Monday, June 18, 2012

Presentation

Homework

DUE: Friday June 22

Using PowerPoint (or any type of Presenter software)

Students will be required to pick a city and/or country they find interesting.
This city and/or country has to be a place you have never lived in before.

Subject and information is totally up to you. What does this mean? This means the any information you want to add is at your discretion. As long as the presentation is interesting and captivating I will give you guys complete freedom over what to write.

Instructions:
- You will do a 4 minute to 5 minute presentation.
- The presentation can use images and multimedia.


This homework assignment counts for Speech and Writing Labs.
You will make a report and speak using what you wrote.
However, do not just read from your paper the whole time.

The student should be able to answer basic questions based on the country they chose.

If you have any questions, please send me an email.

-Prof. Rob
Rmorenoi@mdc.edu 


Friday, June 15, 2012

Helping Verbs

The 23 Helping Verbs:

  • is, am, are, was, were
  • be, being, been
  • has, have, had
  • do, does, did
  • will, shall, should, would
  • can, could
  • may, might, must

Monday, June 4, 2012

Cigarrette Tax

A $1 Cigarette Tax Starts a $47 Million Brawl in California

LOS ANGELES — California has some of the toughest antismoking laws in the country — it is illegal, in some places, to smoke in your own apartment — and boasts the second-lowest per capita smoking rate in the 50 states. But for all the disdain toward smoking, it has been 14 years since California raised its cigarette tax, a tribute to the power of the tobacco industry here and the waning of this state’s antitobacco dominance. 

That may be about to change. An array of health and anticancer groups has rallied behind a ballot initiative to impose a new $1-a-pack cigarette tax to finance cancer research. And that has provoked a $47 million storm of advertisements, overwhelmingly financed by the tobacco industry, which is outspending proponents by nearly four to one to defeat the biggest threat it has faced in California in more than a decade. 

An independent poll conducted May 14 to 20 signaled the power of the assault: while a majority of voters in California, where the average price of cigarettes is $5.71 a pack, say they still support Proposition 29, as it is known, the percentage has dropped markedly since the campaign began, according to the poll by the Public Policy Institute of California. 

In the recent poll, 53 percent said they would support the measure, down from 67 percent in March. The vote is Tuesday.
The latest frontier in the fight against smoking is a very unlikely place: a state that has long been identified with championing restrictions on smoking. The battle has drawn national attention — Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York contributed $500,000 to the initiative, and Lance Armstrong, the bicycling champion and cancer survivor, has become its chief public advocate — reflecting the frustration of antismoking groups on their defeats here. The Legislature has voted down more than 30 attempts to raise cigarette taxes in 30 years. 

“You think of California as a healthy, progressive state leading in tobacco cessation,” said Chris Lehman, one of the organizers behind the initiative. “It’s just not. And it’s not for lack of trying.”
California’s dominance as a leading antismoking state has declined significantly since it passed, in 1998, what was at the time the toughest antismoking bill in the country, according to the American Cancer Society. Since then, 23 states have passed tougher laws. The American Cancer Society has contributed more than $7 million to get Proposition 29 passed. 

“California has been a leader, not only in the country but in the world, in efforts to curb smoking,” said John R. Seffrin, the chief executive of the society. “They are overdue.”
The tax, which would raise an estimated $735 million, is being voted on as California is reeling from a new wave of bad budget news. Gov. Jerry Brown announced last month that the state was facing a deficit of $16 billion, and he proposed a round of severe spending cuts to deal with it. 

But none of the $735 million would go to close the deficit. Organizers argued that the tax would have less chance of passing if voters thought it would go into the state coffers, and said that their only goal here was cutting down on smoking. Raising the cost of tobacco has proved to be the most effective way of discouraging smoking, particularly among teenagers. 

“The voters in this state are disinclined to give money — even tobacco money — to the Legislature to spend: they don’t trust them with the money,” said Don Perata, a Democrat and former president pro tem of the State Senate, who is the author of the proposition. “We’ve become such a damned antitax state that we’ve demonized any kind of tax.” 

