Security

Today's discussion in class really stuck in my head, especially the parts about the airport.  My family flies a lot because we love to travel, and it seems that every single time we go somewhere else there are different security rules and measures, for example the one quart size bag that each passenger can put their liquids in for their carry-on (and of course the liquids have a specific size that they can be too).  Security does not bother me personally, and I think that twenty extra minutes out of my time is not going to kill me if it will prevent someone dangerous boarding the plane.  The metal detectors have never bothered me very much, but I am not a fan of the pat-downs, or frisking.  I got this special treatment in Brazil by a very large, mean woman.  I did not enjoy this at all, and I do not think that they should be allowed to treat or touch me or anyone else more than the police is even allowed to with suspects.  People that are flyng somewhere should not be treated as suspects.  I think these very thorough pat-downs are across the line.  I have not decided how I feel about the X-ray machine if these pictures are saved somewhere and can be identified, but if they cannot be identified, then I do not think it is that big of a deal because it should not be that different from the old metal detectors.  But, I do know I am against these pat-downs.  This is way more than just an inconvenience. 

More about Little Brother

   I finally finished the book the other day, and I honestly did like it.  It kept my attention and entertained me thoroughly.  I think the part where people were imprisoned by the DHS, while their families thought they were dead, is the part that stuck with me the most, other than the awful treatment of the prisoners by the DHS of course.  These families thinking that their missing family members were dead was ruining their lives and is definitely not something that should be taken lightly.  The DHS was just going to allow these people to think that their family members were dead. A loss of a family member radically changes the family life, and so many people that were being held, like Daryl, was being held for nothing. He was innocent, and they knew that.  The DHS had nothing on him to hold him there imprisoned.  This really bothered me.  Meanwhile, Daryl's father was completely changed.  He was such a clean sober military man.  When Marcus and his parents go to tell Daryl's father what really happened, they found his father to be unshaven and drunk.  His house was a disaster and smelly.
   The DHS did not care about the people at all.  It does not make any sense that they are trying to prevent terrorism while treating their own citizens as prisoners witout any rights at all.  It was terrible how they treated those poor people, and they still never caught the people behind blowing up the bridge.  Nevertheless, they still had all those people locked up in that prison.  They did not treat everyone as badly as they did Marcus, but still most people had no business being in prison.  The DHS was taking advantage of their power and hurting more people than they were helping.  They were controlling everything, and this is why today's government bothers me. 

Little Brother applicable to today??

   I am not a person who generally enjoys reading. I have always felt like there are more productive things that I can do with my time than to read, and almost every book that I have ever had to read for school I have hated. "Little Brother" is different though. I like the style of the book and the entire story. It actually holds my interest and makes me want to find out what will happen next. I have never heard of half of the technology in the book, so sometimes it confuses me and gets a little dry. For the most part, I think it is a rather exciting book, and the different forms of technology really interest me. I am not a huge fan of technology though. It is neutral, but sometimes I feel like technology is more often used for bad things than it is for good. Technology takes peoples' jobs; it allows people to prey on other people very easily.
    In "Little Brother" the government uses technology to spy on their people. Is this exaggerated, or are they already doing that now? Well, the Patriot Act basically allows them to bend the rules and not respect all of our rights for the safety of the country and government. The government does spy on us to some degree, but no, it is not as extreme as it is presented in the book, as far as we know. Is this where our country is headed though? The government is continuing to take control over more and more areas in our lives, controlling more industries all the time. I hope that what this book describes is not where this country is headed, but who knows.

Schools with Technology

   I was thinking about our discussion on Monday about Little Brother and how schools do use technology to spy on their students and take it to the extremes.  The whole web cam thing that Mr. Bevill mentioned is beyond anything I have ever heard, and that is by far the most disturbing and worst story I have ever heard dealing with this subject.  It really bothers me how schools do get away with some smaller acts of invading their students' privacy.
   When I was in middle school in the seventh grade, we got a new principle.  She had a reputation for being very strict, and she certainly lived up to that reputation.  We had a bullying problem at the time, so the principle decided to take the consequences to another level if you were caught bullying someone else.  However, it affected more than just the people involved in bullying situations.  If you had your phone taken up at all during school, the principle would read all of your text messages, sent and received, whether they were sent during school hours or not.  I think this is absolutely ridiculous and that the school has no right to read your texts.  I guess they should be allowed to take up phones if they are being used during school hours, but they should not be allowed to go through the students' phones at all.  I believe it is against the students' constitutional rights, and the school has no business going through their students' phones and invading their privacy like that.

iSearch

  I am not quite sure if I want to go the global warming route with my paper because I feel like that might be something that everyone has heard a million times and boring, but I really did like that TED talk about penguins by Dee Boersma.  I have also watched the TED talk by Brian Skerry about the ocean's many horrors and the ocean's glory.  It is very interesting and seems to go along with the first talk if I just look at the general aspects like how we need a new operating system for the ocean and how over-consumption and too many people are two huge fundamental problems in the ocean and world in general.  The operating system is not giving proper feedback to be able to sustain life as it was before the human population more than doubled since the 1960's, and the humans are not paying the environmental costs of their actions yet.  However, the animals are paying the costs for humans' actions because almost all species, if not all, have much smaller populations, and most species are declining rapidly.  Pollution and climate change are also two factors from this first TED talk.
  The second TED talk deals more with the terribly images of the ocean.  With the seals, there are two huge environmental issues.  First, the seals are being hunted and slaughtered in massive numbers, hundreds of thousands anually, and secondly the loss of ice in the ocean.  The seals need thick, packed ice to be able to nurse baby for twelve days, but the ice is not thick enough, and baby seals are falling through and dying.  There is also the global fish crisis.  It is unbelievable that ninety percent of the big fish in the ocean have disappeared.  I have never thought of the fishing industry in this light- that people are way too efficient in catching fish, so much that we are not even allowing fish to grow older and bigger before they are caught and sold or cooked. 
  Now, I just have to pick a direction to go in- environmental issues like global warming or more of the animal route like overfishing.