Activity 1

Tell the next person what s/he and you think!!


This activity will help improve your summarizing skill.
We give you three articles. Find your name below and see which article you have to work on.
Article 1: Smo, Super d, Boss
Article 2: Friends, Goodluck and New American Gospel
Article 3: Jack Bauer, Overdose, and Doengda
* You don’t have to follow the order of the names listed above. That means Smo, Friends, and Jack Bauer do NOT have to be the first ones to start this activity. Whoever starts working on this activity will be considered as the first person.

Each of you will have a different task to do for that article depending on your order.

・ First person: Read the article. Then summarize it (less than five sentences) and write your own opinion about the topic (more than ten sentences). In short, you have to write two short paragraphs. The first one is a summary of the article, and the second one is your response.

・ Second person: Read the article and the first person’s post . Summarize the first person’s response (less than three sentences) and express your own opinion for/ against the first person’s opinion (more than ten sentences).

・ Third person: Read the article and the second person’s essay. Summarize the second person’s response (less than three sentences) and express your own opinion for/ against the second person’s opinion (more than ten sentences).

You should post your comment before Monday midnight.


Article 1
President Obama promised in his campaign to preserve President George W. Bush’s faith-based initiative aimed at helping social service programs sponsored by religious organizations win federal grants and contracts. He also promised a vitally important change: groups receiving federal money would no longer be allowed to hire employees on the basis of their religion.Skip to next paragraph
The idea was to prevent discrimination and preserve the boundary between church and state. But Mr. Obama has not made good on the promise. His February executive order revamping the White House office for religion-based and neighborhood programs left untouched a 2002 presidential directive authorizing religious-oriented programs that receive federal financing to hire and fire on religious grounds.
Also left untouched was a constitutionally suspect 2007 memo concluding that the government cannot order religious groups not to discriminate as a condition of federal financing — even in programs like Head Start, where religious discrimination is outlawed. The memo, based on a far-fetched interpretation of the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, was produced by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. That is the same outfit that wrote the memos authorizing torture.
A coalition of 58 religious, educational and civil liberties groups is now seeking to reverse the 2007 memo. A group letter last month to Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. asked him to direct the current Office of Legal Counsel to review and withdraw the memo. Mr. Holder should do so, and Mr. Obama should revise his February executive order to include the anti-discrimination language that he omitted the first time around.
As a candidate, Mr. Obama drew the right line. Effective social service programs should not be ineligible for federal dollars just because they have a religious affiliation. But they should be required to abide by the same anti-discrimination laws as everyone else. Public money should not be used to pay for discrimination.

“Faith-Based Discrimination.” The New York Times 13 October 2009. The New York Times. Web. 19 Oct. 2009.


Article 2
The last few years have seen a boom in 3-D movies. And a new generation of cameras, projectors and light-processing technologies — relying on such things as circularly polarized light — has transformed the process. Watching old 3-D movies, you felt as if you were looking at a flat screen with occasional protrusions. Watching the re-release of “Toy Story” — and especially the trailer for the 3-D version of “A Christmas Carol” — you feel as if you’re looking through the surface of a snow globe and sometimes as if you’re falling right into it.
Leaving the theater we found ourselves thinking about the best 3-D effect of all: walking out of a 3-D movie and into a 3-D city. (What a subtle world we live in!) The actual world doesn’t have to create the illusion of its three-dimensionality. Its depth is so pervasive that we forget to notice it. We register it with a kind of 3-D equanimity, taking in everything as part of the natural field of view. There’s an unexpected serenity, a calmness, in how we see.
That was the pleasure of walking up Broadway from the theater. When a man looking for spare change said “Hey, bub!” his face didn’t leap into the foreground, nor did we suddenly see ourselves walking toward him from his point of view. The light mist that was falling didn’t hang like the northern lights between us.
It was a pleasure to take 3-D for granted and marvel, for a few blocks at least, at the subtlety of the special effects inherent in ordinary perception.

“Living in 3-D.” The New York Times 18 October 2009 The New York Times. Web. 19 Oct. 2009.


Article 3
New Yorkers in and out of government should be concerned by new statistics showing that homelessness has reached an all-time high and that 120,000 men, women and children resorted to the shelter system during the fiscal year that ended this summer. The spike in homelessness is especially troubling because it has arrived before the onset of winter, which typically drives people in off the streets, filling the shelter system to bursting.
The Bloomberg administration says it is fully prepared for the winter rush and has been adjusting all along for a rise in demand for shelter that began two years ago. Even so, the administration should keep looking down the road to determine if new populations are becoming vulnerable and if new policies might be needed to keep endangered families in their homes.
The city attributes most of the rise in homelessness to the economy. It says the problem is not as bad here as in other cities and would be worse if not for refinements in the system, including programs that channel people into permanent homes and that prevent at-risk families from becoming homeless in the first place. The administration points with justifiable pride to the fact that the shelter system is more humane than it was a decade ago.
Advocates for the homeless and the hungry, however, continue to be suspicious of the city’s motives. They argue that the city has driven some vulnerable families to the brink with bureaucratic obstacles that make it difficult for qualified families to receive welfare and food-stamp benefits. A bone of contention between the advocates and the city dates to 2005 when Mayor Michael Bloomberg ended the practice of channeling shelter residents into apartments paid for by the federal Section 8 housing voucher program, which was then under attack by the Bush administration and in disfavor with Congress.
Under Section 8, people keep subsidies as long as they remain income eligible. In 2007, New York created a time-limited program under which working families get support services and rent subsidies that end after two years. The point was to get as many families as possible to stand on their own, but the advocates are predicting disaster when the subsidies run out and are calling for the city to return to the Section 8 strategy. The Bloomberg administration contends that this program has worked well and that only a tiny fraction of the families have reverted to homelessness. But the city should keep a close watch on these families as the subsidies phase out.

“New York City and the Homeless.” The New York Times 14 October 2009 The New York Times. Web. 19 Oct. 2009.