A New Voice

Leonard Popovic
5-11-09

Singing Phenomenon?

Susan boyle a shy woman from the UK who was an ordinary person who had hopes and dreams since she was a little girl. She started getting older and her dreams became more and more unlikely to come true, she always wanted to sing and be in front of an audience.
She is now 48 years old and went to a show called Britain got Talent and she got boo’d while walking out on stage then gave a terrific performance that blew many people away. She doesn’t look like a normal singer these days with perfect bodies and model like features, she surprised the crowd and all of the judges automatically passed her for her good voice and her bravery for going on the show as a older aged woman.
“According to Visible Measures, which tracks videos from YouTube, MySpace and other video-sharing sites, all Boyle-oriented videos including clips of her television interviews and her recently released rendition of “Cry Me a River,” recorded 10 years ago for a charity CD — have generated a total of 85.2 million views. Nearly 20 million of those views came overnight.” So she has become a huge hit overnight, she got more views in one day then she had in years, this being a great thing for her because she can now live her dream and people will want to hear more from her because of her unlikely talent.
The seven-minute video that was first posted on YouTube and then widely circulated online easily eclipsed more high-profile videos that have been around for months. Tina Fey’s impersonation of Sarah Palin has clocked in 34.2 million views, said the folks at Visible Measures, while President Obama’s victory speech on election night has generated 18.5 million views. Her video had more views then the president of Americas speech that tells American people what changes will be made. That is a huge achievement because it shows that people will support her and want to hear more of her, she is now living her dream.
Now Boyle is a contender in the contest and she can win the whole thing with all of the support that she has been getting, hopefully in the future we will be hearing more of Boyle because she showed people that no matter what how someone looks they can have a secret talent, which people seem to have forgotten about.

SC

Leonard Popovic
5-5-09

Starcraft

Many people might be wondering what Starcraft is? it’s a old game from the late 90s that’s become a phenomenon all over the world. The game is a RTS game (Real Time Strategy) which is basically a game where you control massive amounts of units and try to fight another person with massive amounts of units and you can lose the game if you don’t have superior control to your opponent. In this game you first start with 1 base and 3 miners who will mine minerals and continue mining until the patches are done, you must create more miners to get more income faster, then you move onto higher tech buildings which create higher tech units that do a lot more damage then your workers can output. it’s a game that involves a lot of micro which is controlling units and macro which is keeping your minerals low making sure you are spending what you are earning. There are three races in Starcraft Protoss, Terran,  Zerg all with different strategies and different play styles and units.
In Korea Starcraft is actually a huge sport, they take it as seriously as we in America take baseball or American football. There are players who pratice 12 hours daily to get skilled in this game and win prizes in tournaments that reward up to $25,000 or more. There are star craft teams such as Samsung Khan, Cj Entus, Wemade FOX who are all sponsored by huge companies that get a lot of advertisement from the teams that play star craft. There are not only team leagues but there are individual player leagues also that get individual players a lot of fame such as we have lebron james in USA for the NBA in Korea they have terran players such as Flash or such as Bisu who is the rank 1 protoss.
This was very surprising to find out that a videogame could become a phenomenon across the world and not many people know about it. This shows that cultures are very different in different areas of the world and maybe one day in America there will be videogames as a pro sport here too.

Ipod

Leonard Popovic Journalism

Article

iPods

iPods have become a very successful item for the past 6 years since they started becoming really popular and everyone was carrying one of them. The first ipods just had music and a couple of games that you can play wasting time on the train, but it was pretty basic, it just played music, but became a huge success for the Apple company making millions of sales per month.

iPods now have so many new features it doesn’t only play music, but now you can play videos up to 8 hours on the small skinny ones but not only that you can store up to 17,000 pictures in the tiny iPods. The bigger memory sized iPods with 120GB of hard drive space you can hold up to 30,000 songs and up to 150 hours of video, that’s about 75 movies in one small device you can carry around anywhere you go. The technology has increased greatly over 6 years of time when the iPods were dull and all they did was play music, now they can do pretty much anything. The iPod shuffle is the smallest mp3 player and it apparently can talk to you now, in Apples new ads it can tell you what songs are playing and who is the artist you’re listening to it also tells you what playlist you are listening to. Even the smallest brothers of the iPod industry have come a long way from the original fat iPods that just played music.

