New Year, New Layout! (same old news?)

That’s right~ ‘Tis the big 0-9er: my last semester in high school. Man, all the school work is killing me… of course, that’s not what this blog is about, now is it?

This blog is for Current Events!

Those occurring in the year 2009. This is a big year, you know! Obama’s in the White House, the economy’s in a depression recession and rumors of war spread around the instant anyone gets iffy! (Like Gaza/Israel and even Iran with its ’satellite programs’) But I’ll leave that for other posts~

Note: As you can see, I updated my layout. Looks very smooth now, I like it more this way.

Canada PPt

Here’s the PowerPoint presentation I worked on. It’s on Canada :D

I’d write more but this computer is about to restart. Enjoy~

EDIT: Okay, now I can talk a little more about this. I already sent this assignment on time, but it had to be uploaded to the blog, so that’s that.

Violence can’t pierce an iron bubble

Oh dear. It’s violence. Great in movies, fun in video games but not so much in real life, hmm? But, you know, is it? Here in PR, the murder rate is astronomic. Death and murder are almost on equal terms with the weather, yet we don’t live our lives in fear, do we?

It’s sad. It’s as if I can’t take violence seriously. Death is depressing, murder is horrifying and abuse is cruel; but all these things are sort of alien to me. I’ve experienced them somewhat, but it’s like they’re the other side of what I can only call “my bubble.” The only way to stay sane in this world is to take the good in and leave the bad out. It’s not feigned ignorance, it’s being selective about the truth we choose to accept.

What kind of Twitter-er are you?

Twitter.

If you’ve turned on the news at any time this past week, month or what little we’ve had of the year, you’ve no doubt heard its name. So, it begs the question, what is Twitter? If you’re behind the times, you may not know. If you’re “hip,” “cool,” or more likely curious, you’ve probably been ‘tweeting’ for a while now.

Regarding my rather unbalanced state of health

I despise being sick. It crums up your brain and tires your body. It’s a very unpleasant experience. Of course, at the same time, I love talking about myself. So rather than using my free entry for something boring or weird, I’ll use it to talk about germs. Because they’re “what’s current” to me D:

Firstly, let’s work on our terms. What here in Puerto Rico we call “monga” varies from “catarro” or “fiebre.” This isn’t the case in English. In English, you either get a cold or get the flu. In truth, the two are not very different. A flu is a severe cold, whereas a monga is cold with symptoms outside of the usual “stuffy nose, sore throat” combo. If you get a fever and are bedridden with aches, you have a monga. In reality, aches and fevers are actually symptoms of the common cold. (There are countries, such as Japan, where you are not considered to be suffering from a cold unless you have a fever.)

So rounding it up: I have a case of the common cold, but I did have a monga. Why is this? What is the “common cold”?

The common cold is a contagious, viral infectious disease of the upper respiratory system, primarily caused by picornaviruses (including rhinoviruses) or coronaviruses. It is the most common infectious disease in humans and there is no known cure. (wikisource)

Oh woe. That sounds a lot worse than it is, doesn’t it? That’s the problem with viral diseases, of course. They’re each completely different. This is because once you’ve recovered from a viral illness, you can never have that same illness ever again. You’re cured because your body became immune to it.

It goes without saying then, that every time you get sick, it is because you caught a different strain of virus. Considering how many times a person will get sick in their lifetime, that’s probably over a thousand different viruses.

This is why the common cold has no cure. It’s always different, so the only things doctors can prescribe are medicines to treat the symptoms, rest and hydration. Your body has to work the virus out, and every body is different. So if I got sick at the same time as a friend of mine got sick, it isn’t unexpected that he recovered faster than I did; his body just adapted faster.

This is, of course, very inconvenient in real life. People like me, with what appear to be weak immune systems, will always take longer to heal than people with stronger immune systems. Eating healthy, exercising daily and keeping a healthy lifestyle can only take you so far. These things won’t make you any less susceptible to the common cold, but they will make you heal faster.

