Afghanistan Helicopter Crash

On Saturday, August 6 2011, US had suffered its greatest single day loss of the entire Afghanistan war. Taliban militants had shot down a Chinook helicopter containing 31 US elite SEAL units and 7 commandos brought in to support and rescue 4 of their units. They were believed to have been shot down by an Roclet-Propelled Grenade. US president Barack Obama had visited the families of the deceased, showing his condolences for the soldiers and their families. The US military had seemingly "avenged" them by bombing the suspected Taleban hideouts. However, i believed that they have the wrong mindset. They underestimated the Talebans. They had believed that they own the rights to the sky, as we can see from the fact that the US air force had sent in a vulnerable transport helicopter into a danger zone, which actually shows that they are being complacent. However, this unfortunate accident had simply just reminded everyone that, there are still enemies out there.

I feel pity and sadness in not only that these soldiers had died in the battlefield, but also that they are dying due to the wrong reason. Their purpose of entering the battlefield was to save people and to kill people who take others lives. However, in this case the soldiers are dying due to the mistakes their superior make. Is This Right?

Book Review: The Prodigal Daughter

This book by Jeffrey Archer, is the second part of the Kane and Abel series which includes the main characters of Florentyna Rosnovski, Richard Kane and their fathers. This story is divided into two parts. The first part describes Florentyna Rosnovski and her life from her birth till the end of Kane and Abel, where both fathers passes away. The second part of the story however, holds more meaning and significance than the first part of the story. In the second part, Florentyna wrestles control of Richard Kane's bank back. She then meets up with an old friend, Edward Winchester, who then convinces her to run for Chicago in the Congress. This marks the start of her political career which as she progresses, she meets obstacles such as funerals and scandals, one of which was Richard's death in a car accident which derailed her political career for a period of time but of which she recovered fairly quikly. She then became the vice-president of the United states.Subequently, after President Parkin died, she became the president.

This story shows me that friends are an integral part of us, and we have to treasure those friends and disregard those that do not consider us in their actions. This can actually be applied to much of our lives and is an important key to our success. Without friends, we can improve, can develop and can persevere.

Book Review:Kane and Abel

This story by Jeffrey Archer is the start of a series of book with the main characters being Abel Rosnovski,William Lowell Kane and Henry Osborne. This story is about two man, one Polish and one American, from totally opposite backgrounds. William Kane had inherited a bank from his deceased father who died in the Titanic while Abel had inherited a castle from his father,a baron, but it was destroyed. Subsequently, he took over a hotel group known as the Richmond Group, consisting of 11 hotels. Henry Osborne was a unemployed man who was in search of a spouse when he met William's mother, Anne. He then married Anne and made Anne pregnant. He then slowly drawed on Anne's inheritance of 500.000 dollars to fund his outings with his friends, claiming them to be discussions with potential customers of his made-up company.William found out and kicked him out of the house, but not before Anne passed away. William then grew up and took over the bank of his closest friend's father, Lester bank, while Abel developed the renamed Baron Group into a hotel empire,both parties trying hard to topple each other from their seat. After Henry Osborne convinced Abel of William's guilt, Abel made use of Henry Osborne to destroy William.

I believe that this novel shows something very important that students fail to see. In our environment,we see that life is easy, that repenting helps to erase your mistakes, but this as a sheltered and enclosed environment, where there are mostly students and therefore minimal contact with the real world. In the world out there, people are not what it seems, not as trustworthy as friends. In Kane and Abel, a truth sets in, that a dispute had come between Kane and Abel, but Henry Osborne had made them enemies to feed his hatred towards Kane for kicking him out of the house. This shows that the world is not so simple, and that simply being ignorant about the outside world is not an option, and if you realise it late,it might be too late to do anything.

Russian ship capsize

A half-century old Russian tour boat named the Bulgaria had capsized in the Kuibyshev reservoir of the Volga river, two miles away from the shore. 188 people were on board when it capsized, and 101 people are still missing and 85 survived and 3 others were found dead in the reservoir. A few ships had came to their rescue, yet other ships simply avoided them. Emergency teams and divers from the neighbouring regions headed to the wreck site to search for survivors. It is claimed that the ships sunk within a minute due to its lack of partitions and that it had not been inspected and retrofitted since many years back. This resulted in an inability to release lifeboats before the boat capsized due to the lack of time.

