Wednesday, September 25, 2013

UN Arms Treaty will be Menace to US for Years to Come

 The article named “UN Arms Treaty will be menace to US for years to come” claimed that UN Arms Treaty signed on Wednesday was a big mistake and would be harmful to the United States, because the Senate would have no real opportunity to reject the treaty. There was a loophole in the process of ratifying treaties, meaning that we have to obey the treaty that the Senate has never ratified. Since treaties today are not what they were yesterday, they are not just about international conduct but also about our daily life. The Treaty would be more troublesome because the administration will use all the powers to enforce the treaty. Relevant terms of the Treaty are “international humanitarian law” and “international human rights law.” By committing to these terms, the United States will give other countries new opportunities to affect the U.S. firearms market as well as domestic firearms market. Proponents of the Treaty are still seeking to protect their human rights, which will cause uncontrollable circumstances of the United States. Opponents of the Treaty are voicing their opposition in order to call for the president’s rejection on signing the Treaty and thus avoid the far-reaching menace for the U.S.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/09/25/un-arms-treaty-will-be-menace-to-us-for-years-to-come/?intcmp=trending

Article: “FBI Releases Video of Navy Yard Gunman Stalking Prey” - www.FoxNews.com



I read the Fox News article (www.FoxNews.com) who wrote about the latest surveillance videos released by the FBI in regards to the Navy Yard shootings last week by the hands of Aaron Alexis who killed 12 people.  Within the article, there were more details in regards to what the shooter was wearing, where the video was captured (both in hallways as well as parking facility) and how the shooter maneuvered the hallways with his own shot gun, purchased two days prior and a separate gun “…believed to have been taken from one of the victims”. 

Fox News reports that the head of the FBI office in Washington, Valerie Parlave, stated that Alexis had a “well-documented history of mental illness” and that he, Alexis, “held a delusional belief that he was being controlled by extremely low frequency waves or ‘ELF’ waves”.   There was also a video snippet tied to the article which showed a few images of the FBI video.  The article did not include any other claims or commentary except quotes from the FBI and their latest news conference, however feel they (Fox News) used fairly strong vocabulary/phrases (…”Talking Prey” and “stealthily hunting down victims”) for an increased dramatic feel.

Cereal Companies are Evil.

The Onion article entitled, "Cereal Commercial Completely Neglects Showing Numerous Life Problems Character Faces Beyond Breakfast" takes a look at the phenomena of cereal companies failing to show the hardships that characters in cereal commercials. The article claims that by cereal companies failing to show the rest of character's life, they are portraying an inaccurate lifestyle for the character. This portrayal misleads viewers by not showing the social and fiscal hardships experienced by the character. The claim is that cereal companies show an inaccurate life of the commercial's character. The grounds for this claim are that the rest of the life of the character fails to be seen by the viewer, as well as the unrealistic acts done by the character such as pouring the milk into the bowl for twelve to fifteen seconds. The warrant being that people have lives outside of breakfast, and anyone who poured milk for that long is crazy.

Matt Stemper, The 2nd Amendment


In this Article the author, Maxim Lott, discusses the debate regarding the 2nd Amendment. Does it mean the right to bare arms for any lawful reason, or does it mean to bear arms and maintain a militia. Well, that is what the senate webpage states. The author is very obvious on where he stands, he states that there is no debate, because the Supreme Court has looked over many of these cases and every time they have stated that people have the right to bear arms for lawful uses, such as self defense. The author clearly takes a stance when he states that the Senate website administrators are simple wrong, and need to revise their website. The argument was brought up that a Texas history book states that there has been a debate over the meaning of the 2nd Amendment, but that is debunked when the author writes that the book was made before the Supreme Court ruling, so it is irrelevant. 

 http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/09/25/senate-website-gets-2nd-amendment-wrong-critics-say/

"Obamacare will question your sex life?"




