Flying

                This month, a Germanwings flight crashed into the Alps. The CO-pilot of the plane locked the pilot out of the cockpit and slowly descended into the French Alps.  This killed all 144 passengers. Read more here (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32063587)

                This is so unbelievable sad, creepy, and bizarre. The Co-pilot made no contact with anyone and as far as we know, is not a part of any terrorist groups.  The creepiest thing of all, he just sat in a cockpit absolutely calm and silent with hundreds of people screaming as he was killing them all. It is scary that there are people in this world who can kill hundreds of innocent people without any guilt, regret, or thought.

                Flying is a touchy subject; it’s been in the news a lot lately with these missing flights and crashes. People have and are starting to acquire a larger fear to flying. Passengers were afraid there would be a terrorist on their flight.  The national government is afraid of an attack by flying so they have increased security (TSA).  Passengers now are scared that their pilots might turn against them and get them killed. This is a major hit, I felt like the pilot is the one person on the plane I could trust, the one that would look out for everyone on the plane. I won’t be doubting any pilots anytime soon but everyone will probably be a little more careful around their pilots. They shouldn’t have to feel that way, there are thousands of flights daily with thousands of trustable pilots but it just took one for everyone to lose trust in the person who has your life in their hands.  It really makes you want to appreciate and thank the pilots that do their jobs so well.  Pilots have hundreds of lives in their hands and they try their best to make sure we are safe, they shouldn’t be judged, bashed, or hated on just because of one incident. 

NASA

                Now this is a topic where I might begin to rant on so fair warning.   I like this subject and tend to get emotional.

                Science is extremely interesting to me. I love science, its fun interesting, and there is nothing better than learning about our world. Most of all, I love physics. The laws and the world that we discover through math and observations blow my mind sometimes. Science is awesome and our country and world is very determined to learn more science, tons upon tons of resources and a millennium of time have been used to try to unlock the unknown. I want our knowledge as humans to expand so far beyond this world, I want to know all about our universe. In this blog I’m going to discuss how science has been held back and what we can do to not let that happen.

                NASA is a government agency that everyone knows. It works on the deep and dark world outside of ours that is space. The agency has put a lot of people on the moon , taken some of the most beautiful and interesting pictures, help create a giant space station that orbits our planet, sent a robot  to mars to observe the giant red rock, and even sent a manmade object past our solar system. It’s amazing what the agency has done since the beginning of the space race in 1957. NASA has brought humanity a long way but there is still a lot to be discovered.

                Lately though, NASA and humanity has come to a halt on space exploration. After the golden age of space in the 60s, NASA’s budget has been cut severely, extremely severely. From when nearly 4.5% of our government spending was on space exploration in mid-60s, to today when it is at about .5% of our budget. That money is really important to the space industry. Science has been severely cut as well. We could have humans on mars by now and even possibly other planets. That just infuriates me for some reason. This is something I can get really emotion about. To think that we could have been discovering so much more and even gaining more power as a country, but we put space to the backburner and here we are, possibly decades away from setting foot on mars. Exploring our world is natural as humans and just forgetting about it isn’t the right option.

                The budget cuts began occurring in the 70s and lately have begun to increase more and more for many reasons. One is of course the reason we started our space exploration in the first place, competition. That’s right, we can all thank those wonderful Soviets for allowing us explore space. Mountains and mountains of money went into NASA just to beat the USSR, now that they are less competition, we spend less. Although that is the main reason, along with spending being moved to other areas such as our military, there are others. I think another reason is that the next obstacle, Mars, seemed impossible back in that time. Billions and Billions of dollars were spending just trying to get people to the moon and back. Mars is a much heavier task and I think a lot of the moral of our country dropped once we realized, the next step won’t be any easier. Reaching the Moon seemed impossible, it was so far away. Mars is about 150 times farther from Earth than the Moon, which is a lot farther away.