I believe that no matter how much these companies are trying to cut cost, they should not do such fatal actions that could cause such terrible accidents to occur, resulting in a loss of many lifes. Why should all the people who have died in this tragedy sacrifice their lives for the money saved in not upgrading or replacing this ship.

Mississippi Burning

When it comes to serious crimes, is it right for the justice system to pursue criminal charges several decades after the crime is said to have occurred?

I believe that even though the criminal might only be recognised a few decades later, it does not mean that justice cannot be done for all these victims. Even though the victims of this crime has already been killed, this still reduces the presence of one cold-blooded murderer in the US. By allowing them to get away scot-free after so many years of evading the government, it would just signify that you can get away with crimes by hiding for many years, thus encouraging them to continue commiting the crime, therefore i beieve that it is right for the justice system to pursue criminal charges several decades after the crime was commited.

What do you think: was the state’s image “rehabilitated”?

I do not really believe that the Mississippi's state's image was rehabilitated. Even convicting the murderer of this criminal would not make much of a difference ever since the racial barriers were torn down and that the arresting would not make a significant improvement to the state's image. Furthermore, This just reminds people of Mississippi's past of being a state full of racism and therefore would not rehabilitate its image but cause it to worsen.

DEHP contamination

There is a recent food scandal in taiwan regarding the use of plasticizer DEHP in place of palm oil as a cheaper alternative. DEHP has many effects, which includes affecting hormones in children. These people are trying to earn more profit and yet they give excuses for these illegal usage of harmful chemicals, such as palm oil being short-lived and gave off a badd odor afterr a while. Would all these food be better off being short lived and having a bad odor, or having chemicals that destroy humans?

All these food were actually made and allowed to be produced by them. They said that since the clouding agents sector only consist of a small part of these large chemical companies, they would not use all these unsafe chemicals. However, the authorities have confirmed that these clouding agents are unsafe. So are lives or money more important to them?

Food and Us

I have read an article which states something that we, some of the people in the world, fail to recognise. People often take for granted what they eat and drink everyday. They always take it for granted that they will have food forever. What they fail to recognise is that as humanity progress, greed starts to develop. That is when we taking food for granted becomes harder as greed, and the other multitude of emotions decides to take advantage of this. Counterfeits such as dyed egg and melamine milk starts to be produced to lower cost for more profit but creates bigger health risk to the humans.

After all these different kinds of problems regarding the food we eat, how will we be able to eat without considering that the food we are eating might not be real food, but food made up of dangerous chemicals. Would we have to bring a food testing machines everywhere we go and not even be able to eat without any worries that this would be a meal full of poison and chemicals?

http://www.foodpoisonjournal.com/food-policy-regulation/of-recycled-buns-food-safety-in-china-and-the-jabberwocky-of-political-debate/

E.coli Outbreak

The E.coli virus has many different strains, some harmless, others fatal. This rather potent strain of E.coli, however, has caused over 38 to die as of now, mostly within Germany which is believed to be the source of the infection. Most of the victims had recently travelled to Hamburg, Germany. The start of this infection is claimed by the German Government to originate from sprouts grown in a farm in Hamburg. At the start of this outbreak, The German Agricultral Minister had attributed the start of this outbreak to Spanish Cucumber after testing positive for the E.coli virus, resulting in a loss of sale of over 200million euros for the Spanish farmers. I believe that even though these virus mainly affects the victim and these farmers, there are also other indirect effects of all the different outbreaks. I have just read about this article on a journal which i have recently posted about how we trust the supplier of foods with our life and that this trust is being chipped off slowly by all these food scares and virus outbreaks, which makes people disheartened with our own food suppliers and the effect of that would be that human would not even be able to rely on one of their neccessities as the trust of the other neccesities get chipped off and slowly, humanity loses itself.

