Watch Your Step!

The average car weighs just over 4,000 pounds. The weight without passengers of a school bus ranges from 22,000 to 28,000. When you add 84 passengers, say high school students, that adds up to 14,700 additional pounds, bringing the total up to about 42,700 pounds. Automobiles, are machines, and you must respect them. Nearly 50,000 people die yearly in the U.S. from car accidents. Carelessly jay-walking a city street could end you up in a hospital's emergency room, so watch your step. People underestimate the potential destruction a car or bus can cause. This video here shows a Russian man who was nearly flattened while crossing a street by a bus. Although he wasn't jaywalking, it seems that these laws aren't enforced by local police, and should be possibly revised considering how deadly automobiles can be. The penalty for jaywalking, in its most severe form is a mere ticket of less than $100. By making a more severe penalty, and punishing more people for violating jaywalking laws, we can hope to ensure more public safety for pedestrians on the streets.

Just a couple months ago, White Sox General Manager Kenny Williams was cited for jaywalking, as he crossed a street outside of a crosswalk near Safeco Field in Seattle. A control officer issued Williams a $56 ticket, nothing to Williams, and I'm sure he has commited the same violation since then. However, more severe punishment, and stricter enforcement would make people think twice about running across the middle of a street, and risking getting splattered by a 42,700 pound bus.

Man Eaten Alive by Crocodiles! (Almost)

An Australian man spent 12 hours up in a tree, elevating himself from the danger of being eaten alive by the crocodiles that populated the river below his tree. The story says that the man was on his boat and fell asleep while he navigated through the crocodile-infested Lynne River of northern Australia. He awoke and found his boat was filled with water, and jammed under a tree. How could someone do something so careless, as to doze off to sleep while they are on a small boat, alone, going through a river of crocodiles? You either have to lack a lot of intelligence, or have to be a very lazy person, you can't simply "fall asleep". Regardless, he hid up in a tree for half a day, and was eventually rescued after activating his emergency radio beacon.

My Favorite Blog!

So, what makes a good blog? A good blog, is one that provokes ones ideas, creatively, and freely. The author of said blog, must write all of his posts because he is attracted to the subject matter, not because his teacher prompts him to answer a question. The blog expresses the author's ideas towards the topic, and he does so in a creative fasion, and expresses his ideas freely, for the author writes what he strongly believes, not the opinions of others. Still a relatively new blogger, I want to reflect on my blogs thus far, and select one that I think, is most characteristic of what I believe is, a good blog based of my previous description. "Driving Text" voiced my belief that drivers are sending more text messages then ever while driving, and that doing so while driving is not safe. One generally thinks more mainstream, that driving while under the influence of alcohol or drugs are dangerous, yet I thought about the affects of driving text, and found the studies with data that is able to back up my blog post, and support my argument. In doing so, I constructed my best blog thus far.

Boy in Box Makes Headlines

Hot air balloon floats high above the ground, a six year old Colorado boy is believed to be inside. The headlines seemed like a promising story. Yahoo, AOL, MSN, FoxNews, had one featured story, with such headlines, leaving Americans countrywide wondering about this six year old boy. Later on October, 15, 2009, the date of the boy's supposed takeoff in his hot air baloon, the balloon crashed and the boy was not found inside. You would think this must mean that the boy never was in the balloon in the first place, what a relief! Specuators from various news networks interpreted it differently, saying the boy may have fell out of the balloon during its flight. They were wrong. The six year old boy was found hiding in a cardboard box, in the attic of his garage, according to Macomb daily. Lately, some topics on news shows seem unimportant, as if there is no purpose for their headlines, and that there is nothing beneficial, to their publications online, and their coverage on television. This story seemed to be a perfect example of that, and left me wondering, why is this so important, who cares? Then when it was released the boy was hiding in his garage attic, in cardboard box, I wasn't surprised. What do you think about this story, and shories like this, that seem like they have no importance. They are only slightly entertaining, and leave a person wondering, why?
Yahoo's Coverage

Why Grade?

Initially, one may believe that grades are great! Great, in the sense that they give students direct feedback to their performance in their classes, let the students know how well they understand the material, and how they need to improve or maintain study habits (if they are doing excellently in a class). However, ever since high school I felt grades lost all of those legitimate purposes, and became material "letter" grades. You aren't a good student unless you have the "A" grades, and if you don't have the grades, your not as intelligent as the students that do. It seems like to students are more interested in acquiring that "A" grade than anything else, and that constant tests, and quizzes all assessed on a grade scale, now conflict with students abilities to focus on strictly learning class subjects matter, and not being distracted constantly by their grade. Students can relate to this example. Think of a time where you just get a test back, a scantron test. Students search their scantrons in hope of finding a "scantron error" or an eraser mistake, which triggered an incorrect answer, of course. What students don't realize is that they are victims of the grading system, that the one scantron error on a large test, doesn't make a difference in the grand scheme of their knowledge they take away from the class.