The iPhone is a breakthrough in technology it can do pretty much anything technology wise. It has maps, navigation, internet, over 35,000 applications which you can add onto it such as finding restaurants or even games of your choice, it can even become your controller for your t.v. or keep track of where your keys are. The iPhone is the smartest phone out right now, up next to the Blackberry storm which also has a lot of those features but is arguably slower, and doesn’t have as many applications as the iPhone. The iPhone is also a 3G phone which means it’s the highest technology of modern communication for a phone. The price for the lowest memory iPhone is $199 which isn’t very bad, because when it first came out it was like $500 dollars and it was hard to even find the phone, because everyone wanted to get one. The bad thing about iPhone not all of them are compatible with video recording, that’s one downside of it. Other than that it has pretty much everything you can ask for.

In this day and age technology is getting more advanced by the day so soon people will just bring handheld objects that can do everything in one little compact item. Even today the iPhone can do pretty much anything but imagine in 10 years when there’s phones with holograms and 3D effects on them. I feel that technology will get very advanced within 2-3 years, the classrooms will be filled with phones that can do anything and will be used as a good learning tool.

If She Can do Why Cant I?

A Definition of plagerism for Maureen Dowds. Plagiarism is the unauthorized use of someone else’s work. Words, ideas, charts and pictures are all considered the creator’s intellectual property and may not be legally reproduced or reused by another person unless that person acknowledges the creator by citing the source of the material.Plagerism has been a big problem for schools, new papers, magizines, and even tabloids. The one common law is that no one can say anothers persons words with out quoteing it. If you are caught in most cases they tell you in high school to rewrite it and make it into your own words. In colleges there is a zero tolerance for plagerism. In New York College of Technology your accused paper is brought to a review board and then if proven guilty worst case is your kicked out of school and red flagged for other schools. Now as an adult not in college or school. Working for a very long time and has had many published articles like Maureen Dowds has there should be penalties for her plagerism. In a New York times article, May 18,2009, there was a correction to Maureen Dowds atricle because she chose not to cite her source. To the accusations of plagerism Maureen Dowds says that she did not know that she had written that same exact paragraph from Joshua Micah Marshall work. She says that she had got it from a friend through an email but she still chose not to credit her friend.This link shows the exact site where the words where lifted. She also refuses to to admit she really did anything wrong. It may have been a mistake but if the tables where turns people would be more angry. There also has to be some blame to the edtiorial staff because if they had done there job better things would not have gotten this bad. Obviously she was in the wrong but they did do there jobs as well. Now her work is going to not get be as much respect as before. I guess for a writter thats enough punishmet. But there where alot more people who messed up here and she should not only be the one that gets the blame. There has to be a bigger punishment so that people dont say “If She can do why cant I?” Then all our work will be screwed.

Failing Economy

One of the key things that the president said is that he was going to improve in our economy is the job decrease and the lay offs. If the president is trying to help the middle class/ small business owners why is that the mayor and the governor is doing the complete opposite not trying to help the middle class. According to the news they are cutting city workers from the board of ed. and other agencies, and the people that they are trying to layoff are the middle class low income workers. So once again the rich is only going to get richer and the poor is getting poorer. It’s a real shame. For example, in the DHS, instead of cutting employees making six figures or lowering their salary they are eliminating the low income workers. They rather keep one person who makes 100,000 dollars a year than keeping five employees whose salary barely makes up to that amount. Union workers are also expected to help pay for their healthcare benefits. I really don’t get how the mayor expects the economy to actually get better if he’s laying off hundreds of city worker. Where do they get their next job at. Matter of fact how could they even get a job if there isn’t any jobs left.

Job cuts, can’t help us. What happens to graduationg college students who need jobs to pay off their debt/ loans for school? How will they be able to pay for them? The answer is that they wont be able to. they will probably end up homeless or selling their belongings, which is just ridiculous. If this happens then the rate of those homeless college students will just increase. Another thing with the job cuts is that more and more people are going back to school for a higher education for a better career. But what will happen with the people who don’t have the money for that? They’ll be left down at the bottom struggling, because all they had was maybe that city job, and now with the job cuts its just over for them.

