Hate Crimes Are Simply Cowardly Actions

In April, a gay UNC student was attacked in the form of a hate crime. Quinn Matney was the victim of this crime.

He had been having trouble sleeping so he went for a walk around campus at about 3 am. He ran into an acquaintance on a bridge by a residence hall. Two men were sitting on a bench nearby. One man got up and approached Quinn saying “Here’s a taste of hell you f***ing fag” and burned him with an unidentified object on his wrist. Quinn tried pulling away but the man didn’t let go until he received a hard punch in the face. Quinn then quickly walked away from the two men who had appeared to be drunk.

He headed to the emergency room but left after hours of waiting. He said he received treatment at Campus Health Services the following day. This burn was diagnosed as 3^rd and 4^th degree burns. Quinn now no longer has feeling in his thumb and only limited mobility in his index finger. Doctors told Matney that he will need to visit the burn unit and go through two weeks of occupational therapy for his injury, and that he might need surgery.

University officials did not comment on the situation until a week later when a post on Alert Carolina occurred. The co-chairman of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Straight Alliance said, “A very blatant hate crime against a GLBT individual occurred on this campus, and we only heard about it by word of mouth”.

UNC planned to report the incident as a hate crime to the federal government after finally addressing the subject.

The man who had burned Quinn appeared to be a white 19-year-old, standing 5 feet 10 inches, with a large build and short brown hair. He believes this man might have overheard previous conversations with his friends about his sexual orientation. The man will be sought on charges of aggravated assault.

My views on this issue tie in with one of my previous posts about bullying. Being mean to anyone (and especially when it physically or mentally harms them) is so pathetic and cowardly. If you have to hurt someone then you obviously want to be a part of their life. If you don’t like someone then don’t bother them. There’s just no use.

It bothers me so much that people think it’s necessary to physically harm someone because they are happy living their life. Everyone is entitled to their opinion but it should never be forced upon anyone. I really hope that someday we can have this world full of tolerant and open-minded people.

Going along with this story: How many haters does it take to change a light bulb? None, haters are afraid of change even if it will make the world a brighter place.

Warm Winter In Iowa

Recently the Weather Channel forecasted for a milder winter than years before. The northern states will be colder than their average and the southern states will be warmer than their average. This is because the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) has been dominant over the past few years. However, this year the NAO does not appear to occur this winter.

--North Atlantic Oscillation: A climatic phenomenon in the North Atlantic Ocean of fluctuations in the difference of atmospheric pressures at sea level.

Because it will be warmer than last year’s winter in the Midwest, there will be less need for high heating. Generally you would think that you’d save money then. But, because the quantity demanded for heating will decrease then the price for heating will increase. Energy companies plan to raise their prices on heating during this warmer winter.

Even though you may not be saving much money on heating, you could be on winter apparel. Because of this warm November there have been increasing markdowns on outer wear for winter.

I am glad that it is becoming warmer for the winter. It’s still nice enough to be outside and gloves aren’t necessary yet. Also, I’ve only had to scrape off my car maybe 4 times this year? There really hasn’t been much frost so I don’t have the need to get up early and scrape it off my car.

On the other hand, I really love snow. We have only had one day this fall/winter season when it snowed. Last year in November it had snowed or rained ice about 7 different days of the month. This year we’ve mostly had rain if any precipitation came our way. The one day this month we had “snow” was actually mostly flurries turning into slush.

I’m really hoping that December and January bring a decent amount of snow to Iowa. Now that my high school senior year has arrived, I don’t have to make up the snow days. I’m going to be really upset if we don’t have any this winter.

I don’t just love snow because I get out of school though. It’s just pretty when it’s snowing and accumulation and white blankets cover the streets. And it better snow for Christmas like it did last year. It’s not Christmas without snow.

Music Adds More

Have you ever noticed how much music adds to a movie? I was watching a really suspenseful movie recently and there was a part where the camera was just observing the scenery. This would have just seemed peaceful if no music was in the background. However, there was creepy music playing along with the shot and it made the movie just that much more suspenseful.

Music is such an important part in almost every movie. Even when there was ‘silent’ films there was still funny piano music playing to keep the audience entertained. Great acting in a movie is very helpful but it can’t be a great movie without great music as well.

The movie Insidious is a great example. It’s a horror film and the acting in it is great. Not only that but the storyline is unlike any horror film and kept you intrigued and scared. But if it wasn’t for the music it wouldn’t have been so top of the line for me. At the very beginning of the movie when the title comes up a bunch of violins keep hitting this ear piercing, bone-chilling note making it scary from the start. One of the songs in the movie itself was a song by Tiny Tim (and if you’ve ever heard him, you’d know why it’s in a scary movie) and it just added a whole other level of creepy to the movie.

Without music, movies would not be near as entertaining as they are with them.

