Tree branches make killer weapons...

On December 9, 2010 Herlin Mendez, a native of California, was involved in a "stickup" that stayed true to its name. Mendez held a Shell station at stick point on November 22, 2010. Mendez demanded not only money from the cash register, but cigarettes as well. Mendez made his escape in a 1995 Ford minivan. Police tracked down this minivan and inside found the weapon of choice: a three-foot long tree branch. Obviously this tree branch was enough to scare the employer into giving Mendez what he was searching for. In this case Mendez was not able to make like a tree and leave. 

Could the Titanic vanish before our very own eyes?

A part of our history may vanish before our very own eyes. It has recently been discovered that a bacteria named Halomonas titanicae is eating away at the Titanic wreck and leaving dust in replace of the infamous remains. Since this bacteria is chewing away at the Titanic at a faster rate than any of us could have expected, than the prediction made in 1995 that the Titanic will be on the ocean floor for another 30 years will be proven false. Eventually all that will be left of the Titanic will be a rust stain. This is due to the fact that the eating away of iron is a natural process and this is its way of returning it to nature.

Sketchin' on Facebook

I know personally that I can spend hours creeping my life away on Facebook and I’m sure countless of other college students feel the same way. When it comes to social networking websites such as these, we all have to be careful about the information we submit. It has been brought to my attention that pedophiles have invented a new way to deceive Facebook users into accepting their friend requests. Over the past few weeks, people have made their statuses “Change your Facebook profile picture to a cartoon character from your childhood and invite your friends to do the same. Until Monday, Dec 6th of 2010, there should be no human faces on Facebook, but an invasion of memories! This is for a campaign against violence on children." As always if some of your friends change their profile pictures, you will obviously follow the trend. I don’t know if it’s just me but I know when I log onto my Facebook, my mini- feed is clogged of notifications of all of my friends changing their profile pictures to the cartoon character of their choice. I did not see the point since changing you picture is in no way creating awareness for child abuse. There are no donations being made and no program groups are involved in this Facebook trend that is taking over cyber space. Since I found this act pointless I decided to not follow the trend and pick one of my favorite cartoon characters to use as my profile picture and I am sure glad I didn’t. It is now being reported that “the group asking everyone to change their profile pictures to their favorite cartoon character is actually a group of pedophiles. They are doing it because kids will accept their friend request faster if they see a cartoon picture. It has nothing to do with supporting child abuse and violence; IT'S ON TONIGHT'S NEWS. Copy and paste this to your status, let everyone know now!!!” My one word of advice would be if you have a cartoon picture as your profile picture change it, and to never accept a friend request from someone you do not know, especially if they have a cartoon as their main picture. You never know who will be creeping on you!

The History of the Music Legend in Your Very own Hands

         In my world music makes up a big aspect of my life. I am constantly listening, downloading, and researching new artists. To me, music is a way to express my thoughts and my moods. Each of us all have our favorite artists that we turn to, but would you be willing to pay the price to have a piece of your favorite artist in your very own collection.

         All Bob Dylan fans will now get the chance to bid for a piece of paper that contains lyrics to the songs “The Times They Are A- Changin,” “North Country Blues” and “Come gather ‘round.” These lyrics will be auctioned by Sotheby’s and will go for between $200,000 and $300,000. Very few people in particular have seen this document over the past 47 years, which is when it was first discovered. This piece of music history will be auctioned off on December 10, 2010.

         Even though I love Bob Dylan as much as the next person does, I don’t know if I would pay that much money to have his own hand written lyrics in my possession. But, nevertheless, hardcore fans will be going wild on the thought of possibly owning their own piece of the legend known as Bob Dylan. 

Unraveling The Onion

          Cries of laughter could be heard miles away from the Mabel Brown Room as two writers from the publication The Onion- America's Finest News Source presented the audience with their best satirical articles. These writers further proved the belief that you should never believe everything you hear or read. The Onion makes its fame by providing its followers with outrageous and false stories on political figures and life- changing events that have happened or are currently occurring. The Onion is an example of a publication that tries to find the humor in every situation. 

        From this presentation we all learned the secrets of the writing process behind The Onion. The biggest revelation to me was the fact that the first step in writing an article for The Onion is first creating the headline. Usually in the journalism world the heading is the last part of the article that is created, and the heading is most likely formed by the editor. In my opinion, this would be a hard task to accomplish because you never know what you are writing until you apply the pencil to the paper. 

         Even though I was laughing throughout this presentation, I was constantly questioning the ethics of their publication. I thought it would be nearly impossibly for them to get away with the facts and words they had written, but this is not the case. Since their publication is considered to be satire parody, they never run into any trouble from the law. Since the public knows that all of the information they are writing is in fact false, they are writing ethically. The writers are also careful about who they target. By choosing targets that are often in the spotlight, it is equivalent to writing a gossip magazine such as Star about these people.

         From this presentation I definitely became more knowledgeable about the code of ethics and how it can be applied according to a publication’s tendencies. The lesson to learn here is you can’t believe everything you read kiddos. 

Obstacles in creation of blog

Just started this blog... have to say the hardest part was figuring out a blog URL. It was a tad difficult. So this blog post is an example of my accomplishment in successfully creating this blog. Enjoy...