Passion #10

Wow, what a crazy semester and first year of college. Did not go exactly the way I expected. Never in a million years would I have called  ending in a global pandemic, but here we are.

This class feels a lot different than all the other ones I had because it was the whole year not just one semester and it was actually fun.

Even for classes that I enjoyed the topics or had friends in, most of the time I would’ve rather been sleeping or doing anything else. But this class was an exception to that most of the time.

I don’t really have a specific favorite part or moment, so I’d have to say that my favorite part was definitely  all of the questions of the day where we could listen to a bunch of funny answers and stories.

And I liked how much Meg would treat us like adults and allow for our schedules and opinions to be factored in like they mattered.

passion #9: Boredom

There are many real problems right now like disease, losing your job, the economy collapsing in general, overcrowding of hospitals, etc.

Aside from all of those, the much less significant one that most people seem to be universally facing right now is boredom. We are stuck at home not allowed to go out or ever see any of our friends. Or even go in public. I would love to run errands right now. I cannot believe that I ever complained about having to go anywhere.

This quarantine I’ve tried to keep busy by working out, doing stuff for class, and hanging out with my family. This has only gotten me so far since there’s only so much of this you can do. This has led to me getting into reality dating TV shows, and anime. Both of which I never knew were really good.

However, once school ends in a couple weeks, there really is going to be nothing to do at all. We probably won’t be able to get jobs or hang out with our friends still for at least a month and probably much more. Because of this I’ve decided to buy a guitar. I have never played any musical instrument ever in my life, but I decided that right now would be the perfect time to try. If nothing else, it will be something that can occupy several hours of my day.

I’ve also decided to get back into yoga which I used to do a lot, but haven’t done in over a year. This will be another thing that can occupy my time and this will be a calming and enriching activity as well.

Another thing that I am taking advantage of is not getting my hair cut. Of course all the barbers are closed so I couldn’t get it cut if I wanted to. But, I am in Army ROTC where we have to have our hair cut within certain regulations, so not being in school has allowed me to grow it out a lot. And I don’t think I’ll cut it at all until I have to.

I’m hoping that having these new hobbies will help the quarantine go by faster. And worse case scenario, I’ll come out of this being able to play the guitar. So that’s a plus.

CI: Issue Brief Draft

Draft is a loose word

This is more of an outline

It will definitely be finished by the due date tho

 

 

Tommy Shero

4/16/20

Issue Brief Draft

 

Overall group idea: College Athletes and Pay

Intro- What to do?

Body 1- Case for

Body 2- Case against- ME

Body 3- Case for letting them make money off of their likeness

Conclusion- The best solution is letting them make money off their likeness

 

AP

  • Sports talk radio
  • We each debate
  • We do a poll after and the winner is likeness

 

Argument against college athletes getting paid

 

Main points

  1. Scholarship money
    1. Same as average American
  2. Perks
    1. Medical, facilities, stage, gear
    2. Travel
  3. Case against fair market value
    1. Cheating will still occur
    2. Athletes not worth anything until the pros
  4. Only football and basketball are impacted
    1. If you pay one you’re going to have to pay them all
    2. Not fair to pay one sport or gender more than the others even though they might generate more or less revenue
  5. NCAA doesn’t have enough money to pay the atheltes
  6. Hurt the sport
    1. Not playing for pride
    2. Or school but just money
  7. Hard to project which players will be stars so pay won’t even be equitable

 

Sources

 

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1588301-theres-no-crying-in-college-the-case-against-paying-college-athletes

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2018/03/23/596132113/why-shouldnt-we-pay-student-athletes

https://www.npr.org/2019/10/30/774850944/an-argument-for-not-allowing-college-athletes-to-earn-compensation

https://www.newyorker.com/sports/sporting-scene/why-ncaa-athletes-shouldnt-be-paid

Passion #8 Love is Blind

All I can seem to do now for my blog posts is type about whatever show I am currently watching or just finished on Netflix. So here we go again.

