Monday, October 5, 2009
4th Period Current Event 10/9
Please post your current event for Friday, October 9 below. Remember to include the link to the article you read, provide the topic of your article, and write at least 5-6 sentences discussing your opinion of the article. You may also use video clips or podcasts for your current event.
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http://www.abcnews.go.com/Health/SwineFluNews/shipments-swine-flu-vaccine-arrived/story?id=8758469
ReplyDeleteIt's great that the government has finally found a vaccine to the swine flu or the H1N1 flu. It seems a bit late though. I do think that it's fair that Le Bonheur Children's Medical Center in Memphis, Tennessee and a Indiana got the vaccines first (because they were hit harder than other areas) as well as the vaccine being limited to health care workers. It makes a lot of sense because if the ones caring for the sick got sick, then there would be nobody to care for the sick. The downside is that there are not enough vaccines (currently) to vaccinate everyone. Anyone who's afraid of the swine flu is pleading with the doctors for the vaccine or to be sent to the top of the waiting list, but some hospitals haven't even gotten the vaccine yet. Personally, I don't think it's that big of a deal. It's just a flu that can infect anyone. It's only bad for pregnant women or people with some pre-existing health problems.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/09/10/60minutes/main4935509.shtml
ReplyDeleteI am excited to see that in recent years medical technology has advanced enough to make this possible. As stated in the article, before this particular project there was very little in the way of prosthetic technology. You could get a clamping hand controlled by muscle twitches and that was the height of technology. However now you can have a fully functional "hand" with an opposable thumb, individually manipulated, articulated fingers that relies on residual nerve impulses as its primary means of control. What i find most amazing however is not that the robotics and control methods of this arm are so advanced, but rather that it has about 80 sensors that relay tactile information back through residual nerve endings to the brain allowing one to "feel" the prosthetic hand and have tactile input without relying on their eyes for everything. This is a huge breakthrough over previous technologies and I find it to be rather amazing.
http:///www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/10/07/italy.berlusconi/index.html
ReplyDeleteI find it heartening that the Italians are making sure that no one is above the law. It is good that they do not allow their Prime Minister immunity from the law as everyone, no matter how powerful, should be held accountable under the law. I do find it kind of ridiculous that this man is still in office after being tried 17 times in courts. It seems to me as though his position probably had something to do with the lack of conviction before and it will be interesting to see what will happen this time without his absurd laws protecting him. This man seems very corrupt and I have no idea why his approval ratings are so high. I actually find the level of devotion to such a corrupt man rather frightening. Lastly he seems to view himself as some sort of a king, shown by the quote "Viva I'talia and viva Berlusconi" and by the fact that his attorney argued that he was a special case outside the influence of the law.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/10/07/language.facebook.google/index.html
ReplyDeletethe language barrier has been a difficult barrier to get passed, especially on the internet. Facebook is tackling the problem with an "army of volunteers" as well as several professional translators. They're calling it "crowd sourced" translating, where text is translated by several different people and vote on other translations. Google, however, is doing what it does best and using a computer to do the same task. The google computers can learn the translations by analyzing text on the web and professional web translations. In my opinion, google's translation plan is better, since it can translate large amounts of text quickly. Facebook's plan would require several people to vote on one translation, ultimately taking more time.
I don't think that its right for people to marry others just for their benefit. It doesn't matter if you are going to get more money of freedom, you should still marry someone because you care about them and want to be with them. Not because it's going to get you more money or citizenship in another country. I think that this was wrong of them to do even if they both got something good out of it. The wives could have had something to do with the military there and could be planning something against the United States. There are probably many other soldiers who have married people of other countries or even of america just so that they could get more money and I don't think that that is right at all.
