The Big One

This piece was first published on Blogcritics. You can see my original article here.

Californians — particularly those living in the southern half of that state — are living on borrowed time. Scientists have predicted with near certainty that the San Andreas Fault will produce an earthquake with a magnitude of at least 6.7 and likely higher than that.

Earthquakes, of course, are nothing new to Californians. Their state is riddled with fault lines, and minor earthquakes occur all the time. During the week of November 5 – November 12, the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) recorded over four hundred minor earthquakes in California. Granted, only three of these registered above a 3.0 on the Richter scale, but the vast quantity of seismic activity cannot be ignored.

A Call for Community Service

This piece was first published at Blogcritics. To see my original article click here.

According to USA Today, TIME, and a plethora of other news sources, Generation Y (to which I belong) is all about community service. We believe in doing food drives, donating blood, reading to children, participating in street cleanups, raising money for charities, and just about anything else you care to think of. We prefer working for companies that actively engage in community service,TIME says. Even more, a survey included inUSA Today states that, “61% of 13 to 25-year-olds feel personally responsible for making a difference in the world.”

It has also been suggested that Generation Y naturally tends toward community service — it supposedly correlates perfectly with our learned tendency toward working as a team, developed through years of sports, group projects at school, and socializing. Working for the good of society comes as naturally to us as multi-tasking (which, incidentally, isn’t nearly as effective as everyone thinks).