Creating New Fossil Fuels

An article found HERE describes how a team of researchers at the University of Minnesota are creating their own gasoline. The team is using a special kind of bacteria to turn carbon dioxide into petroleum, using solar energy. This idea has earned this group of students a $2.2 million grant from the US Department of Energy. "Led by biochemistry professor Lawrence Wackett, the researchers are assembling a "co-culture" system in which two types of bacteria grow on opposite surfaces of a thin latex film. The bacteria on the upper surface will make glucose during photosynthesis. The glucose will then diffuse through the latex to the second bacteria, which will turn it into the building blocks of diesel and gasoline." The process looks like this:Led by biochemistry professor Lawrence Wackett, the researchers are assembling a "co-culture" system in which two types of bacteria grow on opposite surfaces of a thin latex film. The bacteria on the upper surface will make glucose during photosynthesis. The glucose will then diffuse through the latex to the second bacteria, which will turn it into the building blocks of diesel and gasoline. The group is currently working on getting a patent for their idea. It is ideas and initiatives like this that will help break our country's addiction to oil. If we can create our own clean fuel, not only will it help us reduce the prices we are paying at the pumps right now, but it will also help keep the environment clean. This process is using carbon dioxide which is the biggest problem of pollution. Carbon dioxide is the largest greenhouse gas in the atmosphere that is contributing to global warming. If we can take that carbon dioxide and turn it into fuel then we will be cleaning up the atmosphere and helping create fuel that our country needs. Steps like these are the only ones we should be taking when it comes to the development of energy in our country. We need to break away from oil and fossil fuels, and need to create alternate forms of energy that won't run out and cost us fortunes.

US Oil Dependency 101

In the article HERE, CNN gives a very basic set of bullet points to give a brief understanding of what is going on with the American dependency on oil. Although the list is short, there were a lot of surprising facts on it. One thing I had no clue about was that only Russia and Saudi Arabia pump for oil out of the ground than the US. However, even though we are the third largest oil producers in the world, we still need to import "51-60%" of our oil. And where is the one country we get the most oil from? Is it Iraq? Saudia Arabia? Libya? The answer is no. The largest quantity of foreign oil actually comes from Canada. This is surprising to me since our wars in the Middle East are supposed to be over oil, well then where is it? If we are fighting so hard for it then why is it still Canada that is giving us the most oil? That's a question I cannot answer. The top five countries that we get our oil from Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Nigeria, in that order. This article gave a great overview of the dependence on oil in the US.

Truth Behind Our Energy Crisis?

President Obama said in THIS ARTICLE that he does not believe there is an energy crisis. But because he doesn't think so, does that mean it is true? Currently the national average for gasoline is $3.84 a gallon. This morning on my way to school a gallon of gas cost $4.29. It is hard to believe that there is no energy crisis when I have to pay this much at the pump, and a year ago I was paying around $2.85 to $3 a gallon. "The president laid out his own plan for controlling prices, which focus on ending price gouging but also call for an end to the $4 billion in federal subsidies for oil and gas firms. He said there are some steps the U.S. can take to improve the situation such as ramping up domestic oil production and ending subsidies for oil and gas firms."  Obama wants to stray away from gas and move in a better direction. “Instead of subsidizing yesterday’s energy sources, we need to invest in tomorrow’s”. I could not agree with him more. Not only would investing in greener forms of energy be cleaner for the environment, but it would also create more jobs for Americans. If we can start to gear our focus towards trying to develop alternate energy sources, we will be able to create jobs for people who want to help do this. We would need people to research and figure out how to make it work and then others to use it in things such as construction of greener buildings and work for supplying cleaner energy to our communities. The creation of these jobs would help stimulate our economy and would help pull us our country out of the recession we are in and go back to a more productive and easier way of life in America.

