ENG 103:01 Fall 2019

What is the 27 Club? It is a notorious age for stars like musicians, artists, and actors that have died either before or at the age of 27. This "club" is haunted by the common thread of drug abuse and addiction. Recently, rapper Juice Wrld passed away from apparent overdose. Many artists sadly promote the use of drugs and violence. The constant culture of drug use and violence in the entertainment industry has promoted an extremely risky lifestyle to those watching. According to the Addiction Center's article entitled "The Influence Of Social Media On Teen Drug Use", studies show a link between media and drug use. The author Jena Hilliard stated, "A study conducted by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University found that teenagers who regularly use popular social media outlets were more likely to drink, use drugs, and buy tobacco than adolescents who either did not use social media or used it less frequently". There is ...

Recently, I went to work and I was informed there has been an E. coli outbreak found in romaine lettuce.  So what is e. coli? According to the Center For Disease Control and Prevention, e. coli or " Escherichia coli  (abbreviated as  E. coli ) are bacteria found in the environment, foods, and intestines of people and animals.  E. coli  are a large and diverse group of bacteria".  This bacteria can cause a variety of possibly life threatening problems if not treated quickly.  I am a server at Bob Evans, and salads are sold left and right. Unfortunately, this is not the first outbreak I have observed. The recent outbreak has left individuals  to question regulations regarding the control of outbreaks like e. coli. Did you know that the leading factor to cause the outbreaks are the poor farming techniques used by today's agriculture industry? This is caused by the buildup of water runoff from the manure and fertilizers used in agriculture. The r...

Pensacola Suffers From Cyber Attack As of recent events, the government of Pensacola, Fl suffered an attack that shut down the communication systems . The government released a statement stating that the cyber attack targeted the systems and has been notified to the FBI. The cyber attack targeted city payments, emails, and systems. Events like these, pose a huge risk to the privacy of individuals.    The recent cyber attack has drawn me to ask a question. Do you feel safe on the internet?  

Here are some tips on how to survive our first college finals: 1.      Create a schedule for studying: a.      Spend around 60-90 minutes a day 3 to 4 days a week taking a brain break every 20 minutes to soak in what you studied. 2.      Find a study partner or group: a.      If you find that you study better well with someone else find someone in your class a study with them.                                                         i.      It’s never too late to find a tutor or ask your professor for help on something you just really don’t understand.       ...

As 2019 is coming to an end, there have been many new fads that have came about. These trends spread throughout the entire world, and are still popular today. Everyone has heard of Tik Tok, and this app has sky rocketed in popular this year. Although the app was made in September of 2016, it  now reaches its glory as many people download it. We can all admit that we spend hours scrolling through new posts instead of doing important tasks in life. It tends to distract us from reality, and focus our attention towards people becoming famous by dancing or lip syncing to songs. This craze has grew to its full potential from luring many people in. If you think about it, fads are results of rhetoric being used in society, so the art of persuasion is used so effectively that people start to catch onto new ideas. Another fad that is easily known is the "ok boomer" phrase. This phrase has risen because of the notorious Tik Tok app and has become the talk of the year. Some people ar...

Recently an interesting article was posted to Business insider talking about how a US drone was able to eliminate a terriost threat using a missile to strike a mini van that was traveling through Atmeh in Syria. But the most interesting part was the missile was not packed with explosives instead swords The main targets in the strike were elites in a grouped named the red bands. The mini van seemed intact besides the driver side where is was torn in shreds. This was created and used to reduce civilian causalities. In review its crazy to see how modern day weaponry is being intovative to solve problems of civilian causalities .

Peer editing has always been something people hear and most of the time their first reaction is "ugh peer editing", but peer editing can actually be very beneficial to everyone that takes it seriously. The rubrics that are used to grade papers is most of the time the same ruric that is used to grade your actual paper. When peer editing is taken seriously it lets another person read your work and tell you what you should change or add to your writing to make it better and possibly get a better grade. Over the times that we have used peer editing in this class it has helped me change my papers for the better and I will continue to have others look at my writing in the future because of the feedback that I have received.

As most of you have heard of the TV show "Americas Got Talent" that lets ordinary people display there talents. But if you haven't watched the last season of it, you should know that Gabrielle Union was one of the Judges on this show. Recently she has been fired for reportedly, two reasons. One of the reasons was that Union had filed a complaint that there was racist joke being used within the Human Resources and it was not take seriously. Another reason was that producers complained that her hairstyles were "too black". In this day in age we should all know that jokes whether they were meant to be harmful or not that was used in a racist manner should be taken seriously. Also, many black women had to fight to wear their hair how they want too regardless of their race. This is a discrimination issue that needs to be addressed. 

Most of you do know that the 2020 presidential election is about a year from now, and some of you do know who the candidates are for the race as well. As of December 3, 2019, Kamala Harris has dropped out of the presidential race. This was a shocker to most people because she was one of the top candidates for this upcoming election. The reason behind this according to CNN, was that she was not able to raise any money for her campaign events.

