Grammar Assignment

Rich, page 117

Grammar A-K

a) She felt bad about missing the school board meeting, but her editor fired her regardless of her excuse.

b) We will join in prayer for the students who died in the shooting and we will fly the flags at half-staff.

c) It is all right if you miss class for a job interview. You can make up the test tomorrow.

d) We will divide the workload among three students.

e) The St. Joseph Board of Commissioners plans to submit a proposal for a bond issue to pay for road improvements. It hopes that the election committee will reach a consensus to put issue on the ballot.

f) I know you are eager to get this job, but each of the applicants will have a chance to discuss their strengths and weaknesses with the personnel director.

g) Based on your writing skills, it looks like you could be a good journalist.

h) Each of the students will receive a plaque with his or her diploma at graduation.

i) She was embarrassed that she had fewer than five answers correct on the quiz.

j) After the boss read the report, he gave it to Jim and me to rewrite and said that it is due back by Monday.

Grammar L-Y

a) The people that attended the gay rights rally sponsored by the school said it was a unique event.

b) However, the participants in the rally said the media were annoying when they converged on the speakers with cameras and microphones.

c) Some of the speakers felt bad that the crowd became unruly and the organizer said he was embarrassed when some of the participants complained.

d) Next year the rally will be planned better.

e) None of the five students involved in the fracas is going to be published.

f) The first-place award, which was an engraved silver bowl, was received by the class valedictorian.

g) The three top restaurateurs in the city provided food for the banquet, but more than 200 people got sick after the event.

h) The City Board of Health, which investigates such cases, said the food smelled and tasted good, but they are withholding judgment on the cause of the illness until the food can be tested.

i) Regardless, a lot of people were lying in the ground, holding their stomachs in pain.

j) The city health inspector wanted to know whom he should blame, and he said he was moving toward a solution to the mystery of revealing who is responsible for the food poisoning outbreak.

Revised News Story

Right-Handers Live Longer than Left-Handers

Right-handed people live longer than left-handed people, according to a recent study reported in today’s edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Researchers studied death certificates of 987 people in two Southern California counties, and relatives were queried about each subject’s dominant hand. The results showed that, on average, left-handed women die around age 72 and right-handed women die around age 78; left-handed men die at about age 62 and right–handed men die at about age 73.

The authors are Diane Halpern of California State University at San Bernardino psychology and Stanley Coren of the University of British Columbia.

Halpern, a right-handed psychology professor, commented that “The results are striking in their magnitude.” But she also warned that the study should be interpreted cautiously: “It should not of course, be used to predict the life span of any one individual. It does not take into account the fitness of any individual.”

It was once thought that the relatively low numbers of left-handers among the elderly was from the old custom of forcing people born left-handed to change to their right hand. But it is now clear that left-handers tend to die earlier through accidents. “Almost all engineering is geared to the right hand and right foot,” Halpern said. “There are many more car and other accidents among left-handed because of their environment.”

The Difference between left-and right-handed people

Right-handed people live longer than left-handed people.

California State University at San Bernardino, psychology professor Diane Halpern and University of British Columbia researcher Stanley Coren did a study to determine why fewer left-handed people are among the elderly population. The study comparing the death and accident rates of left – and right – handed people. Research was conducted last year and was reported in today’s edition of New England Journal of Medicine.

Researchers studied death certificates of 987 people in two Southern California countries. Relatives were queried by mail about the subject’s dominant hands.

Left-handed women die around age 72; right –handed women die around age 78. Left-handed men die about age 62; right –handed men die about age 73.

Halpern said, “The results are striking in their magnitude.” Halpern is right-handed. She said her study should be interpreted cautiously. “It should not of course, be used to predict the life span of any one individual. It does not take into account the fitness of any individual.”
“Almost all engineering is geared to the right hand and right foot,” Halpern said. “There are many more car and other accidents among left-handed because of their environment.”

Some of Halpern’s friends are left-handed. “It’s important that mothers of left-handed children not be alarmed and not try to change witch hand a child uses,” she said. “There are many, many old left-handed people. We knew for years that there weren’t as many old left-handers,” Halpern said. “Researchers thought that was because in the early years of the century, most people born left-handed were forced to change to their right hands. So we thought we were looking at old people who used to be left-handed, but we weren’t. The truth was, there simply weren’t many left-handers left alive, compared to right-handers.”

