Superstar Gang Problems

The article “Paul Pierce Fined 25,000 for Flashing Piru Gangs Signs” by Whudat News Blurbs reported that Paul Pierce got angry in a game and flashed a gang sign to an opposing player. In game three of last years play offs Al Horford hit a jumper over Paul Pierce and Paul flashed up a Piru (pimps in red uniforms) Bloods gang sign. The article states that Paul grew up in Oakland California in the hood and that is most definitely a gang sign, but others think that his hand signal was meant as an OK. I believe that it was a gang sign because nobody would walk over to half court to throw up an OK. I think that there are too many superstars today involved in gangs. Pretty much every other rapper is in a gang and there are many pro athletes involved in gangs. I think that we let superstars get away with gang violence too easy, such as Snoop Dog and The Game. Everyone knows that Snoop Dog is a Crip and The Game is a blood and nobody does anything about it. If the police found a Crip or blood on the streets they would arrest them in no time, but that’s not the case with many of the gang affiliated superstars. I think that Paul Pierce getting fined was a step in the right direction. Now every time The Game raps about his affiliation he should get a fine. If we step up our enforcement of getting rid of gang violence we might not have deaths such as that of Darrent Williams.

School Threats

This article was written about a child who threatened a school and tried to acquire explosives. It states that he could spend up to nine years in jail. Nine years in jail would make him twenty seven when he gets out. That’s a third of his life wasted in jail over a bit of anger that got out of control. Even if he didn’t plan on actually blowing the school and it was just a statement made from his anger, the court will still take you seriously and they wouldn’t show any clemency. After reading “Teen Arrested in Potential School Threat Charged” by the associated press I made a connection to some personal experiences I had with school threats which lead me to ask the question, are school threats taken to seriously. I believe that in most cases people take the average school threat to seriously. I can see why they acted strongly on this threat because he tried to buy explosive but other statements that are somewhat threatening are taken too seriously. I have friends who have gotten in a bunch of trouble because they made a remark about causing violence towards a school in a jokingly way. One of my friends had to go to court and now has to go to anger classes because he made a joke about shooting up a school and a teacher over heard him and took it seriously. Another friend of mine said he was going to kill another student in a joking way but a teacher over heard of him and he got suspended. Another example of people being too uptight was when I told my best friend I had a surprise for him but he wouldn’t be able to find out till after school. He thought I meant I was going to beat him up so he told a teacher and I got a half day in school suspension. When I said I had a surprise it was really some money for a birthday present. I believe that everyone is to up tight about the average threatening statements because most of them are jokes. I think that in some cases it’s alright to take further action on these threats if you have good reason to believe they are actually going to go through with the actions they say they are going to do.

Skeleton Predates Lucy

I read about a newly discovered fossil in the blog “Fossil Skeleton from Africa Predates Lucy” by Josh Wilford. This blog describes a skeleton of a Ardi, an Ardi is a human branch of the prime mate family tree. The Ardi was said to come before lucies on a time scale, which were the previous earliest human branch out there. The Ardi was expected to be alive 4.4 million years ago. When I look at my life of 14 years I think that I have been alive forever, but when u compare that to 4.4 million years that is a puny amount of time. Finding this new skeleton make me wonder what all could have happened in those 4.4 million years or even before that. It makes me wonder how we could go from a Ardi at 4 feet tall and 120 pounds to the human beings we are today averaging somewhere around 6 feet tall and 165 pounds. I know we evolved from apes way back then but what did apes evolve from? I think that all animals evolved from something except for the one original animal. I would like to see the beginning animal if there was one. It would consist of many interesting species such as fish, dogs, human, birds, and many more. It’s very interesting to thing about what animals used to look like and be able to do millions and millions of years ago. It also makes me think about how life came to be upon earth. I wonder if there is a planet out there somewhere where they have life forms like ours, like a parallel earth.