Still, the image of a $735 million windfall rushing in at a time when California is facing a three-week cut in the school year has proved, at the least, discordant. The editorial board of The Los Angeles Times, while proclaiming itself uncomfortable to be siding with the tobacco industry, urged voters to defeat it.
“It just doesn’t make sense for the state to get into the medical research business to the tune of half a billion dollars a year when it has so many other important unmet needs,” it said. And opponents have seized on this as one of their central arguments. 

“Isn’t that a little strange?” said Michael C. Genest, a former director of finance for the state who worked as a consultant to the “No on 29” effort, noting that Mr. Brown had just announced the state’s latest budget shortfall. “It’s astonishing to me that someone would go to these lengths to have a major tax increase and none of it would go to the budget.” 

At 87 cents, the cigarette tax here is about half the national average, and it ranks 33rd in the nation — down from the third highest in 1999. California is one of only three states that have not raised the cigarette tax over the past decade. About 12 percent of Californians now smoke.
Drawing on wealthy backers’ coffers, opponents of the proposition have hammered the proposal, warning that money raised would go out of state (which organizers call a complete fallacy) and would have no legislative oversight. 

Cigarette taxes were last increased in California in 1998, in that case by 50 cents in a voter initiative. California was widely viewed as a leader in the antismoking effort, with, among other things, a punitive tax on cigarettes and a raft of laws banning cigarette smoking in restaurants, sidewalks, public places and, in some areas, apartment buildings. Efforts in Sacramento to raise the tax have repeatedly failed, attesting to the contributions of the tobacco industry as well as the requirement for a two-thirds vote on any tax increase. The ballot measure’s passage requires a simple majority from the voters. 

Philip Morris USA and the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company are the leading contributors behind the effort to defeat Proposition 29. It has also drawn around $1 million from the California Republican Party.
In addition to the American Cancer Society and Mr. Bloomberg, the proposition is backed by the American Heart Association and the American Lung Association, among other groups.
Mr. Armstrong said he thought many people were “shocked by the amount of money that big tobacco is spending.” But he said he remained optimistic.
“This is our best opportunity, we think,” he said.

Than or Then

The English words than and then look and sound a lot alike, but they are completely different. If this distinction is harder than it should be, read this lesson and then try again.
 
Than
Than is a conjunction used in comparisons:
Tom is smarter than Bill.
This is more important than you might think.
Is she taller than you?
Yes, she is taller than I.
Technically, you should use the subject pronoun after than (e.g., I), as opposed to the object pronoun (me). However, English speakers commonly use the object pronoun.
 
Then
Then has numerous meanings.
1. At that point in time
I wasn't ready then.
Will you be home at noon? I'll call you then.
2. Next, afterward
I went to the store, and then to the bank
Do your homework and then go to bed
3. In addition, also, on top of that
He told me he was leaving, and then that I owed him money
It cost $5,000, and then there's tax too
4. In that case, therefore (often with "if")
If you want to go, then you'll have to finish your homework.
I'm hungry!
Then you should eat.
Exercises: http://www.towson.edu/ows/exercisethen2.htm
Exercises: http://www.towson.edu/ows/exercisethen5.htm


From:  http://www.elearnenglishlanguage.com/difficulties/thanthen.html

Friday, June 1, 2012

Troubled lives clashed in MacArthur Causeway attack

ebrecher@MiamiHerald.com

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/31/2826565_p2/causeway-victim-among-the-chronic.html#storylink=cpy

 Saturday’s horror-movie episode on the MacArthur Causeway brought together two troubled men, one who was struggling to get his life on track, another who had given up trying.
Rudy Eugene, 31, had been seeking spiritual guidance in Scripture. On May 24, two days before he viciously attacked a homeless man named Ronald Edward Poppo, chewing off much of his face, Eugene attended a Bible-study session at a friend’s North Miami Beach home.