                I want the budget for NASA to increase greatly. I want to see us hit Mars and use our intellect to our full potential. There are a lot smart people in this world who want to see humans go beyond home and conquer the great unknown, we just need the resources to do it. I’m fine with taking out a few billion in national defense, which by the way is 57% of our federal budget. Take a few giant unneeded tanks and put them into the NASA budget, we could see a major increase of breakthroughs in the space world. We could unlock the unknowns of our universe, whatever it is. 

Rooftops

                                This is a quick post.  France has created a new law this month. This law requires that all new buildings must be built with to have either solar panels or plants on their roof.  Read more here (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/20/france-decrees-new-rooftops-must-be-covered-in-plants-or-solar-panels).

                This is an incredible idea and is just what you dream about. It’s what you see in all those cool futuristic utopia books.  With this law being passed in France that story is now coming true. France is taking steps, such as this, to make sure our world is clean and efficient. Other motions such as making public transit free which helps to cut the amount of cars on the road and making use of nuclear energy could make pollution in France non-existent. Here in the US, I feel we need to start implementing these types of steps.  Pass a few laws, even a few small ones, to help make our society cleaner. It may cost money, which seems to always be in short supply but I feel making our world a clean and wonderful place is important and I’m glad France has started making these steps to become a clean utopia.  

Iran

                The Persian Empire ruled and it dominated for a long time. It has probably been one of the most stable regions in the Middle East. When Muslim reform took over, diplomatic issues arouse, specifically conflict between the United States, Israel, and Iran. If you’ve seen Argo, which I would highly recommend as it is one of my favorite movies, you would know about the American hostages jailed in Iran. These, along with other incidents, have led to the United States and Iran to not really like each other that much.

                This week, the Obama administration has made deals with Iran to become better friends and prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. This is a tricky situation to me like everything else going on in the Middle East. Iran is a loose cannon, they have leaders that could very much be going against everyone. Trying to make friends with them could lead to some serious problems. I feel like Obama kind of just settled with the deal made (more here http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/03/politics/white-house-congress-iran-nuclear-deal/). This is a very sticky situation and settling is a bad idea.  Nuclear weapons in unstable countries like Iran are not good. Look at Israel who is being extremely war-mongering because they have nuclear weapons and aren’t afraid to use them.  Countries like this shouldn’t have a nuclear arsenal and we should do everything in our power to not let that happen. We can’t settle. 

Israel

                Israel is the hot spot of all the fighting in the Middle East. It’s the source of religious hate and aggression. For thousands of years, like the rest of the Middle East, Israel has been fought over and fought over and fought over. Two religions, Jews and Muslims now want to call this place home due to their history. The Jews claimed the land after coming back to their homeland at the end of World War 2. Ever sense, the Jews and Muslims who previously resided their and called it home have been basically at all-out war for the past 60 years.  If you haven’t look at any news for the past few years, you can look at more recent events and history here. I’m going to give my point of view and of course maybe a way to solve all of our problems, which is probably impossible.

                So first of all, I know that these two sides have been duking it out for a very long time.  They’ve had their history and over time they’ve grown to hate each other so much. Along with the extreme hate towards each other, they’re also angry with everyone else in this world.  Each group being oppressed has led to a toxic and dangerous hate all across the world. All these terrible emotions being bottled into this little piece of land about the size of New Jersey is a bad thing. The hate won’t ever go away, the way the Israeli government is treating Palestine and the attacks on the Israeli government is making things worse. I feel like nothing is going to change, emotions are too high and the only way for and end through war is a full scale invasion of Palestine. Millions of lives would be lost and along with just that country, other nations around the world would join in the fighting and maybe just causing all-out war around the world. We don’t want that, nuclear weapons have somewhat helped prevent that but having an invasion in Israel could have serious consequences. The scary part is this could very much happen. The leaders of Israel seem very aggressive and not afraid to send the whole world into chaos.  

                I feel like the only solution that sounds okay is the impossible one. The world needs to band together, find a way to work out the problems without causing mass destruction. Making Israel a neutral international state sounds like the perfect idea but that won’t happen, there is too much hate on that land fueled by thousands of years of oppression and war.

