As my project for this Government 103 class, I was asked to visit a government body in action. My selection for this project was to visit the Fairfax County School Board at their bi-monthly meeting on November 15. There were many reasons this was my choice, not the least of which being that I was a student in the Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) system for over six years and, to be frank, hated it.
Airborne Carcinogens and the Little Black Box
Well there are two issues on my mind today that I’d like to rant about, the first being airborne carcinogens. For those who need to study their vocabulary, airborne means “in the air”. A carcinogen is a substance that has been identified as a cause or potential cause of cancer.
Those Underrated Bee Gees
Those who know me well know that my two favorite bands are the unlikely combination of Pink Floyd and the Bee Gees. Now surely, neither of these bands are well understood by the majority of my friends—as they are far too preoccupied with whatever pre-fabricated beats and hot-bodies they hear and see on MTV to worry about any music made before last year. This obsession with modern “music” bothers me quite a bit, because although certain modern bands are worth listening to (Matchbox Twenty, Wallflowers, Linkin’ Park, others) the fact is that older music was more consistently memorable, interesting, and most importantly REAL.
AOL Instant Annoyance
America Online has probably done some good things over the years, I’m sure of it. I mean you can’t become the worlds largest internet service with crappy connections, buggy software, and bad attitudes alone! There has to be something in there that attracts people to the service. Many will say user-friendliness, others will say good marketing, and others just can’t make sense of it no matter how they look at it (me, for example). But regardless, much of the internet use in the United States flows one way or another through AOL.
Court Case Speech
(Written for Prof. Bulger’s Intro. to Oral Communication [COMM100] class at George Mason University.)
I have been on the bench of the United States Supreme Court for five years, and seldom has a case come across my desk where a decision from a lower court literally angered me. Not since the electoral decisions from the Florida Supreme Court in 2001 have I ever heard of a state court being so entirely out-of-line with law and reality as the decision that the New York Court of Appeals made in this case.
Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.