Countdown to the Marketplace of Ideas: 19 Days Left

My topic of discussion at the marketplace of ideas is going to be the United States of America's dependency on oil. Because of oil, our country is engaged in two wars right now, and they prioritize the foreign policy based on whether or not we can get oil from the country we engage with. As the beginning steps of my research, I have watched two different Frontline documentaries about the United States and the effect that oil has on our country. The first film I watched was 20 minutes long and was called Colombia: The Pipeline War. The film was all about how an American oil pipeline caused violence and civil war in Colombia. Rebels attack the pipeline daily. They plant bombs at certain sections and blow up chunks of pipe and run before the military gets to the scene. Every time the pipe is attacked the military has to come to survey the damage and have to repair the pipe. A lot of the time the rebels that blew up the pipe are still waiting around hidden in the fields somewhere near the damage and will attack the military as they come to check out the damage. America's addiction to oil causes problems all around the world, and the situation in Colombia is a great example. The US doesn't even think about what is going on in the places they are drilling because all they want is the oil. Instead of researching and inventing new sources of renewable energy, the government is dead set on using up all the oil in the world before it admits it has a problem.

The second film I watched was an hour long and was called The Spill. It was about the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that happened last year. The film gave a history of BP and talked about not only the spill in the Gulf but also the explosion of a refinery in Texas City, Texas and the spill in Alaska's North Slope in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. What I didn't know before watching this film was the BP had a history of cutting costs to the point where safety of their workers and of the equipment was in danger. Anyone who knew this would have seen the explosion in the Gulf of Mexico coming a mile away. In Texas City, BP cut costs in their refinery and decided not to update equipment to bring them up to the standards of the rest of the oil companies around the world. The automatic safety checks like alarms and automatic shutdown were not working and that caused the oil to fill up too much in the pipes and eventually explode. The oil was spewing from the top of the stacks like a geyser. 15 people were killed and around a 170 more were injured. In Alaska, BP decided to cut costs again and made the decision to not clean out their pipes. In order to clean the pipes they use a device called a Pig to scrape out the sediment from the walls of the pipe. BP hadn't done that for about ten years and because of that the pipes were extremely corroded and eventually burst. The only reason that the spill in Prudhoe Bay was not a huge disaster was because it happened in the winter. The snow and cold was able to cause the oil to pool up instead of flow into the rivers near the pipe. If it were to have happened in the summer time, cleaning up the oil would have been very difficult and much of it would have flowed into natural water sources and would have poisoned the land around it. The explosion in the Gulf was caused by BP trying to save 7 million dollars by cutting corners and not living up to many of the safety standards the rest of the oil world uses. This was all possible because of the laws in the United States though.

If the US were to have tighter laws about safety and cleanliness of operations for oil refining then I feel that these accidents could have been avoided. Instead, the government let a lot of things slide because they wanted to benefit from the oil that was going to be produced. The addiction we have to oil as a country has made us blind to many other things going on around us. Because we care so much about finding oil, we pay less attention to safety and are left cleaning up huge messes that should have never occurred in the first place if we would have cared a little bit about how we get our oil. It is time for the United States of America to start looking into new sources of renewable energy. There will be a day when all of the oil in the world has been burnt up and we will be left in the stone age again. We need to invest in things like wind and solar energy. The sun shines on the Earth every single day. If instead of having huge oil refineries, we have solar refineries, I'm sure we could produce more, better, cleaner fuel than we have now. The only way that we can expect this to happen though would be if we are forced to by an extreme oil shortage and that does not seem like it will happen too soon.

State of the Union

This year's state of the union was interesting to watch. It seemed like Obama was trying intentionally to make the speech bipartisan. The Republicans and Democrats usually sit on opposite sides of the room from each other. They always stand and applaude at different times, when something their party likes is said. But this year it was different. The Republicans and Democrats seemed to mix this year. What I connected to most from President Obama's speech was what he talked about with the future and educatoin. Obama said, "Over the next ten years, nearly half of all new jobs will require education that goes beyond a high school degree. And yet, as many as a quarter of our students aren't even finishing high school." As a soon-to-be high school graduate this related right to me. Fortunately for us, we live in a nice area where many students don't drop out of high school. There are a few, but it is definately not 25% of our students. I am fortunate that I am able to complete my high school education and go on to further my education at college. Unfortunately many others are not as lucky. If students were to stay in school and at least finish high school, they would see that the education is all they need to start a good life. Then maybe they'd apply for higher learning. This country needs to do something to work on our youth's education. There has to be a reason why all these students have decided to drop out of school. We need to do something to figure out why these kids don't want to finish their education and fix it. If we start by fixing the education system then maybe we'd be able to have these newly educated young adults help generate ideas to help solve other problems this country has.

