The Three Gorges Dam

Was building the Three Gorges Dam a good idea? My first reason that the Three Gorges Dam was a bad idea, is that ancient historical sights were lost. Second, entire cities were swallowed where the river overflowed. Third, water pollution has greatly increased since the dam was built. Lastly, building the dam cost way too much money. Therefore, building the Three Gorges Dam was a bad idea.

First, there were tons of historical sights that were swallowed by the water. There were at least 1,200 sights lost from the rise of water. Also, you can never rebuild something as important as that. Finally, that result emotionally hurt people that were attached to the sights. In my opinion, building the dam was not worth this loss

Second, entire cities were swallowed when the water level rose to meet the dam height. Because of this, people had to leave the safety of their homes and farms and start a new life on higher ground. Also, not only did it cost millions to build the dam, it also costs a lot to build new homes for those people. Another reason is, when families moved they had to dig new terraces, and had much less farmland than they did before. In conclusion, losing cities and people’s homes was not a great idea.

Third, ever since the dam was built water pollution has greatly increased. This causes a decrease in fish and plants around the river. People who depend on this food could get less to eat. Also, this can cause dirty and contaminated drinking water. Water pollution is rising and contaminating the river’s water.

Lastly,  people spent way too much money to build the dam and new homes. China spent about 22.5 billion dollars on the dam which is a lot of money. If the dam breaks, then all that money would go to waste, not to mention cities downstream would have major flooding.  Finally, China was probably way in debt after building the dam. All of the money that was spent on the dam could have been used for much simpler things.

In my point of view, the Three Gorges Dam was a bad idea. First, major historical sights were lost. Second, Lots of major cities were lost, due to the rise of water. Finally, water pollution increased greatly after the dam was built. In conclusion, the Three Gorges Dam was not worth the hardships that people went through.

Heir Apparent

Heir Apparent, by Vivian Vande Velde, is about GiannineHeir Apparent, by Vivian Vande Velde, is about Giannine Bellisaro. She is 14 year old girl who gets a gift certificate for a gaming center in her town. She decides to play a virtual reality game, called Heir Apparent. In this world she is known as Janine, who lives in a small village, with many siblings and her mother and father. She meets a man from the castle who tells her that she is a princess and is an heir for the throne due to her real father's death. She goes to the castle and meets her real family, who are not who you would expect them to be. They are nasty, mean, and are even plotting to kill her. And of course she dies not to long later. The owner of the gaming company then speaks to her. He says that the game that she is in is breaking down, and that she only has three more days to beat the game or she'll actually die from brain overload. He also gives her two hints; don't forget the ring, and that Kenric and Sister Mary Ursula don't work well together. This time Janine finds the ring and the person who had it told her that if she puts it on someones finger that person has to do her bidding. Of course she somehow finds another way to get herself killed and has to start over again. She goes through all this again, except for getting killed, and finds Sister Mary Ursula, who turns out to be a crazy lady, who only talks about the "One". Somehow she finds another way to get herself killed, and has to start over again, which happens lots of times after this. Eventually, Janine makes it farther into the game. She finds that she has to retrieve a crown that belongs to a barbarian king and a dragon now has in his possession. She confronts a wizard about this problem and he gives her 7 league boots, which take her 7 leagues when she says 7 leagues. She gets to the dragons lair and uses a time stopping hat to find the crown. As soon as she finds the crown the time starts again. She travels back to the castle not knowing that the dragon followed her. She uses the crowns power and turns the dragon to gold, then returns the crown to the barbarian king. Kenric crowns her king and Giannine barley makes it out of the game in time. She wakes up into the real world to unexpectedly see her father standing over her. 

I think that the main theme of this Heir Apparent is to never give up. An example of this is when Janine dies again, and she doesn't think she will ever beat the game, but she does. "I was going to die. I was never going to get past the first step of the game, and I was going to die" (58). A second example is when Janine is saying a poem to get the ring, but she repeats the same one and gets killed, but she doesn't give up. "OK: hill, Deming, Dad, shrine... The next time I stood in front of the statue, I recited" (220). My last example is after Wulfgar (the oldest prince) has just killed Janine. She thought she would never make it past the first step of the game, but she eventually did. "Well, how many more stupid mistakes can I make before my time runs out?" (121). These are three examples of why the main theme of this book was to never give up.

Heir Apparent has a futuristic setting in the real world, but an older setting inside of the virtual game. The game forces Janine (or Giannine) to think outside the box and to trust her instincts. An example of this is when Janine is when Janine is looking for Rawdon, who is said to have stolen treasure, and she trusts herself. "Maybe I should start in Fairfield, you said Rawdon always headed off in that direction" (151). Another example of how the setting effects Janine is when the barbarians are attacking the castle and Janine doesn't want them to slaughter the people. "No! I can't begin my kingship with a slaughter of my people" (299). These are ways in which the setting of this book changed Janine greatly.

Some other books that Vivian Vande Velde has written are Deadly Pink, and User Unfriendly which are both sequels to Heir Apparent. Also she wrote Never Trust a Dead Man and Dragon's Bait. Vande Velde has also wrote many more novels.

I would not recommend this book to other readers. It is a very repetitive story, owing to the fact that every time Janine dies, she has to start over at the beginning. The story line and the characters were really well written and explained. But, I eventually got bored with the book. These are reasons why I do not recommend this book to others.