Rebutal to Tony's post on DNA alteration

       I decided to make a rebutal on Tony's thoughts about DNA altering. Here's the qoute.

Parents should not be allowed to change their children DNA because there would be insufficient resources, it is unsafe, goes against some religions, and would split the human race into super humans and humans.

       There's a few things I disagree with here. The first one is when Tony talks about DNA going against some religions. Religion is not very good evidence to go against changing DNA. I think that there are also some religions that would have no problem with altering DNA. So don't bring religion into debates unless you're arguing about something that concerns religion.
       Another thing is the superhuman thing. How would altering DNA mean that people would become super humans. Altering DNA would probably just include stuff on hair color, eye color,or other small things like that. I'm not sure that making changes in DNA would mean that humans would have super strength or other things like that. It would probably be just small things on the human body. So super humans would probably not exist unless DNA alteration was greatly advanced over a long period of time.
       I also don't know how this would lead to insufficient resources. It would still be one person, no matter how much their DNA is changed.So would they eat a lot more or something like that?

Writing Prompt

             Celie's letters to God say many things about her beliefs. For one thing, she never asks God for advice by saying "What should I do?" or How should I...", so maybe she lacks certainty about God and whether he exists or not. She might just feel like she needs someone to talk to. Kind of like how people have private journals and or private diaries. Maybe she doesn't believe in God that much, and she just uses his name in place of Diary or Journal or something like that.  If she wants to believe in him, then maybe Celie thinks that she will start believing him by saying "Dear God". She never says for (so far anyway) that she prays for a better life or that she prays to see Nettie or her child, or anything like that.

"Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know what is happening to me." (p. 1)

            Celie asks God for a sign to know what's happening to her. She might have asked for a sign for a different reason in her letter. Possibly the real reason she asked for God to give her a sign is to find out if he is real or not. She might want to believe, but might just be having a hard time believing. Though maybe writing things down like this is her way of praying and she writes better than she speaks.
           Or, my last theory on why she writes  her "Dear God" letters is because she wants someone to find them. Possible people are her sister Nettie, her husband Mr. ______, her father, or maybe someone else that turns up in the story that abused her, made her life hard, or played some sort of significance in her life. If one of these people found them, then they would feel remorse and if Celie had a child that she loved, then everyone else would take care of him or her to pay their respects to Celie. Whatever it is, she probably doesn't believe in God, however much she wants to. She probably believes in him at the end of the story, or believes in something because the dedication page is "To the Spirit".

Debate: Opening Statement; How can we avoid Terrorism?

            Terrorism is like a grudge. People sometimes carry grudges against old enemies. Nations sometimes carry grudges against other nations. Grudges lead to hate, hate leads to a want for revenge, a want for revenge leads to plotting it, and plotting it leads to carrying it out. This is the future of terrorism.
           Terrorism lead to the war in Iraq, and more terrorist attacks against other nations will lead to more wars. Then the world will be full of ruin, despair, poverty, violence, and fear. When that happens, there will be nothing left to fight over. Grudges will remain held with other nations and there will only be war.
          There's only one way to prevent this from happening. Peace must be made with other nations. I found a quote from a website called commondreams.org.

" If you want other people to be nonviolent, you first have to be nonviolent. Renounce every trace of violence in your heart and your life. Adopt the wisdom and practice of active nonviolence, as Gandhi and Dr. King taught. Beg the God of peace for the gift of peace. Join your local peace and justice group. Stand up publicly for an end to war. Let your life be disrupted, and take a new, nonviolent risk for disarmament. Create new cells of active nonviolence. Embrace the religious roots of nonviolence. Study and teach the wisdom of nonviolence. Resist your local military and government violence. Stop business as usual, government as usual, media as usual, war as usual and demand peace, justice, and disarmament for the whole world, now. Announce the vision of a new nonviolent world, a disarmed world, a world without war, poverty, injustice or nuclear weapons."               

          Real efforts have to be made. Not the "well we tried" efforts. Don't ask other nations for peace. Tell them that peace is going to happen, because the world will get pretty screwed up if we don't put aside the past and start over. Tell them that this is what were going to do to help, and this is how much we just want to live in a peaceful world. We need to actually help other nations with whatever they need. Give money to the poor places, water and food to the starving and thirsty places, and give medicine to the sick places.Make sure every nation and continent has what they need to survive. How will America pay for it? It turns out America can pay for a lot of stuff if they put their mind to it. Give away some food, water, materials for building, medicines, and whatever else that the U.S. has a surplus of. The other option is to keep saying "we tried" and just let terrorism happen and wait for it to turn into a World War 3. Let it happen even longer and a century from now we'll be in World War 7. That's why we need to stop making plans on how to defend ourselves from threats of terrorism and start making peace with other nations and people alike.
          

