I am groot.
– Groot
HELLO YOU HUMAN BEING. I hope that you are doing good, it’s been a crazy year. Here’s a little video on plants below. I talk about Lavender, Aloe Vera, and Rosemary!!! If you watch it, just know that I’m forever grateful. Stay safe and don’t forget to social distance and hydrate! Love you! ❤
Video presented to you by yours truly,
Elizabeth 😀
Here’s my opinion on the whole school system:
The majority of schools follow the same requirements of taking math, english, and all those other subjects. It has been this way for years. The same cycle for every student. But, why? We ask kids what they want to be when they grow up and fuel them with excitement as we put on a facade of “you can be what you want to be”. Why did I say we put a facade? It’s because as they get older our expectations we share them truly reveal themselves and we try to mold their minds to a 9-5 job. We shake their realities of life making them believe that those dreams they once had isn’t the priority and might not even come true.
I’ve asked countless people: “why are you going to college”
And, the answers are usually the same: “to get a good job”
But, why are we programming our generation that after kindergarten to preschool to middle school to high school to college their priority is finding a 9-5 job till retirement. That’s no life to live. And, I’m not trying to say don’t go to school, because I truly believe that somewhere that the intention is to teach. And, those who give their time to teach others are true heroes. What I’m saying is that their implementation for their intention is faulty. What’s the use of trying to force students to take subjects they don’t want to day after day. This just leads to cheating in class and the destruction of motivation.
Every child and every person is different. They learn differently. They take in information differently. Some people have shorter attention spans. Some people learn better when they do hands on activities. Some people learn better by watching. With all our data researchers and statistics we should know that putting everyone in the same process and expecting them to learn and grow the same way is just a big no-no. Wouldn’t it be crazy though if we did that? If we hundreds of different people into a box and teach them all the same way and expect good soaring results? Oh, wait, that is what we do.
It’s kind of like getting a bunch of cactuses and a bunch of daisies, watering them with the same amount of water then expecting both of them to grow equally healthy and to it’s full potential.
Students should be given classes that is directed towards what they want to be in life. Yes, there should be some mandatory classes. But they should ones that would really benefit the student when they go out there in the real world. To name a few classes that students should have to take: Financial, leadership, cooking classes, first aid.
Life skills are what need to be taught. They expect graduated students to suddenly be on their own and know how to do their bills and budgeting when all they taught at school was you had to run at least a mile to have a good grade in PE and that the square root of 64 is 8.
To sum everything I’m saying, learning life skills is way more important than trying to memorize the values of the unit circle. Everything around us is evolving, changing, and improving. It’s time that the educational system do that as well and make school a place of growth, ambitious.
Yours truly,
L.O.A.S.H
© Elizabeth Anne Villoria
Quote of AWESOMENESS: “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” – Dr. Seuss
!school edition!
Reading may be difficult at times, however, with a proper game plan this process may not be as painful. Okay, I’m overreacting a little bit here. Reading is awesome! There are some many books out there that inspire, teach, and share so much amazing stories and information. Aside from books, there are also great blogs (*cough* L.O.A.S.H. *cough*), articles, and more to learn from.
Now, time to read how to read. Here are some tips!
Okay, before you start reading (or, really before you start anything that you want to go well) it’s always best to start with a positive attitude. If you’re complaining and keeping a bad mood, this attitude influences that way you feel which then leads you to affect what you remember and have learned what you’ve read negatively.
Create a reading schedule! Put aside some time every day for reading. This is a good habit to form. This will help you to spread out the reading over a course of time.
Before you read through, skim through it first. Notice all the bolds, words in italics, in all CAPS, and what seems to stand out.
It is very helpful to take down questions you may have while you read to retain the information before you better.
Don’t just go through the motions and stop just looking at it word for word. Read the ideas. Where are these founds? Ideas are found in groups of words. So, remember, read in chunks!
As you finish each section of what you’ve read, pause. Think back on what you’ve just read and summarize it.
