Period 1: Turmoil in the Middle East, Day 3 - Class Recap

Suzanne Mubarek, the first lady of Egypt, who we read about in class today.
Hello class,

I have driven home, made lunch, watched the daily White House press briefing, read up on what is going on in the world, been excited that Greg Oden is possibly coming back tomorrow night, and listening to my absolute favorite sportswriter ever, Bill Simmons, via his podcast on ESPN.com. This is a life of luxury that I will all too soon have to leave behind to be at Westview full time! A good trade off though - I finally get to be at the school every day, for the entire day! I am not sure how it will all work out yet, but for now, let's all enjoy another class recap!

Essential Questions: How does conflict arise and in what ways have various people responded? What impact can women in the Middle East have on policy?

Soundtrack: "I'm Shipping Up to Boston" by Dropkick Murphys. Lyrics (which do not make any sort of sense) here. Song chosen in honor of the Irish and St. Patrick's Day. I certainly hope that there was no pinching going on, regardless of what you were wearing.

AGENDA 3/17/09:
Weekend and Essay Talk
News Brief
Article Reading
Battle of the Sexes
Debrief Seminar

Homework: Write neatly or type a three paragraph explanation of how you think women can have a say in decisions in the Middle East. Check blog!

You should have a lot of notes about what everyone in class had to say. Basically, I want you to choose three ways that women can impact policy in the Middle East. Think about it as like the Somalia Five Points assignment. What needs to happen in order for women to have a say? There were a lot of good ideas in class. Pick three and talk a little bit about why you chose each one. This should not be a difficult assignment.

I also need any late work (and especially the Nigeria essay - which is going to be marked down as a solid 0 if it not in) by Thursday. Seriously. Do not leave things to do until after Spring Break. You do not want it weighing on yourself, trust me.

Weekend and Essay Talk: Let's see here. I remember a few interesting things from the weekend talk. I'm glad that everyone made it back in one piece! I talked a little bit about the NCAA tournament (feel free to set up a bracket for the class, if you want - with the stipulation that absolutely nothing is bet on it), the Blazers finally winning on the road in Memphis, and planning my latest flights. PDX-SEA-EWR (Horizon and Continental) on May 22nd, EWR-PHX-PDX (US Airways) on May 24th, for those interested. I try to go out once a year to help my brother pack up all his stuff and come home from Princeton. Really looking forward to it already!

I also asked how the class liked Ryan coming in, and was glad to hear the positive response. I am always thinking of ways to get people to come in and talk, so hopefully I will be able to bring someone else in soon! I talked a little about the new "gadgets" on the side of the blog, which have the Western Conference standings and The Oregonian front page. I mentioned that today is the last day of printing for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Sad times.

News Brief: Kurtis shared a good article about workers in North Korea being allowed to return home to South Korea. The article can be found here: CNN.com - N. Korea lets stranded S. Koreans cross border. Apparently the workers had been stuck since March 9th. The most interesting part of the article in my opinion was the end:

The border closing was part of a recent series of aggressive moves by North Korea, which included cutting the last remaining communications channel between North and South; saying that the North could not guarantee the safety of South Korean passenger jets in its airspace during the annual joint military exercises; and threatening to retaliate if a "satellite" launch from its northeastern coast was intercepted, saying interference would "mean a war."

U.S. and South Korean officials have said that North Korea appears to be preparing to test-fire its long-range missile, the Taepodong-2, under the guise of launching a satellite into space. The missile is thought to have an intended range of about 4,200 miles (6,700 kilometers) that, if true, could give it the capability of striking Alaska or Hawaii.

Yes, you read that right. Any interference with satellite/missile launches will be considered war by North Korea. A huge reason to continue to pay attention to the area. Thanks for the article Kurtis! Kierra, you are up for next class on Thursday. One current article about something outside the United States.

Article Reading: I read this article to the class: The Observer - The Arab world's first ladies are forging rights for women. A lot of interesting questions and comments came up during the reading. One was about genital mutilation, and whether or not that was okay to enforce our culture on other cultures. I am not going to link to any articles or pages on the subject, but I think you can pretty much guess what the debate is about from what we talked about in class. Along those same lines, I posed the question about human sacrifices, and whether or not those should be culturally acceptable too. I also thought the debate about men having multiple wives was good. Lots to think about!

Battle of the Sexes: I had Mrs. DeFrance take the ladies, while I took the gentlemen. I am not sure about exactly how the female side of things went (Mrs. DeFrance told me you had a little trouble starting off with ideas, but then got into it after a while, and some "boys stink" comments), but I really enjoyed what the fellas had to bring to the table. The article really wasn't the best for referencing, it was more to start the process of building ideas about women's empowerment. Which we had a good conversation about.

Specifically, I wrote about the ideas that "women process information better than men," "men do not look out for women's best interests, but if women were in power, they would just look out for themselves," "through education and voting rights, women can have power," "give women a chance to have power, see what they do," "do women really want to be treated like the stereotypical definition of "ladies" is?" "listen to what everyone has to say - give everyone a chance in the process," "women have to be vocal about what they need - come out of the closet!" "women can't just build up a burst of things to unload - share it immediately instead of bottling it up," and finally, "make a time machine so that we can go back and create equality from the very beginning."

I am not saying that those are my ideas or all of our thoughts - they were just thoughts that came up during our lively discussion. Thank you for that!

Debrief Seminar: I asked Archana and Brandon to share what both groups thought of. I am not going to recap this, because if you did not take notes during this part of class, I am not going to enable you to not listen and just come online to find out. However, if you do have any questions about what I am asking you to do for homework, please let me know.
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Finally, we had a (very) short debate today in class about the best Southern California frozen treat place. I mentioned Pinkberry, Yogurt Land, and Jamba Juice (which apparently has oatmeal as a menu item now). However, as one of my SoCal friends pointed out to me later, when I told her about the debate, I made an egregious (which means really bad) mistake in not including the best one of them all, Golden Spoon. Just a terrible oversight on my part, and I profusely apologize to the store owners of the many Golden Spoon's I have had. Glad to have that off my conscience.

The Blazers play tomorrow afternoon at 4:00 PST in Indiana (CSN). Unfortunately, I will be in class for the entire game. Ugh. I will be at school, subbing for Mrs. DeFrance tomorrow (and I will be at Westview every day for the rest of the year, actually), so please come see me if you have any questions or concerns. Please finish up your late work (especially those essays) and revisions by Thursday!

LATE EDIT: Zack T. has made a group for our class NCAA tournament bracket, which can be found here: ESPN.com - Tournament Challenge "1st period globstud". The password to get into the group (you will have to create a free member profile first) is westviewglobstud - all lowercase. Zack and I are already in the group, who wants to bring it on? :-)