The Limits of Language

"The Limits of Language" by Nicholas Lemann points out that the way language is represented today is made to change or to hide the true meaning of words. As Orwell states in his essay of "Politics and the English language," bad language produces bad politics.
Lemann states "function is far preferable to emotion." This can be seen as a rule that Orwell did not establish in his essay but Lemann thinks it is necessary for correcting the way language is represented.
Another point from Lemann's essay is that the internet is a useful modern tool but it has corrupted the information that we find and so it can't always be trusted without doing research.
Politics and media will use any means in order to convince the population. The question is to what extent will they use "bad language."

The Infotainment Freak Show.

On the essay by Martin Kaplan "Welcome to the Infotainment Freak Show" there is a very revealing analysis on the information media. Kaplan show that news today is all about entertainment and finding the most bizarre and crazy things to entertain people with. I think money and power is what drives the media in to showing the American population these things. It is how they get higher raitings.
Kaplan also states that reporters aren't doing their job of researching in depth about an important news topic and instead they just get their stories by looking up information on the internet.
News used to be a public service that transmitted facts and well researched stories and now, with more competition, being profitable is the only way they can compete or so it seems that way.
everyone must consider now if what is shown in the news channels is factual, researched information. that is why it can be a good idea to watch the news in more that one newscast.

On Politics and the English Language

This weeks reading of George Orwell's essay Politics and the English Language was difficult to understand because it is highly analytical. Orwell intends to explain how we shouldn't write essays with words that we have to look up in the dictionary.
Sometimes we use words in our essays that we might think means a certain thing, but it is actually something different. This is because how we are influenced by the "bad habits which spread by imitation," according to Orwell.
Also, our constant changing politics are giving us the guidelines of how we should think, regarding political and economical issues in our nation and abroad. For instance, words like democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, justice and other that Orwell uses can have different meaning with every new presidential term.
Orwell's rules on writing essays are very helpful. Sometimes i try to write and essay using words that sound sophisticated but i end up not even understanding my own essay. Another thing that I often do is to write words just to "fill up" the essay in order to reach the assigned number of words. Hopefully by following his those rules my essays will turn out to be better in quality and analysis like in Orwell's Essay.

Inappropiate Haunted House

An article from the San Bernardino Sun on 23 October, 2009 was posted online with the title "Rialto mother turns home where sons died into haunted house." It caught my attention because it sounds disturbing just by reading the title. Josh Dulaney reports that a a fire in a Rialto home killed the two sons of Viviana Delgado, who is making a haunted house out of the remains of the burned house. According to the city planning department, it is safe to enter the house as long as it is not red-tagged.
Some neighbors consider it to be a "macabre memorial." "It's not cool," said Harry Cass, 49. "I disagree with it." "People don't know what I'm going through, they don't know how I feel," Delgado said. "This is how we're going to spend Halloween together."
I think everyone has the right of mourning the way the feel it is the right way for them. Some ways seem inappropriate or disturbing. I personally think it should be just a memorial and not a haunted house with sounds and lights.

Counterfit sellers

On Sunday October 18, there was a news article that talked about counterfeit sellers in the inland center and what the police is doing about it. "Inland police targeting counterfeit sellers" is the title of the article by John Asbury of The Press-Enterprise.
In the article, Asbury describes that law enforcement people have found sellers of counterfeit merchandise in swap meets and outside of markets. Brands like D&G, Coach and Ed Hardy are among the top most seized by authorities.
According to an interview with Riverside County sheriff's Sgt. Zachary Hall, "A lot of this counterfeiting is what funds terrorist activities and narcotics."
Asbury explains that the sales of counterfeit items hurt sales of local businesses and that retailers loose thousands of dollars. I think that most of the people who buy counterfeit clothing, shoes, bags among other things are people who can't afford to buy the brand named items at regular price, so in a way it is not really a loss to the retailers because these people who buy counterfeit would otherwise never buy original. I am not saying that it is ok to sell counterfeit products, I am only suggesting that the price of original merchandise shouldn't be too high, specially at times of economical crisis.

