Writing Log 5B

It’s a Girl

When reading this essay, it made me think of the movie, Baby Momma. I never thought it was going to be possible to pick out the traits for your unborn baby. I thought that being able to implant sperm into a woman’s body, to make a baby was enough technological advances to pregnancy. The first hotspot that stuck out to me was, “The outcome, however, has always been pretty much a matter of chance” (pg.361). This is how our parents made us, and how their parents made them. When someone is pregnant and going to have a baby, this is how the outcome of pregnancy should be. Some people however, do not like being surprised with the birth of their baby; they would rather be told the sex of the unborn child. When reading this essay, my second hotspot was, “Using a mechanical sperm sorter, the Fairfax team reported that nearly 93 percent of the babies born were of the desired sex” (pg.361). This new technological advance to pregnancy could change the world. If people desire to have only girl babies, I feel as though our country would be strictly female, with few men. Being able to pick the sex of your unborn baby is one thing, but being able to pick if they will be athletic or not is somewhat crazy. The essay stated that there will soon be, “...DNA that produces characteristics such as hair color, height, athletic ability, and perhaps some behaviors” (pg.364). Parents are going to want to produce the perfect baby, with all of these new advances. If a parent were to pick out all of these traits that they wanted for their baby, and then when the baby was born and didn’t have any of those traits, they would be upset and disappointed. I feel as though being pregnant should mean what it used to mean.

Why We Should Go to Mars

When first seeing the title of this essay, I felt as though I wouldn’t be interested in what was being said, however I was wrong. Reading this essay, I came across my first hotspot, “The better we understand our planet, the better we will be able to keep it (and ourselves) healthy” (pg.309). I agree with this statement because there have been studies that show similarities with mars and earth. When trying to compare our planet with others, to better understand it, there aren’t many planets we can do this with. Mars is one of the few planets that isn’t harmful for us to land on and study. The second hotspot I came across was, “If we go there and find life, or even fossil evidence of past life, it would be one of the most important scientific discoveries in history” (pg.390). This is one of the better reasons why we should go to mars and explore what is on the planet. I say this because when I grew up, my parents told me tons of stories about what it was like when they were growing up. If people were to go to mars in this lifetime, thin of all the wonderful stories people could tell. Depending on what is found on mars, could potentially make our world a better place.