CyberWar

The article "Cyber War" by Patricia Smith is about the United States being attacked by Iran on the Internet. In the article it states, "The hackers picked the one day of the year they knew they could inflict the most damage on the world's most valuable company."

The hackers picked a specific day to attack the United States. In the article says, "They knew that last August 15, more than 55,000 Saudi Aramco employees would be at home preparing for a Muslim holiday. So that morning, at 11:08, a computer virus began erasing data on 75 percent of Aramco's corporate PC's-- documents, spreadsheets, email files-- replacing everything with an image of a burning American flag."

Before the virus could be stopped it affected a lot of computers. Some people feel that we could be facing a 'Cyber Pearl Harbor'. In October Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned that the United States is facing the possibility of a 'cyber pearl harbor'. In the passage it says, "The U.S. is increasingly vulnerable." Leon Panetta said to foreign hackers who could dismantle the nation's power grid and more.

I feel that this is something that the United States should be worried about. Cyber-attack may not seem that important to people because it's on the internet. But if people are calling it a 'cyber pearl harbor' than it's something to be concerned about. If you have ever heard about Pearl Harbor or seen the movie about it, then you can see why this would be important. Pearl Harbor was an attack on the U.S. by the Japanese, which caused World War II.

What is the reason that these hackers are doing this? Is it something that the U.S. did to them that we don't know about? I can't read people's minds but I’m kind of sure that these people didn't just attack the U.S. for no reason. There is something that happened before they decided to attack us and it would be nice to know what it is. If these people are that powerful that they are erasing important files and e-mails and hacking into banks and things like that then this is something the President, we the people, and the world should be concerned about.

The Secrets Couples Keep

The article "The Secrets Couples Keep" by Marisa Cohen http://www.redbookmag.com/love-sex/advice/couple-secrets-ll is about secrets that couples should tell their spouse and secrets that they shouldn't tell. In the article it says, "Yet even "small" deception can rock a relationship, and it can be hard to draw the line between what's harmless and what's not."

Most people in relationships keep secrets away from their spouse because they are scared of their reaction or they are afraid the relationship will end. Their are some secrets that are needed to be spilled in a relationship even iof you are afraid of the reaction. It's better to tell your spouse about something in your past instead of finding them out from other people. In the article it says, " If you want a relationship grounded in mutual trust, certain issues require full disclosure. ' If something has a chance of impacting your partner's future or his life with you, then he has a right to know about it," says Mira Kirshenbaum, a relationship expert and author of Is He Mr.Right?.

Secrets that are kept in the dark and then eventually comes in the light can affect you and your partner. The article states, " As many couples find out too late, when you keep a secret that profoundly affects your family, you face a double whammy when the secret eventually-- or inevitably--implodes." There is a limit to how much you need to tell your spouse. They need to know everything about you and your past, but they don't need to know 'everything'.

I think that keeping secrest in a relationship can affect you and your partner. I am in a relationship and there are a lot of secrets that i didn't tell him that he eventually found out. He wasn't so much as upset because he found out but because he found out from other people instead of me. Yes, there is a limit of things that you need to tell your spouse but then again there is really no limit. Like for instants if you have a jail record buto it was ex-sponged and your in a relationship, that is something you need to tell your partner. Just because it's ex-sponged doesn't mean that it will never be talked about, because eventually the conversation will come up.
   Why keep secrets? Is there anything that you feel your spouse doesn't need to know? If it is thats something you still should bring up because like i said, it will eventually be talked about.

Historically Incorrect Canoodling

The article "Historically Incorrect Canoodling" is about how Valentine's day was celebrated differently back in the old day. In the article it says, " Such expectations of married bliss would have horrified the people who invented Valentine's Day- and confused couples steeped in the rules of traditional courtship in the West before the 1800's."


' Valentine's Day was originally created by the Roman Catholic church as a limit on sexual passion.' People almost never believed that falling in love was a great and glorious thing that should lead to marriage, or that marriage was a place to achieve sexual fulfillment. The article states, " Valentine was a Christan priest , martyred in the third century. Some legend says he was executed for refusing to follow a rule againstconducting marriages for Roman soldiers... etc. In one account, Valentine feel in love with his jailor's daughter and wrote her a poignant goodbye letter signed "from your Valentine."


