The U.S. Census Bureau

    The United States Census Bureau's website is a statistic lover's delight. There are fact sheets, a population clock, and not to mention that you have access to the entire U.S. 2000 census. I looked up the statistics for Arabs in the United States and found out the Arab population has increased 40% since 1990.  I also found out that there are 117,014 gas station and they employ 887,341.  The population clock estimates how many people are in the United States currently, even the world population (which is 6,870,731,967).
    The census bureau's mission statement says the following, "The Census Bureau serves as the leading source of quality data about the nation's people and economy. We honor privacy, protect confidentiality, share our expertise globally, and conduct our work openly. We are guided on this mission by our strong and capable workforce, our readiness to innovate, and our abiding commitment to our customers." The U.S. Census Bureau is considered part of the department of Commerce. One of the most important reasons the it exists is to determine the distribution of Congressional seats to the states. They also provide information regarding age so congress can know how many individuals qualify for Social Security.
    There are several different types of censuses the census bureau conducts. The one we are the most familiar with is the Population and Housing census which occurs every 10 years. We just recently completed on for 2010. There is also the economic census, American community survey, and the census of governments.

Sensitivity and Respect

    Sensitivity in language towards other people has never been much of an issue for me. My parents always taught me to treat everyone equally and I haven't a single racist, sexist, etc...bone in my body. I appreciate that people go to such great lengths to make everyone feel equal and I know that it can be a challenge and inconvenience. But I do feel that it is an important aspect of writing. A silly story is not as important as someone's feelings or beliefs being respected. I love different cultures and will continue to respectfully and correctly celebrate their differences.

Journalistic vs Academic Writing

For the majority of my 15, some-odd years in the Texas, California, and now Oklahoma public school systems, all that was ever taught to me was academic, MLA style writing. Switching to AP style has been tricky, but not so difficult that I cringe when I'm told to pull out the AP Stylebook. I appreciate the conciseness of AP styling; though, I often miss the complex sentence structuring allowed in MLA academic writing. I certainly miss the creativity. Brevity and accuracy are two very important aspects to AP style writing and I fully intend to improve my skills in both.

Grammar: Language Evolves and So Should We

I haven't had a grammar lesson since, probably, the 10th grade. These grammar assignments are really starting to make me second guess my, supposedly strong, grasp on the English language. In Spanish class we're learning about the different conjugations of verbs and it's so much simpler than English! What's frustrating is that the way we speak in day to day life, according to my textbooks, is inaccurate. If our verbal language has evolved to the point where we need not worry about the different uses of lie, lay, lain, laying, blah...why do these professors/scholars insist we learn and use them?