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A few years ago we were mesmerized in the sports world by an unorthodox quarterback by the name of Michael Vick. He did it all. He ran for unheard of rushing yards for a quarterback. Vick could throw off balance with some noteworthy accuracy, across his body, to a receiver three checks down.
It was an amazing thing to watch.
Then someone let the dogs out and Michael Vick’s life turned upside down and his reputation and legacy were decimated in the public eye, while PETA got out its rain sticks and danced on his persona’s grave.
As many know, Vick and friends were accused and proven guilty of running a dog fighting ring, made all the worse through the media’s tendency to create a public execution, and in high definition, color corrected, memory searing detail. Vick went to jail for a bad decision.
Not to justify what he did, but with how often things like this happen all across the world and no one cared at all in the past, Vick got thrown under a bus simply because he was famous. And everyone loves Fido.
Fast forward to 2009.
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This past year has been a rough year for many people. Unemployment skyrocketed. People were being foreclosed on left and right and evicted before you could even finish reading the notice. Stocks tumbled, super corporations filed bankruptcy and went under. But most of all, Motor City USA was pummeled by this recession, with it coming to a head with the demise of a company once deemed too large to fail, General Motors.
After bailouts and bankruptcy, the GM brand is one that has been badly damaged. One won’t know the extent for perhaps several years, and the outcome of the chain of events put into place by their June 1 bankruptcy filing, but the Associated Press reported of a popular method of reinvention.
On top of company restructuring, many companies also opt for renaming their brand.
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Christine Clifford, owner of the Clothes Line Too consignment boutique in Clearwater, Fla. stands in the center of her store surrounded by hundreds of trendy clothing pieces, colorfully decorated walls, sparkling jewelry and three smiling customers. If one didn’t know any better, this place might seem like just another expensive clothing store in the mall, and that these four women were simply carrying on together like best friends shopping on a typical Saturday afternoon.
Clothes Line Too is one of many consignment shops or clothing resale stores where people can bring in their old clothes to be considered for consignment. Many people don’t realize it, but places like this are more than just good for the few extra bucks they provide their clients’ wallets.
“I love my job because of the people. They become like family and you discover there’s more good out there than you might think,” Clifford says, as she pushes up a cheerful grin and hangs some new items on a nearby rack. “During certain times of the year, like around Christmas, my assistant Trisha and I will do something I call ‘late-nights’ where we’ll keep the store open extra hours for people who work late. For example, last year a man came in with three women. He gave them each $50 to buy whatever clothes they wanted. The women, I found out later, were some of his employees, single mothers who just needed a little help. I thought to myself, what a nice guy.”
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We know America as “the melting pot,” where people from all ethnic and cultural backgrounds come together as one. I was born here, so I naturally relate to American culture in ways that other people who moved here from other countries probably don’t.
I was born in Georgia and grew up in a small Florida town consisting of predominately white people. It wasn’t a racist area, but definitely a place with very little diversity. Upon moving to a larger city while in high school, I was amazed by the diversity of the people that surrounded me. I was even more amazed by people’s pride in their respective cultures.
One piece of culture that I became especially engrossed in was the Asian tea culture. Having been a fan of Southern sweet tea for years, the tea culture was not only delicious, but also engrossing. The fact that many countries in Asia have festivals surrounding tea (because it’s a part of their daily lives) is so fascinatingly foreign to me.
What would the American equivalent of tea be? Coffee? I think it’s safe to say that America doesn’t have anything like this, something so deeply rooted in our culture, and I think it’s sad. Here, we don’t have many traditions to unify us all other than a lack of tradition. But is that enough?
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When one thinks of pregame rituals for football, many people would consider the prayer part of it. It has been seen in movies like “Varsity Blues,” “The Replacements” and “Remember the Titans.” No one can dispute that it has taken place, and many embrace the practice, but the question has come up in recent years about legality.
The Constitution specifically states that we are to be a country forged not under a single religion, but that we are to embrace those that come from many. Even with Christianity in all of its forms being the majority religious belief, according to a study done in March 2009 reported by the Christian Post, the number of non-religious Americans has doubled in every state from 1990. On top of the decline in Christian believers, the total non-believer population has gone form 8 to 15 percent in the time frame. This includes atheists (no God) and agnostics (not sure), as well as deistics (belief in a higher power, but not necessarily God).
The study also shows that mainline Christianity and Catholicism are on contraction, shedding numbers overall (some minor sects showing small gains, however) while a generic brand of Christianity has begun to consume a good portion of the non-denominational believers.
With prayer still being commonplace in sport, there are even some that wish to have public prayer before games for the crowd to take part in as well. Given the data on the contraction in religious Americans over the last two decades, for us to uphold the rights granted to the populace by our government, this would be an offense against those who are of a non-Christian faith.