Mock Trial Response

I worked on the case of Elyse Roberts. I was arguing on the side of the District Attorney's Office of the District of Columbia. My job with the case was to prove that Ms. Roberts was not sexually harrassed. Unfortunately, we were not able to prove this. In the end the jury decided that Kevin Murphy had sexually harrassed Elyse Roberts and the District Attorney's Office of the District of Columbia did nothing to stop it. At first I did not believe this was the right the choice. I did not think that Elyse Roberts had been sexually harrassed. However, after discussing the verdict a little bit in class I saw that I was wrong. I was looking at it all from the viewpoint of an eighteen year old, male, high school senior. The things that Kevin Murphy had done or said to Elyse Roberts just seemed funny to me, because he was acting like he was my age. If it were me, I wouldn't have thought of it as such a big deal, but now that I look at it from the point of view of a mature business person I can see how wrong Kevin Murphy was. Even though I still feel like Elyse Roberts was overreacting a little bit, it is clear that what Kevin had said was wrong and in the eyes of Elyse, it made her working in environment feel hostile and unworkable. Based on that alone it is fair to say that she was sexually harrassed.
Sexual Harrassment is a very tricky thing to describe. There is no clear defination of what is and what is not sexual harrassment. There are only a few guidelines of what it is and whether or not the woman is offended even if the man did not mean to offend her. Sexual harrassment, I feel is not a big deal at DHS. I think that in high school sexual harrassment isn't as prominent because for the most part, there are boys who are too afraid to do anything to mess with a girl because they are afraid of what it will do to their reputation. The problem of date rape, like in the second case, might be a little more of an issue. I haven't heard of any cases in our school where that has happened, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear about it at a high school. Boys think that because they are dating a girl for a while that means that he is entitiled to have sex with them or sometimes he will pressure the girl into having sex with him. He might not think it was rape, but if she didn't want to have sex with him, then she can call it rape at any time.

Libyan Uprising

After a few weeks of headlines, I finally dove into what is actually going on in North Africa. I originally came across some headlines on Google News about something going on in Tunisia but didn't think it was a big deal so I didn't think much of it. Then came the protests in Egypt. Those caught my attention because of how close Egypt is to Israel. Everything seemed relatively peaceful there though so I didn't read into them too much, but kept track of what the headlines said until Mubarak stepped down. Now my AOL.com homepage is plastered with headlines about Libya and the violence going on in there. After gettin' some background and a timeline of what's gone down in Libya, I feel I have a bit of an understanding. The thing that draws me into more details about Libya than Egypt is that the government in Libya is fighting back and killing the protesters. In Egypt this was not happening. Right now the United States and the European Union have put sanctions on Libya in an effort to keep the violence from continuing. This didn't happen until two days ago. Now it's time to see how long it will take for the unrest to stop or to see if we need to get involved. Since this all started in Libya gas prices here have sky rocketed. If they keep goin' up like they have been, I wouldn't be surprised if the United States got involved to settle things down. The Navy is already stationing warships in the area just in case we need to go in for any reason. I never thought that uprising like this could happen in that area of the world since it is generally very Islamic and they are led by the laws of Allah and don't seem to change. However, of the past month the whole area seems to be in unrest. I would understand if this had happened when we originally invaded Iraq, but now that there are no more combat troops there, it is interesting to see that the area erupts. I am just nervous to see how this all turns out because I don't need gas to cost anymore than it already does and I would hate for the uprest to spill into Israel and destroy everything we have there.

Final thoughts on The Dumbest Generation

After reading this book I am very intrigued. I didn't think that it could have had such an impact on me. I thought it was just interesting to see how the fact that I grew up on computers and video game could be harmful to our society. However, I found a lot of points that made me want to show Mark Bauerlein that he is wrong. Other points made me embarrassed to be part of this so called "Dumbest Generation". There were a lot of great points raised that I hadn't even thought of though. The fact that we spend so much time in front of TV screens and computers is amazing to me when I look back and think about it. Even more amazing is that fact that it's not just one or the other. Most of the time I am in front of the computer and watching TV and listening to my iTunes or iPod and texting. The fact that I can multi task so well without getting confused and keeping it all on track is crazy. I'm happy I can multi task though. This will definitely help me in the future. I think the reason Bauerlein is so upset about the way that my generation is so technological is because he can't keep up with us. Since we were raised on computers we don't know what it's like to spend hours in the library trying to search through the dewy decimal system and a large set of encyclopedias just to find one piece of information. I just go to Google, type in the topic I'm looking for and there it is instantly at my fingertips. This book brought up a good point about how our social skills may be hurt because of our dependence on Instant and Text Messaging. We spend so much time in front of screens that when it comes time to get face to face with people we are sometimes at a loss. Overall, I think this was a good book and I'm glad I chose to read this instead of a story about Meth or Abortion that probably wouldn't have meant as much to me because it wasn't as personal.

