Technological Empires

Last week I was lying on my bed late at night procrastinating homework when I stumbled upon a music video that gave me some inspiration. The song "Fake Empire" shows us the harsh reality of our world, a world controlled by the few corporations and their products. The most obvious one of these is Apple, and that's emphasized in Ryan Lewis' video.



This video's image of people's mouths being covered by corporations made me think about my own life and how dependent I was on certain companies, mainly Apple. I sit and write this post on my Macbook pro while checking texts on my iPhone as my mom sits in her room looking for Christmas presents on her iPad and my dad does work on our iMac. Apple truly is a company that my family relies on to function, and I think it's frankly too much.

Technological advancement is supposedly an exponential function. This means that for all the new technology that gets created today, twice that will get created tomorrow. And four times that the next day, eight times that the next day, and so on and so forth. If technology seems advanced now, it's barely scratched the surface of its full potential. This can be explained further by Dan Brown in the video below.



What really scared me as I looked around my house and saw all the Apple products is the idea of the future. If Apple can already dominate technology on the relatively miniscule scale of technology that exists today, imagine where we'll be in twenty years. Will Apple lose its popularity and ultimately become a small company in a large conglomerate of tech overlords? Or will our entire existence be controlled and dictated by one megacorporation?

Talk about a dystopia.

Shoe Game

Although it looks like I won't be able to do my documentary on this subject because another group is already doing it, I wanted to at least write a blog post about this interesting subject.

The Shoe Game is the business of buying, selling, and trading shoes. It's somewhat like a black market, except there isn't really much illegality associated with it, the shoes are just treated as such. People buy these shoes, mostly varying types of Nike Jordans, for 500 hundred dollars or more, compared to the limited release retail price of around 200 dollars.

In many malls and schools (including Blair) you can see these shoe deals happening all the time. One guy hands another a seemingly new shoe box, and the other hands over either a giant wad of cash or another box of shoes. Apart from the "resellers", people only involved to profit off desperate shoe-gamers, the goal of the trade is to be able to wear the "freshest" and "rarest" pair that everyone else wants but can't find.

While this business can actually be good practice for business in the real world and some people can even make substantial income from it, there are inherent dangers in such high value merchandise. This video shows a store being broken into by a stampeding crowd in order to get these shoes first.



In addition to the dangers of these actual shoe releases, there are dangers in the deals themselves, where a buyer may mug a seller or the other way around. I spoke to one student at Blair who was held at knifepoint for his Nike Foamposites.

Pink Nike Foamposites

Overall, the shoe game can be an educational and profitable business, but there are risks involved and any shoe gamer should be aware of them and take necessary precautions.

Kids and Sleep

As a high school student, something that I'm always worried about is sleep. With school, sports, clubs, homework, chores, and all the other obligations I have, it's really hard to get enough. This scientist talks about the requirements of sleep and how much kids of different ages need.



As a young child, it's not hard to achieve the numbers this man specifies. Even through elementary school and early middle school, the 8-10 hours he recommend is easily attainable with fewer worries and obligations.

However, as kids approach later middle school and their high school years, things change. Homework piles on, along with more frequent and longer sports practices, earlier school start times and later school release times, increased social pressures, and many other stresses that push bedtimes later and later. Many students can find themselves getting six hours or less per night, which can cause increased reaction times, slower brain activity, and overall a less functional person.

Certain proposals have been made with hopes to improve this situation. In fact, here is an article about a petition that I and many others have signed encouraging MCPS to move its high school start times to no earlier than 8:15.

While this potential legislation wouldn't magically fix all student sleep problems, it could certainly help students get more sleep, making them more alert, focused, and ready to learn in school, all things that lead to their success.

Fantasy Sports

If you were to walk down the halls of Blair during lunch or before school, you'd hear all the usual gossip: who likes who or what happened at such and such party. However, you'd also hear a lot of talk about Fantasy.

Now, this isn't the kind of fantasy that includes dragons and magic, but the kind that has point guards, rebounds, tight ends, and touchdowns. Obviously these are different sports, but ESPN has made these fantasy games so readily available that they all seem to mash together in the high school boy culture.


