let's get MAD up in this joint!

Let's get down to the brass tacks of what MAD was and how it benefitted or put us at a disadvantage in the cold war. MAD was essentially stood for Mutually Assured Destruction. Which essentially meant that if we were to send nuclear missiles at the enemy, we would have to literally destroy all of them or else they would respond with equal or greater force in order to try and destroy us. Hence the destruction part. The Mutually assured part was that our president and the enemies president agreed that this would happen if either side were to attack. So essentially this was a good thing because it basically assured that no side would get hurt, because attacking the enemy would almost definitely mean that your country was to get hurt too, and no one wanted that. A con of this would be, if one side were to attack (for any foolish reason) millions of people would die. So after that both sides were hiding their weapons in submarines and silo's in order to have a chance to rebuttal the attack if they were to be attacked.

It's A New Day, A New Dawn, A New Life, And A New World! the 80's

Jeez, the 80's was very, very hectic. At the start of the 80's everyone was extremely gloomy, due to the problems in the 70's and the aftermath of those problems. Like stagflation, or the Vietnam war and those who opposed it. So it was not a good start for the people who lived in the 80's, but it gets worse! President Reagan thinks it's a good idea to reduce funding in welfare programs (to fix the inflation). So he's basically screwing over the poor people and they're already having a tough enough time. They were sorta dependent on those programs... Another fun addition to the gloomy 80's was DRUGS! YES I LOVE EM. Crack cocaine was all the bad effects of cocaine in a cheap parmesan cheese looking block. Gave you a short high and all the addiction with some stronger side effects. It turned addicts into predators because they needed to get their fix or else they'd be in a state of withdrawal, and well, no one wants that... It got so bad that drug dealers were actually admired, because of the wealth and power they obtained among the neighborhoods. Let's get into some business.  Corporate raiders were the exact opposite of a man's or should I say business's friend. They'd buy a business to sell off all their products, materials etc for more profit, disregarding the people working there or how much time and effort it took to build up the company; But I mean in business you gotta do what you gotta do. One last big gloomy and extremely scary thing that was focused on was AIDS. A disease that would drop people like flies. Originally no one knew where it came from. Soon it was found out that it most commonly is found among the gay community. Of course the people shunned them for a while. So everyone was on high alert for gays and people who had aids because no one knew how it was contracted, and it would kill you with in a short period of time if you had it so, it was sort of a predator vs. prey scenario. Sadly the 80's had a lot of down sides and gloomy moments, but it'll get better... right?

Annnnnddd it's the 90's deal with it.

Well, today we started a documentary on the 90's! It's in the past so it's actually considered history, cray right? We started in class to talk about what famous things that the class knew about the 90's. Like the Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air, or Vanilla Ice, or the Persian Gulf War. The Persian Gulf War was a bigger focus in the documentary and it just talked about how we fighting war, in a whole different perspective. We were fighting with predominantly more technology. More efficiency, bigger, better, faster stronger. They gave an interesting face like only about 140 American soldiers died in this war, just due to the super advanced tech that we had. Then of course their aren't wars without presidents. So we started to talk about how President Bush (the first one) was very out of date, and not getting with the recession. So of course soon to be President Bill Clinton out shined Bush in every way. He was hip, light on his feet when it came to questions that were shot at him, he was very active; and just so much more appealing than Bush. Sadly with all good things, there's most likely a "downside" Clinton wasn't too faithful to his wife, which caused a lot of controversy. Sadly our juicy history ended there when the bell rung, but to be continued next time...!

Lets Move Into The Movement!

The 1960's was the decade of movement. Women wanted to be independent. They wanted to be able to work. They didn't want to be always relying on their husbands. They wanted to be able to provide for themselves. They wanted to work for as long as they liked for whatever reason they wanted. They wanted to be able to have control over their own body. What that eluded to was birth control. They wanted to be able to choose whether or not they themselves could have a baby. They didn't want to have it where their husband was choosing for them. They didn't want a life where their spouse was the one controlling whether or not they could have a kid, or have their own bank account, or where they had to be stay in mothers who cleaned or cooked. Other movements that proceeded the women's right's movement included the free speech movement, the farm worker movement, gay rights movement, and many many more. Of course with all this change, some people may not agree with it all. In comes the rise of the conservative party (those who didn't like all the change). They wanted to put a stop to all these movements. They wanted to stay in the past with all the suppression of all the minorities. They didn't like what was changing and they wanted to keep to what they had. Essentially the conservatives did not really get their way, but they really did not like all the change going on.

