Robert Ballard response

Robert started with the question on why NASA gets so much more funding than NOAA. NASA's one year budget would fund NOAA for 1000 years. The ocean makes up 72% of the worlds surface and very little of its has been explored. He showed a map of the world without the oceans and there was mountians in some spots and it was just flat in others. He said it was flat because no survey ship had been there. That amazed me becasue the ocean is on our planet and home and we don't know as much as we can about it. And even in our country 50% of the land is under water and we have better maps of mars than our own country. That seems crazy becasue we can use what is here not what is on mars. It also suprised me that the average depth of the earth is 12000 feet below the sea. The sea is one of the richest places on the planet with huge deposits of ore so why aren't we taping in to these. Robert talked so much about the scietific wonders of the ocean that it reallty made me think about his question on why NASA gets so much more money than NOAA. Why aren't we explioting the recources that are on earth and cheaper to get to than ones that are possibly in space. Robert also talked about how they are using the dicovery and adventure of the ocean to motivate kids and get them interested in science and other subjects so that they can compete with kids from other countries. Robert ended with another question: Why are we looking to colonize the moon but not the ocean? Again it would probably be cheaper to habitate the ocean than the stars.
I've read every book Clive Cussler has written and all of his series have something to do with the ocean. I thought that he had used writers licsence to write his books but this talk made me realize that most of it is true. The reason I bring this up is becasue I would actually consider having a carrear in ocean research becasue I like science and the prospect of discovery. This talk really made me think about the what ifs in the world and that just makes me want to learn more.

Shai Agassi electric car response

When Shai opened with the question on if a country could be run without oil it really made me think. After he worked through several ways that he thought would work but wouldn't he figured that eletricity would be the best way to achieve the goal of no oil. I agree with this becasue other methods just don't seem to have the abundance to sustain an entire population. Electricity however has many ways to be produced that are sutainable including wind and solar that are another way to get off oil. One of my main problems with electric cars is that they don't go very far. Shai had a fix for that in a network system. When you park you plug your car in and when you are driving if your battery gets low you swap it out at a store. This really reminds me of gas stations today where when you get low you just fill up. With the battery swap system he figured that it would cost 8 cents a mile compared to $1.50 a mile to gas  today. If you think like the average american whats not to like about saving money. And it would get even cheaper becasuse of the life of the battery. If it got that low a 40 mpg gallon car and the whole Pacific of oil could not compete. When he started talking about islands of electricity I didn't think that was good becasue you could only stay in a limited area. That seems to be one of the bigger problems with this concept. I really agree that the U.S. will be one of the last areas to get this system. Without a large tax on gas like Europe or places where gas isnt as cheap as it is here.
This was by far my favorite talk so far. It was a really good topic and the way he spoke gave it a lot of flow and made it really easy to follow. This topic made me think a lot about how cars and oil impact the economy and environment and how if changed there could be a lot of ups and apperently from this talk few downs. Oil is one of the resons our economy is bad so why don't we just get rid of it and its problems.

Dave Eggers response

His talk seemed very rushed and unpracticed. He was very nervous and talked really fast with a lot of ums and a's. He used a lot of hand motions and looked around a lot when he paused. His presentation was very choppy and unflowing. However he seemed like he was having fun and the audience seemed to like him. The way that they desinged their centers as joke stores with the tutoring in the back is cool because they might make a little money along the way from traffic that goes to the tutoring center. It is a really good model to use anywhere because the kids can have some fun and learn at the same time. 
The topic that he talked about was a really good idea because he and his friends love writing and want to use that to help kids that get no one on one help becasue of class size. Many of the kids they help do not speak english at home so they struggle in classes that require english. You can see how this would be good even here in Denver there are schools that are not mainly english speaking and they seem like they do not do as well as schools that are more english. Something like this would help kids becasue if you don't speak a language primarily then it would be really hard to do good at it in school. If every city had a place like this then a lot of kids would really bennifit because if they went at a younger age then they will get a solid base for later life in writing and english.