http://www.theonion.com/articles/report-everyone-starting-new-exciting-stage-of-lif,34738/

This is a news brief. How does it compare to ours? What do you think about the humor in this article--is there actual news underneath? Should this be labeled as news?

Child pornography is completely disturbing but everything the FBI did was legal and I believe the cause justified the means. They didn't create new child pornography or create a site to share it, they just grabbed control of an existing site and tried to identify users. This was totally ethical as long as they were able to come through and actually catch people, which the article itself was unclear about.

I think this article is very thought provoking. I think that the media's bias towards women is at the root of many problems in our country and therefor needs to be addressed. I think that what Sweden is doing is a good first step and I am interested to see how if it changes anything. Obviously the Bechdel Test is not a perfect measurement of a film's gender balance and there are ways for a film that passes it to portray gender stereotypes. Then again, passing the Bechdel Test doesn't seem like it should be that hard, but a shocking number of movies don't. I think it's important for us to remember as this test becomes more popular that gender bias isn't black and white and the test isn't the end-all be-all that determines whether a movie should be watched or not. Acknowledge and appreciate the Bechdel Test for what it is: an excellent, easy way to become more aware of the media you are consuming and the media that is out there so you can make informed opinions and choices about what you let influence you.

http://redwoodbark.org/2013/10/powder-puff-ends-in-bench-clearing-scuffle/

How do you think they handled this story based on the fact that there were many rumors and speculations surrounding this issue? Is there anything they should have done differently?

I think the fact that this happened in a middle school should be huge warning signs to all of us. School shootings started in colleges like Virginia tech and moved to high schools. Most shootings that we hear about that occur in grade schools are perpetrated by adults. The fact that this crime was committed by a seventh grader proves that we have a big problem on our hands. My exchange student had never heard of a school shooting happening in her country. This is something that someone in America thought up and now we have to deal with it because it is getting worse.

I found the tone of this article very interesting. I know many people who were previously barred from marriage are planning to get married now that it's legal but this overwhelming evidence that so many who aren't going to bother with the technicality sort of invalidates those who were so vocal against gay marriage in the first place. I also found it heartening to see how many people in the LGBTQ+ community were more focussed on the fact that a relationship is what you make it not what the law declares it because this gives them more power than those who would take their life choices away from them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/04/opinion/friedman-arm-and-shame.html?ref=opinion

Do you think the NYT is covering the Syria debate in an unbiased way?
Does this article get the points across in a way that is easy for a reader to understand (without too much political jargon)?
Do you agree with Friedman about how to handle Syria?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/30/opinion/ecology-lessons-from-the-cold-war.html
What do you think about this? Should this technology be available in the name of national security? Or is it safe to assume once it is created it will end up being used? Should it be used? What are the ethical concerns surrounding targeting a nations food/water source during war time?

I think this article is worth reading and discussing because the effort to include the needs of a minority population should be lead by that minority population. Who else knows what would be best for transgender students but the students themselves? It is in these cases where the GSA or a similar club can act as a spokesperson for minorities in the LGBTQ community. I think that the proposal by the Redwood GTSA is not a perfect solution and if such a change is implemented that there will be problems getting it off the ground but that it is extremely important that the efforts of the GTSA is not written off as unnecessary or over-accommodating. The quickest fix that the GTSA mentioned was the crack down on slurs directed towards those in the LGBTQ community. Getting teens to stop swearing is a lost cause but getting them to stop using harmful slurs should have happened a long time ago.

I think that the part of the reason that this is happening, although I am not excusing it in the slightest, is that there is an underlying feeling that obese people have brought this problem on themselves. Whenever we do health units in class we all learn that McDonalds and Burger King are terrible unhealthy choices so we think that if people eat there all the time and are obese that it is somehow their fault. It's dangerous to make that kind of assumption for several reasons. For one, there is of course other reasons for obesity besides bad diets. For another, we can't know for certain that others are being educated about the dangers of fast food in the same way the we are in health-concious Mill Valley. For another, money is a huge decider when it comes to diet. Even if people know what they should and shouldn't be eating that doesn't mean they can afford to shop at Whole Foods.
But even so obesity has this blame attached to it and that has transferred to the medical profession, which is absolutely unacceptable because doctors should treat everyone the same--that is their job.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/us/californias-new-problem-too-much-money.html?pagewanted=all

What do you think about this? About how it is being handled? Should the money be spent or saved? If it is spent, on what and in what quantities? Who should decide this?

I think the point about urban schools with less resources being less likely to print a regular paper or magazine is an important one. If you think about the Tam News Patrons list, and consider what our budget would look like if we didn't have community members chipping in...it is makes sense that there some areas of our country that can't afford that. The problem with newspapers, I think, is our generation. For example, I agree that they are important but I still don't read them. I think that newspapers provide a layer of protection against some dark government conspiracy to control the press that may or may not evolve in the future. This possible conspiracy would be more easily accomplished online or in some other technological setting. Newspapers, being on paper and thus impossible to hack, are harder to be controlled and that is, of course, the point of them. I think that environmental considerations and costs are important to consider when looking at newspaper circulation but if there is ever a world with no newspapers, then our information will become less reliable.

This is a very disturbing example of school rivalries being taken too far. The article seems to be largely based on supposed sources that aren't identified which takes away from the legitimacy of the story. However, if it did in fact happen, it represents the competition that can clearly get out of control and cause serious damage. In movies like Daddy Daycare all the school rivalry is comical and mostly harmless. In real life, apparently things can get a lot more serious. I don't see how doing this helped the rival school. All it did was take away the children of two families.

This article is certainly funny, but even besides the humor I agree with Julia. People say things online that they would never say in person because clicking a button and sending words out into cyberspace without being able to see the receivers face is easy to do without thinking. The poor grammar and spelling makes some of the comments easy to dismiss as immature or uneducated (which is the focus of the "your grammar sucks" videos which are also on youtube and make fun of others comments), but that doesn't make them not hurtful. We also have to be careful when we judge how offensive a comment is when it doesn't target us personally, which takes us back to the Slang Dictionary and Cassie's article.

I think that Tam made the right call because ultimately the articles have the same information. In general first is better than right because you don't want to stop being a reliable source--if that happens it doesn't matter when you come out with anything because nobody will trust your publication. However, in this case Tam had enough info for an article and we wrote it while redwood waited to publish the same information. If redwood had waited and then kept waiting until the story played out that would have been different. In this case, what we did makes more sense, the reason being that we didn't publish rumors about what was going to happen we just wrote what already had happened.