Sunday, March 21, 2010

Your vote

VOTE OR DIE! As a woman living in America, I feel very privileged to have the right to vote. We’re in a time much different from the past and I’m honored that one day I will be able to pledge my vote. Everyone wants their opinions heard so I wonder why people don’t participate in voting. The person elected is going to make decisions that affect them personally so to me it seems like a no-brainer. We do have the power to make change happen! For example, the election of President Obama.

It was nearly impossible to avoid last year’s presidential election. With Bush finally about to be out of office, everyone was pumped to learn more about the potential candidates. Regardless the hype, I didn’t really follow the election as well as I could have. The talk I heard around my town was, “We either get a black guy or another stinkin’ republican.” Growing up my mother was a democrat and my father a republican and with the opportunity to learn more about each I would consider myself a democrat if I had to choose a party.

Although I do feel that many people voted Obama for wrong reasons, I would have chosen to vote in his favor as well. It seemed that no matter what his views were everyone loved him and we put a lot of faith in him. Some chose to vote Obama just because he was black and they wanted diversity in the white house. Who knows, it could have been years till the first African American president. Then on the other hand, many people chose not vote McCain just because he’s republican. It all goes back to image. I honestly don’t think that the majority of people casted their vote off of reasoning but either way, now we have Obama as our president and it is what it is.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Character

Overtime politics has changed tremendously. Instead of truly judging our votes off the candidates intelligence or plan for change we tend to look at their image. It sickens me to believe this is true because it’s not right in my opinion. This isn’t a necessarily new concept but what is new is the enormous spread that’s taken place. The faces we see in magazines, TV, games, movies and in the cool clique at school all appear to be attractive and it’s shocking to know that’s even spread to our presidential history.

The first thing we can judge off a person is their looks so it’s natural that we base relationships off that aspect. But this concept has taken a whole new meaning. In some countries women don’t even see their husband before marriage. The arrangement is made by the parent’s judgment of the man’s community status, family name, job title, etc. and neither have a say. Then there’s America, “Land of the Free”, and we do have a say… Yet many of us won’t even glace at the opposite sex if they’re not up to our standards. We have the opportunity to dig deep and really get to know somebody before marriage. So tell me, why is divorce rate so high? Why is there so much infidelity? How can two strangers keep a marriage going when we can’t? Why are so many of us unhappy with our past presidents when we got to choose them?

I feel that we’ve really let our freedom get the best of us. Without even realizing, we’ve created a monster. We need to become aware of this cycle or it’s just going to keep repeating itself. We still have the freedom but we need to use it in a more positive way and stop choosing political figures off their looks and more off reasoning. Needless to say, I firmly believe that Abe Lincoln would not win any political election; he’s a bit too hard on the eyes for us spoiled Americans.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Downloading

Now that downloading has become so common I don’t even think twice about doing it. We can download music, movies, software and even games. First of all, downloading is easy to do. It does have some benefits and other negative consequences but some find it worth it. A lot of Americans download music although it is illegal to do so.

Downloading is actually a very easy thing to do, considering it used to not be a possibility. Instead of physically going to the store we can now get what we want online in the comforts of our home. With a simple membership we can download all the free songs we want and sometimes we don’t even have to create an account. With one click it begins to download and is soon yours to keep. There are options to download a whole album or just certain tracks which is also convenient.

When downloading online we get to experience something we might not otherwise in stores. There are a lot of underground artists that aren’t commonly sold. I have found a lot of artists by browsing online that I doubt I would have heard of elsewhere. It can be really difficult to find smaller bands in stores because the racks are packed with records that are likely to sell and bring in profit since there is such high competition. When we browse online it gives us the opportunity to check out the songs before downloading too.

It greatly affects artist when we don’t purchase their albums. They work countless hours putting together their CD and it’s got to be disappointing to know that people carelessly rip you off. Sometimes I don’t really think about downloading from famous artist’s because they are already so rich as it is. I do feel guilty though when I download less popular artist’s music. They aren’t as widely known and it’s harder for them to receive profit.

Although technology has benefited artists to get their music out there it has also backfired on them immensely. I would personally be really outraged if I was losing money because of illegal downloading. I probably would do all I could to change it and prevent it from happening. I’m sure I would have every teenager hating me because of the consequences I would try to get the government to enforce.