 

SPOILER ALERT

 

I turned on Love is Blind to see just how stupid is was going to be and boy was I not disappointed. It was exactly the low tier trash entertainment that I was craving. I haven’t ever really gotten into any reality dating TV show before even the Bachelor, but I had heard just how fun they were to watch, so I decided to stick with it. And I’m sure glad that I did.

I binged all 11 episodes in about 3 days in between working on school work and it was so enthralling. I thought that the beginning was very cool because it was such an interesting concept of having 10 days to find a fiance without ever seeing them. I personally think that that’s crazy and would never do it, but I gotta respect those people for putting themselves out there.

The middle kinda dragged a little because there was less drama, so they had to kind of stretch for a couple of the big moments, but I still liked it a lot. And I really did develop strong opinions towards the people and which of them were good couples or not.

The ending tho. DID. NOT. DISAPPOINT. It was amazing. It was the biggest cringe I’ve ever seen on TV. So good. 3 out of 5 of the weddings ended in one of the people saying that they couldn’t marry the other. It must have been heart-breaking for the people, but I couldn’t stop laughing. If every season has an ending like that than I will always be watching. Also the reunion episode was awesome because they all got to watch the show and could see all the times other people were talking shit or backstabbing them. I laughed so hard when Jessica got called out. I hated Jessica, she’s the worst. She got what she deserved in the end.

I have to say that one of the only good things that’ll come out of this quarantine for me is my newfound love for reality TV  dating shows. I will definitely be watching the next season of the Bachelor. I considered watching the one on Netflix, but it’s from like 2007. I feel like that’s a show that you need to watch live so that’s what I’ll be doing.

Civic Issue #5 Issue Brief Title and First paragraph

Justin Rheinstadter, Tommy Shero, Anurag Pandey

Meg Tully – CAS 138T

April 6, 2020

College Athletes Need Pay to Fairly Play

College athletes are essentially employees working thousands of hours to create billions of dollars. None of which goes to them. For years, their labor has been exploited by the NCAA and the schools that they attend. The NCAA makes over 1 billion dollars per year not including the hundreds of millions of dollars that each individual school makes off of their programs as well. 

Professional athletes are known to make substantially large salaries, mainly due to the amount of revenue they bring in. College athletes playing for the NCAA, on the other hand, may make little to no salary while still bringing in large amounts of revenue for the NCAA, or their college or university. An argument can be made that college athletes receive scholarships which pay for a part or the entirety of their tuition, however, does this compare to professional athletes’ salaries. According to Forbes, the average salary of NBA players in 2016 was $6.2 million1. In the MLB: $4.4 million. In the NHL: $2.9 million. As seen in the Figure 1 below, the trends are significant.

 

Figure 11

In 2017, the NCAA generated $1.1 billion in revenue. CBS and Turner combined pay about $800 million in total every year  to broadcast March Madness, and none of it goes to the players that make it happen. College athletes do much more than just that. They also help their schools generate revenue through ticket sales, making appearances for fundraising events and boosting the overall school brand.

 

Passion #7: Tiger King

I just finished the Tiger King on Netflix yesterday and absolutely loved it. There isn’t much to do these days other than watch Netflix so I’m just going to make my blog post about this intriguing documentary.

SPOILER WARNING

 

 

 

There are a lot of people who have voiced their opinion about Joe Exotic thinking that he got set up and should be set free from prison. I disagree with them. I think he got exactly what he deserved since he’s done tons of terrible things and he definitely deserves all the prison time that he’s gotten. That being said, I do agree that he’s not even close to the only person who deserves to be in prison. Not by a long shot. Jeff Lowe should be in prison, the hit man he hired, Doc,and probably Carol too. Jeff was just as much a part of the plot to try to murder Carol as Joe was and I can’t believe that there hasn’t been any attempt to put him behind bars as well. Also the hit man, I forget his name, nearly went through with the job and accepted money to kill Carol. That is extremely illegal and he should be in prison as well.

