Book Report 1

I decided to read "My two Moms: Lessons of Love, Strength, and What Makes a Family" by Zach Wahls. I decided to do my book report on this book because while I was surfing you tube, I came across Zach giving a speech in Iowa about Gay Marriage. I watched his speech and was inspired and absolutely agreed with what Zach said and what he believed in. Here is the link I watched http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSQQK2Vuf9Q In his speech he talked about how gay marriage should be allowed in Iowa and how it is okay for two people of the same sex to be married. He was the son of a gay couple and he used himself in his example of how someone who is raised by two gay people can turn out normal, successful even being a engineering student as well as an eagle scout. In the book, Wahls discusses how having gay parents is just like having normal loving parents except with the politics that other people try to force on them. In the book, Wahls discussed how his parents really stressed about being kind to other kids and it was a virtue that he grew up with. His parents said "Since I was a little boy, my moms have impressed upon me how important it is to be kind." All parents should press love and kindness onto their children as virtues yet in my own school I see many of my peers that have parents that do not express the same kind of virtues with their children. It is funny that people stress that two gay people could not be good parents and role models yet here is Wahls, a eagle scout and a good student who was taught good virues yet even in my own school where (I think) all of the parents are heterosexual, they are not taught the same kind of virtues and morals that Wahls knows. People have to realize that whatever the sexual nature of the parents, it is the virtues, morals and ideals that create the kind of person their child is. Wahls shows us this in his book and the way he acts towards other people. While Wahls was in first grade his parents told him to not fight but be the better person. When at school the next day he was being bullied by a kid who was telling him he would never be a man and was too weak to even through the dodgeball in PE. Wahls could have said many things and acted inappropriately yet what Wahls did was tell the kid he "feel sorry for you" because he of how his parents raised him. It is because of the way Wahls's parents raised him that he is the kind of person that he is today and just like any other family, it is up to the parents to set the values that the children should look up to. Same sex marriage should be allowed because it is not because someone is married to someone of the other sex that would suddenly "make" the child weird and different. It is up to the parent's teachings and values that will help a child grow and become who they are.

Issues: Renewable Energies

Looking at some of the information from this article, this is the information I found:

• Fossil Fuels although theoretically renewable, we are extinguishing them faster than they can be replenished.
• United States makes about 1/3 of all geothermal energy in the world.
• Alternative energies are on the move with 20% of Denmark's energy coming from wind power.
• Geothermal energy makes nearly no emissions at all and the only thing that comes from it are some bad smells occasionally.
• Wind power is becoming more streamlined and efficient and can mitigate the effects of hurting birds, making noise, and taking up too much space.
• Photovoltaic cells are linked together to create solar panels. This is the only source in able to directly convert the pure energy of the sun to usable energy.
• In the coming years, alternative energies will become more prominent because the cost of fossil fuels will increase do to their rarity and because alternative energies will become even more advanced.

I believe that with this information I can help show others what alternative energies are and what they can do. I found this interesting myself by learning how solar energy is collected by photovoltaic cells.

Ebsco Database: "Global Warming"

This article discussed some of what global warming is and what is a part of the history of global warming. Here are some of the information that they discussed:

• Koyoto Protocal: A legislation stating that the countries who signed the document would decrease the amount of greenhouse gasses that they will release by 5%. The United States did not sign this document.
• Jean-Baptiste Fourier (1768-1830) believed that solar energy got trapped in the atmosphere and would lead to a raising the the earth's temperature.
•  John Tyndall (1820-1893) suggested that when carbon dioxide gets caught in the atmosphere it captures infrared rays and warms the earth.
• Charles Keeling (1928-2005). measured carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and all scientist believe his research and is the most widely used.
• Raising in the temperature of the earth can cause more natural disasters such as hurricanes and weather patterns around the globe.

This information explains more about the history of global warming and how we knew more about this before it has become a pressing problem.

National Geographic and Global Warming

Looking through some of the websites advised by our teacher, I found out that there are lots of information showing that global warming does exist.
From National Geographic:
"Now, humans have increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by more than a third since the industrial revolution. Changes this large have historically taken thousands of years, but are now happening over the course of decades"
Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas which means that in the atmosphere, it can trap the heat of the sun instead of having the rays bounce off the earth and go through our atmosphere. Having more carbon dioxide increases the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere which will warm up our planet. This is not a theory, it is a present issue happening now. As the quote above states, our planet is heating up over a period of decades which should be happening over the course of a few thousand years. National Geographic points out that Glacier national park now has 27 glaciers when in 1910, there were 150 glaciers. This change happened in just a few centuries when it should have happened over thousands of years. These changes happening in our world are happening too quickly. National Geographic also states that the IPCC notices that the temperature of earth is rising, nearly 11 out of the last 12 years are the hottest on record. The government of the USA also recognizes global warming because Bush stated that anthropogenic carbon dioxide is responsible for global warming. Anthropogenic means that humans are responsible for global warming.

