Quarter 2 Outside Reading

For quarter two outside reading, I decided to read the book The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini. I decided to read this book because I have heard from many people that it is a good book and it was on the list of books on the blog. I also think that the situation in Afghanistan is interesting and will be interesting to read about.

Post #7

"Thousands Flee Rebel Advance in Congo".  This week rebel forces in the Democratic Republic of the Congo took over the city of Rutshuru (a territory capital) and moved within 12 miles of the city of Goma. Goma, one of the largest cities in the Congo, is the home of over 600,000 people and is a city that the UN is desprately trying to protect. Goma right now however is in choas, five rockets were fired at UN armored personal carriers and citizens have been throwing rocks at the carriers. The UN says they are in control of the situation but over 1 million people are now living in displaced UN camps and 150,000 of those people have came in the past two months. This is just two days after the rebels took over Virguna National Park, a park that is home to 200 of the remaining 700 mountain gorillas in the world. This is all part of a long war that supposably ended in 2003 and has killed 5.4 million people since it began in 1998.  I thought that this was an interesting article and I am suprised how little attention people pay to this war because it is a big deal and millions of people have died and yet many people around the world aren't even aware of this war and just continue on with their daily lives. If this war were happening in the US or Europe it would be all over the news and virtually everyone in the world would know about it.

Post #6

"Gigantic River Cave Revealed in Laos". One of the largest and most spectacular river caves in the world; the Xe Bang Fai river cave was finally explored and mapped out this year on an expedition sponsered by national geographic and led by veteran caver John Pollack. The Xe Bang Fai river cave was little known before Pollack's crew spend ten day in the dark cave taking pictures and looking at the spectacular formations throughout the cave. The cave was first discovered by the western world in 1905  by a French explorer on a bamboo raft. Ever since then explorers have been wanting to study the cave but Laos constant war and political unrest kept them out. After their expedition one of the men of Pollack's expedition, Bob Osburn is making a detailed map of the cave, while the rest of the group is planning to go back to the cave to explore more in 2010. I found this article interesting and I was glad that there are still big natural wonders around the world that have never really been explored and mapped out. I was also suprised by this because there are so many maps of small towns and really unimportant places all over the world but nobody has been able make a map of an important natural place like the Xe Bang Fei river cave until now.  I also was suprised to find out that nine mile river caves exist around the world and it makes me wonder if there are any big river caves in the US that I could go to.

Blog 5

"Early Voting Suggests 2008 may see record turnout, expert says". Officals in the twenty nine early voting states are reporting record turnouts this year and have counted 2.2 million votes already. Many battleground states like Florida and North Carolina had record turnouts. Turnout in Charlotte, North Carolina was so big that fifteen new voting stations had to be opened up because voters were standing in three hour long lines. The counties of Martin, St. Lucie, and Indian River have had more than six times the amount of early voters than they had at this time in 2004. These are records in early voting, but experts don't expect the record turnout to stop before election day. "This will be the election in which the most people have ever voted in an American election in the history of our country" says Michael McDonald a professer at George Mason University. McDonald also said that there is a very good chance that more than 64% of the registered voters will vote which would be the highest percent since the nineteenth century. I thought that this was an interesting article and I before I read it I hadn't heard of voting before election day and I was suprised that to hear that it could be done. I also wonder what makes someone eligible to vote before election day and if the only criteria is that you are traveling over election day, than I am suprised at how many people travel over November 4th. I also was suprised to hear that states like Georgia and Texas are having record number turnouts because those states are usually huge conservative states and I thought that people wouldn't be as motivated to vote if their state leans so much to one way.

Post #4

"Iceland Teeters on the Brink of Bankruptcy". Iceland, the small country of only 320,000 people is in danger of becoming the first country to go bankrupt. Cafes and supermarkets across the country are half empty and retailers and real estate agents had very few sales. Earlier this week the government took over all the banks in Iceland and centralized them in an attempt to save their country. Iceland is also currently trying to get a 5.4 billion dollar loan from Russia. If Iceland were to go bankrupt, it would not only be a big problem for Iceland but the majority of Europe as well because many powerful Iceland banks have big investments in companies across Europe. Also many Europeans have savings accounts in Iceland banks and would lose all their money if Iceland went bankrupt. Iceland's economy's recent slide comes as a suprise to lots of people because it had been doing well over the past decade and was voted the best european country to live in just last year. But it turns out that Iceland's economy is built on borrowed money that is invested in companies, an economic strategy that is "high risk high yield" says Global Insight's senior economist Venia Spilia. I found it very interesting that an economic crisis much bigger than our own economic crisis was happening in Iceland, but all people talk about is the United States's economic crisis. I also wonder if it is in other country's best interest to not help Iceland and let them go bankrupt because nobody is offering them a loan. I would think that it would be in other country's best interest because if Iceland goes under, then some of their big companies go under, but maybe there is just some logical reason I don't know about. Overall I'm glad I read this article and I thought it was interesting to read about other country's economies after hearing about ours so much.

Post #3

"Scientists Debate Possible Cell Phone Link to Brain Cancer". On September 25th 2008, congress debated about whether cell phones can cause brain cancer. Ronald Herberman and David Carpenter, the directors of health and cancer for Pittsburg University and Albany University were brought in to testify. Both of them agreed that they couldn't say cell phones were defiantly dangerous, but they also couldn't say they ere defiantly safe. Both also agreed that further testing was needed but pointed to a study done in Sweden that showed that people under twenty get brain cancer five times as often as others and that people who use cell phones are twice as often as others to get brain cancer. "Are we at the same place we were with smoking and lung cancer thirty years ago?" Carpenter asked. However Dr. Robert Hoover, who is the director of the national cancer institute, disagreed with Carpenter and Herberman, noting that brain cancer in children has not increased much from the late 1980s to now. I thought that this was an interesting article because I had never heard of cell phones causing cancer before. I don't think that this will stop me from using my cell phone because most experts still believe that cell phones cause no harm. But I do think that the US government should start tests on this like Sweden did because even though it is a small chance that cell phones do cause cancer there still is a chance and tests could save many peoples lives.