Now when it comes to Carol, I think she killed her husband. There’s no real evidence that she did, but all of the circumstantial evidence lines up. Also in the show when Joe is talking about how he thought that someone put cologne on his shoe to get a tiger to eat him, Carol says “The only way to get a tiger to eat someone is to cover them in sardine oil or something.” How would she know what to put on a person to get a tiger to eat them? The only way she’d know is if she had done it before…to her husband.

Lastly, in all of the lies and crimes, I feel the worst for the tigers and all the other animals. I think that none of them belong here. I feel so bad for all of them just being put on display. It should be illegal. They should all be in the wild where they belong.

Passion 6: Celebrities complaining about the quarantining

So with the corona virus outbreak, everyone is practicing self-quarantining. That includes all people:poor, middle class, and even the rich.

If you have any common sense whatsoever, you know that the group that the coronavirus is affecting the most is definitely the poor. As with any type of tragedy, they are hurting the worst as many of them are out of their jobs and do not have enough money to pay rent or keep up with the mortgage payment. This is why the stimulus checks exist in order to keep these people afloat amidst the global pandemic and economic depression.

Despite all this, the people who seem to be complaining the most about just how hard their lives are rich people. It’s absolutely unbelievable how ignorant and idiotic these people are. I saw a video of Cardi B crying about how she was eating cereal. She was upset because she had to eat cereal instead of being out at a sushi restaurant. She is in her 6 million dollar home and can’t stand it. Also Sam Smith was posting pictures of them crying because he couldn’t spend a week in his 12 million dollar house.

Another thing that was super cringey is the Imagine video that Gal Gadot and several other celebrities put out of them singing the famous John Lennon song. It was supposed to be uplifting, but it came off as very dumb since they are singing about not having any possessions yet they all have millions of dollars.

Eric Andre and several other celebrities poked fun at this video by making their own video where they sing lines of the song Slob on My Knob. Its super funny and pokes out just how stupid the Imagine video is.

I’m not trying to knock all rich people here since there are some who are using their widespread influence in order to spread the word on how serious the coronavirus is and how we should all take it as such.

I just think in general we idolize celebrities too much and its kind of crazy to see them complaining when they have millions and millions of dollars.

Civic Issue #4 Deliberation Nation

I think that overall, our deliberation on whether or not standardized tests should be put to rest and the one that I attended on food insecurity went extremely well.

I think that the food insecurity group had a better setup since they were in the Hyatt lounge area so there setup was a lot more comfortable and spacious. Ours was kind of an awkward setup since we were all put into a crowded circle on the stage at Webster’s cafe. However, in the case of the food insecurity group, there was another group having their own deliberation in the area right next to them. This wasn’t that distracting but there were a few times that they were a little loud. For ours, there were lots of people in the cafe area, but they really had no impact on the discussion itself since we were all packed into such a small area.

In terms of participation, I once again think that both groups did a very good job in making people feel comfortable with sharing and sparking a thought-provoking dialogue. In ours, there were very little if any times where there was an awkward silence. This was mostly because of the fact that we chose a topic that was so relatable to all students since we’ve all had to go through standardized testing as part of our college admissions process. That was probably the biggest challenge for the food insecurity group, to explain what food insecurity is and why it is a problem for students. This didn’t get in their way as they obviously knew that they had to deal with that at the beginning of their deliberation and they handled it beautifully.

For the three approaches, the food insecurity group did a very good job of separating their solutions by size. I forget exactly what they had but they focused on food insecurity on an individual scale, as a Penn State problem, and then as a problem for the whole state of Pennsylvania. This really helped as it showed how this problem can be addressed on several different levels. In contrast, our three solutions were just three different approaches to dealing with the national problem that is standardized testing. I think that this made more sense for our approach because it is a problem that everyone faces and is always thought of on a national scale. In both cases, I think that each group chose the correct scale to compliment the solutions to the specific issues.

