jacob news

A lot of stuff happened this week. In my weekly sweeping of articles as I searched for what to write about I came across a multitude of headlines. These headlines included, �Joel Osteen responds to accusations over closing church doors to Harvey evacuees,� �Ted Cruz Defends Vote Against Superstorm Sandy Aid Amid Harvey Destruction,� and �Trump campaign adviser tried to set up Russia meetings, Washington Post reports.�             As I started looking through these stories to see which one would be my champion and would earn my attention (this is of course assuming that the authors of these columns wrote them with me in mind and I doubt that is the case), I became disillusioned. The whole Joel Osteen controversy is something I would easily jump on but there are some fishy circumstances surrounding the situation. The media seemed to be looking to find a fault in Osteen and was just searching for an opportunity to criticize. On the oth...

Among the controversy surrounding Confederate statues and their removal, there is the famous general Robert E. Lee whose statue in Charlottesville was the cause of the Unite to Right rally two weeks ago, which ended in riots and national outrage. In places like Duke, New Orleans, Baltimore and Austin, Texas his statue has been removed. And in places like Charlottesville, Arkansas, Washington, Pennsylvania, Richmond, Maryland, Florida, and Dallas he still stands.             In this push to remove Confederate statues, Lee has been a center of focus and one of the first to reach the chopping block because he was, after all, the highest-ranking Confederate general and the face of the Confederacy. However, many people who want him gone do not know who Lee really was and why he did what he did.             It�s time for a history lesson.        ...

Following the events in Charlottesville earlier this month, the national debate around Confederate statues and their place in our modern society has heated up. Some see the flags and statues of Confederate generals and figures as offensive and troubling. Others see it as a symbol of pride and heritage.             For years this debate has gone on and has become increasingly polarizing as more ideas clash and wounds reopen. Living in a state at the center of the controversy, that debate is very important to the people here.             South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union. The Civil War began in Charleston Harbor. For decades, our state upheld Jim Crow laws and instituted segregation. And 2 years ago, 9 black churchgoers were killed by a white man who wanted to start a race war. Needless to say, South Carolina has had a long and complicated racial history....

Yesterday, I sat down with Mayor Tecklenburg in his office in downtown Charleston for an interview. We sat around a conference table near his desk and talked for about half an hour. This is what happened.             My first question to him pertained to the solar eclipse and how many people were expected to be in Charleston on Monday. He responded by saying, �There�s a lot of speculation around the exact number. All of the 14,000 hotel rooms in the region have been booked for this weekend. With an average of two people per room that makes about 30,000 people. There are also many people who will be driving in� We are expecting between 75,000 and 100,000 visitors to be in the city on Monday.�             When I asked about his recommendations to travelers coming to Charleston on Monday he said, �Wear those safety glasses.�          ...

The events that happened in Charlottesville, Virginia last weekend were an explosion of tensions that have been building in our country for years. At this point, do I need to explain what happened on those two days? It is something that has been talked about by media outlets, public figures, and videos of the riots have gone viral on Twitter and Facebook. The President has held three press conferences to discuss Charlottesville and there is not one comment section on any news outlet�s Facebook page that doesn�t have a commenter talking about it. I think it would be a waste of time to go into everything that happened on those two days.             Instead, I want to focus on the response to the event which has left me more outraged than the event itself. Many people on the right have equated the KKK and neo-Nazis to BLM (Black Lives Matter) and ANTIFA (an anti-fascist organization) which is ridiculous. Many have also blamed former Pr...

One of the bigger societal debates we are facing right now is censorship versus free speech and the limits of free speech and whether censorship is a suppression of free speech. This debate became a subject of national controversy following incidents like the one at UC Berkeley when Milo Yiannopoulos (an alt-right figure/activist) was unable to speak after a series of protests and then riots against his event. Similar events like this have occurred with other alt-right figures such as Richard Spencer who won a court battle after being blocked from speaking at Auburn University earlier this year and was able to speak. However, his ability to speak was handicapped as he fought multiple interruptions throughout his speech and Q+A.             In my opinion, I think Milo and Spencer are ridiculous and say a lot of what they say just to start controversy and troll. But, suppressing their ability to speak only makes them more popular and ...

There was no light here. No feeling. No sound. Only thought. Thought probing at the boundaries of nothingness and finding nothing. With increasing panic, the mind searched for something outside itself. Only the lack of lungs prevented the being from hyperventilating. Finding no crack in the darkness, the mind�s activity settled, its energy dissipating. The change in state indicated the passage of time, a first orienting and comforting feature in the formless void. The mind waited. With time, memory began to thaw, giving content to thoughts. The darkness became light, a white light, fringed by orange and red, the colors of fire. The mind remembered that somewhere there was another who was different from it and whose presence resembled the light, a female, although she was not here now. And by this, he remembered that he was a male. The first concepts were wordless, but soon words came. And with the words, concepts poured in more rapidly. Visions and images flashed through his mind. Huma...

Tonight, I�m going to focus on something that I usually don�t focus on: foreign affairs. Usually I focus on domestic issues, specifically the happenings in the media and Congress. But some important and slightly concerning events have occurred in the past few days in places other than the US. Combined with the difficulty of finding a story in the US that is not about our President�s comments or tweets on any given day, foreign affairs are a lot more appealing to me right now.               Our first and most concerning country of focus tonight is North Korea. For years North Korea has been expanding their nuclear program and conducting multiple series of missile tests despite sanctions and protest from the rest of the world. These missile tests and military exercises have increased in frequency this year which may be attributed to the change of leadership in the US with Donald Trump replacing Barack Obama as president. Nobody k...