The Animal Farm movie is about a farm of animals rebelling against their way of life. This change is sparked when Old Major makes a speech about freedom from humans and animal equality right before his death. The next day the animals break free from their stalls and drive Jones out. The animals become independent from humans and Snowball creates seven commandments for all animals to follow. Then Snowball makes plans to build a windmill and Napolean opposes the idea, he calls his nine dogs, which drive Snowball out of animal farm.

The animals at forced to continue work on the farm for the windmill under the tyranny of Napolean. Napolean makes the animals work 12 hour days, and he bends the commandments to his liking. Then seeing how well animal farm was working, a mob of men attacked Animal farm, and then Jones blew up the windmill. Then Boxer was injured and a paramedic truck came, at least it looked like that, but in reality it was a vehicle of the morticians. With the money made from boxers body the pigs drank alcohol. Then the pigs became indistinguishable between humans and the animals revolted against the pigs and overthrew Napolean.

The movies was different than the book in many respects. Overall, I would give this movie a 4/5, because it had a better ending than the book and was more humorous.

I am going to be answering the question, “What makes a good leader and what are a leader’s character traits?”

• Being able to get others to follow you and believe in your visions, ideas and plans.
• Looking towards the future and coming up with new ideas, even when nobody believes in your idea.
• Being able to not procrastinate and produce something amazing or useful.
• Being able to be calm when a project meets a block or your project/idea doesn’t work out and everyone around you is in chaos.
• Be able to be in your comfort zone out of your comfort zone.
• Setting goals for yourself and following through with them and having the willpower to resist things that would be against your goals.
• Helping people if they need it, without doing their work for them.
• Be in control of yourself, if your not how are you supposed to lead others?
• Be able to co-operate with your team, and be able to deal with complications and unexpected problems.

Character Traits:

• The ability of fluent public speaking
• Grit
• Social skills
• Intelligence
• Determination
• Kindness
• Courage
• Self control
• Humbleness
• Patience
• Definiteness of plans
• Mastery of detail
• Co-operation
• Able to assume responsibility for actions as the leader

JG’s by M.D. Marrone is a story about Luke whose sister, Claire; has a hearing deficiency and he participates in a lifeguarding camp in the summer. With his sister having a disability she goes through problems most people would never experience. One kid named, Jimmy is going through his own complications, because of his parents. He decides to cause others misery because of his misfortune and calls Claire, ‘retarded because of she can’t pronounce words correctly’. Luke does not take kindly to this and in turn is training to beat Jimmy in a race that he’s previously won.

Later at the end of the book Jimmy and Luke become friends and is a great ending to the book. My favorite part of the book was ending, because I have actually participated in an event like the Taplin in JG’s and gotten 5th place out of 300 of the fastest B’s. Overall, I would rate this book three stars, because to me there wasn’t much excitement or anything urging me to turn the next page.

There is a place,

where towering grey peaks,

and rust redwoods rooted through rock,

spike out of the ground,

underneath clear blue skies,

white snow coats the parched ground,

Where birds sing their tune,

nearby incredibly powerful streams fly off mountaintops,

sunlight meets the stream and reflects itself

Lakes filled with flamboyant fish,

curvaceous slopes and swaying trees,

mirrored against the water.

Where wildlife faces humanity,

white tailed deer group together and roam,

Where a mother bear and her cubs explore the forests.

“Where is this you ask?”

“We’ll only the peaceful Yosemite National Park.”

There is a place,

where towering grey peaks,

and rust redwoods rooted through rock,

spike out of the ground,

underneath clear blue skies,

white snow coats the parched ground,

Where birds sing their tune,

nearby incredibly powerful streams fly off mountaintops,

sunlight meets the stream and reflects itself

lakes filled with flamboyant fish,

curvaceous slopes and swaying trees,

mirrored against the water.

Where wildlife faces humanity,

white tailed deer group together and roam,

Where a mother bear and her cubs explore the forests.

“Where is this you ask?”

“Well only the peaceful Yosemite National Park.”

Did you know that Martin Luther King Jr. was wiretapped by the government? Well, plainly; this is an invasion of privacy. The Department of Justice has a division specifically dedicated for spying on terrorists, it is called the National Security Agency. Although they do catch some terrorists, that is not all they do; they also spy on Americans internet activity and phone calls, which is unconstitutional.

