[ESSAY]Human Characteristics

What makes a human a human? Intelligence? Two legs? What separates us from animals and plants? I believe that the answer lies in a combination of various characteristics, rather than just one single characteristic that defines all of humanity. People are complicated and it will probably take more than just one characteristic to completely represent the entire human race. For example, a few traits that I think are important are our creations and our capability to do other things in life to become more advanced than other creatures. Being able to have imagination, to wonder, and to love and feel, plays a key part in one’s daily life style as well. Generally speaking, there is no singular definition of a human being.

One definitive trait of a person is living. Excluding domesticated animals, most living creatures' only goal in their lives is to get food to survive long enough to reproduce. Although we started out like that, humans have moved on to greater things. While some are accidents, people may choose to reproduce to feel the emotions and rewards of having a child or two, instead of just guaranteeing our survival population-wise. We lived past the point where the only goal was to survive and have formed civilizations, governments, science, and so much more. We have education and medicine and have done things marking us "better" than other animals, going beyond just trying to acquire the basic needs to survive. Humans have the power of choice, of free will, rather than being caged constantly on the goal of receiving enough food or fleeing from predators. We have proven to be unique in the sense of freedom of choice.

The second characteristic is our ability to create and imagine. Creating objects by putting several different materials together plays a big part in advancing human civilizations across the world. Cities and buildings and other structures have been constructed all over the world by humans and have been unique to humanity. Art, music, culture, philosophy, and other things have all been created by someone’s inspiration to do great things. While other animals may have built things, their constructs have not been nearly as complex or detailed as humans. Cars, phones, computers, and other forms of technology have all been a result of advancements and achievements in science and research. These advancements and breakthroughs may have helped improve society through imagining. People are able to create buildings and ideas through imagination. It gives people the ability to come up with ideas and invent new ways to improve conditions of living for people. It plays the role of a catalyst for people to invent and create things beneficial towards their interests. Predictions are based on imagining what will happen next or what will the next move be, which could be a turning point in war or in a competitive activity such as sports. Religion has part of its origins from a group of curious people wondering where had they come from and they had used their imagination to come up with a extensive explanation that ended up in having a large part of the population believing in it. Our imaginative nature allows us to wonder where our origins are from, as it also allows us to come up with different philosophies and life styles. In the end, our innovation and imagination have a large role in the development of human society.

Love determines how a person treats other people around them.  It is a very important emotion of the human nature. While there is definitely love between animals in the wild, love, for humans, can be expressed in so many different ways than just physical contact. One’s affection for another would change their behavior, possibly making them more kind or cruel and may change the way they think or act. It also opens the door for many other emotions such as sadness and pain. Losing a loved one is painful and could very easily damage someone who is close to that person. It may take time to recover, and sometimes people never do. Sadness is never pleasant. There is an opposite of everything in the universe, and in this case, the opposite is hate. Love and hate go together and can easily be interchanged very quickly. Part of love is based on trust, and if that trust is violated and broken, a person could learn to hate someone close to them just as much as they loved them, and can even learn to do both at the same time. Love makes someone capable of doing great things, as hate makes one capable of evil. Love branches out toward a variety of things, including illness. There is a disease by the name of Heart Broken Syndrome that has been officially recognized by many doctors as a legitimate illness. The act of losing something may be more irritating and painful than what it is actually worth, that some people find it very difficult and frustrating to cope with. It may drive people toward insanity unless they find something else to distract themselves with until the solution of the problem is presented.

The human race has advanced forward over the ages. We survived for a long time, though not as long as others. With time, creatures are supposedly inclined to move forward. Yet the human race managed to develop farther than any other creature, making progress in technology, science, literature, and much more. What defines a person cannot be kept to a single word. People are open ended and should not have to be required to be kept in a tiny box of classification. Identifying humans is not simple, whether it is good or bad, smart or dumb, or otherwise, but I believe everyone should have a choice to decide on their personality, and that makes them who they are. The fact that people have this choice makes them human, which also means they are not perfect and are prone to make mistakes early on in their life. 

[RE]Community Service

"I encourage everyone to give their time for the good of the community. The more volunteers we have, the better. This will continue to improve the cleanliness of our community."-Gabriel Mapa 

      I borrowed this quote because I agree that everyone should do something to help out in their community to make it better for everyone. Community service can really help out people who need assistance. Also, doing community service is a high school graduation requirement as well as a necessity to get accepted at a good college, besides getting good grades and other things. It can also be healthy for a person who does not usually do this kind of activity. It gets people outside working and can make the environment cleaner and less polluted, depending on what community service you are doing. There are many ways to help out in your community, including helping pick up trash, volunteering at various places, and more. Overall, helping your community is beneficial for everyone to have better living conditions.

