BBC LINK  
  Nothing on the internet can be deemed safe anymore.  Hackers have penetrated some of the most secure agencies in the world Including the FBI and governments of many countries.  The hacking group "Anonymous" has been known for wreaking havoc and causing trouble on the interwebs.  This time, they have hi-jacked a top secret profile concerning the warrant for arrests of some of their own members.  They publicized their findings on youtube along with an attached email.  This just goes to show that no matter how fast our technology expands our capabilities, their will always be restrictions.  I don't believe that any highly confidential documents should be transferred via the internet because their is no real way to secure it.    Anti-virus and anti-hacking software can only be developed after a threat has been posed meaning they are always vulnerable to new threats.  Internet commerce is extremely dangerous because it puts out a lot of information meant to be kept private such as your SSN and your CCN.  If hackers get their hands on these, it can and will ruin your financial life or at least cause some damage.  They can also get their hands on things such as your address and pin numbers meaning E-Hackers can even put you in physical danger.  I don't believe we should take down the internet, but at the same time don't think we should make it such a critical part of our life that we expose ourselves to all these potential dangers on the internet.   

NYTIMES
    After Dr. Ayers presented the problem in Syria to me in class.  I decided to further investiage why Russia is being hassled by the U.S.  It turns out that the U.S. is scolding Russia for not condeming what is taking place in Syria.  This article made me realize that the U.S. is kind of a bully that swings its weight around to get what it wants.  Russia has a firm belief that other countries do not have the right to interfere in other countries political life.  The U.S. has been practicing this attempted control on foreign governments all the way back to the Spanish-American War.  I am dissapointed that the U.S. is handling the situation with the "It is my way, or the highway" approach that is often reflected in ignorant bullies.  While the current style of government in Syria conflicts with our values here in the U.S., I do not believe that gives us the right to forcibly change or shape it.  Russia believes the situation should be handled by Syria.  I support their resistance to "threats" from the U.S. pushing them to change their stance on the Syrian crisis.  The current proposal from the U.N. is that the current president of Syria should step down from office immediatly and let the vice president transition in so no major changes happen.  They then want the new president to begin a peaceful and swift transition into democracy.  I don't believe forcing democracy on a unstable nation will really acheive anything except more violence, or in the author's opinion, a civil war.  Regardless, forgein intervention in political affairs rarely resolve peacefully and I don't believe this one will be any different.   

One more thing we get to worry about!  Apperently microplastics are (you guessed it) tiny plastics that are washing off our clothing articles and getting into our water supply.  There is no filter at the momment designed to remove them so they have entered the food chain and will eventually become a major problem.  Since up until this time, we really had no evidence of these, there is no telling what the can do and or are capable of.  Perhaps they are harmless, or maybe they're the main reason the cancer rate is on the rise.  According to researchers, about 1900 microplastics are released from a single garment every time you wash.  This would really add up seeing as you have 250 million people in the U.S. and probobly each person has 10 items of clothing washed a week.  The scarier thing is, this reveals that we don't even know all the ways we are polluting the environment if we are still finding new sources of our own pollution.  It is very hard to fix a problem that you don't know exists meaning we still have to figure out all the bad practices we are doing before we can actually fix them.  Another thing to consider is that we drink out of plastic bottles and use plastic filters meaning microplastics might come out of those too meaning our body could alreedy infested with these potentially harmful microplastics.  Whatever they are, they are another example of how little we know about everything and how much more we must learn.   
LINK TO BBC