The National Security Agency is an organization that formed on November 4th, 1952 under the orders of Harry Truman. The NSA was made to break the German and Japanese communication codes during WWII, which contributed to the victory in the war. Since then many programs have been formed such as, Dropmire, Xkeyscore, Pinewale, MYSTIC, PRISM and countless other programs. The NSA has an estimated budget of $10.8 billion and 30,000 to 40,000 employees. The NSA in conjunction with the Special Collection Service (SCS) are used for the protection of the US Government communications, information systems and of network warfare. The SCS, “inserts eavesdropping devices in difficult-to-reach places. SCS collection tactics allegedly encompass close surveillance, burglary, wiretapping, breaking and entering.” (Wikipedia, ‘National Security Agency’. 2015. Web. 30 Apr. 2015.)

There have been a few NSA whistleblowers including Thomas Drake, William Binney and Edward Snowden. Edward Snowden is the most well-known of them, for leaking hundreds of pages of classified NSA documents. It was known, that the U.S. citizens were being spied on, but the extent wasn’t known. With new information from Snowden’s leaked documents about programs like PRISM, Tempora and MYSTIC, have revealed the incredibly massive scale of  surveillance. One example of this is the Xkeystone program, which collects 40 billion internet records each month including, emails, internet searches, websites visited and more. Even text messages and phone calls are also collected without a warrant or cause. Three billion phone calls to and from the U.S. are collected, then stored in the NSA’s data centers for five years. This is an incredible invasion of privacy for almost no reason.

The National Security Agencies expansive spying is unethical and unconstitutional. The NSA spying directly violates the Fourth Amendment which guarantees, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” The NSA should need to require a warrant and reasonable cause to acquire anyone’s phone calls, web history and other personal information.

A counterargument to this is that after 9/11 this service is valuable and that the NSA foils some terrorism plans. Another counterargument is that the NSA can assist is criminal cases by providing information otherwise unreachable. Overall, the NSA is unconstitutionally exceeding its jurisdiction and legal power.

In conclusion, the NSA’s spying is an extreme invasion of privacy and violates the fourth amendment. The NSA’s spying should be limited and or be regulated. Although it may stop some terrorism, overall, the NSA’s spying is unethical and unconstitutional, .

The year is 2020 it is in an alternate universe and many things are different from the world you now today. In this alternate universe the world is unstable, because of occurrences of time travel which has made the world unstable. The criminal division that is called to fix these events is the Fringe Division. In this alternate universe two twins look almost identical and are living a life of crime. The twins are James and Jared Holloway and they live in a

“James, we need a plan we can’t just barge into the bank and ask for money!” Jared exclaimed.

“Well… let me think, how about we cause an air ventilation problem in the bank and pose as electricians and plank knockout gas? Then we could use our invention to go through the vault door and retrieve the box. James said.”

“That is good plan for the moment, but that plan has many variables and holes.” Jared said in response.

“How about we go into that old underground gateway system that runs close to the banks lower levels. We could pretend to be construction workers, nobody would question us. Now how about that plan?” James said inquisitively.

“That plan has flaws, but it would likely be the best plan we’ve thought up so far.” Jared said.

(End Of Part 1)

“Jared park the van and head into the old subway station,” James commanded.

“Ok James, do you have the equipment ready in the back?” Jared said.

“Let’s get going quickly! We need to get this done quickly,” James said as he hopped out of the trunk of the car with some of the heavy equipment.

We put on our construction helmets and begin walking to the wide stairwell about a quarter of a mile away. When we reach the stairs we get a glimpse of the bank in the distance. We begin walking down the stairs and see multiple homeless people taking refuge in the unused space. This train station was decommissioned and no light powered trains go through this station.

We walk on the train tracks and we get out our geothermal locator. We are 160 yards away from where we are going to set up.

“Ok, lets get the machine ready to operate,” James said.
“We have to be very careful, these are very sensitive materials; we don’t want to break anything,” Jared said.

“Three Cups Of Tea”, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin  is a true story about “One Man’s Mission To Promote Peace…One School at a Time.” This story documents the humanitarian efforts of Greg; building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. During his journey he faces many hardships and sacrifices his health for his cause. Over his journey he gains control of the Central Asia Institute and the assets of Jean Horeni which allows him to build over 170 schools in Afghanistan/Pakistan. Overall, this was an impressive memoir and I would rate, “Three Cups Of Tea” 3.5 stars.