Much like humanity as a whole, the man in the story ignored countless warning signs. “He knew that at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow, but this spittle had crackled in the air.” The man was completely aware that he should not have continued into the extreme cold of the Yukon, and yet he was so secure in his abilities that he pressed forward. Similarly, humans release enormous amounts of toxic gases into the atmosphere, even though we are fully aware of how damaging they are to life. We know better than to breathe in the gases our chemical plants release, and yet we don’t seem to grasp the fact that those gases have no way to leave the planet. Eventually, perhaps sooner rather than latter, they will come right back to harm us.

“It was as though he had just heard his own sentence of death…Perhaps the old-timer on Sulphur Creek was right.”(London) Even though he continued to struggle for the chance of surviving the ordeal, from that point on he knew that he was as good as dead. He had enough intelligence to realize how hopeless his situation was. Shortly after this he accepts the cold reality of the situation and determines that “he might as well take it decently.” While humanity may not have reached such a tipping point yet, many do not realize how close we are to an irreversible decline, like the man’s death, we may actually be. If enough of the polar ice caps melt, the amount of sunlight (and heat) reflected back into space will diminish to the point where the poles will no longer be able to refreeze, and the world climate will change even more drastically (Revkin). This is in addition to the more well known concept of rising sea levels causing entire cities to be flooded, including New York and London (Revkin). From that point on there would be nothing we could do to repair the damage in any measurable amount of time

Mankind continuously “tests the ice” of the world by adding more destructive abilities to what we already do. Man builds a single coal power plant, testing an area of ice. Because there was no immediate change in the area as an effect of the new power plant, humans build hundreds more. Mankind might hear a metaphoric crackle in the ice, but continues building yet more toxic machines, such as automobiles. It might not be until our entire civilization has fallen through the thin layer of ice that we realize that we probably shouldn’t have been so reckless, and that all of those pesky environmentalists were actually right all along. “You were right, old hoss; you were right”(London). Even with all of the abuse the Earth has taken because of us, it will take no notice of our departure.

Jack London’s century old story warned the world about the dangers of trusting knowledge over wisdom Since then, few improvements have been made in how humanity treats the planet, in fact, the situation as become even more dire. Nature has warned us countless times to discontinue our destructive ways, all to no avail. The global community attempted to set the gears in motion to attempt to alter our amount of destruction with the Kyoto Protocol, but it has the same effect as the man building his fire under the snow covered tree. An attempt at survival was made, but it was not sufficient. Humanity now has far more wisdom than the lone man in the Yukon, but only time will tell if we posses more wisdom than he had.

Works Cited
London, Jack. To Build a Fire. 1908. Wikisource. 6 Sept. 2006. 2 Feb. 2009 .
Revkin, Andrew. “Arctic Melt Unnerves the Experts.” New York Times 2 Oct. 2009. Feb 2009
Merriman, C. D. “Jack London – Biography and Works.” The Literature Network: Online classic literature, poems, and quotes. Essays & Summaries. Jalic Inc. 10 Feb. 2009 .

The War on Terror was necessary. If the USA had not acted with force after the September 11th attack, it is logical to assume that there would have been more terrorist attacks attempted on American soil. Robert Kagan expressed the theory that if the United States had not acted to remove Saddam Hussein from power he would have grown more powerful and would have launched a larger scale assault against the United States. The world is certainly more secure now that Saddam Hussein is out of power. He would not have been removed from power had it not been for the War on Terror. Kagan also thinks that although management mistakes have been made by the Bush administration, the War on Terror can be considered successful.

