http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/money-is-a-terrible-way-to-measure-the-value-of-a-college-major/283290/

Do you think classifying college majors with future salaries is an intelligent way to approach choosing a college major?

First person features are always really interesting because they are uncommon and allow the reader to understand the issue at a more personal layout. However, due to the inherent repetition of homework, the article was somewhat repetitive. I found myself rolling my eyes at the beginning of the new section when I had to hear, again, about having to read Angela's Ashes and do algebra homework. The points he brought up were certainly interesting and living in his daughters shoes for a week was definitely a good way to gain insight into the issue, but the author could have made the article less repetitive. While the repetition may have illustrated how boring and repetitive the homework was, it didn't make me more interested in the article.

I agree with Bella. I think the best way they could have handled this was to get a preliminary, short article (like this one) out on the web as soon as possible after the event, and updated a bit later with more in-depth information, such as the reason for the altercation. This is a good strategy for us to use when something this important and talked-about happens at Tam.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/10/the-case-against-high-school-sports/309447/

How do you think sports at Tam affect the overall school environment? How do you think this compares to the rest of the country?

I think that technology provides the opportunity to disconnect from reality but I think it's entirely up to us the degree to which we get sucked in. It's just like anything else. We can indulge and use the product or exert some self control and stop ourselves from using. Technology will not stop advancing and providing us with more opportunities to disconnect from the real world, so it's up to us to choose whether or not we let it control us.

There is a time and a place for technology. When we are in our own cocoon (such as our house or apartment), it's ok to stay in that cocoon through the use of technology. But when we are out in the world and continue to glue our eyes to a screen, we miss out on opportunities and experiences. I think losing experience is one of the worst things you can do to yourself.

I think that while the author brings up a lot of very interesting and relevant points, they get lost in his inflammatory language. Even though I'm a part of Generation Y, and he is yelling at the critics of Generation Y, I almost feel like he's yelling at me. It's simply unpleasant to read an article that is so aggressive and frankly, unsophisticated. If you need to employ curse words to communicate your ideas, your ideas and way of expressing them are not strong.

http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/08/chick-lit-remixed-the-simple-brilliance-of-gender-flipping/278441/

How do you think gender roles are represented in literature?

This is truly shocking. It speaks to the competition that has been so engrained in some cultures (including America's- obviously not to this extent). Even still, I find it difficult to believe that this actually happened. It doesn't seem logical that someone thought killing two 5-year-olds would help their students to get ahead.

http://www.uclick.com/client/nyt/jd/

What are the characteristics of a good cartoon? How can we incorporate them into our magazine?

I think that we could definitely do a piece like this, perhaps comparing a chain restaurant all around Marin. Photo essays are most effective when they tell a story and speak to something larger than their content. Including the stories about each of the customers contributed even more to the overall idea that all types of people eat at McDonald's.

1)The piece is absolutely accurate. The author mentions "the eternal tension between the encouragement of kooky freewheeling California freedoms and the contradictory, conservative urge to tamp all that down, to maintain the place exactly as it was found by its latest wave of settlers." Marin is most definitely a strange mix of "hippie-dippie" and conservative, depending upon where in the county you are. The water-skiing elephant was a perfect example of this; I really like how he used the story as an opportunity to comment on Marin's climate.

2) I think we are all very narrow-minded in our awareness of the world, because so many teenagers are stuck in the marin-is-so-boring mindset. There are definitely lots of interesting stories that occur in Marin and it would be very beneficial to report on them. We could do a feature on a community within Marin (Sausalito houseboats, Bolinas, the Canal, etc) with mini-profiles of interesting community members as well as interesting events that occurred there.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/16/new-apps-arrive-on-google-glass/?ref=technology

What do you guys think of this technology?

I think that these new measures are appropriate because it is definitely better to be overly cautious than under cautious. There is definitely a possibility that a person may see the attention the Boston bombers received due to their actions and replicate their actions in order to gain press coverage and attention. Increased security could definitely be taken too far, but enforcing preexisting rules seems completely appropriate.

The Bark ran a story about the prevalence of abuse of Adderall at Redwood, and I think Tam also has a bit of a problem with such drugs. CSU Fresno is cracking down on its use on campus. Do you think that using such drugs constitues cheating? Was the university justified in their actions?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/01/us/colleges-tackle-illicit-use-of-adhd-pills.html?ref=us

This is very relevant today because the School Board as well as the larger Marin community is beginning to understand just how prevalent this is in our community. TUHSD is completely redoing their curriculum to help lower income students succeed. At the last board meeting Michael McDowell, Assistant Superintendent and in charge of curriculum, made an hour and a half presentation about what he's doing to help lower income students in TUHSD schools. Another presentation was made on the same subject by a nonprofit organization called Marin Promise. They suggested that our community come together to help students succeed from the time they enter preschool to the time they leave high school. This approach seems very promising because just changing one step of the educational journey. If you improve 9th grade cirriculum but not 7th or 8th grade, students come into 9th grade almost guaranteed to fail because they have not been aptly prepared. There is most definitely an education gap in Marin and I think it's going to take a huge, wide-swept effort to even attempt to remedy it.

This reminds me a lot of Mae's feature (although that might partially be because I spent so much time editing it). Like the mascot change, dissenters rely almost exclusively on the argument of tradition. I find this extraordinarily counterproductive to progress and it is absolutely outrageous that this is still occurring in 2013. I think it demonstrates the defacto racism (in this case, segregation) present in America and even in Marin. I think that issues like these often get shoved under the rug because we think that nothing like this could be occurring. We often refuse to accept that we are perhaps not as progressive as we may believe.

Here's another NY Times Multimedia Article that is somewhat similar to the one we looked at in class. Is it possible to do something similar to this? How effective do you think it was?