Dallas's Portfolio

In the Brave New World Huxley tells us what he thinks the world will be like in the near future. He thinks that there will be clones and no individuality left but in the savage reservation. I believe we are going to change also but the most we are going to change in is technology.

Technology has grown rapidly since the 1970′s and now it seems like we can almost make anything. Ever since the first cell phone came out in 1973, they have developed quickly and now they can pretty much do everything a person wants it to do. I think that cell phones in the future will be a lot smaller and will be bigger in gigabytes. They will allow you to connect to the internet quickly and go on social networking sites like when you can film yourself with a little cell phone. The computers and T.V’s will be thinner and bigger than ever with the highest resolution. They might even be little tiny upward projectors where you can speak and touch to interact with it. They will also have it so they can talk to you and tell you what is going on if it is having a problem or not having a problem.

Within ten years computers have grown from small amount of megabytes to an enormous amount of gigabytes. The computers in the future will be a small system but with a large monitor or even a touch screen projected monitor. They will also be so common and everybody will be able to afford one making it a necessity to have a computer and also have a cell phone. You will be able to keep up with people through new myspace’s and facebook’s just through your brain and will be able to look at pictures and chat without even doing anything with your hands.

The medical technology will grow so that all diseases are curable but the government will put out diseases to control the population. They will be able to clone humans and will control the population size. Different places be set up differently and you can live where ever the place fits you most is.

Like all times the clothing style will change and clothes will be able to be projected on a humans body and they can keep all of their clothes in a small little machine. More people will get surgery to try and look perfect. The medicine will be so great at it will cure anybody of anything. The medical drugs will be so controlled that nobody will be hooked on painkillers and addiction will be gone unless the government wants it. There will be no more smoking cigarettes and people will just be able to have little tiny machines that are filled with thousands of cigarettes and can just keep smoking them to get their nicotine.

In the future the government will be more controlling and start killing people who they want killed and also have a tyranny so their is a king of different lands. The wars will be over quick and might not even happen because one country could kill all people in another in just a matter of seconds so that will bring peace.

Every person will have their own clone that is used as a backup plan when that person is sick or doesn’t feel like doing a certain job or task. They can be compact and fit where ever you want them too and be there in the touch of a button. Most humans will be limited to one clone that ages and looks exactly like them but some will have specials privileges to have many more.

The future doesn’t look scary to me because as technology grows the people decide one what survives and what won’t survive. It will be a gradual change and not a rapid change like it looks like it will be.

The time has finally come to where Lebron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers has reached his free agency in the NBA. He has been the talk of the NBA ever since he got out of high school and every year he has been getting better and better and has been showing what he can do. James, now coming off back to back MVP’s, can now choose pretty much any team he wants to go to. He is also being offered at some places the ability to be able to pick a new head coach that he wants to play for. His most likely choices are staying in Cleveland, or either going to the Chicago Bulls or the New York Knicks. After he lost in the playoffs to the Celtics, the press and media were already talking about where he was going to go even though his free agency wouldn’t go into effect until a couple of months later. In New York it is now rumored that he will not only be able to pick his coach but also the general manager of the team. This will mean that the organization is run all by Lebron and that he has most of the control over whatever team he chooses. I don’t think he deserves that much power and ownership in a team because he is just a player and is not superman. I think he will just stay in Cleveland because that is his hometown and the only place he knows.

http://www.fannation.com/truth_and_rumors/view/190710-james-part-of-knicks-gm-search?xid=cnnbin&hpt=Sbin

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has affected many people ever since it has opened and can be one of the biggest catastrophes in history. The oil first started spilling on April 20 when an explosion happened on the deck and then 2 days later it sank and a mile down, hit the pipe and broke it causing oil to gush from it. A year earlier in 2009, British Petroleum said that if an accident such as this occurred they would be able to shut the pump off with an emergency switch in the water. The emergency switch didn’t work and now people are trying to figure out different ways to stop the oil flow. The big problem is that the leak is a mile below sea level and it is hard to get things down there to fix it.

Initially it was estimated that it would take three months to fix but there could be some temporary fixes but now people around the world are trying to help save the environment and trying to create their own way to fix the leak. The oil is spilling at a rate of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day and has been spilling for 38 days as of today.

The oil spill has greatly affected the communities and economies that rely on the wildlife of the gulf to make money and eat. The oil affects even land creatures such as birds and any other animal that swims in the sea. When the spill reached the coastlines it caused many fisherman to not catch anything and then many of them have stopped trying to fish and now the coastlines are empty. The gulf of mexico produced almost 2/3 of the United States’ seafood and now the seafood business is taking a plunge.