So the lesson is (and I direct this largely at myself): stay happy, eat healthy and exercise, or else you’ll just keep getting sick for the rest of your life. A virus is a virus is a virus. And it’s really annoying when you get sick around important school dates.**

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**I have the stories for the blog assignments, I just haven’t been able to write them up because I’ve been so sick these past days. I’ll try to have them up tomorrow…

If I’m going to do this the wrong way..

…It might as well be amusing.

Sorry for my ridiculous tardiness. I’ll just blog whatever news I find relevant immediately next time.

For now I’ll blog about this: Woman Calls 911 After McDonald’s Runs Out Of Nuggets

A Fort Pierce woman called 911 three times to report an emergency after McDonald’s had run out of McNuggets, according to a police report obtained Tuesday

Next up: Africa

Following our Cuban theme, next is Africa. What in Africa? Oh, just Africa. What’s up with Africa these days… How ridiculously broad o_o

Here\’s a story that piqued my interest.

The United States of Africa

Wouldn’t it be cool if that happened? Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the new head of the African Union seems to think so. Unfortunately, his hasty approach is probably hurting his chances to actually live to see it happen.

Wanting to do something and having the means to do so aren’t the same thing. Africa is a continent filled with almost endless turmoil and instability. It’s clear that rather than skipping to the end, the African leaders should focus on the baby steps it’ll take to reach such an ideal.

This is of course, the view most of the leaders have. Better luck next time, Mr. Gaddafi?

Viva la Revolución!

(Yeah, I know Spanish.)

Filler space for the

Cuban Revolution

I’m supposed to talk about Cuba. I… can’t say I care, really, but school’s school, so that’s that.

This past January marked the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. Despite the fact that Cuba is supposed to be our soul-brother, not many people in Puerto Rico actually care. That’s sad, isn’t it? Our lack of interest in the subject (at least in my generation) is proof of the Americanization here in Puerto Rico :/

Throughout our elementary years, we are brought up amid several misconceptions that can only be traced back to ignorance. It’s not done on purpose, but we are told certain things in a ’simplistic’ way, so that we may easily understand what we’re told. No one bothers correcting people when they assume Frankenstein is the monster, not the scientist.

Another good example of this would be when first graders are taught basic math. One of the first rules they learn is that 3 – 4 is not possible because 4 is greater than 3. However, later in life they’ll learn that this is an incorrect assumption, since such a difference would yield negative numbers, which are not beyond our scope of understanding. This same basic principle plagues our history and can be applied to this Cuban indifference, I think.

Because the simplest History books are by American authors, (and old ones at that, at least for people my age,) many of the views expressed in these books can be misleading. These are the same books used to breed tried and true Americans (back in the day which was a Wednesday, by the way my History book said “Formerly USSR” next to Russia) So when kids are taught with books like these, history tends to get dumbed down to “Germany attacked Europe and the good guys won.” or “Communism is evil, and Russia is the source of it, so Russia should be feared.”

Naturally, with flimsy historical knowledge and a general Anti-Communist perspective, when kids here learn about Cuba, they think “Oh, it’s the crappy communist country with Fidel.” This is of course, wrong.

Before the Embargo on Cuba, Puerto Ricans and Cubans could come and go as they pleased. Many Revolutionary Puerto Ricans went to Cuba to aid in its independence, and likewise many Cubans came to Puerto Rico to help out, though that didn’t work out. (That explains the sister-flags, btw)

In fact, and this is another misconception, the Cuban Revolution did not immediately mark the victory for communism. The Cuban Revolution was simply an act of the country’s populace getting together to overthrow their dictator, who favored the big foreign-held business’ who controlled most of the land. At first, Fidel Castro even promised to turn Cuba into a republic, free of ties to the shareholders of the companies situated there, but in the end, after his victory, he favored Communism as a means to even things out between the rich and the poor. This in itself wouldn’t be frownable if it weren’t for the fact that Fidel established a socialist dictatorship.

A dictatorship is an extremely frowned upon style of government. It puts one person in command of an entire country, and this person is usually in control until the day he dies. See the problem there? One man with thousands of lives in his hands. Not a good deal. So in essence, it’s not that Cuba is wrong, that’s just what they tell us.