Ban On Pet Sales

Summary of the article

The article "San Francisco Considers Banning of Pets Except Fish" by Carolyn Jones is about the proposal of San Francisco's Commission of Animal Control and Welfare to ban the sale of companion animals at pet stores in San Francisco, including dogs, cats, hamsters, mice, rats, chinchillas, guinea pigs, birds, snakes, lizards and critters, except fish.

Commission Chairwoman Sally Stephens says that many people are buying these small animals on impulse, and many of them end up at shelters and are being euthanized. That's what they want to prevent.

According to staff of shelters and rescue groups, the main issue is not cats and dogs. It is hamsters. Hamster is the No. 1 animal being euthanized at shelters. Many people buy hamsters on impulse because they are cute and cuddly, not knowing hamsters are prone to biting, gnawing and racing on their exercised wheel at 2 a.m. in the morning. Shelter staffs are concerned many hamsters are being euthanized especially babies.

Many pet store owners argue that the proposal to ban pet stores from selling pets is ridiculous, and it will hurt their businesses. 

The commission will listen to testimony from pet store owners and others before voting. Commissioner Philip Gerrie said they're still in the information-gathering phrase. The final decision will be on the Broad of Supervisor.

Summary of the First Response

Ken White, President of Peninsula Humane Society and SPCA, posted a response, titled “The no pets in Pet Store Proposal”, to the article saying that there is nothing silly or ridiculous about the proposal when it concerns the suffering and death of animals. It is worth a discussion.

He stated that even though the article says that cats and dogs are not the issue, in fact it is. He said that on average San Francisco is adopting about 45-50% of sheltered dog and cats. The rest will be euthanized.

He also stated that some animals are being neglected while they are in the pet stores. Usually these animals are not being sold for a profit, especially for the big stores. These animals are giveaways, and the store owner will profit from the sales of tanks, cages, foods, books, etc. He believed it is good for the animals to ban sell of these animals in pet stores.

Summary of the second response

"Banning Pet Stores in SF: A Solution in Search of a Problem" by Michael Yaki, Attorney and Political Consultant, is a response to the proposal of banning animal sale in San Francisco. He believes the proposal is ridiculous and is not well thought out. He said, "The impulse to care for another creature is not going to be bound by whether you can buy it in the city of Richmond or the Richmond District." He also claimed that the proposal is a hypocrisy. If a commission concerned with the welfare of animal, then why exclude fish and feeder animals like baby mice and crickets.

My Response

I find the proposal to ban the commercial selling of animal in San Francisco is ill-thought-out. I share the same opinion with Mr. Yaki on that buying an animal on impulse is not bound by where someone can get it. If the intent of the proposal is to prevent people from buying on impulse, I don’t believe banning animal sale in pet stores would prevent that. Nowadays, many people are buying on Craigslist.  Does it mean that these people are not buying on impulse? No. Is there a guarantee that these people won’t end up sending their pets from Craigslist to one of the shelters? No, I don’t think so. According to the article, the major reason many animals end up in shelters is that people don’t know what they’ve signed up for when they buy a pet. If that is the reason, wouldn’t requiring the pet store owner and staff to explicitly explain and educate customers on the animal behavior and required care be more effective?

Two Teachers

The articles, "Suspended Teacher Defends Book Assignment" and "Museum Field Trip Deemed Too Revealing", are about two teachers who were suspended for unjustified reasons. Connie Heermann was suspended for using a book that had been approved by 99% of the parents of the students in her class. Sydney McGee was suspended for taking her 89 fifth-grade class students on a field trip to the Dallas Museum of Art and receiving the complaint of one parent that her child had seen art depicting nudity during the tour.

Connie Heermann, a high school teacher of Perry Meridan High School in Indianapolis, was suspended from teaching for assigning a book to her 11th-grade students without the approval of the district's curriculum director. The book, "The Freedom Writers Diary", is a collection of at-risk teenagers' essays that contains swear words and sexual content. Heermann said, "she wanted to use the book because she thought it would inspire her students, many of whom are considered to be at-risk." Heermann stated that she had received permission from the parents of 149 out of 150 of her students, and had received positive signs from her principal and the district's acting superintendent before passing out the book. She had sought approval from the district's curriculum director months before the school year began without reply. She believed the book's swear words and sexual content were one of the reasons for her suspension. She suspected the other reason was that the administrators were afraid of losing their jobs. She said, "Most of the administrators at central office fear for their jobs, They don't want to be responsible for anything because they are afraid the board will fire them."

Sydney McGee, a popular art teacher at Wilma Fisher Elementary School in Frisco, Texas, was suspended after taking her 89 fifth grade students on a tour of the Dallas Museum of Art.  Ms. McGee was suspended after a child's parent complained about her child seeing nude art in the museum during the tour. The tour had been approved by the principal, and Ms McGee found nothing offensive after retracing her route in the museum. The principal and the superintendent of the Frisco Independent School District emailed parents saying that the suspension was for reasons of unsatisfactory performance. Rogge Dunn, Ms McGee's lawyer, said that her past job evaluations had been consistently superior until the museum trip and only turned negative afterward. Many parents and teachers had come to Ms McGee's defense.