I think that the main difference between my group’s deliberation and the one that I went to was the environment. At the Hyatt, it seemed very professional and the group even dressed semi-formal to match. This led to the deliberation feeling like an intelligent discourse. But at Webster’s, the vibes were much more casual and that led to our conservation and dress code being very chill. This didn’t take away from the quality of our deliberation but instead enhanced it by making it more of a natural flowing conversation that we might have actually all had outside of an assignment for our CAS class.

Coronavirus testing

I know that the only thing that everyone is talking about is the coronavirus but that’s because it’s only that seems to matter at the moment. I think that I am in the same boat as everyone else in that this is crazy.

One of the biggest things that has been concerning in America is the lack of testing available to the citizens. China, South Korea, and Italy have all performed hundreds of thousands of tests yet the United States has less than 50,000 performed so far.

Its also very interesting that over half of the NBA players have been tested. Lots of them needed testing because of the recent exposure of many of their players such as Rudy Gobert, Donovan Mitchell, Kevin Durant, etc.

Also many of the other people that have been revealed to positive have been celebrities. This makes sense because many people are going to get it, celebrities included, but its kinda weird that there are so few people are getting tested yet all these move stars and NBA players are getting tests yet most of the general public don’t have access to it.

Like 50% of NBA players have been tested but almost none of their staff has been reported to be tested even though they’ve been in direct contact with the players who have it.

I guess it makes sense that these rich companies and rich people are getting the tests because they can pay for it but its just kind of messed up that there are lots of people who have symptoms and haven’t been able to receive tests. And there are lots of workers in the healthcare industry who need tests as well.

Another thing that is interesting is that the United States has performed some of the least amount of test per capita and per million people. We need to step it up if we are going to get ahead of this outbreak and prevent the deaths of millions of our citizens.

PAS #4 Award Shows

I was about to write my 5th passion blog and my peer evaluations, then I realized that I hadn’t written my fourth passion blog yet.

Whoopsie.

I guess I was too focused on the deliberation nation assignment that I forgot we had other assignments happening at the same time. Not sure if this will be worth any points, but might as well write it right.

 

I’m going to use this passion blog to talk about award shows. I know I’m pretty late since awards season has passed, but I was thinking a lot about it today. Mostly how little awards matter yet they still do.

 

I was looking mostly at the Grammy’s as their credibility is extremely low. I was listening to music on the way to class and a throwback appeared: Macklemore’s Thrift Shop. Undoubtedly a bop, this song radiated through the radio when I was 12. Everyone loved it. The accompanying album, The Heist, was pretty good too. But then I remembered, and got mad, that it won best rap album of the year beating out Drake, Jay-Z, Kanye West, and most notably, Kendrick Lamar’s masterpiece Good Kid MAAD City. That album is an instant classic, masterpiece, and one of the greatest albums, not just rap albums, of all time. And it lost to Macklemore. That is incredible to me.

I remember too that at the time the general public and music industry realized how incredibly wrong this choice was saying that Kendrick got robbed. And he really did.  Kendrick has shaped himself into one of the greatest rappers of all time with an outstanding discography consisting of Section 80, GKMC, TPAB,  and DAMN. All of which are absolutely incredible and all of which are better than The Heist. Yes, even Section 80. I’m not trying to take anything away from The Heist either which I do believe is a great album. In fact, I just listened to The Heist in its entirety while playing Madden. And now, I’m halfway into listening to GKMC for the millioneth time.

This is just one example of dozens, if not hundreds of times, that the Grammy’s got something wrong. And its not just the Grammy’s. The Golden Globes, Oscars, and all of the other ones always get certain things wrong. This is because it is all just the opinions of a bunch of rich people which means that it probably doesn’t reflect the view of the general population or industry.

Still, I pay attention to who wins Best Picture. I don’t know what that says about me but I do.