my bike

The Eeyore Effect

David
Per 6

1) What is the Eeyore Effect? Who or what is Eeyore? Why does the author use examples from Winnie the pooh in the story

2) Pg. 57 “Eeyores are realists, the say. But reality is what makes it” it spoke to me since it helps clarify what a Eeyore is, this passage is significant since it shows how Eeyores look at things and only take the bad part of it but someone else could look at the same thing and see the good side of it.
Pg. 54 “ There is something in each of us that wants to be unhappy. It creates in our imaginations problems that don’t yet exist, this spoke to me since all of us start to think of bad things that could happen, it is significant since everyone is a Eeyore at some point in their lives
Pg. 57 and 58 “never before in history has the individual had so much power, and so many opportunities to effect change, this spoke to me since it shows that everyone can always make choices about what they want to do, it is significant since it shows that everyone has a choice of what they want to do and that nobody can make choices for them if they don’t want to do something

3) The Eeyore effect is when somebody only looks at the bad side of things. For example in president elections candidates usually only tell the bad things about the other candidate running against them and not the good things. Another example would be when there are news things that only tell about bad things that are happening in Iraq and none of the good things that are happening like schools opening or things being rebuilt. Another example is when people usually look at teenagers they usually think that they would be getting in trouble and not being very good kids and being helpful

4) Today’s Eeyores are fearful since Eeyores only look at the bad side of things and are afraid of trying to be positive and looking at the good side of things and the good things that are also happening

5) Eeyores around us are newspapers and the presidential candidates who are always looking at the bad side of things like presidential candidates only say the bad things about other candidates and newspapers don’t usually show all of the good things that are happening in places like in Iraq. Eeyores around me are cross country coaches that only pay attention to the girls team that always win and then they always say that the boys team should try harder and that they aren’t as good and the coaches don’t actually see the improvements of the boys cross country team.

6) Theme 1: Eeyores only look at the bad side of things, the author gives examples like the news media, critics, educators, and Eeyore amazons the effect of this is that people only think about the bad side of themselves
Theme 2: Eeyores negative ideas change the way people think about themselves, the author talks about how people start to feel powerless or are afraid to try something since there will be a lot of tension on them if the they fail or people might not like them if the fail to do something

7) 1:Eeyores can’t look at the good side of thing’s, they don’t look at the good side of things since they don’t believe that there is a good side to things, this reveals that they are self centered around something, and cant see both sides of something.
2: Eeyores cant solve problems or move ahead in life, they don’t want to try to do new things since they are afraid that something bad will happen, this reveals that they would have problems if they tried to do something new.

8) The Winnie the pooh quotes played a roll in this story since it gives example of Eeyores in the story and it help the author to start talking about another idea or subject that the author wants to talk about.

9) Negative News Media: the Negative News Media only tell us about bad things that happen and they look only for the bad parts of people who are actually good and they make us think what they want to think and to learn only about bad things and we need to start reading or hearing about good things that happen too and it is a one sided story

10) Critics: the critics are the people who tell want to tell us what to think and to tell us that they can do something better than what something or someone is doing even though they most likely cant do it better and they judge everything they see even though they might not be experts at it and critics only talk about the bad side of things like books or movies etc.

11) Educator: the educator Eeyores try to teach as many children as possible the bad side of things at the youngest age and that they need to learn things faster since they say childhood is waste of time and they want them to grow up faster so that they don’t waste their time being a child. They can tell young children by forcing them to learn things that are more complex then what they should be learning at a young age.

12) Eeyore Amazons: they are people that think that anything that has to do with girls or women is a bad thing, they want to change words and try to get rid of fun things like they try to change firemen, and chairman they think that women should act like men do. The problem is that they try to make men and women be less kind to each other.

