Liv Castro 1450

Here is my final presentation !

The internet can be incredibly helpful, but also incredibly dangerous. The internet is constantly watching your every move. If you do anything on the internet, there is a record of it somewhere. What you watch, search, buy; it’s all being monitored and saved. For example, if you buy a shirt on a website, the record of you buying that shirt is saved and other shirt companies can see that and target you to buy their product through ads. These ads pop up on random websites like facebook, not just clothing websites. Nothing is private information, even if it says it is.  After watching the TED Talk videos, I feel scared. I do not like the fact that the internet knows and keeps track of everything that I do. It’s not that I’m doing anything bad, it’s just creepy. The first TED Talk really scared me when he talked about a company that tracks and records people's faces. Anybody has access to this information and can do whatever they want with it. It’s also scary to think about how

According to Merriam Webster , a whistleblower is “an employee who brings wrongdoing by an employer or other employees to the attention of a government or law enforcement agency and who is commonly vested by statute with rights and remedies for retaliation.” In other words a whistleblower is someone from inside the company that alerts the public about neglect, abuse or corruption going on inside the company. There are a few things that a whistleblower needs to consider before speaking out. The first thing that you need to consider is the following question; is speaking out really in the public's best interests? Next, you need to consider which is more important; loyalty to the company or loyalty to the public. You also need to consider your personal consequences such as your reputation and your job. Then you need to consider is the following question; will real change take place? If you finally go through with it you have to be very specific with your facts. You need to specif

The Smith Mundt Act , also known as the U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948, was the authorization for propaganda activities conducted by the U.S. Department of State only for foreign audiences. This act was proposed by Carl E. Mundt in January 1945, but was not passed until 3 years later in 1948 by President Truman. This act is sometimes called "public diplomacy". Public Diplomacy defined as any government-sponsored effort aimed at communicating directly with foreign publics to establish a dialogue that supports the government’s strategic objectives.  64 years later the Smith Mundt Act was amended and transformed in 2012. This idea was introduced by Congressman Mac Thornberry. It gave the State Department, Secretary of State and the Broadcasting Board of Governors, permission to use propaganda for foreign audiences as well as in the United States. Propaganda is defined as “information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or

Nowadays almost everyone has some sort of social media and some sort of online footprint, whether it be email, Twitter or Snapchat. But at what cost do we use these websites and apps? Personally I have a pretty large online footprint. Name a website or app and I probably have an account. I think part of the reason that I have such a large online footprint is because of the culture surrounding social media. It’s almost necessary that people nowadays have at least one social media account. I have multiple. I do not have a personal website yet, but I am in the process of making one so that future employers can see the projects that I’ve worked on.  The most common social media sites that I use are Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter. I use Instagram to post pictures that I take at events such as formals or on vacations. I use snapchat to talk to my friends and send them funny pictures or videos. I use Twitter to see what is happening in the world around me, but I almost never post in

Snapchat is one of the most popular forms of social media that is used today. But what makes it so popular? Will it be popular forever? S napchat officially launched in September 2011. At this point in time, the app only allowed you to send pictures back and forth to your friends. The catch was that the picture could only be seen for a maximum of ten seconds. This is what made it so popular because this idea had never been done before. In fact it was so popular that it gained 10 million active users in exactly one year and one month. Exactly a year later Snapchat introduced the idea of “Stories”. A Snapchat story is a photo or video that someone posts to the story section of the app, which is visible to all your friends not just one person. This made Snapchat even more popular because no other app used this idea yet. In May 2015 Snapchat reached 100 million daily users. In fact 36% of Americans age 18-29 had a Snapchat account in the beginning of 2016. Snapchat also has features th

Out of the eight values of free expression, I think that Stable Change, also known as Safety Valve, is the most important. Stable Change is the idea that in society, people will be more stable if they are allowed to vent. In fact, people are less likely to resort to violence if they can vent.  I know for me personally, venting is very helpful. When I was in high school I used to hold all my emotions in and it took a huge toll on my mental and physical health. The first time that I vented, I did it to a trusted friend and it really helped. I felt like a weight was lifted off my shoulders because I don't have told hold the weight of a particular problem. I’m not a naturally violent person, but venting still allows for me to get out my emotions in a safe and nonviolent way.  According to Psychology Today , there are 3 reasons why venting is good for you. The first reason is that it is better for you to express your emotions rather than keeping your emotions bottled up inside. K

Over fall break my mom and I spent the week in San Juan, Puerto Rico and we learned a lot about the history of it. Although Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory, they have a different constitution that consists of 2 different preambles and 14 different articles.  The U.S constitution starts with a preamble that states... “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Then comes the 7 articles. The first article is about the Legislative Branch. The second article is about the Executive Branch. The third article is about the Judicial Branch. The fourth article is about The States. The fifth article is an amendment. The sixth article is about depts, supremacy and oaths. The seventh article is a ratification.

