2nd Edition November2013

The
Doherty Spectrum
Jumpstarting the
Holidays pg. 3
Black Friday:
Increase in Chaos
pg. 2
Photo by Laci Durham
1
Opinion
The Spectrum
Minimum Wage
M
inimum wage is a
topic that has come into
debate several times over
the years, but how does it
affect us? Minimum wage is
a classic example of a good
intention, but a bad idea.
Minimum wage is the lowest
wage permitted by law or by
a special agreement. As of
now in Colorado the minimum
wage is $7.78 and has risen
over the years, yet some families still find it hard to make
ends meet. The average
person that makes minimum
wage tends to make around
$14,500 to $15,000 annually.
“I am a tipped worker
at a restaurant, so according
to Illinois law I only have to
be paid 60% of the minimum
wage, or $4.95 an hour. I
am a single mother with a 5
month old son. I am worried
Editorial by Leah Urie
because with the economy
going so badly, people aren’t
eating out as much or tipping
as much,” waitress Jenna S.
said.
“I have been working
at McDonald’s for two years
and it is very difficult to make
ends meet on only $8.25
an hour. Right now we are
dependent on food stamps
because the cost of living is
so expensive,”
cook Roger M. said.
People like Jenna and
Roger are failing to afford the
basic necessities because
their lack of pay, and are
forced to rely on the government for support. People often
find themselves late on bills,
without enough money for
new clothing, and are powerless to change their situation
because of peoples’ lack of
education they are forced to
have a low wage job, and
not only that, currently there
aren’t many jobs open. The
job market is such an issue
that the unemployment rate is
high, so people are clinging to
their jobs despite the fact they
get paid very little.
Times are tough and
people are getting stressed
about money, and are working
hard to have a comfortable
life. It’s very unfortunate that
people have to rely on other
resources because the job
they work hard for pays them
very little.
As minimum wage
rates rise, people will hopefully have a bright and prosperous future.
“Super”
Heroes
M
Editorial by Taylor Green
any people always debate what the exact definition of a super hero is. They
debate if people need powers to be a super hero or if
anyone can be a super hero.
People debate what makes a
hero super. According to Dictionary.com, the exact definition of a super hero is: a hero,
especially in children’s comic
books and television, possessing extraordinary, often
magical superpowers.
Although the definition says you need to have
super powers to be a “super
hero”, do you really need
amazing powers to be a hero?
The answer to this question is
no, you don’t.
Gabriel Inglacius is the hero
of comedy,” junior Kennie
Richardson said.
Although Gabriel
does not physically have powers, he still has the ability to
make people pee their pants.
Of course we have
the heroes at home, and the
people that inspire us, but
let’s not forget the people
who protect us and serve our
nation. Veterans Day has just
passed so let’s all take the
time to commemorate and
thank the greatest “super”
heroes of all, our nation’s
military. No matter what the
definition says these people
are “super” and the defiantly
are heroes
Everyone has seen
at least one superhero movie.
Whether is it Superman or
Ironman, we can all agree
superhero movies are all
very entertaining. There is no
doubt that everyone has seen
a superhero movie.
“Cat Women is my
favorite,” junior Sara Bishop
said.
There is not one person in
this world that doesn’t have a
favorite.
Everyone can be a
“hero,” maybe not with powers, but we all have the ability
to help or save the community
and people around us.
Editorials
2
The Spectrum
News
Black Friday:
Increase in Chaos
Disclaimer:
Parents, Staff, and Students:
The views and opinions of The Spectrum’s writers do not necessarily reflect
the views and opinions of the staff as
a whole or Doherty High School. If you
have any questions or concerns regarding the content of The Spectrum,
please contact the Editor, Olivia Stinett,
or the Advisor, Mrs. Bonville.
-The Spectrum Staff
O
ver the years, it seems as
if the chaos that always
comes along with Black Friday has gradually increased.
Deaths and injuries are on
the rise and the want for lowpriced bargains is increasing
as well. In 2012, Black Friday
weekend hit a record of $59.1
billion, up from $52.4 billion in
2011. As the years pass, the
number of sales during the
Black Friday time period gets
higher and higher.
