years ago. This quote on page 1 shows his obsession: “he [Cross] would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hour of light pretending. He would imagine romantic camping trips into the White Mountains in New Hampshire. He would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had been there.” Cross is still attached to Martha not just because he can’t help it, but because it’s his way of coping with being a soldier in Vietnam. Each day, their troop wakes up at dawn, walks practically the whole day, then sleeps for a few hours. Day in and day out. It’s understandable that Cross needs to remember Martha to remember what home was like and to remember that if all goes well, he can get back to her.

On page 239, O’Brien explains the importance of storytelling during wartime to the reader: “We kept the dead alive with stories. When Ted Lavender was shot in the head, the men talked about how they'd never seen him so mellow, how tranquil he was, how it wasn't the bullet but the tranquilizers that blew his mind. He wasn't dead, just laid-back.” By telling each other stores, O’Brien and his comrades can, for a little while, escape the war, socialize, and have fun. A good story engages the listener and takes him or her into a different world. Without them, it would be much harder for the soldiers to deal with the gruelling daily routine. Storytelling is another coping mechanism that O’Brien and company utilize to survive the ever-changing war.

On page 33, O’Brien describes the character of Ted Lavender, a fellow soldier: “Like when Ted Lavender went too heavy on the tranquilizers. ‘How's the war today?’ somebody would say, and Ted Lavender would give a soft, spacey smile and say, ‘Mellow, man. We got ourselves a nice mellow war today.’” The tranquilizers make him sleepy and happy but still able to walk, so they’re the perfect mechanism to make the world a little more tolerable. Soldiers in Vietnam, particularly O’Brien’s crew, had to walk miles and miles every day. Without a coping mechanism like tranquilizers, they wouldn’t be able to deal with the drudging routine of war.

Here’s a quote from O’Brien in an interview published in the New York Times: “Storytelling is the essential human activity. The harder the situation, the more essential it is. In Vietnam men were constantly telling one another stories about the war. Our unit lost a lot of guys around My Lai, but the stories they told stay around after them. I would be mad not to tell the stories I know.” Again, the soldiers tell stories to other soldiers so that they can briefly escape the war they’re in. “The harder the situation, the more essential it is,” implies that O’Brien has been in plenty of difficult situations and probably has experience where storytelling was necessary at varying degrees to tolerate and get through the situation. His account confirms that having a coping mechanism, such as storytelling, is necessary to survive a changing world.

Tranquilizers, stories, and even dreaming, are all coping mechanisms. When people go through tough times, such mechanisms are essential to carrying on with their lives. Coping is simply a part of human survival. Change arrives in some form, and something has to be done to adjust to that change. That’s what coping is, and it’s how change happens in a person.


Works Cited for Analytical Essay:


  • Bruckner, D.J. "A Storyteller For the War That Won't End." New York Times Online. The New York Times. April 3, 1990. Web. October 20, 2009.

  • O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990. Print.


Narrative Essay:


One morning, two and a half years ago, my dad gave me an ultimatum. He told me that I had to take up some sort of physical activity. The options he recommended were sports and crossfit. I wasn’t a fan of the competitiveness of most sports and I had never heard of crossfit, so I asked him about crossfit. He explained that it was a fitness regimen for all ages designed to increase cardiovascular/respiratory endurance, stamina, speed and strength. I thought that sounded interesting, so I acquiesced.

At the time, I was really skinny for my age and height: 78 pounds. For some reason that I still don’t really understand, I wasn’t hungry often. Even when I was, I usually found whatever I was doing more interesting than food. Though I was told by parents that my weight was unhealthy, I had a bad tendency to ignore them. It didn’t seem unhealthy to me - I was never in pain, and except for occasional pangs of hunger, there weren’t any repercussions.

I started crossfit at the Sweat gym on Main Street, just a few blocks away from my house. I went two days a week to get personal training from Jim, who has been awesome throughout the whole session. I was an awkward kid and I remember saying very little for the first session we had because it was new and scary to me.

Over the next few weeks, I learned a lot of techniques and forms. Deadlifts, presses, front and back squats, cleans, jerks, snatches, and so on, became like second nature to me. Still today they’re embedded in my muscle memory. Knowing form sped up the training process - now I was really doing crossfit. Jim started assigning me actual crossfit workouts. They included a strength and a WOD (“workout of the day”) portion. The strength portion was dedicated to getting PRs (personal records) and the WOD portion was dedicated to completing an amount of exercises as fast as possible or completing as many exercises as possible in a given time.