The internet revolutionized the way that people could look up information, in fact some people say it was the greatest invention of all time. It allowed for people to look up information immediately, almost anywhere, but the internet also has many drawbacks . Today I’m going to talk to you about three major issues that the internet caused.  The first issue that I want to talk about is cyberbullying. The definition of cyberbullying is “the use of electronic communication to bully a person, typically by sending messages of an intimidating or threatening nature”. The internet created a whole new way of bullying because people were not able to bully from behind a screen rather than face to face. Even though it was face to face, it doesn't mean that it isn't hurtful. 37% of teenagers, between the ages of 12 and 17 have been bullied online and 30% have said it has happened more than once.  The second issue with the internet is that you can get addicted to it very easily. Peo

The video “Mad World Remix of Moby Video (Are You Lost In The World Like Me)” is a prime example of how society is obsessed with their electronics, America is especially obsessed with their cellphones. In America, about 96% of adults have a cell phone and 42% of the 96% of Americans have iPhones. As seen in the video, people are oblivious to their surroundings when they are on their cell phones. The people in the video are on their phones, for the entire video and at the end of the video the people are seen on their cell phones walking off of a cliff. While this hasn't happened to the extent that it happened in the video, people have done some pretty stupid things while they were on their cell phones, like walk into polls and trip over their own feet. But why are people so obsessed with these little gadgets?  Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, created the first touchscreen cell phone on June 29th, 2007. As you probably know, he called it the iPhone. The iPhone completely changed

Like most concepts in the world, there are always pros and cons. I’m going to analyze some of the pros and cons of a very important topic, war. War has affected humans for as long as history has been recorded. I’m going to start with some pros.  The first pro that I want to address is economic growth. War opens up opportunities for people to find jobs. The most prominent job that opens up are jobs in factories. Since the country is at war factories need to increase the amount of goods that they are producing, especially the ones that are used in war like ammo and weapons. The second pro that I want to address is technological advancement. In order to win a war a country needs the best equipment. So during times of war, workers and companies work hard to create the best ammo and weapons. These two points kind of go hand in hand because there is a need to be the best and in order to do that, a country will need as many employees as they can. Now moving onto the cons.  The first c

Google , one of the most popular search engines, now has 48 states launching an antitrust investigation on the company. The investigation will focus on the advertising market and whether or not Google broke antitrust law. “In the United States, antitrust law is a collection of federal and state government laws that regulates the conduct and organization of business corporations, generally to promote competition for the benefit of consumers.” So basically antitrust law is in charge of making sure that no company gets too powerful. Google also owns a bunch of smaller companies, which they advertise when you search for something. This causes an issue because it doesn't give other companies a chance to sell or advertise their products. When you look up something on Google, you have to look pretty far down in the search to find a company that is not associated with Google.  Another issue is the use of DoubleClick. “ DoubleClick " was a company acquired by Google in 2008 wh

As you probably have learned in any U.S. History course, the U.S. Supreme Court was established in 1789. You have also probably learned that the Supreme Court had its first meeting in New York City in 1790 but that it now resides in Washington D.C.  Now there's still a lot to the Supreme Court that you probably didn't learn about in school. There is one fact that I am going to analyze and that is that in the history of the Supreme Court, there have been 112 justices. Out of all 112 of them, only only a handful of them have been part of a minority. Four have been women and one of those women were Latina. Two of them have been African American and eight of them have been Jewish. So 15 of the justices out of the 112 justices have been in the minority. This statistic angers me. It angers me because there is barely any diversity in a system that helps to run our country. So what happens if there is a case that involves a white American and a black American? Throughout histor

One of my favorite quotes is a quote by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The quote states that "music is the universal language of mankind." To me this quote means that no matter what language you speak, music is always there to unite people. This summer I went to my first music festival and I met people from all over the world. From California to Spain to many other places, people gathered to enjoy the music. One girl that I met from Spain told me that she didn’t always understand what the songs were saying since her native language is Spanish. I asked her why she came to music festival where she couldn't understand everything that people were saying and she responded saying, it’s not always about the lyrics, but sometimes it’s about the feeling. Her response really spoke to me. Music is a way of expressing yourself, whether it be from the lyrics or melody. It is also a way of telling a story or communicating with others. An article by The English Magazine reminded