The Meta Post to End Them All

Fourth quarter was an interesting one for me. I must admit my blogging took a hit from Junior Theme. Howver, I feel like I got to try out a lot of new stuff. Take for instance my blog on Osama's death. While it's far from perfect I think this post was the most personal for me. I wrote it the night that Osama died  right after I heard of his assassination. Being able to write in such a way was really liberating. It felt like I was able to express myself in a more pure form. That's what I loved most about blogging, a blog post can take any number of shapes and forms. This post definitely allowed me to exercise some of that freedom that blogging has afforded me as a writing style.

Please Assess: http://trefies.blogspot.com/2011/05/heroes-villains-and-patriots-or-why-i.html

Heroes, Villains, and Patriots, or Why I Loved Osama, or Junior Theme: The Epilogue

The last two weeks have seen both a radical change in the identity of a superhero and the death of a super-villain. First came the shocking news that Action Comics no. 900, released on the April 27, would feature Superman, America's first superhero, renouncing his American citizenship (Superman Renounces His U.S. Citizenship). I recently completed my junior theme in which I borrowed Superman's motto: "Truth, justice, and the American Way" in my title. Superman defends his monumental shift in thinking by saying he is "tired of having my actions construed as instruments of US policy" and that the world is " too small. Too connected" to only fight for America. Reading this for the first time it caused me to wonder about the state of patriotism in the US. Is Superman's split from America somehow indicative of a shift in identity for Americans in general? Are we identifying less with the "American Way" and more with more global ideas like "truth" and "justice"?

Then yesterday a man long thought to be at the forefront of one of the greatest threats to the United States was killed. Osama bin Laden wasn't just shot anywhere: his Abottabad mansion complete with its electric fences and bared wires and hostage-taking henchmen was a classic super-villain lair. And while the flag-waving, and USA chants that ensued were viewed by many as earnest--if misplaced--displays of patriotism. For me these impromptu celebrations symbolized a last hooray of sorts; one last nostalgic attempt to recreate the "United We Stand" revelry that paradoxically sprung from Osama's worst crime. The feelings of indignant rage before our fight against terror became about oil and nonexistent weapons.

In many ways the almost ten years that have passed since 9/11 can be summed up in Superman's founding principles. We as US citizens learned the harrowing truth that there are people hell-bent on and plenty capable of attacking Americans on our own soil. We sought justice, in one fashion or another, for the blow we were dealt that day, across the deserts of the Middle East. And from it I get the sense that we redefined the "American Way".
Osama bin Laden has always been an almost mythical character in my eyes. Evil, manipulative, charismatic, capable of incredible escape; he was the perfect villain. In many ways he could be regarded as our generation's Hitler. Despite all this, his death has inspired, among other feelings, a reluctant sadness in me. It's a feeling of purposeless that brings to mind the question: who are we fighting now? The hero ceases to be a hero when there is no villain to thwart. I can't help but think that Osama's final moments in a wealthy Islamabad suburb were also part of the death of something greater. It's a special kind of patriotism that comes from fighting a war, not one against greedy imperialists or power-hungry dictators, but against the idea of terror itself. Its an ideological fortitude, a galvanizing of American values that I doubt I will ever see again during my lifetime. These days little is said about unity or the defense of our ideals, Americans seem more interested in domestic issues. America's heroes now are the ones who seek to change America from within instead of protecting it from without. With the death of Osama America's superheroes may have lost their last great supervillain for now, as Superman puts it in his latest comic, "Truth, justice, and the American Way--it's not enough anymore". Perhaps it was naive to expect such a superficial, over-simplified Us vs. Them philosophy to last any longer than it did. But as patriotism in the US gets a new identity I'll try to remember the American Way we've known for the last 10 years, where it seemed like those three things were all we needed.

If It Ain't Got that Swing

Recently I've found a vital reprieve from the ocean of academic pressure flowing from junior theme, the ACTs, and most of all the formidable PSAE  (how am I supposed to know how many people are in the picture, do I look like a wedding photographer to you?). My lifeboat came in the form of HBO's Treme. The drama, which airs on Sundays, is starting its second season. Treme follows the lives of New Orleanians trying to reconstruct their lives in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The show has a particular interest in jazz, which is to be expected given its almost synonymous association with New Orleans. During a symposium at Tulane University one of the shows creators, David Simon, identified New Orleans' jazz infused culture as, "one of the things that has led New Orleans back, to the extent it has come back". I found this quote especially interesting considering the setting of our latest book, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. The novel is set in the 1920s otherwise known as the Jazz Age. And as Fitzgerald makes evident it was a time of unprecedented prosperity and promise. While I won't go so far as to prescribe jazz as the remedy for all societal hardships, I think the two examples give an interesting account of how culture is tied to economic growth. In the case of the Roaring 20s jazz helped defined a nation swiftly becoming a economic, and cultural, superpower, while the late 2000s jazz helped revive the South's great city. It seems that jazz embodies that clique of the Crescent City, Laissez les bon temps rouler.