I would be interested in learning about poverty around the world.  I'm kind of running out of things im interested in learning about and this would probobobly be next on my list.  Before I continue with this blog post, I would like to ask you to come up with something else we could blog about because I've run out of things I'm interested in.  Perhaps reviews on articles or (insert creative idea here).  Continuing with the blog, I like learning about poverty in other countries (as awful as that might sound).  Its kind of one of those things where people enjoy watching people endure physical pain on TV for laughs.  Something this reminds me of is the pictures of 30 kids bedrooms around the world.  Some kids have it tough.  Its a depressing, but true fact.  After writing this now, I really don't want to learn about this because as Sydney/Spencer have pointed out.  It sounds really messed up, which it is.  If you get anything out of this, please let it be the suggestion of other things to write about because I want a change of pace.  
After reading this article on the BBC.  I think it might be fun to learn about beauty around the world and the many different forms it takes.  Footbinding, neck extensions, lip stretching, and implants would be interesting to learn about.  This implants are pretty relevant to American life, but many other practices such as neck extensions would alienate your average American who is not accustumed to that culture.         

    Towards the end of the book.  Some injustices in my mind occurred that totally ruined what I had planned out in my head.  First off, although I'm dissappointed that her father and brothers visciously murdered her new family, I can let that one slide however, because its what dragged the book out another 150 pages and gave a whole new story.  Towards the end of the book, when she discovers that her brother is going to kill her son.  They argue for a while and settle on banishing him.  How is banishing your son supposed to be a remotley happy ending?  I mean, there can't be some love and they just pardon him and live happily ever after?  Or better yet, since they would now know that they were family, they could work together and become even more powerful in the system and maybe even become king!  Then, when she has the oppurtunity to confront her father about all the horrible crimes he had commited.  She just watches as he, with whats left of his sanity, pours his blessing to his youngest son.  I thought it would be better if she just gone off on her father and maybe even killed him to get revenge for how he ruined her life.  It isn't like she forgave him so he just died without taking the righteous or vengeful path.  Then the ending is just boring.  She just grows sick and dies.  I mean I may have teared up a bit, but it was kind of just a plain ending with no real revalations or anything of that matter that you would expect from a book that had so much happen in it and was even based off the bible. 

As many drug addicts (including coffee junkies) know, it takes higher and higher doses of a drug to get the effects.  This is also true I believe for having fun.  In America, most people don't find things such as driving or school fun.  This is because we do it every day and have built up a "tolerance" to it.  For children in impoverished countries however, I'd take a bet that if you one of them into school or behind the wheel, they'd have the greatest time of their lives.  My friend once said, "How do they not die of boredom in Africa when they can't play GameBoys."  I believe the opposite is true however.  Since some children have never experienced things like GameBoys or amusement parks, they don't need to do something as exciting to get the same level of enjoyment out of the activity.  So being born in America has put Americans at a disadvantage to having fun.  I'd place a bet that many kids can have around the world can have as much fun playing with sticks and stones as Americans do going to Disney World.  However, a teenage American raised kid would get very bored playing with some sticks while the other kid would probobly have  a blast at Disney World too.  
I would be interested in learning about what other people around the world do for fun if that point wasn't already made clear throughout this blog.  I saw an article on MSN.com that was somewhat related to this topic, however I still need to find the link.  

   

The recent sinking of the Concordia cruise liner off the coast of Italy has really shaken my belief in "The System".  We are raised to believe that the world we live in is secure and catastrophies like the titanic, only happened because it was a long time ago.  Why did the ship sail along a rock coast in the first place?  How did no one raise the quesiton that they might have been a tad too close to gigantic rocks when the ships crew size was over 1000 people (I would say strong but that wouldn't represent the crew accurately.  Finally, the captain.  How the hell did he become the captain of a multi-million (maybe billion?) dollar cruise ship when he had the guts of a dead squirrel.  If I was placed in the same situation he was, hell I woulda dove right off, BUT I wouldn't allow myself to be put in that situation either unless I was getting paid a lot of money in which case I'd have more dignity to follow out my job.  Then on top of all this, he makes up several (sticking to one story wasn't good enough) excuses for why he wasn't on the ship.  His most recent was that he "slipped and ended up in a lifeboat".  You find out later that he was accompanied by his 2nd and 3rd in charge men, who obviously also slipped...  Best part, the life boat wasn't lowered into the water for another hour so what prevented him from standing back up, and reboarding the ship?  Turns out he also called his mom during this time to assure her that he was safe, "What about the 3,000 passengers?'  "Oh, don't worry about them mom, they are in utter chaos with no one trained for these type of situations to guide them through it."  You really wonder how he managed to become captain.  This angered me and I decided to blog about it, but I would also be interested in learning more about other wordley incidents like this one perhaps that could maybe have even be avoided if someone with a decent mind was in charge.  Who knows. 
http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/dancer-saved-from-capsized-cruise-liner-after-facebook-plea/

