What If #3

What if Memphis wins the national championship in basketball next year? The new team is looking quite fierce, and there is no doubt that we will be a national contender. With the number one recruiting class, we may be able to go all the way and finish what we could not while Derrick Rose was here. The number one obstacle for the Memphis Tigers next year will be, in my opinion, the Ohio State Buckeyes. With the number two recruiting class just behind Memphis, they will be receiving quite a bit of talent. I do not know how Pastner will try to use all the talent he is bringing in, but I know for sure that we will have a much deeper bench for all the grueling games where players will be fouling out. Hopefully these new prospects will stay at Memphis and be able to hit free throws. If Memphis wins it all, it will be our first ever national championship victory. The new recruiting class will bring in not just more point guards, but some talented power forwards and a strong center. The new recruiting class consists of Tarik Black, Chris Crawford, Joe Jackson, Antonio Barton, Will Barton, Jelan Kendrick, and Hippolyte Tsafack. The number of players being recruited are enough to start all of them together, but we know that is not going to happen. The talent will be spaced out with the veterans in order for them to grow more comfortable and learn the strategy of the team. I believe Pastner can pull the team together with the new recruits to create a powerhouse for next year. It should be a lot fun watching Memphis run an undefeated season.

Hot Zone Reflection

The Hot Zone really scared and interested me at the same time. The thought of a level 4 biological agent getting loose in a heavily populated area should scare anyone. It takes a certain amount of lunacy to work in a level 4 biolab. Any mistakes you make become amplified due to the infected area you are working in. Only three layers protect you from one of the nastiest diseases this world has seen. The black plague does not even hold a candle to Ebola. The parts of the book that took place in the biolabs left me breathless and restless. You never know what is going to happen. If something does happen, there is no way to know if they are infected until they start showing symptoms. The lives of many hung in the balance during the outbreak of Ebola Reston. The efforts of many brave men and women helped eradicate the outbreak and contain it in the monkey house. As we know now, the Reston strain of Ebola does not affect humans, but they did not know that. They showed great courage to walk into the area knowing that it was infected so that they could make it safer for others. The book interested me because the Ebola strains may have been around since before humans even developed, according to evolution. The smallest thing can still overtake one of the most complicated systems in your body and essentially turn it against you. A breakout of Ebola that has the ability to transmit through the air and have the same effects as Ebola Zaire could take out a significant number of the population of earth. A single cell organism could effectively wipe out 50%-90% of the Earth's population of humans. If we assume there are currently 7 billion people on earth, which is a death toll of roughly 6,300,000,000 people under a worst case scenario. That would leave around 700,000,000 people on Earth; that is just a little over twice the population of the United States alone. The amount of power contained in the single cell organism that is about 300 nanometers is both awe-inspiring and downright frightening. Let's all hope we can stop the next breakout before it becomes too dangerous.

What If #2

What if there was life on other planets. The world as we know it would never be the same, especially if the other life forms were invading. The planet could be taken over and the human population could be wiped out or made into slaves. The aliens do not necessarily have to be invading; they could be coming to help us out. They might show us how to perfect fusion power so that we do not have to pollute the world. World religions would change overnight if a sighting occurred that nobody could denounce. Not only would current religions be affected, but new religions, cults, and other groups would appear. Everything you have ever thought would be challenged; the world would forever appear differently due to the new extraterrestrials. The repercussions of a stronger more advanced species coming to earth would be that all humans would look at each other differently. The borders and cultures that separated us would no longer be as apparent. The human population would either feel or actually be threatened; the will to survive would overcome the will to stay separated by race and culture. But no one can be sure of what we would really do because we have never been in that situation. It would be interesting to see how it would all turn out. If a superior technological alien race decided to attack our planet, how fast would we be able to counter attack and defend ourselves? Would we trust each other to give up our government’s secrets in order to better protect each other? When I think of different cases of this happening in fiction, I tend to think of Independence Day and Halo. Halo is different because the human population had already spread from earth. Independence Day took place during the current day and we had not moved from earth. The different nations had to join military power to take out the aliens and return earth back to normal.