Recently, Eugene posted a verse from Psalm 59 on his Facebook page: “Deliver me from my enemies, O my Lord; Defend me from those who rise up against me. For the Lord God is my defense. . . .”
Friend Bobby Chery said he, Eugene and another friend discussed that day what they could do to become better men according to the word of God, and that Eugene vowed to give up marijuana.
That same Thursday, Miami police rousted Poppo from one of the last places he called home: the top floor of the parking garage at Jungle Island, the Watson Island botanical and wildlife attraction.

Outreach workers from the Miami Homeless Assistance Program found him there and offered help, said Ronald Book, chairman of the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust.
But after Poppo became “belligerent and aggressive,” the outreach team called police. Officers issued Poppo, who had turned 65 a week earlier, a “trespassing after warning” citation.
“He grabbed his box of stuff and went off,” said Book. Outreach workers reported he was “cursing and claiming discrimination.”

About 2 p.m. Saturday, a naked Rudy Eugene grabbed Poppo near the causeway’s western end, stripped off his clothes, beat him, bit him and gnawed off his face.
More than 15 minutes into the attack, a police officer arrived and shot Eugene to death. Poppo remains in critical condition at Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center.
The crazed assault shocked almost everyone who knew Eugene.
Johansen Aurelus, a childhood friend, called Eugene “preacher” because he liked sharing Bible verses with friends and kept his Bible handy.

Aurelus attended Bethel Baptist Church with Eugene when they were teens. Back then, Aurelus said, Eugene would ask questions about the pastor’s sermons and how they applied to his life.
Over the years, Eugene had some run-ins with the police for marijuana possession and a domestic dispute. Most recently, he had trouble holding a job, friends say.
Eugene’s stepfather, Melimon Charles of North Miami, said Eugene “is not the kind of devil who goes out and kills people like they are showing on the news. He’s a fine boy. He was raised in the church. He was in the choir.”

Trouble may have started about the time Eugene learned Charles was not his biological father, in ninth or tenth grade, although Charles had been with Eugene’s mother, Ruth, since the boy was 2.
Rudy “was angry because he was looking for his father,” Charles said. “His father passed away and he didn’t know. And I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t even have a picture to show him.”
Soon after, he said, Eugene accepted “the truth and we were doing fine.”
But at 17, Eugene moved out of his home, without telling his stepfather. He transferred from North Miami Beach High School to North Miami High.

If he was upset over “family issues,” it was because of his parents’ divorce, which took place after he was an adult, Charles said.
Charles dismisses gossip that Rudy was the target of a Vodou spell.
“Nobody went to Haiti and did anything to him,” he insisted.
Though Eugene had stopped attending church regularly, he maintained his quest for spirituality. He regularly sent inspirational text messages to his friends. And on Facebook, he mentions “Zoe Life” several times — a phrase both associated with Haitian life and with born-again Christians.
His final post, on May 18, proclaimed: “ZOE LIFE IS ETERNAL!!!!!!!!!”
Friends posted tributes on his page.

“Damn, I still can’t believe it, out of all people, YOU! You have been a great friend to me, and for that you will always be missed!” wrote Meli Mel Rivera.
Ranessia Rollins posted that Eugene was at her house on Friday and kissed her cheek.
All of his friends expressed disbelief and solidarity.
Pudding Sabali said: “They’re telling me (us) that we shouldn’t have any grief for you dying. But it’s hard to not have the deepest warm feeling when it comes to you . . . just a young man misunderstood . . . God have mercy on your soul. . . .”

Understanding Ronald Poppo is harder because he lived anonymously for so long.
Ron Book said that outreach workers had been offering him services since Dec. 27, 1999. At the time, he gave his last permanent address as 150 NE 10th St., but said he had not lived there since 1970.
Poppo said he had become homeless outside of Florida, slept on Watson Island and abused alcohol.
He stayed in an emergency shelter for 141 days, during which he saw a counselor once, according to assistance program records.

