Current Events Activity 1.3 - News Encyclicial

1.
The Pope is in town adressing throngs of Catholics and infidels alike, trying to instill some of the churches values in them. There are many facets of traditional livelihood that the church has upheld for centurites as it's most sacred tenets - the family, and the community. Before industrialization, a materialistic outlook on life was uncommon among most people, as relatively few people had the potency to aquire large sums of wealth through their own endeavors. The Church was intsrumental in maintaining a sense of community, but also instilling christian values of piety, humility, and above all, kindness into the heart and minds of it's congregation. Francis is worried that here in the states our keen adoption of the Protestant Virtues of wealth and hard work as exemplars of faith has become very dangerous, and our reckless abandon of the Church's communalism may lead us to destroy important societal institutions. This is the first time that the Pope has visited the United States in his life, and it is the first time that many of his more skeptical critics here in the United States have borne witness to his teachings. He was invited to speak in front of a joint session of Congress by Speaker of the House John Boehner, an Ohio Republican and Catholic.

2.
Apparently some high school linebacker teed up a ref, which in my book is pretty awesome, and also totally justified if he was spewing racist bile. I honestly whish I was surprised, but this sounds like something that happens in some silly Friday Night Lights spinoff show. I doubt the kids or coach will ever play ball again if they didn't show up to their hearing, but this whole story seems sort of overblown.

3.
So apparently a bunch of parents are going to be crybabies about not having a teacher anymore because the district is too stingy to just hire a new one. AISD wanted to avoid breaking the law and they did, and in the process they disrupted the learning of sixth graders at Maplewood. I'm sure knowing that you might have to have a new teacher is hard, but it sounds to me like these Yuppie parents need to get over themselves.

4.
John Whitmire asked the Attorney General, Ken Paxton, to issue a non-binding legal opinion on the subject of SB-17, a bill that the Texas Legislature passed that either:

a) Allows firearms to be carried and concealed on outdoor areas of public school campuses, you know, in case you want to do a little target practice during recess.

b) Allows you to carry a firearm everywhere on public school campuses, because having the power to quickly and efficiently kill schoolchildren needs to be magnified.

5.
There was a stampede in Mecca when a bunch of people rushed in to complete the pilgrimage by doing circuts around the Kaaba, a giant black box with a meteorite inside. 700 people died, which is surprising considering that it was because of a stampede. Couldn't you just slow down for a while, it's not like the Kaaba is having 70% off Black Friday deals or anything, it takes a while to complete all of the circuts, there is absolutely no reason to rush.

EXTENDED RESPONSE.

Poor Yogi, smarter than the average Bear. He will be missed. An Obit is a lot of things, remeniscent, elegaic, maybe a little sad and sappy, bt overall, it is a tribute to the life that the person lived and the great feats they acieved in their lifetime, or the modest and humble way by which they lived. An Obituary is a sending off, a way of bridging the gap bewteen the peson, living and dead, and helping all those who knew them or who were inspired by their character to mourn, and to accept thier passing.

Dogs Playing Ultimate Frisbee - The Jackson Gattis Biography

"You'd have to train them when to catch the frisbee, like if you were throwing it all the way down court you would have to somehow signal the dog to go and catch the frisbee, but if you were just doing short passes down the field you wouldn't want your dog to try and bite your hand off - you'd have to have some way of telling the dog when to catch the frisbee, if it didn't catch it in the goal, you'd have trouble getting it back from the dog because it would probably want to walk, and you'd get a carrying penalty and then the disk would just go to the other team."

Current Events Activity 1.2

1B.

Long Term Republican Candidates were in a way by reviving a preferential treatment by the CNN crew - any candidate had the chance to respond to any claim or allegation made against them with a rebuttal, giving certain people who are frequently the object of scrutiny, namely Donald Trump.There is no way for mainstream candidates to avoid coming under fire and being tasked with responding to claims or comments by log shot candidates. The Donald tends to be center stage because of a vicious cycle of high polling numbers and oversaturated coverage by the media, he also happens to be very good at using that media coverage to make aggrandizing statements to attract controversy.

2.

John Brennan visited the UT campus in order to release 2,500 new documents from the LBJ and JFK presIdencies. The CIA is currently undergoing a process of declassification, and releasing a bunch of previously confidential presidential daily briefs might held the Agency in their effort to appear more transparent. The briefs apparently give keen insight into the dizzying array of challenges faced by both presidents during the 1960's.

3.

Hungarian Security Forces used water cannons to repel migrants who had been attempting to cross through the border with Serbia on their way to elsewhere in Europe. The refugees crossing through the Balkans must deal with land mines, which are left as a residual from the decade long crisis that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Xenophobic governments, especially the Hungarians, have arrested migrants en masse, and other obstacles along their route to Western and Northern Europe.

4.

A 14-year-old engineering student named Ahmed Mohammed made a clock and brought it in to his class in McArthur High School in Irving, Texas. The clock had posted no problems until the alarm went off, at which point, presumably because the student was a Muslim, he was detained by police and arrested. Islamophibia in the wake of 9/11 is nothing new, and the demonization of an entire religious group based on the actions of a few people is something that should and did spark national outrage of the purest kind, a Twitter hashtag. President Obama invited the kid to the White House. The Irving City Council passed an anti-sharia law law in an attempt to curb the looming threat of radical Islam or some such made up boogeyman, because Irving, Texas can sometimes be not that welcoming to Muslim people.

ESSAY QUESTION

I first heard of this story on Twitter in a typical slightly misinformed tweet about the subject involving a few pictures of Flavor Flav, it was a pretty ridiculous few minutes. I am not typically someone who gets easily outraged at news articles about islamophobia, I guess I go get outraged, but it is fairly outrageous. I don't think that it should have deserved front page attention, but the story about Hungarians with water cannons could probably have been bumped. I think the underlying problem with the story's placement has to do with the quality of the writing more than with the story itself. I would have put the story on the second page, I don't think that incesence should take prominence away from political debates, no matter how outrageous it is.

RESEARCH SCENARIO, PART 1

First things first I would try and obtain a copy of the PowerPoint presentation that the teacher had used in the class to verify that it was in fact the PowerPoint supplied by the district. If it was, bad teaching ethic by the teacher is in play, and I could write a piece about how the district still teaches creationism and interview some students and parents about the outrage. If the teacher was teaching creationism on his own initiative then I would probably wrote a piece about this troublesome practice, also including student and parent interviews. If I could swing it I would try and interview the teacher himself if he was alright with it however circumstance might prevent me from running it.