After a month or so, I was gaining weight. Slowly, but surely - as a kid, I was always growing, but it was happening faster now. My dad had to tell me before I noticed, but when I did, that got me excited. I noticed that I was enjoying crossfit more than I used to. Two months after I started, I went to see the doctor for a checkup. I was now above the eighth percentile in body weight. This is about the time when my trainer opened up his own gym on Ridge Avenue, which is where I worked out from then on.

That’s my favorite part about crossfit, or any sort of exercise regimen. The more you do it, the more accustomed you are to doing it, and the better you get at it, and it’s uphill from there.

Soon, summer ended, and I went back to school - my first year at SLA. Things got complicated pretty quickly. When school ended, I had to take the train to the gym, which made my schedule hectic, given that I get out of school at very different times each weekday. I would walk up the hill on Ridge to the gym, then get driven home by parents. Fortunately, I settled into the not-so-routine routine well enough, and eventually, I went to the gym three times a week.

I did this for about a year and a half. I was gaining weight and increasing in body weight percentile, and the doctor told me during a checkup that my resting heart rate was lower than average (which is a good thing). When 2014 came, Jim bought a new gym. It was this huge, spacious building with a high ceiling just a few blocks away from the previous, and much smaller, location. It was also closer to the train station I got off at, so it was perfect. I went a solid three days a week for months.

Unfortunately, in the recent months in junior year, school caught up with me. I’m still doing crossfit, just at a slower pace - two days a week instead of three. But, crossfit has been immensely helpful in my weight gain process. Two and a half years ago, I was 78 pounds and around the eighth percentile for my weight. Now I’m 128 pounds and nearing the 40th percentile. Crossfit has been the perfect mechanism for me to change myself.

Be the first to comment.

State Lotteries and Regressive Taxation

Posted by Raz Reed in English 3 - Pahomov - C on Sunday, November 9, 2014 at 9:46 pm

According to Investopedia, the definition of a regressive tax is “a tax that takes a larger percentage from low-income people than from high-income people.” Unfortunately when it comes to the lottery, that is the case in the U.S. State lotteries cause disproportionately high spending among low-income citizens, and are therefore a regressive tax.

State lotteries operate by printing large quantities of lottery tickets. Each ticket has an extremely small chance to reward their owner with a huge monetary prize. However, the insensible dreams of wild riches are mostly those of the impoverished. So, in an effort to escape their situation, they buy lottery tickets - but this only serves to send them further into poverty. Though the state is not deliberately asking for money from the low-income citizens, their lotteries have the same effect.

The Fiscal Policy Institute shows that lottery purchases are 4.0% of citizens with a median household income of $20,000, whereas they make up 0.25% of citizens with a median household income of $85,000. If it's the poor who are purchasing the majority of lottery tickets (money which goes to the government), then that meets the definition of a regressive tax.

The NCPA offers more evidence on the disparity between low- and high-income citizens’ expense on lottery tickets: “the dollar amount spent on the lottery by the lowest-income individuals (earning less than $10,000) is twice as much as the highest earners (earning more than $100,000 annually).” The impoverished buying twice as many lottery tickets than the wealthy, thus giving more money to the state government, is more proof that lotteries are a regressive tax.

In a memorandum to the governor of Massachusetts, Dong Kwang Ahn and Elizabeth Caldona did a study of 27 Massachusetts cities and found that “in 2009 the people living in Newton, one of the wealthiest cities in the Commonwealth with a $56,285 per capita income spent 0.4 % of their income on lotteries, while Springfield, one of the poorest cities in Massachusetts, with an $18,187 per capita income spent 3.6 % of its income on lotteries.” Here is yet more evidence that the poor are spending disproportionately high amounts on the lottery.

As the studies, research and statistics have shown, state lotteries in the U.S. have unintended consequences. Impoverished citizens feel that the only way out of their situation is to keep spending money on the one-in-a-billion chance of wild riches - but in doing so plunge further into poverty. By making the lottery available to everyone, the government is indirectly taking advantage of the poor.

Works Cited:

  • "Regressive Tax Definition." Investopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. <http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/regressivetax.asp>.