Skyping is just the beginning

What will we do now that the swine flu is causing classroom sizes to dwindle significantly? This question was answered in the blog I read, “Learning and H1N1: Students Skyping into Class” by Anne Smith. This article was about how the H1N1 virus is forcing a change in how students are learning today. The virus is causing many students to be absent from the class room resulting in less of a learning experience. As a result of this many teachers are discovering new ways of maintaining contact with students even when they are at home sick. One of the exciting new technologies is called Skyping. Skyping allows students with a webcam and microphone to listen and watch the class from their beds, and students without a webcam to listen and type/text to the class. I believe Skyping is a huge step forward in education. With all the new computers coming out having webcams and microphones, students will never miss another class and teachers won’t have the burden of teaching the information taught in a single class multiple times. Eventually this will probably eliminate days where that entire schools need to be closed due to weather, bomb threats, disease epidemic, and many other problems. The possible future is interesting to think about. In the not to distant future full body images maybe be able to be projected in to students living rooms. These images, called holograms, will someday be affordable to everyone. Imagine an entire class room inside you living room. With technology advancing so quickly, soon enough you will never have to leave your couch again.

Anxiety of Being Influential

I am reading “Anxiety of Being Influential” written by Jon Caramanica. The article talking about Jay-Z’s new album “The Blue Print Three” and how Jay-Z isn’t as wonderful of a rapper as he used to be but more of a influential aspect of rap today. I believe that if Jay-Z wanted to he could still put out a hit song with in a week. To quote Star Wars, I believe that Jay-Z has gave up his role of the all powerful Darth Vader who gets what ever he wants and is the one who runs everything to more of an Obi Wan type of character who is more of an influential presence to Luke (Luke being all the other rappers). I believe that Jay-Z is getting close to retirement but needed to redeem him self with one last great album which he gave to us as “The Blue Print Three” sense he messed up his last couple albums before. He is almost 40 and is settling down with his wife Beyonce and him as himself will retire soon, but him as a memory will be around forever as one of the best rappers to ever live. When I think of rap I think of Jay-Z and I think of him because his music is so inspiring. For example, after I heard the song D.O.A. I didn’t listen to an auto-tune based song for at least a week. Also another example is when I have something I want to get pumped for I just go to my little album of Jay-Z I have and jam to that, his new song “Run This Town” in particular just gets my adrenaline running. He is a rap icon and he always will be.

The Social Media Revolution

I am writing about the video “social media revolution” by Erik Qualman. It was questioning if the social media revolution was just a fad. It was trying to persuade the audience to believe that it is not. Some of the information presented did a great job of persuading me to believe that it’s not a fad such as the Wikipedia information. Everyone has told me that Wikipedia is not a reliable source of information but this video tells me that “studies show that it’s more accurate than the Encyclopedia Britannica”, and “78% of the articles are non English”. That says a great deal about how the information is evolving in such a fast and efficient manner. Another interesting fact presented in this video Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months. That’s saying that we can form a group of people that’s only smaller to three other countries, China, Indonesia, and the United States, in 9 months. This says that social media has some amazing power able to influence millions of people. An interesting fact is that “the fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year old females. This doesn’t really mean anything to significant more than it is just interesting. It could possibly mean that older females are trying to find a last chance of love before they get to old because so many people these days rely on the internet to find love, just a thought. At the beginning it mentions that “the social media revolution might be the biggest shift sense the industrial revolution” which is a very strong statement, but after watching the video I might have to agree with it.

Comparing "New Literacy" article and Wesch video

The article "new literacy" and the video constructed by Mr. Wesch are about how technology is changing so quick and drastically these days. The article by Clive Thompson talks about how before the internet and text messaging came along, people hardly ever wrote anything unless it was for school. The video by Mr. Wesch just shows how the internet is changing. I connected to the "New literacy" article especially. It talks about how Americans are writing more than any generation before them. This got me thinking about how much i actually do write and it turns out to be more than i ever thought i would. I do it through texting and social networking all night. I never thought i would enjoy writing. Mr Wesch's video shows how much technology has improved and made me realize 20 years ago none of the social networking sites or texting would be popular and i would have no need to write. Without the improvements in technology i would have a very hard keeping in touch with people sense i dislike talking on the phone, it would be pretty hard to live with out texting and social networks. These articles changes my thoughts on writing, from disliking it very much, to appreciating it a great deal.