The election on Tuesday, November 4, 2008, was full of positives and negatives. I was very happy about the presidential election results. I believe that Barack Obama can and will do a lot to improve our country. I think that his opinions on universal healthcare and his plan to make healthcare and insurance easier for american citizens to achieve is a very good plan and goal. I feel and hope that education will become a higher priority to the government.
One thing that highly concerns me is the war. I do not fully understand Obama's standpoint on the war and how he plans to take us out of it. I am also concerned with Obama's safety. I think it is safe to say that a large portion of the citizens in our country are worried about an attempted assassination. I hope that the people of America can forget their prejudices and come together to pull our country and its economy back up to a place that we can be proud of.

I feel that my own understanding of civic knowledge is far greater than a lot of people my age. My junior year humanities class has helped me so much in my own understanding of our country. I feel that my own opinions are not based so much on what other people think, but what I feel is right or wrong. I have been learned how to form my own opinions and biases and how to dig deeper than just the mainstream media and find out the real facts. I really like the discussions that we as a class have because I like learning from not only teachers but my own peers. I need to improve on keeping up with the assignments that we have and turning them in on time. In my conversations outside of school I feel a lot less ignorant and very well informed of what is currently happening in our country. I sometimes get frustrated with the ignorance of others though.



For my h20 project I will need a video camera, a computer, and some type of program to edit my video.
The people that I need are people from surfrider or other organizations that work to improve the ocean and beaches. I would like to interview these people on what people here in San Diego can do to lessen their impact on the trash collected in the North Pacific Gyre.
In the next few days, I would like to come up with questions that I would ask these people and set up interviews. I would like to get the interviews done by Friday, November 14. This way I could have the raw videos from the interviews and work on those during the week before Thanksgiving break.

What are some of the environmental effects that the great pacific garbage patch have on the plant life in the north pacific gyre?
Plastics in the ocean are not biodegrading but just breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces. The plankton in this area are actually just little pieces of plastic. Fish that swim by and eat the plankton are also eating these mini pieces of plastic. This effects the fishes health. We also eat fish, thus causing us to eat the plastic that was eaten by the fish.

What can San Diego beach-goers do to eliminate their contribution to the collection of trash in the North Pacific Gyre?
San Diego beach-goers can lessen their contribution to the collection of trash by putting their garbage in garbage cans so that it doesn't collect in the ocean. They can also use more eco-friendly products such as allumanium cans/bottle instead of plastic ones.