Freedom, Liberty and Rights

We read the essasy "Freedom, Liberty and Rights: Three cautionary Tales" by Aryeh Neir. This essay talks about Orwell's view on these such words: freedom, liberty, and rights as unclear and misleading words because their is no clear definition of them. Neir believes these words go more along with what Orwell said about corruption."But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought." He agrees with Orwell that the government uses these words as a form of corruption, as a form to get us to go along and support them. I never really put much thought into those words themselves and their true meaning until reading Orwell's and Neir's essays. I agree with both of them, i do feel that the government twists things around by using these words as an excuse to go on war(Iraq) and such. This means that as Americans we have a responsibility to keep ourselves informed and not only listen to politicians but analyze what they are saying, how they are saying it and why.

Reporters and Rhetoric

The essay Reporters and Rhetoric by Geoffrey Cowan, agrees with Orwell's perspective on the essay "Politics and the English Language". He also adds on that the media should also be aware and be careful with their word choice when writing articles or providing news coverage. Reporters should be making sure to not only cover the issues but also spend time analyzing the issues for themselves. As he says, " Rather than allowing any political figure or administration to define the terms of public debate, reporters and editors should examine the issue for themselves and reach an honest conclusion." I strongly agree with Cowan's argument. It should be the reporters job to get all the facts out and use them to form their own conclusion on whats going on...instead of flipping through the channels and hearing the same report over and over again about the same issue just said by different people. This serves as a reminder that we cant always go by what the reporters write we as Americans owe it to our country to keep ourselves informed and to form our own conclusions based on our own ideas and perspectives.

The Limits Of Language

In the essay, The Limits Of Language, Nicholas Leman agrees with Orwell's 1946, Politics and the English Language essay that clear language can lead to better politics. He agrees that simple, clear and to the point is better than something long complicated and confusing. He adds however that a more frightening thing to him than the corruption of language is the corruption of information. He feels that we should guard and focus more on the corruption of information. I feel that we should focus on both english lanuguage and the corruption of information. I feel that the corruption of english language sometimes twists the truth/facts and that ends up going along with the corruption of information.

Revising

In Harris book Rewriting, he gives us tips in how to revise our writings. He suggests we first ask ourselves questions as a form of coming to terms, forwarding, countering, and taking an approach. He mentions three general steps in writing. The first one being "drafting, or general text". Second being "revising, or working with the text you've created, rethinking and reshaping what you want to say" . The third being "editing, or working on your text as an artifact, preparing the final version of your document". I thought this was great advice. I always have a hard time revising and usually don't even put much effort into it because I just end up getting overwhelmed. With Harris advice however he makes it easy to organize yourself in revising by coming to terms with your writing, forwarding, countering and taking an approach to your essay. I also found the advice of the three general steps very helpful. Especially to me because I didn't even have a writing process or knew of this writing steps. I usually write, revise, and move my essay around as I go along. If I can focus on certain writing goals at a certain amount of time it would make my writing process easier for me.

Teenage Girl Raped In School Premises During Homecoming Dance

The picnic area in the courtyard at Richmond High School in Richmond,Calif.

where police say a 15-year-old girl was brutally gang raped. (cnnnews.com)

As I was skimming through the news in cnnnews.com I read an article that shattered me. The article is about a 15 year old girl all dressed up and ready to go to her homecoming dance but getting brutally raped and beaten for 2 1/2 hours in school premises during the homecoming dance. A total of 10 people were involved in the evil act and another 10 people watched with out calling 911.The victim was left abandoned unconscious under a bench. The article focuses on the victims friends speaking out against school officials over safety and how they don't even feel safe in their own school.You can find the article here,

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/10/29/california.rape.victim.friend/index.html

I don't believe any valuable information is missing in this article.I was deeply disturbed after reading this article. They were so many wrongs done, I didn't even know where to start. There was the obvious wrong which was the rape but they were 10 people involved in the rap and beating! How horrible is that?! To make matters even worse there was 10 other people who just watched and didn't even bother to take any action! What has the world turned to?! The people involved in the rape and beating are getting their punishment in jail but I feel that the people that just watched should get some kind of punishment as well. If you watch and just let harm be done, your participating with the crime! I also feel that school officials are at fault here as well for not supervising the school campus and not keeping the school area safe for students. The students in this article mention that they were men outside the dance room area and the school officials did nothing about it. The incident happened in school property for crying out loud!It's obvious the school officials weren't doing their job in keeping the school campus safe. This article is important because it serves as a horrible reminder to school officials to make sure to keep campuses safe to ensure that tragedies as these don't occur to any other innocent students. It also serves as a reminder to speak up! If you see a disaster as this occur and don't do anything about it, you are participating in the evil event. Just think about it, if you were the one getting raped and beaten wouldn't you want someone to speak up for you?

Dont Blame Us For Your Obesity Blame Yourself.

While I was reading news on abcnews.com this article on coca cola caught my attention. You can find the article here http://abcnews.go.com/Health/WellnessNews/coke-ceo-argues-merits-proposed-soda-tax/Story?id=8786606&page=1. The article talks about proposed soda taxes intended to help with America's problem with obesity and Coca-colas reaction on it. This article seemed bias against coca-cola and more for the proposed taxes on sugar sweetened beverages intended to help with obesity. Coca-cola argues in this article that they are not responsible for obesity problem but the peoples choices. However this article seemed to focus on countering coca-cola responses. I agree with Coca-cola however. I believe that proposing taxes on sugar beverages wont help obesity. People are the only ones that have control on their diet and decide what to eat. For example, too much pizza and fast food is unhealthy and taxing it all is not going stop obesity, its up to the people to decide on themselves to eat healthy and exercise.I found this article important because it serves as a reminder to us to stop blaming food or drinks for our weight and blame ourselves because we are the only to blame for the lifestyle we chose to live.

