What's with the world?

I remember a time, when friends actually meant something, relationships were something worked on and honour and integrity were important qualities for one to possess. Now, all we see/hear/read in the media is about how friends turn on one another, kill, maim those that once meant something to them. Reality t.v. has taken over the media landscape and all anyone is interested in is who's bedding whom, who's divorced, married or fighting thier best friend over some guy/girl. It's become the norm to write songs about cheating spouses, boyfriends/girlfriends sleeping with thier best friend.

Maybe, there's something wrong with me, but I don't see the point in this. Since when, did it become kosher to have so many dishonorable traits and to advertise this to the youth of society? We wonder why children are having kids so young, and have so many different fathers to thier children? It's pretty obvious that we've cocooned the youth into believing this is the norm when in fact that's not at all how thier parents were raised. People follow the Hollywood trends like that's a reasonable way to live, when in fact it's probably the opposite of what we want the children to learn.

All about me

Alicia Walker

I’m a Hamiltonian born and raised. I have an older sister and a younger brother whom I'm really close with. I’m a family-oriented person and find that to be a very important part of my life. I’m an outgoing and driven person and love to strive for the top in everything I do. I absolutely love writing in any form I can whether it be for a news story (radio, print, online, TV), scriptwriting, news releases, poems and songs. I like to delve into my creative side and explore all my options in that way. I love theatre and acting, it’s a huge passion of mine as well as broadcasting.

As for skills, I’ve learned skills such as media training, and crisis communications which I feel are very helpful skills to have in my line of work. I’ve learned how to make better presentations and continued to improve my writing skills with this program.

In a year from now I want to be in working in a not-for-profit organization like the Canadian Red Cross because I’d like to work for an organization that allows me to make a difference in my community. In three years from now, I see myself living in British Columbia to start my Journalistic career. Ideally, I’d like to work for a radio station and eventually have my own show and to do some deejaying on the side. In five years from now, I plan to have done some travelling, and hopefully living overseas working for a Public Relations Firm so I can do some international work.

In 10 years, from now I hope to be working in Corporate Communications for some large corporation in a management position and volunteer for not-for -profit organizations in my spare time. I’d also like to do media training on the side to help corporations and small businesses that can’t afford a Public Relations expert.

Do you know who you're going out with?

I read another interesting article in the Spectator today about the ability to get information on who you're about to go out with at your fingertips. Technology lets us do so much, access public files, check the weather, keep appointments on your phone or computer but technology is about to take the digital world a step farther. Check it out at:http://www.thespec.com/News/CanadaWorld/article/679181

According to this article, Apple has developed two new i-Phone applications known as " Stud or Dud?" and "Are they really single?" to help paint a more apparent picture about the person you're dating. The applications gather information from public records and government agencies to help the user understand more about the person they are about to meet.

Sounds great so far, doesn't it? Well, it is considering you can search the person and get information such as criminal records, address history, marital status and whether or not they're a registered sex offender but you have to pay for it; however there is a catch. There is no guarantee that the information is 100% accurate considering how common some names are. You can either pay$ 24.95 a year or $9.95 a record.

The company PeopleFinders decided to launch this application with the i-Phone and if it's successful they might bring it on board with company's such as BlackBerry ect.

Talk about making people nervous? This definitely will, as much as having information can be useful; it makes it more difficult to maintain privacy especially if you have a criminal record and you're trying to clean up your life. I guess this will make people more concious of what they're doing with the knowledge that their information is that accessible.

World's oldest Sheep dies

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8376053.stm
A 23 year old Sheep died in Australia from a heat wave. Yes, a sheep lived to twice it's life expectancy, no wonder it's named Lucky. Lucky held the Guinness record since 2007.

She was abandoned by her mother and raised and had 35 of her own offspring. Lucky died on Monday in the farm from a record heartwave of temperatures over 30c.

She was brought into the shed and put in air conditioning but she succumbed to the heat anyways. Lucky had lost all her teeth and had arthritis due to her old age. She was buried under her favourite nectarine tree on the farm.
They've displayed a copy of Guinness World Record certificate on the wall of the town's tourist information centre which supplies postcards, bookmarks as well as wool for sale.

Parents negotiating children's homework contracts?

This one blew my mind. Honestly, I can't even imagine a parent negotiating a contract on a child's behalf banning their school from giving them homework. Well, that's what two Calgary lawyers did for their 3 children. Check out the article at http://www.thespec.com/News/BreakingNews/article/674885 .

The lawyer's 3 children ages: 10,11 and 18 were struggling to balance homework and sports so their parents decided to design a contract banning homework and outlining the students responsibility.
The contract is known as the " differentiated homework plan" which states that the students must complete their work in class and be ready for quizzes as well as practice their music and read every night. However, all the grades they receive must be based off of the work done in class.

Studies show that homework and school performance don't have any clear link to prove that homework benefits the students.

If kids are getting bombarded with assignments daily, they aren't able to focus on what really matters- the lesson being taught through the assignment. Homework than becomes a race to get it finished and students aren't going to retain any information.

This is actually pretty effective in making school boards review their classroom structure. I can understand high school students having a lot of work to do outside of class but elementary students? That's a little ridiculous.

So first queue line jumping and now tossing vaccinations out?

I was quite appalled when I read this article in the Spectator today:http://www.thespec.com/News/BreakingNews/article/673249 So after we heard a week ago about queue line jumping from professional athletes we now find out that the they've miscalculated the amount of vaccination they needed, yet we don't have enough vaccine to give to school-aged children?

Sounds rather contradictory to me. If the country is so well prepared for this, how can we run out of vaccination and now have too much and have to throw it out since the vaccination is time sensitive?

It sounds like whoever was in charge of this plan didn't think it through thoroughly. They've said they had limited vaccine available and they wanted to be sure pregnant women, children under 5 and those with medical conditions received priority yet they threw out 1% of their vaccine?

After the vaccine is put in the syringe, they must use it within 24-hours or it's unusable since they haven't had enough time to study how it would react after that window.

I'm sure, that those awaiting the vaccine are very frustrated since many parents are trying to get their children vaccinated to prevent the spread of H1N1 yet every where they turn they're limited for what they can do.

There has to be a better way of distributing vaccination without wasting it.

Facebook Rape page?

I came across this article while on Facebook:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/6530584/Anger-after-Sydney-students-set-up-pro-rape-Facebook-group.html
Apparently a group had made a Pro=rape Facebook page that was called "Define Statutory" and was formed by a bunch of male students from St. Paul's College in Sydney. The group was just shut down last month and has been in operation since August. I find this appalling that that sort of content would even be allowed and what shocks me more is that people wouldn't report it. The article states that the page could be accessed off of any of the members profiles, so why wouldn't someone say something sooner?

I can't imagine that anyone with morals would see that page and not do something about it. It's an illegal and unethical act so why would Facebook not catch it or someone report it?

There are so many regulations for what you're allowed to post on Facebook and anything offensive isn't allowed I'm sure Facebook does some sort of monitoring for its users, so I'm shocked that it stayed operational for as long as it did.This looks really bad on both Facebook and St Paul's not to mention the young men who created the page.
This sort of publicity is going to cause public outrage meaning a tightening of regulations for Facebook users.

This shouldn't have happened, I hope they do something about this sort of incident.