The Killian Memos

September 8, 2004, the CBS 60 Minutes anchor Dan Rather ran a story about how George W. Bush got preferential treatment in the Texas Air National Guard. The real mix-up started when CBS posted National Guard documents on its website and later found that CBS had failed to authenticate the materials. If I have to put myself in Dan Rather’s situation, as a mass communication student and as a journalist myself, I would probably have cried out:” Hey, colleagues! We’ve got such great material! The audience will love it!” Honestly, for me it is quite easy to imagine and feel Rather & Company’s excitement when they got this unique document from Lt. Col. Bill Burkett, a former US Army National Guard officer. The notes were made by Bush's commander, the late Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian. The Killian memos, allegedly written in 1972 and 1973, included criticisms of Bush's service in the Guard during that time. “In the 60 Minutes segment, anchor Dan Rather stated "we are told [the documents] were taken from Lieutenant Colonel Killian’s personal files" and incorrectly asserted that "the material" had been authenticated by experts retained by CBS.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rathergate)

Quite soon the audience got news that the Killian Memos were forged! And of course it raised a question “Who wrote them and why?” Columbia Journalism Review journalist Corey Pein wrote an article “Blog –Gate” where he tried to guess, “The Kerry campaign created the documents. CBS’s source forged them. Karl Rove planted them. Memos were forged, authentic, or some combination thereof.” But one thing is clear; somebody wanted to make CBS look bad. They succeeded! The head of one CBS affiliate said that after the 60 Minutes episode he received 5, 000 e-mails complaints. The final step: Peabody Award-winning producer for the television show 60 Minutes, Mary Mapes got fired by CBS, several senior news executives were asked to resign; Rather announced that he will leave 60 minutes after six month; CBS apologized to viewers. Later Rather stated, "if I knew then what I know now – I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Rather)

All this Killian Memos mess started just two month before the 2004 Presidential Election. I cannot vote in America because my permanent resident status doesn’t let me vote for five more years, but from living here for more than three years and following America’s political life while I was living in Europe, I have to say very simply: American politics is very dirty (though, of course, European politicians are not better). For example the American Presidential advertisements are just one big set of personal attacks, and vicious distortions! That’s all. Right now we are witnessing the dirty attack methods in the McCain vs. Obama ads. Why did Kerry lose on 2004? Because of a set of forcefully stated and widely circulated untruths! Unfortunately, however much American voters claim to dislike negative campaigning, lies and attack methods really work in American elections. In Kerry’s case, the major example is the famous SBVT (Swift Boat Veterans for Truth) a political group of American Swift boat veterans and former prisoners of war of the Vietnam War. This group was established in 2004, during the presidential election campaign for the purpose of discrediting John Kerry, and opposing his candidacy for the presidency. Kerry was awarded with the Purple Heart during his service in the Vietnam War, but SBVT made groundless claims that the official accounts of his heroic service were false and that he had in fact been observed by some of his ‘comrades’ to have acted with cowardice during combat. Kerry lost! It looks like similar attack methods were used against Bush, although compared with the attack on Kerry, the accusation was relatively minor, or even a bit silly! Probably not many people really care what George W. Bush did in 1972 when he was only 26 years old – even if it was very far from heroic. It can be argued that everybody gets bigger or smaller preferential treatments in their life. And when the public very soon found out that the materials were forged, that possibly made Bush looked quite good! Mainstream media picked up the SBVT attack stories, not necessarily agreeing with them, but adding to the publicity. Sadly, I have to agree with The Washington Times article “Playing ‘whack-a-mole’” written by Douglas MacKinnon “The media, not the voters, chose the winner of the 2004 Democratic primaries.” The media stole Kerry’s nomination! The SBVT story is a great example for the old expression “A lie can have traveled half way around the World before the truth has had time to put on its boots”.

In the case of the CBS/National Guard Scandal, however, it looks as though the Media was a bit too quick to discard the story as completely false, even though much doubt had indeed been cast on the authenticity of the documents. More careful examination later showed that many of the accusations of the bloggers and “investigators” who had led the attack on Rather were themselves inaccurate or false. But by then it was too late – any journalist appearing to question the accuracy of the forgery allegations were dismissed as biased liberals.

As a news consumer, journalist, student and voter (not yet), it seems that it is very difficult to get the right balance. It is good that bloggers can dig-in to a news report, question its validity and attempt to uncover the truth. At the same time bloggers can themselves spread lies successfully, by force of numbers and because of the great speed with which those lies can move around the world before anyone has time to check them. An election can be over and the damage done before the full story has been properly and diligently researched by investigators who have no bias and who take the time-consuming trouble of turning over all the stones. The public want news now, and soon loose interest when the answers to not come quickly

Bloggers’ Power?