Selling Radicalism

The CLA's flier is an orgy of American symbolism.

With the basketball season finally coming to an end and the copious amounts of free-time that has afforded me I had the pleasure to indulge myself in one of my favorite of New Trier's extra-curricular offerings, Out-of-the-Box Club. This Thursday's speaker was a representative from a local chapter of the John Birch Society (jbs.org). In a nutshell the JBS is an extra-Conservative, libertarian national organization founded on a near religious devotion to the Constitution and the protection of our constitutional republic against the threat of Communism wherever (if anywhere) it exists. While the representative that plenty of interesting things to say (including some not-so-PC comments about the Civil Rights Movement), what struck me most was the flier he handed out. It was basically an advertisement for the Campus Liberty Alliance (campuslibertyalliance.com), which is the youth branch of the JBS national network. Absent from the flier was the McCarthy-esque fear-mongering and fiery opposition to all things un-American, and in its place was a milder call to action which would seem to appeal to any American. Here's the mission statement printed on the flier:

The mission of Campus Liberty Alliance is to educate our country’s future young leaders on faith, family, free enterprise and a free society, and to activate, equip and send them into the marketplace of ideas to recapture and proclaim the virtues of liberty.

 I found this interesting in light of our class's focus on conscious construction. It seems to me that the JBS is using this flier as bait to draw in new recruits. It appeals to the sense of patriotism that are almost naturally installed in us as Americans without the hinting at the sharper, more radical thinking the society promotes. In fact the flier shows great empathy for its readers. Perhaps its this kind of advertising that has kept the society's membership steady for the past 50 years.

The Ultimate Token?

Towards the end of the TV Tokenism presentation Mr. Bolos raised the intriguing point that in some regards Barack Obama could be viewed as a different kind of token. I think this argument definitely has some validity. When I think about the presidency of Barack Obama I think about a lack of action. Obama offered his ability to compromise as one of his most valuable characteristics during the 2008 campaign and he has shown this to true beyond perhaps even his own knowledge. Obama has seemed unable to satisfy the Democrats or Republicans, the Liberals or Conservatives, and seemingly the entire public, from the poverty stricken to the wealthy elite. Obama compromising role has meant that he hasn't had the kind of dramatic effect on the direction of our country that his campaign of hope and change promised. In this way Obama has been made a token. He is a black man put in an authority position on to have the main story and the main events be lead by his fairer skinned counterparts.

Football and the New Reconstruction

The Super Bowl, as has been said time and time again, is more than just a game in American culture. But last week's game, the forty-fifth in NFL history, may have held more significance for the country than the usual demonstration of American capitalist competition. The mascots of the two teams, the Packers and the Steelers, were named, around the turn of century, after prevalent blue-collar industries in the cities in which they play, Green Bay and Pittsburgh, respectively. As the orgy of ads offering various services surrounding the Super Bowl indicates, the economy of the nation has undergone significant change since the inception of these football teams. While Green Bay and Pittsburgh still are leading producers in their industries in the US, manufacturing as a whole has fallen from its role as the driving force behind the American economy. You could even go as far as to say that America's transition from a manufacturing to a service based economy represents a modern-day Reconstruction. And if the recent financial downturn is any indicator, the new, like the old, Reconstruction hasn't been a complete success. Does the government have the same responsibility to integrate lower-class workers (those who traditional filled manufacturing jobs) into a more modern economy? Will the new Reconstruction be seen as a time of increasing civil rights like the last? And perhaps the most important, will we see our sports teams change with the economy, could the future hold team names like the Green Bay IT Technicans or the Pittsburgh Hedge Fund Managers? One can only wonder.