  • Kramer, Brent. "The New York State Lottery: A Regressive Tax." Fiscal Policy Institute (special report) (2010): 961-66. www.fiscalpolicy.org. Fiscal Policy Institute, 29 Mar. 2010. Web. <http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/StateTaxNotes_LotteryRegressive.pdf>.

  • Davis, Michael L., Ph.D., and Edwin L. Cox. "Taxing the Poor: A Report on Tobacco, Alcohol, Gambling, and Other Taxes and Fees That Disproportionately Burden Lower-Income Families." Ed. Matthew P. Moore. National Center for Policy Analysis 300 (2007): n. pag. www.ncpa.org. June 2007. Web. <http://www.ncpa.org/pdfs/st300.pdf>.

  • Ahn, Dong K., and Elizabeth Cardona. "Interoffice Memorandum." Maxwell School (2010): n. pag. www.maxwell.syr.edu/Faculty/. 10 May 2010. Web. <http://faculty.maxwell.syr.edu/jyinger/classes/PAI735/studentpapers/2010/ahn_cardona.pdf>.

2 Comments

The System of Family

Posted by Raz Reed in English 2 - Pahomov - E on Thursday, April 3, 2014 at 11:11 pm
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOaNYjl-Jv4&feature=youtu.be

Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Wj3zEnucyU&feature=youtu.be 

Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ktWD-8Rq4Y&feature=youtu.be

Part 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph5rwI8Z1Fg&feature=youtu.be

Part 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cmdm_LuB0I&feature=youtu.be
Be the first to comment.

Advertising and Insecurity

Posted by Raz Reed in English 2 - Pahomov - A on Wednesday, January 29, 2014 at 7:26 am
There are many ways to make a person feel insecure. Probably the most prevalent method is through advertising. Ads are everywhere. Companies constantly seek opportunities to inject need in the brains of potential consumers, reminding them that they would be better off with that company’s products. “Your body is not as attractive as it could be.” “You’re not making as much money as you could be.” “You aren’t as happy as you could be.” These neuroses natural to humans are reinforced by the slogans and manipulative words commercials use to get under your skin and remind you that you are not perfect.

Why use insecurity in advertising?

The fundamental goal of advertising is to get you to buy or do something. That goal doesn’t need to achieved by creating a sense of insecurity. For example, in an advertisement from “Old Spice,” a mother follows around her son with his lady friend trying not to be seen. She sings a song about how he’s growing up so fast, how he’s being treated like a man and now thanks to Old Spice, he smells like a man. What this advertisement implies is that with Old Spice, women are not only attracted to you but also respect you.

Another example of an advertisement which does not attempt to make the viewer feel insecurity about his or her self is one by the U.S. Navy. In this commercial, they inform the viewer of how powerful the “call to serve” is and how it is a force of good in this world. It inspires one to join the Navy to become a better person. It does not use techniques such as the archetypal before-and-after comparison advertisements to badger the audience for not being good.

This method of before-and-after comparison is most common to insecurity-based advertisements. Why use insecurity in advertising? Well, the answer is that it’s very easy to instill self-doubt in the viewer.


It’s easier to destroy than to create.

Advertisements which deliberately attempt to make the viewer insecure are much more common than those which use different techniques (such as the aforementioned Old Spice and Navy commercials). This is because it is easier to make someone feel bad rather than good.

For example, in a short article by Mark VandeWettering, he explains how a beautiful  monument made of paper cranes dedicated to a girl who died of leukemia was easily burned down by some “yutz.” Making something is hard work, and destroying it is easy.

A survey conducted by the University of Central Florida revealed that 95% of male college students had some sort of dissatisfaction with their body, some claiming advertisements they saw a more ideal body image which made them consider their own stature.

Advertisements such as those by Axe are directed at males’ view of their sex appeal. In one of their commercials, two men and a woman are in an alley. One man looks very handsome on a motorcycle and is obviously the woman’s boyfriend, and the other man is homeless searching through a shopping cart. He sees the woman walking towards the first man and applies Axe deodorant. The woman smells, and approaches him, and sniffs him all over. She eventually returns to her boyfriend and winks at the homeless man. This advertisement is an example of those which cause people to be insecure about their body image.

