Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Obama's First 100 Days in Office

With all of the news outlets and most everybody talking about the swine flu, this has overshadowed that we've reached the 100th day of President Obama being in Office. The NY Post put up 100 Days, 100 Mistakes, in which they list out 100 supposed mistakes made so far in the first 100 days of President Obama being President of the United States. They list everything from "11. The picture of Obama and Hugo Chavez shaking hands" to "62. Not adopting a dog from a shelter". According to a Gallup Poll, however, 65% of Americans approve of how President Obama is doing, while only 29% disapprove. Out of many categories that the figures were broken down into, it looks like the only two categories that Obama didn't have the majority of approval from are Republicans and self-proclaimed Conservatives. In every other category, President Obama had the majority of approval.

Well, as President Obama moves into his second 100 days as President of the United States, he will obviously have his plate just as full as crises from the swine flu to the economy to health care to the "war" in Iraq still are on the forefront of the American people's minds.

Swine Flu Panic

As the talk of the Swine Flu has drowned out the cries about the economy for a while, there is a great deal of worry and a great deal of misinformation that is being spread. Widespread panic is hitting some areas, as the fears of a quick-spreading pandemic become more pronounced.

This Swine Flu epidemic is reported to have started in Mexico, which is already feeling the brunt of this financially. As we are approaching summertime and people are contemplating destinations, Mexico, already troubled with the news of outbreaks of violence and trouble related to drug trafficking, is looking less and less appealing.

Now, unfortunately the pork industry is also feeling the effects of this pandemic. Pork sales are dropping and the pork industry made it known that they would like this influenza strain to be renamed. In Egypt, the Health Ministry decided that all pigs in the country, roughly 300,000 animals, would be slaughtered! This is despite the fact that there have been no confirmed cases of the swine flu in animals or humans in Egypt. I am not sure if this was to allay the fears of the people or was an action of the Health Ministry panicking, but it is very severe. This seems crazy to me, but as worries rise, things will probably become more worrisome. The biggest spread of this strain is face-to-face contact of people, but the pigs are really taking a beating on this one.

Today, the pandemic flu alert level was raised to Phase V, the second highest level on the scale. This is indicative of more person-to-person infections being seen by the World Health Organization. Surely this is going to continue spreading for at least a while before it ceases, so there is going to be a lot of interest in most every detail that comes out on this for at least the near future...

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Earth Day 2009

If you had $20,000 to make your own community greener, how would you spend it? Well, National Geographic and SunChips have teamed up and want to hear your answer! If your answer is chosen, you will receive that $20,000 to go ahead and do it! Click here for more information.

Earth Day 2009

Earth Day is tomorrow, April 22nd. Earth Day as an awareness day has become a much more recognized "holiday", as environmental issues have come more and more into the foreground and global warming and greenhouse gases have become more of a recognized issue. Recycling is no longer a strange idea, alternative energies are much more seriously looked at, and people are taking the idea of helping to protect the Earth and environment as real goals now.

All too often, people start to feel like the global problems we are facing are way too big to be able to affect. People have that "one person can't make a difference" mentality, but it's totally not the reality of our situation. Every little thing you can do to make a difference helps and when every person does one tiny thing, the compounded effects can be overwhelming! For example, right now the population of the U.S. is approximately 306,263,646 people (population count is not a static thing, so it will be different at any other time after this and is only an estimate). Now, if each of the people in the U.S. gave one penny (assume a parent can give $0.01 for children, haha) to any cause, that would amount to $3,062,636.46! Over three million dollars and people seem to often throw pennies "away" and many will not stop to pick up one on the ground. Now, if each person picked up just one piece of litter off the ground to clean up, think about how overwhelming the difference would be. It'd be like filling a landfill!

That all being said, there are many many things that we can each do to help make a difference on Earth Day and everyday! Many things are just common-sensical things that you hear and are aware of. Others might be some things people haven't given a try to.