Four years later, Miami police took him back to the shelter. Starting Oct. 6, 2003, Poppo stayed for 10 days, and again met once with a counselor.
Between that stay and his last encounter with outreach workers on May 24, Poppo might have spent less than a week living indoors.
Records show he stayed twice at Camillus House in 2004, on Jan. 26 and July 20, and once at the Homeless Assistance Center on Nov. 16. His last stay: Jan. 23, 2005, under a cold-weather sheltering program.

On Nov. 11, 2004, some kind of “mental crisis” brought him to Jackson’s crisis-intervention unit, but an assistance program report is unclear about whether he stayed overnight.
Outreach teams approached him three times in 2005 and 2006, but he refused help.
“During one of the contacts he became angry and started throwing rocks at the outreach staff,” Book said.
Among Miami’s 240 to 260 chronic homeless people, “sometimes after three, 10, 30 attempts, we get a guy or woman to come in,” Book said. “There are people for different reasons, it takes them that long, maybe never, to get off the streets.”

Details of Poppo’s life have been surfacing in bits since the assault. The 1964 graduate of New York’s elite Stuyvesant High School grew up in Brooklyn, according to long-lost sister Antoinette Poppo.
Neither she nor Poppo’s two brothers had seen him in more than 30 years, she said, and none of them plans a trip to Miami. Two siblings live in New York, another in California.
Their late father worked in a shipyard. She believes that “Ronnie” attended both parents’ funerals.
She could not explain the conditions that led to her brother’s downward spiral and his estrangement from the family.

“I’m 12 years older,” she said. “He was 6 years old when I got married and left the house.”
But she called him “a very intelligent boy and a gentle person.”
For a time in the late 1980s, Poppo worked as a roadie for the band SKUM, which spent about two years in Miami before breaking up around 1990.
In an email from North Carolina, former bass player Patrick Burke, a former Miamian, said band members would see “homeless guys panhandling, so we’d take them to Burger King, and say, ‘You want to work, take out the garbage and sweep up the parking lot?’ ”
They’d give them a few bucks, booze and dinner.

There were moments of lucidity with Poppo, whom he called Ernie, “because I thought he looked like Ernest Hemingway,” Burke said.
Poppo was hanging out “under a bridge off Biscayne Boulevard” when the band met him, Burke said. “He loved to drink, and we used to always kid him about the fact that homeless people always had the best heads of hair. Pops used to say, ‘It’s just the lifestyle, man — no bad chemicals on my head.’ ”
He was always wearing a Yankees cap, Burke said, “and he would take it off to show his locks to the girls at our shows.”  . . Last time I saw him was at the Grove Cinema in 1989.”
On Thursday, the Jackson Memorial Foundation established a fund for Poppo’s care. Foundation spokesman Larry Clark said that “inquiries have come from all over the country.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/31/v-print/2826565/causeway-victim-among-the-chronic.html#storylink=cpy

Monday, May 21, 2012

Prepositions: At, To, On, For, Since


Rule
A preposition is followed by a "noun". It is never followed by a verb.
By "noun" we include:
  • noun (dog, money, love)
  • proper noun (name) (Bangkok, Mary)
  • pronoun (you, him, us)
  • noun group (my first job)
  • gerund (swimming)
A preposition cannot be followed by a verb. If we want to follow a preposition by a verb, we must use the "-ing" form which is really a gerund or verb in noun form.
Quick Quiz: In the following sentences, why is "to" followed by a verb? That should be impossible, according to the above rule:
  • I would like to go now.
  • She used to smoke.
Here are some examples:
Subject + verb preposition "noun"
The food is on the table.
She lives in Japan.
Tara is looking for you.
The letter is under your blue book.
Pascal is used to English people.
She isn't used to working.
I ate before coming.
Answer to Quick Quiz: In these sentences, "to" is not a preposition. It is part of the infinitive ("to go", "to smoke").