Book Review(A Darkling Plain)

This is the last book in the Mortal engine Quartet. The leadership of the Green Storm has been passed to General Naga,the second-in-command to Stalker fang, who married Oenene Zero, the Engineer who repaired Shrike. The green Storm is now observing a ceasefire with the Tration cities. Lady Naga is also promoting peace with the African Empire, where Theo Ngoni, best friend of Wren, from the Mayor's office, lives at. While Lady Naga is sent back to the Green Storm headquarters of Tianjing, the airship was sabotaged by a spy of the Stalker Fang and exploded. The spy flew away and reported to General Naga that The traction Cities had destroyed and killed Lady Naga, with the intention to start the war, but General Naga just dismisses the fact and waves it off. Cynthia Twite, the spy, then tries to poison him.

Meanwhile, just outside the borders of the Green Storm, an alliance of Traction Cities had gathered and Tom and Hester had just touched down on one of the cities. Along the way, they saw a londoner walking about and follows her. They meanwhile, make friends with a Mayor's son, who owns a Harvester-suburb. They then follow her all the way back to the ruins of London where they have started building a Mag-lev city. Stalker Fang finally manages to activate ODIN which fires on both the Traction Cities and Green Storm, causing chaos in the face-off at the border. Wolf, the suburb owner then flees London and chases New London with his suburb. General Naga is informed of this by Tom and rushes over with much reluctance. In the end, General Naga kills Wolf and Harrowbarrow, the town, and loses his own life. Tom and Hester tracks down Stalker Fang, and Stalker Fang is killed, but not before a tinge of Anna Fang's soul returns and cause her to command ODIN to self destruct. Tom dies of a heart attack and Hester commits suicide. Shrike arrives too late and carries Tom and Hester's bodies away, leaving them to rot as he hibernates until he sees signs of human life, of which he then expresses then he is a remembering machine. From this, We can learn that before making our decisions, we have to consider what purpose is it for and who caused the reaction, as we can see from the war of the two organisation while the perpetrator, Stalker Fang watches from the sides. I also can learn that while every action of a person shows a different personality, what one risk his life for is what displays one's true intention and characteristics.

Book Review(Infernal devices)

This book is the third book in the Mortal engine quartet where Tom Natsworthy and Hester Shaw now lives together in a broken-down moving city. They now have a child are are content to live in Anchorage-in-Vineland, the city. However, their child, Wren Natsworthy, after hearing all the stories of adventure and courage that the couple had experienced, feels frustrated at the boring live in Anchorage-in-Vineland, and decides to follow Caul, a former Lost Boy, which was an organisation of boy thiefs that loot cities by leaching submarines to them. Caul then met a Lost Boy, who then requested him to help steal a book in the library of Anchorage. Caul refused to steal the book, but Wren is discovered and convinced to steal the book,The Tin Book, from the library in exchange for an adventure away from Anchorage-in-Vineland on a limpet,the Lost Boys' submarines. Wren manages to steal the book from the library, but the Lost Boy were found when Hester tracks Wren down. The limpet manages to excape, but has 3 crew down and Wren on board. they then get distracted by the raft city of Brighton, which holds the Lost boys as slaves. Slowly, Tom and Hester tracks down Brighton and manage to escape, but not before Brighton is attacked by The Green Storm, a organisation to make the world green again by eradicating all traction cities. Stalker Fang, A stalker made out of Anna Fang, is killed by Stalker Shrike, who was programmed by the Green Storm engineer to kill her, but not before she memorises the Tin Book down, which was the activation code used to activate ODIN, a orbital weapon.From this story, it is possible to tell that peace is extremely fragile and that once a mistake is committed, the chains of events occuring is irreversible. In our present life, Peace should not be taken for granted and that we should be contented why what we have, unlike Wren.

Book Review(Mortal Engines)

