In Naples Florida, there has been a constant brush fire that has been burning for past couple of months. So far the fire has burned through thousands of acres of forest because of the drought Naples was experiencing. Dozens of homes have been destroyed and the fire crew are doing everything they can do to contain the fire. As a resident of Naples who has lived in the city for the past seven years, brush fires were a common thing that happened usually in the summers when it got really hot and humid and there would be no rainfall for weeks on end. So even though wild fires are a common occurrence in the region, these brush fires have been happening too often and spreading rather very quickly and destroying thousands of acres of forest and peoples homes and properties. The fire crew as of so far has contained about 68 percent of the brush fire but with the unfortunately high number of 7,ooo acres of forest still burning.

Netflix released a new show on April 21 starring the famous Bill Nye. In his new show, Bill Nye talks about different topics in science and tries to educate the audience in a funny way. The show is almost like a reboot of his 90’s children’s show “Bill Nye The Science Guy” but with a more mature target audience. The first season of “Bill Nye Saves the World” consists of 13 episodes each being 30 minutes long and each episode usually has a panel discussion with guests who are experts in the topic and one guest star who will give their opinion on the topic. Bill Nye has been the face of science to many children in the 1990’s and early 2000’s. He was shown in countless school classrooms and many kids watched it on the Disney Channel when they were home watching TV. Any kid who grew up watching TV during this time will almost definitely be able to remember the old theme song and start repeating the words and singing “Bill Bill Bill Bill Bill Bill”.

By the end of the week of the creation of this post, there is chance that the U.S. government will close its doors due to insufficient funds. The battle for the wall that president Donald Trump wants to build on the U.S./Mexican border and his issues over the current healthcare system that is in place have been the biggest issues threatening the government shutdown.

This will not be the only time that the U.S. has had a government shutdown. The latest government shutdown that took place was in 2013 during the period of October 1st to the 16th. The shutdown was due to not getting the government spending in on time and not coming up with a resolution for the problem. About 800,000 federal employee’s were laid off without pay. If the government shuts down, multiple government funded services will close at midnight on Friday if the government does not pull together the proper funding needed to stay fully open.

Kendrick Lamar has released his long awaited album “DAMN.” and people all over the world are yelling “Kung-Fu Kenny”, including myself. It has been almost a year since Lamar has released his album “Untitled Unmastered” and almost two years since he released his critically acclaimed album “To Pimp a Butterfly”. The 14 track album is a perfectly constructed masterpiece that touches on topics that hit very close to home. In this album, he goes on to rap about the personality in which he posses and how he wants to change the world for the better but before he can do so, he has to change himself. The lyrics that he uses in this album are god like and he preaches about issues that really need to be put on the spotlight especially when it comes to internal struggles. I have listened to the album in its entirety numerous times and I believe it to be one of the greatest albums of all time. Although I might agree that I have some bias towards Kendrick Lamar since he is one of my favorite artists of all time, anyone who has listened to Kendrick will tell you themselves on how amazing he truly is at what he does.

Famous rapper known as Kodak Black was arrested again today, February 28, 2017, for violating his probation. Kodak Black was attending his court date following his arrest that took place in April of last year. The year previous, Kodak was arrested for possession of a weapon by a convicted felon, possession of cannabis, and fleeing from officers. His arrest took place just a few weeks after releasing his long awaited single “Tunnel Vision”. Kodak Black is a young rapper from Pompano Beach, FL, who struck stardom at the young age of 16 when he released his single hit “No Flockin”. This song became a famous icon for the rapper because of the amount of popularity it gained throughout the world with its catchy beat and great lyrics.

Personally, I enjoy listening to Kodak Black’s music even though others might not. He is one of my favorite artists to listen to at the moment so I was upset to see that he was arrested again. However, when it comes to the situation that he is in and when it comes to the question of releasing him or not, I believe that no matter how famous or how good of an artist you are, nobody should just be given a slap on the wrist and sent home for sexually assaulting a helpless woman. If the rape allegations are true, then Kodak deserves to be put in prison for his crimes.

