We have been hearing more and more about fracking lately, as a possible solution to end our foreign oil dependency. What exactly is fracking some might ask. Fracking in its most basic terms is a drilling process that involves pumping a mixture of chemicals and water down a hose and into the earth where it produces cracks in a shale base and the gas is then allowed to flow to the surface where it is then stored. This is a very controversial process and lately there has been much more support for fracking and it has been making some advances in legislation as the article states. However, is this process actually the best way for America to end our foreign oil addiction. In the documentary we watched in class, “Gasland”, we learn of the potentially fatal consequences fracking can bring about for an area where there is an abundance shale that holds methane. In the video Josh Fox interviews a man that lives near a fracking site and now his tap water is flammable but the gas fracking company denies that there isn’t anything wrong with it. This for me raises my suspicions of how beneficial this process will actually be for us. If it is going to pollute many water sources and land near each fracking site and when there is an area as big as the Marcellus Shale basin, we have to think about how much land and water is going to be wasted. One thing that shocked me is that the article is entitled “Fracking Insiders Score Big in New Gas Bill, But Americans Not Told the True Costs of Massive Drilling Plan” but it doesn’t mention anything about the negative aspects that fracking can have on both the environment and the people that live near the fracking sites. I believe that this needs to be brought to light when bills like the “Pickens Plan” is being debated in congress. If people are not aware of this situation when these plans are being debated then we could be heading into a very bad situation in the near future.

I think this article is an interesting one given that religion as played a crucial role in almost any country in the world through out history. One major example of this would be the country we live in right now, the United States of America. One of the reasons this country was started was because the people of Europe were being forced to follow the same religion as the king and they just were not having that and next thing you know here we are present day, in one of the most religiously diverse country. We have all kinds of religious groups, Catholics, Christians, Muslims, Buddists, Scientologists, Atheists, and many many more. I think this article is interesting because these experts are predicting that organized religion will be driven toward extinction in 9 countries, which seems at first to be not that big of a deal. However, if we look at how religion has affected our past then it seems to me that in a world where the most popular religion is no religion, it will be somewhat different than what we are used to now. There is no way of knowing whether it will have a profound effect on the world but it very well could just as being highly religious has had an effect on the way our world has been shaped. A world in which there majority of the people are not religious my be a more peaceful time as you would not have religious conflicts between different groups of people. Such as is happening and has happened in the past. Just recently a pastor burned the Quran and taped himself doing it and put it online. This video sparked a very strong response in Afghanistan where some of the people were so outraged that they took it upon themselves to surround the UN building there and ten people ended up dying as a result. This leads to the question if the world was less religious would things like this still happen? I think the answer would be yes situations like these would still exist but they would possibly happen less frequently than they do now.

This seems just crazy to me 464 juveniles in prison on a life sentence with out the option for parole. After reading the statistics for other countries with juveniles serving life sentences and that we lead the world in the amount of prisoners is just ridiculous. I mean really we have more than double the amount of any other state and about 20 times the amount of the listed countries combined. The next question would seem to be is it really necessary for us to being locking this many kids up and then what are they doing here in Pennsylvania that gets them all locked up.
We then get into the issue of are they actually fully accountable for their actions given that we limit them in so many things that can not do such as it mentions in the article like smoke, drive, join the military, sign contracts, vote, gamble and work under the same conditions as an adult. But once they commit a crime they are immediately considered an adult and receive life sentences with out parole.
Now comes the issue of how much it is costing people to keep these juveniles locked up for their entire life. The figure they provided was $735,750,000. Just think of what could be done with that money. Would we even have to cut the funding for education? Yet for some reason the funding for prisons and correction facilities is going to be increased. This just does not make sense to me. Most of the kids who have received a life sentence without parole may indeed deserve one but also I am sure that out of 464 juvenile delinquents there are some that probably do not deserve a life sentence. Also what about after they are rehabilitated like prisons are supposed to do, do we still keep them in and pay for someone that can very well be a productive and efficient member of society. For me I believe if they have become rehabilitated I see no reason why we should keep locked up and pay for something that is not necessary.

Fear -- is an emotional response to a perceived threat. It is a basic survival mechanism occurring in response to a specific stimulus, such as pain or the threat of danger. Fear can lead an individual to do many things that they might not do in absence of fear. Such as anything from the act of killing to peeing your pants from being frightened. Fear can be a driving force and can be utilized to organize masses of people for both good and bad. Fear has been around ever since the beginning of time. And for most of time the things we have been afraid of have stayed the same. Sure they have progressed from being afraid of not having food for the winter to now a days where afraid of walking down an alley way and being robbed at gun point by an aggressive mugger. But the thing is fear still controls are lives in more ways than most of us even realize. Such as we talked about in class about the statistics of little kids being abducted on their walk to school. When actually it was much safer for them to walk to school within a reasonable distance rather than have their parents drive them. That is because driving within a mile or so of the place where you live is the most dangerous because you are so used to driving their that it is almost like you put yourself on auto pilot and feel like you will never get into a wreck somewhere so close to home. But in reality it is quite the contrary, within a mile or so of your home is the location where you are most likely to get into a car accident. So this leaves the question why not let your child walk to school if it is in reasonable walking distance rather than risk driving them in an area where you are most likely to get into an accident. The reason most likely is that the media has broadcasted almost all of the abduction cases in America and this scares people into believing it happens way more than it actually is. Which leads us back to the whole concept of fear discussed here.

