Wildfire

On April 26th, a wildfire broke out in Sierra Madre, California. Sierra Madre is located about 15 miles northeast of Los Angeles, and borders the east side of Pasadena. Since my house is on the east side of Pasadena, I was very worried about this situation. I was constantly checking the news updates online, and by Sunday the fire has already burned about 400 acres and was only about 5% contained. One of the websites had what looked like a MapQuest map that showed the burning area in red. It used to only take me about 7 minutes to drive to my high school, and the fire was much closer to my house than that.

I don’t get homesick, so when I’m at school I don’t really think about my house very much. But this situation made me realize how important it is to me to know that my house is there and that I can go home at anytime. I think that this is a pretty common way of thinking. We don’t realize what is truly important to us until we are about to or do lose it.

This situation also made me really think about what material possessions I actually value. When I talked to my mom on Sunday, she asked me what I would want her to get out of my room if the worst happened. At first I had absolutely no idea. When I thought about all my stuff and realized that I actually had to decide what I would want to be saved, I was at a total loss. But the more I thought about it, it was actually not as difficult as I had first thought. The things I found myself choosing were not clothes or shoes or my TV, instead I wanted pictures, my yearbooks, and other things with similar sentimental value. I think that those are the things that are truly important. The things that can’t be replaced. Fortunately, by now the fire is mostly contained and my house is safe.

Sierra Madre Wildfire
Over 1,000 Flee Wildfire Near Los Angeles

Blog Comment

I commented on GoldBracelet’s post “A Quiet Place to Study?”. It’s about how crazy Fondren Library was a few nights ago.

A Quiet Place to Study?

1 Piece Only

Recently, airlines have started changing an important policy. Starting with United and Delta and progressing to Jet Blue and most recently American Airlines, airlines are now only allowing passengers to only have one checked bag. I think that this is very inconvenient. I definitely can’t fit all of stuff into just one bag, so that means that on top of the expense of having to fly home, I now get to pay an extra penalty.

I understand that the airlines are doing it in order to offset the rising gas prices, but I don’t feel like $20 or even $50 per passenger is going to make that much of a difference. But maybe if everybody is having to pay that much the airline will see some change.

I think that this new policy will especially affect college students. Going home for the summer or Christmas Break is like an event. With all the packing and getting ready and finding a way to get to the airport, traveling is stressful enough, but now there are even more restrictions. Our breaks are so long that there is no way to fit everything you need into one bag, I took home two bags just for spring break. While that may be a little bit extreme, I still feel like this new policy is going to affect college students more than anyone else.

Blog Comment

I commented on LMD’s post “Are computers really our friends?”. It’s about our dependence upon computers and can be found here .

Who said Sing-Song was Greek only?

On April 4th, the annual Sing Song competition was held in McFarlin Auditorium. This year’s production was call “A Night on Broadway” and features 7 performances comprised of 13 groups. For those who don’t know, Sing Song is a competition that involves singing, dancing, and acting. This year each group had to perform their interpretations of different Broadway musicals, and all the groups practiced hard for months in order to be ready.

However, Sing Song is not really a campus-wide event. All of friends who are in sororities attended, and they were expecting 1,500 people to be there. But, I also have many friends who are non-Greek, and none of them went. Why? They all said that it was a sorority/fraternity event so they didn’t want to go. While the contest is mainly comprised of Greek organizations, does not make it a Greek function. Sororities and fraternities usually just the ones that enter.

Sororities and fraternities are often accused of being close-minded and exclusive, but I think that my non-Greek friends were behaving the same way. They were not wiling to attend simply because they did not wan to support Greek life. However, the group that ended up winning almost all of the awards was Delta Gamma and the men’s swim team. The only non-Greek organization in the show.

This shows that the event was in no way centered around or biased towards the Greek community. I think that sometimes those who are not in sororities and fraternities and say that Greeks should be open-minded and accepting, often need to work on these traits themselves.

Sing Song 2008

Argument Paper

Today, there are so many couples that are having a difficult time getting along, and that’s not good. I think that people should spend more quality time with their spouses in order to improve their relationships.

I think that the more quality time couples spend together the happier they are. If they are able to accomplish goals and work together, they will become closer and be a stronger team than if they do not have experience working together.

Being happier not only benefits the couple, but also their children. Children who come from homes with divorced or unhappy parents are more likely to be worse off in a number of ways, including having less education, having children before they are married, and being more likely to get divorced themselves.

Blog Comment

I commented on Powerade’s blog on his post “Love on TV”. It’s about all the reality and dating services that are so popular today.

