Archives for the Month of December 2005 on A View of Cleveland From The Eastside
Random News Stories
Christmas has come and gone and now New Years is coming up. I just wanted to talk about a few things in the news.
The Cleveland Indians are coming back to local TV! The Indians signed a deal with Time Warner cable. A whopping 20 games will be broadcasted on our local WKYC channel 3 (In HDTV) while the rest will be on a cable station. For all the details you can go here. While I am excited that baseball games are coming back to a local free station after 4 years, I wonder if I will be able to see the rest of the games as I am a DirecTv user and not a local cable user. Hopefully this deal will give more exposure to the Indians as well as generate more support for the team. I do not want to see a repeat of last year where we almost did not sell out the home opener.
I thought this following article was pretty interesting. I did not know that student based EMS groups were growing. Both UD and JCU seem to have better programs then what we currently have but I ask is it really necessary? I can not imagine the insurance, equipment, and teaching costs. Furthermore both JCU and Case are not in rural areas where we expect EMS to arrive 10 minutes after a call. I think offering a class is one thing but do we really need this?
There seem to be a rash of police shootings locally but here is one in New Orleans as well. Now to me this latest one in New Orleans could have been resolved with out the suspect being killed. Just with the amount of man power there I would figure someone could have jumped the suspect from behind to take him down. I was not there and do not know nearly all the details so I can not pass judgement. The police have said that what occurred was that one of the officers tried to do that and then the suspect lunged at him with his knife and that is when three other officers opened fire. What I hate most about these stories though is that the media as well as the general public takes a quick stance against the police officers. Sometimes this is deserved for example when a man was beaten in New Orleans a few months ago. But in Cleveland especially we have people calling our police officers ‘murderers’. I think that is completely ridiculous and when ever it is a white cop who shoots a black suspect the cop is automatically racist. These people get paid worth crap for what they do and I do not believe for a minute that there are officers who get up and think lets see who I am going to shoot today. Furthermore I am sure that they make mistakes but that is expected when you have only a few seconds to decide whether or not to shoot. The least we can do is give them respect and wait for the investigation to occur before we judge them. In society we presume innocence until proven guilty but that doesn’t seem to apply to cops. Why?
Here is a little heard news story. While most of the news about the Catholic Church recently has been negative and in recent years all we have heard about is church closings and priest shortages, here is an example of the strength of the Catholic Church. Furthermore you never hear that the Catholic Charities is second in donations to those in need and you never hear about how many new members the church brings in a year. The church has been hit hard but is no where as bad as people may believe.
Here is an interesting article about the growing gender gap in College. Now this may not be what you think. Apparently more women than men are matriculating into universities. How come I don’t see this at Case?
I hope everybody has a wonderful New Years!
Damn Deer
This is something the east side of Cleveland deals with quite a bit. What to do with the over population of deer. I live right next to the city of Solon which has continually taken controversial steps to control the deer population. I do not remember the exact numbers but I believe the deer population was as high as 30 deer per square mile nearly double than what it should be. One fact I know for sure is that 175 car accidents due to deer occurred just in Solon. Last year Solon city council decided to have a culling of about 600 of the dear and then donate the meat to local food banks. The culling took place with licensed sharpshooters who took head shots to make it as humane as possible. This year the issue was the feeding of dear. People decided to feed the deer in order to keep them around their house and not in the areas where the culling took place. Now this has also brewed a local fire storm. Some citizens said arrest me and send me to jail or we will move if you pass this ordinance. It was also discussed on how police would find out if the ordinance was being broken. I believe feeding any wild animal is a bad idea and should never be done. I also think the thinning of the population is necessary. In America there are 1.5 million accidents with deer resulting in nearly 1 billion dollars in damages which was stated in this article. I also have a personal connection to this when my parents came home late the other night when they hit a deer on their way home. Luckily there was only minor damage to the car and my parents were fine. This accident did occur in Solon. The deer also managed to get away but my parents believed it was badly injured. So to all the people who say poor deer why do we shoot them, I ask, which is better, starving to death, being hit by a car and then bleeding out, or shot in the head? I know there are many arguments on both sides but I believe the city of Solon is doing what it has to in order to protect the welfare of its citizens. For more information go here and here
Finally if you live in the Cleveland area take a look at this and help someone out in need.
Biswanath Halder
For some of you the name in title will mean almost nothing and for some it will bring back sad, horrific, and terrifying memories. Yesterday Mr. Halder was convicted of Aggravated Murder along with 196 counts felony counts. For the full story and more go here. Being it so close to break and with finals I think it is going to be hard to judge the reaction of the student body. Now with most of the students who were truly affected being 4th and 5th year seniors plus grad students, I am wondering if there will be a difference in the reaction especially what may come later on as Mr. Halder will most likely be put to death. For more on that view I encourage you to read this. My brother managed to write what I was going to say very eloquently.
My First Entry
To supplement my views on the world and especially cleveland I will contiunally link to other blogs specifically, http://darthvadermeditations.blogspot.com
A view of Cleveland from a Westsider
http://clavinng.blogspot.com/
A view of Cleveland from someone who actually lives in Cleveland
and finally
http://hickmania.blogspot.com/
He has interesting views on the world being a double EE(English and Econ not Electrical Engineering).