Texture

 

For my picture I decided to do one of a bike wheel.  I like the rubbery grooves that mostly mountain bikes have so I wanted this to become my image of texture.  It worked out even better because this is actually a picture of my sisters new bike that she got today because it is her birthday.

Underneath Picture

 

For my underneath picture I chose to capture a photo of water or under water. Now obviously I could not take a picture of myself underwater so I thought I could just take a picture of the water itself. I chose this scene because I am in water or under it most of the time when I am swimming and because it can relate a lot to me personally.  If I had more materials or the right materials I would have liked to taken the photo while the camera is submerged underwater so that you could see it from both angles, but unfortunately I do not have a water proof camera.  I hope you like my picture and I am interested to see what my classmates have come up with.



What the World Eats

(Rogate homework questions)

1.     Germany spent the most at around $500, but that could vary throughout all of Germany and even though what other countries spend is smaller in our U.S. dollars it might be bigger there.

2.     It looked to me like families from Italy, the United States, and Mexico consumed the most food.

3.     I think that the Melander family of Germany had near the most because they had over 50 glass bottles of beer, wine, and other liquids, but the Revis family from the US had the most packaging.

4.     I think the Mendozas family from Guatemala was the healthiest because they had so many fresh vegetables and fruits. It was not the traditional meal you would find in a Shoprite or Bj’s.

5.     I think that the Aboubakar family of Chad had the least healthy diet because there were no vegetables or any kind of protein so I don’t see how that will support their dietary needs.

6.     It is hard to tell how wasteful families are because you don’t know if they will actually eat all the food spread out on that table, but it is very easy to say that people in places like Haiti or Chad are not wasting the small amount of food they have.

7.     I was surprised that a family in Greenland caught their own food, a seal, before they ate it. That is not anything I have ever done before, but it is something that I would be willing to try.

8.     One picture that interested me was the one where the food was delivered by bicycle in the Weitaiwu village in China. I guess that the nearest shop or market wasn’t too far away from the house.

9.     My family’s diet was similar to some of the diets depicted in the pictures, but a complete juxtaposition to others.  I have never really thought about how much food I actually eat in a week by adding it up, but I know it is definitely not like what they get in some of those third world counties. I think it is kind of in the middle or not on either extreme end.

Passion Project

For my passion project I am working with travel and other cool places.  My project is to pick 10 - 20 places that I would like to go and then do some research on each of them, but I am also going to add many pictures of this place which will be the bigger part of the project.  I will either have a city or a specific place.  So one of the main places could be Rome, and then get the highlights of that city or just focus on a specific place in that city like the Colosseum.  Hopefully this project will be interesting and full of pictures with brilliant images and bright color.

Renewable Energy Essay for Teen Ink

"Our dependence on fossil fuels amounts to global pyromania and the only fire extinguisher we have at our disposal is renewable energy." – Hermann Scheer, President of Eurosolar (The European Association for Renewable Energy) and General Chairman of the World Council for Renewable Energy.

"There is one forecast of which you can already be sure: someday renewable energy will be the only way for people to satisfy their energy needs.” – Herman Scheer

“Once the renewable infrastructure is built, the fuel is free forever. Unlike carbon-based fuels, the wind and the sun and the earth itself provide fuel that is free, in amounts that are effectively limitless." – Al Gore, Vice President to Bill Clinton.

Due to the growing issues with the fossil fuels we use today, many are considering and using different energy sources that are new, clean, and everlasting.  The popular forms of renewable energy today are solar, wind, and water (hydro).  These are the forms of energy that will support us for the rest of our lives.  From reading the quotes above many opinions can be taken, but one thing is for sure, oil isn’t going to be the answer to our energy necessities for much longer.  One day all of the oil is going to disappear and we are going to be forced to switch to renewable energy. To make life easier on future generations we should start moving away from oil now and towards renewable energy’s. 

One major advantage of renewable energy’s is that they are unlimited. They are therefore sustainable and so will never run out. They are unlimited because the source of their power is from nature which will be present as long as earth can sustain life.  A second advantage is because renewable energy is clean energy the equipment generally requires much less maintenance than traditional oil processing. Since there is no fuel involved in renewable energy it reduces the costs of operation.

Even more importantly, renewable energy produces little or no waste products such as carbon dioxide or other chemical pollutants, so it has minimal impact on the environment.  The elimination of these byproducts will lead to a cleaner environment and reduced global warming.

There is also a very big disadvantage from the use of fossil fuels, global warming.  Global warming is when the pollutants from our cars, trucks and any other engine reach the protective ozone layer that shields us from the sun’s harmful rays.  The pollutants break up and destroy this ozone layer letting those harmful rays through. Those rays then heat the earth and are now causing the polar ice caps to melt which can cause major global flooding in years from now.  This is also why 2012 was the hottest year ever recorded, on average, in U.S. history.

