The Perils of Street Racing

That night, Davey Yeoman hadn’t planned on almost killing himself. He was out cruising with a couple of friends in his blue turbo-charged Honda Accord. The other guy was in a yellow Pontiac GTO with katana rims. The driver of the GTO asked if Davey wanted to race. He said yeah. So they agreed to meet at 11:00 that night on a two-laner outside town. It was a popular place for street racing. When the stoplight changed, Davey hit 120 mph almost right away. The GTO was running beside him, just off his right quarter panel. Davey’s Accord was shaking, and its engine was screaming. Suddenly, ahead, he saw the headlights of a semitrailer turning into his lane from a side road. The last thing Davey remembered thinking was, “Not me, God, not me.” He knew he was dead. Street racing is a craze that has grown steadily in the last decade. Last year, over two hundred young people were killed in street racing incidents (FARS 9). Most of the dead and maimed were the drivers or their passengers, and some were people who just got in the way. Street racing has turned some of our roads into deadly places. These street racers need to understand the deadly dangers of turning our roads into racetracks.

What will happen when the earth runs out of fossil fuels? Scientific guesses as to when we will reach this point vary, but it is coming – the day when we have squeezed this planet dry of every ounce of oil and gas it had to offer. Instead of using our energy, resources, and ingenuity toward finding new sources of fossil fuels, we should be focusing our efforts on creating usable sources of renewable energy that will sustain us far longer, without harming the environment. (“UN Secretary Unveils ‘Sustainable Energy For All (SE4ALL)’” 1 September 2011)

Have we forgotten the words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty over 130 years ago? “Give me your tired, your poor, Huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” These were the words chosen to greet countless immigrants as they made their way to the land of the free. Recently, an American-born woman of Indian descent won the Miss America title and prompted a backlash from people calling her an “immigrant,” even a “terrorist,” and saying she doesn’t deserve to represent the country because of her ethnicity and background. But these people seem to have forgotten that America was a country built by immigrants themselves – for immigrants. (“Indian-American Miss America Winner Faces Racist Reponses” 13 September 2013)

Although the Holocaust is considered unprecedented, human rights officials say that there have been 37 cases of mass genocide since 1945. (“Sarin in Syria and Slayings in Sudan: Are we in Danger of Repeating the Holocaust?” 15 January 2014)

An alarming trend shows that some of the bills presented to Congress last year were not written by Congressional members or their aides, but big businesses and their lobbying groups. Now, large corporations are one step closer to literally running the country if nothing is done to stop them. (“ALEC Exposed: Corporations Write Legislative Bills Behind Closed Doors” 26 November 2013)

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid,” Jane Austen wrote in Northanger Abbey. However, the rate of Americans who regularly read fiction by choice has decreased in recent years, as other hobbies have taken the place of reading or people are burdened by school or work. But as Austen said and studies have proven, reading fiction does increase a person’s brainpower. (“Reading Novels Boosts Brain Power for Days” 26 November 2013)

A great humanist and civil rights leader, Mahatma Gandhi said, “The greatness of a nation and its moral process can be measured by the way its animals are treated.” Yet in America, we buy pets born in puppy mills, infringe on wildlife habitats for our own gain, and allow livestock to be caged and mistreated to the point that they cannot walk and must be carried to slaughter. (“Farm Bill’s King Amendment Threatens Animal Welfare Laws” 20 August 2013)

When I wake up to the ear-splitting sound of my alarm clock, blindly search for the snooze button, a sudden thought dawns: “What am I doing?” The time is 5:30 a.m.; all is dark and hushed. My weary body feels completely drained of energy. While straining to open my eyes, still warm and snug in my comfortable bed, I am overcome with a feeling of lethargy. “Perhaps I should call in sick.” Despite all my musing and my bed’s magnetic pull, I still manage to rise each morning at this ungodly hour to join the cross-country running team in rigorous training. (“While the World Sleeps” Student Essay 1998)

“What’s that?” Zarie asked when she heard a low rumble. “It’s probably a plane,” her mother replied. After all, she thought, the hurricane had already come and gone, its eye hitting 50 miles west of their home. “It’s not coming from the sky,” Zarie said. “And it’s getting louder.” Her mother finally put down the dish she was cleaning with a towel and cocked her head to the side to study the strange noise. “Do you hear it, mama? What is it?” “That’s funny, it kind of sounds like . . .” But her sentence was cut off by water – water pushing into the house, lifting her up, fighting her as she struggled to reach for her daughter. That was the day a watery hell broke loose over levies long in need of repair but surreptitiously ignored. (“After the Storm” 15 March 2006)

A secret rider dubbed the Monsanto Protection Act was slipped into a must-pass spending bill earlier this year, instructing the Secretary of Agriculture to allow GMO crops to be cultivated and sold even when courts find they pose a potential risk to farmers of nearby crops, the environment, and human health. The measure shields sellers of genetically modified seeds from lawsuits, even if the resulting crops cause harm. The act is set to expire at the end of this year, so House Republicans released legislation that would include an extension of the Monsanto measure in their continuing resolution. But, as of Tuesday, the act will not be included in a bill designed to avert a government shutdown, according to a statement from the press office of Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.). (“Monsanto Protection Act Extension Not Included in Latest Budget Bill” 26 September 2013)

