Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Senior Reflections #3 Final Days
As I finsih up my final days of highschool I kind of feel weird. I have spent a whole 4 years of my life in the same halls my brother did almost 6 years ago and man has time gone fast. I remember just starting highschool as a bright eyed freshman with all my innocence and wonder and although highschool has robbbed me of both those I've still walked away from it with a strong sense of identity and a multitude of great friends as well. The things I've learned throughout highschool haven't exactly prepared me for the ral world but then again I don't think it was supposed to. That's what college is for, but it did give me a great educational foundation. Although I leave highschool feeling like the scared ackward 14 year old I once was I realize that regardless of how I did highschool this would have happened anyway. I had fun in highschool though and those experiences will follow my everywhere as I along with all my other friends and classmates head off into that big, scary world of ours knowing that even though we may be intimidated we will always have the right skills to face any challenge.
Senior Reflections #2 Friends
Throughout my Highschool career probable the most important thing I've gained is the amazing relationships and the amazing people I have met. At the beginning of highschool most people would drift off into there different social groups and not stray outside these groups but as highschool progressed people started to break away from these groups and now by the end of highschool I feel everyone at least knows a little bit about everyone else. The social pressures of groups have dissappeared by the end of this year and meeting and talking to new people has been easy. While I've been at Herndon I've met some of the smartest most talented people I have and probably will ever meet in my life and I only hope that I can keep in touch with them throughout the rest of my life. Education is important but the relationships you make are as well and the relationships I have made just in highschool have shown me how how valuable friendships are.
Senior Reflections #1 Making my choice
By the end of my senior year here at Herndon I had been accepted to my two top choices of colleges and was stuck between wantin to go to either JMU or VCU. JMU caught my attention because it had many of the courses that I wanted as well as the reputation of excellence that I wanted in a school. VCU was also a major choice to me. Even though it didn't have many of the classes I wanted or as good of a reputation as JMU did I still loved the city of Richmond, the music scene in the area, and most importantly I thought I would fit in extremly well with the people who went to VCU more than I would with the people who went to JMU. In the end I went with JMU. I did this because although a social life is important education stays with you for a lifetime and lets you acheive your dream career. Anyways friends can be made anywhere with some effort.
Wisconsin
As a laboratory of democracy, the battle to recall Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin had all of the messy pieces: a clash of armies on the ground, the influence of a vast amount of money and the broader context of an improving but still sagging economy. Republicans harnessed it all to Mr. Walker’s advantage, tapping into the public’s queasiness about the wisdom of a recall and its divided opinions about union benefits to deliver a blunt warning to President Obama and Democrats about what they might face in November.
Mr. Walker’s victory was helped by political crosscurrents unique to Wisconsin, where the historic union-led attempt to remove the governor halfway through his four-year term was the culmination of red-hot anger over his push to end collective bargaining for public workers. But the outcome also provided a kind of election-year exercise that put on full display the financial, economic and organizational forces that are already shaping the presidential contest between Mr. Obama and Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee.
This article attracted me because the issue being addressed is an issue near and dear to me, unions. Now I am a supporter of unionized work because I believe that corporations should work for their community not the other way around. When I first heard about the threat Govener Scott Walker had made to destroy collective bargaining I was shocked and appauled. How could they take away the essential part of unions and get away with it? Without collective bargaining unions would have no power to protect its workers and the whole point of having a union would be a sham. I'm saddened at the fact that the govener was not repleaced. I hope it was more based on the republicans use of funds being greater than the democrats and not based on popular support but I don't know. I hope this issue will not be lost in time now though and that we as a country will realize the importance of having unions before it is too late.
Syria
Syrian opposition activists reported a mass killing of villagers by pro-government militiamen and security forces on Wednesday — if verified, the fourth massacre in less than two weeks — threatening to inject a new surge of angry momentum into the growing international effort to isolate President Bashar al-Assad and remove him from power. The accounts of the mass killing, in the village of Qubeir in central Hama Province, could not be independently corroborated, and United Nations monitors in Syria could not immediately gain access to the site. The accounts said as many as 78 civilians were killed, half of them women and children, including 35 members of one family. Some were burned and stabbed.
The killings were reported as representatives of more than 55 countries pressing for Mr. Assad’s resignation threatened to sharply expand their financial pressure on his government at a meeting in Washington sponsored by the United States Treasury, and as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton traveled to Turkey, an outspoken critic of Syria, for further talks on how to quickly reach a solution to the Syria crisis that would depose Mr. Assad.
A senior Western official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Mrs. Clinton was sending Fred Hof, a special Middle East envoy from the State Department, to Moscow on Thursday to assess whether Russia and the United States could achieve a common vision on a post-Assad political transition in Syria. Russia, which has been Mr. Assad’s most powerful foreign backer, has repeatedly opposed outside intervention in the Syrian conflict but has recently suggested it is not opposed to new leadership in Syria, its most important ally in the Middle East.
If the Qubeir massacre accounts are confirmed, they are likely to place enormous new pressure on Kofi Annan, the joint special envoy to Syria from the United Nations and the Arab League, whose nearly-two-month-old peace plan has not only failed to halt the bloodshed in the 16-month-old Syrian uprising but, in the view of some critics, has strengthened Mr. Assad’s resolve.
Like the article on the E.U. I was interested in this article because it was on a subject that is important to me but has of late disappeared from the national eye for the last few months. With the Arab Spring now pretty much dead in the water Syria seems to be one of the last regions in the position to throw off the shackles of their dictatorship. A few months ago though a ceasefire was called between the rebels and the government but no reforms were made and now the killing and massacres have started again. In my opinion these people deserve a chance at freedom and it's impossible for them to acheive this without at least military assisstance from the U.S. government. The Syrian government is too terrible and cruel to be trusted to make amends and comprimise with the rebels and do what's best for their own people.
Mosquito
I've always wondered how bugs such as mosquitos stay flying in rain. A new study reports that the answer lies in the mosquito’s low mass and its strong exoskeleton.
An author of the study, David L. Hu, a mechanical engineer and biologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology said that most of the time, mosquitoes simply do not resist the impact of a water drop and instead “go with the flow,” as he put it.
“It’s kind of like boxing with a balloon,” he explained. “There’s no way to pop the balloon because it doesn’t resist you at all.”
About 25 percent of the time, raindrops fall directly between a mosquito’s wings. In these cases, the mosquito is absorbed into the falling water drop, but it pulls away just before the drop hits the ground.
Although this article isn't serious at all when I saw it I had to take advantage of this activity to find out the answer to a question that has peaked my curiosity for years. I never knew that a mosquito could be so durable aganist rain or could do such amazing acrobatics to prevent themselves from hitting the ground when it rains. Although this article isn't educational it did answer an interesting question that I didn't know and I would wager many others didn't know as well.
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