In all honesty, I didn't see anything particularly interesting in this week's Collegian. I'm going to voice MY opinion about an opinion piece titled "Jury out on Ellen as new Idol judge." This article states that Ellen Degeneres has signed on to replace Paula Abdul as an American Idol judge.
I agree with the writer, Ellen has NO musical background. I don't think she'd be a good fit for the job whatsoever. There's so many people out there with musical talent and history that would be able to give better input than any singing advice she could offer. She also recently served as a judge on So You Think You Can Dance. I don't see why she was considered as a guest judge for that show either. She doesn't have any dancing experience...unless you include the silly dancing intro she does on her talk show every day.
I don't know why American Idol chose her, of all people, as a judge. Much less, why they gave her a 5 year contract and I'm assuming a pretty good amount of money. I don't think she'll be much of a contribution to the contestants trying to make a singing career. They're looking to the judges for constructive criticism, they expect it. The judges who they'll be looking to for advice now are Kara DioGuardi (singer and song writer), Randy Jackson (former record company executive and music performer and producer), Simon Cowell (Sony/BMG music executive), and Ellen Degeneres (comedian and daytime talk show host). One of these things is not like the other. I'd love to know the reasoning behind Ellen's newest title.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Texting While Driving
While I was reading through the third issue of this year's Collegian one article in particular caught my attention. The title read, "Anti-texting film worth viewing." The article provided the link to the film so I watched it. It was a lot more gory than I thought it'd be and was a little horrific to actually watch a car crash like I was witnessing it firsthand.
My senior year in high school when I was driving to school I actually was run off the road by a girl who was texting. She pulled into my lane and didn't even realize it. I was driving on the shoulder until the truck that had been behind me slowed down to let me back into the lane. The girl texting barely noticed the light she was approaching was red.
Also during my senior year, as my mom was driving me and my friends home from school, we came to a closed lane so we had to come to a stop in order to merge into the traffic in the left lane. There was a car behind us and when my sister turned around she noticed that it wasn't slowing down and panicked. We simultaneously heard her scream and felt the impact of their car going over 40 mph slamming into our stopped car. The wreck was disastrous. The car that hit us had 4 students in the car and 3 of them got injured (they even had to pull one girl out of the car because she couldn't move). Our car had 6 people and there were no serious injuries except a torn ligament in my neck and a sprain in my friend's neck. Both cars were totaled. We soon came to find out that the reason the car behind us didn't see the lane suddenly end was because the driver was searching for his phone on which he had just received a text. The text was more important than the lives of those in his car and everybody around him.
It's very unfair to endanger the lives of others just because you want to find out what time your friend wants you to come over later that night or where you're meeting someone for lunch. If it's an emergency it's not too hard to pull into a parking lot and either text the person then or call them. We have enough distractions around us in the car as it is...rolling down the windows, listening to and singing along with the radio, adjusting the air conditioning. Do we really need another unnecessary distraction? I don't.
My senior year in high school when I was driving to school I actually was run off the road by a girl who was texting. She pulled into my lane and didn't even realize it. I was driving on the shoulder until the truck that had been behind me slowed down to let me back into the lane. The girl texting barely noticed the light she was approaching was red.
Also during my senior year, as my mom was driving me and my friends home from school, we came to a closed lane so we had to come to a stop in order to merge into the traffic in the left lane. There was a car behind us and when my sister turned around she noticed that it wasn't slowing down and panicked. We simultaneously heard her scream and felt the impact of their car going over 40 mph slamming into our stopped car. The wreck was disastrous. The car that hit us had 4 students in the car and 3 of them got injured (they even had to pull one girl out of the car because she couldn't move). Our car had 6 people and there were no serious injuries except a torn ligament in my neck and a sprain in my friend's neck. Both cars were totaled. We soon came to find out that the reason the car behind us didn't see the lane suddenly end was because the driver was searching for his phone on which he had just received a text. The text was more important than the lives of those in his car and everybody around him.
It's very unfair to endanger the lives of others just because you want to find out what time your friend wants you to come over later that night or where you're meeting someone for lunch. If it's an emergency it's not too hard to pull into a parking lot and either text the person then or call them. We have enough distractions around us in the car as it is...rolling down the windows, listening to and singing along with the radio, adjusting the air conditioning. Do we really need another unnecessary distraction? I don't.
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