The Culture of Anonymity
Important Dates & Deadlines
As you’re reading this, you’ll notice that next to the title of this article is my name. This already makes it so that I can be held accountable for anything I write. By having my name published, it’s been identified that these are my own unaltered words. Now that we’ve established the fact that this article is of my own writing, let me get to the actual point before you get too bored.
April 30 - May 21: IB Final Exams June 8: Graduation
May 9: EE Deadline: Preliminary Research & Title/RQ May 28: Group 4 Project June 3: EE Deadline: Formal Outline & Summer Work Plan June 6: 2nd CAS Deadline
May 2: SAT Registration Deadline May 4, June 1: SAT & Subject Tests May 18: One Family Worker June 17: Last Day of School June 19: Report Card Pick-up
Days Off: May 5: Eastern Easter May 6: Sham El Nessim
*College Board Deadlines expire at 11:59 pm Eastern Time, USA Dates and deadlines are subject to change. IB Busy! cannot be held liable for any changes.
Earth Day Earth day was on Monday, April 22nd. Earth day, an annual event, a day dedicated to raising awareness towards our non-stop evil towards the environment. The funniest part is that every year we turn off the lights for a couple of minutes, we don’t let the tap run, preach some jargon about saving the earth and slowly slide back to our evil ways. But the practice of tree hugging and the day we call earth day is more than all that. Aiming to inspire and reward both simple individual acts and larger organizational initiatives that reduce carbon emissions and support sustainability Earth day is a reminder of our duty as global citizens to preserve the planet. This year, Germans battled against the coldest ever winter in...history. Last year, Europe in its entirety saw a deadly cold wave killing more than 824 people. All this because of climate change. Every year, we are affected more and more by our lack of care towards the environment. An issue that may just bring around Armageddon one of these days (no pun intended). But surprisingly, many of us fail to see the importance of Earth day and the environment in our lives. As pollution levels soared above average in Beijing early this January, a middle aged
Yasmine Dessouky Chinese man reportedly said this to the Washington Post: “If we can’t get a handle on the smog problem without abandoning economic growth then it just isn’t worth it. If we can fix the issue and still grow economically, all the better. But really our priority should be the economy.� Surprised? Appalled? Amazed? Well, it’s sad but unfortunately true. As humans we have become more concerned with materialistic gain than our health and not only our future but our children’s future. We’ve become consumed almost. As long as we’ve got money in our pockets and beds to sleep on nothing else matters. We’ve become passive to industry’s effect on our lives. We’ve resorted to ignoring the issue rather than facing it. We must this Earth day, make the effort to become more sustainable. To develop industry and partake in efforts for our world (that can still be financially rewarding) rather than turn our backs on the myriad of issues that will implode. Cheryl Empey
Students:
One Down, Five to Go: Art Extravaganza
Last Day of School Countdown On the day this was published, the 1st of May 2013
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days were left to the end of the academic school year 2012/13. Good luck from the IB Busy! and the IB Busy! team.
After two years of tiring work, the IB Art seniors did not only get a chance to try to earn a good grade in this GLIÂżFXOW FRXUVH EXW DOVR WR VKRZ off their art skills through the Art Exhibition. Since there is no IB Art exam, the exhibition was the most crucial part of the course. The senior IB class included Shehab Fawzy, Engie Ezz el Din, Youssef Abdel Mohsen, Yomna el Barahamtoushy and Nourhan el Gendy. Of course, art is not strictly the traditional talent of holding a pencil to paper and creating something beautiful, but it has also evolved into photography, VFXOSWLQJ ÂżOP PDNLQJ DQG PXFK more. Likewise, each student had their own talent and they were all so beautifully put on display in the exhibition. Accompanying it were the works of aspiring artists from all grade levels. Shehab Fawzy exclusively told IB Busy that “The two years of Art were full of a lot of ups and downs...and downs, but in the end if was worth it. It was the best feeling in the world showing everybody our work, and then laughing at them because
Marina Milad
we had one less subject to deal with during exam time. Congratulations to Nourhan, Engie, Youssef, and Yomna. I can’t wait to see everyone’s future work.� His own piece of work was a comical twist on a poster Obama often used for his campaign. But, the picture of the US President was replaced with that of Egyptian president Mohammed Morsy, and the word “Nope� instead of “Hope.� By just looking at one piece of work we see that IB Art not only augments talent, but also encourages creativity.
