11th Grade

I support sending humans to Mars. That is the only way we will ever know if we can exist there or not. I know they sent rovers there to see what the atmosphere is like etc. But, we need to send humans too. There was a big debate about just this topic with a Senate subcommittee just this week. One of NASA's former chief scientist, Ellen Stofan, who now leads the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, argued that, “If we truly want to find and understand any potential traces of ancient life on the Red Planet, robots can't do it alone — we'll need humans on the ground. While I'm optimistic that life did evolve on Mars, I'm not optimistic that it got very complex, so we're talking about finding fossil microbes. That's why I do think it will take humans on the planet, breaking open a lot of rocks to try to actually find this evidence of past life. And finding one sample is not good enough; you need multiple samples to understand the diversity," Stofan said. I tell you what, I will be the first guy to suit up for that mission.

Japan has a new Peanuts Themed Hotel opening this month. It has amazingly created 18 different private rooms that each showcase a different comic. The hotel has 3 floors with 3 different themes, Imagine, Happy and Love. All over the hotel there are different illustrations and quotes from the series. They left no stone unturned. Even the bottles of shampoo have Snoopy's face on them. August 10th is Snoopy's birthday and that is the day of the Hotel's grand opening. There is a Peanuts Cafe and a Peanuts Diner too. All with deliciously named entrees and desserts like, Charlie Brown's Choco-Banana Baked Alaska. You might want to book your stay early. I'm sure it's going to be packed full of peanuts.