If you haven't heard from the news or the media, that Congress are currently in the works of impeaching Donald Trump. For months, there has been a lot of speculation of whether Congress was moving forward with the Impeachment. As of December 3, 2019 the report from CNN states that there was a 300 page report outlining the process of impeachment towards Donald Trump. Do you think Donald Trump should be impeached?

Around a month ago,  Instagram  chief Adam Mosseri announced that Instagram will start  removing likes  on posts in the US. This is an experiment which is already being tested in seven other countries. Users will still be able to see  likes  on their own posts, but not on others. This has caused many people to be upset, mainly famous people. A lot of internet creators gain revenue through interaction on their posts. This new like system would make it harder for that to happen. The cause of all this, is inequality. For instance, if a High School girl only gets 75-100 likes per post, while another girl in her grade gets 350-400, this causes the girl with less likes to feel more insecure about herself. This is something that I see on a daily basis and has lead to many people feeling like they are less of a person if they dont get as many likes as someone else. I truly think it is silly, and no one should compare themselves to others, but it is a real problem s...

Many food providers and producers do not bring full awareness to the ingredients and parts of the products that they make and sell. Many companies hide ingredients to promote it as healthier. For example, Gatorade is known as a "healthier" drink than soda. It is promoted as being a healthy alternative to drinking soda. However, Gatorade contains as much, or more, sugar as soda. Recently, schools across the country have been replacing soda in vending machines with Gatorade. Another example would be flavored drinks. Most "fruit flavored" drinks do not include the actual fruit. The taste is coming from an artificial chemical.

On an average day, how often do you look at the nutrient content on food labels? Have you noticed that the word "natural" is labeled on some items that are not really natural? Yeah.. I did not think so. The food industry is the biggest industry in the world, yet it is the most problematic. We tend to believe the "facts" that is given to us, and don' t really read into the actual truth about the food industry as a whole. Junk food makers spend billions of dollars advertising unhealthy foods to kids. This often sways parents to buy those foods just to make their kids happy. Especially when kids are temperamental in the grocery store. Not looking at a product before buying it, can cause health issues later in life. The food industry is the one to blame. Why lie about the content in food, and why tell the world one thing and then do another? People should not question things that are healthy, because immediately when we see words like "natural" or ...

After a severe record of no rain in 155 days in St. George,Utah, received over a month's rain in over a day. The city of Utah had absolutely no rainfall during the course of 5 months, beginning in the month of June 18 through November 19. Smashing its prevoius record of 121 days without rain, a new and marvelous accomplishment for both the city and the residents. https://weather.com/news/weather/news/2019-11-21-st-george-utah-record-long-dry-streak-record-wettest-november-day?par=flipboard The city of Utah later recieved about "1.29 inches of rain Wednesday morning", and lasted the whole day of 24 hours.According to the U.S Drought Monitor released about 64.5% of the city was in drought, and the rain was much appreciated. Overall, the residents were happy of the rainfall and were given an amazing sight of a beautiful rainbow over St.George.

Last week in class one of the groups topics that presented was animal rights. They spoke about whats happening to animals and about animal cruelty. One of their main focuses was on animal testing. I was curious about what is being done to help these animals and this is what I found.   Just this week Senators Cory Booker, Martha McSally, Rob Portman, and Sheldon Whitehouse brought a new piece of legislation to the senate floor. This legislation covers animal beauty testing. The act is to completely ban cosmetic testing on all animals. An animal-rights group cruelty free international commented on the legislation by saying,  “Cruelty Free International applauds this renewed effort to bring an end to animal testing for cosmetics across the United States that will match the progress that we have seen around the world as consumers, companies, regulators, and advocates come together to achieve a common goal of ensuring that animals no longer suffer for the sake of cosmetics anyw...

Just FYI: Trump Retreats From Flavor Ban for E-Cigarettes Advisers say the president pulled back from proposed restrictions intended to curb teenage vaping after he was warned of the political fallout among voters. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/17/health/trump-vaping-ban.html for more information (from the CDC): Outbreak of Lung Injury Associated with the Use of E-Cigarette, or Vaping, Products

We know look at things as refuse, reuse, reduce, recycle instead of reduce, reuse, recycle. Today I read an article on electrek on the climate crisis. This weeks crisis was "What would the world look like in 2030 if we stopped climate change?" The mayor of Venice blames the record flood they recently had on climate change. On November 12, 2019 they town had there second largest flood they have ever seen. with the sea-level recorded at 187cm, which is 6 feet and 2 inches. It brought severe damage to the city due to the fact that the city was submerged in more than a meter of water. The mayor said that the drastic change in the tide is the result of climate change. Scientists are constantly doing research to show how climate is changing. In this article scientist are in the Amazon in Brail discover a way to prove this stance. They are saying that "if another fifth of the Amazon goes it could pass an ecological point of no return." We need to make a change in ...