Cyber-Bullying
On the daily basis, we could find harassing posts or insulting comments on the Internet. In my country, we call them "droppings of a dog on the side walk." Don't touch it, don't poke it. If you pick it up, the dog owner will be happy, so we should just avoid stepping on it and ignore. However, if such harassment is targeting you, or someone of your family member, everybody could be hurt. Especially for children, such Cyber Bullyings are deadly violence. There are three important points among recent Cyber Bullying: what they are, what is happening right now, and what people can do to protect children from being harmed.
Cyber Bullyings are posting harassing and insulting text or images on the Web pages including Blogs, Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, or sending a number of mean text messages to a targeted child’s cell phone or other digital devices. The purpose of the act is to hurt or embarrass other person, and this Bullying is getting common among teens. “Bullying has changed so dramatically – it no longer only takes place in the school yard,” said Mayor Menino on States News Service, February 12, 2010. In other words, Cyber Bullying is a latest style of Bullying. The victims of Cyber Bullies don’t get physical scars, but their mental wounds are very deep.
The actual cruelty of Cyber Bullying may be far beyond what adults have imagined. It is not only cursing others with words on the Internet. For example, according to The Capital Times, October 12, 2009, 44 % of teen boys said they had seen a photo of their classmate girl naked, and 10 % said they had shared a naked photo of themselves online. As for the number of the experienced, according to The Augusta Chronicle, October 18, 2008, 35% of 10 t0 17 year-olds said they had been victimized and 21 % said they had bullied people online. Even in a survey of college students, 11% claimed they had bullied people online. The worst result of being a victim must be Megan Meier’s case. In 2006,She was a 13 year-old girl in the St Louis suburb and happy with her online boyfriend named Josh. However, one day Josh suddenly turned on her and wrote, “You are a bad person and everybody hates you. The world would be better place without you,” so she committed suicide. Actually, a neighbor woman pretended the boyfriend Josh to hurt Megan for her own daughter. Another case is that Phoebe Prince, a 15-year-old high school freshman, committed suicide on January 14, 2010. She had received cruel messages on the Facebook profile and through text messages on her cell phone.
Then, what kind of action can we take to prevent Cyber Bullying? On the Philadelphia Inquirer, July 30, 2009, authorities emphasized that school officials should notify police as soon as possible when something seems suspicious because “They’re bullying at home, and then it spills over into the school.” In addition, on San Jose Mercury News, April 16, 2010, Cyber-Bullying experts listed tips on responding to cyber-bullying.
For family members:
- Save the evidence
- Protect your child from bullying by blocking offending e-mail addresses and cell phone numbers
- Report harmful online speech to the police
- Report incidents and file complaints with e-mail services, Internet service providers, Web sites, cell phone companies
For students:
-Ignore the bullying
-Don’t feel shame to tell your parents or a trusted adult about being bullied
-Change phone numbers, e-mail addresses and screen names if necessary
According to Sentinel & Enterprise, January 31, 2010, Lawmakers currently support Cyber-Bully legislation, and government is expected to immediately find prevention measure against Cyber Bullying because it’s never the right of free speech, it is surely deadly violence.
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Wind Power
Today, we face problems of limitation to the amount of fossil fuel, the risk of nuclear power, global warming caused by air pollution, and many other things. We must be responsible for all these causes and therefore, we have to think positively about switching the use of fossil fuel to other safe and clean power sources as soon as possible. Recently, we have already had solar power and wind power as the environment-friendly energy resources, and they have been improved toward the practical use. So, I’m going to tell about both positive and negative aspects of the wind power.
Wind powers, as you know, provides electric by using wind turbines. This power source is unlimited and doesn’t emit carbon dioxide, which is the main cause of the global warming. Most of the people and scientists claim that the uses of wind powers are positive and agreeable. PR Newswire said on May 24, 2010, 9 new wind projects are on going throughout US and Canada. This current movement shows how much the wind power is expected to become widespread. Not only for the reason of protection of the environment, but also wind power can be effective new business. According to States News Service, June 8, 2010, Secretary Salazar said, “Renewable energy resources hold great economic promise. By one estimate, if our nation fully pursues its potential for wind energy on land and offshore, wind can generate as much as 20 % of our electricity by 2030 and create a quarter-million jobs in the process.” As we listen his claim, most of people will think wind power is definitely an ideal resource.
However, there are some negative aspects. According to Investor’s Business Daily, January 27, 2010, the government said, ”wind power could supply the eastern half of the US with a 5th of its electricity by 2024. Just don’t try building wind farms where someone might see them. “ The ability of wind power the government said is questionable, but more problem thing is this claim has a connotation of the scenery with wind turbines can be visual pollution. Also, Bangor Daily News continuously reported from June to December 2009, that wind farm critics in Maine challenged state law against wind power problem. They claimed the wind turbines emit noises and vibrations effect on people’s health, the range of wind turbines is obvious visual pollution, and the turbines have the potential for destroying wildlife, especially birds. Considering the current condition of wind power, Investor’s Business Daily, January 27, 2010, also said, wind provide only 1% of our electricity compared with 49% for coal, 22% for natural gas, 19% for nuclear power, and 7% for hydroelectric. These numbers show the wind power is far behind of other sources for practical use.
Let’s see other countries. Development of wind power in other countries is remarkable. In May 24, 2010, PR Newswire reported new analysis from Frost & Sullivan, Asian Pacific Wind Power Markets, finds that the markets earned revenues of $2 billions in 2009, and estimates this to reach $4 billion in 2016. This means the wind power industry in Asia will be doubled in 15 years. In Europe, according to Europolitics, June 15, 2010, European Wind Energy Association said, “ wind power industry has grown significantly in the last decade. In 2000, wind power accounted for only 2% of Europe’s energy consumption, but as for 2009, that number has increased to 9%. Last year alone, wind power accounted for 39% of new energy sources in Europe.” For remarkable example, State News Service, October 26, 2009, said. 17% of Denmark uses wind powers to provide electrical power to the entire country. As a result, fifth of the country’s electrical power is derived from wind source. In addition, because Denmark values wind power so much, they have started to export energy and the technology to other countries as one of the industry. In addition, to avoid noise and visual problem, they have built the lines of wind turbines on the shallow ocean surface.
As I talked, there are many positives and negatives on wind power, and nobody wants wind turbines in our own neighbor. However, it is clear that the limit of fossil fuel is coming soon, so the US, the large and powerful country with huge land, have to work more positively on developing wind power because the US is one the biggest oil consuming countries in the world.