Animals Deserve Better

I was at the gas station earlier today and while I was waiting for my car to be full I read a sticker on the gas pump. It said something like too much inhalation of gasoline fumes will cause cancer because we tested it on lab animals. REALLY?!?! Is that really a test that needs to happen? Common sense says that inhaling gas fumes is dangerous to your health so why would we put innocent animals to the test of that? Are these scientists doing these labs really that stupid? And who is stupid enough to sit there and inhale gas anyway?

Animals shouldn’t be tested on stupid things like that. It is easily understood that anything to do with gas or gas in the air will affect your health. You don’t need to test that on animals to figure that out.

There are more tests that are completely unnecessary as well. These include testing shampoo in eyes of animals to see if it irritates or animals getting their fur shaven off and get applied a thick amount of a substance to test for toxicity.

For tests like these we should be using human cells, organs, and artificial skin programmed to act like human skin. It’s a much better idea than putting poor helpless animals to their death. Even if animals survive the tests, they are usually euthanized afterwards. Even dogs and cats are specifically bred for tests.

These tests are unnecessary and cruel. We live in such a technologically advanced society now that we should be able to find other means to test products than putting innocent lives at risk.

Discrimination Over Happiness?

In the same realm as the debate over homosexuality legal rights, transgender is also very much debated. Being transsexual means you were born one gender but had surgery to be the other gender.

The people who feel the need for this surgery feel as though they were born wrong. In their heart and in their minds they believe they were meant to be the other sex.

Arguments against transgender rights include that you’re born the way you are. I do agree with this statement. I believe God made everyone how they were supposed to be. HOWEVER, I am not transgendered so I have no idea how they feel. I think they are totally right for doing what makes them feel like themselves. I wouldn’t know how it feels so I don’t judge when I hear or see people that say they believe they are in the wrong body. It’s actually kind of interesting to watch the TV show documentaries on their lifestyle because it’s so different from my own. But just because it’s different and I don’t entirely understand it doesn’t mean I am against it.

Apparently somewhere in Canada they are teaching kids in classrooms to be tolerant of homosexuals and transsexuals. I think this is an awesome idea. It’s great for kids to know that it’s okay to be who you want to and it’s okay to love anyone you want. Although, there are some people against that being taught.

The people against those teachings say that it will poison our kids into thinking that they should be gay or that they should be the other gender. They think it will only confuse kids because their mind is still developing and learning. This is so utterly and entirely false!

Just like homosexuals, you can’t choose to be transsexual. I’ve watched about 4 different documentaries on transgender people and learned about them. After learning new things about their lifestyle it makes me more understanding, aware and accepting. It does not make me want to be transsexual because I already know who I am and what I want.

This still doesn’t go against the argument though because little kids don’t know yet who they are or what they want to be. But their mind is just grasping for new information up until a certain point. This point is where we start basing opinions on only what we know and if new information is presented that goes against our own ideas, we reject it. It simply gets ignored and that’s what causes people to become ignorant.

If we teach kids at a young age that these things are okay, they will know that before they start basing their own opinions. And if they learn it while their mind is still developing ‘wrong’ and ‘right’ then chances our they won’t have many opinions against people anyways because they learned to be accepting at a young age. If they learn these things are okay then they will carry that through their whole life and grow up as an open minded individual.

Basically, I am for transgendered rights. It is their life, their money, and their future. If they are doing what makes them happy and doing what makes them love themselves, then they are totally on the right path to have a successful life.

The people that probably take that information the hardest are the parents of a child who want to change their gender. They had that child as one gender, this beautiful baby they spent their time treating as a certain sex to find out that they’re going to alter their lifestyle completely. I bet that’s one of the toughest things for a parent to overcome. But if they truly love the child they will want them to be happy no matter what that entails.

Plus, for many transsexuals it is a matter of life and death. If they can’t become who they feel they are destined to be, they become depressed and suicidal. If they have to be stuck in a body that they don’t feel they belong to, they are going to feel like they belong in life.

A really touching quote I heard from a documentary was “Would you rather have a happy daughter or a dead son?”

I’m supportive of transsexuals because as long as they are making themselves happy, then I am happy for them.  They’ve had enough of a struggle to deal with inside their own mind so I don’t think anyone should give them any harder of a time.

Dislike: Rude Customers

Here’s one huge annoyance that just drives me insane:

RUDE CUSTOMERS!

I’ve worked at a café and now I am working at Sears and let me tell you this: people are mean. I really don’t understand why people have to be so rude. They act like the person either making their food, or ringing them up at the cash register is so stupid. They talk to you in such a condescending way.

I understand if you’re having a bad day or whatever. But that doesn’t give you the excuse to ruin my day. It really hurts when people are rude to me at work because it just feels like such a personal attack. I honestly don’t understand what the need is to be so angry at whoever is providing you the service that you came for. I just try to do my job the best that I can and when I get people yelling at me it’s so upsetting.

So for those of you that are rude to people when you go into restaurants or store, please think before you act. Your actions mean a lot more than you think they might.

On the flip side, the people that come into my work and are extremely nice, make me very happy to be working there.

Weather Phenomena

I’ve found some really interesting weather phenomenon and decided to research and share the ones I liked most.