That being said, the financial cost of the War on Terror has been enormous. Veronique de Rugy estimates that the war has already cost upwards of one trillion dollars. He stated that “(one trillion dollars is) 10 times more than what specialists predict it would take to eradicate malaria once and for all.” Although the money was needed to pay for the military action in Iraq and Afghanistan, we need to reduce the amount we spend on the war in the future. This amount of expense is unsustainable and could ultimately prove to be much more of a problem than most people realize (Rugy). However, money is not the only thing American citizens have been giving up in order to further the war on terror

Joyce Slaton warned in November of 2001 that the Patriot Act grants the government far to much power. She was especially concerned with the ease at which the personal privacy of citizens could now be infringed upon. The Act grants the executive branch the ability to, with easy to obtain approval, track and view anyone’s online activity (Slaton). This monitoring is, according to Slaton, trivial to bypass using simple encryption, code words, and/or other obfuscation techniques. Any terrorist with the slightest desire to not be caught would use these techniques, leaving regular citizens with little benefit for their loss of online privacy. In addition to the privacy issue, monitoring vast amounts of internet traffic is expensive and requires large amounts of resources (Slaton). Because of the high cost and low effectiveness rate, the monitoring of internet activity should be be limited to already suspected terrorists only, and not include the general population as is currently the case.

Americans, Slaton claimed, have given up their privacy rights in order to be better protected from terrorists. This could possibly have been a good idea when the Patriot Act was introduced, but the American people need to reclaim the rights that they deserve. It is easy to see how being able to spy on someone who is planing to bomb a subway station would be beneficial to society and save lives. The problem arises when telecommunication providers look at everyone’s communications, not just suspected terrorists, on the off-chance that one of them turns out to be a terrorist. Slaton made the accurate assessment that it is counter productive to give up the rights that your country is going to war to protect.

The lack of privacy is not the only concern that faces many American citizens. American emergency systems are not prepared to deal with a terrorist attack of any magnitude. According to Arthur Kellerman, funding needed to maintain an adequate state of readiness in hospitals is being diverted to other areas of government. With the current medical system, hospitals are barely able to maintain their day-to-day operations, let alone a large scale emergency (Kellerman). Hospitals must be able to have surplus capacity in order to be an effective tool for assisting with a recovery after an attack. If hospitals are not able to cope with a large scale emergency or attack there will be many needless casualties that could have been avoided.

In addition to hospitals necessitating a larger operating capacity, ambulance technicians need to be trained in how to respond to common types of terrorist attacks, including bombings (Kellerman). The London subway bombings are a prime example of what emergency personnel need to be able to respond to.

Daniel Hamilton and Tara O’Toole used the Atlantic Storm project to demonstrate how woefully unprepared the current emergency system is for dealing with a bioterrorist attack. Atlantic Storm was a war-game that was designed to demonstrate the importance of how nations from all over the world would need to work together if there were ever to be a new pandemic virus, such as a bio-weapon (Hamilton and O’Toole). While a bioterrorist attack may be impossible to prevent, it is possible to reduce the effectiveness of an attack to very low levels (Hamilton and O’Toole). They stated that “The first step (to improve emergency preparedness) is to recognize that this (bioterrorist) threat requires something more holistic than buying more vaccine or training more doctors.” This means that hospitals cannot simply buy medicines that negate the damage done by an attack. Instead, the world as a whole must be ready to pool resources and work together to quickly develop and deploy vaccines in sufficient quantities to eradicate the contagion (Hamilton and O’Toole).

Because the War on Terror has so far been relatively successful with it’s goal of reducing the threat of terrorism, it is time to refocus our resources. While a military presence is still required in other countries, it is now time to begin strengthening the United States itself. As Hamilton and O’Toole have explained, our emergency response systems, specifically our ability to combat bioterrorist attacks, are not currently in a suitable condition to face an attack successfully. Funding for our hospitals needs to be increased dramatically in order to allow them to properly deal with the many threats that the military alone cannot combat. Although the War on Terror is fulfilling it’s objectives, the price in privacy and domestic emergency preparedness has been high. Now that the threat of a terrorist attack in the US is lower, it is time to refocus our objectives and to improve anti-terror preparedness domestically, in addition to other countries.

