The United States' Air Farce

On Thursday, March 27, at Malmstrom Air Force base, nine officers were fired for cheating on a monthly proficiency test. This was no small, unimportant test either, it was testing the officers on "the launching of intercontinental ballistic missiles"(NY Times Article). When dealing with ballistic missiles, it is crucial to operate it correctly, as the missile is intended to hit multiple targets. The officers at Malmstrom are considered 21st century minute men, and must be prepared at all times for to operate, especially with little notice. Cheating on this test not only ended their careers, but put the lives of innocent Americans at risk. These men took an oath to protect their country, and completely disregarded it by cheating.

What comes as even more of a surprise is that their Commander, Col. Robert Stanley, knew about the cheating, and did not stop it. Although only nine men were fired as of now, 82 of Stanley's other officers are under investigation. Whether we can say if it was he who provided answers, it is unclear. Stanley has been relieved from his duty. Although we do not know who is behind the cheating, we do know how they cheated.

Answers to these monthly tests were sent through text messages to the cheating officers. As I mentioned in my most recent blog, smart phones may be making us dumber. This is yet another example of how technology can be seen as evil and unhelpful. More and more information will inevitably come out in the near future, but this is already being seen as the "largest number of dismissals in the history of the ICBM force""(NY Times Article).

2048

Any New Trier student or teacher would recognize the 4x4 box shown to the left. These boxes are the staple of the newest smash iPhone game 2048. The goal of the game is to match like numbers to create bigger numbers using addition. The game is finished when you add two 1024 boxes together, to make a 2048 box. The game is lost when you fill up the board with numbers, but no viable moves are available.

Unlike the other popular iPhone games this year (including but not limited to Dear Hunter, Flappy Bird, and Candy Crush) this game uses mathematics and strategy. Many people, like author Amanda Rush, believe that the over-dependence on our smart phones is actually dumbing us down. With so many people completely reliant on their smart phones, they have much less use for their brain. The rest of her article can be found here.

Are these smart phones turning us into dumb people? Will a time come when one must choose between their own brain and Siri? Maybe Gabriele Cirulli, the inventor of the game made it to stop this craze, and make smart phones make people smarter. The 19 year-old Italian web designer finally did the impossible: made kids addicted to math. One can only hope there are more games like 2048 in our future, and less like Flappy bird.

Why Retro?

Today, while scrounging around my dads office waiting for him to finish a meeting, I found an old Loony Tunes mint container. I was immediately attracted to it. I picked it up and studied it, only to become even more amused by its simpleness. How could a cheap metal box with a few cartoon characters on it be so interesting to a 17 year-old? The more I thought about it, the more I wondered why people like old things so much.

I've never realized how strange the attraction to retro things are. People are gravitated to things they played with as kids, or that their parents and grand-parents did/wore, for a reason nobody knows. One explanation is the power of nostalgia. Maybe when I saw the box, my memories of watching Saturday morning cartoons ignited, and I was brought back to a simpler time. A time when my biggest worry was what was for desert that night.

Nostalgia may the explanation for the box, but not for the phenomenon of wearing retro clothes. Even the richest of celebrities, like the rapper Maclemore (right), love old things. His top song this year was even a ballad of love for retro items: entitled thrift shop. One would expect that a man worth over 15 million dollars would splurge and buy new clothes, yet he is often seen dressing like the photo below. As an fexaminer.com article states, Maclemore's "home is decorated with thrift store taxidermy, furniture and lamps. In his closets hang fringe jackets and outerwear of purple, red and blue leather". This multi millionaire hates spending "50 dollars on a tee-shirt" as the thrift shop lyrics tell us. 

I don't have a good reason for this crave for the past, but I hope I see people wearing Vineyard Vines sweaters and salmon colored dress pants in 30 years!

Between Two Ferns- Obama

For those of you that have not seen the Between Two Ferns with Barack Obama, go watch it. Now. 

In this hilarious video, Obama and comedic star Zach Galifianakis, poke fun at each other in a mock interview through Funnyordie.com. Zach brings up Obama's birth certificate scandal, and lackluster basketball game. Barack jabs right back at Zach, torching the Hangover 3 and even making a few fat-jokes. After the back-and-forth burn battle, Obama begins to discuss what he obviously came there to plug: Obamacare. 

Obama began talking about the site, (also called Healcare.gov) and stated that the site is now working 
better than ever. Keeping the mood light, Zach continued to make jokes periodically, like asking Obama why he asked the creator of the Zoon to design the website. He finished the plug by telling the viewers that they only have a couple more weeks to sign up. 

While many people (including myself), found this hysterical, others were appalled. Conservative political commentator Bill O-Reilly said that the interview was a farce, and that "Abe Lincoln would not have done it". ABC's Jim Avila said the interview damages the "dignity of the office". MSNBC's Rachel Maddow disagreed with Avila by saying past presidents such as Reagan, Bush, Eisenhower and Nixon have all appeared on comedy shows in the past. 

The controversy is brewing between these two sides, but one thing is for certain: the video was effective. Healthcare.gov has seen a 40% increase in viewership since the video released on the 11th. This is huge for Obama, who says his reasoning behind the video was to reach the 18-30 year-old demographic. Who would've thought that Zach Galifianakis calling Barack Obama a "nerd" would bring in so much publicity?