Dumbest Generation Cinco (That's Spanish for Five)

"Undergraduates do all sorts of things at universities. They play compuer games, they eat pizza, they go to parties, they have sex, they work out, and they amuse each other by their ppretensions. What most fiction has ignored is that a lot of them also spend vast amounts of time alone, attacking the kinds of intellectual problems that can easily swallow lifetimes. In the perilous months of their last years at good colleges and universities, seniors parachute into mathematical puzzles, sociological aporiae, and historical mysteries that have baffled professionals. With the help - and sometimes the hindrance - of their teachers, but chiefly relying on their own wits and those of their close friends, they attack Big Questions, Big Books, and Big Problems." This quote talks a lot about what people don't give people my age enough credit for. Mark Bauerlein can go about a write an entire book about how my generation is going to be the end of us all because we rely on the internet instead of reading books like our parents. But when you really look at it, we do plenty to push our society along. If it weren't for our ever changing views on the way we see the world as young adults or how we deal with the mistakes our parents and generations before us have made then things wouldn't change. For instance, because of the way our country has become so dependant on oil from the Middle East, I want to grow up and solve this problem. I plan and creating homes that don't need to use any kind of outside energy because they will be able to create everything they need on their own. Other people my age look at the computers we have now and the way that people use their cell phones and change them. Computer operating systems are now changing every year and once you get used to one and learn how to use it, a new one is made to make your computer using experience even easier. Just because we keep changing the way we use all our technology doesn't mean that we are incompitent in keeping our lives and the course of future on track. The fact that we look at these big questions and big problems and then go our and try to fix them makes us even better than the generation before us. Instead of sitting around and complaining about it we are actually going out and doing something about it.

The Dumbest Generation Episode IV: A New Hope

"We had a four year pilot laptop computer program which investigated the benefits of a laptop computer environment from both practical and pedagogical points of view. The results are clear, our laptop students are completely convinced this is the only way to go!" Since this is what we grew up with, it only makes sense that computers would make it easier for college students to success in the highest level of education. I know that next year when I am in college I will get a laptop for myself. I'll be able to research for my classes, write my papers, stay connected with what's going on around campus, and even keep in touch with my family and friends from home. I found it interesting that even though we are supposedly the "Dumbest Generation", colleges are looking at their students for feedback about how to use technology in their classrooms. They are supposed to know more than we do, that's why they are teaching us, but they are allowing us to form the classroom environment and dictate how classes are taught. I think it's great that more college are using the internet and other forms of technology to help teach. For me personally I know it will make things easier. I am so used to the internet and interacting with my lessons online that it will make what I learn more meaningful if I can manipulate it. This sort of thing is already done in my Psychology class. We run through Psych Simulations in class as a way to get a hands on feel with the material that we are learning. This makes it very easy to understand and even fun to learn about. Our generation is very visual because we spend so much time around the TV and computer that when we have the opportunity to learn by seeing how things are played out such as neurons firing in our brain, or even watching the steps a computer would take in order to solve a math problem, it helps more than people above the age of thirty would believe. I understand that they are concerned for their future since in a few years we will be old enough to vote and take control of major corporations, but they need to learn to trust us. Just because we grew up on Facebook and our high school projects were posted in blogs open for everyone in the world to see doesn't mean we didn't also learn the lessons they taught us. If people have faith in the Dumbest Generation, I'm sure we will turn out just fine.

