Next

So I have bben so busy I forgot to start reading my book. I sat down and read 275 pages in one night. It is very interesting even though most of it could never happen at this point in time anyway. I wrote a lot about this in my final paper, but I guess I can talk about it again. Transgenesis is possible, and it happens all the time, but not even close to what they explain in the book. In the book there is an orangutan that swears in different languages, a parrot that does math, and a half man half chimpanzee. The extent of transgenesis at this point is implanting a few genes form one species into an embryo of another species for experimentation puropses. Gene patenting in the book was a little extreme even though they do occur. People can patent genes to prevent people from stealing the credit for any discoveries from them. In the book there are companies litterally feuding over patenting genes. I'm sure this happens to some extent, but not people committing suicide so they wouldn't get caught stealing research from another companies patented gene. The ethical paroblems in this book are enormous. People creating all kinds of unneeded animals just to see if they can. There needs to be reason you do anything in science, and I couldn't find any for any of the experiments that were done in this novel
Katie Zimmer lol :)

Debate

Well debate day was fun! People seemed to know what they were talking about, but only what they had prepared. When they got asked a question that they hadn't prepared for they had no idea how to respond. Mt. Kilomanjaro for example.... and who ate the last frog.... or the poor polar bears having to swim around to find ice.... I think people took the argumentation part a little too seriously. They seemed to put the fun argumentative part ahead of the facts of matter at hand. No one made any headway in their side breaking out for the win. In the end both groups thought they won, which really shouldn't happen if a debate is executed correctly. There should be a clear winner, or at least a slight winner, but it was a complete draw. It was a fun day, but it accomplished nothing, and didn't teach anything. Sad Day :(
Katie Zimmer lol :)

The True Life

So for my final blog I'm going to blog about how extremely dysfunctional these people are on this show called True Life. In the first episode I watched there were three people. One was a senior in high school who has been cast from her family because all she wants to do is be a cheerleader. Another one was a teenage Indian guy who has no talent and honestly believes that he's going to get a record deal before he graduates from high school. The last person was my favorite. She was a 21 year old who still lives with her parents, doesn't have a job, asks her parent's for money, and has the extremely realistic and righteous dream of being a nude model. All of these people fail at the things they are trying to do, and I thought it was hilarious. Basically, it makes me feel really smart that I'm sitting here at college right now writing this blog. I'm not sure, but I think I made a pretty good life choice.

Katie Zimmer lol smiley face:)

NATS

So I missed classes on Friday to go to a voice competition YAY. I love competitions and all, but I don't love the competition aspect of it. I'm sure that makes no sense to you, but it does to me and i'm going to try to explain it to you.

Eight girls from my voice studio went together to this, we all go to hear each other and support each other. We all left Thursday night and spent the night in a hotel. The next morning we all drove to Rock Island Illinois to Augustana College for our voice contest. We all followed each other around and heard everyone perform. Later that day they posted who was in the semi- finals. seven out of the eight made it to the semi-final round. We went out to eat together and helped eat other decipher the judges comments to improve for the next day. My favorite part of that night was seeing how non- competitive we all are. We all just help each other. Most of us were in the same division, so technically we were competing against each other, but we never once thought about it. The next day were the semi's. we all did AMAZINGLY well, but only one of us moved into the final round. We all went to support her in the finals, and she won!!!!

I go to these things because I love to perform, not because I like competition.

I love the girls in my studio, and I love doing competitions with them. I couldn't imagine going through these without my girls and Rosemary.

Katie Zimmer lol :)

Michael Crichton video

SO I liked this video a lot more than the Al Gore one. He also had a bit of a skewed perspective also. Everyone is going to be slightly biased to one side or the other, but I feel he did a much better job of presenting the evidence in a more objective manner.

He presented the opposite views, and I think that it's always a good plan to hear both sides of the argument. In high school we ALWAYS heard the extremely liberal views and that was it. I think that if we had the opportunity to watch both sides of the argument a lot of people would have come out with different views than they did. Isn't that what education is about though, make everyone believe the same way you do or fail them.

Crichton was obviously trying to sway people, it wasn't supposed to be a video to present the facts and have people decide for themselves, but it wasn't nearly as attacking as the Al Gore one.

Katie Zimmer lol :)

Blogging

Yeah prof. Wright, I am doing all of these tonight and tomorrow night because I have no other time to sit down and do these things. I'm skipping out on my other homework to make sure that these are done by Friday. I think that blogging is a good thing, but one per class period is a little excessive in my opinion. Maybe one a week would be better. I know at least for me I just can't seem to find the time to do these without missing something else. I have classes every day, and on tuesday's and thursday when I only have three classes i work and do my homework. It's not just this class though, my German teacher seems to think that this is our only class and so she can WAAAYYY overload us with homework and online quizzes and worksheets and tests every week at least. I understand that we have to cover a lot in one semseter, but NO ONE can get this done in only a 24 hour day. I have to decide every day what is and isn't going to get done. I usually decide to do my German over most other things because we have tests so often. Blogs are the first thing that I cut out from my daily routine because I will just sit down one night and do most of them like i'm doing right now. Also being a music major screws me over with my classes. I have to practice 3 hours every day. 1 hour for every 1/2 our of lessons. I have an hour voice and a 1/2 hour of piano, so that adds up to 3 hours of practice a day. Also being a music maor you ahve to be in at least one of the music groups on campus which for me is Castle Singers. They rehearse Mon- Thurs. 4:45- 6:15 thats another 1 and 1/2 hours cut out of my homework time. I just thought I'd write a blog about blogging in my busy schedule, so you don't just think I'm a lazy procrastinator. I really am trying to keep up with everything including blogs, but i just can't seem to keep up with my blogs and all the rest of my homework.

Ok I'm done whining now, cuz i have more blogs to write
Katie Zimmer lol :)

List of Global warming facts lol

We all know the earth go in cycles of warming and cooling, hence the ice ages, but according to liberal America we are causing the world temperature to drastically increase which is causing the ice caps to melt which will eventually casue global flooding and the displacement of millions of people.
- If this is true why is it that they were worried about global cooling not 30 years ago. That just doesn't add up to me. So 30 years ago we were doing things so differently that we were causing the world to cool down, we changed our evil ways, and now all of a sudden it's getting to hot AHHH.
- If thats true what's happening to all the water that is apparently melting and not re-freezing. If the ice caps are melting and not re- freezing anywhere shouldn't there be enormous flooding already. As far as I'm aware NYC isn't being flooded causing the dispalcement of it's citizens. I know that they measure the melting of the ice, but what if they're just missing the it's re- freezing somewhere else.

I'm not a scientist, and I didn't do any research for this blog, so don't quote me in any papers or anything, but these are just the two HUGE things, that I CAN'T get over. I can't take this "problem" seriously until someone answers these questions to my satisfaction.

Katie Zimmer lol :)