Start of the swimming season

The high school boys swimming season starts on monday, and I'm really excited. I haven't really improved very much over the past few seasons, and that really motivated me to work hard in the off seasons. I swam at a swim club up in faribault and went to a swim camp at gustavus college to improve my technique. I also went to the y and swam often to work on the many new things that i had learned. I am confident in myself and what i can accomplish. I was told by someone who was a swimmer that one of the fastest people on their team in high school was a tall and skinny guy who didn't have a lot of muscle, just like me. Yet he could swim a 50 free in 23 seconds. Our school record in the 50 is a 21.28. That really made me realize that i was fully capable of swimming that fast, and that i just needed to work hard and improve my technique. My goal is to take the school record in the 100 freestyle, which is 47.47 seconds. My goal is to swim the same race in 45.5 seconds. I'd also like to take the record in the 50 free. My goal time for that is 20.5 seconds.
                                                              -Andrew

Giving

Giving is one of the most important and beneficial things we can do in this world. I think it is a lack of giving that makes up for much of the evil in this world. We opress other people because we don't give them a chance to be our equals, which they are. When we don't give to other people who are in need, we are taking away from them a chance to have the same comfortable lives that we are leading. Based on this logic, if giving is the cause of all good in this world, then the root of all evil must be stealing. When you kill someone you are stealing their life. When you persecute someone, you are stealing their right to be human. I think that if everyone would start giving each other their right to be human and treat them as equals and consider their rights for once, we wouldn't have nearly as much evil in the world as we now have. We should remember that every time we give, we are making a small difference in this cold world.

Hubble movie at imax

I recently saw an advertisement in the science museum magazine saying that there is an imax movie about the hubble space telescope and its discoveries coming to the science museum. I think this will be great and it will be amazing to see the incredibly high resolution spacescapes that the hubble has produced on the huge imax screen. The hubble is am orbital space telescope with a huge, extremely high resolution camera to take pictures of objects in deep space. It has given us an unpresedented view of the beauty of deep space, and it continues to show us new things all the time, such as the furthest visible objects in the universe, which are nearly 13 billion light years away. This means it takes light 13 billion years to reach us. This is just an incomprehesible distance for me, the fact that it takes light, the  fastest thing in the universe, 13 billion years to travel the distance. I hope that this movie will help people to realize the beauty and vastness of the universe we live in.
                                         -Andrew

Adaptation/Evolution

The ability to adapt is one of the best traits that living things have. They can adapt to their environments through the process of natural selection. The best genetic mutations (adaptations) which allow an organism the edge over its competitors in survival are passed on through reproduction, and the cycle continues into the next generation. These small genetic changes can accumulate and lead to large changes, which is how speciation (the evolution of new species) and ultimately large scale evolution takes place. While many creationists would say that this kind of evolution never takes place, speciation has been observed and the fossil record essentially lays to rest creationist arguments. The fossil record is abundant in transitional fossils, which are fossils that show the gradual evolution from one type of organsim to the next, such as fish to amphibians. It would be quite useless for creationists to argue against these obvious evidences. Also, if every organsim had existed on the earth at one time, then we should find fossils of Velociraptors mixed with the fossils of modern humans, but this isn't what we find. We find every fossil at a certain depth based on its age, and the deeper the depth, the older a fossil is. The fossil record only truly makes sense when viewed in the light of evolution. We also see evidence for evolution in vestigial structures, which are organs that are reduced in functionality, or have lost their function completely and are no longer needed, all due to evolution. One of my favorite examples of this is the fact that whales have tiny leg bones that are completely covered by flesh and have no function whatsoever. One must think logically: If this animal were created in its present form, then why would it possibly have leg bones that are completely useless. Creationism has no answer to this, and this can only be logically explained if whales evolved from land mammals, and that the leg bones are just leftovers from evolutionary ancestors. I'm a Christian, yet I believe in evolution, which is possible. In fact, polls have shown that many of the world's Christians believe in evolution. I'm really tired of all the useless creationist arguments, and listening to a creationist is like listening to a broken record. They just repeat the same arguments again and again, year after year, even though these arguments have been refuted scientifically time and time again. I hope that creationism will die out in the next 40 years in the light of modern science.
                                                                  -Andrew

Humanity

People have always wondered what makes us human and sets us apart from animals. Humans are obviously very different from animals. We have a complex civilization and are capable of abstract thought, which means that we can ponder deep questions, such as why are we here? and how did the universe begin? As far as we know, animals are incapable of pondering these same questions. Humans can also express many emotions, such as love and compassion. While some primates can also have these emotions to some degree, they don't display them as often or to the same depth that humans do. Sometimes people think that because they have a different skin color than someone or that they are wealthier or more intelligent than someone that that means they are better than them. I don't think this makes any sense. We are all members of the human species and we alll have similar feelings and desires. You may be better at something than someone else, but that person is probably more skilled than you are in a different area. I think that humanity will have finally reached its full potential when we put aside pride and prejudice and work for the commo good of everyone. Sadly, this probably won't happen any time soon, and may never happen. People are just too selfish and enthralled with themselves. I believe this is the root of all evil in this world.
                                                            -Andrew