Times Have Changed

Technology has continued its influence on our world throughout our existence. From the wheel to the i-phone they have all effected the world and the way it works. A good question our world should ask itself is "is all of this technology good for us?". Last year the question arose if smart phones were bad for our bodies because they use higher levels of waves, microwaves instead of radio waves. Many things have helped us continue to grow such as the Internet. In order to find the answer to something many people had to go to the nearest library and search for an answer but in this day and age, people can type into their smart phones and it will come up with an answer on the spot anywhere in the world. Technology has also saved millions of lives. Polio, anthrax and small pox used to be deadly diseases that were impossible to cure but they are now nearly wiped out around the entire world. Yet with all of these good things impacting the world, there have been some unfortunate things that have come with the advancement of technology. People are becoming less social in person than in the past. People used to talk to whomever was around them but in the 21st century with nearly 114 million smart phones being used in the USA which is more than half the amount of people with phones being smart phone users. In my own life I have noticed that my colleges at my lunch table have been less talkative because so many people are preoccupied using their smart phones. When I look at other tables even more people will be on their phones rather than talk to their friends. This is a frightening revolution to see people being less social in person. Technology has also increased the amount of social interaction between people too such as social media and websites like Facebook, Twitter, and My space. Technology has its upsides and downsides but overall, it has more upsides. Technology saves lives, allows more people access to information that they may not have otherwise and creates even more forms of entertainment. It has enhanced my own life far more than it has damaged it and technology has had more positive impacts on our world than negative ones.

Stereotypes: Skaters

As I walk through my high school on a late start many students are paying more attention to me, staring even. I walk to my locker and put away my carver board, basically a larger skateboard. My friends come up and are surprised as I put my board away and ask me why I would ever do something like that. I ask what, and they tell me "why would you skate?". Skating has been a hobby of mine for about the past year or two and I use it as a past time and a motive of transportation. I asked my friends and some of my acquaintances what they thought about skaters and their responses varied only slightly. They would say druggies, dangerous, drugs, mean, cocky, and rebels. I was surprised by their answer but then again they were surprised I was a skater. A certain stigma comes with being a skater and many people only expect something bad to come from someone who is a skater. The city of Chicago believes does not allow skaters in the business districts which is a great deal of Chicago. This is due to their belief that skaters were driving of business. I found this frustrating because not everyone who is a skater is a rebel or fit the stereotype. If anything, I am the exact opposite of the skater stereotype; I am the drum major of my school's marching band and I am also an Eagle Scout. Yet when I walk around school with my carver board people look at me differently and my friends were completely caught off guard when I told them. My parents began to worry that I was getting into drugs when I first started skating but I wasn't. People began to perceive things about me just because I was skating around even though it was just a hobby of mine, it did not define who I was or my personality. There are nearly 11.08 million skaters nation wide and yet this stigma seems to follow skaters. It is a shame that people fall back onto stereotypes because it is easier to do than learning who a person is even if that stereotype does not fit them. People must learn to stop listening to stereotypes and learn who people really are at their core.

IAT Tests

I believe the results I got were kind of far off. It said I had an automatic bias to European Americans. I believe that I do not, I have hardly even met anyone who is African American so it is difficult for me to see why I would have a bias in the first place. The page says that biases begin at the age of three, which is a surprising age for someone to begging having opinions yet even more interesting because sometimes they do not know that they have them. I believe that this does change some of my thoughts about the movie "I Sit Where I Want" because much of these biases are not conscious, they are subconscious. Many of the people that were in the movie said that they thought that they had no preference for black or white they just happened to sit with black or white people. I believe that they began sitting at their tables because they went with their gut instinct when they first went into high school. This would make them rely on their biases for the first little bit. After they got acquainted to high school they would then branch out but they would always stick with their roots, which is where their biases told them to be because the people you first meet you tend to have a greater bonding strength. Biases are interesting because it is difficult for people to realize that they have a bias but even more difficult for people to get over their biases and move on with their lives. What the school in the movie we watched was trying to do was help get rid of the biases people have by intergrating the schools and making a project to have all of the people in the lunch room sit together. I can imagine that trying to have another person get rid of ones biases is next to impossible. The person who has a bias must get rid of it. The problem with the school was that all of the students believed that the other race should come to them and get rid of their biases but they never wanted to do anything to help the other race either become rid of their biases or show them that they were similiar. Each race belived that the other race should do the work and show that they were not as they appeared to other people.