Riverside's all-over web

approximately three years ago there was a plan made to provide the entire city of riverside with free wireless Internet access by placing access points all over. In and article of the Press Enterprise "Riverside goal of all-over Web access falls short so far," Alicia Robinson details how the plan is doing and what problems have surged so far.

Robinson tells us that the current "WiFi" coverage is about 70% of the city in the three years they have been working on it and to have the full coverage the city would need $5.1 million in stimulus money. 

A few other issues that arise are that the wireless coverage that is currently provided by AT&T has a contract until the year 2011 so it is unsure of what will happen to the plan after that. Also the Internet service is not as good as it would have been to have individual wireless access points at home. Although Robinson gives us a clear story, i would have liked to read interviews about the subject from people in favor or against it.

It is a good idea because people that don't have Internet access because it is expensive would benefit from the plan but I think that they should not use more of the stimulus money for a service that is not really good and unreliable because of weather conditions and trees blocking signals.

Ready, Set, Believe!

On 10/4/2009 The second annual Believe and walk for the cure for cancer took place in Redlands, California. I am pleased to say that I participated in this walk along with over 4,000 others that attended. 

As it was reported in a Press Release on 10/1/2009 by the Stater Bros. Charities "4,000 Registered for Redlands' 2nd Annual Believe and Walk for the Cure," the walk began at 9 a.m. on the corner of 5th st. and State st. and there was the option of a 5k or 10k distance walk. Compared to last year's 1,700 walkers, there were more than double the participants. The Stater Bros. Charities and Inland Women Fighting gathered approximately $250,000. After the walk, there was a celebration at the Redlands bowl with kids activities, musical presentations and free food from Baker's, California Pizza Kitchen and other local fast food chains.

I could not find a news report of the event but as I mentioned before, I had the privilege to participate in this event. Before the walk took place, we heard a few words from the people who made this event possible like: the three founders of this event (which told us a brief story of how the foundation started), The C.E.O of Stater Bros. who mentioned the importance of why we were there, The Mayor of Redlands who's speech was like a heartwarming welcome and a few others.

It was a very emotional day for some that have experienced the battle for cancer, either themselves or their families. Some have lost loved ones, others are still fighting for a cure, but we were all there united because we want to help each other, not just help ourselves. During the walk, there were signs that read "Go walkers" and "Start Believing", and also people motivating you to keep going . 

To me, the walk represents the struggle that people go through and on that road, nobody should be alone, that is why everybody walks together. The end of the walk represents making it out of the struggle and a sense of relief for everyone. I Hope that next year we can unite even more people so that soon enough we can find a cure for cancer.

Web Security

The security of the web is an issue that we should be looking at more so today than ever before. According to the article by the Associated Press "What's government's role in making the Web secure?" the government should be prepared for a cyberattack that could harm the infrastructure of  our country in terms of revealing government secrets, military weapons specifics, sensitive data and personal information.

The article was published on 9/27/09 and Lolita C. Baldor states that On a daily basis, there are hackers and cybercriminals trying to access secure network information from both the private and government sector, that information must be kept secure, and there is an ongoing debate on whether the government should have the power to shut down all Internet traffic in an event of a crisis. An example of this can be found in the movie Life Free or Die Hard from Twentieth Century Fox where terrorism in the form of a cybercrisis threatens the integrity of the nation's finances. 

Some bloggers believe that the government is trying to take control of the Internet and some business leaders protested on the bill's introduced to congress that address the issues of giving federal authorities the power to protect the country in case of a cyber attack. In general, I think that the government should not have the ability to "pull the plug" on the Internet traffic, but instead should only worry about protecting the  "classified data" and the personal information of it's people. Like Tom Reilly  states, "Private companies are willing and able to protect their systems without government mandates," Also private citizens should take the necessary precautions to protect they're personal computers from hacker attacks. There is free software available to download to protect your computer for people that can't afford paying for expensive antivirus software like Norton or Mcafee. I really recommend downloading Avast if you don't already have an antivirus or you cant afford to pay monthly subscriptions. Over all the article is clear in giving us different points of view about the web security issue. We are left with the notion  that it is an issue that involves every person. Either we think that the government wants to take control or that they are really protecting the web security, it is good that they are doing something about it right now instead of waiting for a disaster.