The Lazy Self-Involved Man-Child Steps Up

On Facebook today, I came across a video displaying Seth Rogen, the raunchy comedic actor, making a speech in front of the senate. To my surprise, it was not a stand-up routine, but instead a heartfelt speech about Alzheimer's. His wife Laurie's mother has been battling the disease for years, and he has decided to use his fame and status to help the cause. He started the Hilarity for Charity program in 2011, where he and his actor-friends go on comedy tours to raise money for the disease. Although their most recent fundraiser raised half a million dollars, Rogen still felt he could do more, and decided to take his cause to the senate. 

He spoke on Wednesday, February 26, in an attempt to erase the stigma around Alzheimer's as well as increase government funding. He was able to use his comedic talent, to draw in the listeners, as well as become a YouTube sensation. He opened by saying he was aware that "this has nothing to do with the legalization of marijuana" and even asked the Chairman if he had seen his major film "Knocked Up". The audience loved it. He made hysterical references to the new television show House of Cards, and also called himself a "Lazy Self-Involved Man-Child". While making everyone, even the chairman laugh, he brought very real, and frightening statistics to light. He stated that Alzheimer's is the only one of the top ten deadliest diseases in the U.S that has no cure or prevention. Rogen also claimed that it is the most costly of all the those ten diseases. 

Cost is a very important part of this issue, and not enough work is being done to reduce the financial burden on families. Luckily, there are some people, like New Triers own Allie Harris and her mother who started a website called http://www.alzcaresource.com/ which not only lowers the cost of necessary products, but donates all the proceeds back to Alzheimer's research. Rogen admitted that if America didn't love his "Genitalia driven comedy" he would not be able to financially support his mother-in-law. 

While I find it fabulous that Rogen has stepped up like this, it is slightly terrifying to think that in order for a cause to become known, it needs to have a celebrity as its face. A medical expert could have made an even more convincing, factually sound argument to the senate, yet the public would never have known about it. With Rogen making the speech, countrywide publicity is achieved. Although it is sad to know Americans are so celebrity oriented, it is nice to know how much of a difference one person can make. Rogen's speech puts pressure on other Hollywood icons to step up, and make a difference. 

Short. Sweet. Popular

For those of you frequent YouTube watchers, I'm sure you have heard of or watched Vsauce. Vsauce is a YouTube channel run by Internet personality Michael Stevens. Vsauce produces short, 5-10 minute videos about various interesting science, cultural, and technological topics. These videos range from titles like :What if everyone JUMPED at once? to Will we ever run out of new music? to Is your red the same as my red?. Although I'm sure these titles do sound interesting, do they sound 5-million-views interesting? That's right, many of Vsauce's videos have 5 million plus views. How does he get so many views on his short videos?

That question is what I have been asking myself ever since my friend Ian showed me these videos. My initial reaction was there are just A LOT of science geeks out there, and Vsauce is just one of the many suppliers of this demand. I decided to compare his YouTube page to National Geographic, the best science magazine of 2013 voted by peer editors according to Allyoucanread.com. I was shocked to find that Vsauce has well over 3 times the total YouTube subscribers that National Geographic does. So once again, I'm left wondering: "What is so appealing about Vsauce videos".

My second and final assumption goes back to an earlier blog I wrote. This post was about how Americans need to have their video games instantly, and how game manufacturers have taken advantage of that. Maybe just like our need for immediate game gratification, we as Americans need immediate knowledge gratification. It may be possible that the reason Vsauce has 11+ million subscribers and is one or two videos shy of having one billion total views is because he has kept his videos short. People see a question like Why do we kiss? as a video title and want to hear the answer within 5 or so minutes. Vsauce provides them with that. This is just a hypothesis of mine, and I'd love to hear any and all reasons for popularity you all can come up with.

Toofer? Nah, Fivefer.

After The Office, 30 Rock, and How I Met Your Mother all concluded or ending this month, I decided I needed a new, easy-to-watch, non-animated comedy. The golden globe results lead me to start watching Brooklyn Nine Nine, a winner of two globes. As I watched the first few episodes, I couldn't get the idea of Television Tokenism out of my head. As I stated in a previous blog, "Tokenism is the inserting of minority characters in an attempt to create diversity"(Previous Nolo blog post). 

We talked a lot in class about different kinds of characters that create tokens. Mr. Bolos showed a presentation that discussed the token character in the aforementioned 30 Rock named Toofer. Bolos' hypothesis was Toofer was code for "Two for One", meaning they filled two Token roles in one character. These roles were the "black guy" and the "smart guy". Brooklyn Nine Nine took this idea to a whole new level. 

One of the main characters in BNN, Captain Ray Holt is the epitome of Token Characters. He embodies FIVE token characteristics we discussed in class. First, as you can see from the image, Captain Holt is black, but making him black was not enough for these writers... so they made him gay too. Notice the prefix to his name: Captain. He is the highest-ranking officer regularly shown in the show, making him the authority minority as well. I'm not done. 

As shown in the picture above, Holt is clearly frowning. Right? Wrong. The longest running joke of the show is that NOBODY can tell Holt's mood by his facial expression, thus, making his a mystical minority as well. Fox couldn't possibly make him anymore more of a Token character right? Wrong again. He is also always the best-dressed man, another aspect token characters usually embody. Holt is constantly yelling at the main character for not wearing a tie. 

30 rock thought they were being obvious with Toofer, but Brooklyn Nine Nine just blew them out of the water. Captain Ray Holt, played by Andre Braugher, is the most obvious token character in any media I have ever seen. The only thing Fox could have done to make it anymore more obvious was to name him Captain Fiverfer Holt.