Laser Pointers at the Airport

Today I read an article in the Star Tribune called, “Charge those who point lasers at planes, pilots say”. If the title of the article isn’t self explanatory it was about many cases of people shooting laser pointers at commercial and private airliners. This has been a problem that has not been addressed or taken seriously until now. Shooting the laser directly in your eye can impair your vision for a couple of minutes, this is called flash blindness. In 2005safety chairman Terry McVenes took the stand testifying "there have been hundreds of these kinds of events over the past several years." He also testified about a man from New Jersey who shoot the pilots with the laser pointer on there approach to Teterboro Airport. Why is this happening? Bob Hesselbein stated “The people who do this are doing it out of curiosity, never being aware of the problems they are causing for pilots flying the airplane." Because of the fact that there is no way to completely protect the cockpit the airport is upping the consequences and keeping a closer watch around the landing and take off zones.

Mailman not bringing the mail

Today I read an article in the Star Tribune called, “A mailman who didn’t deliver”. This article was about a mailman named Steven Padgett who was not delivering the junk mail he was given to peoples houses. Why? Because he felt overwhelmed by the torrents of direct advertisement mail. Supposedly Mailman Steve had not delivered seven years worth of mail, he kept the mail that he didn’t deliver in his garage of sometimes even burry it in his yard. He was caught when a random person saw the bin in his garage and called the police . Mailman Steve was given a 3,000 dollar fine, three years on probation, and 500 hours community service. On the flipside of the story there was never one complaint for the undelivered mail and some people like Kenna Reinhardt responded to the charges saying "Mr. Padgett did not mean harm to any person, rather he overcompensated by doing his job better than anyone". Yet 1/3 of the mail companies income comes from the junk mail sent out.

Obama and his Technology

This week I read a interesting article in the Star Tribune called Mr. President! You must get off the Blackberry! This article was about how Barack Obama wants to add his own touch of technology to the white house, with everything from keeping his Blackberry to putting a laptop on the Oval Office desk. If Barack pulls through on his plan for the laptop he will be the first American president to ever do so. Having the laptop he is also trying to keep his e-mail. Someone who did not like the idea of keeping connected to cyberspace while in presidency was president Bush saying, "Since I do not want my private conversations looked at by those out to embarrass, the only course of action is not to correspond in cyberspace,". This brings up a valid point for Obama because trying to keep hackers out is virtually impossible to do. Even with that Obama posted the weekly democratic radio address on Saturday that for the first time will be posted on YouTube.

Forecloser

This week I read an article in the Star Tribune called, Nation's foreclosure rate in October increases 25 percent year-over-year, with Nevada on top. This articles name is pretty self explanatory about the fore closer rate in America still rising by the month. More then 279,500 homes in America received a notice on their door for a forecloser warning this year, and more then 84,000 thousand homes were repossessed. The three highest for closer states in the united states are Nevada, Florida, and Arizona. Because of this growing economic problem the government was forced to pass a $700 billion dollar rescue package to buy bad package assets from banks but some still are very sceptical about this plan like the Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson, saying that they probably wont be used to buy such troubled assets. Though there doesn't seem to be a clear solution to this economic crises many people are hoping it will work itself out over time.

A True Hero

I stumbled across an article when I was researching the Heroes assignment worksheet. This article was called Life saver: Hero Alan Beavan. I found this article on Myhero.com and it was about the life of Alan Beavan. Alan lived a life helping others, his career was to represent many cases of clean water acts but what he really wanted to do was be a volunteer environmental lawyer in India. Right before Alan and his family could live out his dream he has one more clean water case to finish in California so on September 11th, 2001. Alan Beavan boarded a flight when it was hijacked and redirected towards the Pentagon. Alan and a couple other brave men and women fought to gain control of the plain, though they didn’t safely land the plane they directed it away from the pentagon saving many more lives. In my opinion Alan is the perfect representation of what a hero truly is.