I just read a book by the author Philip Reeve called Mortal Engines. This book is about a girl, Hester Shaw, and a tier-three London historian in a future world where cities are now mobile and have tiers, one being of the highest ranking, follow a system called municipal Darwinism where they eat the weak and get eaten by the strong. In this story, the start of the mortal engine quartet, Tom, a normal historian fallls in love with the daughter of the London Mayor's right hand man thaddeus Valentine. He follows her around and Valentine until a day where an assassin attempts to kill Valentine. Tom stops the assassin from killing Valentine and chases after her. However, the assassin, Hester Shaw tell him about Valentine's murdering of her own parents. Valentine figures that Tom knows too much and tries to silence him by throwing them out of london into the Out-country, a muddy ground consisting of all types of Traction cities. They then travel all the way back to London, while avoiding a Stalker,Shrike, which has been sent by Magnus Crome, London's mayor, to kill both of them. Meanwhile, Valentine is sent on a mission to destroy the air-fleets of the Anti-traction league and obtain the parts of an ancient weapon that can vaporise an entire Traction city. Katherine, Thaddeus daughter, finds out what they were attempting to do with the ancient device, to destroy the wall of the Anti-traction league, and stops them, causing a large build-up in energy and causing the weapon to vaporise London with it. Hester and Tom gets off in an airship just in time, before London is destroyed.

This story shows that in life, not everyone has a good intention. Life is never idealistic and that one does not always get to choose what he does and that we should always treasure that we have a choice of our life, where we get what we want and need. Developing survival skills is also vital in the real world where there is no pillar of support. You are on your own.

Japan Earthquake

The significance of this event is not only that this is one of the strongest earthquake and caused a tsunami to occur, but caused a nuclear disaster, which has great environmental and economic impacts on the economy. Firstly, the disaster will put a strain on the reserves and economy of Japan due to the need of resources and money for the victims and repair of damage done to the infrastructures of cities in this disaster.

The nuclear disaster happened with the blown outer building of reactor 2 where an immense amount of smoke bellowed into the air.Radioactive materials were found in traces in the air, slowly water was also affected. This caused a widespread concern of the health of Japan's citizens and the integrity of nuclear reactor structures. traces of radioactive iodine was detected in air above Fukushima power plant and had slowly travelled over the pacific to the US. this shows the wide impact on the environment. this also caused countries to issue an alert to stop consuming food from Japan from fears of radiation, causing the agricultural sectors of japan to slow down due to less demand. The tourism industry was also hit as countries started issue travel alerts to Fukushima area, which the world generalised it as japan and thus refrain from going to Japan altogether. slowly, foreigners were charted flights to evacuate from Japan, including Tokyo.

This has been further worsened by the lack of communication and transportation between the cities and the remote areas, making it harder to progresss and provide aid to the mountainous regions where immediate help was required. The extreme weather also caused delays in travelling and discomfort in survivors, where daily needs such as heater were out due to the loss of power.

LA Exposition essay

Did you know that when Oprah Winfrey endorsed Barack Obama’s campaign for the president of the United States, Obama gained a lot of voters’ support and he won! So Celebrities do influence others mind, often to the extent of taking over the role of a parent’s guidance. But I agree that celebrities’ opinion and guidance are not always correct and that the current situation that celebrities are more important than parents and teachers in guiding people’s ambitions is bad.

Celebrities do not have enough life experience to guide others’ ambitions. Most celebrities have a pleasant and comfortable environment and do not have the chance to witness the life of most people out there. Unlike most people, they enjoy comfortable lives and do not understand how reality differs from the world they are in, therefore they cannot be trusted to guide others. However, parents and teachers have life experience and knowledge from the many events in life to be able to guide a person’s ambition

Furthermore, this shows that the relationship between many parent and child is widening as the trust between the parent and child wears out. This is an alarming fact as a relationship between the parent and a child widening causes the parent to lose confidence in the child and therefore refuses to give him any guidance on accomplishing his ambitions. The child also loses his most important pillar of support and an important source of guidance and advice that could make a big difference in achieving their ambitions. Thus, this shows that the parent’s guidance and trust is more important than the celebrities’ guidance and therefore the situation of the guidance of a celebrity being more important than that of a parent or teacher is alarming and bad.

Lastly, The celebrities do not understand the person’s character and therefore their judgement of the situation and ambitions might clash with the person’s character. This causes a problem that the person might be confused and under considerable stress due to that he wants to follow the guidance of the celebrity, but his character simply does not allow it, which could be detrimental to his physical and mental health. This demonstrates the fact that celebrities guiding one’s ambition may lead to unnecessary stress to the person causing harm to him.

Others might argue that it is usually the person who requests for help from the celebrities, but the celebrities could have taken a different approach towards helping them by guiding them to a party that can provide a more professional and personal advice and guidance for the best effect instead of taking the matter into their own hands and causing even more trouble.