A 2008 study conducted by Dove Self-Esteem Fund showed that 62% of girls aged eight to eighteen felt dissatisfied with themselves, and 71% of those girls felt that way because they believed that they were not as pretty as they should be.

However, probably the most notorious in the field of insecurity-inducing-advertisements is before-and-after cosmetics commercials. These types of ads show a female looking wrinkled, dirty, and unappealing in one frame labeled “before.” In the next, labeled “after,” is her looking attractive without any sort of blemish. This type of advertisement has caused females to feel insecurity about their own body image and purchase more in the hope of being pretty.

Defense against the “dark arts.”

Since people will not stop making advertisements that make others feel insecure, it’s important to have a self-defense against those. An article by lifehacker.com demonstrates several methods you can use as a consumer to remain unaffected by marketers’ schemes. “Don’t forget to think” is the first method: there are people everywhere who want to make money off you. Consider your purchases and if what was portrayed in the commercial will actually play out for you. The second method is “be wary of your emotional responses.”  Remember that advertisers are out to get you and have developed devious, subtle tricks to get under your skin. Just notice if you feel affected by an advertisement. The third method is “watch out for products indirectly targeted at you.” Even if you think the ad isn’t aimed at you, it can still affect you. Like in the example given on the website cited, an ad targeting dogs based of off human tendencies can still affect you. The fourth and final method is simplest: avoid advertisements altogether. If you often watch television this proves a bit difficult, but just take a short break whenever the ads come on. Pay no mind to billboards in public, and use Adblock when online. You are free of the insecurities induced by corporate giants.

Works cited:
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEbpbNTkIdk
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmuuVGrQIVU
3. http://brainwagon.org/2003/08/02/its-easier-to-destroy-than-to-build/
4. http://www.mhlearningsolutions.com/commonplace/index.php?q=node/5954
5. http://www.divinecaroline.com/beauty/makeup/about-face-why-some-women-can%E2%80%99t-go-without-makeup
6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHCRWfV1q5A
7. http://lifehacker.com/5824328/how-advertising-manipulates-your-choices-and-spending-habits-and-what-to-

do-about-it
Be the first to comment.

Augmentation

Posted by Raz Reed in English 2 - Pahomov - E on Monday, December 2, 2013 at 8:37 pm

Character lays sideways in bed, feet and head dangling over opposite sides, propping up his head with his arms, apparently staring up at the ceiling. He is smiling and chatting with his friend via his augmentation implant, a chip designed to grant the user abilities greater than that of a modern day computer.

“Haha, alright, I’ll talk to you later. Bye. Pause. End call.” Sits up, sighs.

My friend likes to ramble. I like to listen to him, so I think we make a pretty good team. Now, he was just rambling to me about family history, some funny events that lead him to meet his wife, the sort of thing he talks about sometimes. When he was getting to the end of his story, I asked him what his first date with his wife was like, just to humor him, to let him talk about what he likes to talk about. He responded evasively, I inquired, and he confessed to me that he didn’t really remember.

Character’s face turns serious. Now I know it’s not just me.

People don’t remember things anymore; they have technology and chips and stuff to memorize things for them. This whole generation has ADD. Social networks are accessible from anywhere, we can’t focus because we get notifications, calls, distractions that bring us back to the world of our friends, and it’s wired right to our heads. Literally. The era of smartphones is gone and chips have replaced them.

Stands, paces. Matter of fact, I was the last one to sign up for an augmentation chipping. My family and friends told me it was “the ultimate convenience” and my son uses it like a drug. He told me he was getting work done and that he didn’t need a computer or anything else. Now, I know he has also had issues with his work ethic. I’m trying to not let him slip into the zone of social isolation. The bubble of games, music, videos, digital communication. I just want my kid to be able to focus on school and not go all spacey on me when I talk to him.

I remember when he first got his chip. I was anxious as hell and I had learned everything there was to learn about augmentation, and why it was supposedly a good choice. Back then, I think it was expensive, but I’d been told about the calendar and digital organization and event planning and whatever. Know what? Right after we got it, he was texting his friends, going on the web, just staring at nothing in particular. As I recall, that was the first time I saw the glaze in his eyes as he looked to his upper left at the little display.

Before chips were becoming widespread, I didn’t really think much of the pace of technology. I mean, I knew it was fast, and new inventions were always happening, but… well, I can’t predict the future. My memory is fuzzy on occasion, but I think about 2005 was when me and my wife wanted a son. Now she wanted… um… well, she asked me if I was ready, and I told her… huh.