ReplyDelete-Katelyn
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/world/middleeast/09pullout.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp
ReplyDeleteSeptember 11, 2001, planes crashed into the twin towers, the whole world was on our side, and what did we do? Screw up! We attacked Iraq, who had no weapons of nuclear destruction, and harbored no terrorists (the terrorists were from Saudi Arabia.) Not only did we lose the sympathy from the countries that had just decided to back us, we created a horrible image for ourselves. We were called “a country run by an idiot.” Now too be fair, Bush did take down a dictator, but countless mistakes after this can easily cast this positive away. At least a Dictator could control a country! After we took Saddam down the country broke into a state of anarchy. However, this would have been no problem; the Iraq military was on our side. Unfortunately, Bush fired all of these men right after the war, how ingenious! We had a bunch of anti-American’s roaming the streets, who probably had access to guns, with nothing to do, what could possibly go wrong? Well, you may be thinking, can Bush screw up anymore, and yes, he did, but he did do one other good thing, he set up a date for our troops to come home. Although, I say this loosely as he did start the war in the first place. Now, as hundreds of military installations have to be taken down, I say, finally! We have caused too many problems as it is!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhtlhl5K-pQ&feature=channel_page
ReplyDeleteBefore I get to the real content, I just wanted to voice an annoyance that I have whenever i hear a conservative speak: They always walk about washington in the third person, when they are part of washington. He says that washington is incapable to doing its job, which is the same thing as saying he can't do his own job. I don't know, it just always annoys me...
Ok, so now for the video. This is something that all Americans need to see, and the members of the GOP need to see. It probably won't change any of their minds, seeing as how they are all taking bribes from the insurance companies to block a public option. But, this is what most people don't understand. A public option does not eliminate private insurance companies. It simply creates another plan that citizens don't have to pay for. All of the celebrity politicians, actors and such who do not support the public option have never lived without unlimited money do not understand why the common person and 76% of Americans support a public option. Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sPvkANsHlw&feature=channel_page. The people in this video's beliefs about what the public option is so warped and so wrong that it makes me feel sick. They have no honest idea what they are talking about. And conservatives representatives are coming up with the stupidest possible reasons not to pass reform. One example is that the want more money to go to abstinence-only education, even though it has been proven time and time again that the states who teach abstinence the most (TEXAS) have the highest rates of teen pregnancy. Congress needs to stop playing the politics game and a legitimate healthcare reform bill that includes a public option, and they need to do it fast.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/10/07/cocaine.vaccine/index.html
ReplyDeleteI think this is really interesting because previously people treated cocaine relapse with drugs such as lithium. It could potentitally be very useful. However, it does bring up some interesting points. Would it be more useful to use this vaccine or would it be more helpful to provide someone using cocaine with a job and counseling? If they don't want to be off cocaine, they won't get the vaccine voluntarily, and if you give the vaccine to them with something like a court order, the vaccine alone won't do anything. They need to want to be off cocaine. They might also try to take even more cocaine to overcome the effect (which could be incredibly dangerous). The idea of the vaccine is a really good idea but there are so many variables that can interfere with the usefulness of it. Something that intends to help drug usage is especially difficult to create because it's so hard to determine the variables within someone's life. it's a good start though.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/10/08/rogue.nurse.diseases/index.html
ReplyDeleteI think it's awful that the nurse potentially exposed all these people to various diseases. She should know the extreme risk of spreading diseases by not replacing used needles and other one-time use products. It wasn't even an accidental issue; she fully understood what dangers she was placing on her patients. She deserves to be fired and placed in jail for endangering all of her patients. I feel bad for the hospital that she worked at, because they now have a tarnished reputation because of her.
http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?storyid=200910082043dowjonesdjonline000668&title=summersus-economy-improvingbut-too-soon-to-declare-victory
ReplyDeleteOne of the president's economic advisors, John Summers said there are signs that the economy is improving. Of course I find this to be great news considering how long this recession has been going on. Don't get me wrong we still have a long way to go, the dollar needs to get stronger and employment rates need to go up but we are making some seroious progress.
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/nation_world/story/133385.html
ReplyDeleteThis very exciting current event has to do with our 44th president, winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Obama is only the third sitting U.S. President to win this award. He was highly praised for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," This will greatly improve the spirits of Americans and will most likely help Obama's approval rate. Obama has already started his office term with a major achievment and is set on his way to many more.
-John Alex Porter
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/33227014#33227014
ReplyDeleteWOW! i thought this was very weird. A woman in Florida was found buried underneath 8ft of trash! Her neighbors said that they haven't seen her in years. Her cousin also said a week before her death she called and asked him to bring over some food. But, her family members never we're allowed to go into her house either. I think it must have been a horrible place to die.. Some of the officers that were searching for her body got ill from the stench
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/10/09/probe.moon.crash/index.html
ReplyDeleteWhen I heard this it didn't really make sense to me at first. I thought for a second that NASA actually blew up the moon. But then when I read on I realized they just did it for research. What NASA was looking for was water on the moons soil, and it was a succesful atempt. This is what I found on my research on the crash on the moon.