Works Cited:

Hamilton, Daniel, and Tara O’Toole. “Facing up to the bioterror threat.” International Herald Tribune. 31 Jan. 2005. 15 Dec. 2008 . http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/01/30/opinion/edotoole.php?page=1

Kagan, Robert. “Whether This War Was Worth It.” Washingtonpost.com. 19 June 2005. The Washington Post. 15 Dec. 2008 . http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/ 2005/06/17/AR2005061701217.html

Kellerman, Arthur. “Still Not Ready in The ER.” Washingtonpost.com. 5 Aug. 2005. The Washington Post. 15 Dec. 2008 . http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/04/AR2005080401826.html

Rugy, Veronique. “The Trillion-Dollar War.” Reason Online. May 2008. Reason Magazine. 16 Dec. 2008 . http://www.reason.com/news/show/125438.html

Schramm, J.B. “The Best Anti-Terror Force: Us.” Operational Risk Management. 23 June 2004. 10 Dec. 2008 . http://operationalrisk.blogspot.com/2004/06/best-anti-terror-force-us.html

Slaton, Joyce. “What Price Patriotism?” SFGate. 15 Nov. 2001. San Francisco Chronicle. 15 Dec. 2008 . http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article/article?f=/g/a/2001/11/15/patriotisp.DTL

I found this assignment interesting even though I did not learn much from it that I did not already know. Basically it confirms that I drink enough milk, eat an adequate amount of fruit and meat, and that I need more vegetables. My sodium intake, unlike most Americans, is, on average, within it’s limits. The average sodium intake for the 3 days is 2145mg, which is below the 2300mg limit. Basically if I were to simply add more vegetables to my diet I would be in good shape. Now if only vegetables tasted better…

I found several flaws with the system that we used for this assignment. Most of the food items that were in the database appeared to be from fast food restaurants, which is not a very good place to get information about food from. A cheeseburger from McDonald’s is going to have very different nutrient values when compared to a cheeseburger made at home by hand. This was my largest issue with this website. A shortcoming of this assignment was the time span that we were given. Three days (data points) is not enough quantitative data to obtain an informed opinion of what is going on. A full 30 or 60 days of data collection would have been much more informative and accurate, although I realize that it would have been unpractical to collect that much data for this class.

Although not related to the calculations themselves, the database server for the website either failed or went down for maintenance while I was attempting to input my list of food. That to me looks like bad management skills on behalf of the site owner and operator. (If you must preform website maintenance, you do so during off hours, not in the middle of a weekday). The website could also have been designed better. There should be a standard menu, like the one that can be found while adding food items to your day, that is shown on all screens. This would allow for easier navigation to the different features of the site. Overall, the website is very interesting, and I would recommend it to a friend interested in tracking their food intake.

September 2008
English 111

How High Speed Internet Connections Have Changed My Life

I was four years old when I first used a computer. It was a 486 (with turbo!) that ran Microsoft Windows 3.1. Ever since then I have been fascinated with computers and all things related to them. When I was in elementary school my parents ordered dial-up internet. For the first time I could communicate with other people using only a computer. In the 4th grade I didn’t really understand the full implications of what this new technology was allowing me to do, I simply thought that it was “really cool.” I began using a service called “AOL Instant Messenger” and was soon reading up on the latest technology news on informative websites. I didn’t know what all of it meant (there were lots of big words), but I found it fascinating.

In the 8th grade I received a homework assignment from my English teacher to write a persuasive paper and then show it to my parents. Compelling them to upgrade our internet connection to Verizon DSL seemed like the perfect thing to write about. My father liked my essay so much that he ordered DSL that week. The difference in what I could do with a computer was amazing. It was now possible to download entire works of software in the time it took to send a large email before. This was a radical shift for me to adjust to.

In the days of dial up, downloading a new program to run on my computer was a large decision. A new messaging client would take anywhere from thirty minutes to two hours to download, and we were only allotted 20 hours per month. I learned the art of multitasking for this very reason. It was a common occurrence to open up fifteen different windows in Internet Explorer and as soon as they had all completed loading disconnect from the internet to save connection time. I would then spend thirty minutes reading the pages that had been downloaded, close them, reconnect and then start over again. This happened countless times. Downloading software to simply “try it out” was unthinkable for me, it was simply too time consuming.