Stephen Hawking and Brick Houses

In our final exam paper a lot of people, myself included, examined the nature of truth. In my paper I argued that absolute truth (or as Doc OC branded it "big-T Truth") doesn't exist and discussed the impact that had on the motivations and interactions of humans. In agreement is Alva Noë, professor of philosophy at Cal Berkeley, and one of the authors of the blog, 13.7. In his latest post, A Little Philosophy is a Dangerous Thing, Noë criticizes Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow's conclusion that thew belief that perception of reality is subjective and unique to each individual is a, "naive view of reality". Noë makes a persuasive counter-argument, I especially like this example he gives:

I can find out whether there are brick houses on Elm Street by looking. In a different context, I can test whether my eyes are working by checking whether I see the brick houses. We don't have any grip on the idea of what we can see (or measure, or detect) apart from our prior understanding of what there is.

 But I'd like to here from the other side as well. What seems more plausible to you, Noë's assertion of subjective reality or Hawkings' and Mlodinow's that consclusion that all humans are born with "the conscious and subconscious mental models we all create in order to interpret and understand the everyday world"?

Wordle

Inspired by our class's analysis of the State of the Union using a word 
cloud and the reflective nature of my most recent post I decided to 
create a Wordle using the text from my blog. The result can be seen 
here:http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/3047682/One%2C_Out_of_Many_Blog.
 The Wordle reveals several things to me about my blog. First, some of 
my most used words (question, information, opinion, and story) can be 
grouped into a Communications category. Perhaps this sheds light on how I
 view my blog. My blog has analyzed the way people communicate and has 
also become part of the ongoing human interaction (by sharing opinions, 
stories, information, and questions). Secondly, the Wordle shows the 
historical events which I chose to focus on. 9/11 and slavery stick out 
the most. Besides the fact that we discussed these historical events and
 eras in class, what drove me to comment on them in my blog? It is 
possible that these two key parts of American history have the strongest
 reverberation in my daily life. Remnants of slavery can be seen in 
racial interactions today and the wars and mindsets of Americans are 
reminders of the attacks.Lastly, the Wordle shows that not only what is 
examined but how it is done so. Among the most used words are right, 
wrong, and moral. It's clear that what concerns me most about the 
American society is its ethics. Now what remains to be seen is whether, 
like the speeches of the United States presidents, my blog will undergo a
 shifting of paradigm over the course of time.

Return of the Meta-Post

Another quarter has flown by and its time again to take a look back at the posts of second quarter. The One, Out of Many blog has undergone a few subtle changes during the winter season. Most notably a shift in opinion has occurred on the blog. While much of my first quarter was spent stating my own thoughts and ideas, during second quarter I leaned more on my audience. The blogs after my first meta-post saw the rise of the question (How does history get edited over time?, When will we run out of time?, Should the government have the right to raise the income tax during wartime?, While his talent is incredible, wouldn't it seem more just, and potentially wiser, to higher an unemployed person with some talent over an ex-con with a lot of talent?) and it seems my more reader-empathetic style has proved successful garnering a whooping 5 comments for the quarter and more importantly leaving only one post un-commented. The reason behind the changes are two-fold, one good and one bad. For the good, they reflect a concerted effort on my part to make my posts more inviting to readers expressed in my last meta-post. And on the bad side, they are partly due to lack of passion or concrete opinion on some of the topics I wrote about. This struggle to find synthesis between posts which are opinionated and passionate, and posts which attract comments has separated itself as the definitive challenge in writing my blog. And so the quest for my perfect post continues.
Please assess: Honest Abe?

Second Chances

No doubt a lot of you who are reading this are familiar with the story of Ted Williams. The homeless man turned professional voice-over artist became a Internet sensation recently. Williams's example demonstrates the power with which the redemptive arc continues to hold the American mind. William started with a promising career in voice-over work which was then wiped away by drug and alcohol abuse leading to the rock bottom of homelessness only to overcome his demons and begin a meteoric rise to new heights. It's certain that its this kind of story, and the American fascination with it, that has accounted for Williams's redemption. However, has our eagerness to accept Williams as a redemption story diminished the wrong he did in his past? When you consider that Williams left 9 children fatherless because of his addiction and was arrested multiple times, you have to wonder does he deserve the sudden celebrity more than someone else? The second chance is as integral to the American identity as apple pie and football, but it seems to me that Williams has been given two chances before others would get one. While his talent is incredible, wouldn't it seem more just, and potentially wiser, to higher an unemployed person with some talent over an ex-con with a lot of talent?