British petroleum has a plan no that is stopping the leak but they have stopped it a couple times because they felt as if they weren’t making enough progress and also to monitor how the back pumping was working. They said it has slowed the leak tremendously and that they expect to start the “top kill” project again and hope to stop the oil with the next 24-48 hours. The back-pumping consists of many bridging materials and it it supposed to temporarily shut down the spill. Many people are skeptical of this operation but it seems like it has the potential to work. The first temporary fix was a big box that was supposed to cover up the leak but that proved to be too hard to do a mile under water and now there is many other suggestions on what to do but everyday we wait the more oil is spilling.

After the spill is over I think British Petroleum will end up going out of business because they have to pay off so much debt for their actions. It is good that they are trying to help as much as they can but the spill is going to cost them way too much in business and maybe people will boycott their oil.

This oil spill is going to affect me because I am going on a cruise in the summer and the oil could possibly still not be cleaned up yet. I hope it will not affect the coastlines of the islands of Jamaica too bad so that I still have the time of my life. I have also helped by donating dog and cat hair to the cause. The hair helps soak up the oil and since my dogs are shedding a lot, I felt it was my responsibility to help out and donate hair.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/27/gulf.oil.spill/index.html?hpt=T1

On Tuesday May 25 I was in my first car accident with three of my friends. At lunch we all went into my friends lifted Nissan Pathfinder and it felt like a normal lunch. After we went through the drive through at Taco Bell we decided that we had a lot of time for lunch left and thought that it would be fun to go mudding like we always do in a local mud pit. We used to go in the mud pit when it was wetter outside and the rain was worse but we thought that it would be one of the last times we got to go before it dried up.

We went to Agilent and just thought it would go smoothly and would go back to school after a couple of laps drifting and doing doughnuts. The pit looked to be muddy but it was only wet on the top because it had not rained that much yet. When we took the first laps we spread out the rocks so that the dry ground under was showing. WE were about to leave when somebody said do another one but faster. The driver said i would but I don’t want to flip the car. We all thought it wouldn’t tip because it was gravel and the car would just through the bumps like they were nothing.

I usually go and i have got on two wheels a couple of times and counter-steered but this time i wasn’t driving. We went around one turn and caught a bump and the car went over and rolled. My first reaction was that it wasn’t really happening because I didn’t think it would ever happen going under 30 mph but I was wrong. It rolled onto my side first and smashed the window next to me but it didn’t cut and it kept on rolling. When it was upside for the split second I started to get really claustrophobic and didn’t want to have to climb out of the car when it was upside down and I hoped for it to keep on turning. When it turned on the other side we all hoped that it wouldn’t turn back onto its side and we were all in shock of what happened. I then opened the door for the person that was below me and he hopped out as fast as he could. The the two front passengers climbed out of the sunroof. I was confused and sat there for a second deciding what to do and then I unbuckled my seat belt and climbed out of the sunroof also. The car was still on so I got back in it and put it in park and got every-body’s stuff including my food. The driver was in shock and was calling his parents and told us we could go back to school so we called people to see who could give us a ride back to school.

When we got picked up the driver didn’t believe us and we were going to drive back and look but it was time to go back to school. As I look back on it now I wish I would have gone back to scene and taken some pictures as the car was laying on its side. After we got back my neck hurt a little bit but I wasn’t seriously injured. After school I called the driver and he said he got a ticket and his car was totaled and it still seemed surreal to me. He was glad we were all alright but we were all fine and if I was him I would have been worried about my car because it was nice and I probably would have been freaking out about having no car in the future.

I have learned a lesson to not push things to far and never go mudding in a car that is top heavy with a driver that is not too experienced and not to go when the mud has dried up. I now take things more seriously because I see that we could have got a lot more injured and the consequences could have been greater. I know that car accidents are no joke and not to mess with the ability of a car too much.

Bottled water has been around more many years and people still drink it even though it is more expensive and can be worse for you than tap water. Since the global warming crisis and the economic crisis began in headlines in 2008, more people have just been getting their own plastic containers and filling them with water to conserve money and save plastic bottles. Another reason people are switching is the plastic in the bottles can wear off into the water in the bottle and cause cancer and people are scarred of that. Most bottled waters are healthy for you but most of the flavored water drinks have too much sugar.

http://health.yahoo.com/experts/eatthis/56052/americas-best-amp-worst-quothealthquot-drinks/

In recent studies we have found out that an average person consumes about a quarter of their daily calories through drinks. Bottled teas are also very bad for you with alot of sugar and filled with calories. The frozen drinks are also not healthy because they contain many grams of sugar an many grams of fat.