Struggling families will be left out to dry with this budget cut. Workers who have been working for over 20 years are getting laid off. Even healthcare is getting cut. What’s going on with this city. Doesn’t the mayor and the governor see that these cuts are not the solution to our problems; that our city will crumble beneath our feet. Our problem will never be fixed like this. We need to start from the top, the wealthiest of them all and minimize their paychecks so that maybe five other families will get to eat that night and wont end up in homeless shelter, or in a tent community like in other cities. Mayor Bloomberg needs to stop this immediately, I really do not want to see another great depression happen, we have came to far for this. My motto is with any problem there is always a solution, but this one with the job cuts isn’t one.

Mayor Bloomberg’s grim budget plan – 1/29/09 – New York News and Tri-State News – 7online.com

How are we suppose to get through this? Better yet, how is the economy going to overcome this drastic cut of jobs worldwide? We need a solution and we need it fast before half our nation ends up homeless.-Marva

When is it ok to breathe a sigh of relief?

In the very serious times, the health and safety of thousands are at risk when major health crisis’s arise. At the turn of the century, it was Influenza, Typhoid Fever and Cholera on the surface of  the filthy tenements of New York City. Later, the ever increasing pandemic of HIV. Yet strangely, there is a new viral epidemic which seems to have such a mild effect on the health of those who contract it, but the fear it generates nevertheless  creates a stir. That is, of course the H1N1 strain of the influenza virus, commonly termed swine flu. Just years ago, it was avian flu and Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). However, with this new outbreak, it is very questionable to wonder what this disease might become. While it is an off-shoot of the common influenza, its rate is astoundingly lower than the common flu. Yet is it enough to breathe a sigh of relief?

http://consults.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/01/more-readers-questions-about-swine-flu/ The strain of the virus seems to be pretty mild and has a minute death toll in North America. At its initial discovery and astounding rate of infection, traffic to Mexico had all been but completely barred by most countries (excluding Cuba, who banned travel to the stricken country). The question becomes, just how lethal is this strain of virus. The answer comes from Robi Caryn Rabin at the New York Times Blog relating to the subject : “

So far, Americans infected by swine flu don’t seem to be all that worse off than they would be with any seasonal influenza. The cause for alarm was the reports of deaths of young healthy adults in Mexico who were apparently infected with the new strain, and public health investigators from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are in Mexico now trying to learn more about the scope of the epidemic to get a sense of how lethal the virus is. They should have a lot more information in about two weeks, said infectious disease specialist Dr. William Schaffner.

“We need to know the ratios of deaths to the total number of flu patients,” Dr. Schaffner said. “That will tell us how this compares with seasonal flu.”

But some experts caution that this is not the time to let one’s guard down. Even though swine flu cases in the United States appear to be of milder severity, Dr. Scott P. Layne, an expert on global influenza, warned that the virus can mutate and change.

“Don’t be fooled,” Dr. Layne said. “We don’t know what additional genetic mutations may come and go, and these mutations could flip the switch and turn up the virulence knob. Swine flu could continue its grand experiment in the world and we just don’t know what that pinball is going to do.”

Despite the massive school closures and the two deaths in our local area since this new biological strain appeared,  it can still be combatted with some old fashion things. Its known as washing your hands, covering your mouth and avoiding contact with those who have come down with the virus. In honest actuality, keeping yourself sanitized and avoiding places that are contaminated is the best thing for this. Its has gone as far as schools being shut down and thoroughly cleaned in order to sterilize the areas in order combat the strain. Some measures might be more extreme than others, but the ends to the means is just the same. “

Yes, after someone recovers from swine flu, he or she should be protected from a future infection, as long as the virus doesn’t mutate further, experts say.

“It’s a little like measles,” Dr. Schaffner explained. “Once you get a case of measles, the body makes antibodies and then, on subsequent exposures to the measles virus, you don’t get sick a second time. So if I encounter swine flu, it infects me and my body responds to it, and recovers; and now I have antibodies that protect me should I encounter it again”  It seems to me that having gotten the flu, you should be able to fight it off.

So when is it best to breathe a sigh of relief? Only when we know for sure what this virus fully capable of,  can we be sure to rest ourselves. Until then, we must continue to be careful with the protection of ourselves and children. Remember, clean hands and sanitary measures can fight the spread.