           I was looking at some recent posts made, and I saw something that I knew I could write a lot about in 14 minutes on Cristian's blog.

Sometimes it just hits me that we, humans, the animals that have an open consouis and can feel love are the same animals that can a drop a nuke and comit genocide on a people because religious sterotypes. We are the animals that can make industries like Pixar and the Red Cross, but yet, we can also judge someone based on thier skin color or have rich and poor. Well, I think we messed up, big time.

          I was just watching a movie called Food Inc. and when I saw this post, I had to respond. People do these things out of greed. They either want money so they can be rich, or money so they can stay rich. Anything goes to achieve that goal. Killing, scamming, stealing, everything. On that movie, it shows the founders of McDonald's. They make everyone do only one job like putting lettuce on or something like that, so they don't have to pay employees much. Then they use the rest of the money for more Mcdonald's places and more products.
         Another thing on that movie is that a lady with a son had three hamburgers, and in 2 weeks, he died. The lady pleaded his case, and went through all this stuff in more than 1 month to see the owner of the company. The kept making sure they never saw her or never met her, because if it got out they would lose their company that wasn't even doing well. On top of that 2 more kids died from their products with the same disease that came from the burgers. The company denied it.
       

        This is part of my quickwrite in Mr. Sutherland's class on spirits. I also added examples that I thought of in books and reality. I said that spirits are emotions like happiness, anger, revenge, and so on that can control you in a way, like impulses and choices on split-second decisions. I have many examples that they are true.           
          In the book Unwind, one character named Conner had some problems that he talks about. He would often get in fights for no reason at all because there would be too much noise. He would just turn around and beat someone up.
          Another example (though I'm not entirely sure it's a true example) is the main character from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Inn, Christopher. I didn't read the book, but from some of the discussions I heard, Chris couldn't control his emotions and didn't know how to deal with them. That could be because he has so many spirits in him and they are all happening at once, so that he doesn't know what to do.
          Possibly even some people who have anger-management issues have a lot of anger spirits in them. You could call those spirits demons I suppose, and maybe things like meditation or that whole take a deep breathe stuff tames them in a way. Maybe some people write in journals ore diaries because they can think about their thoughts and know how they really feel. Kind of like with siblings are angry at each other and say "I hate you", then they probably don't mean it. Saying that, like swearing and yelling and punching stuff, lets out anger. Also things like being distraught and not eating or doing things that keep you unhealthy are ways of the spirits that have sadness show emotion. That's all I can think right now. I might think of some other examples.

Elite Colleges

            Recently, there was a debate on elite colleges and whether or not they help you to be better in life(at the website Room For Debate). Some of these debate responses were convincing and pursuasive, others weren't so good at telling me otherwise. One of these really convincing debate posts was titled "What You Do v.s. Where You Go" by Martha O'Connell. She really had an interesting post on elite colleges and she put in things that I didn't even know. One of them was that some celebrities were dropouts but ended up being rich and famous and have the most brilliant minds. These people include Steven Steilberg and Bill Gates. Both of them are very rich and famous, and they were dropouts. Most people would think that they went to some college that would be really selective and elite and expensive. Usually when I think of those kinds of colleges, I think of big chances of getting accepted into jobs that will make you rich and famous in whatever job you pursue. Another thing that Martha said that was surprising to me was,

"Researchers found that students who applied to several elite schools but didn't attend them -- either because of rejection or by their own choice -- are more likely to earn high incomes later than students who actually attended elite schools."

          This qoute in Martha's speech surprised me. I can see why this would happen though. If you want to just go to a good college like Harvard or something, then you think, "Oh, I graduated from Harvard, so I'm smart and can get any job I want". There's that versus someone who really knows their stuff and went to a community college. The second person would probably get more money and a way better job, and easier raises.
            The debator with the least pursuasive argument was Anthony P. Carnivale's Access to Money and Power. Sure, it had a few strong points in it, but the one thing that I caught was that he said,

"The elite colleges are increasingly white and affluent. The least selective four-year colleges and community colleges are increasingly home to disproportionate concentrations of low-income students as well as African-American and Hispanic youth."

             What Carnevale said was like a loophole in a contract. It was that one sentence that means either a lot of elite colleges are racist, or if they know these kids are wealthy, then they might demand money right at that time and no loans. But either way, that slims the chances of someone who really has potential for something, like a latino Bill Gates or a black Steven Steilberg. Because it is what you do, and not where you go.