Nuclear BOMB simulation!

On Wednesday at the end of class, Mr. Stewart told us we would be doing a simulation. Since my group is usually the "shady", and fun seeking group we were ecstatic to find out we had a simulation waiting for us. Essentially the simulation was trying to simulate how difficult it was to make a Nuclear Bomb. The way Mr. Stewart simulates this is by first he gave every group, components to a flashlight. Our group got the batteries, others got the lightbulb, etc. We had to trade components or make deals of some sorts to try and gain all the components of our flashlight or the "bomb". We had to announce when we were going to test our bomb to the whole class, so that others could see if our "bomb" worked. The twist is, some of the components that were given, didn't actually work. So I think this was to simulate not everyone got it right on their first try, and maybe they got some of the pieces wrong; Or they did actually just have bad parts. Of course our group got all the components first, using our shady ways... but not all of our components worked to fulfill it's purpose. For being shady to other groups those who finally built their "Nuclear Bomb" nuked us immediately.

CUBAAAAAAAAAAAa

Today in class we started talking about Cuba. We talked about how Fidel Castro came into power and started to screw everything up. He was a total dictator, who was executed civilians, he was a just not a good leader. Castro then nationalized American holdings in Cuba. In response President Eisenhower cut Cuba's sugar market by 95%; and he recruited Cuban exiles to the CIA to burn sugar cane fields in Cuba. Since we were still in the Cold War against the USSR anything that was unpleasant to the US the USSR was right behind it. So Cuba was a big unpleasantry, and of course the USSR supported and helped Cuba with it's tomfoolery. That's about all we got to in the video. But essentially at this time, we were not very fond of Castro, Cuba, or the USSR.

The 1930's :(

On Wednesday (1/13/15) we watched a video and filled out notes on life in the 1930's. Essentially it consisted of a lot of depressing time, what people did to try and cope and like what everyone tried to do to recover. A way some people coped with the depression for a few hours was going to see a movie. Motion pictures were a new thing and for a good .15$ you could get a few hours away from the depressing 1930's and get some good fun. After the movie and the news ended, they had to go back to the depression and back to the sadness. Another way the people coped was the radio, it was like our tv now, they broadcasted movies (just sound) and it kept people happy for as long as it ran for. The depression hit ordinary people extremely hard. Those who worked most likely lost their jobs, and those with families could no longer really provide for them, everything from shelter to food... Banks failed, so everyone lost their money, unless you took your money when their still was money to give out. The people blamed themselves for the depression because they felt like they didn't work hard enough, when in reality it was bound to happen. People moved to Germany because they thought communism sounded cool after they lost all their money... spoiler, it was pretty bad over there too. But President Roosevelt came to the rescue, and loaned out 2 billion to the banks, started making jobs to give the people purpose. But we didn't finish all the documentary... so more to come later!!

Child Care In The Bay Area (Reflection)

This presentation really was interesting and informative. Since I never paid for my preschool out of pocket I never really noticed how much it actually was. They can go even higher than  High Schools. Yes i understand that Preschool is a shorter period of time than a High School is, but still it's ridiculous that those schools would charge so much just for small children around the ages of 2-3. I agreed with their claim that children should have a chance a good education without having to pay so much money. So I am for what they proposed and that it shouldn't be a battle of who has more money will get a better education, the system should be, everyone gets the same chance, and then what they chose to do with that chance is on them.

School Funding Presentation and others!