Few hours later, after September 8, 2004 CBS TV Show 60 Minutes, tons of bloggers showed up on Weblogs like a mushroom after the rain. The purpose - 60 Minutes anchor Dan Rather reported that they got official materials that shows how George W. Bush got preferential treatment in the Texas Air National Guard. The records were written by Bush's commander, the late Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian during 1972 and 1973. CBS also published the Killian’s Memos on its website. From the professional viewpoint – Dan Rather’s report was blatantly biased, but readers could find biased thoughts in the Weblogs that offered ‘support-Bush’ and ‘anti – Bush’ articles. Rather is known as the anchor of one of the “Big Three” who was never granted an interview by George H.W. Bush and also his son George W. Bush during their presidencies. The second noticeable mark of Rather is that he is known for having a liberal bias for much of his journalist career. The accusations quite soon also appeared in the mainstream media (MSM), such as, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Chicago Sun-Times. The Republican supporters were the first who reacted to the published Killian Memos in the CBS website and claimed that the documents were forgeries. There were many kinds of bloggers: men who remember stories told by their ex-military fathers, uncles and friends, ex-military guys, journalists, just ‘mumblers’, and even people of high position. For example, the rightwing Web site FreeRepublican.com blogger “Buckhead” turned out to be Harry MacDougald, a Republican lawyer in Atlanta. Ratgarete.com was sponsored by Richard Viguerie, a famous conservative fund-raiser. Columbia Journalism Review journalist Corey Pein wrote an article “Blog–Gate” where he mentioned that some Weblogs “were fed up by the conservative Media Research Center and by Creative Response Concepts, the same p.r. firm that promoted the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.”

If I have to answer the question. How do bloggers fit into the communication sphere of America? Do they make media better, or do they distract media from the important issues of our world? Well, probably I won’t say anything new and I will just agree with the idea that there are two kinds of blogger: those who just talk and those who really react to the news and make some significant contribution or even find completely new information, or the real facts behind a doubtful news story. There are bloggers who make a living doing only blogs! Perhaps we can count those on two hands, but I am sure that the influence of bloggers will keep growing. There is no doubt that Weblogs also shape the Main Stream Media; there are cases in U.S when bloggers found information faster than journalists and also cases when MSM followed the blogger’s lead - for example in the CBS’s fiasco with the Killian Memos. The times when organizations within MSM competed only with each other to run a story first, is over. MSM has to compete also with Weblogs. I am largely in favor of the Blog-Media, though as I mentioned in my previous blog, the speed with which bloggers can spread their stories means that there can be lot of false stuff out there before the truth emerges in the bloggshpere, and when it does emerge, it can be too late - the lies may have caused irreversible damage to someone or to some organization, and/or the public may simply have lost interest. Paraphrasing one of the Dan Rather’s ‘Ratherism’ “Turn the light down, the party just got wilder!” I would like to say quite similar: “Turn the light on, the competition just got tougher”

Volunteerism Research Questions/Answers

Research Answers:
1. What five states rank as having the highest rates of volunteerism in the U.S.?

In 2007, 60.8 million volunteers performed 8.1 billions hours of service.

In the last three years, Utah has been the top volunteer state with a volunteer rate of 43.9 % followed by:
2. Nebraska
3. Minnesota
4. Alaska
5. Montana

Sources:
http://www.nationalservice.org/about/newsroom/releases_detail.asp?tbl_pr_id=1116
http://www.volunteeringinamerica.gov/

2.What five countries provide the most economic aid to other countries (overall and proportionate to population)?

1.United States
2. Switzerland
3.Germany
4.Italy
5.France/Turkey
Source:
http://www.efilsummersummit.org/index.php?page=newsletter&id=6

3.Where does the word “volunteer” originate?

“The word comes from Latin, and can be translated as "will" (as in doing something out of ones own free will)” http://en.wikipedia.org

4. How many nonprofit organizations provide the opportunity for citizens to volunteer in Boulder County?
There are 250 different nonprofit organizations in Boulder County that provide the opportunity for citizens to volunteer.
Source: http://www.bouldercounty.org/volunteer

5. What opportunities do CU students have to volunteer on their campus?

CU students can choose different fields to volunteer, including:
The Arts, such as film festivals, dance companies, art exhibitions etc.
Counseling/Crisis Intervention
Community Services
Animal Welfare
Helping people with disabilities
Recreation/Outdoors
Child care/ Pre-School
Health/Medical
Education
Families/Parenting (‘baby-sitting’)
Children: Clubs/Tutoring
Environment
Justice/Legal policies
Seniors
Women’s Assistance

