Sunday, October 11, 2009

10/11 Eng 107 : Typhoon Parma

Typhoon Parma has been plaguing the Philippines with landslides and flooding. With 186 killed, 93 injured, and 40 still missing this can be considered as quite a disaster. There has been 36 inches of rain already and it is on top up the remnants of another earlier typhoon. (typhoon Ketsana) Flooding has affected 32 towns and 2 cities, and some 35,000 people have been forced to go to evacuation centers. Because of the severe flooding many rescue trucks can't reach houses that are in the more flooded areas of the country.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/weather/10/10/philippines.floods/index.html

It is pretty sad that this is going on in a place like the Philippines because it is a third world country and is troubled by a lot of problems already. It is a tragedy because of the amount of damage it has done and there have been almost 200 deaths which is really sad. But, it always seems like there is a really bad tropical storm almost every year in the part of the world. I would say that there is no bias in the story because it is just reporting about the weather and how much damage it has done so far. Some things I'm still wondering is what is going on now and what kind of air and relief is being provided by other countries.

alright back to finishing up my essay :]!

Monday, October 5, 2009

10/4 Eng 107 : Sheep Fires..

Soooooo...

I was driving yesterday when I saw a red glow from the mountains over in the Mt. Baldy area. Then when I get home I go on Facebook, and see the status of a family friend of mine Don Kurth who is the mayor of the City of Rancho Cucamonga. He is talking about how the firefighters from the city are providing aid to stop the fire. It made me wonder more about the fire and what was really going on, so I decided to do some research and this is what I found. The fire started on Saturday around 2 p.m. and were being supported by winds that were going up to 60 mph. The fire is beginning to come closer to the city of Wrightwood, which is in the San Gabriel Mountains. This morning the fire had already burned 7,500 acres and was only 20% consumed, but because of the change in weather and chance of rain there will be relief for the firefighters.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-sheep-fire5-2009oct05,0,6147766.story?track=rss

This fire reminded me about the fires a few years ago that were really close to us in the Rancho Cucamonga area and it was actually kind of pretty to see from far away, but all the problems that come from this fire probably are not that funny. I would say that the story isn't biased in anyway because it's just giving facts about the fire and how it is affecting neighboring cities. The only question I have about the story is what started the fire and what the current status of it is.

:]

Monday, September 28, 2009

9/27 Eng 107 : Walkouts..

Soooooo...

A few days ago I was browsing around on facebook, haha. when I see a status updates from one of my friends about a "UC WALKOUT." Intrigued, I continued to do some research on the topic. Turns out that on the 24th of September all of the UC schools had a planned walkout to protest the increased in student fees, no layoffs, no furloughs, and a variety of other things. Then planned to do this by having supporting UC faculty sign up to support the walkouts, also there were walkouts throughout all the UC schools where students and faculty alike were picketing and protesting in order to save their university.

http://ucfacultywalkout.com/

While reading the above link it was pretty obvious to me that this site was going to be extremely biased towards the side of those participating in the walkout. But after reading about it and seeing the amount of signatures I can see what they're complaining about and why they have a right to. The only thing I'm questioning about all this is if it will actually do anything to change the way UC administration has gone about doing things. But, I think it was a really cool thing that happened. I hope that these walkouts and protests will do something to stop the UC administration from continuing talk of even increasing the tuition for fall 2010 by 30%.

"On September 11 the LA Times and the SF Chronicle reported the UC President’s proposal to increase tuition by 30% by the fall of 2010. That is an unprecedented and absolutely unacceptable fee increase."

http://ucfacultywalkout.com/blog/

Here are some pics of the walkout from Berkeley :

http://i34.tinypic.com/wv4xp5.jpg
http://i35.tinypic.com/2ut18uw.jpg
http://i33.tinypic.com/2a6qwwl.jpg

Well that's just my 2 cents about all this.