Log 5B hotspots

The first hotspot in “It's a Girl” for me came when the author actually described the process they use to stack the odds of the baby's gender. The whole process seemed so unnatural, and I feel that doing such a thing is a crime against nature. I believe that couples should just let nature take its course, and their love for their child shouldn't be determined by the gender of the child. I don't really believe the technology will take in the United States though, the reason being that we have more equal rights here.

The second hotspot for me was when the described all the details that they could potentially manipulate with the child. They admit that there is no way that they can manipulate a baby other than it's gender for the time being, but what if they do develop the technology that allow these scientists to change the baby's IQ, looks, or even interests. I see this as the parents being selfish, as they are not allowing the child the chance to even be who he or she wants to be. I cant really seeing this becoming too popular in America, but in countries like China where having a male child is important to carry the name, I can see this technology being popular. This would have negative consequences though, as the increase of males over females would lead to a drastic population decline. I may not agree with this technology, but I still believe that people have the right to use it. People should be allowed to make their own decisions, and if they want to choose the gender of their child, then they should be allowed to do so.

The first hotspot for me in “Why We Should Go to Mars” was when the author claimed that going to Mars would help us better understand Earth. At first I found this difficult to comprehend, but as the author explained I learned that going to Mars would help a great deal. I've always been interested in space exploration, and when I was younger I always dreamed of being an astronaut. The idea that there could have been life on Mars really interests me, and to think that we could actually land people there to study the planet is mind-blowing. While it is safer to send robots to the planet, the cost of sending all these robots adds up, and there are also some things that a human just needs to be there to do.

The second aspect that blew my mind was the price. The fact that the price has dropped by 400 billion dollars over the past decade is amazing, and actually putting a man on Mars is finally within our grasp. 50 billion dollars is still quite a lot of money though, and NASA doesn't receive as wide of a budget as it used to. Actually landing on another planet would be the greatest achievement in human history, and would probably mark the first step into what we currently perceive as the future. This achievement would make us think about our accomplishments and set our sights higher for the future. The idea of actually colonizing Mars would seem a lot closer once we actually place people on it, and who knows where we would go from there.