Is it any wonder that prepositions create such troubles for students for whom English is a second language? We say we are at the hospital to visit a friend who is in the hospital. We lie in bed but on the couch. We watch a film at the theater but on television. For native speakers, these little words present little difficulty, but try to learn another language, any other language, and you will quickly discover that prepositions are troublesome wherever you live and learn. This page contains some interesting (sometimes troublesome) prepositions with brief usage notes. To address all the potential difficulties with prepositions in idiomatic usage would require volumes, and the only way English language learners can begin to master the intricacies of preposition usage is through practice and paying close attention to speech and the written word. Keeping a good dictionary close at hand (to hand?) is an important first step.

Prepositions of Time: at, in, on

We use:
  • at for a PRECISE TIME
  • in for MONTHS, YEARS, CENTURIES and LONG PERIODS
  • on for DAYS and DATES
at in on
PRECISE TIME MONTHS, YEARS, CENTURIES and LONG PERIODS DAYS and DATES
at 3 o'clock in May on Sunday
at 10.30am in summer on Tuesdays
at noon in the summer on 6 March
at dinnertime in 1990 on 25 Dec. 2010
at bedtime in the 1990s on Christmas Day
at sunrise in the next century on Independence Day
at sunset in the Ice Age on my birthday
at the moment in the past/future on New Year's Eve

Prepositions of Time: at, on, and in
We use at to designate specific times.
Description: #The train is due at 12:15 p.m.
We use on to designate days and dates.
Description: #My brother is coming on Monday.
Description: #We're having a party on the Fourth of July.
We use in for nonspecific times during a day, a month, a season, or a year.
Description: #She likes to jog in the morning.
Description: #It's too cold in winter to run outside.
Description: #He started the job in 1971.
Description: #He's going to quit in August.
Prepositions of Place: at, on, and in

Prepositions of Place: at, in, on

In general, we use:
  • at for a POINT
  • in for an ENCLOSED SPACE
  • on for a SURFACE
at in on
POINT ENCLOSED SPACE SURFACE
at the corner in the garden on the wall
at the bus stop in London on the ceiling
at the door in France on the door
at the top of the page in a box on the cover
at the end of the road in my pocket on the floor
at the entrance in my wallet on the carpet
at the crossroads in a building on the menu
at the front desk in a car on a page

We use at for specific addresses.
Description: #Grammar English lives at 55 Boretz Road in Durham.
We use on to designate names of streets, avenues, etc.
Description: #Her house is on Boretz Road.
And we use in for the names of land-areas (towns, counties, states, countries, and continents).
Description: #She lives in Durham.
Description: #Durham is in Windham County.
Description: #Windham County is in Connecticut.
Prepositions of Location: in, at, and on
and No Preposition
IN
(the) bed*
the bedroom
the car
(the) class*
the library*
school*
AT
class*
home
the library*
the office
school*
work
ON
the bed*
the ceiling
the floor
the horse
the plane
the train
NO PREPOSITION
downstairs
downtown
inside
outside
upstairs
uptown
* You may sometimes use different prepositions for these locations.
Prepositions of Movement: to
and No Preposition
We use to in order to express movement toward a place.
Description: #They were driving to work together.
Description: #She's going to the dentist's office this morning.
Toward and towards are also helpful prepositions to express movement. These are simply variant spellings of the same word; use whichever sounds better to you.
Description: #We're moving toward the light.
Description: #This is a big step towards the project's completion.
With the words home, downtown, uptown, inside, outside, downstairs, upstairs, we use no preposition.
Description: #Grandma went upstairs
Description: #Grandpa went home.
Description: #They both went outside.
Prepositions of Time: for and since
We use for when we measure time (seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years).
Description: #He held his breath for seven minutes.
Description: #She's lived there for seven years.
Description: #The British and Irish have been quarreling for seven centuries.
We use since with a specific date or time.
Description: #He's worked here since 1970.
Description: #She's been sitting in the waiting room since two-thirty. 

Infomartion gathered from www.englishclub.com


For more help: http://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/grammar/preposition_time.htm