How To: Kill Yourself Slowly

The boy who smokes cigarettes need not be anxious about his future, he has none.

-David Starr Jordan, 1915

        “More deaths are caused each year by tobacco use than by all deaths from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), illegal drug use, alcohol use, motor vehicle injuries, suicides, and murders combined.” The dangers of smoking are no secret, yet 443,000 people in the U.S. will die prematurely this year from smoking or from exposure to secondhand smoke. That’s over 1,200 deaths per day, and given the huge efforts to curb public smoking by the government and by tobacco companies themselves, these numbers should be much lower. Despite the uniform availability of tobacco products to all Americans, smoking does not affect everyone equally. Americans living in poverty smoke at three times the rate of those with household incomes over $50,000. This subset of the U.S.’s population makes up a majority of the working class, who, along with adolescents, are America’s most likely to succumb to smoking cigarettes. “Nearly one in four high school seniors and one in three young adults under the age of 26 smoke." Why are the smoking rates among America’s youth and the impoverished so high? Americans with lower socioeconomic statuses are less educated, more likely to begin smoking at an early age, less likely to quit, and more exposed to smoking daily. The same repeated exposure to cigarette smoking is a leading cause of teen smoking in the form of peer pressure, as are tobacco advertisements and backfiring anti-smoking campaigns.

How To: Fix What's Not Broken

“The world has shrunk to those mean dimensions known to county clerks,” said Aldo Leopold in his book, A Sand County Almanac (44). In other words, Leopold is pointing out that people’s appreciation of land and the world they see has been reduced to what can be expressed on paper, such as acreage and square-footage. This mindset is the result of England’s system of equating land ownership with political power, because this motivated colonial settlers to claim land as far as the eye could see when they first began establishing families and governments on the east coast. Leopold is trying to express how this system of acquiring power has resulted in people regarding land as “a commodity belonging to us,” (vii) rather than a community we are members of along with all other living and nonliving things. Unfortunately for this community, more and more people came to America and ‘purchased’ land for themselves, and over time, as land became less available for purchasing, America has been reduced to the metropolis we know today. Some might think that the driving out of all the good (the wilderness) and replacing it with the bad and the ugly (industry and urbanization) has been an improvement, but the reality is that this process has caused America to regress as a whole.

How To: Ingest Pure Cancer

        I scanned this page from my copy of TIME Magazine's April 16 edition. Right away when I saw this, I thought I had hit the jackpot. Never before in my life could I recall coming across a positive advertisement for cigarettes, and considering how I am in the midst of writing a research paper about cigarettes and impact on American culture, finding this ad, especially in such a reputable magazine, was like gold.
        As a receptor for advertising campaigns, how do you feel about these types of ads running in some of the worlds most reputable magazines? 

How To: Fall Short

        This piece was created by Adam Simpson, the same artist who created the piece I discussed in my earlier blogpost: "How To: Make Million-Dollar Movies". I particularly like his work, because he is commenting on the aspects of our society that we pride ourselves on. In this image, the "ALL IS FAIR" idea relates to the fundamentals of the democratic society that we set up for ourselves and the liberty for all that was supposed to come with it. 

        But instead, as this image points out, sometimes that democracy and liberty get twisted, and our government has arrived in a sticking point in which in order to get laws passed, exhaustive compromises must be made in order to get everyone needed on-board, sometimes defeating the purpose of the laws in the first place. 

        This piece reminds me of the hypothetical little girl who grows up wanting to the the President of the United States, and when she finally becomes a state senator years later realizes that in order to get ahead politically in America, you either sell out or bust. It's no longer a matter of whether or not this is true, but it is a matter of how much longer we (the voters, citizens, and Americans) are going to put up with it. 

        At least, that's what I see when I look at this piece. What do you see?

How To: Read The Fine Print

        This photo, taken by Kevin Frayer, was featured on pages 12-13 of National Geographic's February edition. That's pages 12 and 13 out of 145, the first two page spread in the magazine that month. Without reading the caption, it's hard to grasp what's going on in this picture, or more importantly why National Geographic decided it is such an essential photo that it should be given prime placement in the magazine. The only thing that's clear is that there is a man leading a flock of sheep through a gap in some sort of wall. The caption reads:

 "Afghanistan—On drought-pocked earth near Marjah, in the restive Helmand Province, a lone shepherd leads his sheep through a mud wall's gap. Scenes of pastoral grace persist in this agriculturally intensive country, despite strife, insecurity, and dire food shortages."

        The words "lone," "strife," "insecurity," and "dire" stimulate our natural humanitarian impulses. Whomever authored this caption was shooting to appeal to the readers emotionally, hoping that the caption would arouse some sympathetic feelings towards this poor Shepard who is (not coincidentally) in Afghanistan, a country the United States currently has soldiers fighting a war in.
        I don't think Frayer intended for his photo to become anti-war propaganda, but it is quite plain that National Geographic published it in their magazine with that exact message in mind. What other subliminal anti-war messages are present in the media today?

How To: Change A Story With A Photo

        Both photos above depict the same awesome event: the Central Adirondack Paddlers Society set the new world record for the world's largest raft, with 1,902 kayaks and canoes floating freely for thirty seconds, held together only by holding hands. The photos themselves were taken in September of last year, but the Guinness Book of World Records only just recently confirmed their accomplishment. Also, the CAPS event was in effort to raise breast cancer awareness.

        The top photo was taken by Nancie Battaglia for National Geographic Magazine, and is featured as a two page spread in the magazine. The second photo was posted by Kevin Mansell on his blog. Which picture represents the event better?

        The Battaglia photo works better for the magazine in many ways, that it gets across the mass size of the raft, and that it's simply a kick-ass photo. On the other hand, the Mansell photo does a better job of showing the viewer exactly what was going on, in that you can see the entire raft and it is more straight-forward. 

        Personally, I saw the first photo before the second, and seeing the different perspective of the same event helped to give me a better idea of the actual size of the raft. 

        Which picture tells the viewer the truth about this world record?

How To: Build Your Own Middle-Class

        Entry- and midlevel jobs at companies like IBM, Microsoft, Verison, and Cisco require high school diplomas, but not quite bachelor's. According to TIME Magazine writer Rana Foroohar in These Schools Mean Business, 70% of college students at four-year colleges don't finish their degrees, which leaves big name companies with, "hundreds of unfilled slots for middle-level workers."
        What do these corporations to do solve this problem? They create Pathways in Technology Early College High Schools, or P-Tech schools. One was launched this past September in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where the students, "will graduate with not only a high school diploma but an associate's degree," says Foroohar. Each P-Tech student receives an IBM mentor starting on their first day of this open-admission public school.
        Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel plans to set up five STEM schools, in which the core curriculum focuses on science, technology, engineering, and math, that are to be partnered with the four companies listed above in order to produce a more 'job-ready' graduate population.
        Is this going to help Chicago Public School students graduate and get jobs? According to Yasmin Rammohan of Chicago Tonight in 2011, 40% of CPS students drop out. However, many Crown Heights 9th and 10th graders have already met the City College admission requirements, and are likely to complete the associate's program two years earlier than expected, says Foroohar.
        So yes, P-Tech and STEM schools are likely to give more college graduates midlevel jobs right after graduation. But the only jobs these graduates have available to them is at companies such as IBM, where the companies' intention is to keep them for as long as possible. There is much less room for students at these high schools to be creative and express themselves via the arts and exploring other personal interests.
        I'm curious as to how much the graduates of these schools will enjoy their jobs after ten years at a company like Microsoft, when they've been raised like cattle to be perfect job candidates for companies desperate for middle-class workers and have the training and education for nothing else.