TOW #27 (Written)- When a Culture is Destroyed

A powerful earthquake — the country's worst in 80 years — rocked mountainous Nepal on Saturday, killing more than 1,800 people and leveling buildings and centuries-old temples. Dozens if not hundreds remained trapped under mounds of rubble.

Hospitals in the capital of Katmandu were so crowded that many of the injured were treated outside in the open, according to local media. The magnitude-7.8 quake, which shook a wide swath of northern India, Bangladesh, Tibet and Pakistan, also triggered avalanches in the Himalayas, killing at least 10 people on Mount Everest.

Nepal police said at least 1,865 people were killed. Given the scale of the destruction, the death toll was expected to rise. An emergency Cabinet meeting designated 29 districts as crisis zones, the Home Affairs Ministry said.

Tens of thousands of people, fearful of aftershocks bringing down more buildings, gathered outside during the night.

"My entire neighborhood is still in shock," said Chiranjibi Gurung in Katmandu. "My children who were inside the houses at the time of the earthquake are scared to go inside now even at this time of the night."

Around 180 bodies were pulled from the ruins of the nine-story Dharhara Tower in the center of the capital, China's official Xinhua News Agency reports. It said about 200 were feared trapped in the rubble of the tower in the city's historic Basantapur Durbar Square.

"We had heard the earthquake stories from our ancestors and how I remember my grandparents telling me about the devastation of the 1934 earthquake and how it uprooted the Dharahara Tower then," said Sabita Lal of Katmandu. "I saw the same thing happen today to the tower. It was a massive one."

TOW # 26- Hillary 4 Pres? (Visual)

               In today's news, there are many articles dedicated to Justice Sotomayor, an associate justice of the Supreme Court. The articles are covering all sorts of topics including how race is the most important issue to her, how being a minority is the reason for her votes during 2009, and other subjects that are along the same lines. Then, I came along this political cartoon that has grasped the attention of many. The author, written in a blurry manner on the side of the cartoon, was able to include everyone's views on this matter in one picture. The cartoon displays, what I saw as, Barack Obama on the left saying that he throughly checked Sotomayor's background before he picked her to be on the Supreme Court. On the right, is his checklist for Sotomayor, and it only includes four points of qualifications that are seen as the biggest debates when it comes to politics. The viewers, people interested in the news and information about Sotomayor, mostly agreed with the political cartoon saying that the picture represents everything that shouldn't be present in a judge on the Supreme Court. The viewers do sound racist, but Sotomayor did publicly state that race is a huge matter to her. To Americans, it sounds like she has some sort of safe zone for people of color, which is frankly a little scary because she does hold a lot of power. However, as a woman of race, I don't feel threatened by Sotomayor's outburst on people of color. Now, people could argue I am coming from a biased side, but I don't think that an intellectual woman could make such a poor decision. I think that all she meant by it was that race matters to her, but not the extent people are thinking. As a woman of color, nobody expects her to act aggressively to others in her situation, but with her education and skills, she does not seem like the type to favor others.  Ultimately, the purpose of this cartoon was to portray the different viewpoints of Sotomayor and her recent statement of race mattering to her. 

TOW #25 (written)- The Technology Gap by Ben Wineston

One of the most powerful parts of this article was not the words, but instead the pictures. One picture could mean as much as a thousand words they say. These pictures, or rather, collages that embellished the article were full of "It Girls" and just at a glance you could recognize that at one point every woman up there had been idealized into an it girl. Then there's the pictures of magazine covers-most notably Vouge and Vanity Fair-which have the it girls posing. Not only does this sometimes create the "maniac pixie dream girl", as 500 days of Summer aptly put it, but it expects woman to conform to the standard of that one woman. It also pits women against each other in competition to be the "it girl" when really, we are all the It girl. Now the It girl category is diversifying, take Lupita Nyongo and Benazir Bhutto, but this image limits the woman that it holds. Now, the media expects them to be the exact mix of sexy, demure, smart, but not too smart, different, but not too different, and they take away the power of the woman to define herself. One example of this is Clara Bow, from the 1920-30's. She was the starlet of Hollywood, until she went too much out of the box and proclaimed herself a feminist, gambling, drinking, and partying too much. But of course, the it girl mantle was passed on, as it always is. Take the quick switch from Jennifer Lawrence, to Lupita Nyongo, to Rosmund Pike. The article says, “It's another to see the term-and all its insidious, objectifying power- resurface, proliferate, and thrive nearly a centuary later. Only this time, it's saddled not on one woman, but any woman who seems primed to be more than an object-an It, passive and pliable-in the narrative of their own lives.”