After DSL was installed my perception of what a computer connected to the internet could do was radically altered. My computer could now download software that I wanted to try, use VoIP technology to talk to someone in another state for free, become part of a cluster computer and search for aliens, help find a cure for cancer, and even download an entire operating system all in a single evening. It blew my mind. The vast resource of information that was and is the internet was available to me no matter what time of day or night it was. But like an addicting drug soon it wasn’t enough to satisfy me. Sure, I could do all of these great things on my 768kbs DSL line that was almost 14 times faster than the old 56kbs dial up, but the school internet was capable of downloading at almost 10,000kbs! I would hang around after classes were over at high school in order to take advantage of their extremely fast internet connection that was no longer being used. It was laborious to transfer things on CDs and Zip disks between school and my home, although it seemed to work well enough.

Towards the end of my senior year in high school I got it in my head that I would get a business grade internet connection for my own personal use at home. It would be expensive, of course, but I deemed it worth the cost. And how right I was. After the cable connection was installed I was downloading things at an incredible pace. It seemed almost identical to the shift in speed from dial up to DSL. It was literally an order of magnitude faster. Just as before a it was possible to do something in ten minutes that had taken hours on the older connection. Once again I no longer had to worry about downloading things ahead of time or rationing my use. I even began earning money off of the internet connection by hosting my own website. In addition to all of this I was learning so much more about how computers communicate. I’ve decided that I want to focus on large scale computer networking. Without a high speed internet connection none of this would have been possible. Even this paper that I am writing right now would have had to have been written on a different computer if there was no such thing as high speed internet. My productivity has skyrocketed as has my ability to earn money from computers. High speed internet has changed and improved my life in radical ways.

The results actually surprised me. I was a little worried about finding a place to secure my bike, but it turned out that there was a bike rack right outside the entrance nearest to my first class.

The trek over was fairly decent except fora a major design flaw about 2/3s of the way through the trip. Crossing a bridge near landmark mall is impossible unless you ride in a regular traffic lane. At the last apartment complex on the south side of the bridge the sidewalk bends into the complex and then promptly ends (without so much as a ramp). I decided to go past anyway since the sidewalk appeared to resume on the other side of the entry way. After about 50 feet the sidewalk turned into a well worn dirt path. A few feet after that I found a bus stop. Seriously, a metro bus stop in the middle of a tree surrounded path on the side of the road. a little ways after that and the path was replaced with a concrete barrier. I check the traffic and when there was an opening I hopped down onto the street and quickly speed up to my top speed of 25 MPH. At that point decided that it was best to just take the road the rest of the way. Latter when there was a red light I jumped back onto the sidewalk to keep going, then stayed on it until I got to Alexandria campus. The actual time on my bike was 29 minutes. I arrived a full hour early and had plenty of time left over to write this entry. I’ll post again with the results of my return trip.

Class ended early so I ended up with two and a half hours of free time. Normally this would be great, but my laptop has yet to be programed to use the college’s WiFi network yet. The security measures are actually pretty decent, although it gets in the way of connecting. The SSID is not broadcast and I’m pretty sure that association happens using a radius database, although I’m not sure. I ended up going to the cafeteria and buying a $6.86 cheeseburger meal and playing Warcraft III. The game crashed as I got toward the end because there were more units on the map than my Toughbook could handle (the downside of not having dedicated graphics.

I’m actually writing this entry in order to kill time waiting for my math class to start. So far this has taken less than five minutes. I still have an hour to go. Random note: there are 5 laptops in the cafeteria at the moment, as well as one in use desktop and around 30 people not using a computer.

Although I like my psychology class and I’m pretty sure that it will be interesting, I don’t think that I want to study it further, although not for lack of interest. I simply do not want to be able to analyze my personality in excruciating detail. I already ponder my existence and life goals far too much. I’m fairly certain that if I were to have some sort of extra training in the matter that I would analyze myself to the point of loosing my mind. The general idea I have to use in order to find meaning in the grand scheme of things is that “Life’s purpose is just one big lie. In order to believe the big lies you have to believe the little ones.”

This is starting to turn into an essay or paper or something (this is what happens when I get bored with a computer, no games, and no internet). I’ve already read through every page cached in Firefox.

Cheers.