The Middle East

                Known as the powder keg of the world, the Middle East causes tensions everywhere. The fighting never stops and due to different relationships with countries, the whole world is involved. Throughout history, the Middle East has been fighting. There has always been fighting and I feel like there will always be fighting. We’ve had the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Egyptians, Romans, Arabs, and Turks rule these lands and the list goes on and on and on. All these nations fought and battle; the sand of the Middle East is red with blood of millions of people fighting. It won’t stop and sooner or later things could get worse.

                Religion seems to be the thing that causes all these wars. Along with religion, we see oil, differing cultures, interpretations of religion, and diplomacy with other countries playing a role in all the fighting in The Middle East. All these factors have led to not just war between two nations but an extremely complex and confusing war between different groups and terrorism and everyone. Different rebel groups and many governments make the Middle East an impossible place to create boundaries, especially boundaries everyone can agree on. It’s a giant mess, in the Middle East, and fixing it doesn’t seem possible.

                Now let’s talk about our country and US influence in the Middle East. We, like every other country in the world, have major influence and are the puppet masters of what goes on in the Middle East. Other powerful countries such as Russia, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom also take part in this battle for power in the Middle East. We’ve been in many wars in the Middle East, spending billions of dollars to keep the country’s interests protected. 9/11 is of course what started our major influence in the Middle East.  We sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan leaving with almost nothing to show for it. The Middle East is a black hole for lives, money, and diplomacy; you can put in a lot but get almost nothing in return. The reason we stay in is oil. Oil runs our country and everywhere in the Middle East is full of it. Do we get out what we put in though? We spend billions and billions of dollars trying to be friends with countries like Saudi Arabia when all we get out of it is 13% of our oil supply. 13% isn’t that much and I’m not sure if it’s worth millions of lives just for some oil and not even that much.

                There is the question of course, that if we don’t intervene, what would be different? Would it be the same or would the Middle East be home for terrorists? I think we would be a lot safer if we just stayed out of affairs in the Middle East. Defend our own country will make our world better than trying to stop a force (terrorism) that will always be present. Terrorism can’t just lose too many battles then lose the war and disappear, they will always be present and antagonizing them will be bad for everyone. Terrorist groups wouldn’t hate us and a lot less people would die. America needs to realize that being a police force, although good at times, can be a very bad thing.  

The Lies

                The court is a place were supposedly people don’t lie. You place your hand on the book and you say the oath, promising you won’t do it. Yet so many people lie and become deceptive while on the stand. There is a term for it, Perjury. Telling a lie to the jury happens all the time and it can totally ruin someone’s life and change the outcome of a decision in court.

                Eye witness testimonies and others like it are huge factors when deciding a case. If someone says they say you kill someone, you will likely be tried for murder and possibly convicted just on the one piece of evidence. It is scary that someone has to the power to false convict you of a crime you have never done quite easily. Eye witness testimonies should really have little to zero influence on a case because someone can lie too easily. People cannot have the power to just ruin someone’s life by putting them in jail by just telling a single lie. Sure there is charges against those who do lie in the court room, but how many times have people actually been caught lying? I don’t feel like it happens very much.

                False testimonies also can have a large effect based on generalizations. We have heard it from the Ferguson case and many others, some people are treated unfair and as less in the courtroom than others. In our society, a nice white girl can just say a minority did a crime and a lot of people would believe her. Society has put generalizations on certain groups of people and it isn’t fair at all. Lying and cheating the court room is so much easier if you fit the right demographics. Juries should be totally colorblind, have no preference to gender, and not look at the wealth of a person but we all know that isn’t the case. I feel like setting up some sort of blind system where the jury does not know about the victim or the criminal’s background and demographics. IT seems like the only way right now to make court fair. Our country is devoted to everyone having equal rights but discrimination and generalizations occur, even without us knowing it. So I feel the best way to stop the bias in the courtroom is to make everyone blind to the things that do not matter.