A Pentagon report, released in May, estimates as many as 26,000 service members may have been sexually assaulted last year. The head of the Army has called sexual assault “a cancer” that could destroy the force, while Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the problem threatens to undermine troops’ effectiveness in carrying out missions. But military leaders have rejected far-reaching congressional efforts to strip commanders of some authority in meting out justice, saying that would undercut the ability of commanders to discipline their troops. Now every branch is scrambling to demonstrate it can get the situation under control by instituting new measures that emphasize a zero-tolerance message and crack down on alcohol, which is said to be a major contributor to the problem. Patrols are among a number of new initiatives the armed forces is implementing to try to stop sexual assaults by changing the military’s work-hard, play-hard culture. (“Military Sexual Assaults Rose Sharply in 2012” 7 May 2013)

The young men wade through thigh-high grass beneath the firs and ponderosa pines, calmly setting the forest on fire. With flicks of the wrist, they paint the landscape in flame. The newborn fires slither through the grass and chew into the sagging branches. Every few minutes a fire ignites, flames devouring it in a rush of light, the roar of rockets. It is over in seconds. Only a smoking skeleton remains. (“Under Fire” by Neil Shea, National Geographic 2008)

In a dimly lit back room on the second level of the University of Michigan library’s book-shelving department, Courtney Mitchel helps a giant desktop machine digest a rare, centuries-old Bible. Mitchel is among hundreds of librarians from Minnesota to England making digital versions of the most fragile of the books to be included in Google Inc.’s Book Search, a portal that will eventually lead users to all the estimated 50 million to 100 million books in the world. The manual scanning – up to 600 pages a day – is much slower than Google’s regular process. “It’s monotonous,” said Mitchel, 24. “But it’s still something that I’m learning about – how to interact with really old materials and working with digital imaging, which is relevant to art history.” (“Preserving World’s Books is a Real Page Turner” Associated Press 25 April 2008)

I promised God I would eat all my peas, but He didn’t care. A confused eleven-year-old girl, I sat and listened to my father pace. With each heavy step echoing loudly throughout the silent house, my family’s anxiety and anticipation mounted while awaiting news of my grandfather’s health. My heart racing, I watched the clock, amazed that time could crawl so slowly. Finally, the telephone interrupted the house’s solemn silence. I heard my father repeating the words “yes, yes, of course.” He then hung up the receiver and announced my grandfather’s death and cancer’s victory. (“Why did my Grandfather have to Die?” Student Essay 1998)

“I had no idea college was going to be so much like a gay porn movie.” That’s what I kept thinking as I stood in the middle of a sun-dappled backyard, dressed in nothing but a spandex unitard and running shoes, preparing to have oil poured over my body. For the last two hours, 10 other young rowers and I had been undergoing “initiation” to my university’s varsity crew team. College is a strange time. As soon as our parents drive away from our dorms, and leave us alone with our boxes of books and Ikea corkboard, we’re free to make an extraordinary number of mistakes and end up in situations that may not teach us much about organic chemistry or Emily Dickinson, but let us figure out who we are and who we want to be. In my case, that situation involved man-on-man oil wrestling. (“The College Hazing That Changed My Life” by Thomas Rogers, Salon 21 September 2011)

Fred Jenkins never thought he was the kind of person to declare bankruptcy. He was a successful businessman with enough money in the bank. When his wife discovered she had ovarian cancer, though, his bank accounts were soon emptied by the costs of treatment. Mira Johnson took a different path to bankruptcy. She racked up $24,000 in credit card debt, because she bought a house she couldn’t afford. When she was laid off at Gerson Financial, she could no longer make the minimum payments on her credit cards. Then, with her credit in ruins, she could not refinance her mortgage. Her personal finances collapsed, causing her to lose everything. (“Bankruptcy Not Just for Poor Anymore” 11 November 2012)

John Ferris had been working as an electrician for 12 years when he fell off a ladder on the job, injuring his back. He was unable to work for the next eight months, while going through physical therapy. But what helped him the most were the prescription painkillers; they were the only thing that combatted the ever-present pain and he felt he was handicapped without them. Hundreds of miles away and a decade later, his daughter was in labor with her second child. Doctors misjudged the size of the baby’s head and the width of her hips, so the baby could not fit through the birth canal and an emergency C-section was necessary, but the epidural to numb Larae from the waist down didn’t work. In the six weeks after delivery, doctors prescribed painkillers for the pain that resulted from the ordeal. But with an infant, a one-year-old, mounting debt, and a husband who spent more and more time away from home, she needed something to dull the constant pressure on her nerves. And that something she turned to was Vicodin. (“Addiction to Prescriptions on the Rise” 11 November 2012)

For Nathan Wolfe, a 38-year-old visiting professor at Stanford, an ordinary workday can look like a clip from “Survivor” — chasing primate hunters through the dense foliage of rural Cameroon, sloshing through mud and streams, dodging branches and malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Dr. Wolfe says he enjoys the adventure. But he has a broader purpose: staving off global pandemics before they happen. (“Nathan Wolfe: Virus Hunter” The New York Times 21 October 2008)

Miranda Lambert’s songs about good-for-nothing men and gun-toting women out for revenge have shot her to the top of the country music charts. Now she has a new album, a new husband, and even a new state to call home. But the girl from Lindale who likes to hunt and fish still believes one thing: She’ll do it her way or she won’t do it at all. (“The Girl Who Plays with Firearms” Texas Monthly 21 September 2011)