Perilous Dimes

I've been hearing a lot about the possible extension of the Bush tax cuts. I piece I heard on NPR's All Things Considered I found particularloy interesting. The title of the segment was "A History of the Income Tax". The expert they interviewed was Steven Weisman, author of The Great Tax Wars. Weisman focused on the relationship between taxes and war saying, "[The income tax is] always accepted more at a time of war and sacrifice. The income tax was a perfect way to appeal to the egalitarian spirit and the spirit of sacrifice". The parallel can be drawn between taxes and civil liberties during times of war. Americans may be more willing to sacrifice their civil liberties as well as their money when they believe it is directly supporting the war effort. Should the government have the right to raise the income tax during wartime?

Racing Against the Clock

In my math class last week my teacher was talking about his reaction to seeing "Race to Nowhere" during Institute Day. He commented that when he went to New Trier students used to typically take 3-4 majors a year at most and an average Trevian would have 3 or 4 free periods. Due to the increasing pressure to get into college students have since then loaded their schedules with classes. The only people I know with more than two free periods have to take early bird classes to free up their day.
Also last week we had a start of the season basketball meeting. My coach talked about how in order to compete the basketball program has extended to be year round including only two days off during winter break. It seems to me from these two observations that current high schoolers suffer from a shortage of time. And more importantly it seems that more of our days and years are getting filled with activity in the name of competition. When will we run out of time?

Honest Abe?

How does history get edited over time? During my Civil War Civil Liberties project research I stumbled upon an intriguing answer to this ever-present American Studies question. The example is Abraham Lincoln. Honest Abe is widely regarded as one of our nation's greatest presidents. His story, or perhaps one version of his story, has been taught to us repetitively during our upbringing especially here in the "Land of Lincoln". I remember Lincoln's life story going something like this: he is born in a log cabin, defiantly learns to read, never tells a lie, out-debates some guy named Douglass, becomes President, beats the Confederacy, gives the Gettysburg Address, frees the slaves, and is shot in an opera house. Most every American's view of Abraham Lincoln is that the man could do no wrong; that he was the ultimate advocate of fairness and freedom. But upon looking closely at the 16th presidents' time in office it's clear this is not the case.
I offer to you as evidence Lincoln's Letter to Erastus Corning and Others. In which he defends his earlier suspension of the right of habeas corpus in order to silence the voice of the Confederacy by detaining Clement Vallandigham without trial. While it's not shocking to learn that for all his accomplishments in the advancements of the rights of the American people Lincoln made mistakes under the pressure of civil war, what I find disturbing is that none of his shortcomings are mentioned in a typical overview of the president. Given the current issues involving habeas corpus and Guantanamo Bay Lincoln's example seems like it would give a perfect historical perspective to the ongoing debate. 

'The credit score of the future'

Anybody who's ever spent any significant time on the web has asked the question: exactly how much does the Internet know about me? Most everyone has experienced those annoying targeted ads in the sidebar. But after reading an article in Newsweek on the topic, I was surprised to find out the extent to which personal information is being collected. The article imagines a future where anyone can access a wealth of your personal information from the web :

Think HMOs, loan applications, romantic partners. Let’s say you’ve been hitting up a burger joint twice a week, and you happen to joke, in a post on Twitter, how all the meat must be wreaking havoc on your cholesterol. Suddenly your health-insurance premiums go up. Now imagine your job is listed on Salary.com; your vacation preferences linked to Orbitz. Think how this could affect your social standing, or your ability to negotiate a raise or apply for a loan.

We talk in class about the FBI tracking seemingly innocent people without warrants. To me this trend seems to be a similar breach of privacy. What Internet sites you visit should be protected by law the First Amendment as a form of free speech. Insurance providers and employers should not be allowed to discriminate based on this information. More than anything this article definitely makes me think twice about where I go on the Internet.

Meta-Post

Looking back at the blog posts that I've done this quarter the first thing that jumps out at me is my tendency to examine the philosophical side of our class discussions. I tend to pose ideas and questions that address why things are the way they are. The two posts where I really did this are "The easiest moral question we've ever had to face" and "'Made with Organic Oats and Soybeans' (And a Bit of Philosophy)". I've said things like, "when scripture is morally wrong, where do we turn for moral guidance?", "the common belief in America is that the most efficient and time-effective way is the best" and "What if the Neo-Nazi movement could buy the rights to the history of the Holocaust?". I wasn't surprised by this trend in my writing; it's usually how I like to think about things. But I have to ask myself: by focusing on the big picture am I making my posts too impersonal and therefore unattractive to my fellow classmates?
The answer, I believe, is yes and no. In "The easiest moral question..." I keep it strictly philosophical. The post, while intellectually stimulating, could comes off as lifeless and cold. "Made with Organic Oats..." on the other hand wrapped my philosophical musings in a nice personal story about a hurried breakfast. That's probably why it got two great comments and "The easiest moral question..." got zero. This is definitely something I'll keep in mind for later posts.
Please assess this post: 'The easiest moral question we've ever had to face'