Love on TV

Athletics Deficit

According to an article in the Daily Campus, over the last four year the SMU athletic department has lost $56.7 million. I think that is ridiculous. SMU lost $12 million in 2004, $13.72 million in 2005, $12.96 million in 2006, $17.95 million in 2007, and they expect to lose $16.8 million in 2008 and $16.3 million in 2009. Personally, I think that these numbers are outrageous.

Apparently, most Division I schools do lose money through their athletics departments, but their average losses are much lower than that of SMU. I think that SMU goes pretty all out for a lot of occasion, and usually that’s a nice thing because it means that SMU provides great experiences. But in situations like this, I don’t understand why they would waste so much money when they could use it for something much more beneficial to the campus.

Part of the reason the losses increased by about $5 million in 2007 is because there were a few large expenditures. There was the $400,000 a year deal for new basketball coach Matt Doherty, a $600,000 buyout for fired basketball coach Jimmy Tubbs, and a contract extension that raised Phil Bennettt’s salary to $500,000 a year. While these are all very expensive, it’s possible that they could help the deficit by increasing our schools reputation for sports so that more students want to come here. Either way, I doubt that SMU is going to change its policy toward athletics any time soon.

SMU Athletics Deficit

Do Not Pass Go, Do No Collect $200

I just read an article that I though was very interesting about China freeing a reporter that they had put in jail. Ching Cheong was charged with spying for Taiwan and was sentenced to 5 years in jail on espionage charges. But he was released on Monday, which was 3 years early.

Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong based researcher for Human Rights Watch, said that “His arrest was unjustified”. Apparently China has “a history of applying vague espionage and sedition charges against free-speech advocates and journalists with view it does not like”. Can you imagine that? Being put in prison for your ideas? I can’t. The only thing that Cheong seems to have done wrong is that he advocated improved ties between China and Taiwan. But because the the have been enemies since splitting in 1949 during a civil war, this is apparently a big deal for them.

I think that a lot of times Americans take what they have for granted. For example, I can’t really even imagine what it would be like to be put in prison for my beliefs, but I also never think about the fact the I can express my ideas without getting put in jail. Overall I just thought that it was very interesting that the Chinese government could just put people in jail and take them back out when it was beneficial for them.

China Frees Jailed Reporter

Blog Comment

I commented on a post from Interesting Points blog. It was very interesting and disturbing and was about crucifixions in the Phillipines.

Crucifictions

No More Books

Recently, Amazon cam out with a new device called the Kindle. Basically it is an electronic device that provides access to and stores books, newspapers, magazines, and blogs. All you have to do is get on it, buy whatever you want and it is downloaded onto your Kindle. Then you can read it whenever you want. Also, it’s wireless and works the same as advanced cell phones, which means that you have access and can download wherever you are.

I think that this product is amazing. Aside from the incredible innovation of the device, I think that it has many advantages. First, I personally think that the environment is very important and that we should do whatever possible no to harm it too much. Every year people buy so many books, read them once, and then either put them away or get rid of them. Whenever there is a book I really want to read I always try to go to the library to read it because it not only helps the environment, it is also much less expensive.

That is another benefit of the Kindle. New York Times Bestsellers and New Releases are only $9.99, and you can even read the first few chapters of a book for free before you buy it. I think that the Kindle just makes reading incredibly easy and accessible. The Kindle is lighter and thinner than a typical paperback, and yet it can store over 200 books. You can get new books wherever you are and don’t have to take the time to go to the bookstore. Also, there are different features that make reading easier for people to read. Like the fact that you can change the font size of whatever you are reading, which makes it easier for older people to read. In all, I think that this is a great new device that could totally change the way we read.

Kindle

Take A Seat

Recently I read an article about how long patients have to wait in the emergency room before receiving care, and it was pretty disturbing. The study said that half of all emergency room patients waited 30 minutes or longer before being seen by a doctor in 2004, which was a 36% increase from the average wait time in 1997. It said that even among patients suffering from heart attcks, half had to wait about 20 minutes or longer to be examined in 2004, which was also up from about 8 minutes in 1997. Also, the study said that for those patients who had serious health problems and needed treatment within 15 minutes were having to wait 14 minutes or longer in 2004, also up from 10 minutes in 1997.

I think that this is really scary. My dad is a doctor, so we have never had to go to the emergency room before. We always just go straight to whatever kind of doctor we need, or if we need like x-rays or something my dad just takes up straight there gets it done. But what am I going to do when I have kids? Am I going to have to wait in the emergency room if something happens to them? Probably, and that makes me really nervous. I never really thought about emergency rooms before, but after hearing this information I wonder how people deal with it. I don’t know what I would do if someone I cared about was hurt and in pain and we were told to just sit and wait. I hope they find some way to fix this problem soon so that people receive better care and feel more confident about going to the emergency room.

Emergency Room Waits Grow