I sucked it up, and read the rest of the book, and much to my suprise, I thouroughly enjoyed it.  It had many insane plot twists that really came out of no where and totally changed the direction in which the book was heading.  For instnace, the EPIC climax I would have to say was when her own father murdered her husband and whole family for really no reason completly ruining her life.  At that point, you thought things would only get worse, and they did for quite some time.  You see her just kind of carry on with the only light in her (Dinnah) life being her son.  That too was taken away from her when he turned 8 and was sent off to become a scribe.  On a simple trip to the market however, a man takes interest in her and she ignores it and the reader usually forgets about this encounter until even later in the book where you learn that the man had set out to find his love and make her his.  They had true love and I almost teared up at some points (although I never would cause im a MAN).  The last insane twist is when you learn that her son is going to be executed, but at the last second it turns out that the noble who ordered the execution is her long lost brother and he instead just decides to banish her son (happy ending???).  All in all this book was very amazing and it just took a while to get into, but once I got into it, I couldn't stop (ignoring the fact that my group told me they'd abandon me if I did not finish it fast).  The book takes a really long time developing the story which seems pointless, until the very end where like every single loose end is wrapped up into a beautiful masterpiece. 

Something that has always caught my interest would be weapons.  This may be result of violent media, regardless, big, sharp, objects catch my attention.  The Frazier Historical Arms Museum in Louisville, Kentucky contains weapons dating almost 2000 years old!  The musem is laid out so you walk from bottom to top, working your way up the history of weapons.  You learn not only about the weapons they used, but also about what conflicts were going on at the time that required the use of such weaponry.  For example, you learn that the "Long Bow" was created back in the Crusades Era by the British to exploit weaknesses in the French Army.  They also have some very beautiful decorative swords that signified the wealth of the empire from which it came.  I might also add that all weapons are not for killing.  There are many weapons there, such as "The Lady Pistol" that were used to intimadate rather than cause physical harm (because everyone knows women can't shoot guns ;p ).  
I actually visited the museum once, although I did not get the chance to explore the entirety of it becaue of bored younger siblings. 
I believe that currently as of today, I'd be intrested in global disasters after hearing about the Italian cruise ship crisis.  The crisises could range from anything from shootings to bombings to that one city that was destroyed by a volcanic eruption and freezing everying in stone where they stood.  Huge disasters catch my intrest and intrigue me (does t 

I believe it would be cool to learn more about ancient traditions and beliefs around the world and one of the earliest known records of them are found in a set of French caves known as the "Chauvet".  LINK.  Inside, are some of the earliest artistic works of the human race.  There are very few photos of what actually lies in the cave due to the French Government wanting to protect this historical treasure.  However, there was a documentary called "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" done on the cave which does explore the inside of the cave in great detail and shows the many stories the cave pictures tell.  The cave wasn't actually discovered until December of 1994.  During this time period, most scientists agreed that the human race wasn't really that old, the cave paintings on mammoths went against the current beliefs and suggested we were a lot older then we initially thought.  
The stories the cave paintings tell give us a greater understanding of what life was like for the earliest humans.  I believe it is essential to know one's past in under to fully understand oneself.  It is cool findings like this that give us a greater understanding of what it truly means to be human.  I don't think we should necessarily dive into greater detail about this specific cave, but rather just dive deeper into the past as a whole and then we could progress to the present.  For example, we could learn about the earliest societies in Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent area.