Digital media Blog 12/01/2109

Digital Media Blog 01/23/2020 Update of Australia fire According to CNN, the southeastern of Australia, where Canberra is located has been battered by severe weather for the past week. Canberra was hit by a hailstorm on Monday, with hailstones the size of golf balls shattering car windows and injuring scores of birds. There have also been heavy winds all week apart from exacerbating the persistent and widespread fires, the wind created apocalyptic scenes of massive dust storms engulfing towns last Sunday. Australia has been gripped by a devastating drought since 2017 which has not only destroyed livelihoods but has left the land parched and dry, full of loose soil and dust that are easily whipped up into the air by wind. In normal conditions, dust storms are not common occurrences. But because of the drought and wind, they are happening more and more frequently in Australia. The major city of Melbourne, south of Canberra in the state of Victoria, was hit with a dust storm on...

Digital Media Blog 01/22/2020 Three Americans dead after firefighting water bomber crashes in rural Australia. According to CNN, three American crew members have died in Australia after an air tanker crashed in the state of New South Wales, where fires continue to burn out of control. The water-bombing tanker had been chartered by the New South Wales Rural Fire Service (NSW RFS), state Premier Gladys Berejiklian said in a news conference on Thursday. It was called in to fight a bushfire near the town of Cooma, in the state's southeast. The Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council told CNN the casualties were American. The crew members belonged to Coulson Aviation, an aerial firefighting company that owned the aircraft contracted to the NSW RFS. Coulson Aviation said in a statement that the crew had been on a firebombing mission when the accident occurred."Today is a stark and horrible reminder of the dangerous conditions that our volunteers, ...

Digital Media Blog 01/21/2020 Current issues #11 Lunar New Year festivities canceled as dozens die of Coronavirus ou break According to CNN, The Wuhan coronavirus continues to spread around the world and has already killed dozens of people and infecting hundreds in China. In the US, the first cases of coronavirus were confirmed this week; a man in his 30s who is under observation in Washington state and a Chicago woman in her 60s. The outbreak is accelerating in China: Chinese President Xi Jinping chaired a meeting with top officials of the ruling Communist Party on the prevention and control of the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, China’s state media reported Saturday. During the meeting, Xi pointed out that in facing the grave situation of the rapidly spreading epidemic of the deadly new coronavirus, it is necessary to strengthen the centralized leadership of the Party Central Committee. Confirmed cases of coronavirus in Chin...

Digital Media Blog 01/20/2020 Current issues #10 Preserving Macao's handmade signs in the digital age According to CNN, Lam Weng Io is a scholar or a librarian, bespectacled and in deep concentration. perched on a stool in his dusty workshop in Macao, With steady hands, he carefully guides a sheet of red acrylic through a cutting machine. For more than 30 years, Lam has been creating handwritten storefront signs in the former Portuguese colony as a full-time typographer. In each of his characters, Lam aims for a trifecta of balance, clarity, and liveliness. Hundreds of the 65-year-old's signs can be seen all over Macao, a special administrative region that was handed back to China in 1999 after centuries of Portuguese rule. They're written in traditional Chinese characters -- which are more complicated and contain more strokes -- as opposed to the simplified Chinese characters that were adopted by the mainland in the 1950s, when M...

Digital Media Blog 12/13/2019 Current issues #9 Is Trump Going to War With Iran? In a tweet late Sunday, President Donald Trump warned Iran of “consequences the likes of which few throughout history have suffered before,” seemingly raising the odds of military conflict with one of the most powerful armed forces in the Middle East. He was responding to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s remarks to Iranian diplomats that “America should know that peace with Iran is the mother of all peace, and war with Iran is the mother of all wars.” Trump’s all-caps message may make it seem as if the conflict with the Islamic Republic is inevitable. But just as Rouhani held out of the prospect of the “mother of all peace,” Trump’s message is reminiscent of his threats against the “madman” Kim Jong Un. He threatened the North Korean leader with “fire and fury,” and added that the North Korean leader will “be tested like never before.” Just months after making those remarks, Trump...

Digital Media Blog 12/12/2019 Current issues #8 US cities are losing 36 million trees a year.  According to CNN trees cover in US cities are shrinking. A study published last year by the US Forest Service found that we lost 36 million trees annually from urban and rural communities over a five-year period. That's a 1% drop from 2009 to 2014. If we continue on this path, "cities will become warmer, more polluted and generally more unhealthy for inhabitants," said David Nowak, a senior US Forest Service scientist and co-author of the study. Nowak says there are many reasons our tree canopy is declining, including hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, insects, and disease. But the one reason for tree loss that humans can control is sensible development.  Why does it matter if the planet doesn't have trees and how can we prevent that？here are Nowak lists 10 benefits trees provide to society: Heat reduction: Trees provide shade for homes, office buildings, parks a...