Blog post on article (spring break HW)

The article pythons attack the everglades  by Stephanie Kraus really helped me understand how people are hurting the ecosystem  and the food chain even if it’s on intentional. People don’t even realize what they are doing is hurting the land and animals around them, it even affects them. People are releasing their pythons into the wild where they DON’T belong.

This article states that people are bringing Burmese Pythons into Florida and its hurting the ecosystem! The reptile trade as grown immensely over the past couple of years which of course includes snakes as stated in the article.  People buy these pets and don’t realize how big they will grow. Burmese Pythons can grow up to 19 feet. And that’s when people realize they can’t take care of them anymore so they release them into the wild. This is not the natural habitat for this large animal, so other animals don’t know how to respond to it. And as all animals do these snake needs to feed as well, and they feed on the native animals that live in the everglades such as raccoons, bobcats and opossums. And they are now wiping out these species and this is messing up the food chain because this is not naturally supposed to happen. The numbers of these animals have decreased drastically, affecting the other animals that revolve around them, such as over population in small rodents.

Another way that these snakes are creating havoc in the food chain and ecosystem is that they are now competing with the alligators that live there. The Burmese Pythons and the alligators have much of the same diet including fish, small mammals, raccoons and what not. But they are also feeding of each other. “We have documented pythons eating alligators, and alligators eating pythons,” he said. “It depends on who is biggest during the encounter.” As stated int the article.

Overall People are bringing Burmese Pythons into the state of Florida and then letting them free in the everglades which is not where they belong. The snakes are disrupting the food chain by eating certain animals like raccoons which are now low in numbers and creating competition with alligators. This is an issue that needs to be addressed more clearly and needs to be solved.  

Plagiarizing (Spring break HW)

1. What the student did wrong was that he took the material from another person and used it as his own without giving the author any credit. What he could have done was quote the site he got it from.

2. "There is a peaceful essence flowing from the structures. Perhaps the cool dark colors and the fiery windows spark memories of our own warm childhood years filled with imagination of what exists in the night and dark starry skies. The center point of the town is the tall steeple of the church, reigning largely over the smaller buildings. This steeple casts down a sense of stability onto the town, and also creates a sense of size and seclusion.To the left of the painting there is a massive dark structure that develops an even greater sense of size and isolation." as stated in the article A Brief Understanding of the Starry Night Paintings.
http://www.vangoghgallery.com/painting/starryindex.html


3. To avoid plagiarizing you can 1. site your source 2. paraphrase it 3. write in your own words 4. quote

My thoughts on reading responses (Spring Break HW)

I really like Joyce’s blog about how Peeta and Gale are different and Aiden’s blog about being ‘unwound’ and all the characters different opinions about it.

One reason I liked Joyce’s article is because she kind of gives her own opinion about it. She states “I have fallen for Peeta ever since I read about him”. Basically she stating if she were Katniss she would go for Peeta instead of Gale. I like that she did that because if make the audience reading her blog get more into it and sparks ideas in their head about the same things.                                                          
 I also like how she gave reasons why she liked Peeta better then she liked Gale. She also made it really brief getting right to the point which is something I love about blog posts.

I really liked Aiden’s blog post because I could tell he put a lot of time into it. The wording was clear and to the point. He also explained what the story was about. It was really helpful and gave me a clear understanding of what his blog was based on. 
“In the book Unwind by Neal Shusterman, abortion is illegal until the age of thirteen and cannot be performed after eighteen. When they kill the child, they use its organs to give to others in need, so they are "technically alive". This is called being unwound. In this book, three characters called unwinds because they are about to be unwound. Even though the three unwinds have the same fate, they all think of it differently.  Connor is determined to get out of his situation, Risa wants to run away but first feels hopeless about it, and Lev is a tithe; born and raised to be unwound.  Lev feels it is his divine duty to be unwound.” is what Aiden stated.
Overall I really liked Joyce and Aiden’s blog because they both were clear and I feel I could do some of the same things as they did by giving background information like Aiden did or/and add my own opinion like Joyce did.