What exactly is it that
attracts so many people to
stores Thanksgiving night?
Many believe that the increase in interest pertains to
the fact that Americans are
becoming more and more of
a consuming society. People
want more and more, even if
Story by Noelle Coultrip
they don’t necessarily need
it. Unfortunately, a side effect
to the increase in shopping is
a very large amount of Black
Friday-related deaths and
injuries. In 2008, three people
got trampled to death on
Black Friday at a Wal-Mart in
Valley Stream, New York. This
is just one example of how
dangerous this competitive
shopping is.
In order to decrease
the injuries, the Occupational
Safety and Health Administration has issued safety guidelines and regulations since
2008. Despite these updates,
Black Friday remains increasingly dangerous. Quite a few
people believe that large companies are behind the Black
Friday chaos in order to rake
in more money. This theory
is more than reasonable. In a
consumeristic society like the
United States, all that matters to most people is money.
People’s lives are just a small
price to pay according to
some big businesses. In order
to make Black Friday more
effective, stores have added
new hours, different types of
sales, and a bigger online focus; all in an effort to increase
sales.
In the future, Black
Friday sales will most likely
increase. Hopefully, without
any more deaths and injuries.
All we can do is be hopeful
that things will change for the
better.
Brandomania
Story by Anna Kusakina
I
t has become so natural
that coffee associates in
our minds with “Starbucks”,
and when we think about
buying food for dinner we
mention “Wal-Mart”. We don’t
think about how our lives are
influenced by brands. We
believe in the created images and our subconscious
automatically give us a name
of a brand connected to the
image. That forms some sort
of connections “brand-image”
in our brains. 75% of our buying decisions are based on
emotion. So basically, what’s
happening is brand names
have a physiological effect on
consumers, urging them to
choose one product over the
other based on their perception of it, rather than hard
facts.
Let’s dig deeper.
Apple, Google, McDonald’s,
Coca-Cola…I bet when you
read these brand names you
imagine their logos without
hesitation. Logos, advertising
slogans, last TV ads – we can
easily recall the entire marketing means. Even if they will
wake us up in the middle of
the night and ask. I wish we
could remember our school
lessons as easily. What does
it signify? Well, only one thing:
people who are responsible
for the marketing of companies use neuropsychology – a
scientific field concerned with
understanding relationships
between the human brain, behavior, and mind. So broadly
speaking, customers become
something like laboratory rats:
marketers further an advertising campaign; if people run to
local stores to buy a product, it worked. If not, they try
something else.
But penetrating into
kids’ or teens’ subconscious
is easier than into adults’.
Kids usually try hard to get
what they want. So when, for
example, a kid sees a toy in
the TV commercial, he will
“torture” his parents by constant whimpering until they
finally give up and buy the
toy. So marketers go further:
they expand kids’ products
market. To the existing huge
toy and entertainment industry they add “adult’s” stuff.
They use the desire of kids “to
be like an adult” and put on
the market different kinds of
make-up made for little girls
and real car models designed
for little boys. According to
the author of the book “Cinderella Ate My Daughter”
(Peggy Orenstein) nearly half
of girls from 6 to 9 regularly
use lipstick and lip gloss, and
girls at the age from 8 to 12
spend on make-up more than
$40 every month. When a kid
goes to kindergarten and then
to school the principle ‘I want
the same’ starts to work. So
basically the implantation of
the desire of buying something in one or two kids’ heads
will lead to the expansion
of the desire in the group of
kids, and this method became
widely used by marketers. For
example, such a phenomenon
as a partisan marketing was
born. Approximately 40,000
girls all around the US work at
Girls Intelligence Agency that
calls itself “a unique organization comprised of approximately 40,000 ‘Secret agents’,
ages 8-29, living all over
the US. GIA communicate
with these Influencers daily,
seeking out their opinions,
ideas, motivations, dreams
and goals and translates that
information to help hundreds
of corporations in the US to
strategically reach and connect with the female market.”
In other words, to understand
how to increase its sales.