Addressing the audience: You ever have a memory almost clear in your mind and it just evades you? That’s what’s been happening to me recently. I mean, I’m only 48, but… do I need a doctor? Character’s speaking becomes excited and angry with realization, and gets a crazy edge to his voice. No. No, it’s this damned thing in my head! I swear it’s messing with me. I know that I’ve never had these issues before “augmentation” and that I haven’t always been like this. I think that - Pauses. You hear that…? I swear I heard a click, right in the back of my he - Pauses again. Character blinks and looks dazed and unfamiliar with his surroundings.

What just happened? Man, I don’t remember what I was just doing. Exit.

Be the first to comment.

The "B" Word

Posted by Raz Reed in English 2 - Pahomov - E on Monday, November 11, 2013 at 10:12 pm

A loud hiss, the sound of pressurized air being released, made the din of the students temporarily inaudible. The large, yellow, gas-consuming transport behemoth in front of me settled and opened its doors. Not in any hurry, and wearing half my weight in winter gear, I let my schoolmates barge past me to escape the weather. I turned my head acutely to face my three close friends.

“Back of the bus,” I told them. They nodded, shivering. We boarded the steep steps into the bus and made our way through a multitude of loud children to the rear seats. Sheila followed suit, then Joy, then Taylor. Sheila was twelve, naturally a very pale girl, and a lover of dresses, accessories, and fashion (girl things), vampire novels, anime, and dolls. She was tall and thin, had purely dark hair which was neatly separated on tied into little buns on each side of her scalp. Her facial features slightly resembled that of a mouse, pointed and prominent. She wore an incarnadine dress with white buttons and a lace collar which I found adorable, with black buckled shoes and stockings striped black-and-white. These stockings she bore every other day, and they were collecting rips and tears (when I asked her about them, she told me that “threadbare” was her style). I wondered why she wasn’t freezing.

Joy was not tall, just the opposite was she. Stout, and proud were two adjectives that best fit her. She stood straight and as tall as she could, took school seriously, and wore plain clothing. Jeans, a t-shirt, and a thin jacket were all she ever needed. In warm weather, she would shed the jacket and that would be her outfit. She rarely talked about her hobbies, but I knew she played violin and piano. I couldn’t tell if she enjoyed it, perhaps her mother was the reason she played.

Taylor’s long, flowy, hair was dark as night. It went past her shoulders, and almost reached the small of her back. Each week she did new things with it, always growing it and caring for it. She had a feminine, kind face, with long eyelashes and a delicate nose. People were often assumed her soft appearance was matched by a soft personality, and they soon found out they were wrong as they got acquainted with her. She was seen by others as truculent, I saw her as righteous. She had a loud, infectious cackle of a laugh.

Despite our bizarre and differing interests, we had many common traits. We were reticent to those who didn’t know us and we took a long time to get acquainted.

At the moment, Joy, Sheila and I were conversing about boys, and Taylor and a few other kids a few seats ahead were yelling to each other. I heard snippets of their conversation, and at some point I Taylor say this:

“Yo, you are a bitch!” It was followed by clamorous laughter from Taylor and the other kids.

Whatever was funny, I didn’t get it. In my mind, the “b-word” was not something you called someone, and much less something you called a girl. Was it a joke? It sounded like one. I was a little bewildered.

I looked at Taylor. I started to say something, but I stammered, and just made an incoherent mumble.

“Huh?” Taylor queried, turning to see me.

“Um. Nothing,” I said awkwardly. Taylor was about to return to her conversation, when I continued:

“You can say that?” I blurted with sudden clarity.

“Say what? ‘Bitch?’”

“Yeah.”

“Of course!” She stated, almost too kindly, as if trying to not misunderstand what my issue was. “It’s just something girls call each other.”

“I thought it was especially bad when you said that to a girl.”

“Well, maybe if you’re a boy,” I was a boy. “But it ain’t that bad.”

Sheila and Taylor looked at me. I felt funny. Was is just me? I couldn’t call a girl the b-word yet other girls could address each other as such? Wasn’t it a bit unfair? The whole encounter left me confused. Was that double standard justified by gender? I never found the answer.

Be the first to comment.

