Is Mayonnaise an Instrument?

All my life, I've grown up watching Spongebob. I've watched it ever since taking my first steps to watching it instead of doing AP Euro homework. So when the Los Angeles Times claimed that watching Spongebob

kills brain cells, I needed to do some research.

Angeline Lillard and Jennifer Peterson of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville recruited 60 4-year-old children for an experiment. They wanted to compare the instant influence of fast-paced and slow-paced TV shows on children's problem-solving skills, gratification-delaying skills, and attention spans. This group of cognitive skills is collectively known as executive function.

20 toddlers were assigned to watch 9 minutes of a Spongebob clip. Another 20 were assigned to watch 9 minutes of Caillou, a cartoon that is about the everyday life a 4-year-old child. The last 20 were assigned to draw and sketch whatever they wanted for 9 minutes.

After those tests, Lillard and Peterson asked the toddlers to perform several tasks, such as learning to touch their toes when told to touch their head and reciting a strand of numbers in reverse. The results? They found that the kids who watched Caillou or sketched did exceptionally better on every task than those who watched Spongebob.

Now, these tests only proved that watching Spongebob drains attention. The Los Angeles Times takes this information out of proportion by claiming that watching Spongebob makes kids dumber.

"Saying that Spongebob is making you dumber is very different than saying a child's attention is temporarily impaired and that we don't know what the long-term impacts are," says Lillard.

Toddlers watching Spongebob must use a lot of mental resources to try to fathom exactly what is happening in the fast-paced cartoon, while toddlers watching Caillou are allowed more time to process what is happening. This means that watching Spongebob before a test may not be the best idea, but it certainly does not mean that watching Spongebob makes kids dumber.

In conclusion, Spongebob does not kill brain cells, and no, mayonnaise is not an instrument.

Border Patrol can't catch us now

Mira Mesa is a place with much diversity in its people. The sight of a group of people who hang out together and are all the same race is uncommon these days. People of this generation have learned to coexist with people of different race, and it should always stay this way.

However, there are stereotypes floating around about certain races. They're there, hidden in plain sight. For instance, the group that I hang out with consists of mostly Latinos and Filipinos, and I usually hear jokes about Border Patrol directed towards the Latino half of my group and how that because I'm in cross country, Border Patrol can't catch me.

Your race does not really define who you are as a person, so racial comments and stereotypes should cease to exist. But that is not the case, people still tend to make stereotypical remarks because everyone has a little bit of racism in them, as stated in the article, Exposing Hidden Bias at Google.

Obviously, I'm not offended because I know I'm being messed with, that's just the way my friends are sometimes, and that's what makes these stereotypes okay at times. These jokes don't get out of hand at all because we have common sense. We can coexist with others who are not like us, and we don't really judge people by their skin color as much as before.

Having the ability to befriend people who are more diverse than you are is also great because you can learn more about their culture, as in what foods they like to eat or what music they like to listen to.

Overall, interacting with people of different race is what holds our society together. Once we lose the strong bond we hold in this community, Mira Mesa will never be the same and it will change for the worse.

Exposing Hidden Bias at Google Response

Google

Total Employees: 48,600

Pct. Male Employees: 70%

In the article, "Exposing Hidden Bias at Google," the author is claiming that Google favors men over women. He has reason to claim this because Google's workforce consists of mainly men, as shown in the data above. Not only that, but sexist comments in the Google workplace are made too often.

Obviously, Google is doing wrong for just hiring men to work for them. A person should be hired for his/her skill and intellect, not for his/her gender. It is not fair to the women who go into tech, especially the ones who actually should be hired, the ones with the most intellect.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/technology/exposing-hidden-biases-at-google-to-improve-diversity.html?_r=1&referrer=

I downloaded this image directly from the article because it caught my eye and this image perfectly represents the bias in the Google workplace. The two drawings represent the Android logo if it had a gender, with the male one on the left, and the female one on the right.

The reason why the male logo is only used is because of sexism. Android does not see the female logo as one that could attract people to buy Android phones.

In conclusion, people with a good work ethic and a strong intellect should be hired for jobs, no matter what gender. Gender in no way can affect the creativity and progress of the job being done, and thinking so reveals a hidden bias.