The Project

I think the project was pretty easy. I really didn't have much prior knowledge of the Erie Canal's construction, but it wasn't hard to find information on it. Once we found out that the Erie Canal was made for transportation for the towns around it, it was easy to predict the results. Obviously it made shipping cost less, and also made things go a lot quicker. I guessed that it would make the towns around it more popular, which I found that that was true. Our group worked really well together, despite the fact that Hunter's job was to get pictures and he didn't. In my opinion, the challenging part of the project is making the script really creative. We didn't pretty good though, we have an interview with the creator of the Erie Canal, and we sang the Erie Canal song at the end of it. Pretty sweet.

Well today....

I don't have much to say about today's class. We went to the computer lab and worked on our scripts. I was hoping we could record, but Hunter's flash drive didn't work (of course) so we couldn't, and by the time he found the pictures on the internet, we only had 5 minutes left of class. The mindset of my group was that the script was literally due at the beginning of today's class, so we literally did everything and perfected everything, so while everyone was finishing their scripts, we didn't have much to do except for look for pictures, but Hunter knew what pictures would go with what, and even though Caroline, Elise and I did all the writing, and it was Hunters job to find the pictures, we still helped to speed up the process by looking up pictures. So basically Hunter owes us, but overall, I think our project is really good. We added some humor into it, (comic relief?) and a song at the end, that I thought was just a random song a random person wrote, but when Elise and I were singing it to our friends at a party on Sunday, one of our friends parents knew the song...? Is The Erie Canal song really known? Weird... heres the song, check it out?

Lab Day

We went to the computer lab today and my group and I are having some trouble trying to make it so our script sounds like a news report and that the construction of the Erie Canal is happening at the time. I think it's because we have to talk about the proposal, which was about 5 years prior to the construction, the passing of the bill to get funding and how the president vetoed it, and the actual building of the canal. If anything, I think it would be easiest to do a historical report on it, because it's hard to pick an event time period to "report" in. We can't do the proposal, because then we'd know everything that's happening in the future, so basically we have to go as recent as possible, I'm thinking that it would make the most sense to report during the ending of the project, and kind of review what happened for the last 10 years or so.

The quest

I thought the quest today was really easy. The only question I wasn't 100% on was the election of 1800 and how it changed future. I know that vice presidents and presidents are voted for o separate ballots But I'm not quite understanding how that resulted from the election of 1800. In my head, I feel like the election and the separate ballots for presidents don't have a lot in common. Everything else on the quest I understood and I know it's from some serious studying. I used an online flash card generator that Ive used since middle school and it's just like flash cards without the paper,You don't have to download anything either and it's really easy. Personally, flash cards are the most effective for me. The website is www.flashcardmachine.com You should check it out!

War of 1812

I think that patriotism in America is so stereotypical because of the War of 1812, I think that's where it all started. I can imagine that fighting Britain while you're still a newish country could be really scary and stressful, seeing as America broke away from Britain and started it's own country. After the bombardment that Britain started, I'm sure a lot of hope was lost. For some reason we couldn't do anything to stop Britain from burning Washington DC to the ground? I don't understand why we couldn't fight back or get to them before they burned down our capital. But it was probably a sign that when the American flag was still waving over the fort that morning after the fight, it gave us hope that we could overcome the British attacking us, and I think that was the turning point that kind of united us as one nation, because we were represented by the flag still waving, and unity makes a country stronger. I think we've kept the patriotism and it's why we're not so separated, even though we're the most diverse country because we're literally just a bunch of people from around the world, but I think America as a nation is pretty tightly knit.

Louisiana

I don't think it was the Louisiana purchase was a good idea at the time. For a new country, we were pretty cocky I think. Obviously it was a good decision to stay out of France's whole revolution situation and making the country twice as big as it already is, it kind of is a big risk, because the government just made a system that works...for the small country that America was before. We had a hard time figuring everything out for just the few states that we owned before the Louisiana Purchase. Although obviously this was a good deal, 15$ million for everything up to the Rocky Mountains, but we aren't ready to govern a country thats 100% larger then what we're used to. I guess at the end of the day though, we knew that this opportunity wouldn't come again, so we have to take a chance and just do it, also it's better to know you're neighbors, in case they're planning on attacking you. So in this case, we were buying our neighbors land. It would get us more respect too, among the rest of the world, who sees us as a small country that has no support and is kind of poor, land=power, but money=power too, if you use the transitive property, does land=money? Because we definitely needed money.

Help the french?

Although in almost any other case I would say we should've helped the French, in this case, I think that we had a good excuse. As I think maybe it was Joe saying, that in 2003 and 2001, we had been a stable country for a long time, so we had a lot of experience under our belts, and we could afford to take time and help Afghanistan and rid them of the Taliban with Operation Desert Storm. I think that because we've all lived through that experience, people get a strong opinion in their heads that that's what America's about, helping people and getting favors in return, so when people are asked if they think we should help France, they automatically assume we should because we're known to be kind people with good morals. Despite America's reputation, we have to remember that like all countries, we went through a beginning phase too. It's completely illogical to stop in the middle of creating the American government and working out all the kinks in the system to make everyone happy, and leave it all behind to go help France. Don't get me wrong, I think we owe something to France for helping us in our revolution, but right then was not the right time, sometimes we have to focus on getting our act together before we can help someone else. I think that leaving the country kind of idle could cause impatience with the people. If something goes wrong, if they start to rebel a tax or get angry, then we'll have to force ourselves to leave in the middle of helping the french and that could cause french resentment, especially if the revolution gets out of hand because everyone knows france has america on their side, they might raise the severity of the rebellions and if we left, it would leave the French to a worse fight that they'd be by themselves on. Also, I think we shouldn't help France right now because no doubt would we make enemies. A new country has enough problems to fix, they don't need enemies on top of that. We were already disliked by all the world's monarchs. If we gain respect from countries, then when the French need us, we can help them and we won't bring in more enemies into the French's problem, because more countries will respect and like us, and maybe can make an alliance in the future, which obviously happens. No doubt do we owe France something, at the very least, some support, but it just wasn't the right time to do that.

Today in class.

Today in class, we took notes and I'm not really 100% with what we're learning right now, mainly because I think personally, I'm not the kind of person that is interested in politics. I'm not interested in what goes on in the government, which is probably a bad thing because basically we're learning about how the government was created, and the decisions they had to make, and the problems the government has faced and how they fix those problems. We're learning about how the government is managing their flow of money, they're taxing whiskey and I think it's kind of mean that they put tax on whiskey because the farmers that can't afford much use whiskey as currency, so their "money" is being taxed. I don't think this was what the government should be all about, it should be about helping the people of the country and making the country stronger and having the people be more patriotic, and united. If anything, the government could try helping the farmers pay for what they need, or at least leave them alone, this makes the whole country look nicer in general and more inviting. They're trying to get away from the cruel monarchy that they call England, but it just makes the government look more selfish I think. They should rely on the people that can afford taxes and the people that can afford taxes should be willing to help the people that can't afford taxes, because I think that's just the way life should be. We're one country and we should strive to be good, well-rounded people.