      Although I approve of community service and understand its benefits, I have not done any of it in my high school career. In middle school, I tutored at the library every day after school for one to two hours. I do plan to do community service later on, just as soon as I get my homework under control and when there is an opportunity present for me to use. In UCLA, the average amount of community service hours done is two hundred, which may seem like a lot, especially to people like me who have zero, but hours build up over time and can pile up very high. Community service is definitely important for everybody.

[CE]Two US Prisoners Released

     Shaun Bauer and Josh Fattal, imprisoned by the claim of espionage and spying on the Iranians, were released from their Tehran jail in Evin by posting bail after more than two years. Five hundred thousand dollars, two fifty for each, was paid by the Oman government to free the two prisoners. They had a third member of whom was released a year ago reportedly due to some health problems of some sort. They were hiking on the border of Iran and Iraq when Iranian border guards arrested them for almost twenty six months. They flew to Oman and met with their families there.
     There are some people believe that these two are actually spies because they believe nobody in their right mind would try to go hiking between regional powers who are still fighting. Some also believe that Josh Fattal and Shaun Bauer should work to repay the money used for bail to the government. There are so many safer places to go hiking too, like somewhere not in the Middle East or the surrounding areas. I believe the Iranian government had the right to arrest them because even if they were hikers and not something else, they were still trespassing and violating the rights of the Iranian government. Any nation or government has the right to have a legal punishment for any illegal entry or trespassing. Anyway, I am still happy that these two were released and have come back to the United States, whether or not they are spies.

[BC]In the Dark

       So this guy wakes up in a house he does not recognize just as the lights starts to flicker. The door slams shut somewhere behind him and he jumps up in surprise, only to hit his head on something metal and square shaped right above him, where it made a weird ringing sound. The sound got louder and louder, up until the point where it was deafening.  He barely has enough time to take in his surroundings before the lights shut off, completely leaving him in darkness. The guy got scared, so he tried to run towards the door. He groped the door to try and find the knob, but the door seemed smooth and empty. Confused, he slowly came to realize that the door was no longer there anymore, and in shock, he started to take a few steps backwards. As a result, he stumbled in to a pile of something warm. He tried to resist the smell and tried to figure out what it was by rolling it around in his hand. It felt warm and creamy, and left a sticky residue on his palm. To his horror, he realized he was playing with a pile of animal poop and quickly tried to wipe his hands on his clothes.

       He tried to regain composure, and ignoring the stinky stuff on his hands and clothes, he tried to adjust his eyes to the darkness around him. After a couple minutes of just sitting there, his eyes still did not adjust and he started to panic as he thought that he went blind. His head did not hurt that much from when he hit it against the metal thing, and only seemed to be a dull ache. The ringing was still going on, making him wonder which direction it was coming from. He started to rub his aching head, but quickly stopped due to the sticky stuff still on his hands. Squinting, he tried to look around again, but failed. He drew his knees to his chest, shivering, just now noticing the frigidly cold air around him. It was not just cold, it was freezing. The frost seemed to seep into his bones, working its way up from his hands and his feet towards his chest. Taking in quick, shallow breaths, he stood up, intent on finding a window, door, or anything that could get him out of there. He walked forward, stumbling over ledges, boxes, and various other object strewn across the floor in front of him. He walked for a short time, which turned into a while, until it seemed that he would be walking forever. Confused, he stretched his arms out to find anything on either sides of him. Finding nothing, he sat down, his mind working at figuring out the questions that were in his head. The ringing had quieted down by now, but he could still hear it a distance away. Then, he gave up and died in that house which was not really a house. The End.

[FREE]Doggy Style

A couple of weeks ago, my family  from Seattle, Washington came over and stayed at my house  for a couple of days. My grandmother likes to go on walks and since my parents  and my brother and I will not be home every day, my grandmother needed a key. My mother solved this problem by giving her my key to the house. On the Sunday  that they left, I was at my father’s house in Oakland and I had not realized that my grandmother still had my key, so I went around for about two weeks without a  key.