The basic idea of fantasy sports is that you own a team in a specific professional sport such as football or basketball. You are the sole manager of this team and you call the shots, hopefully making the right decisions to win the league and the prize money (if there is any).

This management can be extremely time consuming and can often take time away from school work and other requirements, especially when maintaining multiple teams at once. However, there are some benefits to fantasy sports.

First off, it's a way to connect with your friends on a new level and socialize beyond the mundanity of gossip and schoolwork. Also, it's a way to practice actual business decisions based on research and data.

Overall, Fantasy sports have advantages and disadvantages, but they are here to stay at Blair for seasons to come.

Michael "Marijuana" Phelps

Michael Phelps is associated with being a national hero and an olympic sensation. However, ever since early 2009 when this image was released of him, he's also been associated with marijuana and drug use.

This incriminating picture was taken at a college party in February 2009. This was during his "break" following the 2008 olympics in which he was very successful.

Soon after the event, he released a public statement apologizing for his actions. He said "I engaged in behavior which was regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment. I'm 23 years old and despite the successes I've had in the pool, I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner people have come to expect from me. For this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public it will not happen again."

This apology earned him some credibility back, but he still lost multiple sponsors, including his biggest one, Kelloggs.

In my opinion, he didn't deserve this loss of the country's support. Many youths act in such a way and being an American hero, he still deserves our respect for his achievements despite a brief hiatus in character.

School vs. Education

"You need to understand that the world is changing and if you don't stay with it, the world will decide it doesn't need you anymore."

I saw this video a few years ago but just stumbled upon it recently and it made me see my schooling differently. Education is very important; it gives you the skills you need to find a job, socialize with people, and overall have a successful life. Traditional school has always been a great way to get this education, and it has been working for hundreds of years since it was begun by the Byzantine empire thousands of years ago. However, as Dan Brown points out in his video, it just isn't working anymore the way it used to.

There are three steps in a typical class that are repeated over and over throughout the year. Listen, study, test. You start with a class in which the teacher gives some sort of presentation about a topic, and if you're a good student you'll probably take as many notes as possible. You then go home that night and study those notes to try to remember as many facts as possible. Then you go into class the next day and you're given a test to see how many things you were able to cram into your brain the night before (or five minutes before, if you're a less avid student). This test grade impacts your quarter grade, which impacts your semester grade, which impacts your GPA, which impacts your college application, which impacts your quality of higher education, which impacts your credentials for a job, which essentially is your ticket to a happy and successful life. That's a lot of pressure to just remember what an editing symbol means or the atomic mass of Carbon.

Although it provides a lot of strain and pressure on students, this system has been effective in making kids more intellectual. However, as we grow in this age of information, most of the facts we're cramming into our brain can be looked up in a matter of seconds. Information is so easily attainable it almost seems worthless to remember it all, and the idea of our careers being decided on the basis of "google-able" facts really seems outlandish.

Clearly the system needs to be changed. Teachers are supposed to be experts in the field they teach in, and most of them are. They just need to be able to apply their knowledge in a way that prepares a student for life, not just for a test.

Dystopian Trailer

The Matrix, Larry Witchowsky. R, 1999

The Matrix depicts a futuristic society in which the entire human population lives in a dream world and are actually being controlled and slowly eaten by a robot population. The main character, Neo, is released from this dream world with the hopes of being the "chosen one" and joins the human resistance against the machines.

This is a fantastic trailer that features many qualities of effective dystopian trailers. It features voice overs from explanatory parts of the movie but couples them with action scenes in order to establish the premise of the movie while simultaneously attracting viewers and impressing them with special effects and action sequences. The trailer also uses music very effectively, featuring several dramatic sequences that elevate the mood and excitement of the viewer. It has many short shots in order to give more of a fast paced preview to the film. I plan on having a similar trailer for my film. Instead of long scenes, I plan to use voice overs and music as audio for more exciting visual sequences with quick cuts. The Matrix trailer also features a line at the end that says "it is impossible to explain what the matrix is, one must see it for himself." This is an excellent cliffhanger and makes the viewer want to see the movie. While we won't actually be filming the movie, I want a similar effect with my trailer that leaves the viewer wanting more.