This is a particularly interesting article because what is Michele Bachmann actually targeting Michelle Obama for? Her support for breast feeding infants? I think this is actually a good thing for the government to get involved in because if the tax deductions for breast feeding supplies actually encourage women and families to breast feed their babies which improves there health, why oppose it? And if your argument is “oh the government isn’t the answer to everything,” then why do we provide so many tax breaks for corporations to tread on the side of the governments. Now the government is actually supporting something that can help many Americans out and potentially aid in our fight against obesity. I don’t know it seems like an issue that people shouldn’t be getting up in arms over because of the good that can easily come of this. One quote that gets me “This is very consistent with where the hard left is coming from” said by Michelle Bachmann. That quote to me just seems illogical. Yes the republicans and democrats aren’t going to agree on much of anything but to disagree on an issue like this and criticize the Democrats for trying to do something that will help people be healthy starting from an early age, just shows how people in the government can become so caught up in trying to assert their views that they begin to look past what some of the good things the other side is trying to do. This then leads into the issue of big and small governments and which is better. This makes everything a lot more complicated and even more controversial. So people will say the government needs to not get involved in the everyday lives of its people but then on the other hand people believe that the government can do a lot of good if it intervenes in parts of people’s lives where it can make a difference for the better. I do not know the right answer to this entire question and I am sure out of the whole American population there’s a lot of other people like me that aren’t sure but one thing I think is that this issue of providing tax deductions for breast feeding supplies is not our biggest concern and shouldn’t be because it can actually serve our country well.

This article was a real eye opener to something I always kind of knew already but something I never actually sat down and thought about. Only thirty percent of Americans have a passport out of the 308 million plus citizens in this country as the article stated. That is amazingly low when you actually think about it. That means the vast majority of Americans have never stepped foot out of the United States which in a world were we are starting to do more and more business internationally is quite startling. I mean sure some of those people may think they have a good idea of what other countries are like or what their customs are but yet again what kind of idea do we actually have if we’ve never actually experienced their cultures first hand. What most people see of foreign countries is what they see from different news sources. And with that they are not even painting a well rounded picture for us. We only ever hear of a several things when it comes to other countries such as natural disasters being one and then bad things that occur in a country. Take Egypt as an example. Other than recently with the uprising and overthrow of their government when was the last time we actually heard anything about them. Most Americans probably didn’t even know a single thing that was happening until the most recent issue. This really says something about our culture which we hold so near and dear to our hearts. When it comes to this we really do need to start branching out and help gain more cultural knowledge of other people. This is where I believe that the year between major phases in our lives could bring about many good things for the U.S. Such as it would give many of us college students a lot of good life experiences that could prove to be very helpful in our future careers. Also it would help to bring America closer to other countries because if we we’re able to communicate better with them it would very well help us out and advance our culture.

This is a powerful message for people of any age. This side of life is seldom seen by the public eye despite its potential to help heal many of the people who are in this situation. He begins by first informing the reader of something that most of us probably don’t think about and that is that most people how do take a life, truly do regret what they have done. This I think helps the reader to really understand where this man is coming from even if you don’t agree with what he’s saying. But I feel as if this has definitely enlightened me to at least a different perspective of thinking on this subject. He is giving people life lessons about being accountable for your actions not matter the consequences, even though he is a lifer, which seems life the last place somebody can learn a life lesson from. However, maybe not. Perhaps this is just the right place and we have just been passing over it for all this time. Because weren’t we always told as kids that if you need help with something go to the person that knows the most about that subject, such as if your having trouble with math you would consult you math teacher with the trouble you are having This should be the same way with other things in life but for some reason things change and it just doesn’t happen like that. I really think that this is a great thing that can be utilized by people in this situation to help them overcome the tragedy that has occurred in their life instead of just hiding the problem away and keeping it suppressed.
I think that there can be great strides taken in being able to get this out to the public where it could help so many people. Although it may bring about some controversy I think the only way to overturn a new stone would be to actually talk about what is being said here and take it as valuable information from a situation that none of us ever need to experience.

14, did he really deserve to spend the rest of his life in prison for his one mistake?

This man has an unfortunate story that depicts a lifestyle that is unfamiliar with all of us. Before I even picked to read this story I was browsing through the choices and saw the this certain person had been in jail for 22 years and he is only 36 years old, which made him only 14 at the time he was sentenced. That for me is what got me to read this letter. As I was reading the prelude to the letter it asked to keep in mind the idea of people’s moral compasses and what helps to shape it. Even before getting to what the man had even wrote, I had already been thinking about how his views of right and wrong would differ from mine. But as I read what he was saying his experiences in life were completely different from mine, yet his ideas of good and bad were not far off from what mine are. As of now being only 5 years older than when he was arrested I’ve experienced many things that he can only imagine what they would be like. Such as what it feels like to drive a car, and a major one all of use are going through right now the experience of college. Then I got to the code for which he wants to live his life by and this showed that people could have two incredibly different sets of experiences in life and the outcome for their moral compass is almost the same.
I think he brings up an interesting point when he says, “…prison teaches a person one thing, how to be a prisoner.” It’s something that I would imagine a prisoner saying but yet he says other things such as “I broke the law I deserve to be punished.” I think this man shows that lessons can be learned and prison and that Pennsylvania should rethink the way the have structure their prison system. And lastly to relate to what we talked about in class today was this man actually fully to blame for what happened when he was

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