Geneticist Creates First Synthetic Cell

The creation of the first synthetic cell will affect the world drastically in a positive way. "Venter is creaking open the most profound door in humanity's history, potentially peeking into its destiny,” says an Oxford professor. The first synthetic cell is proven to be a way to help breakdown the greenhouse gases in our atmosphere that cause global warming. Once more synthetic cells are made; scientist will be able to hopefully find a solution for the holes being formed in our ozone. The synthetic cell will also help speed up the production of vaccines. Doing that more lives will be saved and protected from illness and vaccines will be made for diseases scientists haven't found a cure for yet.

Summer

I'm really looking forward to this summer. Staying up all night and sleeping in all day. Bonfires, and going to the beach, swimming and tanning. No homework, no stress and there really isn’t that many rules amd parents are a lot more careless.

My favorite thing to do in the summer is go to my lake house. I spend most of my summer there, and it’s really fun. I usually bring a friend or two with me. We swim and tan all day, go tubbing and jetsking and do flips off the dock. Almost every night we have a big bonfire and make s’mores! If it’s colder we go in the hot tub. Fourth of July is my favorite day in the summer. Everyone decorates there boat in a theme. My favorite was the Sponge Bob themed boat we see every year. Basically during the day you drive around in your boat and throw water balloons at other boats. It’s really fun! At night we take our boat out in the middle of the lake and watch the fireworks. They are amazing and huge! But every year there’s always the stupid intoxicated people that set their house on fire with fireworks or decide to swim in the middle of the lake at two in the morning. Last year there were two houses that caught fire.

What I’m looking forward to the most in the summer is going back to Denver! I went over Spring Break and my parents are sending me back this summer. I really want to go to Vail- a ski town in the Rocky Mountains and go shopping again in Downtown Denver. My cousins also said that we were going to drive down to the desert.

I love going on vacation in the summer! Last summer I sent to Mackinac Island. It was really fun because you could walk everywhere and not have to worry about cars. I liked having to take a horse wherever you went or biking. The island was really pretty; there were a lot of flowers and plants. I didn’t really like that a lot of things looked old fashion. My favorite part was the fudge! I went to one of the hundreds of fudge shops on the island and they had tons of flavors! My favorite was chocolate peanut butter. But there were also some strange ones like orange, and apple.

There’s only about a month and a half left of school and I can’t wait for summer!

SIMUN:)

SIMUN was really fun. At first I was really clueless and didn’t know what to expect. All the sophomores, juniors, and seniors seemed to know what they were doing and understood everything. Our first scenario was the Zimbabwe election in 2008, and lucky me, I was Zimbabwe. I was so scared because I didn’t know what to expect. I kept thinking to myself that I was over exaggerating and that it wouldn’t be as bad as I thought, but it was. Everyone got very into it and some people even yelled at me because the South African president was killed in my country. I seriously don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t have Ms. Van Horn and the mentor helping me.

I think for my first SIMUN experience I did pretty well. I gave a lot of speeches and contributed to two of the three resolutions made. There were a few countries in my group that didn’t like me that much though because I asked a lot of questions. After the Zimbabwe scenario I did very well and was able to participate more. People actually came to me for my opinion and advice in caucus. I was amazed because I was a clueless freshmen who wasn’t really sure what they were doing.

At first I didn’t really know how to prepare for SIMUN. I started off by figuring out where Zimbabwe was. Then I researched there government system and leader. Reading news articles about Zimbabwe also helped me get a picture of what countries were allies and enemies with Zimbabwe. Knowing the countries allies helped me extremely in SIMUN, especially during caucus. The research for the SIMUN prep questions helped me prepare a lot too. If I hadn’t written the paper on the Zimbabwe elections in 2008, I would have been clueless at SIMUN because I never came across the story of the violence in the election.

For next year in SIMUN I plan on researching much more on the allies of which ever country I have. I will definitely do more research on the stability of the countries government and what kind of government they have. Researching the groups of citizens would also help a lot because when my group was doing the Uigher and Chinese government scenario I was very confused. Most of all I think researching more on the culture and religions in the country and the countries surrounding will help me out next year in SIMUN.

I'm reading Chinese Cinderella. The story is about a little girl that is "bad luck" to her family because her mother died giving birth to her and is unwanted by her family. She has seven siblings; five biological and two half siblings. Her step mother Niang treats her horribly. When they moved from their hometown to Shanghai she is forced to share a room on the third floor with three of her siblings. While her half siblings got their own rooms, the five of them aren't allowed any food other than breakfast, lunch, and dinner. On her first day back from school in Shangai was forced to walk miles in the rain back home and even when there was storm watches. Her father married a woman who was only seventeen when he was in his late thirties. Age doesn't seem to matter in Chinese culture because it wasn't just her parents. Even her grandparents got married when her grandma was fifteen and grandpa was twenty five. It's only a ten year differences. But in America it would be like a sophomore in high school marrying someone who is already out of college. Also in China, if a stepmother is brought into a household, the father’s children from a previous marriage aren't treated nearly as well as his step children. In the story the two half siblings were given a private tutor, who would always blame accidents on the five other children. The five children had to starve between meals, while the two half children would constantly feed food to pets. They weren't provided with any transportation to school and even being in a wealthy family are to never be given pocket money by their dad. They also acknowledge the dead in very strange ways. The body was kept in the house for several days so people could pray to the dead grandmother. The day the grandmother died, the five children were forced by their aunt to sleep on the floor by the coffin at night to keep her company. Even though they were terrified.