Compact fluorescent lights (CFL's) have been one of the biggest innovations in power saving! CFL's use just a fraction of the energy of standard incandescent bulbs, cutting energy costs for households (and seriously, who can't use a break on the bills right now?) and greenhouse gases that would have been produced to feed the hungrier incandescents. The color spectrums have vastly improved as well, which used to be an issue for some people with fluorescent lighting. The small amount of mercury that is in each bulb is also an issue, but there are many places to recycle these bulbs so that this can be safely managed. LED lighting is another development and could be the answer to this issue, though LED lighting tends to be more directed light, which is good for floods and spotlighting over lighting up an entire room and more reflective devices would be necessary for such applications. LED's last considerably longer than both incandescent and CFL bulbs, but the costs are higher due to much smaller productions at this time. Hopefully, a greater demand will soon lower initial costs.

If you can just change out one bulb in your house from incandescent to CFL, you will be saving yourself money AND reducing the production of greenhouse gases with just this one simple step. With government subsidies on the costs of CFL's, you can also get them for pretty decent prices and not feel like you're breaking the bank to save a over the long run. Costco has packs of various bulbs for excellent prices and thanks to their deals, I finally accomplished my goal of replacing all lighting in my house away from incandescent bulbs. If every household replaced 3 60-watt light bulbs with CFL's, the effect would be the same as taking 3.5 million cars off the road! If we all make a change, the difference will be astounding!

This is one simple money-saving, energy-saving, and quick-to-accomplish idea, but everybody knows of little things that they can do to make a difference. There are now many ideas such as this that will not only help the environment, but the wallet, and especially with a lot of government tax breaks on environmentally friendly ideas as well!



Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Tax Man Got You Down?

Well, it's that time again... Time to pay the taxes. Well, if you're down in the dumps about owing a bunch, Taco Del Mar might be able to lighten the blow, even if it's just ever so slightly! Click here, get their coupon, and print it out for a free taco today! "Free" is just the word people like to hear in these economic times...

Saturday, April 04, 2009

Binghamton Shooting Leaves 14 Dead

In a horribly unfortunate news story yesterday afternoon, a single shooter in Binghamton, NY entered a community center after barricading the back door and opened fire on a room full of immigrants who were taking a citizenship class. In local coverage of this news story this morning, the local newscaster commented on this story:
"We know more today about the shooting that led to 14 deaths in NY. Some say that the shooter was recently laid off from his job. We haven't confirmed that. We do know that he was an immigrant... (pause) and a gun owner."

Sounds like a troubling combo...

Friday, April 03, 2009

Madonna Denied Chance to Adopt Second Child From Malawi

After weeks of talk and much criticism for her attempts at adopting a second child from Malawi, a judge rejected Madonna's bid to do just that. It was based on a residency requirement that was apparently overlooked/bypassed when she adopted her first Malawian child.

Protests from human rights activists, the media, and a lot of the general public had been ringing loudly for the past number of weeks, since it was reported that Madonna was attempting to adopt a second child from Malawi. Much talk has been about how there are so many children in need of adoption in the United States that could be her "targeted" children. Also, the topic of taking the children away from their own cultures into other countries has been another issue. Madonna has been vocal in bringing the problems of poverty, AIDS, and other troubling issues in Malawi into focus.

While it is most definitely true that there are children in other countries who are also very much in need of adoption, it is hard to understand why so many people would be outraged that Madonna is attempting to adopt this 4 year-old girl from Malawi. I would agree with the rejection of her bid to adopt the child on the grounds that she didn't meet the residency requirement, but that's about it. For someone to take a child out of an orphanage, to provide that child with a home and love and try to improve that child's life, is really an amazing thing. It's true that Madonna could just send the family money to assist, but so could so many of the people protesting her adoption. She wanted to give of herself to the child, though, providing much more than the child can probably ever have otherwise. Her bid to adopt this young girl having been rejected means that the child will continue to live in an orphanage. Of course it would be nice if this child were taken care of by her own family or someone else locally, but this is not happening. The family cannot afford to raise her and local residents aren't clamoring to adopt children in what is one of the poorest countries in the world. It's an unfortunate situation all around. While I don't think that Madonna should use who she is to bully her way around into adopting a child, I don't think that she ever had any intentions but to love this child and provide a home and family that aren't there now.