       I looked at the link for The Tampa Bay Times which publishes a fact-checking piece called “PolitiFact Check.” Through the column researcher Becky Bower, analyzes the supporting data for the arguments made in the articles of other journalists. Her objective is to determine whether the facts they uncover are accurate. Rather than research the databases for accuracy I chose to analyze the claims of the original piece, which was a New York Times exposé that was published by former lieutenant governor of New York Betsy McCaughey, on September 15, 2013. In her composition entitled “Obamacare Will Question Your Sex Life,” McCaughey makes the blanket argument that Obama’s new health care guidelines will facilitate the prying of doctors into our private lives. However, she offers no supporting data to prove what specific healthcare questions will be imposed upon doctors nor if those responses must be included. The warrant for her claim is that our private information once obtained will somehow be used against us. The author supports her first claim with theoretical examples of questions that the doctors will ostensibly be asking. Among these are “are you sexually active, and “with how many individuals?” However, she goes on to back up her claim with an unrelated assertion that fails to connect to the first: Namely that that Obamacare also demands that doctor’s shift to online record-keeping.  Finally, she ties these premises together with the assertion that since Obamacare requires everyone in the United States to have health insurance or pay a fine, all personal data will be intrusive, the information will be public, and it will be available. This is where the argument breaks down. While McCaughey does offer backing to support the claim of online documentation she does not support her inferences of standard questions that will be required to be asked by physicians. Nor does she offer data to support the claim that the responses to questions about sexual behavior will be automatically placed in online files. Finally, she does not make an attempt to support the assumption that online files are unsafe or have a tendency to be used maliciously.     

















http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/sep/19/betsy-mccaughey/betsy-mccaughey-says-obamacare-will-question-your-/

World Cup preparations forge ahead in the middle of the Amazon

The article I read is named "World Cup preparations forge ahead in the middle of the Amazon", which claims the challenges of building a stadium in the rainforest and how this stadium benefits the city of the Amazon region.

At the beginning of the article, the author mentions 2014 FIFA World Cup first and then talks about the challenges of the stadium construction in the middle of the Amazon. The first challenge is logistics. It is difficult to get the material of construction to city surrounded by rainforest because the stainless steel is too heavy and large. Secondly, the rain is a challenge since crews have to install most materials before the rainy season, which may also cause the flood that threatens the construction. The third challenge is material should be used on the seats to prevent the damages caused by the sun. The author quotes from a former Brazilian national team player to explain that some people do not agree to build the stadium since it might not be used after the World Cup. Then the quotes of local officer argues that it is a good chance to show the city and the Amazon region to the world.


3D printing aims to deliver organs on demand

Since regenerative medicine has proved that the first three types of all four levels of complexity in building organs can be implanted into patience, scientist and researchers have the reason to look forward to that 3D printing can contribute to the widespread use of such organs. For printing an organ, one lab wants to use 3D printers to print both an artificial scaffold and living cells, while another lab uses 3D printer to situate the building blocks in layers to build tiny slices of organs. So far, no lab has succeeded in 3D-printing organs with the tiniest scales of blood vessels and organs, but bioprinting pioneers wish to make use of the smallest 3D-printed organs, and they believe the bioprinting revolution would happen in 10-15 years, which would change many patients’ life.




850 snakes found at New York animal control officer's house



This article addresses a contradiction that an animal-control officer, Richard Parrinello, was hiding numerous snakes for selling them on the illegal side. He committed an immoral business utilizing the animals at his private place even though he is an animal-control officer being involved in an animal rights group. There were Burmese pythons among the stash of snakes he had, which are illegal to have in the state of New York because the snakes can grow to thirty feet long and have potential to kill human. According to the author, it actually happened that there were two young boys who were eaten by a Burmese python in the state. In my opinion, Parrinello deserves an aggravated punishment since he was caught not only running a business at his house without a permit, but also owning the Burmese pythons which are illegal to have in the state of New York.

Hidden camera catches culprit taking man's Second Amendment sign

I read the article that argues the violation of freedom of speech and his property ownership by a law-enforcement officer. Jon Gibson, who is living in the rural town near New York, claims that a police officer continues to remove his pro-Second Amendment sign. The sign contains the phrase “protect the Second Amendment” with an illustration of a firing gun. Gibson argues that the police officer removes the sign even he put the sign inside of his hunting field. He claims that removing the sign in his property is clearly a behavior of theft and the violation of his freedom of speech. The stealing of the sign was captured by the hidden camera that Gibson had fixed near the sign. The sign was disappeared twice before which made Gibson to fix a hidden camera. However, Somers Town Supervisor Mary Beth Murphy counterclaims that the sign was removed because the sign was put on the public right-of-way. The supervisor says that “the town does not allow signs in the right of way, […] the police chief had received numerous complaints from neighbors and it was determined that the sign was posted in the right of way.” Murphy also denies the vandalism of the sign which is claimed by Gibson. Murphy clearly states that the sign does not have any kind of damage and can be picked up by Gibson from the police department any time he wants. Conversely, Gibson argues that he captures the scene with his camera that the officer was trying to destroy the sign by kicking it. Murphy explains about this scene that the scene can be interpreted as a behavior of loosening the sign from the ground. Gibson says that this is about his First Amendment and even his Fifth Amendment because the sign was taken from him without due process. I personally think that the due process and the acknowledgement between Gibson and the Police Department should have been taken because it might reduce the chance to ease the conflict about the violation of Amendments. 