The Dumbest Generation Three Peat

"Born between roughly 1980 and 1994, the Millennials have already ben pegged and defined by academics, trend spotters, and futurist: They are smart but impatient. They expect results immediately. They carry an arsenal of electronic devices - the more portable the better. Raised amid a barrage of information, they are able to juggle a conversation on Instant Messenger, a Web-surfing session, and an iTunes playlist while reading Twelfth Night for homework." This quote came from the third chapter entitled "Screen Time". This statement amazes me because it is entirely true. The way we were raised, we have everything we need within seconds. If we need an answer Google will give it to us within one second of hitting search. Now they even give it to you before you even finish spelling out the word in the search box. This extremely short wait time has made us very impatient though. For example, if my computer takes more than five seconds to load a page or an email I go nuts and can't belive the internet is acting up so bad. Then I sit back and think about how regular mail takes about three days to get to you and how my parents had to either pick up a landline or wait till the next day at school to talk with their friends. I am currently listening to my iTunes, browsing Facebook, and writing this blog post. All of this is going on with the TV on behind me. Not until I started reading this book did I realize how much technology is in my life, and not only that, but how much I've mastered it. It has been a joke in my house that I have been the family IT guy since third grade, but it's true. Since then I was able to take apart our computer, figure out what was wrong, and fix it. All this was done without any training or experience at all. Since I grew up with all this around it was all natural. All I have to do is press a bunch of buttons in the right order or plug one thing in and everything works exactly how I want it to. Me being able to do this just makes me think of people younger than me. I didn't have a computer until about first or second grade. I have three little cousins who are two years old and another who is six. Even now they are playing on computers and with gameboys. In a few years they will probably know more about computers and technology than I do. The pace at which we are moving is crazy and I havn't even thought about it until now.

Dumbest Generation Part Two

"Book reading doesn't seem to improve young people's money and prospects, so why do it?"(67) This is the basic message that Mark Bauerlein is spreading in the second chapter of this book called "The New Bibliophobes". At first I had no idea what a bibliophobe was. So naturally as part of the Dumbest Generation, I googled it. I came to learn that a bibliophobe was someone who hates reading.

This seems to match perfectly with people our age. As a high school senior I am proud to say that I did end up reading all the books assigned in my English classes throughout my four years in high school. However, plenty of my friends made it by without even purchasing the book at all. To be honest, instead of using the three and a half months to read this book and get these blogs done, I waited until the very last possible second. So to be a bibliophobe is dead on. But like Bauerlein points out, reading isn't really helping me progress in life and because of that I don't spend too much time with it. I want to go to college and study to be an architect so I can design homes and communities that create their own energy. When will knowing Hamlet's second soliloquy help me do this? In order to get ahead in the business world that I will be entering in about five or six years I will need to be able to communicate with others quickly and be able to get ideas across a firm of other architects so we can decide on how to go about our next project. Even the classes I have already taken in high school have been solely on the computer. We spend about four weeks learning the computer program and after that short period of time we are so familiar with it and pick it up so quickly that we can whip together an entire floor plan and three dimensional model right on the computer in about two weeks. This is the skill that will help me get ahead in my chosen career path, not reading books by dead authors. This area of bibliophobia is indeed one area that I am proud to call myself a member of the Dumbest Generation. My technological skills will be able to get me ahead of the pack even though right now plenty of older people don't see that.

Dumbest Generation Numero Uno

Chapter one of The Dumbest Generation is called Knowledge Deficits. It talks about how our generation is increasingly growing dumber and dumber. Seeing as I am a part of this so called "Dumbest Generation", I am initially offended by this statement. However, after reading this chapter I am somewhat ashamed of myself. This chapter talked about many tests that current high school seniors were given and how they scored compared to seniors in the past. When seeing the scores at first I figured that I was going to be an exception to this statement because I come from such a great school system with very qualified teachers. Then I read some of the questions. At that point my self confidence was shattered. At first I was laughing at some of the questions that kids were getting wrong. Students were naming Japan, Germany, and Italy as our allies in World War II instead of the Soviet Union. Others couldn't explain why some doorways were marked COLORED ENTRANCE. I thought those kids had to be entirely uneducated to not be able to answer such simple questions. Then came this fact: "only one-third recognized the American general at Yorktown, and less than one-fourth identified James Madison as the 'father of the Constitution'". My laughter was gone. Who is the general at Yorktown and wasn't Thomas Jefferson the guy who created the Constitution? From that point on I fully took responsibility for being part of this Dumbest Generation. Mark Bauerlein, the author, explains our stupidity as coming from "their games, their socializing, and their spending." Our dependency on the Internet and on our cell phones and iPods and other technologies has kept us entertained enough to not worry about things that our parents may have thought as important when they were in high school.