Coolhunting is from the same
field. Coolhunting was born
in 1990s when corporations
were fighting for its survival.
The job of coolhunters is
to make observations and
predictions in changes of new
or existing cultural trends that
will help to sell a product.
However, don’t think
that adults are not exposed
to the principle “I want the
same.” Sometimes people
buy a special brand to “reflect”
their belongings to a group, or
just show others: “Look at me,
I am cool”.
It does not mean you
should not buy brand name
products, but you need to
know the reason why you buy
it. Brands are usually overpriced and it is not a guarantee of quality. Therefore, think
before buying.
Student Life
3
News
The Spectrum
Biological Clock
Story by Jessica Carmona
S
cientists from UCLA have
recently discovered a
new “biological clock” that
measures the age of the tissues in certain parts of the
human body. Steve Horvath, a
professor of human genetics
at the David Geffen School of
Medicine at UCLA and of biostatistics at the UCLA Fielding
School of Public Health used
methylation, a natural process
that alters DNA over time, to
develop an “epigenetic clock”
that analyzes the effects of
age on tissue. Horvath and
his team found that a woman’s breast tissue ages faster
than the rest of their bodies
and that cancerous tissue is,
on average, 36 years older
than other tissue.
Using more than eight
thousand samples from prior
research into DNA methylation in human tissue, Horvath
and his team identified 353
DNA markers from 51 types
of cells and tissue, including heart, lungs, brain, liver,
cartilage, and kidney that
change throughout the lifetime
of humans from birth to death.
These DNA markers form a
pattern that Horvath used to
create a statistical model.
“[The] First-ever accurate age predictor that works
across most tissues and cell
types,” Horvath said.
Many people have
raised the question of whether
or not the epigenetic clock
would lead further into discoveries of a possible fountain of
youth.
“It’s another way of
saying we fall apart,” Darryl
Shibata , M.D., professor of
pathology at the University
of Southern California’s Keck
School of Medicine said.
Though it is a way of
saying we fall apart, others
still wonder whether or not the
process may be able to give
scientists a way to reverse
the effects and make someone live longer than they are
predicted to by statistics.
“The general idea that
you can read a genome and
it reflects the aging process
is probably correct. But the
weakness is that this study
doesn’t provide a mechanism,
and without a mechanism it’s
just a correlation,” Shibata
said.
Fifty
Years Later
Story by Laci Durham
M
id-day on November
22, 1963, in Dallas,
TX, one of America’s most
beloved political figures was
assassinated. Thousands of
on-lookers watched as the
president they had come to
adore was shot, sitting in
the backseat of a convertible. At 1:00 p.m. President
John Fitzgerald Kennedy was
pronounced dead at Parkland
Memorial Hospital. His assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, 24,
was arrested an hour later
at the Texas School Book
Depository. Two days later
he too would be shot to death
outside Dallas Police headquarters. Nearing the 50th
anniversary of these events,
56 year-old Matt Durham is
reminded of the ramifications
of JFK’s death, and tells of
Kennedy’s legacy, as well as
the images of Lee Harvey
Oswald’s death captured on
national TV.
“My dad was a rancher and farmer, John Kennedy
was a friend to young farmers.
The assassination brought a
profound sense of loss to our
house and our community.
Jackie Kennedy was actually
the same age as my parents.
They identified with her. Being young and vibrant, JFK
was the epitome of optimism.
He established a sense of
enthusiasm in the American
people. He created a vision
of heightened nationalism
and personal responsibility
that translated into a time of
growing prosperity and social
awareness,” Durham, six
years old at the time of JFK’s
death, said.
According to Durham, the
years before JFK’s assassination were years of innocence
and American enthusiasm.
He remembers the simplicity
of the time. He recalls things
such as his father buying a
new tractor in 1961. He is
reminded of 1962 when his father bought a new ranch, and
the thrill of starting to school
in 1963. However, more vividly remembers the abrupt end
to these simpler times.
“When JFK died, we lost our
innocence; we lost that enthusiasm that he was building in
the American people. It took
a while for our enthusiasm
and optimism to return, but
our innocence never did. We
had come face to face with
evil,” Durham recalls.