In Arizona a new bill passed that is the harshest bill against immigration in United States history. The bill states any illegal aliens will go to jail for three months, then pay a fine and be sent back to where ever they are from. This has caused an uproar in the state of Arizona and throughout the United States. The people supporting it are writing nazi symbols places including on taquerias with beans. Many supporters are being considered racist because they believe that you should be legal to live in the United and that illegal citizens are taking advantage of the legal system and getting away with too many things. The legal immigrants and illegal immigrants think that it is their right to be here and are trying to veto the bill. Some arguments of immigrants under 18 are that if their parents are deported then they will have no family here and will not be able to survive. I believe their parents knew what they were doing when they had the baby in the U.S. and knew the risks but still had the kid anyway. It is the parents responsibility to make sure the kid grows up good and that they can be there with them to raise them. It is just an excuse to have illegal immigrants stay if they have a kid and some think that they won’t get deported if they have a kid. Right now the bill is being protested almost everyday and Arizona doesn’t seem like it is going to take the law back.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/04/30/natl-poll-more-favor-than-oppose-arizona-immigration-law/?iref=allsearch&fbid=w6lVNazhHSf

Emmett Till was killed in one of the most racial times in America in a town where whites and blacks did not get along. He was a 14 year old boy from Chicago, Illinois who was visiting Money, Mississippi to see his uncle and cousins. On August 24, 1955 Till was dared by his friends to go and see if he could get a date with the white store owner’s wife becasue he said he had already gotten a white girl before. He went inside and grabbed her hand when she handed him candy and when she walked away he grabbed her waist and asked her out. She ran to her car where there was a colt .45 and Emmett’s friends made him leave the site but as they were leaving he wolf-whistled at her. This was the talk of the town and the girl’s husband was out of town so he couldn’t do anything until he got back from his trip. His name was Roy Bryant and his wife’s name was Carolyn Bryant. They owned a store where blacks came in alot to buy food and drinks. Carolyn and her relative were not going to mention this to Roy but Roy heard about it himself through the talk of the town and he confronted Carolyn on it so she told him about the incident. Once he heard about the incident he knew he had to teach this boy a lesson or else he would be seen as a push over to the community. He decided to get his brother J.W. Milam and teach “the boy from Chicago” a lesson to not mess with white girls in the south. J.W. was a trained soldier and had experience with guns in the United States Army. On August 28, at about dusk, the two men went to Emmett’s uncle’s house who was a preacher and pulled up with their truck in search for the boy. They knocked on the door and asked the preacher if the Chicago boy was at the residence. Emmett and his cousin were sleeping but Roy and J.W. went inside to wake him up and take him for a beating. Emmett got dressed and got in their truck with no hesitation and seemed like he wasn’t the least bit scarred. They were going to drive him to a cliff nearby the delta and beat him them scare him by pretending they were gonna push him over the edge but they drove for 3 hours and couldn’t the place they had in mind because it was dark out. They drove back to a property they owned and pulled up close the the delta. They got out and started beating him and he still said he was just as good as them so they kept beating him with their pistols. He still wouldn’t say he wasn’t as good as them so they kept beating him until finally J.W. put the .45 up to his head and shot killing him. They then got a 70 pound fan and tied it around his neck with barbed wire and threw him in the water. Three days later two fisherman saw feet sticking out of the water and found his body. The body was so torn up, the only reason they identified him is because of a ring that his father gave him before he left. The funeral was open casket because his mother wanted the world to see how bad his body was from being beaten. At first Roy and J.W. said they had come and picked him up from the house but dropped him off later. During the court case it seemed as if Roy and J.W. were going to jail for a long time or going to go on death row and America saw this as a very big act of true racism. The jury found the defendants not guilty and most of America was very upset. It seems unmoral to not convict the killers but being racist and from the south people have different morals. This event was one of the sparks to the civil rights movement and put into perspective how blacks were being treated in some places.Two years after the trial Roy Bryant had an interview with Look Magazine where he admitted to and how he killed Emmett Till. He did this because they couldn’t try him again by law so he could say what he wanted. The case was reopened in 2003 and Emmett’s body went through another autopsy but Roy and J.W. had already died so the case didn’t go very far. Emmett’s mother has donated his old casket to the smithsonian and is being showed as a story in the civil rights movement.

