Sources for Alternatives Project And Homework

1. New Windmill Ocean Design
2. Building a Passive Solar Home
3. MIT Sustainable Design Lab

           Sustainability can best be described as the ability to maintain something at a certain rate or level. In this, there is a definite flaw with how we, as humans, are consuming fossil fuel energy. While we will not run out of fossil fuels, the cost of extracting them will ultimately become too high, and an alternative form of energy will have to be found. Alternative energy can take many forms, such as solar, wind, and water power.
          All of these have endless supply and are harvested fairly easily. Countries in Europe have already taken somewhat of a charge, spending over 50 Billion in building more ocean windmills.(1) Another, more practical, example of how alternative energy is being used is in building passive solar homes. These homes rely partially or completely on natural resources for their heating, cooling, and electrical needs. This way, they greatly reduce their own need for power.(2) While this does not seem like it would do much good as there are millions of citizens, if everyone in the United States got in with this method of construction, the worlds carbon footprint would be greatly reduced.

Next, I want to learn about why more wealthy people aren't considering going with alternative energy. I also want to figure out if there has been significant pushback by the companies of large power companies and if so what that pushback looks like.

Homework 4/28/16

I want to focus on studying the "Alternatives" section. I want to study this because I am very interested in living for a very long time (1000 years or so), and I want to have a clean earth to do that on.

Climate

Bad
Weather
Heat
O Zone
Change

I said these words because it has been made obvious that the consensus is  we have created a negative climate for the future in which we will overheat.

How long can we sustain this amount of fossil fuel energy and have a livable climate?

Sources

1. History Channel 7 interesting things about Hoover Dam
2. Zidbits How long it will last
3. History More Interesting Stuff

Reading Questions about 1930s

Read about the Great Depression (Links to an external site.). According to this article, what was wrong with President Hoover's response? Why did people blame themselves when things went wrong, and how valid or invalid was this response?


Hoover underestimated the severity of the depression, and stated it would be over in 60 days. People blamed themselves for the depression because they believed they should be able to provide for themselves and their family. In reality, however, there was very little that any individual could do to better themselves when faced with that situation.


Read about Black Sunday (Links to an external site.). How would you have felt if you'd been there on that day? What kinds of fears, concerns, or questions would be going through your mind during, and after, the event described?


I would be petrified because I get scared of the dark either way so I couldn't even begin to handle being in a pitch black dust storm, I would be most concerned with the fact that all of my crops were being destroyed by dust.


Read about The Drought (Links to an external site.). What areas were affected by it? What caused it. The author ends this article with a pithy quote. Do you agree or disagree with this historian's perspective? Why or why not?


The Great Plains were affected by the drought and it happened roughly every twenty five years, I don't agree with the quote because I think that the people of the great plains did nothing to deserve the drought they received.


Read about Mass Exodus from the Plains (Links to an external site.). Were does the migration of people out of the Dust Bowl rank in terms of other migrations in US History? What made life hard for people once they arrived in California?

It was the largest migration in all of American history. Life was hard for people once they arrived in California because farms were corporate-owned. They were larger and more modernized that those of the southern plains, and the crops were unfamiliar.

Radio Politics

Sources: American RadioWorks
PBS
Virginia EDU

The radio started making it's way into politics in 1924, when Calvin Coolidge's inauguration speech was broadcasted to 24 million people through the use of the radio. This was just the first step in what proved to be a very exciting decade in the world of radio, if you could afford to buy one of course. After the 1924 election both presidential parties used the radio to benefit their campaigns. Little fun fact, these politicians had to pay for their own air time, and it was about 10,000 dollars an hour. Franklin Roosevelt was the most famous president of that time to use the radio to reach people, as his "fireside talks" allowed him to connect with millions of people in the comfort of his own home. Also, news networks could finally establish themselves thanks to radio, and things such as NBC and CBS came into existence. I think it is also really cool how much information could go to so many people just because of the radio. It is interesting to think of a time when you might never had heard the president's voice. The radio allowed everyone to know when the Hindenburg blimp blew up which was a pretty major thing because it would have taken weeks for newspapers to convey the same information.

Speeches

1. I think some of the speeches went better than others, but thats how everything goes. I think that some people really shined with their ability to talk in front of people and it was obvious that others had difficulty.
2. I think Madi did really well because of her vocabulary usage, and I think that Avani had the most coherent essay. If I'm being honest I think using bigger words to prop up an average essay is kind of mediocre but thats just me. I think that it was cool that Carson nailed the whole fake mad thing.
3. I would like to have made my words larger font to read more easily. Also I would have liked to have used some bigger words.

Speech

           The 1920s brought the American people closer together, by making many communities of like minded individuals, but also drove them apart, creating a growing tension between those who did not hold similar beliefs. Through the invention of new conveniences, like the automobile, rural peoples could now more easily interact with those from the city. However, this community overlap did not always produce unity. In fact, it is quite possible that the ability to interact with one another only strengthened the divide between modernist city dwellers and their more rural, traditional counterparts, creating fundamentalist movements such as the Ku Klux Klan focused on the oppression and eradication of those with contrary beliefs.

         While the 1920s produced a number of very important inventions that created more convenience for the average consumer, the automobile completely changed the lives of both rural communities and city dwellers alike. It gave them escapes from their own world, most of the time by allowing them to enter the other. This allowed for much more interaction between the two groups, who quickly learned that on many fundamental principles, they disagreed. This sprouted from a fear of the change that the modernists were seeming to fight for. This fear created a divide between those who lived on farms and those who lived in cities.

          Fear is a very powerful motivator for violence, which many of the rural peoples resorted to. These people were now considered fundamentalists, as they viewed keeping Christianity at the center of American Culture as a necessity. They were opposed by modernist, or urban peoples, who had since adapted the idea that Christian teachings can work together with science for their modern society. This divide, as well as fear of change, created the Ku Klux Klan, an organization focused on the oppression of minorities and anyone who did not share their fundamentalist views. They operated in the open, claiming to be leaders of their community, while lynching those who were only guilty of holding different view points or being of a different color. While this organization did lose credibility after a series of scandals, their appeal alone showed just how deep the divide of the country had become.



            While the 1920s created the ability for American people to come together, it ironically drove them even further apart. It made people revert back to their animalistic behaviors in which fear and anger seemed to rule logical thought. In a time when so many Americans were focused on going forward, they actually took step after step in the wrong direction.

Mini Book Review Short

In Karen Carter's debut as a writer, her book The Life of a Normal Guy in the 1920s perfectly captures the tension of the prohibition era. She tells a story with such a soft tone, it allows almost any reader to connect with the characters and therefore empathize with them. The sweetest of the tone can only be combatted with the ferocity of the subject that she is writing about. Using periodic language, she quickly brings the reader on to the front lines of the action, truly an exhilarating read.

Mini Book Review

Andrew Johnson's new book, entitled Average Family that is Somewhat Average in a 1920s American Society, is truly a testament to the people of that time period. It tells the story of a family that, on the surface at least, appears to be very ordinary. However, upon connecting with each character on a very intense personal level, I realized something not only about the book but about myself. His writing style is so poignant and elegant, enthralling any reader lucky enough to get his hands on a copy of this book. Andrew has created a story here that needs to be told, and he told it in the most eloquent way I have seen in all my time as a professional. If you want to know anything about anything, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy. - Ward Pullen

1920s Mini Book

I wrote a 1920s mini book on the rising Fundamentalist movement across America during the time period. I really enjoyed this project because it made me feel like I was a part of the 1920s, using their slang. I used 14 of their words, and titled the name character John. He is a fundamentalist with a daughter in Dayton.