Benjamin Darling

Our focus on slavery in class recently reminded me of one of my favorite songs (imbedded above). "The Story of Benjamin Darling, Part 1" is by State Radio off of their 2007 album, Year of the Crow. The song is a retelling of a true New England legend about the slave, Benjamin Darling. In the late 1700's he was enslaved to a captain of a boat that traversed the east coast. When the boat was hit by a storm Benjamin saved his master as the boat was wrecked. In return the master freed Benjamin and gave him land on Malaga Island on the mouth of the New Meadows River in Maine. Ben started a family here which eventually grew into an isolated mixed-race community called the Maroon Society. Meanwhile nearby Phippsburg, Maine was becoming a popular summer vacation spot for rich New Englanders. To make the town more attractive the people of Phippsburg decided to rid themselves of the Maroon Society. They attacked Malaga Island by night and killed or sold into slavery all of its inhabitants.
Besides making a great song this story, while only pertinent to a small group of people, has a lot of historical importance. It disproves a number of misconceptions about slavery: that all slaves were field hands tortured by their owners, that there were no significant black communities during slavery, and that all white Northerners were sympathetic to blacks.

'The easiest moral question we've ever had to face'

Earlier this week I found enough free-time to watch one of my favorite shows, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. The episode concluded as always with a one-on-one interview with a guest. This night's interviewee was Sam Harris author of The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values. It's a very compelling interview. However, a very small portion is relevant to class. When discussing why he believes science can answer moral questions as well as, if not better than, religion Harris says, "The God of Abraham gets slavery wrong. Slavery is probably the easiest moral question we've ever had to face...[Scripture] doesn't get that right."
Not being familiar with the scriptures that he is talking about, I have to take Harris' word, whose job it is to study and write about religion, as truth. While most everyone would agree that slavery is immoral, this quote made me think of a more modern debate. In my mind the same thing can be said about the interpretation of the Bible that condemns gay marriage. Those who use the Bible to support the movement to ban gay marriage need only look at the example of slavery to see that conventional wisdom can be greater than religious doctrine in moral debate.
The daunting and complicated question these examples pose, and which I now pose to you, is when scripture is morally wrong, where do we turn for moral guidance? What, if any, other guiding principles do we share to tell us when something is wrong or right? Harris would argue that the answer is science but I don't fully buy that. Then again I pretty much undecided on all aspects of this question. Slavery may have been the easiest moral question; however, it begets one of the tougher ones.

Swimming Upstream

Our recent discussions on race reminded me of an article in Sports Illustrated that I read over the summer. I thought it was relevant for two reasons. First, it addresses the fact that often when people say a race is naturally bad at something it's usually due to social, rather than physiological factors:

As African-American participation in swimming continued to lag, some came up with explanations for the inability of most blacks to swim. One popular hypothesis—which has since been discredited—proffered by Ohio University's zoology department in a 1969 study titled "The Negro and Learning to Swim," was that blacks weren't as buoyant as whites. Among the reasons cited for this were blacks' purportedly lower lung capacity, heavier bones and poor physiological response to cold. (Dodgers vice president Al Campanis repeated the buoyancy theory in his notorious Nightline appearance in 1987.)

On the other hand it provided a very specific example that affirms Barack Obama's statement that, "so many of the disparities that exist between the African-American community and the larger American community today can be traced directly to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow." The fact that African-Americans represent a tiny minority in competitive swimming, while black kids have three times the chance of drowning than white ones is not a result of biological ineptitude, but is instead a remanent of white-only pools. When I think of the places I most often swim in pools (at country clubs, resorts, etc.) it's obviously why economical disadvantaged black families would have a hard time teaching their kids to swim.