White House accuses Fox News of not being a real network.

As I was looking through Foxnews.com I read over an article titled, " White House Escalates War at Fox News" that caught my attention. You can find the article here, http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/10/18/white-house-escalates-war-fox-news-1925819282/?test=latestnews. The article was about the white house accusing Fox news of focusing on just one point of view in there articles and called them out on not being a real news network.
This article of course was bios towards the fox news side, since they wrote it. I don't think they left out any valuable information on this article. I personally believe that every news network is bias towards a point of view and push that point of view on there articles because when your writing or talking about news your opinion comes out some how. Its simply unavoidable. As long as there not messing up the facts and making up stuff in there news articles, I would still consider them a real news network. That's why when you read over or hear current issues on news networks or wherever, you have to check more than one source because an article or news story is always gonna be a little bias towards one side. I found this article important because it comes to show how the media is bias just like we are towards one side of an issue.Its unavoidable for there opinion to come out on there articles and affect our view point on that same issue. So its important to read several articles and always get different point of views on an issue or event so we can form our own ideas.

Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize

As I was reading through some articles, I read over an article in CNN.com that was about all the buzz Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize had caused. This article grabbed my attention. You can find the article here: http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/10/09/obama.nobel.peace.reaction/index.html
The article was about Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize and the huge scandal it caused everywhere on the web: facebook, twitter, etc. Everywhere their was some news about Obama winning the prize and people's reaction to it. Although I think this article tried to stay unbiased by bringing up comments from both supporters of Obama winning the Prize and those who did not agree he deserved it. I did feel it was biased because it did bring up more of the negative comments towards the scandal. However it does illustrate the big commotion it caused. I did read others in CNN.com that made it clear that they did not believe Obama deserved the Nobel prize, such as : http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/10/10/obama.nobel.ed.henry/index.html. everywhere seems to have that same negative titles towards Obama receiving that Peace Prize. Foxnews.com for example in the article: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2009/10/10/abraham-cooper-harold-brackman-obama-dalai-lama-human-rights/, with their title "Peace Prize Winner Obama No Champion of Human Rights" did not seemed to believe Obama deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. Although I'm sure there must be a few articles that spoke out in favor of Obama deserving the Peace Prize i did not run into one in any news websites. Many of the articles seemed biased that Obama did not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. I feel as if most of America is losing hope in our president and in the promises he has made. I feel that he has accomplished alot and that the fact that he is our first African-American president proves that. I think the reason most of America does not believe he has deserved this award is because he has made several promises and we are still expecting more from him. I do feel though that the Nobel Peace Prize hadds more pressure on Obama to go through with his promises and succeed as a good president.

Even With High Unemployment, Employers Find it Hard to Fill the Well Payed Jobs.

Looking over the news I came across a headline at Foxnews.com that shocked me, "Even as Layoffs Persist, Some Good Jobs Hard to Fill ". How could there be ANY jobs hard to fill, I asked myself, especially in our current crisis and with unemployment rates being so high? Well according to the Associated Press, even with unemployment rates up to 10% and with 15 million people hunting for work some employers can't find qualified applicants to fill in the good paying jobs such as nursing, engineering, energy research etc. You can read more on this article here: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,559961,00.html. It’s hard to believe they are still good paying jobs with positions still open and struggling to find qualified applicants with so many people unemployed. Since our economy has dropped low it has caused many businesses that used to provide jobs that didn’t demand much experience or education to close down and therefore left all those people jobless. This has mainly to do with the applicants not having the education or experience needed for the opening jobs and with the employers being more demanding when it comes to finding the right applicant for the job to assure they won’t be losing any money. This current situation just comes to show how difficult finding a job has become and how much education is needed to succeed in finding a proper job in these current times.

Obama is proposing longer school days and shorter vacations

President Obama is proposing longer school days for kids and shorter vacations. You can read more on this story in Foxnews.com in this website :
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/27/obama-proposes-longer-school-day-shorter-summer-vacation/ . Although the article did seem a little biased in favor of Obama's proposal, I still agree with it. The article did point out that adding longer school hours would demand more money but failed to mention how this would impact our current economy. However, I still believe that investing money and more time into our children's education is a benefit for all. Especially with our technology advancing everyday more and more, we need to invest more time and money into children's education to ensure that America's children keep up with our advanced technology and with the rest of the globes as well, so they can help us move forward into a brighter future for us all. As Foxnews.com provided, "Kids in the U.S. spend more hours in school (1,146 instructional hours per year) than do kids in the Asian countries that persistently outscore the U.S. on math and science tests -- Singapore (903), Taiwan (1,050), Japan (1,005) and Hong Kong (1,013). That is despite the fact that Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong have longer school years (190 to 201 days) than does the U.S(180)". Although U.S kids spent most time in school then most foreign countries I agree with Obama, adding more school hours will benefit kids and in several ways, for example it will help them become more focused in school, stay out of trouble and will allow them more time with the teacher to go over any difficulties they are having. This will especially benefit low income children who do not have the resources they need to study or do not have the help they need to advance in school. Overall investing money and time into America's children is an investment for America's future.