End of the Year Reflection

          Al-righty then.

          This is the second to last blog post until school starts back up in January, and I am going to write about the best pieces of work I have done so far this semester that I am very proud of.

          First was the video project that I did on the state of our ocean waters and how our

 littering effects it.  As of the moment the video is not hosted anywhere, but I am working on getting it hosted to youtube (it's currently uploading).  I feel like I really connected to this project because I am a person that cares about the oceans, and the amount of untapped power and unseen beauty that lies within it, and I am definitely not one to stop and let the people that say they are the same as me ruin it.  I put a lot of work into it, and as there are some timing issues that I would love to fix, it is too late now.  I am also proud of how some of my shots were taken.  This shot here I feel is a great artistic shot because of the wide angle and how much it covers and shows.  It shows a cigarette butt sitting in a gutter in the bottom right corner, yet a great blue cloudy sky in the top left.  I feel like it really shows how one little thing can ruin a

 great big thing, just by being in the wrong place, which was really the whole point of the project that I was working on and I feel that this specific shot shows that.

          I got to this point through tons of hard work and time.  I think I stayed in at least days from 7:30 till at least 7:30.  I also worked hard outside of the classroom, in order to get interviews outside of the school, or footage outside of school.  I feel like good projects really require more than a slight motivation and some internet research.  It requires a huge drive and a lot of research, not only through the internet, but through people, places, and things.  For instance for this project I went to a beach cleanup hosted by Surfrider SD and Coastkeeper, and I found some interesting information, such as the amount of trash picked up there, and also the types of trash that was found there.

Neptune's Navy!

          An interesting vigilante environmentalist group known as the Sea Shepherds has recently become very publicized in the United States, thanks to support from Animal Planet, and I am going to post a blog on my personal opinions about what they do.

          The Captain and Owner of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is named Paul Watson.  He looks like a stereotypical lumber jack, only a foot shorter and with white hair.  Ever since he was a child he was completely against any sort of cruel behavior towards any animal.  He even claims that, when he was 9 years old, he shot a kid with a B.B. gun for harassing birds, and destroyed animal traps after his "pet beaver" got stuck in one.  Now as I am unsure about the truth to these stories, this man has dedicated himself to the preservation of marine wildlife around the world.

          Now, the people that he is trying to expose to the world are the japanese.  The japanese are currently the biggest threat to whales in the wild, killing more than a thousand in december of 2005.  The japanese excuse for this currently illegal activity is that it is for research, commonly showing signs in english stating "Collecting tissue samples" and painting the word Research on the side of every whaling vessel they have in their fleet.  The problem here is, the company that they are doing research for, the Institute for Cetacean Research, has never published a thing, which most people think is due to the fact that their whales get cut up and shipped to restaurants before any research can be done to them.

          Companies such as Greenpeace, which Paul Watson helped give an influential start to, are not in support of the techniques used, and claimed to have been used, by the Sea Shepherds, commonly denying any relation to the eco-vigilante group.  The techniques used by the Sea Shepherds include ramming, smoke bombs, boarding vessels or various reasons, and media attention.  One of their most commonly used tools is the media, and they know how to use it.  They are a big story in australian now, because of the fact that the japanese are whaling in an australian protected habitat.  Where the methods of the Sea Shepherds may be wrong, violent, and sometimes a risk to whalers lives, there are still a lot of supporters in their campaign against whaling, such as Pierce Brosnan, Orlando Bloom and Mic Jagger.

          Personally, I feel as if the Sea Shepherds are correct, because I like the idea of protecting endangered animals such as the fin whales, a prominent capture of the japanese, whether the whalers get hurt or not.  I believe this because they need to be taught a lesson, and if extremes are necessary, it will show the japanese governments just how much people care, and they might stop, or even slow down their whaling expeditions. 

Racial Identity Theft On The Rise!

          Ok, so it isn't really theft, but it is a problem that has been going on unnoticed for a long time.   The issue here is racial assumption, the act of thinking someone is from a certain ethnic group just by their look. An example of this is when people look at Oprah, they think that she is black. It may seem that way, but really, she is a mix of African, Native American, and East Asian. This whole assumption thing poses a big problem in my mind, and it is triggered by a few various things.
          The first thing that I would like to bring up would be the large yet somewhat realistic stereotype of the so called "Black" people and their crime rates. According to the official government Bureau of Justice website on the statistics of homicide trends by race, between the year 1976 and 2005, 52% of all homicides in the United States were committed by one who was recognized as an African American.  But, if you go to the site, there is no listings for hispanics, and the only other statistic is listed "other", and the rates for other are extremely low compared to White and Black, never exceeding 5%.  First off, this does not give a good name to the word "Black" at all, almost giving an excuse for racial stereotypes.  Second,  it is almost shameful for the great American government themselves to give out statistics such as this because of the fact that they do not include any sort of information regarding mixed race people, and, the statistics seem a little off because they do not include hispanics.  The fact that it does not include hispanics, and if hispanics were included in the group labeled "other", then they would have committed less than 5% of every homicide in America since 1976.  Does that make much sense to you?

          The next point I would like to make is what we have done with the professional people that have made it far in America.  Obama, the next president, is, believe it or not, is not "Black".  Obama is not the first black president, but he is the first multiracial president.  The news has given off a nice sort of story that is almost convincing everyone in america that we have the first black president, and the black people have come such a long ways in America.  Do you really think so?  Obama's mother was white.

          The big question now is, does putting the name "Black", with all of its negative connotations, on to some one of the multiracial status of Tiger Woods, or Barack Obama, bring the negative connotation of the term further toward the positive side? Or does it make the person the connotation is being applied to look worse?  The big picture here is, we really have not put much thought into how we as a people refer to others, and that in turn has led to a lot of assumptions, some of which can possibly be very dangerous.