Media Studies Final Assignment

a) I think that technology makes us less productive.  For example, if I have my iPod with me at school and listen to music while I am supposed to be doing my work, I may not think it, but I will probably spend about 10 minutes looking for songs or doing other things on it.  So how can wasting 10 minutes looking for a song when I should be learning, be good for me?
b) The consequences are that if you switch from one thing to the next too often then this will shrink your brain because it isn't meant to switch gears so often onto so many different things, like when you are looking at the road ahead of you when you're driving one minute, at your phone the next, then back to the road.  That's an overload for your brain.
c) I think that this is true, because if you just look something up quickly on the internet and don't have to look through a book or something, then there is less chance of stumbling on something of interest or learning more about the subject.

Did the devastating oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico really dissipate or did it sink? There has been a deep-sea graveyard discovered about 11 kilometers from where the oil spill took place.  This graveyard was made of coral.  Debris get trapped in mucus that coral releases when it gets stressed and the coral that scientists are inspecting are a brown colour, indicating that they have been getting clogged up and rotting for months.  This is very good evidence to indicate that the oil never really broke down or dissipated, but sank instead.  Scientists are going to inspect 25 other sites whose marine life may have been affect, they say that even if the oil didn't kill the coral and it seems healthy, it could have affected their genetic mutation or they will not be able to reproduce.  If they are not reproducing, they will not be able to bring that part of the ocean back to life.

Article: African Vulutres Dying of Poison

Asian vultures have gone on a deadly downward spiral and are now being followed by their African cousins.  In the past 25 years, the African vulture's numbers have dropped by 50%.  At around this time the number of dead livestock near the area where these scavengers live soared.  The main cause of death for the vultures is being attributed to the dead livestock.  The farmers in Africa lace their dead goats with a toxic pesticide called, "Furadan" so that the hyenas and lions that eat the carcasses will die.  Although vultures range widely and travel far, they eat together, so then it only takes one per cent of cattle that need to be poisoned for it to affect the entire population of the African vulture.

Article: Most Important Gas Affecting Global Climate

one of the most important gases affecting global warming is incredibly familiar to us, it is water vapor.  Atmospheric water insulates the earth and traps heat in.  Even after years of intense study, scientists were unable to discover how strong the effect was and how large a part it played in global warming.  A Texas A&M University atmospheric scientist, Andrew Dessler and his colleagues, analyzed global water vapor and temperature for the lower atmosphere, and found that warming, driven by carbon dioxide and other gases, allows the air to hold more moisture air and this increases the amout of water vapor in the atmosphere.  This is because the carbon dioxide and other gases allow the air to hold the moisture in.

Article: Intensive Logging Created New England's Rich Wetlands

Few people now adays think of loggers as being good and helping the environment, however, in New England it is the loggers from the 18th and 19th century that are to thank for New England's rich wetlands.  Although logging destroyed the landscape, it helped out the coastline tremendously.  The wetlands that the logging created buffer the coastline from storms, keep the shore safe from pollutants, and shelter marine organisms.  There are some people who wish to turn this area back into its "natural" state from before the European settlers came, however, this would mean losing a lot of the marshland, and its benefits.  Matthew Kirwan of the US Geological Survey in Laurel, Maryland wanted to find out how old the marsh in the Plum Island  in Massachusettes is.  He did this by dating fossil plant rhizomes and found that the ones on the edge dated back to about 4000 years and the ones in the centre went back just some 200 years.  This probably means that this area was half marsh and half open-water bay.  According to historic records, the time that the half marsh half open-water shifted to full marsh, was at a time when there was an increase in logging.

Article: Good-bye Grey Skies, Hello Extra Warming

Clouds play a very large part in temperature all around the world.  Low-level clouds reflect sunlight and cool the earth, but higher level clouds trap heat inside.  So clouds could push temperatures up or down depending on how they change.  A relatively new climate model has been created and is used to simulate cloud cover, this machine is called the International Pacific Research Center Regional Atmospheric Model (iRAM).  This device helps scientist to determine what the weather will be like in a few years to come.  Researchers used this model, which mainly covers the easern Pacific and parts of South America in greater detail than the global model, to determine what the forcast will be in a years to come.  What they found was not that pretty.  According to this model, the temperature in years to come will be going up and "we will find ourselves at the higher end of [temperature] predictions," says Ralf Bennartz who helped in this research.

WikiLeaks lists Canadian sites vital to U.S.

In 2009, a cable was sent to U.S. embassies and consulates around the world.  It insructed U.S. diplomats to update an existing list of foreign sites that could seriously harm the U.S. if they were targeted by terrorists.

On the 2008 list, Canadian sites included such things as the Darlington and Pickering nuclear power plant, a number of international rail crossings and bridges, oil and gas pipelines, the James Bay hydroelectric project in Quebec, the Hibernia Atlantic undersea cable landing in Halifax, several dams, a number of mines, and several factories producing everything from missile parts to plasma to vaccines.  In the note, it stated that the order to update the list was to strengthen "national preparedness, timely response, and rapid recovery in the event of an attack, natural disaster or other emergency."  Former British foreign secretary, Malcolm Rifkind, said, "This is further evidence that [WikiLeaks has] been generally irresponsible, bordering on criminal," and that, "This is the kind of information terrorists are interested in knowing,"

                                                                                  
                                               My Opinion on WikiLeaks

I think that WikiLeaks is illegal publication of sensitive information.  If somebody commits a crime, then they should be punished.  I also agree with freedom of speech, but there is such a thing as too much freedom, especially if it's about private, governmental documents that are vital to the country's security.  If somebody hacked my computer, I could press charges or take the guy to court or whatever, so how is it different if this WikiLeaks guy hacks into computer documents that are FAR more important than mine.