I found the suspension of these two teachers were unreasonable and ridiculous. There is always some narrow minded and whiny people out there. Why jeopardize an opportunity for the 99% of the students to learn from others and see thing from a different angle? Why suspend good teachers who actually care about students?  I believe Ms. Heermann wants her students to learn from other at-risk teenagers, not the foul language nor the sex. People always say it is better to learn from other’s mistakes. Beside, these are 11th grade students. They are old enough to know what is right and wrong, good and bad. As for Ms McGee, I believe she wants her students to be exposed to different kinds of art. Nudity is a form of art, especially during the ancient Greek. Why suspend teachers, just for some unreasonable and narrow minded people, at the time when good teachers are most needed?

Introduce an Interesting Website

Google Document, https://docs.google.com, includes a suite of applications which would be useful for your daily use. It is very similar to Microsoft Office 2010. Within this site, you can create a document, a spreadsheet, a presentation, and a form.

Google Document is similar to Microsoft Word. You can format the headers and text with different sizes and fonts or use the predefined styles for headers and text. You can insert web format pictures. You can create table of content for your document. You can share your document with your friends and limit them to read only or allow them to make modifications to it. This feature is very useful when you are working on a project with many people because everyone can contribute to it at the same time.

Google Spreadsheet is similar to Microsoft Excel. Google Spreadsheet works well with Google Form. You can create a form to collect information from the users, and the data that you collect is tracked in Google Spreadsheet. Similar to Microsoft, you can create spreadsheet formula to tally up the data  in different ways and create different graphs. Like Google Document, you can also share spreadsheet with other people and allow them to either view it and/or modify it.

Google Presentation is similar to Microsoft Powerpoint, an application to create presentations.  Like Microsoft Powerpoint, you can format the presentation and text in any way you want, or you can use one of the templates. You can insert pictures and videos in the presentation, and you can also add speaker's notes to each slide to remind yourself what you need to cover on that particular slide. You can share your presentation with other people for review, comment and contribute to the presentation.

There are some huge benefits of using Google Docs for your personal, school, or professional works. It is free, and you can access it any where in this world as long as you have Internet access. Your work is saved in Google infrastructure which is available 24X7, and you don't need to install anything on your computer. Unlike Google, Microsoft saves all your work on your local drive, and you need to have a copy of Microsoft Office installed on your computer in order to use it.  If you want to share and cooperate with other people, you need to put your document on a central server where everyone has access to it. Anyone who wants to view or modify your document needs to have a copy of Microsoft Office installed on his computer which costs about $500 for Microsoft Office 2010 professional version and $150 for the student version.

Katie Couric Interview

Katie Couric began the interview with Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, by asking him why he had chosen the names for the different sizes of coffee. He said that he had gone to Italy and had seen these names, and they just made sense to him. Katie then asked why he was closing so many stores and what went wrong and if it was because the company had grown too big and too fast. He replied yes, and he said that the growth had covered some mistakes. Katie went on and asked whether he has a business plan in place for the recession. He said no. He said he doesn't have a business plan for the recession because history had demonstrated to him that a downturn of the economy would not affect Starbucks. Katie ended the interview by asking whether he would lower the prices for the Starbucks coffees. He said no. He said he would not cut corners that would jeopardize the Starbucks experience that his customer enjoyed. He said he saw an immediate uptick in the number of people coming in Starbucks after 9-11 because he thought people wanted human connection.

Looking around at my friends and family, I see that many o f them are loyal Starbucks customers. I think Mr. Schultz is right that his customers come into Starbucks for the experience and the atmosphere, not just the coffee. Yesterday I was meeting my brother and sisters at Starbucks for coffee. We were sitting at the booth chatting for a couple of hours. Beside being our meeting place, Starbucks is the place where my older sister has to have a Starbucks coffee every morning before work, and she’s been hooked on Starbucks coffee for more then couple of years. Looking at these loyal customers that I know, I don’t think Starbucks should make any change or cut cost on the store front. Maybe slowing down the growth and maintaining the Starbucks coffee quality and atmosphere could avoid more closing of stores and cutting jobs.

Language Research

The verb concern can be followed by the prepositions with and about. Based on Longman dictionary, it defines "concern with/about" in one definition, to become involved in something because you are interested in it or because it worries you. The example sentence it gives for "concern with" is, he loved his wife and concerned himself with her needs and desires. The example sentence it gives for "concern about" is, he told them not to concern themselves about him."

Based on the the English-test.net's forum, http://www.english-test.net/forum/ftopic40513.html, "concern with" means involve with or on the topic of. "Concern about" means worry about. The sample usage sentence it gives is, the Department of Health is concerned with the welfare of the population and is concerned about the increase in the number of people smoking.

The English-test.net have a clearer definition between the two. From COCA, it provides these samples sentences: "The problem - the concern with global warming is the release of carbon dioxide, okay?" and "Other teachers enter into this work more slowly, often with great ambivalence and concern about its high level of demands."

Google titles also provide some example like, "Traffic safety is concerned with new Fischer Crossings movie theater ..." and "Obama expresses concern about slowing economy - Yahoo! News".

Based on my research, "concern about" means "worry about" like, I'm concerning about my mother's health. "Concern with" means worry about an issue like, My biggest concern with the economy is the slowness of the house market.