Romneyspeak

In class, we've talked a lot about the presidential candidates trying to relate to the general americans. Generally, politicians try to speak in a way, that will attract the demographics that they think are likely to vote for them. This New York Times article, points out Romney's distinctive language. Romney uses what the author of this article calls "Romneyspeak." "In Romneyspeak, passengers do not get off airplanes, they “disembark.” People do not laugh, they “guffaw.” Criminals do not go to jail, they land in the “big house.” Insults are not hurled, “brickbats” are." Romney uses very polite formal language, and the author of this article suggests that his language sets him apart from many Americans.

I agree with the author that his language definitely keeps him removed from many Americans. He already is not very relatable to many Americans because of his extreme wealth and power, and I think his language sets him apart even more. Its almost as if he's set himself upon a pedestal. It almost seems like he thinks he is too good to speak like average Americans speak.

What do you think? Do you think Mitt Romney's language is a disadvantage to his campaign?

New Food Labels for Healthier Choices

In class and on the anamericanstudies blog, a lot of people have been discussing the best possible way to get people to eat healthier. Today I came across this New York Times article on improving food labels. Mark Bittman suggests that, "a red, yellow or green “traffic light,” for example — would encourage consumers to make healthier choices." He thinks that if you have three categories (Nutrition, Foodness, and Welfare) rated out of 5 each for a total of 15 points, consumers would be able to easily tell the quality of their food. It would obviously include how nutritious the food is, but it would also take into account how natural the food is, and how the animals and workers are treated in production.

While I don't think this is possible at this point in time because the food companies would object, I do think that this would be very beneficial to the health of Americans. The current food labels can sometimes be confusing and misleading, so if you are not well informed, it is difficult to make the right food decisions. With this new labeling process, any consumer would be able to make healthy choices.

Do you think that this new food labeling system could help the overall health of Americans? And how do you think we could get the food producers to adopt this system?

Universities and Their Surroundings

This weekend, my mom and I went on a college road trip of sorts up the east coast. We visited many colleges with beautiful campuses. What really struck me though was the contrast of many of these universities between the campus and the neighborhoods that border the campuses. We saw this a little bit during our field trip to Hyde Park between the University of Chicago and the surrounding neighborhoods. However, this contrast is visible in many other locations. The contrast of Yale's campus and surrounding New Haven, Connecticut really stuck out at me. When we were driving towards the campus, we saw rows of small partially dilapidated buildings with bars on all of the windows and doors. But suddenly after crossing an intersection, the next block is filled with expensive stores like J Crew and the Apple Store. The contrast was really shocking. Literally  one street divided a population surrounded by poverty from extremely wealthy population of educated young adults.

Yale's College Town

Many other universities had similar contrasts. It was interesting how many of the universities talked about community service opportunities for students to help out the communities they were in such close proximity to. It was nice to know that the universities are working towards integrating the neighborhoods with the university, but it didn't seem like much visible progress was being made. Do you think it's important to integrate wealthy Universities to their surrounding neighborhoods? How do you think this could best be achieved?