Biome Proposal

David
Per 6

The definition of a desert some scientists say is the amount of moisture lost every year by evaporation. Others say it depends on the type of soil and plant life that the desert would have. My proposal is that we create an educational biome where children can come to learn about the desert.
Some of the characteristics of a desert include specific plants, animals and soil. Deserts have a wide variety of plants such as cacti like saguaro, barrel, old man, prickly pear, fish hook, desert spoon and aloe plants. There are also bushes, short grasses and trees. Some of these plants have a variety of ways to adapt to the desert, some can store water, reflect the sun, have deep roots to reach the ground water or have horizontal roots to reach a water source.
The animals of a desert are often nocturnal to take advantage of the cooler night temperatures. They have ways to survive the hot temperatures like digging holes or finding shade to get cooler. Generally the animals are small so they would need a smaller amount of water and escape the heat. They can get their fluids from the plants they eat. A few of the wildlife include armadillos, bats, bandicoots and spiders.
The soil of the desert is very unique in how it is full of nutrients and can grow many things with very small amounts of water. The soil is usually coarse and rocky and is light brown, gray or yellowish.
The main aspect of the climate is the dryness and heat. There may be no rain for years and the temperatures are generally hot. The rain in deserts may evaporate before it hits the ground or it might just be fog. When it does rain it might flood. There is very low humidity in deserts that make it even hotter. The average high temperatures 44-47 degrees C and the lows can get down to –18 degrees C. The following graph shows how the temperature and rainfall vary over the course of a year.

To create this climate artificially it would require a large closed in area so that moisture, humidity and temperature could be controlled. A heater would be needed to keep the temperatures high year round. The air would have to have the humidity taken out. Moisture would have to be generated by a fog or mist machine. The drainage would have to be controlled so that it could be flooded on occasion. You would also have to have special soil with the right nutrients for desert plants.
The plants and animals would have to be carefully planned to have the right amounts and kinds. You would need animals that are carnivores, herbivores and you need insects. This wild life would survive on desert plants, hot temperatures and very little water. The plants will be a variety that can survive the temperatures and lack of water by the various adaptations mentioned above.
To create and maintain the ecological interactions you would have to have the right balance in numbers of animals. They have to be able to survive on each other and also the plant life so that they can continue to breed and have young so that their species can survive. There has to be a variety of plants that survive in different ways in the desert climate.
In order for the biome to survive you would have to have the right balance of plants and animals as mentioned above. And also need computer generated weather to keep the rainfall and temperature correct. It would take some trained specialists to observe and handle any problems that happen.
Starting up the biome would be expensive. Since you would have to get all of the plants, animals and different types of soil. Then you would need money to pay for heating, controlling moisture, to pay the workers and have someone to promote it for educational purposes. You would have to find somewhere that you would be able to build it without disrupting other environments. Not much water would be needed and not much waste would be generated or produced.
In Conclusion we can learn for ourselves how desert plant life, animals and climate work together in the desert and we can educate many generations for years to come.

Elderly Job DIscrimination

David
Mrs. Hughes
Period 7

Topic Elderly Job Discrimination


I. Introduction
A. Grabber/Hook—people think of the elderly as older and wiser but people probably don’t think of the elderly as older and richer
B. What is the problem?
1. The problem is that the elderly are being discriminated in the job market
2. Also there are more older workers. Baby boomers are getting older so a bigger percentage of working people are older. There are more people that can be discriminated against. Age discrimination complains are increasing.
C. How does the problem affect the audience?
This problem affects you since once you get older there will be
even more older people wanting Social Security and you have to
give money towards Social Security. As there are even more older
people needing it the younger people will have to give much more
money towards their Social Security.