All in all, The situation that celebrities are being considered more important than parents and teachers in guidance on ambitions is bad, and there are many effects of this situation which could be detrimental to our society and thus we should change the mindset of the people lest the effects become irreversible.

DON'T KILL ME.I KNOW THIS IS SERIOUSLY BAD HELP ME IMPROVE BY GIVING COMMENTS>.< ...

Task 1

It stands, a derelict, haunting house, alike to a graveyard. Living skeletons, with damp, muddy skin stretched over it, slouched in makeshift beds. A nauseating stench of death lingered in the air. Among them, a lone mother sits upright on a rattan mat. She maintained a look of never-ending sadness with an occasional sigh, seemingly letting herself be subject to this terrible fate. An innocent baby, born of merciless fate, sat on his mother’s only possession, sucking on an empty nipple, almost as if warm breast milk was the only food he could have, perhaps ever.

personal response (ending)

I find the character Boo Radley most interesting. At the start of the story, there were many stories about Boo Radley such as him being monsterously tall, injuring his own parents and many other tales which Miss Stephanie Crawford claimed to have seen through her window.

In the middle of the story, Dill dares Jem to go into the Radley porch and knock on the Radley House. Jem then runs up to the Radley House and knocks on it before running out of the porch again. An almost invisible motion could be seen at the window beside the door.

At the end of the story, Boo Radley appears and help Jem and Scout home. He appears worn out by this effort to bring them in and looks very pale. Although he looks like a monster or ghost, he has a better and kinder heart than most other humans.

personal response (Chapter 22 to 31)

i believe that the ending of this story is predictable as Bob Ewell has a short-temper and does not forget bad things easily. Due to the fact that Atticus had convinced the Maycomb community to believe that the Ewell family had wronged Tom Robinson. This caused Bob Ewell to bear a grudge against Atticus. Bob Ewell thought that Jem and Scout was Atticus, thus he attacked them. Unfortunately, he killed himself accidentally. I believe that the ending is very realistic as after all, Someone commits a crime would have to pay for it eventually, which in this case, is death as the punishment

personal response (Chapter 11 to 17)

i empathise with Atticus the most. He has to contend with the crowd of Whites who has objections about him defending Tom Robinson, a Black in court. Furthermore, he has to contend with Mayella Ewell who kept saying that Atticus was mocking her and refused to speak up when Atticus questioned her. I empathise with Mayella the least. The author tries to describe Mayella as the victim and has suffered deeply and innocently. However, Mayella seems to be hesitating about providing answers relating to her father as though he had threatened her not to tell on him.

Personal Response(Chapter 1 to 11)

I believe that there is a very big difference between my and Scout's experience. I have been raised up in a protective environment and thus do not have many encounters in my childhood. I am not allowed to roam around in public without either a parent or guardian with me. However, Scout is able to roam around freely around Maycomb County, thus she would have more experiences and adventures. Since she has a tomboyish attitude, she isn't afraid to meet challenges and problems and thus accept dares by her brother and friends, thus resulting events to occur. I am being protected from all the threats in normal lives by my family, thus the only few experiences i have would be only in school. In my old school, there was an Indian classmate who was always treated badly and bullied in class by the other students. Their names get made fun of and they are always insulted saying that Indians are smelly.This shows a example of racial discrimination in schools,especially neighbourhood schools

Picture description

the waves rippled through the deep blue sea. The wind coated the calm waters, picking up the salty smell of the calm waters. Rocks protruded out of the water, seemingly fencing up the small paradise-like island with lush forests and its pearl-white sand.The faint sounds of sploshing can be heard. The sky seemed to be coated with a layer of cloud, the light blue sky streaking through.

Prejudice

Prejudice means to be permanently biased agianst someone or something due to some reasons. However, there is a difference between the meaning of bias and prejudice,as obias is generally used to describe people while prejudice is used to describe items. For example, the white Americans were prejudiced against the African-Americans due to the belief that they were of higher ranking than them.

However, there are many aspects of prejudice that i do not really know or understand as other than just biased against something, there are probably more meanings of this complicated word.