Queens Teens Voices

My phone is my life i dont know what i would do with out it. with out ma cell phone i would not know a thing like whats going on in the world whats new you know? Definetly dont want to use the house phone with these nosey people asking who im talking to no privacy what so ever!!…Also text messaging what for those times when your in the car and you dont want no one to hear your conversation thats when it comes in handy,or late nights when your parents tell you to go to sleep sure you cut the lights off but you could still talk duh!..Another thing that I know couldnt live with out is the computer because if i dont have a phone at least i have a.i.m i could just talk to people like that but phone is still better. Finally food!!!! without food besides the fact that i would drop dead i wouldnt be able to taste that good stuff..yea im a skinny girl but i could eat up a storm that fried chicken french fries whew i could go on for days!!!…But yea those are some of the many few things i couldnt live without…

Bye…..Sabrina Tyler

Music.  It rule the lives of us young people.  Even on our Myspace pages, we put music to show a part of ourselves. When I was younger, I only listened to hip-hop and rap.  However, when I entered high school, I was introduced to so many new cultures.  After befriending people of many different races, I began listening to many different types of music.  I especially developed a fondness for rock.  Now when most people hear rock, they automatically think of screaming people shaking their heads.  But, there are different varieties of rock. I prefer listening to alternative and a little bit of alternative gothic.  My favorite rock band is Evanescence; I enjoy listening to their music because they mix a little bit of pop into their songs.  My mother said that rock sounds like some on speed (lol) but I keep telling her that there are different types of rock.  Hopefully she will come arounfd soon enough.  However, it feels good to know that there are some people who appreciate the different types of music.

In my opinion, the Zune is way better than the ipod. I believe this because of the fact that the Zune is capable of a lot more things, such as sharing and emailing music, and other media. The Zune is also extremely affordable and is capable of free music and video downloads. The ipod, on the other hand, is pretty expensive, basically incapable of free downloads, and has additional costs to activate the devices special features. The way I see it, the ipod is a complete rip-0ff.

Microsoft’s new Zune media player, which i think is on sale according to me, is aimed directly at Apple’s wildly successful, music industry-changing iPod. But how does it compare to the i-pod. WiFi-based sharing of songs and digital photos wirelessly between two or more nearby Zunes. There’s also an integrated FM radio tuner, something the iPod lacks. The display of the Zune is bigger, and the screen automatically shifts to a wide, horizontal view for videos and pictures.

Battery life of the Zune is about the same as the video iPod, as is the cost (the Zune costs $250. A comparable 30GB iPod with video costs $249) The Zune Marketplace uses a point system in which most songs cost 79 Microsoft Points each - the equivalent of 99 cents - the same that iTunes charges for most songs.

Microsoft explains that this Zune is just the first of what will be an entire family of media devices. Will the Zune eventually become a Voice Over IP phone? Will it be able to download music wirelessly from the Zune Marketplace? Will smaller, flash memory-based Zunes -or Zunes with larger storage capacity emerge any time soon? Only Microsoft knows. For now, though, the questions are: Should you buy a Zune? Should you switch from an iPod?

I’ve been testing a couple of Zunes along with the online Zune Marketplace, Microsoft’s answer to Apple’s iTunes music and video store. Here is how I think they i-pod measure up against zunes it some way shape form or fasione zunes have a music sharing ability where you can tranfer music to another zune and the can keep it for up to 3 days. Ipods in my eyes ar obsolete.

There are five great ways to avoid any form of confrontation. For one, there is avoidance in it’s self. What I mean by this is the fact that by avoiding people you know you have problems with,  ultimately you will avoid confrontation. Secondly, you can avoid confontaion by being sure not to partake in gossip/rumors, and not worrying about what you heard, or someone told you they heard.(He say she say)Third, you should also be sure not to stick your nose where it doesn’t belong. In other words, mind your own business! Another great way to avoid confrontation is through watching the company you keep. You should try your absolute best not to associate with troublesome people and ones you know for a fact are known to drag others into their problems. Lastly, you should just try to be your self. Individuality is great for avoiding confrontation because it stops anyone from having any reason to bother or even be around you. (People often bother people who are too much like them.)