II. Body
A. Causes
1. Factors leading to the problem.
a. Stereotyping
(1) Some of the stereotypes that companies have of older people are that the older have less energy than younger to do things like work longer hours and moving things around like boxes, another stereotype of older people are that the older lose out to the younger in every situation in the jobs that they can fulfill since the employer will always want the younger worker to work for them since they wont have to be paid as much. Youth is valued more, even though older people are healthier now than they used to be. Another stereotype of elderly workers is that they can’t learn new skills like in the technical fields where they have to know how to use computers.
b. Forced Ranking
(1) Another cause of elderly job discrimination is that companies use forced ranking. They may rank employees against each other based on their age. And then once the workers get into the lowest ranking they are fired. For example, they may get a C ranking in an ABC ranking scale, and all C ranked people get fired.
(2) Companies use forced ranking since it is a good cover up
for stereotypes about the elderly like how they cant change, some well known companies that use Forced ranking are Ford, Pepsi Microsoft and many more.
(3) Many older workers end up working part time or don’t get benefits. And if the economy goes down, they may be asked to retire early.
2. Why does this Problem still exist?
a. These problems still exist since the laws that have been made like the ADEA still have ways that companies can get out since the person suing has to prove that the discrimination was done on purpose.
(1) Disparate impact is when a person has to prove that the company had an impact on a certain group even if they didn’t mean to discriminate. Up until now the courts have required that the older worker prove that the company intended to discriminate. And the courts said it wasn’t good enough just to show that discrimination happened.
b. Also, courts don’t see older people as a ‘special group’ that
needs to have their civil rights protected.
B. Effects
1. Big picture
a. Some of the effects of elderly job discrimination are that as people get older they are being paid less even though they have much more experience. And the younger are being paid more w/ less experience.
(1) This happens since the employers don’t want to pay more money for better experience and that’s what the older workers have.
(a) According to a 2001 Infoworld compensation survey, Senior managers get paid 133 thou, mid level managers get paid 85 thou, staff gets 70 thou in their 40’s then by the time these people are 55 their salaries start to go down.
(2) Another effect of this job discrimination is that when people get fired older workers can’t find new jobs but younger workers can and this is supported by a statistic by Adam Goodman.
a. People who were out of work that found new work in two years or less - 67% of those 35-44 years old, 58% of those 45-54 years old, 39% of those 55-62 years old, but only 8% of those 63 years old and up were able to find work in 2 years or less.
2. How does this affect us on a smaller scale?
This affects us on a smaller scale since it makes me not get the wisdom and guidance of older workers that would be useful for me in the future and my money during my working years would be needed even more for older workers social security and public assistance.
C. Solutions
1. What’s been done? Why no longer done?
In employment law history in 1884 there was an “employment at will” rule that said employers can hire and fire whoever they want to, then in ’64 there was the civil rights act that said you cant discriminate against race, religion, sex, but it wasn’t sure about age. They had a committee study discrimination and they found that age discrimination was a problem and should be included in a civil rights bill.
2. What’s being done now?
a. Ineffective The Age Discrimination Employment Act was passed and it hasn’t worked too well. It gave a way for workers over 40 to file a suit for Age Discrimination and employers can’t fire or hire anyone based on their age, but the person being discriminated against has to file a suit within a certain amount of time and it only applied to employers with 20 or more workers and government, university, and labor union jobs with 25 or more workers
b. Ineffective The ADEA has been ineffective because of disparate
impact.
c. Effective But now there is hope that the ADEA will be more effective since there was a recent Supreme Court ruling on a age discrimination case. This was a case filed by police officers in Mississippi who received lower raisers than younger police officers. The city said that this was because they needed to make the salaries of the younger police officers more competitive with other jobs. The Supreme Court said the person being discriminated against doesn’t have to prove that the discrimination was intentional – it was good enough to prove that the discrimination happened, whether or not they meant it to happen. So they were saying that disparate impact is ok to use as a legal argument now. But there was a flaw in it since the Supreme Court also said that if the company had a reasonable explanation for making their decision, like cost cutting or if the person wasn’t mentally or physically able to do the job, then it was ok to fire them or give them lower raises.
3. Other possible solutions?
a. Some other possible solutions would be to enforce the laws
(1) They could enforce the laws by making sure that old people know the laws and are provided with lawyers.
b. One more possible solution would be to retrain the older workers. This could happen by having retraining programs to let older workers know what they’re doing

III. Conclusion
A. What can audience do about the problem?
You as the audience can educate yourself about this problem and
learn about the rights of older workers and respect older workers
for what they can teach you from their lifetime of experience
B. What have I done to help?
I have educated myself about the problem and I try to learn from
people with experience and older people for what they can teach
me
C. How can audience become involved?
One way you could get involved is to not believe stereotypes about older people and know that those stereotypes aernt actually true, and respect and value what older people can teach you about all they have learned in their life time of experience