Through our experience with oil for the past hundred years it is now clear that an alternative source of energy is required for us to maintain our way of life.  Renewable energy is the best long term source for power because it is unlimited, clean and freely available all around the earth.  Renewable energy is the only hope for the future of the world and every single person that lives on it.

http://www.solarschools.net/resources/stuff/advantages_and_disadvantages.aspx

http://grist.org/news/2012-the-hottest-year-in-u-s-history-was-one-of-the-coldest-years-this-century/

2012 Relfections

In 2012 I learned a lot about loss.  I learned how to get through it and help others when they are suffering from it.  I have to admit 2012 wasn't a very good year for me.  This is supposed to be such a wonderful country and yet we have:

March 31, 2012—A gunman opened fire on a crowd of mourners at a North Miami, Florida, funeral home, killing two people and injuring 12 others.
April 2, 2012—A 43-year-old former student at Oikos University in Oakland, California, walked into his former school and killed seven people, “execution-style.” Three people were wounded.
April 6, 2012—Two men went on a deadly shooting spree in Tulsa, Oklahoma, shooting black men at random in an apparently racially motivated attack. Three men died and two were wounded.
May 29, 2012—A man in Seattle, Washington, opened fire in a coffee shop and killed five people and then himself.
July 20, 2012—James Holmes enters a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises and opens fire with a semi-automatic weapon; twelve people are killed and fifty-eight are wounded.
December 14, 2012—One man, and possibly more, murders a reported twenty-six people at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, including twenty children, before killing himself.
(Just to name a few, there is a full list at http://www.thenation.com/blog/171774/fifteen-us-mass-shootings-happened-2012-84-dead  if you would like to see all 16 major shootings in the U.S.)
So I guess this wasn't that great of a year for lots of people, but it wasn't the only downs to the year, and I have a couple of personal downers too. First off my grandmom moved in with us, which I loved and I'm sure she enjoyed the company, but she, at the time,was struggling with cancer so it was very hard for her the year that she stayed with us until she passed away in the summer. There was also my grandpa who died earlier in the year in California.  Another was family friends parents died within 2 weeks of each other.  In addition some of my closest friends moved to places like Tennessee and Texas.  Loss is hard to live with but I think it has helpped me a lot throughout the year, made me stronger in a way.  But don't get me wrong the U.S. has had many great accomplishments like taking out Osama bin laden and ending the war in Iraq, but still I feel like the world is turning into one big battleground with all of the wars and deaths surrounding us.
I like to make new years resolutions, but I almost never keep them. BUT!!!! I will try this year so here they are:

• Drop under 29 seconds in my fifty freestyle
• Survive the next end of the world
• Drop under a 1:09 in my  hundred freestyle
• Follow my dreams
• Go 2,450 yards or more in my 30 minute swim
• Get better at the Tuba
• Graduate high school and go to college
• Don't stink at life
• Take at least 2 honors classes
• Solve world hunger

Questions about the first amendment

I have a couple of questions about the first admendment , but I have decided on one that I think would be the most interesting. My question is: does the freedom of speech have the same portection if you are writing it on the internet instead of speaking it out loud.  So does it have the same limits?  Does it make a difference that it will be there forever not just a couple of seconds?  I am wondering all of this and if there is an answer at all?  Can it be debateable or is it already a different admendment?

The Answer: after much tiring reseacrch I have found this.....

• the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Reno v. ACLU (1997) that speech on the Internet receives the highest level of First Amendment protection. The Supreme Court explained that “our cases provide no basis for qualifying the level of First Amendment scrutiny that should be applied to this medium
• The events associated with Internet censorship are similar to those for online/offline censorship of traditional/modern media such as newspapers or internet. One difference is that national borders are more permeable online: residents of a country that bans certain information can find it on websites hosted outside the country. Thus censors must work to prevent access to information even though they lack physical or legal control over the websites themselves. This in turn requires the use of technical censorship methods that are unique to the Internet, such as site blocking and content filtering
• Theb U.S. has almost no internet censorship but the most common motives or rationales for Internet censorship are politics and power, social norms and morals, and security concerns
• The ACLU's vision of an uncensored Internet was clearly shared by the U.S. Supreme Court when it declared, in Reno v. ACLU, the Internet to be a free speech zone, deserving at least as much First Amendment protection as that afforded to books, newspapers and magazines. The government, the court said, can no more restrict a person's access to words or images on the Internet than it could be allowed to snatch a book out of a reader's hands in the library, or cover over a statue of a nude in a museum.

After finding all of these facts I have concluded that the answer to my question is yes, the same protections and limits apply to posting things on the internet that apply to just saying something out loud.  The government can not restrict any images or words that you put on the internet, BUT I would be careful what you do put up on the internet because it will be there forever and anyone will be able to see it.  So ........... Think before you post and thanks for reading. ( :


My sources are:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship

http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/faq/frequently-asked-questions-speech