Lets Compromise Over Obamacae!


In this article by Kevin Drum the author believes compromise is the way to make Obama care get passed into law and actually help those without health insurance like it is supposed to. The author surmises that if the “employer mandate” which would require employers to pay the subsidy costs for low income workers (30hrs or less), were dropped that Obamacare would have a very good chance of being passed into law. He also argues that in his opinion Republican’s will do anything to kill this proposed law. Simply because they do not like it in principle, as shown by Ted Cruz’s not-filibuster filibuster. So even compromising on the employer mandate would solve nothing. The author gives relatively few examples to support areas of compromise that might be dropped from the law in order to get Republican support, but I think that is his whole argument that no matter what was removed from Obamacare the Republicans would still want to kill the proposed law that is Obamacare.

Reference-

"Kevin Drum." Mother Jones. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Sept. 2013.

'Yellow brick road' leads to Massachusetts pirate booty, explorer says

The article I read is ‘Yellow brick road’ leads to Massachusetts pirate booty, explorer says from fox news. This news is to record the experience of an explorer-Barry Clifford and report it so there is not a clear argument. But this article does write about a claim from Clifford and show his evidences supporting the claim - more artifacts can be found from the wreck of the pirate ship Whydah.
The experience of the Whydah shows there is a big chance that a lot of treasures are on board. “The Whydah sank in a brutal storm in 1717 with plunder from 50 ships on board” wrote in this article. According to Colonial-era documents discovered in April, the Whydah raided two ships before it sank. The Whydah was a pirate ship and these evidences show it raided a lot of ships so Clifford believes that when the Whydah ship sank it had plenty of treasures on it.
What they have found indicates there are more treasures. Clifford pulled up some compelling evidences on the prior trip: “a cannonball piled with 11 coins and a foot-and-a-half long piece of iron stacked with 50 coins”. (Fox, pars. 15) Clifford believes those coins is an example of what’s left because the possibility that all of those coins just happen to fall on these pieces is very small.

Clifford will get back to the wreck of the Whydah in the spring and he is very excited about looking for more artifacts.

Obama: "Raising Debt Ceiling Does Not Increase Our Debt"

This is a transcript from the Rush Limbaugh Show between a caller and Mr. Limbaugh going over the idea of national debt and a small bit of state debt. There are two claims, in my opinion, made in this transcript. First claim was brought about by the caller asking if her state governor was able to get Arizona out of debt and back into the black within two years, and a few other states able to do the same, why is the federal government not able to do so.  Mr. Limbaugh's claim is they do not want to be debt free due to the power it gives them. He backs it up with democrats not wanting to limit their spending or anything else they want financially wise. I see his argument as the more they can collect or outright take from the people the more the people will have to go to the government for help/assistance or approval.  Second claim I picked up on was that Obama doesn't think there is any correlation between raising the debt celling and the total amount of the country's debt.  Mr. Limbaugh took President Obama's words to make an argument of the exact opposite. His stance seems to be that raising the limit only means you have that much more to pay back.  That does not equal free and clear money. Along with the fact that the money being printed now by raising the amount of debt allowed, has nothing to back it up and is basically the same as counterfeit.

The Blackberry Buyout

Five years ago, Blackberry was the most popular phone on the market. Many big name corporations saw it as the most efficient smart phone and handed them off to their employees. The innovation of the full keyboard smartphone exploded on the cell phone scene. Unfortunately for Blackberry, all good things do come to an end. The new Apple Iphone became the phone of the future and stole all of the Blackberries popularity. Over the past 5 years the Blackberry has gotten less popular and finally the buyout has arrived. Now that Iphone is extremely popular among consumers, its extremely difficult for any other company to rise to the top when this industry is dominated by companies such as Apple. Once Blackberry shot past the rest of the field, they never really did anything that put their phones ahead of the game. They were playing catch up with the other big companies and like Manjoo said, "They were just copying what other people were doing." I had a Blackberry in 8th grade and once i was finished with it i knew it was time to move onto bigger and better things. They never really made a push to make a product that consumers would fall in love with once again.