Throughout the years Rancho has been said to be one of the worst schools around but the majority of the people talking bad about Rancho have never been to the school and have never had a child go to the school. I think rancho is not as bad as people are saying it is and not even half the things bad are true about the school. There are many students here that end up going to college and last year a kid even got a full scholarship to Harvard. If a student chooses to excel, get good grades,go to college, they have the chance to do so at Rancho but it is up to them. I do not see how Rancho got such a bad reputation because all four years I have been going here it has been a great school to my peers and I. I think every school has its issues and bad things that go on but nobody discusses them. Smoking marijuana,doing drugs, and drinking alcohol go on at all schools but it is usually the “bad” kids or the kids trying to fit in with the crowd. The students that do that stuff are not dedicated to school and they would do it at any school they went to not just Rancho. The percent of people that do bad things at our school is below 25 percent and I think that it is because Rancho is a public school. At a private if you do drugs or are a trouble maker, it will seem like a waste of money so people have better behavior because they have to pay for school. Many kids don’t do that stuff and get good achievements but nobody ever hears about good things and usually only the bad things. Rancho has good programs to let you pick and choose to do what you want and offer almost everything that can be offered. The band and the yearbook are one of the best i Sonoma county. The “gangs” that are here aren’t really real and most of the kids in them are just “wannabes” and only some are actually in a gang. I have never heard of an organized fighting club at Rancho and most of the fights take place at University square or at school but it is for personal reasons and not a part of any club. The teachers are good and enforce most rules that need to be enforced and most of them have good discipline in and outside of their classrooms. They are well dressed  and never come to school like they just woke up and rolled out of bed. In the classes i have had, the teachers have helped you out with problems and never just wanted to fail you unless you never did the work throughout the year but even then they will still offer help. Most of the myths about Rancho are untrue and almost everybody that goes there will say its not that bad of a high school.

http://yourtown.pressdemocrat.com/2010/03/rohnert-park/dispelling-the-myths-haunting-rancho-cotate-high-school/

The budget cuts in California and all across the nation are getting way out of hand and someone needs to do something about this. Everyday i hear something new about how school is getting shorter or we have to use less of something or another teacher is getting cut. As a student this does not make you feel very good because it makes you feel as if an education is not very important. At first when I heard that the district was cutting five days off of the school year I was a little bit excited but then I realized that cutting days gives me less of a chance to get that much more education. This year has been much more different than any other year in school because of the cuts. The school and teachers are limited to a certain amount of paper and copies and now teachers are switching up their teachings styles to be able to cope with the limited resources they had. The class sizes are getting bigger and bigger each year because the teachers are getting cut but the number of students is staying the same. The students are not getting enough one on one time with the teachers and i think this makes it harder for some kids to learn and then they end up getting bad grades and some are discouraged about their learning abilities and drop out. Teachers getting cut makes me mad because this should not be the way we solve our budget crisis, we should think of other ways to gain money besides just making more and more cuts. It is not fair to the teachers who rely on their jobs to support their family and is very unfortunate that god teachers have to be let go. I have an uncle that is a teacher and his wife also works for the school system but they don’t have seniority so they will be on the top of the list when it comes to cuts. The cuts also affect teachers because they have much larger classes and have to work much harder then they used to. I hope the protests that happened around the nation on March the fourth affected the governors mind so that he helps education and that he knows that education is for the better of our community and helps out everyone and children in schools now are our future.

The Apple Ipad was recently announced in January of 2010 and some people are excited and most people I know aren’t. The Ipad is a touch screen tablet computer that is about ten inches. I think it is just an Ipod touch or Iphone but bigger. The Ipad does the same things as an Ipod and has nothing different except for size and memory. I have an Iphone and most people i know either have an Ipod touch or Iphone so the Ipad is not a big interest to them. The good thing about it is that it is very big and you can play all the games from the app store you love on it. The Ipad has the ability to have internet with 3g in which you have to pay monthly for a plan just like an Iphone or you have no internet and just wifi just like the Ipod touch. The thing I dislike about it is that it does not have a spot to plug anything in like a usb port or anything like that. The only thing you can plug in are headphones and the apple chord that plugs in all mobile apple accessories.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/03/05/ipad.apple.release/index.html?hpt=Sbin