'Christan support for married love is hard to find in the first 1,500 years of church history. As one 12th-century authority wrote, no one "dissaproves" when "a gentle and honest sentiment" softens the bonds of a marriage, but "it is not thr role of marriage to inspire such feeling." Now and days most young people base Valentine's Day off of sexual activity. The article says, "Most young people, then as now, ignored such warnings about the pitfalls of sex and love."


I think that people nowadays do celebrate Valentine's day the wrong way. I feel that Valentine's Day should be celebrated by love and affection for each other. If shouldnt be based on sexual activity. Some people do need to look at the back ground for Valentine's Day because as you read the article you can see that Valentine's Day was actually "when the church declared Feb. 14 St. Valentine's feast day in 498 A.D., it was not trying to celebrate romance." "The Church wanted to replace the existing holiday, a festival honoring Juno, the Roman goddes of love and marriage."

On this past Valentine's Day i didn't really do much. People wished me a happy Valentine's Day and i spent the day with my family. We watched tv and just joked around. Valentine's Day does not have to be based on spending time with a partner or a lover it can be based on many different ways and spent many different way also. My question is besides Mr.Valentine being executed on that day, what made the day so special?

DRUGS + YOUR BRAIN

The article "Drugs + Your Brain" is about different types of drugs and addictions that take over your brain and may control you to do the wrong things. In the article it says, " Abusing drugs directly affects how your brain functions. This can lead to serious physical and emotional health problems." 

Memory meltdown, meaning that certain drugs can lead to shortage of memory. Abuse of marijuana can make it hard for you to remember what you said or did, and impossible to perform complicated tasks, since it affects the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus-- brain areas responsible for thinking and memory. Marijuana and alcohol can affect a person's coordination and impair athletic and driving ability because of the effects on brain areas such as the cerebellum. 
 Abusing cocaine, methamphetamine, steroids, and other drugs can cause anxiety and hostility by affecting many different parts of the brain, including the amygdala, which is a part of the brain that controls emotion and motivation. 

I agree that abusing drugs does much damage to your brain and different parts of it. People who use and abuse drugs would never think that because they use it with out over dosing that they are not hurting themselves in anyway. I have people in my family who smoke marijuana and I see the side affects of shortage memory. Memory Meltdown, Out of Control, A Threat to Mission Control, And Addiction are signs of abuse of drugs. Abusing drugs leads to all kinds of wrong things and puts all the wrong people in danger. People need to soon realize what they are doing to themselves is going to soon affect them in ways they can't imagine.

The New Face Of America

The article "The New Face Of America" is about more minorities being born in the U.S. than majority's and that over time there will be less minorities than majority's. In the passage it says, " The Cenus Bureau annouced last spring that minority births-- Hispanic, black, Asian, American,Indian,Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and Alaska Native-- now outnumber those of non-Hispanic whites."

The shift is monumental for a nation that was founded by white English- speaking Europeans, and has long wrestled with issues of race and ethnicityand engaged in highly charged debates over immigration. " This is an important tipping point," says William H. Frey, the senior demographer at Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. He describes the change as a "transformation from a mostly white baby-boomer culture to the more globalized multhiethnic country that we are becoming."
 Minorities now outnumber whites in 348 of the more than 3,000 countries across the U.S. Whites still make up the majority (63 percent) of the U.S. population. But by 2042, minorities are on pace to collectively outnumber whites, according to Cenus Bereau estimates. The change is happening even faster among younger Americans: By 2020, whites will likely make up less than half of the under-18 population.   

I feel that this change is a good thing. I think more races should be able to communicate with other people othet than the ones that they live with or state they live in. What I mean by that statement is if i was chinese and i lived in china, nine times out of ten i would communicate with people that live in my community and people than mainly speak my language. But if i was to migrat to the states i would be able to communicate with people who don's always speak my lanuage and people who live more differently than what people in my city did.
   But on the flip side, American people may not agree to be around people not in their race. They may feel that since they are not american they don't have to apply by american rules.
I don't think that this change is a bad thing. Question is why do some americans feel that it is?