Belt of Venus:

This phenomenon occurs shortly after sunset or shortly before sunrise. A pinkish glow extends about 10 degrees to 20 degrees above the horizon. The glow is usually separated by a dark layer known as Earth’s shadow. The pinkish color occurs because the backscattering of reddening light from either the rising or setting sun.

Noctilucent Clouds:

These clouds refract light at dusk and illuminate the sky with no seeming light source. Made up of ice crystals, noctilucent clouds are the highest clouds in the Earth’s atmosphere. They can usually be seen in the summer months at latitude 50 degrees north and 70 degrees south of the equator. No evidence has been observed of such clouds before 1885 so they are considered a recent phenomenon. They form only under very restrictive conditions and are used as a guide to an atmospheric change. These clouds are commonly increasing in brightness and extent and therefore are theorized with a connection to climate change.

Mammatus Clouds:

Usually extending from cumulonimbus clouds, these clouds indicate a severe thunderstorm or even a tornadic storm.  The clouds are usually composed of ice but can also be a mixture of ice and water or just made entirely of water. Mammatus clouds can also form under altocumulus, altostratus, stratocumulus, cirrus, or even volcanic ash clouds.

Fire Whirl:

This phenomenon is rarely captured on tape. Fire whirls, also known as fire devil or fire tornado, obtain a vertical vorticity, or a tornado-like rotating column of air. Most fire whirls are triggered from wildfires. They form from a warm updraft and convergence from the wildfire. They can be anywhere from 10-50 meters tall, only a few meters wide, and only last a few minutes. However, some can exceed these numbers. Fire whirls can also uproot trees.

Non-Aqueous Rain

A common folklore states that a Spanish Catholic missionary visited Honduras between 1856 and 1864 and when he encountered so many poor people he prayed for 3 days and 3 nights asking for a miracle to help the poor people by providing food. Now fish have rained between the months of May and July for over a century. There have also been biblical stories of non-aqueous rain. Often only fish are reported to rain, most likely do to a thunderstorm or tornado sucking up the fish and then dropping them on local land. Although there have also been reports of raining blackbirds, spiders, large clumps of tangled worms and even an unidentified animal in pieces. What makes this even more incredible? Many of these were reported before airplanes were ever invented.

Fire Rainbow:

A fire rainbow is an extremely rare phenomenon. It occurs when the sun is high enough to allow light to pass through high-altitude cirrus clouds with a high content of ice crystals.

Fogbows:

Much like a rainbow, fogbows are created with the diffraction of light through water droplets. The difference between the two is that the water droplets in fogbows are much smaller than the water droplets in rainbows.

Triple Sunrise Illusion:

A triple sunrise illusion is hard to see when face to face under sunlight. It’s easier to see when captured on camera. This occurs from standard reflections or atmospheric lensing.

Morning Glory Clouds:

These clouds are low-lying (at about 100-200 meters high) and are very rare. They can only be predicted in one particular place on earth but can actually occur anywhere in various places. These clouds are accompanied by sudden wind storms and a sharp pressure jump at the surface.

Lenticular Clouds:

These clouds can often take form of a UFO but also often look like a stack of lens shapes, a single large lens shape, or even just an unusually long cloud. These are formed through air moisture that condenses from an updraft. This then is interrupted by a mountain, or any other large formation, and has come back down. After the air moisture condenses and evaporates and forms a cloud leaving the lens shape.

Kevin Helmholtz Cloud Formations:

This cloud formation is very unusual and seems very surreal. Unfortunately they are rarely observed because they hold this shape for very long and rarely ever show up. These clouds are formed because of shearing winds at cloud level.

Massive Iceberg Expected to Break Off

I’m running out of ideas to talk about so I’m going to add another topic to the list of things I blog about. This new topic will be about weather and environment.

I came across an interesting article earlier that was talking about Antarctica. It said that NASA found a huge crack in Antarctica that could break off an iceberg large enough to cover New York City. This iceberg can potentially break off within the new few months.

The rift is said to be about 820 feet at its widest and 260 feet as an average width. The crack is about 18 miles long and its width grows about 2 meters every day. Not only is it its length and width shocking but it was also measured between 165 and 195 feet deep. The glacier that could break off is expected to be about 340 square miles. The general time frame for it to break off: the ending of this year or early next.

The NASA researchers do say, however, that an iceberg breaking off is a natural occurring process. They said that Pine Island breaks off an iceberg about every 10 years and the last one was in 2001.

It’s not so much that the iceberg separating is the important idea, but rather that the glacier producing the iceberg is thinning; although the area that is thinning also appears to be growing. This thinning could lead to the disappearance of this glacier within 100 years.

The effects of this glacier melting would be a possible trigger to the entire collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet which would make global sea levels rise anywhere from 3 to 5 feet.

To see the actual report of this occurrence and the pictures and videos included, visit the link below.

http://news.discovery.com/earth/antarctica-about-to-calve-giant-iceberg-111104.html