Indignantly sitting at the edge of their seats for over a week, many in Howard Beach are still awaiting the filing of hate crime charges against five minority group members accused of attacking white teenagers on Halloween.
   A group of as many as 40 teenagers and young men, according to the estimates of witnesses, had been roving through the Rockwood Park section of Howard Beach. Shortly before 10 p.m., members of the group chased four white teenagers from the corner of 159th Avenue and 92nd Street. Five suspects, all either black or Hispanic males between the ages of 16 and 25, allegedly followed them to the McDonald’s at the corner of 160th Avenue and Cross Bay Boulevard.

   Inside the restaurant, one of the teenagers was struck with a broomstick, which broke on contact, and another was struck with a second hard object. The first victim’s neck was bruised and the second needed seven staples to close his wound.
   “He felt a little violated, but thank God he’s okay,” said Dawn Carmatta of her son, the teenager who suffered bruising. “He said (before he went out that night): ‘Mom, I’m going to go with my friends on the boulevard and I’ll be home in an hour.’ Then I picked up my son beat up. He was running for his life.”
   Witnesses claim to have heard terms such as “whiteboy” and “white motherf—–” during the pursuit and during the alleged attack. At a news conference, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly speculated that the throwing of an egg sparked the melee.
   But according to a 17-year-old St. Francis Prep student and Howard Beach resident who identified himself only as Chris, members of the large group were looking for trouble. He said that at approximately 9:30 p.m., he and three of his friends were approached by members of the 40-person group outside Sapienza Bagels and Deli on Cross Bay Boulevard.
   “They started with us,” he recalled. “They were like: ‘What are you whiteboys doing, smoking weed? You tough white boys?’” Chris said that one of his friends was then assaulted.
   Footage taken by surveillance cameras outside Ragtime Dairy and Panzarella Realty, both located on Cross Bay Boulevard between McDonald’s and Sapienza Bagels and Deli, show large groups walking down the boulevard. Some members were carrying long, unidentified objects.
   Police initially arrested eight people, but only charged five men — George Morales, Patrick Pugh, Terrance Scott, Talique Jackson and Victor Tossas— all from Brooklyn. They were arraigned last Friday on charges of second-degree assault, second-degree menacing and fourth-degree criminal possession of weapons.
   Each currently faces up to seven years in prison. Should hate crime assault charges be handed down, the suspects would face up to 15 years in prison, according to a spokesman for District Attorney Richard Brown.
   The suspects’ who are not minors, have prior arrests for crimes including grand larceny, petty larceny, theft of services and possession of knives and instruments with blades, according to the Kings County District Attorney’s Office.
   Many South Queens civic, religious and community leaders met with Brown on Wednesday afternoon to discuss the issue. Brown told them that the number of youths involved complicates the case, but that his office is doing everything possible to determine if it can be prosecuted as a hate crime.
   He also urged community members with information about the incident to cooperate by coming forward as soon as possible.
   A source close to Brown’s office said that a lineup will be held on Friday, during which time witnesses will try to make positive identifications. But the Queens County District Attorney’s Office spokesman could not confirm this.
   Members of the district attorney’s Gang Violence and Hate Crimes Bureau and the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force continued investigating at McDonald’s for several days after the incident.
   But some are already convinced that the suspects should face hate crime charges, including John Grimaldi, a 35-year-old from Howard Beach. He speculated that if a white person used racial epithets while attacking a black individual in McDonald’s that night, the district attorney would immediately declare the incident a hate crime.
   “We just want equal justice,” Grimaldi said. But he doesn’t expect charges to be upgraded. “It’s a touchy subject for them. They have to make certain people happy to keep their jobs. … They’ll just let it go as an assault.”
   Others also believed that there should be more indignation over the incident. As she drove by McDonald’s on Friday afternoon, Lisa Fogelman, a Howard Beach resident of 45 years, stopped to say: “I want to know where’s Al? Where’s Al Sharpton? Why isn’t he marching on the boulevard?”
   While many residents described the Halloween attack as an isolated incident, some believe that it is part of a pattern of people from outside Howard Beach coming into the community and causing trouble.
   Two of the suspects live just west of the Woodhaven-Brooklyn border and two others live just west of the Ozone Park-Brooklyn border.
   “We’re tired of the harassment and the abuse,” said Laura Dimaillo, a Howard Beach resident and mother of four. “The kids come to our neighborhood to beat up our kids and nothing gets done.”
   Chris Serra, a 17-year-old Howard Beach resident, said that: “People are continually coming into our neighborhood with the intention of causing problems. We’re getting labeled as racists. Meanwhile we’re getting attacked at the same time.”