                                                                                                                                  -Marva

Maureen Dowd’s is definitely a con!!!

After the first blogger who spotted that Maureen Dowd a columnist plagiarized her column in the New York times, many more have seen it. It was an widespread news that has gone all around the city. She had plagiarized a paragraph of text form a post by Josh Marshall. The first blogger was well his name under the blog was Joshua Micah Marshall.

Dowd has never been shy or been scared to quote other writers but this time it was different she has copied every word of Marshall’s way of writing his own post. So after they found out it wasn’t her originality they asked her for a explanation. Her explanation wasn’t like a very understanding one., it was that she had gotten it for ma email from a friend and that maybe that friend hast seen Marshall’s writing but haven’t told her about it.

Her words didn’t fit because it wasn’t possible that she had the same amount of words as Marshall with just one bit of word rephrase. As she says it was cause of her friend. Well her friend says the same thing as her that she gave the words to her but didn’t tell her who it was form .

Well Dowd’s has said that she also has seen that her column was plagiarized from Marshall and it was cause of her friend. So she has said that she will give josh credit and will fix up this mess right way.

Bloggers were outraged as to what has happened. That it wasn’t right for

her to lift all the same words. That she should have given some credit to the person she

got the words from. Others were furious, “ How does one inadvertently plagiarize?”

and going against her really hard that this was an excuse by her that her friend gave her the idea. It was a bad way to put it. It wasn’t jus a simple excuse that didn’t wasn’t that persuading.

Well I also think this wasn’t such a good way Dowd has given an excuse. She has given blame on her friend after saying that she did plagiarize. It was a very valuable explanation, not many people too kit to their heart. Many had though it was very irrelevant well I think this was very stupid of her.

She could have just checked to see if this story was put up anywhere on the web. That would have be easier. And I think she did this on purposely because after writing something like this she could have found about it after she wrote it, but someone else found out about it so she came forward then. So it shows Dowd how she was con with her post copying the works of someone else without giving them credit at least for some of the work’s.

 

Links:latimes.com

 Google.com /Maureen Dowd’s plagiarizes

Do you remember your first grade teacher?

Well in Japan you sure wont ever forget who was your teacher in the first grade.

Ms Saya is the first robot teacher who is able to talk various language, take roll call, assign basic tasks to students and express her current mood using facial expressions.  The only problem with Ms Saya the teacher robot is that it doesn’t  administer lessons or give individual attention to students, but the good part is that she plays the perfect roll as a substitute teacher . Which makes it a cheaper alternative to hold back on the cash for schools.

Saya can express six basic emotions such as surprise, fear, disgust, anger, happiness, sadness. Its physical appearance is to represent the ideal human being, its skin is made of rubber which is being pulled from the back with motors and wiring around the eyes and mouth so she can move and interact.

Saya was tested in a real Tokyo classroom earlier this year  with six and fifth graders. She still needs improvement  but the children love the idea of having a robot as a teacher.

Japan and other countries are striving and hoping that robotic will provide a solution for their growing label shortage problem as population  ages .

Is our future is going to be a better place with robots?, robots are just helpers that can help us improve our living or methods in our life later on. They are considered to have no identity just as a tool. They have no intelligence it just and idea that can maybe one day help us throughout our construction of our society.

Why did I get married?

As a young woman living in these times, I have to often wonder what is the definition of true love. I can already accept that the life we live day to day is far from being a Cinderella story, and although every woman will find her Prince Charming, not everyone is going to have a happily ever after. These days, the craze is on for marriage, and women as young as teenagers to as old as their late forties are jumping on board. I,  am no exception, but I often wonder what do these women know about the commitment they are about to seriously undertake.  In my opinion, marriage is always a serious affair to begin with, and marriage was only intended to be performed once (by my own opinion) until death did part the married couple.