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In these rough economic times, people have reorganized their values. If you walk into a restaurant, you see fewer waiters and waitresses. The crowds in the malls have diminished and every few days you hear about a new bank going under, or another car manufacturer turning over control to the court in bankruptcy. Fewer people have made home improvement purchases, gone splurging for new wardrobes and have even had to downsize on housing.
Yet, with all that said, it’s nice to know that Europeans still tickle the American fancy, and they do it better than the Americans could ever.
A great modern philosopher turned lunatic once said, “I feel the need, the need for speed.” Speed is something Americans have loved since we climbed on a horse’s back and told it to run for the sunset. We’ve turned those horses into mechanical horsepower, shelled it in aluminum, carbon fiber and fiberglass. Then we advanced upon that and utilized aerodynamic science from aviation development and created the race car. NASCAR, Formula-1, Indycar and even the urban street racing culture are stem from this tree.
Speed once was the pride of American Muscle, and loud engines that went fast and got 36 feet to the gallon were our adrenaline fixation. The Japanese then created fuel injection, and made cars just as fast, and the Europeans had style; both leaving Ford, Dodge and GM in the dust.
But if there’s one thing America itself hasn’t lost, its our insatiable quest for the better, faster, and most expensive status symbol.
Welcome, the Gumpert Sportwagenmanufaktur Apollo.
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Whether it’s a trip to the Golden State or the Golden Kingdom, airline prices have been slashed as a result of the current (slumping, to use a euphemistic term) economic situation. Even more than this, many theme parks, hotels and other various travel destinations are now offering deals on admission, stays, meals and just about everything else in an effort to keep tourism afloat in a time when we all have little bucks to buy with.
I can’t think of a single reason not to take advantage, and here’s a little help:
Top budget travel destinations for 2009 (according to Budget Travel):
If you’re really looking to save – and maybe even help stimulate that slumping economy we were just talking about – stick to the U.S. for all your travel desires. Here are those top three spots:
Austin, Texas. This city is chalk full of free and affordable events this year, such as the Austin City Music Festival (Oct. 2-4). Austin is also known for its good weather, pop culture, diversified private and public sectors and art.
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The term “autism” was coined in 1911 by a Swiss psychiatrist named Eugen Bleuler. It applied to only adult schizophrenics and later became the term to diagnose children with schizophrenia. Regardless of the term, medical and psychological diagnoses were rarely correct at that time. It’s only been within the last 50 years that true knowledge and awareness of autism has become popular.
Within the past ten years, celebrities like Jenny McCarthy have brought awareness to popular culture about what autism is and how to protect your children from an increased risk. Because of books like Louder Than Words: A Mother’s Journey in Healing Autism, by McCarthy, and many others, Americans have become interested in learning more about the disability that could affect their own children.
Controversy surrounds everything attached to autism. While scientists try to prove if children immunized or vaccines and autism are connected, parents must decide whether or not to take a chance and immunize saying, “They haven’t proved it does, but they haven’t proved it doesn’t.” It’s hard to know what to do especially considering there’s not very much known about the cause.
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Looking for a summer vacation getaway? Let me suggest the beautiful, friendly North Korea, a.k.a. the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). There you can visit the beautiful Tumen River, which shares a border with Russia in the northeast, or swim through the Amnok River on your way from North Korea to China. Maybe, if you’re lucky, you’ll be able to experience a flood catastrophe like what happened in August of 2007 there.
If this isn’t enough reason for you to book your tickets right away, let me tell you more. You thought that the U.S. had a free, democratic government? Well, we don’t have it in our name like the DPRK does. As we have all learned before names of countries with the words “democratic” and “people’s republic” makes them instantly legitimately safe and intelligent.
Just don’t forget to get in touch with the DPRK’s tourism organization, called “Ryohaengsa” because it will get you set up with one or two permanent tour guides. (That is, as long as you’re not from the U.S. or South Korea, because if you are, you won’t be permitted to enter the country.)
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(NERD ALERT)
Like many children, when I was younger I dreamed of being an astronaut. The thought of flying into “outer space” to see all kinds of planets and moons was the coolest thing to me in the world and, honestly, it’s still pretty much the coolest thing to me in the world. As I got older, I began to learn more about the solar system and became especially fixated on something called black holes.
Black holes basically rule out everything that we could learn from physics. They are formed from the cores of supermassive stars once they collapse. And there’s something called escape velocity, which means that the larger the mass, the faster you have to travel to escape its pull. With that in mind, this means that black holes are so massive that nothing can escape them, including light. (To make this even more intense, please don’t forget how fast the speed of light is at 186,000 miles per second.)
To further understand black holes, we can look at dear Mr. Einstein who developed the general theory of relativity. This theory states that gravity affects time, which means that the more massive an object (a.k.a. has a greater gravitational pull), the more it can slow down time. So, obviously, since black holes have the highest gravitational pulse, the concept of time is completely diminished. Essentially, there’s no time.
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