Every day after school, I would be  the first to come back home, so the door was always locked. Luckily, we have a  doggy door in the back which I could fit through, so I used that everyday. One day, though, people came over during the day while I was at school and put the  dog outside in the backyard. To prevent him from coming back in, they would a sheet of plastic over the door, and when they left, they did not remove it. When I got back home, I tried crawling through the doggy door, but was blocked.  My brother was not home because he had other stuff to do until six or seven and  my mother had work until six, so I would have been stuck outside for three  hours. Fortunately, the window my cat uses to go outside was open, so I used  that to get in.

[RE]Surviving

"The most ideal place for shelter in a zombie outbreak, is underground.  The zombies would probably not be able to find you, and if they do, make sure your entrance is a narrow hallway, so the zombies have to enter one by one.   "-Calvin Lin (1)

     I disagree with the statement that the most ideal place to be during an apocalyptic zombie outbreak is underground because I do not really like the idea of being underground where it is dark and easy to be cornered in by a large mass of zombies. Another downside of hiding out underground is the lack of necessary supplies and space. Supplies such as food and water are need for obvious reasons as well as medical materials in a case of which you or someone following you is injured and is in need of immediate medical service. Space can potentially be a problem in a situation where you have a small group traveling with you. A group is usually needed to help revive the human race and repopulate the Earth after the event is over.

     Another issue is the moral of the group. Some people, in the case of a zombie apocalypse, would choose to give up and end it right there. Life would be difficult and some people might not think it is worth it. If a group of survivors did choose to live underground, there is the case of not seeing the sun or breathing in fresh air. These conditions can seriously demoralize a person and force them to give up.

[CE]Pope Benedict

      According to Al Jazeera, the International Criminal Court has been asked by Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, an international group for victims of sex abuse by priests, to prosecute Pope Benedict and three high ranking Vatican officials. This is the first time issues of sex abuse has been brought to an international jurisdiction, even though the Catholic Church has had a series of covered up sex abuse scandals in the United States and Europe. The three cardinals besides Pope Benedict being asked to be prosecuted are Tarcisio Bertone, Angelo Sodano, and William Levada, a United States Cardinal. SNAP has supposedly submitted more than 20,000 pages of evidence and other supporting material, but the Church has not taken any meaningful steps in making the issue go away permanently. Since 2002, SNAP has received more than 9,000 proposals, but has been unable to form a formal investigation based solely on requests.

      It is ridiculous that the world even has groups like SNAP to regulate the Catholic Church and it is even more unbelievable that they have not been able to look into this matter sooner. Even after a Catholic priest was named for assaulting a teenage boy more than 50 years ago, the Church refused to remove the priest from his post. The Church should realize that if people went so far as to form groups against this, then they are not doing a very good job of hiding it and should probably see to it that this problem is fixed.

[FREE]Zombies

The rule of every zombie game, movie, or book is that there is, and will always be, a zombie behind you. However, all zombie  products have something different from each other. For example, in the game  Left 4 Dead, there seems to be guns and weapons available everywhere, while in  the game Dead Island, firearms and other lethal  weapons are relatively hard to find until later in the game. It seems like the  main characters always know a zombie apocalypse is coming and they stock up on  food and guns. Differences in zombies decide whether or not the human race will  survive, such as the ability to swim or climb. If the zombies are unable to  swim, then the solution is easy: get in a boat. If they can't climb, go on top  of a building or cliff or something.

While dead zombies are usually depicted as decaying, stinking corpses with things like worms and maggots crawling out of their eyes  and numerous cuts and gaping holes all over their body, sometimes the zombies do not seem dead. There are stories with people becoming zombies by infection, so they are not really dead. I think, with dead zombies, it would be pretty easy to survive because then I would just have to wait until their bodies decompose enough so they are unable to move. Even though I say that, I do not think I would be able to survive a zombie invasion unless the zombies are  unbelievably stupid and incompetent.

[RE]Yahoo vs. Google

 

"There are many reasons that leads to the decline of Yahoo. One of many is the rise of G-Mail."- Calvin Lin

     I borrowed this quote from Calvin Lin, in first period English, and I agree with this because many people have started using Google mail and prefer it more than yahoo mail; here are some examples of why some people find g-mail better: The new yahoo mail interface is also very crowded and cluttered, while g-mail is very clean in terms of simplicity. Also, as a minor detail, in g-mail, messages marked as spam will be automatically be moved to the spam folder, while yahoo mail requires that you move to mail to the trash manually.