Alfonso Fletcher, Jr.stockbroker

Personal Information

Born Alphonse Fletcher, Jr., on December 19, 1965, in New London, CT; son of a technician and an elementary school principal.
Education: Harvard University, AB, 1987.

Career

Bear, Stearns & Co., investment manager, 1987-89; Kidder, Peabody & Co., senior vice-president, 1989-91; Fletcher Asset Management, founder, chairman, and CEO, 1991-.

Life’s Work

A lot of people talk about making their first million dollars by the time they are 30. Alphonse Fletcher made his first million before he was even 25. By his thirtieth birthday, Fletcher, known to acquaintances as “Buddy,” had made many more millions of dollars–both for himself and for clients whose money he managed– and had earned a reputation as one of the shrewdest stock traders on Wall Street.

Fletcher was born on December 19, 1965, in New London, Connecticut. The eldest of three brothers, he grew up in nearby Waterford, where his mother worked as an elementary school principal and part-time real estate broker. His father was a technician at General Dynamics, but also dabbled in a number of business ventures, ranging from operating a chicken restaurant to owning apartment buildings to running a moving business. Fletcher gives his parents credit for instilling in him the drive to succeed in business. “They were very motivated, very busy, very entrepreneurial and creative,” he was quoted as saying in a 1996 New Yorker article.

Even as a youth, Fletcher exhibited two of the characteristics that have made him wildly successful at his trade–a head for numbers and an aversion to risk. At age 11, he designed a computer program that was 80 percent accurate at predicting the results of dog races. He decided that the payoff was not worth the risk, however, and quickly lost interest in the system. A top public school student, Fletcher went on to Harvard, where he majored in applied math and was voted class marshal by his classmates. He got his first taste of business while still in college, when he and his roommate, Stephen Cass–now a research director at Fletcher Asset Management–started a T-Shirt selling operation. Again, Fletcher’s aversion to risk led him to sell out his share to Cass, who ended up making a tidy profit on the venture.

Initially, Fletcher was an Air Force R.O.T.C. cadet at Harvard, with plans to serve in the military for at least four years after graduation. During his senior year, however, he decided that he would rather enter the world of finance right away. The Air Force, facing budget cuts, gave Fletcher the option of going into the Reserves upon graduation, and he took them up on the offer.

After graduating from Harvard in 1987, Fletcher joined the Wall Street investment firm of Bear, Stearns & Co., where his talents stood out almost immediately. At Bear, Stearns, Fletcher was involved in the development of sophisticated stock trading strategies based on high-level math and computer models. With his career underway, he was now in a position to help his two younger brothers attend private high schools and then Harvard, from which both eventually graduated. In 1989 Fletcher was lured away from Bear, Stearns by Kidder, Peabody & Co., a giant in the Wall-Street- based investment industry.

Because several of his friends and former classmates were already working for Kidder, Peabody, Fletcher was delighted to make the move. Even more enticing was the financial package he claims to have been offered–a base salary of $100,000, plus 20 to 25 percent of any profits he generated for the firm. The terms of this agreement would later become a matter of bitter dispute between Fletcher and the management of Kidder, Peabody. One thing is not in dispute: Fletcher made a ton of profit–$25 million by his own estimate–for Kidder, Peabody in 1990, for which he received a bonus of $1.7 million in February of 1991.