Big Fish Story

About three years ago we look our first family road trip. We aren’t fans of driving and usually fly. But instead we thought it would be fun to spend the whole day driving to New York. Map Quest said it would take about ten hours. But it took a lot longer then just ten hours. My grandparents decided to come with us. We didn’t let them drive because they have a habit of getting into fights and almost causing accidents on the road. We left the house around 6 am. About 20 miles into Ohio between Toledo and Sandusky we were stuck on a bridge. Everyone was tired and annoyed, and we weren’t stopping until we got to Sandusky. I looked into the rear view mirror and saw a semi coming straight towards the car. My mom swerved onto the side and the car almost crashed through the side of the bridge.
We just got into Pennsylvania and there was a huge hail storm, hail the size of baseballs were denting the car and nearly breaking through the windshield. About 10 miles up the road, there was a ten car pile up that was backed up about 5 miles. After about an hour of waiting my mom drove on the side, to a median and turned around taking a “back way” through the mountains that she thought would get us their sooner. There were no guard rails, between the car and the mountain edge. The road was small, unpaved and bumpy. Half way into the mountains something hit the car from behind, it was a deer. The deer kept hitting the bumper until we were almost off the edge. Once the deer left my dad got out of the car to see the damage and realized we had a flat tire as well. We didn’t have a spare and none of our phones had service to call AAA, so we continued to drive until we got to the first mechanic we could find. They said the car couldn’t be fixed until the next morning so we stayed in a hotel for the night.
The next morning the car was fixed and we got back on the road. We were only two hours away from New York now. Everyone was so relieved and happy to just get there and as far from the car as possible. We were at a stop light and the car shut off. It wouldn’t start up again and people behind us were honking and yelling. We had to push the car to the side of the road. My dad opened the hood. A squirrel jumped out, attacked him and bit his arm. A man pulled over and rushed him to a hospital. The emergency room was very busy and by the time he was checked out it was late, so we got another hotel room for the night. It was over 24 hours later, and we were still not in New York. A 10 hour trip took more than twice as long.

The UN should become more involved in helping the people of the Congo.

Millions of people have died in the Congo since the Rwandan genocide ended in 1994 . 30 times the number of people died in the Haiti earthquake. The Hutu militias are mostly responsible. The UN needs to put more troops in the Congo to protect the people from these militias. Women of all ages, even children and being gang-raped and husbands and sons cut to pieces in front of their families. They have no defense or protection.

“It’s awful to see 300 women in need of help and you can only take 10 because the ambulance can only take 10,” said Dr. Mukwege. The hospital can only take 3600 women each year. The UN needs to provide more medical and mental care for the women. The home of an 8 year old girl was invaded by the Hutu militia. Her father was killed, her mother was raped and the girl was raped for a two-week period, and then abandoned. She is so ashamed and traumatized that a missionary had to persuade the little girl to accept a hug from her.

The Invisible War of the Congo

My Semster Reflection Blog

One thing I learned this year was how the Tutsis were treated in Rwanda. Before we learned about the Rwandan genocide, I didn’t have a clear thought of what genocide actually was. I thought it was just a fancy word for being in a war. But it isn’t anything like that. The Tutsi’s were killed slowly and painfully just for who they were. Even if their relatives were Hutu they would still be killed. And the Hutus killed each other if they were helping the Tutsis. But what really showed me a clear picture of how the Tutsis were treated was in the movie Hotel Rwanda. When Paul and one of his workers were driving to get food and the road was very bumpy but they don’t know why because it was so foggy. And when they got out of the van to see what it was. Paul fell into hundreds of bodies of dead Tutsis that were left all over the road and were falling into the river on the side. Tutsis weren’t treated as if they were even human beings.
Another thing I learned was that myths aren’t just made up stories that have no correct information. Most myths did originate from a logical story that at one time was probably true. Making up our own myths in group helped me understand it a lot better. I had to write a myth about where the Earth came from. So my group’s myth was that two planets met on an online dating site, then had Earth. And the Sun watches over the Earth because the Sun is what gives us light and warmth.
I learned how to become a better write from the endless revisions we did to our weekly papers, such as the Iran paper, China paper and Our First Day Paper. I thought at first that I did a really good job writing them because I spent so much time on them. But as we started revising I learned that my resources were horrible and my support didn’t really make that much sense or didn’t relate. I learned how to use action words in my papers to make it seem like the reader is actually there. And when writing a paper you have to either pick past tense or present tense and to always have correct punctuation.
Blogs taught me how to write without a topic given to me. It showed me that you can write about almost anything and if you have a topic given to you, how much detail you can put into four hundred words. Writing seems fun after writing blogs because it doesn’t just have to be about school topics. In the free write blogs I’ve written I got to write about plans for the weekend, homecoming, cheer, my birthday, Christmas and things that interest me.
Learning about South Africa taught me how colonization can affect the people living in places. When the British started colonizing in South Africa it was almost like they kicked the Zulus and other tribes out of their homes and forced them to go north. And when they did they got kicked out again by the Boers. Unnecessary battles killed tons of people. The Zulu people thought that if they shared with the British then the British would share with them. But the British seemed to be careless for any people there but themselves. It showed me a different perspective on colonization and why some people are still colonizing today.