"Harrison Bergeron" Answers

1) I absolutely disagree. After reading the story, it seems to me that when everybody is equal, the world is more darker than it is now. No one is allowed to dance ballet so gracefully, so that anyone who can't dance ballet won't feel envious. No one is allowed to look beautiful, so that anyone who aren't beautiful won't feel envious. There's a reason why a ballerina dances so gracefully and it's because they have talent. If they didn't have talent, they wouldn't be where they are. There's a reason why a person looks so beautiful and it's because they were born that way. You can't just change a way a person looks unless they want to. No one in this world is allowed to be better than anyone else, and that brings people down. We're supposed to be helping each other. In this world, no  one is successful. You can't achieve your goals if you can't go up and beyond. I, for one, would not enjoy my life at all.

2) My laws would be:

• Everyone in a same kind of house. Each house would be painted the same and designed the same. Just the numbers on the house was different. 
• Everyone would wear the same kind of clothes. They only could wear long pants, a T-shirt, a knitted sweater, a baseball cap, and a pair of old tennis shoes. 
• No one is allowed to wear make-up to look pretty. 
• Everyone has to have the same technology. Same computer brand, and cell phone brand. (No ipods)
• Everyone's education had to be the same. 
• No one was allowed to work out to make their bodies look perfect. 

3) I would ask for some volunteers of people to help these people learn and whatever they can to be the same as the rest of us.

4) I can see that not many people would like it. Many people would try to start a revolution like what Harrison wanted. If someone was smarter than another, it doesn't mean that making them equal would mean putting a metal radio in the smart person's ear and sending an extremely loud noise every twenty seconds is the answer. We should help and teach the person that isn't as smart.
    I, as a citizen, probably wouldn't do anything much about it, mostly because I'm a coward and wouldn't dare to stand up to the H-G men myself such as Harrison.

5) Since there's such a big population of people all over the world, to me it seems almost impossible to get everyone equal. Maybe it amy seem possible, but it'd take a whole lot of energy and a whole lot of time to get that done. But I'd say that human nature would make sure that some people would evetually dominate others. If the world was all equal, then eventually everyone would get bored and something random would happen.

6) I didn't feel similar to any of the characters in the story, but George reminded me a lot of my 17 year old brother, Cody. My brother always sounded smarter than I was, well he IS smarter. It also reminded me from my experience that I used to be ballerina during my elementary years back in California. My instructor always told us to point our toes and make every move graceful. She always said to smile at our recitals so we would look pretty.

Advertisement Homework

1) Advertisements influence consumption by making us buy their product. Advertisements exist to make us do something; to buy their product. Which uses up materials and things that we don't need that ends up in landfills, causing consumption on to Earth.

2) No, because advertisements on billboards, TV, websites, newspapers, etc, only say the positive things about the product. The people who are trying to make us buy the product only say good things because if they list the negative things, we probably won't buy it.

3) Yes, because whatever we get is because of a celebrity or it looks cool, etc. If it's a celebrity, people want to be like them and they make us think that if we buy it, it makes us cool. Or maybe the way they show the commercial like in the "Lucky Charms" cereal. It's all magical, sparkly, and the kids think it gives you luck, making the kids want to buy it.

Examples of Sustainable Developments

1) start using solar energy for any electric usage.
2) use heat generation by power plants.
3) change gasoline to cooking oil.
4) start using recylced things.
5) turn off any electricity that we're not using
6) same goes with unplugging things, so we're not wasting energy.
7) instead of riding motorbikes and cars, walk.
8) save water by turning the faucet low.