Although the company informed him that he was entitled to another $2.1 million, Fletcher believed that the total still fell short of what he was owed. He also claimed that Kidder was attempting to minimize his compensation in other ways, such as making him responsible for 100 percent of the losses created by his trades. In this way, Fletcher complained, he was being treated as a partner when it came to losses, but a mere employee when it came to profits. He quickly resigned from his position at Kidder, Peabody as senior vice president after only one year at the company and filed two law suits: one for breach of contract and one for race discrimination.

In 1992 a New York Stock Exchange arbitration panel ruled that Kidder, Peabody must pay Fletcher $1.26 million in back compensation. The race discrimination suit was another story. The process dragged on through nearly 40 hearings over five years, before an arbitration panel finally announced that it had found no evidence of discrimination in the way Fletcher was treated.

Meanwhile, Fletcher wasted no time in getting on with his career. The very day he gave notice of his resignation at Kidder, Peabody, he went shopping for office space and computer equipment. By the end of the week, his new company, Fletcher Asset Management, was open for business. Initially investing only on behalf of his own personal account, Fletcher continued to wield the magical touch that had served him well as an employee at Bear, Stearns and then at Kidder, Peabody. As always, his chief strategy was to invest with as little risk as possible. Throughout his career, Fletcher’s special talent has been in devising complicated “hedges” that minimize losses when stocks decline, but still allow for healthy profits when the stocks rise.

Fletcher soon began to focus on purchasing large equity stakes directly from the companies themselves. His strategy involved finding companies that had solid foundations, but were struggling for cash. A perfect example was his investment in Zenith Electronics Corp., of which he bought seven percent in 1993. Within a year or so, he had doubled his money on the deal. By the middle of the 1990s, Fletcher had begun managing the assets of client investors in addition to his own money.

During its first five years of operation, Fletcher Asset Management’s annual returns averaged well over 300 percent, a phenomenal figure even in light of the stock market’s healthy condition in recent years. As his own personal wealth grew–it has been estimated at about $50 million–Fletcher became an active philanthropist. Among the recipients of his generosity have been the NAACP, to which he pledged a million dollars in 1993; and his alma mater Harvard, to which he handed over his company’s broker- dealer division, valued at about $4 million, in 1994. He has since made further large gifts to Harvard, including the creation of a professorship. Other institutions that Fletcher has supported include the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the New School for Social Research, and the Joseph Papp Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival. Fletcher is not bashful about demonstrating his wealth in his lifestyle choices either. He rides to work in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes, and his office is a lavish suite, complete with private chef, on the 48th floor of Manhattan’s General Motors Building.

By 1996 Fletcher was ready to expand. He did it in two ways. The company opened offices in San Francisco and Chicago. Fletcher also began entertaining the notion of acquiring other capital management companies. The company by this time had about 25 employees, and there had been days when Fletcher Asset Management, a tiny company by Wall Street standards, accounted for more that five percent of the New York Stock Exchange’s trading volume. At an age when most people are just getting started in their professions, Fletcher is clearly approaching the very top of his. Colleagues and clients understand why. As Fletcher himself put it in a 1996 New Yorker article, “We have a reputation of being obsessive about doing things right. I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I think you’d have to say we’re pretty smart at what we do.”

old people are cool and smell good, but sometimes they have there old attitudes. They can be the sweetest and most generous people in the world.. but then theres those elderly people that want to act like there better then the world.

Destiny Clarke

A class clown is one who seeks attention through making, or trying to make, people laugh. The class clown’s reason for being who they are is often because of parental neglect, learning disabilities(such as A.D.D or A.D.H.D), and/or wanting to make others feel bad because of the way they might feel about themself.

The opposite of a class clown is one people often refer to as a HERMIT. A HERMIT is one who very often tends to keep to them selves, stays quiet, and might not want to be bothered with anyone else. A HERMIT’S reason for being the person who they are could be very similar to a Class Clowns reason for being who they are. They could have self esteem issues, not be able to fit in and might not put any effort towards trying to be IN or associating with anyone else.They are very content with themselves or might not like who they are at all. They might be embaressed with who they are.

I think there are class clowns in schools because there are always people that don’t get enough attention. People act like clowns in school because they feel as if people enjoy the fact that they disrupt class time. I think the comple opposite of a class clown is somebody who is studious and pays attention.