     G-mail also has other uses, such as viewing your mail on your browser using various ways. Google Docs is useful and convenient while yahoo does not have anything similar. Yahoo has a premium version that costs a sum of money while g-mail is completely free and g-mail has a larger attachment space available than yahoo. Yahoo has a total of 27 various languages available while g-mail has around 40. While both have a feature where the account is deactivated after a period of non-use, g-mail is around 9 months while yahoo is only 4. G-mail allows you to attach documents on the same screen as the message you are sending while yahoo moves you to a different one. Also, adding more than 5 attachments on yahoo requires additional boxes, which some people find annoying.

[CE]9/11

            I do not really remember what happened on September 9, 2001, so all of the information I use is from other people or books or the internet. One of my previous teachers said that after 9/11, Alameda was really quiet because there were not any planes flying over the city. And since 9/11 is depicted everywhere like on TV or newspapers, I feel that I should know more about it so I picked 9/11 for my current events post since the ten year anniversary is coming soon. My dad believes that the government planned the 9/11 strike to raise national unity so they have approval from Congress and everyone else in the nation to attack and invade Iraq. But he also thinks that a lightning bolt sent from the United States with a virus in it caused a train crash in China. He says that because of 9/11, the government had the power to do anything with the support of the public, which I think is true.
      On another note, there was another “dirty bomb” threat about 9 months after 9/11, which is what the video is about. A dirty bomb is a radiological dispersion device, which I do not even know what that is. The accused was put on trial and indicted for terrorism charges, but no charge was found for plotting to use a dirty bomb. I think that the Department of Homeland Security partially only arrested this person to calm the public and assure the people that they were safe even after 9/11.

[FREE]Caspar the Friendly Ghost

   When I was little, my cousin, who I lived with, had a collection of videos on VHS that I used to watch constantly. Some of the videos were Mulan, Winnie the Pooh, Pokemon, Caspar the Friendly Ghost, and other stuff I am not remembering right now. Every weekend I was at my father's house, I would watch some of these movies on my crappy TV in my room. I watched Caspar the Friendly Ghost dozens of times, which is funny because I do not remember a single thing a that movie.
    Anyway, the other day, which was like seven or eight years ago, I had a nightmare where Caspar the Friendly Ghost tried to bite my face off, so I ran down the stairs at my mom's house and tripped at the bottom where my brother was eating a pop tart and a hot pocket at the same time, which was weird. Then, Mulan came out of no where and saved me, just as my brother started microwaving a small group of dinosaurs. Then, these dinosaurs grew into giant ladybugs which started to chase me too, so I got my bike and started running away from my house. The ladybugs chased me all the way to the green bridge between Oakland and Alameda, so I had to jump across it because it went up to let the boat through. I did not make it across, so I woke up. I thought I wet the bed, but I didn't, so it was cool.

[BC]Introduction

     Hi, my name is Andrew Fan. My birthday is July 15, 1996 and I am currently enrolled in Alameda High School in Alameda Unified School District. I went to kindergarten three times in Amelia Earhart Elementary School, Peter Pan Elementary School, and a school in Seattle because I was too young to go to first grade. My favorite subject in school is math because I am relatively good at it even though at one point I needed a tutor for a little while. I also like science because it is easy. My family likes to travel a lot so every summer I end up going somewhere. My parents are divorced so they each take my brother and I places separately.  Just last summer, I went to Boston, Massachusetts and took the train there to New York City, New York with my mother. After that, I went to China and took tours around there with my father and my brother and went of the bullet train. I have family all around the world because both my mother and my father have at least six or seven siblings. My grandfathers from both sides of the family passed away when I was really young so I don't really remember either of them. One of them died from lung cancer or diabetes or something and the other one died of leukemia, both around the same time. My oldest uncle from my dad's side retired and takes care of my grandmother because she has Alzheimer's Disease and doesn't really know what's she doing. She likes to dig the used napkins out of other peoples' garbage cans and my dad tells me to give her a couple of pennies every time I see her around my father's house. We also have locks on the insides of the doors so she does not walk out and get lost around Oakland a second time.
     My family originated in China, but then they migrated to Vietnam. Both of my parents and their families were kicked out of Vietnam during or after the Vietnam War because their family was Chinese and took a boat from Hong Kong to Boston. My mother told me a story once about how my uncle saved a boat full of people while they were sailing to the United States. The ship's captain had passed away due to a heart attack so my uncle helped sail them to land from there. She used this story to try to get me to do a sailing class over the summer a couple years ago. She wants me to be busy during the summer and takes classes and camps and stuff but I am too lazy to go to any of them so I just stay at home and sleep. Anyway, my writing goals for this year are to be able to completely all of the blog posts we are supposed to write for Mr. Sutherland's class and to get an A in his english class.