It is common knowledge that there is a budget crisis befalling America at the moment, and in California this is especially true. A great, yet depressing, example of this is the L.A. school district’s plan to cut 5 days from this year’s school year and 7 from next year’s school year. While kids in America are already academically behind their companions in other countries, some of which have students attending classes 6 days a week and even have a grade 13, the schools are looking to make more budget cuts at the expense of the future generation of America. It would seem that education of children should be one of the top priorities of the government, not only in L.A., but across the country.
One of the most famous events painted by artists is, without a doubt, the Last Supper. In these paintings, Jesus’ last supper with his disciples is depicted, with plenty of food shown. Among this are a main course, bread, as well as plates. Using new technology, researchers were able to compare the differences of portions in the paintings, including the size of the plates. In a thousand-year period, the portion sizes depicted have continuously increased as time went on, with an overall increase of 69% in the main course, 23% in the bread loaf size, and 66% in the plate size. Interestingly enough, the most common descriptions in the Bible of the Last Supper include only wine and bread, however many depictions include many other foods, especially fish.
The paintings will often use symbolism, which would explain fish being a common addition to the meal due to the miracles Jesus completed involving fish, as well as it being a symbol of Christianity. There are many reasons why portion sizes may have increased in these paintings, as well as many questions as to why. Did the artists realize they were increasing the portion sizes? Did they perhaps do it unconsciously due to an increased amount in their own diets? It may be impossible to ever know, but with improved technologies it appears that we can answer many questions that could not have been answered before. With spring break coming upon us so soon, if not already, airports around the United States are using the same preventative measures as they began to use after the Christmas Day underwear bomber. With so many people traveling in the upcoming weeks, the security measures have greatly increased, including the use of the controversial full-body scanners. Many travelers are upset over this news, feeling that it is an invasion of privacy, while others feel safer about traveling at this time. By the end of the year, there is said to be over 1,000 of the scanners installed in airports across America, being paid for by the airlines themselves.
Another controversy arrived from this, because it could cause raised airfare charges for passengers, in trade for their increased safety. Personally, this sounds like a pretty good deal, but I do understand the outrage about it. Chances are it will still be cheaper than gas prices for driving to your destination, and an improved sense of security at the same time. One thought I have on this is why the airports are only now, for spring break, increasing these security measures? It seems like after the underwear bombing attempt, they would be doing these things year-round on every single flight, not just during times of increased travel. Feel free to leave any thoughts you may have about this. When you think of articles that might appear under a Health tab, there are many possibilities. These range from fitness health, body/physical health, mental health, and even just the overall health of YOU. This article focuses on the STING method to help stop procrastinating (something I’ve been doing a lot of lately). I found the method while using StumbleUpon, looking for a good health topic and this one seemed quite fitting. Rather than stumbling around until reaching a health site, I simply narrowed my stumbles to self-improvement, a subcategory of, you guessed it, health. The STING method goes as follows:
S - Select one task. T - Time yourself. I - Ignore everything else. N - No breaks. G - Give yourself a reward. Debate has been raging ever since the killer whale attack at San Diego’s Sea World. The whale attacked one of the trainers when she got in the water with him, hair in a ponytail. The killer whale in question has attacked people twice before, though one of the attacks was on a man who snuck in after hours and got into the water with the whale. The argument now is whether or not the whale should be put down for attacking people.
Sony’s PlayStation 3 has been having some troubles in the last week. When gamers unexpectedly were unable to play certain games that required Internet access, and when simply turning on the console without connecting to the Internet, they found their systems were locking them out entirely. However, the problems do not seem to be appearing in more current systems, released after mid-2009.
PS3 gamers are looking for reimbursements, especially because many lost money on rented movies they were unable to watch, as well as disallowing access to the PlayStation store and causing players to lose user data and other information pertaining to their game and progress, all due to this glitch. Sony has promised to have the problem resolved in a timely manner, but it also causes us to wonder: should something like this have happened in the first place? The first versions of the PlayStation only allowed games to be played from a disc or cartridge, and more recently, DVDs and Blu-Ray discs. However, a problem such as the one which has occurred never would have happened had Internet access not been needed to play the games. With the world becoming more dependent on the Internet and technology for just about everything is it good for all industries to be following suit? This raises more questions concerning what will happen if we face a national or global disruption in the technology resources to connect to one another. Of course, gamers have been upset about the glitch for many reasons, but they are only part of the population. If something like this were to affect the nation or globe as a whole, what would happen then? This seems to be only a stepping stone on the pathway to failure of systems around the world. | AuthorMelissa M: writer, blogger, reader, music listener, and much much more. ArchivesJune 2010 CategoriesAll |
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