Caltiva Creatividad
Class of 2014:
We all love the internet. At least, allow me to make the assumption for the sake of this article. On websites such as Facebook or Twitter, we can feel a certain comfort. People can’t see our faces as we communicate with them (assuming we’re not on Skype), and they only have our words to go on. We are hidden behind a computer screen and our inhibitions are somewhat altered by this fact. So what’s the problem? The problem is precisely the comfort we feel when we can hide behind a computer. At least on Facebook and Twitter, we have our own pictures associated with our own names. This does not stop anyone from creating fake accounts impersonating another person. We are able to create basic anonymity just by making a fake account, and well, it becomes a bit harder to hold someone accountable for what they say when we’re unsure that it’s really them. Anonymity is actually a huge part of the internet, and beneath the purpose of being able to communicate with each other, the internet has the inherent function of being a free-for-all playSaïvann
Class of 2013:
Tarek Roshdy ground for the devious. It’s easy to hide your tracks on the internet through proxies and other encryption, which is precisely what those who steal money off the internet, or more extremely, terrorists, use to hide themselves. For those of us who aren’t terrorists, this opens the gate to cyber-bullying and other nasty things we’ve been warned about since we were tall enough to sit at a computer. Don’t talk to strangers, don’t believe everything you read, you must be 13 or older to sign up. I am sure all readers of IB Busy! are smarter than to use Ask.fm (shudder), but if you are familiar with it, you’ll know that anyone can ask anyone else a question without revealing their identity. This leads to harassment. What this anonymity has done is create a culture of non-identity, a whole domain of thought dedicated to being invisible. The moral of the story is, don’t be too comfortable of your invisibility on the internet. Be wary of others, be sensitive, understand that the internet is a huge place and that anonymity is a part of it. Don’t reject anonymity, embrace it, but understand why it’s important and how not to use it.
Some Addiction Vindication We’ve heard it from our parents hundreds of times: “Back in my day we didn’t have Facebook and whatsapp to distract us!� But what is it that evolved millions of humans from all over the world from people who settled for sending letters that took months to deliver to ones who can’t handle a few hours away from the almighty Internet? Why is it that we have to ensure that we post every picture of every outing on Facebook? And why in the world does it seem appropriate that we post a picture of every meal on Instagram for the world to see? If we look at it from a historical point of view, one can make the assumption that humans have always had the same needs and they expressed them using the materials available at the time. For example, in the early AD years in the Middle East, people would make a point of praying in front of everyone else because being religious was important to them. Later on in the 14th century in Great Britain, people would show off by
The One Family Workers’ Fun Day The One Family Workers’ Fun Day is the second annual event by One Family that aims to bridge the gap between the students and the community around them. We are daily surrounded by the support staff at our school, yet most of us never care to give them the time of day. This is where One Family steps up. It is the purpose of One Family events to close the very large gap between the students and the community that surrounds them. The first One Family event of the year is the Christmas Fun Day and Bazaar, which many of our readers participated in. The second annual One Family Workers’ Fun Day will happen on Saturday the 18th of May 2013. This event is run by AIS4Egypt and in partnership with NHS, and is primarily a student-led event aimed to create bonds within our community here at AISE. All students are strongly encouraged to volunteer and attend this event to help create a better environment for all of us here at AISE. IB Busy! would like to encourage all its readers to volunteer and attend the One Family Workers’ Fun Day.
Marina Milad
the number of servants they had. Now here we are in the 21st century where our needs of showing off and being in control cannot be met by owning slaves. So what do we do? We turn twitter into an online diary. We play Sims so we can boss around a group of helpless people that we have created. We post pictures on Facebook with the caption “OMG I’m so ugly� so we can get approval of others. There is more to our love of the Internet than meets the eye. In fact, most of the things we believe we do without intending to are a result of our mutual basic human needs and our individual personalities. Of course, the point isn’t that we should stay away from the Internet – but have you ever thought of why you do the things you do? Just a closer look at our everyday actions and reactions, and we could learn much more about ourselves.
In the Making Karim G. El-Eita Marina Milad Rebecca Tenna Sarah Gharib Tarek Roshdy Yasmine Dessouky Under the Supervision of Dr. Dina Taher, Ms. Nora Elmarzouky & Mr. Khalid Dinnawi With contributions from Ms. Katherine Gendy & Farahnaz Abdel Bary Pictures courtesy of Class of 2013 IB Visual Arts students, Shehab Fawzy & Farahnaz Abdel Bary IB Busy! is grateful for permission to reproduce any copyright material used in this publication. Acknowledgments are included, where appropriate, and, if notified, IB Busy! will be pleased to rectify any errors or omissions at the earliest opportunity. Copyright Š 2013 IB BUSY!. All Rights Reserved.