Yesterday, we commenced our dreaded muckraking project presentations. All in all, everyone was very confident talking in front of the class. Everyone seemed like that at least had an idea of what they were talking about, nobody came without something to share. My group started off and we talked about school funding in the bay area and how it was very different throughout the bay area. Our school uses Basic Aid to get extra money from property tax and large donators to stay afloat. Other schools however do not have these privileges. After we finished our presentation Mr. Stewart asked some good clarifying questions that really opened up a lot of questions and a good discussion started. He then proceeded to call the next group, and then rinse and repeat with every other group. Overall every group did a good job in getting their point across which was the overall goal of the assignment,

The 1920's

Essentially, we learned about the lifestyle in the 1920's and how things were rapidly starting to change. We learned that the skyscrapers in New York represented the aspirations and ascendancy of Americans. Harlem starting becoming popular because of the music that they produced, very soulful and live, Americans were amazed with it all. Electricity started becoming big, so no more candle, no more fires to heat up food, everything started to become electric. The car made transportation MUCH easier. With all of these new advances people wanted all the new things, but wanted to stay with the same life they had before. Which couldn't be possible due to all the advances that were happening. They wanted the benefits of the future but the comfort of the past. The KKK became popular around this time, because it was a way for the American people to vent their anger on others, so of course they chose new immigrants coming in. Charles Lindbergh became an American Hero in the 1920's because he flew across the Atlantic Ocean solo, and it showed how much courage America had at the time so it was an amazing achievement.

Muckraking Project

Today we were given the whole block period to be able to work and improve our Muckraking Project. You could do everything from research to planning out what you were going to do as a whole assignment. In my group I worked on interview questions for a video we are going to make. Luca worked on the research and Zach worked on the format of the video, like what comes first, middle, and last, what we are going to do in specific. Overall we got a lot of work and research done and had a productive class period.

Security Simulation 10-9-15

10/19/15
Today in class we started a simulation. The simulation consisted of many different parts. Groups of 5-6 were given a country. That country starts off with a certain amount of troops, fire power, ships, boats, planes and economic utilities. From all of that each country is given a certain power level, and obviously the higher your countries resources and people, the higher your power level will be. The goal of this simulations is to maintain security. To maintain security (in the simulation) was that the civilians in your country had to be happy, and Mr. Stewart would be the one to determine if your people were happy. Within the simulation you make alliances, pacts, trades with other countries if you so please, you can do any to gain stability and security. If I were to take a shot at what makes the people happy, i think it would have something to do with how much defense and offense you have in your country compared to others.

The 10 Amendments

We talked about the many Amendments made to the Constitution today. Here's the list of what we talked about.

The First Amendment basically says you have the right to freedom of religion, press and speech, you have the right to peaceful assembly and the Right to petition the government. We talked about how some people abuse the freedom of speech card and say that they can say whatever they want whenever they want because they want, however this is not true, the freedom of speech rule extends until it is used to cause panic, harm etc.

The Second Amendment is the right to bear arms. Pretty straight forward, you have the right to have guns... after a series of test's to check your mental state.

The Third Amendment talks about how we have the right to deny housing to soldiers, we don't really have use for this anymore because remember that the Amendments were made a long time ago when there were only few colonies and the British still wanted to rule over us.

The Fourth Amendment talks about how you cannot be randomly searched without suspicion of a crime in the act. So you can't be searched just because you look funny. The police need a reason to search you.

The Fifth Amendment is the rule that you can't be tried for the same crime twice (Double Jeopardy). It also says that you cannot be a witness against yourself. Basically what that means if you accidently or purposefully give information that incriminates you in any way, you can choose not to have that evidence used against you because you have the right to not work against yourself.

The Sixth Amendment is basically you have the right to have a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury. Which basically means the court won't have you wait years before they put you on trial for the crime committed.

The Seventh Amendment is that if your trial is under a set amount you do not get to have a jury because there's no point to have a jury over a 20$ fine.

The Eighth Amendment talks about how you cannot have an excessive bail or cruel and unusual punishment.

The Ninth Amendment basically says that it will protect all rights that are obvious to people that aren't talked about in the Constitution

The Tenth Amendment is power to the state and people.