True Enough by Farhad Manjoo

Our latest assignment was to read “True Enough” by Farhad Manjoo. This book was a real eye opener. It broke down various aspects of the media and made the reader re-think it's inter workings. Farhad Manjoo does a great job at trying to change a point of view by using plenty of evidence to back it up.

The problem with the book is it makes you re-think everything with regards to the media. Farhad Manjoo had me trusting nothing in the media. By the end of this book I’m not sure I even trusted what he was saying. It will make you more skeptical than you thought you ever could be.

The section about Video News Releases, or VNR’s ,made me disappointed in news programs at first but with further thought, my opinion changed. VNR’s started in the 1980’s and look like a legit news story but is really just an advertisement. Examples used by the book are National Pancake Day, which is a corporately produced holiday by a pancake batter company Bisquick. This seems like a legit news story but the host is using Bisquick while cooking the pancakes.

A columnist, Robin Raskin started a campaign against porn on Ipads. She was worried about children having easier access to pornographic material. At first I thought this sounded fairly ridiculous. There’s no way to stop children from eventually seeing porn. Even before computers were around, a neighborhood kid got his hands on his father’s stash of Playboy and Penthouse magazines. Curiosity is part of growing-up. We applaud children when they are curious about other things, but frown upon them when exploring sexuality.

Robin Raskin was getting momentum on the porn/Ipad subject and started to gain momentum. She was getting invited to have interviews on various talk and information television shows. Upon interviewing for these shows she started to show items that were “kid friendly.”The interviews became a clever way to push other electronics while frowning upon opponents product.

It turned out that Robin was being paid to push those products and the porn/Ipad subject was just to get her on talk-shows. This happens often with newscasts. It's disappointing and hurts the credibility and prestige of the news. I think news-director’s hands are forced here though. The news budgets are getting cut all across America. This is adding pressure for directors to balance budgets more-so than have all news. The VNR’s are cheaper and easier to put on any given newscast. Most of the public doesn’t even realize what is going on.

A story that really interested me was the Princeton vs. Dartmouth game. It was about a 1951 game that had Princeton winning 13-0 but both sides had felt the other team was playing dirty. I liked this because plenty of times I’ve watched a game of my favorite team and thought the opponent was playing dirty, (Google Buffalo Bills/Miami Dolphins Rivalry). After hearing about this, some researchers sat students from each school down and showed them some clips of the game tape. They found that the students at Princeton claimed to witness an average of ten infractions committed where Dartmouth students saw half as much and most were minor infractions.

As previously found, the fans of each team could not fathom or imagine their team playing dirty. The team they are fans of couldn’t possibly do such a thing. They’re the good team, the good guys. The other guys had to be the ones who were dirty.

People interpret everything this way. If it appeals to you, you’re going to agree with it. A study in this book has students being shown arguments for or against the death penalty. The study found that students found flaws in research that was against there previous believes.

There are countless points made by Farhad Manjoo in this book. I was reluctant to read it and waited until the last possible minute to even buy the book. Once I started reading it, I had no problem continuing on. I do warn you that you’ll start not trusting anyone. You’ll start to lock yourself in your room with no lights and curtains over your windows. The smallest noises will make you think the Government is coming after you. A dog barking outside is an agent coming to kill you. Your parents will call and you will ignore the calls hoping to avoid contact from the outside world. Well maybe it wont be this bad,but it will have you thinking differently. Read the book and enjoy, you'll thank me later

Until next time.....

Public Meeting Number 2

The latest assignment was to attend a second public meeting. If you're a consistent reader of this blog, you know meeting one went pretty poorly.

This meeting was on an issue I can actually relate to. I'm not saying building pools on random businesses lots weren't, I very well may use one in the future, but they weren't something to relate to.

This meeting was about expanding Bruce B. Downs from Bearrs Ave. to Pasco County Road. The length of this comes to about 3.4 miles. It's said that about 60,000 cars go through this stretch of road every day. If you have ever attempted to drive through it during morning or evening rush hours, it can be a frustrating or borderline homicidal. In fact some people like it so much they like to express there gratitude towards each other with the middle finger.

The meeting took place at Tampa Palms Elementary School. My first thoughts were this didn't look anything like the cafeteria at my old Elementary School. It was much nicer and newer than any past experience of mine. There were way more people than I'd imagined coming to a public meeting at an Elementary School. There had to have been at least 150 in attendance.

When we walked into the meeting, the people at the door handed us a pamphlet of exactly what was going to be discussed during this meeting. The pamphlet had four different scenarios of expansion for Bruce B. Downs. There wasn't any question of the needed for expansion. The meeting focused on how to go about expanding it.

It started with a small ten minute introduction to the facts and ideas of the meeting. This was really strange. It was taped and the women on tape seemed very robotic and emotionless. It reminded me of the introductions to Universal Studies rides when in line. Disregard this paragraph if anyone hasn't been to Universal Studies.

When the introduction was finished and the ride, I mean meeeting was ready to take off the officials were introduced, along with different options for plans of expansion.

Various people were then aloud to take the podium and say how they felt about the different expansion plans.

One guy who stood out was someone from Charlotte, North Carolina who's previous experience included helping shape the master transportation plan there, talked about Eight lanes having "failed everywhere it's been used."

He seemed like he knew the most out of public who attended the meeting. Then again, he just seemed the most confident with what he was saying. However, as Farhad Manjoo explains, that doesn't always mean someones knows what they are speaking about, ( pathetic use of class topics for brownie points? Never!).

Some of the arguments for the expansion to eight lanes were that it would save us from having to go through construction twice. One individual illustrated an example of expanding to six lanes, and as the community grows more, doing it all over again years down the road.

I agree with this point, because the community of North Tampa will keep expanding, more-and-more people will be living there. The traffic is bad enough now, something does need to be done. The plan of expansion will cost about 104 million dollars. The community will be forced to pay 52-55 million through a sales tax of an extra penny on every dollar, ( will be later voted on this upcoming November).

If it's decided to just expand to six lanes, then it would cost 52 millions. If we decide to expand to eight lanes, it will cost 55 million.

The main reason I'm in support of the eight lane expansion is because if it's expanded to six lanes and needs to expanded again down the road, it will be a big waste of money. It's been estimated to cost the tax-payers 21 million more dollars, than if we just do it all at once.

Why not for once plan ahead?

The plan is supposed to start the summer of 2011 and end by 2014. This seems a little ridiculous. As we all know construction is rarely finished in its estimated time. My parents pool took longer than three years for god sakes, (yes I'm exaggerating). They can't tell me it's going to be done in less than three years.

One more wrinkle to this whole plan is mass transit. Bills Edwards explained that mass transit by rail is the "only way." He talked about how trolley buses and regular buses don't work with the public. The plan is to ultimately have a train rail connect to the bullet trains to grant access across Florida.

This plan will at the earliest be approved in 2018. I like the idea of the train transit, and it could potentially reduce an immense amount of traffic. The problem is though that is could be potentially one of the most expensive debacles in recent memory.

We don't yet know what will happen to Bruce B. Downs. It will play out in the upcoming months to years. I'll say this public meeting was way more interesting to attend. It sparked my interest in the debate and got me thinking.

Until next time, understand, next time you find yourself in traffic on Bruce B. Downs, just realize that there's something we can do to help.