I often sit here,  wondering why Men take  Women for brides, and they aren’t sure the life they want to have by one woman,  is she  worth giving up the life that they already have.  I have to question  young woman who fall in lust and then love with a man, but never really and truly knows him long enough to be sure he’s the one.  In America, the divorces are higher than high, and this frightens me a bit. I always believed in Marriage, (and I hope that one day, my love of a lifetime will work up the nerve to ask me when he is ready to do so) but I never understand what compulsion do people feel to lead them to something that isn’t well thought out. Love in itself is a powerful and beautiful phenomena. Between two willing individuals, it  leads to marriage. In these times however, comes a revolutionary shif t in the thoughts of men and women everywhere (http://www.divorceguide.com/usa/divorce-information/why-is-the-current-divorce-rate-increasing-in-america.html). With revisions to the gender roles, women becoming more prevalent in the public arena’s revolving finance and breadwinning,  and even in some cases being considered the heads of the household. As a woman, I believe in the empowerment of other women, so that we can  do the things that men do. I think that it is our right to do what we can to help in our homes and families and for once, not be relegated to child care and homemaking.  However, it does bother me that this is the kind of thing that can tear homes apart. What can a lady do? It seems that we are caught in a bind, and it is not just us who are in it knee deep. The men suffer just as much as we do. (http://www.divorceguide.com/usa/divorce-information/divorce-statistics-in-the-usa.html) It becomes a serious problem to undertake when you look at what divorce issues are seriously becoming problematic for society as a whole.

Marrying very young, is one reason why people divorce. I can’t seem to understand why people marry so young. Why can’t they wait a couple more years, to see how their relationship will grow before marriage. If they believe they have that type of long lasting love, then they should trust it’ll be forever. From what  I see and know, the thing set in a woman’s mind for her perfect mate(or at least those who want to be married) is that her beau will come and sweep her off her feet. Charming, caring, handsome etc, these are some of those characteristics that i know we all look for. He’s her knight in shining armor and the man that will knock her breathless. He’ll whisk her off to happily ever after.

                                                                                    -Marva

American Breathing

Asthma has always been a problem to some people but today the numbers are rising with speed. Not only does it seem like so many people suffer from asthma these days but so many children are. There are many different levels of asthma where it can be severe or some people just get asthma attacks about once or twice a year. In fact I know someone who had asthma as a kid; long time passes by with no kind of symptoms and guess what, its back at 49 years of age. I told her it’s probably because of the environment she lives in; New York City.

First of all, what exactly is asthma? It’s a long term (chronic) disease that inflames and narrows the lungs airways. This causes the chest to feel tight, the person to feel out of breath, lots of coughing usually at night or in early mornings and most of all shortness of breath. Shortness of breath is almost always the main problem and then the following symptoms follow.

“Environmental exposures found to predispose to asthma include house dust mite allergen and environmental tobacco smoke.”    [http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1241205]

Does this mean anything to those who are making asthma in the United States a much bigger problem than it used to be? A dusty house is not the worst thing ever because many Americans are never even home so they don’t have the time to look for dust and then again many people don’t even cleans their homes they just organize. I say it because I have met someone in my life to fit the description.

But for those cigarette smokers, I personally choose to put most of the blame on that. It’s negative after negative about cigarettes and some people still don’t learn. I do know it is hard to quit but if you try maybe thinking about that little girl on commercials that says she feels like ‘a fish out of water,’ you might feel a little more like quitting. The way tobacco smoke is affecting our youth is just horrible.

“Topping the list for 2007 is Atlanta, GA, due in part to its higher than average crude death rate (CDR) for asthma, high year-round pollen levels, bad air pollution and a lack of public smoking bans for restaurants, bars or workplaces which many other cities across the U.S. have begun to adopt.

Asthma is a chronic disease characterized by the constriction, narrowing and blockage of airways in the lungs causing breathing difficulty. While asthma affects more than 20 million American children and adults, many people aren’t aware of the severity and impact of the disease:”

– 14 million missed days of school for children each year, making asthma the leading cause of school absenteeism
– 14.5 million missed days of work for adults each year
– 100 million days of restricted physical activity for children and adults each year
– 1.8 million emergency room visits annually
– $14 billion in annual medical expenses and indirect costs
– Nearly 5,000 asthma-related deaths annually

Allergens and irritants such as pollen, pollution, and tobacco smoke
[http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/69048.php]

I believe that poverty plays a big role in asthma, especially in children with asthma. Many people are uninsured so how can you make it better without the proper medication? It’s not just something that comes and goes by itself. Also, the people who live in poverty probably get affected way more by pollution than those who are rich. It all depends how you live and where you live. You have the ability to make it worse or better.

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