Two days later,
Americans were still glued to
the television set. This was
actually the first time stations
had enacted twenty-four hour
news coverage of an event,
something that would not occur again until September 11,
2001. They watched as Lee
Harvey Oswald was being
transferred from Dallas Police
Quarters to the county jail,
and was shot and killed by a
Dallas Nightclub owner, Jack
Ruby.
“As a six year old, the
sight of a man being murdered on national television
was disturbing and totally
unexpected. It was uncom-
mon to see violence on TV
in 1963. However, with the
broadcast of Oswald’s assassination, the world changed
for all of us for all time. It
seemed that those institutions whose primary purpose
was to protect human life had
failed terribly within forty-eight
hours. We lost more than our
innocence. It was like watching a cartoon at first, except it
was not a fictitious depiction.
It was stark reality. In some
ways it was actually like what
we saw 38 years later unfold
before our eyes with the twin
towers,” Durham said.
As the anniversary of
the tragic event approaches,
the world is still fascinated
by the Kennedy assassination, and the Kennedy legacy.
All across the nation people
are uniting in remembrance
of JFK. News stories and
documentaries are flooding
television, covers of commemorative magazines have
Kennedy’s face plastered on
them, and towns are wholly
coming together for remembrance events. A whole new
generation is becoming aware
of the reality and feeling
behind what happened on
November 22, 1963, and the
events following that dark day
in American history. Durham
commented on what Kennedy’s vision for future America
was, and how he believes
Kennedy’s hope and visions
are still relevant today.
*Cont. after “Jumpstarting The Holidays”*
Jumpstarting
the Holidays
Editorial by Olivia Stinett
S
t. Patrick’s Day decorations during Valentine’s
Day, 4th of July decorations
before the last day of school,
Christmas tree nurseries before we even get to wear our
Halloween costumes – these
are the kinds of shopping
schedules society currently
has. We can no longer enjoy
the holidays on the day they
occur, but instead, we are
forced into listening to Christmas music on the radio before
our trick-or-treating candy
even becomes stale. With the
holidays quickly approaching,
this big-business marketing scheme becomes highly
prominent
With the abundance
of advertising on TV, Pandora, and YouTube, many
families get their holiday
shopping done towards the
end of September. Although
Black Friday is still a popular
date, many do not want the
hassle of lines, “Out of Stock”
signs, and frantic rushing, so
instead, avoid the chaos by
completing their shopping in
the fall. Some parents even
hide their children’s presents
for as long as six months!
Businesses are overwhelmed with the pressure of
expectations to have bigger,
better displays, products, and
sales every year that they
begin to encroach on other
holidays. The go, go, go! of
our time prohibits the enjoyment of a holiday and expects
something closer to a holimonth. Consumers no longer
want Black Friday sales; they
expect a month or two of
sales.
“If you don’t have a
sale posted on your window,
you really won’t get the traffic
you want,” store owner Nicholas Han said.
We complain about
the absurdity of seeing Christmas decorations before the
snow and Halloween costumes before school begins,
but it is truly the consumers’
fault. Our impatient society is
incapable of enjoying life as it
comes, and instead, demands
more from businesses, forcing
them to infringe their sales
into other seasons.
“In his inaugural
speech Kennedy spoke of
the ‘passing of the torch’ to
future generations. This was
one of his biggest symbols
of hope. We need to return
to that place. In the same
speech he spoke his most
memorable words, ‘Ask not
what your country can do for
you. Ask what you can do for
your country.’ Our society has
lost this sense of nationalism
and personal responsibility.
We need to strive to regain
this perspective. The 50th
anniversary of these cataclysmic events is the perfect time
to examine ourselves and
remember those principles for
which JFK literally paid the
ultimate price.”
Student Life
4
Community
The Spectrum
I am Thankful For...
“My wonderful family and
friends”
“Concerts
and music”
“The food I have on the
table, and Doherty’s effort
to serve those who don’t.”
“Brendon Urie”
“Ralph”
“Harvest of
Love”
“Christmas,
because it’s so
close”
“My brotha”
“Starbucks”
Community