"The Two Countries I Call Home" - Immigration/Migration Assessment

Darlene Nguyen 8p1
The Two Countries That I Call Home
My name’s Darlene Nguyen and I was given birth in California, United States. As you see, I’m half Vietnamese because of my last name. My parents are both from Vietnam and they immigrated to California to have a better life and thought it was better for us. Unfortunately, we had to move back to Vietnam in 2008. I had to move back here for push factors because my dad often comes back here for his jewelry business that he opened up about a few months ago in 2007. He didn’t want to waste money anymore by fleeing back and forth. Also, he thought that living in the US was boring, having nothing to do, while in Vietnam he had many friends and things made him busier. I’m half glad and half not glad about the external migration. I was pretty shocked when my parents didn’t tell me about the movement. I actually found out that we were moving from the amazingly, large stack of posters faced down on the table. My parents weren’t home yet when I walked home from school and when I walked in, the papers were sitting on the table. I was curious, like always, and took a sheet and immediately saw pictures of parts of our house on the top and along the side of the page. I quickly skimmed through the description, noticing that someone is describing our house. Then, I saw at the bottom was a picture of a man named George Wong. I couldn’t believe that my parents wanted us to settle in Vietnam.
Moving to this region wasn’t much of a big problem for me. Since it’s partially my homeland, I visited this country every winter break. Some positive things about going to a new place are that it could be much more different than the place that we lived in before. Sometimes different things are a good thing because you can learn what you have in common with them and what you don’t. Also, buying things is very affordable here, when you calculate between the dollars and the Vietnamese money. A negative thing about going to a new place may be that you won’t be fully adapted to the country for a while. I felt like an outskirt coming to a new school. But also leaving my country could affect the relationships I have, such as the friends I have made. We haven’t interacted with each other for two years, until one of them found me on “facebook” in the summer of 2010. I was really ecstatic when I found them and wanted to catch up but things have changed and we’re not immature like before. Also I leave my whole family back there with all the cousins, uncles, aunts, and grandparents. Although I’ve known them all my life, it wouldn’t be weird hanging out with them because I’m comfortable with them and I come back to visit them every winter break. A positive effect about leaving the country may be that we could make new friends and meet my 4 cousins that still live here. Overall, I’m okay with my parent’s decision of relocating where we live. Moving to an urban area like this isn’t necessarily pleasant, but it makes me feel like there are people everywhere and it keeps me company. Either way, California will always be my home and so will Vietnam.

A Message From Mother Nature?

• The main point of the article is that most of the natural disasters such as flooding, record-breaking heat waves, and earthquakes have global warming to blame. 
• --------
• Weather is a condition that happens over a short period of time such as rainy, snowy, hot, etc on a particular day. Climate is the average weather over a long period of time of a location over a season. 
• Some examples of extreme weather was the floods in Pakistan, the heat wave in Russia, and the some record-breaking heat waves in the eastern part of the United States. 
• I haven't experienced extreme weather conditions yet, just maybe mini earthquakes that you can't feel in your sleep in California but that's it.
• Perception means what you think, feel, or understand about somethings. 
• My perception of global climate change is that all of these floods, and heat waves, fast climate changes are all because of global warming. Well, global warming is happening because of us. Because of us polluting the air with our cars and factories, we send carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And once the sun's rays hit the earth, it stays in the earth and heats up the world.

Map Assessment: 5 Themes of Geography

Region
My world is called "Darlene's Paradise." It's most definately the home of the jewels. My region is a bunch of lands that formed perfectly together like a puzzle and has united to become the land full of jewels. It's like the olden days when people had to mine underground. I'm not sure if people still do that, but I'm guessing they do, just in a safer way. Because where do we keep getting our gold from? Underground x).

Location
Every single country is all very similar to the others. Each location has similar names, just different ways of titling it. Such as "World of Jewels" and "Bling Bling Empire." They are quite similar, still around the category of attraction, sparkles, and dazzling, etc.

Movement
According to "Darlene's Paradise", people all over in every country is moving, and trying to escape from the man named Hablaga and his minions. This man is very evil and powerful and he's been robbing the cities with most jewels. He's been to every country except "Heart of Paradise." So thousands of people travel to "Heart of Paradise" to all gang up on Hablaga and his minions and if they have the chance, kill them as well. They want him to return all of the jewels and become one of them... peaceful and loving. But if he refuses, the people will destroy his gang AND have back all the jewels. But some people disagree and say that there's a chance that they might give up their lives. So some stay put in their country.

Human-Environment Interaction
Over thousands of years, people in "Darlene's Paradise" found seeds that make trees called "The Gold Maker". It means that when you put this seed into the ground and water it every day, as it grows into a huge tree about 9 meters high, instead of apples growing, it'll be gold. Every two month there'll be gold 20 gold pieces that fall from the tree. People are living around it so, when 20 gold pieces fall, those people have to try and catch them. Whoever catches them, keeps them, but whoever doesn't, has to wait another two months. Every country has two of these trees and that country is responsible for growing them. If that country is lazy, then plastic jewelry will fall down, but it is no use because people won't buy them. After a few years when the tree dies, the government plants another one in another area in the country for others to have a chance.

Place
South of the "Heart of Paradise" is *Darlene's Spectacular Palace*. Every year on March 12 - March  31 is the time when EVERYONE is "Darlene's Paradise" goes to the palace to worship Darlene :) March 12 was also when she was born. The statue of Darlene is made of crystal diamonds and the walls of the palace is made of pure gold. There are also designs on the side of Darlene's poses made of topazes, rubies, emeralds, pearls, amethysts, onyxes, and violets. It was fact that Darlene was the queen of "Darlene's Paradise" and she would make everyone happy by giving out jewelry. It was a happy world for everyone, which was why EVERYONE had to come and give thanks to her.