Writing Assignment 3

1- A cat who went missing three weeks ago on a Germany to England flight was found in the cargo hold of a United Airlines passenger jet yesterday. It will be flown back home.

2-A 23-year-old man was killed early this morning when the car he was riding in went off the road and crashed into a canal.

Writing Assignment 2

Jimmy Humphrey, Lifelong Car Enthusiast

Jimmy Humphrey was born in Nashville, TN on Christmas Day, 1992. Over the years, Jimmy, who has Asperger’s Syndrome, has held many focused interests including weather, classic video game collecting, old magazine collecting, and many others in diverse fields. The longest lasting interest Jimmy has had has been cars. The start of Jimmy’s car enthusiasm was very early, probably when he was age 1 or 2. His first ever word was “Datsun”, read out of a phone book at the age of 15 months; this also showed that Jimmy was a very precocious reader. As a toddler, Jimmy would say what kinds of cars he was seeing when he was in parking lots, which impressed many bystanders. He watched car commercials with enthusiasm and grew most interested in the safety features. Several mid-late 1990s issues of his grandparents’ old magazines, mostly Reader’s Digest, were written in by Jimmy as a small child; a 1997 Consumer Reports Buying Guide, for instance, was found to have the words “WITH AN AIRBAG” and “DUAL AIRBAGS” written in it, along with a basic drawing of what inflated dual airbags looked like.

The years from age 5 to 8 were a step back for Jimmy’s car enthusiasm. Amid reports of airbag dangers, Jimmy became fearful of the devices, resulting in him becoming fearful of car commercials. For several years, the car enthusiasm died out.

Around age 10, Jimmy’s car enthusiasm came back. He began to collect car magazines in summer 2003, quickly growing interested in cars again, as well as car safety and crash testing. Jimmy decided he wanted to become a car safety engineer. He enjoyed his trips to Lane Motor Museum in Nashville, TN, where the old cars fascinated him. On the car safety front, Jimmy kept track of new crash testing releases and did hours of research onto what makes cars safe.

On August 5, 2008, Jimmy got to fulfill his dream when he was able to go to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety to see a frontal crash test of a 2009 Hyundai Genesis.

Through high school, Jimmy took many math and science courses that would help him in his track of being an engineer. He then went to Tennessee Tech University in 2011. It was during the TTU era that Jimmy began to question his desire to be an engineer; he found the subject matter dry and difficult and decided that his calling was in a different field. During this time period, he began to get more interested in cars themselves, and specialized in Honda after his first ever ride in a 2008 or newer Accord on August 31, 2011. By the time Jimmy left TTU in 2013, he was known as the biggest Honda enthusiast there. During his 20-month time at Tennessee Tech, Jimmy rode in 585 different cars. Upon leaving TTU, he decided he wanted to enter the automotive journalism field.

Jimmy, despite being a car enthusiast, was late to drive; he didn’t get his first car until age 19 on May 4, 2012, a black 2008 Honda Accord sedan. On April 22, 2013, the Accord was totaled, and on May 4 of that year Jimmy got his current car: a white 2011 Honda Accord V6 sedan.

Jimmy “restarted” college in August 2013, enrolling at Volunteer State Community College as a journalism major. On May 9, 2015, he graduated with an associate’s degree in journalism and enrolled at Western Kentucky University from August 2015 to pursue a further degree.

Jimmy has also made his first forays into actual automotive reviewing. Since the start of the 2016 model year, he has test-driven every Honda that has been redesigned or introduced. The first of these test-drives was on May 26, 2015 for the new Honda HR-V. Jimmy has plans to expand his test-drive program to Acura (Honda’s luxury brand) and other brands of cars in the near future. 

Writing Assignment 1

If it were me writing the 1^st Amendment today, I would say:

“The right to freedom of speech, religion, association, or the press are considered fundamental rights and shall not be restricted or abridged to any person on US territory by any governing authority, excepting of cases in which the safety or well-being of others is proven beyond a reasonable doubt to be placed in jeopardy. There is also a right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

                The freedoms of speech, religion, and the press are some of the most fundamental freedoms we have in the United States, and the placement of the amendment as first signifies its importance. It was a struggle for me to think of a way to re-write the amendment, because even after nearly 230 years the original amendment still works as well as the day it was written. The 45 words in the original amendment were forward-thinking and serve as a blueprint for democracies to this day.

                With that said, there are some flaws to the freedoms of speech that have developed often hundreds of years after the amendment was written. In relative terms, these are merely blemishes on a foundation of free speech that remains rock solid. For instance, the “redress of grievances” includes the right to sue, a right in which in some circumstances is and should be limited. For instances, strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs), lawsuits filed against critics that are deemed to be typically unwinnable, but burden the defendant with the cost of a legal defense. While this is not an issue with the First Amendment per se, it is an issue that has cropped up relatively recently. Thankfully, states are adopting anti-SLAPP legislation.

                There are some issues that are, and need to be, restricted under free speech. Threats, speech that compromises national defense, speech that compromises safety, child pornography, and obscenity in some situations (such as in K-12 schools) are prohibited and should be. However, the government is not a censor. Still, I am blessed to live in a country where there is very limited censorship.