'Made with Organic Oats and Soybeans' (And a Bit of Philosophy)

I really enjoyed this week's discussion that arose out of talking about Chicago's grid system. I think a lot of people in the class, myself included, believed that the layout of our sidewalks, roads, and other infrastructure reflected a linear philosophy held by American society. By linear I mean that the common belief in America is that the most efficient and time-effective way is the best. With this in mind I was enjoying a hurried and rather unbalanced breakfast the other day, consisting solely of a "Crunchy Peanut Butter" Clif energy bar. I've come to overlook Clif's dogfood-esque taste and lack of desirable texture for the entertaining anecdotes printed on the back of the bar's wrapper written by Clif's founder and owner, identified there only as "Gary". However, the one I read that morning on my way out the door was especially interesting in light of our discussion:

For me, European bike trips have never been about riding from point A to point B. My buddies and I far prefer the explorative method of riding. Rather than being blown off the bigger red roads by the noise and dust of passing semis, we seek out the serenity and quiet of remote alpine valleys on the smaller white roads - views of massive rock faces and glaciers at every turn. We've carried road bikes on our shoulders over high mountain passes, slid down vast glaciers along side our bicycles, and stumbled upon more quaint villages than I can count. As with our cycling epics, it is the winding road - not the destination - that drives Clif Bar. It's a simpler, more rewarding style of riding - and doing business. From our people, to our products, to our planet, it is on the smaller white road that we choose to travel.

Gary is saying more or less the same thing that Mr. O'Connor did about linear philosophies. What is interesting to me is that we can assume Gary's primary concern is selling Clif bars. Clif's logo is a man climbing an actual cliff with several mountains in the background. It seems to me that Gary and the rest of the Clif company are marketing their energy bars away from mainstream society to the Jon Krakauers and Chris McCandlesses of the world; the wanderers, critical of the status quo. Of course the great irony of this whole story is that while pondering all this I was in the midst of eating the Clif bar as quickly as possible rushing out my door to catch the bus, determinedly trying to get from Point A to Point B is as straight of a line as possible, with no thought for valleys or glaciers.

9/11 and the Redemptive Curve

In class this week we talked a lot about the Redemptive Curve, identified by Dan McAdams as the definitive American story model. This graph begins with a fairly well off person whose life falls to decadence only to swing into a meteoric rise landing them in a better position than they began in. I was thinking of that when I found this opinion column on the New York Times website. The article's author, Tom Sorell, criticizes the natural human response of "returning to normal" after suffering a tragedy. Sorell focuses on 9/11 and its aftermath. Sorell states that he believes that after 9/11, and any emergency for that matter, that it is imperative to avoid the urge to try to simply return everything to normal to show resiliency. Rather, he argues, we should look to change our way of thinking and living to better our lives. To me this represented the crucial moment in the Redemptive Curve, an event so extreme that it causes the protagonist to realize he/she has hit rock bottom and needs the begin the climb back up.
Naturally the question that follows is this: did America make a change for the better or simply return to normal after 9/11? In my opinion the answer is simple. The Patriot Act, an unnecessary war, and discrimination against Muslims in the US all followed the attack that day. In my mind, the attacks on the World Trade Center didn't mark a turning point for the US, in fact they may have accelerated this country's decline. And almost 10 years after 9/11, I have to ask: if that didn't stop it what will?

Million Dollar Idea?

In these first couple weeks of AS it seems a lot our discussions have revolved around the idea of intellectual property. First, Mr. O'Conner rallied against the tried and true, "do your own work," rule in favor of a classroom which relies on collaboration. Mr. Bolos, on the other hand, led an interesting discussion on the privatization of the Internet through Apple's app system. Thinking about these two discussions I had to ask myself, does putting a price-tag on ideas threaten the right to information?
Take for instance the controversy over Myriad Genetics patenting a section of the human genome (Judge Invalidates Human Genome Patent). Myriad is a company that creates and sells breast cancer test kits. If their proposed patent had been validated it would have given them and only them the right to do research and testing with these genes. The ruling in my opinion was the fair one, and Myriad's claim seemed to me obviously ridiculous. But even in failure the patent sets precedent, it challenges the difference between common knowledge and private intellectual property. It conjures up all sorts of terrifying hypothetical scenarios. What if I had to pay Jon Krakauer each time I quoted from Into the Wild? What if the Neo-Nazi movement could buy the rights to the history of the Holocaust? Or if the Suns could patent the pick and roll?
In my opinion ideas and information ought to be as accessible as possible. Ideas, after all, are meant to be shared. Patents and copyrights are meant to defend against theft of intellectual property, not to be used to restrict knowledge and take down the competition, like in Myriad's case. As a full-time student and a part of the Internet addicted generation I depend upon free, accessible, and up-to-date information, and I believe in my right to educate myself free of charge