End Bullying - Raz Reed

Posted by Raz Reed in English 1 - Kay on Thursday, May 2, 2013 at 10:12 pm
omg finally done :D

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/JUM1MwtKkro" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Be the first to comment.

Negative Space Drawings - Raz Reed

Posted by Raz Reed in Art - Freshman - Hull on Thursday, May 2, 2013 at 10:52 am
1. What is negative space?

Negative space is the space surrounding an object.

2. Explain how you found negative space in A. your cut-out?, B. your still life drawing?

When drawing the still life, I started by shading in a large portion of my paper. I "drew" it by erasing parts to resemble the objects I was drawing. When making my cut-out, I cut out the shape of the drawing I was given, and traced that onto both papers so I could know where to trim and paste.

3. Why does it help an artist to see in negative space?

It helps by giving the artist an accurate outline of what he/she is drawing.

4. Does seeing in negative space enhance drawings? Why or why not?

It helps by providing a true shape of what you're drawing. In this way, negative space drawings may be better than regular in some situations.
Negative Space
Negative Space
Negative Space 2
Negative Space 2
Be the first to comment.

Raz Reed: Final Perspective Drawing

Posted by Raz Reed in Art - Freshman - Hull on Tuesday, April 23, 2013 at 11:37 am
A. What is one thing you learned, specifically something you did not know before?

I learned that to make something look really 3D, you have to have it conform to a vanishing point. You can't just make a loose guess with eyesight.

B. How did learning this make your drawing better?

Learning this made me realize that you could only see certain sides of some objects depending on where they are in the room. This makes it much more lifelike.

C. If you could do this assignment again, what would you do differently?

I would probably try to complete it a bit faster, and get going on coloring the drawing sooner than I did.

D. What is your advice to someone who has never drawn a one-point perspective drawing before?

I would say to absolutely make sure that everything you draw conforms to the vanishing point, make it the right side, and don't be afraid to redo some things. It may (and probably won't) turn out right on your first attempt.

E. What resource helped you most and why?

I think the slideshow we saw at the beginning of the unit explaining perspective and vanishing points helped me the most. It provided some very basic rules that helped me draw.


20130418_120258 (1)
20130418_120258 (1)
Be the first to comment.

My Home Network

Posted by Raz Reed in Technology- Freshmen - Hull on Wednesday, December 5, 2012 at 9:39 pm
        My home network is set up with several laptops and a computer (mostly my dad's, as his job is immersed in technology), which connect to our wireless provider (wireless-ly). That has a cable going to our modem, which goes right to the cloud via our Comcast service. Our home phone, cellphones and tablets connect via AT&T straight to the cloud.
        I learned from this that there are many connections required just to give an internet signal to a computer, which is something I never really thought about before. I also learned that the <...> symbol represents.
        I would advise other people who are new to the internet to always remember: whatever you do on the internet has a permanent record. Whether it's browser history or something stupid you posted on Facebook, it will always be there and it is forever to stay.
Screen Shot 2012-12-05 at 10.35.14 PM
Screen Shot 2012-12-05 at 10.35.14 PM
Be the first to comment.

Media Fluency - Raz Reed

Posted by Raz Reed in Technology- Freshmen - Hull on Tuesday, December 4, 2012 at 10:42 am
For my slide, I made sure each little portion of the visual would grab the viewer’s attention with big things. I made a picture of outer space as the background, so as to make it not only a big image, but an image of something big. I added an image of the earth in front of this background, bleeding off the edge to make it seem interesting. Its placement was important, because it helped to add depth and left lots of empty space. Finally, I added some text at the bottom of the screen to show what I had learned - “BIGGER IMAGES get your point across.” (In fact, that capital letter text was probably what you saw before you read this.) The first part of the text was bigger so as to easily communicate the subject to the reader.

Reflection: I realized the colorful background detracted from the earth, which was supposed to be the focus of the picture. I changed that by adding a different picture of space as the background, one much clearer and allowing for the earth to be noticed more. I also made the text just a bit bigger.
BIGGER_IMAGES
2 Comments
RSS

About Me

SLA graduate, class of 2016!

Science Leadership Academy @ Center City · Location: 1482 Green St · Shipping: 550 N. Broad St Suite 202 · Philadelphia, PA 19130 · (215) 400-7830 (phone)
×

Log In