Video Games is an art form that was developed a few decades ago and now, it has blown up into this revolutionizing way of entertainment. With this new piece of technology and entertainment, people are going to start looking for the side effects of it just like any new trend. Before I moved to college, I was almost addicted to video games. I always bought the newest video games that was put on the shelves and I spent always playing them and trying beat the game and accomplish every challenge. So as a person who used to be in love with video games, I have a fair amount of knowledge about it. Daphne Bavelier’s Ted talks video on your brain on video games brings up points of video games have been connected to violent acts and mass shootings. There have been people who commit these heinous mass shootings and police have said that their violent tendencies come from them playing violent video games. Through out all my time of playing video games, most of them have been violent video games and after years of playing dozens of violent video games, I have not once have the urge to go and commit a crime or reenact anything that I have seen or done in those violent video games. Video games is an art form that will keep advancing. The virtual reality headset is evident that this new piece of technology will only became more advanced and more popular then anything else that is out right now.

The “Last Lecture” that was given by Randy Pausch was a truly a spectacular lecture. Professor Pausch went on to talk about achieving your childhood dreams. He mentioned some of his childhood dreams for examples and then he talked about how he achieved them in his life. With little time left in his life, since he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he has managed to accomplish or at least work on some of those dreams even though some of them seemed rather impossible. The part of the lecture that was the most interesting to me was when he started talking about his experience with working on virtual reality. As a person who is fascinated by technology, virtual reality amazes me and how far it is come from when it was first developed. So to hear Professor Pausch talk about him working on the project at Disney, it was remarkable and very interesting. The interesting topics, the energy that he gives off, and the whole lecture overall was quite fascinating especially for a man who knows that he will die in the next 3 months.

On the Wednesday morning of February 1, 2017, 4 people were held hostage by inmates in Delaware’s largest maximum security prison. 3 of the hostages were security guards at the prison and the other one is a counselor for the inmates in the prison. Guard Steven Floyd was the only hostage killed during the hostage situation. This hostage hold up situation lasted about 20 hours until the a tactical team came in to clear area. The team came in to subdue the situation after the inmates decided to release 2 hostages after some time of being in the long going uprising. The uprising of the inmates was due to their protest against the prison because of the poor treatment that they receive on the daily basis. They wanted better living conditions because they felt like they were being mistreated. They demanded more comfortable living situations, an education program for the inmates, and better trained guards. Personally, I believe this hostage situation was cry out for help from the inmates and getting fed up with the terrible treatment they were getting. They were getting tired of not being heard so they had to resort to violent use because that is the only way they will be heard at least by some people. Even though it is good for them to try and make a change for the better, a hostage situation was not the way to go about that and the killing of the guard will  only make things worse for the inmates. Until people actually start learning about the terrors that go on behind prison walls, there will be a constant viscous cycle of uprisings and the treatment of inmates getting worse and worse.

Corrections officer Sgt. Steven Floyd killed in Delaware prison hostage situation hailed as hero

The inauguration that took place in Washington D.C. in 2017 for Donald J. Trump to become president is one of the most historic event that has happened in modern times. About 600,000 people attended the event of Donald Trump becoming the 45^th president of the United States. Since the beginning of his presidential campaign, Trump overcome many obstacles from the Republican Nominations to the Presidential Election. Nobody knew that he would come out to be victorious and become the leader of the free world. CNN and FOX News both covered Trump’s inauguration and even though they covered the same event, each of the news sources had their own views. CNN had more of a bias story against President Trump. For the most part, the story does provide unbiased information about the event from talking about the history of the tradition of inaugurations to what the new president stated in his speech. Towards the end of the article is when there is a feeling of bias towards Trump as the author includes a quote from an expert on presidential rhetoric, Robert Rowland, that states that Trump did not use his inauguration speech to call for peace and unity among Americans like all previous presidents have done before. The FOX news article on the inauguration was a lot more opinion based and it is clearly written in such a way that the author wanted to their opinion to be heard on the matter. The author compared President Trump to the 11^th president of the United States James K. Polk, explaining that both were in some ways underdogs. This article just seemed a lot supportive of Trump’s presidency as it goes on to praise the speech that was given by the newly elected president and saying that it was like nothing that past presidents have done before. Personally, the speech was just the same old used up promises that Trump has been saying ever since his entry into the election. The only thing that Americans can hope for at this point is that President Donald Trump changes his mind about some of the promises he was making about the wall the Mexican border, almost every promise he had about immigration, and his promises on stopping environmental funding. American citizens just need to keep a close eye on Trump and make sure that he does not do anything too out of line.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/20/politics/donald-trump-inauguration-highlights/

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/01/20/in-trumps-inaugural-address-heres-one-word-no-american-should-miss.html