Within these broad categories, there are around 30 different organizations on CU Campus where students are welcome to participate in volunteer work. For example: Peace Corps, Rocky Mountains Rescue Group, Sexual Health Education Program, Best Buddies, Bike Club, and much more. For more information and details check out: http://www.colorado.edu/vch/Database.html
As well, CU students can volunteer off the CU campus. There are more than 200 local Boulder communities that are looking for enthusiastic students volunteers. More information about opportunities to volunteer off CU Campus can be found on:
http://www.colorado.edu/vch/Database.html

Beat – Art & Entertainment

Issue – Colorado Film & Documentary
Story Ideas :
• Colorado actors and movie directors
• Supporters for Colorado films and documentaries
• Where the Colorado actors are trained?
• Government supporting for Colorado arts
• How much does the local movie cost?
• Colorado celebrities
• History of Colorado Film Industry

Why People Volunteer?

Story Ideas:

1. Psychology Behinds Voluntarism!
2. Top 5 US States for Voluntarism
3. Politics Behinds the Countries that Volunteer to Help Other Countries. (Who really gets the biggest benefit long term or is it win-win?)
4. History of Voluntarism
5. Do the Religious Volunteer Organizations Damage Indigenous Cultures?

The Role of the Press in the Political Structure of the U.S.

2008! United States of America! Only two competing teams: Nr.1 “Republicans”; Nr.2 “Democrats”. Competition started to warm up already on late 2007 with the fights for the presidential nominations and CNN bought the main rights to cover both teams’ debates. But are they really just two teams competing to represent distinct aspects of public opinion, or do they actually represent the interests of numerous competing and cooperating groups within a complex “pressure group” society?
In The New Yorker, Nicholas Lemann wrote a critic “Conflict of Interest. Does the wrangling of interest groups corrupt politics – or constitute it?” Lemann started his article: “In a year saturated with political conversation, can there be any topic that has not yet been discussed? Well, here’s one: 2008 is the centenary of a curious and mesmerizing book that was long considered the most important study of politics and society ever produced by an American – “The Process of Government: A Study of Social Pressure”, by Arthur Fisher Bentley.”
newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2008/08/11/
The book is about US Interest Groups and probably there will be always an unanswered question as to how strongly these groups impact the US political structure, and which groups are most influential at a particular time in history?
Bentley expressed that there is no “Public Interest”; there are only various groups of individuals with specific interests. According to Bentley, there are two main categories of Interest Group: those that organize and act and those that “talk”/publish/discuss, the former having a far more powerful influence on politics and society than the latter. From this perspective, the press plays a relatively minor role in society compared with, let’s say, the National Rifle Association or the American Association of Retired Persons who ‘employ’ numerous lobbyists in Washington, who are constantly meeting with our elected representatives, and who donate large sums of money to these representatives’ political campaigns, If by “press” we only mean newspapers and magazines, perhaps its impact on political structure is indeed relatively weak, but if the wider media is considered (television, internet, blogsphere, etc.) then Bentley’s argument would seem to underrate its impact and is probably outdated. Certainly, much of the press is and has always been the mouthpiece of specific interest groups, but the voices of more and more interest groups are being heard through internet groups and the blogsphere, and the line between the media and active pressure groups is becoming less clear. For example an interest group can emerge on the internet among people who start by simply voicing a common interest or opinion and end up by actively engaging lobbyists in Washington to represent them.

Lemann also mentioned Thomas Frank’s books, “The Wrecking Crew. How Conservatives Rule.” In a previous book, “What’s the matter with Kansas?” Frank argues that, if you are not rich, there is no reason to vote Republican, and expresses bewilderment at why so many blue collar workers from, for example Kansas, vote Republican. In the Wrecking Crew, he focuses on the strength of Republican lobbyist groups that pervert or “wreck” democracy by their political pressure tactics. However, Lehman supports the notion that we are intrinsically a pressure group society, that this is not altogether a bad form of democracy in itself, and that the only way to defeat one set of interests is by promoting and pressuring for another set of interests. To me, the broader media, especially in its newer electronic forms, is playing an ever increasing role in the impact of pressure groups on society, especially as these media increasingly represent pressure groups themselves.

Personal Anecdote

Finally, anecdote from my life! Somewhere around 2003, almost every day, I heard in the American media that since there is a high possibility of another terrorist attack against the US, it is very important to buy duct-tape. So, I went to the shop and bought enough duct-tape to cover the windows and doors of my two storey house! I am now wondering what kind of commercial interest group was behind the duct-tape campaign, or how duct-tape manufacturers managed to get the unquestioning cooperation of so much of the media.