Remember the list of questions you may have made? Now is the time to answer them!
As you read, highlight the important information you find.
Ask yourself:
“What are the key concepts?”
“What are the supporting ideas?”
Going through the reading, take some notes. If there are any definitions that don’t seem familiar, look it up, and jot down what it means.
Reflect on what you’ve read. Ask questions about what you’ve read to see if you can answer them. Reread the difficult passages to fully comprehend it, you may have to do this a couple of times. Recite the highlighted areas out loud. Talk about what you just read and explain the main ideas to someone.
And, there you have it!
These tips are really great for studying! I hope you enjoyed reading how to read 🙂
stay awesome peoples
Yours truly,
L.O.A.S.H
© Elizabeth Anne Villoria
Oooooh constitution creation stuff, so cool.
Articles of Confederation: Okay, so, before the Constitution, we first had the Articles of Confederation. It was in 1777 when the Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation and then later on ratified by the states in 1781.
quick side note: When something is ratified is basically means that it was signed or given a consent by a contract or agreement of some kind to make it officially valid.
American was still fighting for its independence during this period. And in 1781, the Articles of Confederation became the law of the land. Most of the power, however, went to the state governments. And, the Articles made a loose confederation of independent states while the central government was weak. The Articles of Confederation was a start but it wasn’t strong enough to be effective. And, in 1788, the Articles of Confederation was then replaced by the constitution.
Yup, it was kind of problematic.
weakness & resulting problems of the Articles of Confederation:
quick side note: mutiny is a rebellion against proper authorities, like soldiers against officers
Constitutional Convention: With all the problems that came with the Article of Confederation, 12 states send 55 delegates to meet up in Philadelphia. Congress’ mandate was saying to revise the Articles of Confederation based on state sovereignty but they disregarded this and said no. And, instead, a whole new governing document was created 4 months later (Yup, you guessed it), the Constitution.
Now, you might be asking “Um, what exactly is the Constitution?”, well, don’t worry I shall tell you.
What Exactly is the Constitution?: It is the supreme law of the United States. It’s just the foundation and source of the legal authority underlying the very existence of USA & Federal Government of the United States. In other words, yes, indeed. Very. Important. Piece. Of. Document. It also provides the framework for the organization of the US.
The main author for this was James Madison. He did pretty extensive research as he spent a year studying democratic philosophies, reading more than 200 books, and taking notes on EVERY word spoken during the 4-month convention.
The basic principles added to the Constitution included:
Outcomes: There were plenty of outcomes that followed after such as the Great Compromise, Bill of Rights, and more.
There you go! You just learned about our Constitution. How great was that! Very much, I know.
🎵 dance to the beat of your own drums 🎵
Yours truly,
L.O.A.S.H
© Elizabeth Anne Villoria
Over the past years, technology has seemed to advance faster than we could have ever imagined, especially comparing to the Paleolithic times (where all our ancestors had invented were cave paintings and fire pits, which is, by the way, still very awesome to invent). We’ve gone from having our first light bulb flicker into existence then next self-driving cars, like Tesla. Mind-blown, I know, feelings are mutual. But, now, we’re going to talk about something that isn’t common in most places (for now, or so we think), Artificial Intelligence.
What I mean by this is that they are starting to look super realistic! We have almost mastered the art of forming technology into such human-looking-like figures. To tell you the truth it is a little bit creepy. One example of this would be Yangyang, a robot which has been created. The features that were given to her have made her an almost replica of Sarah Palin!
Sarah Palin isn’t the only one out there. There’s also Sophia and Nadine. Sophia is pretty well-known as she has been on a couple of interviews. She has even met Will Smith, and she’s actually the first robot to receive a citizenship. Nadine, on the hand, is an AI who works as a university receptionist. She was described as the “world’s most human-like robot”. Aside from looking human, these robots are able to interact as such, too. Nadine has the capability to smile, make eye contact, greet visitors, and even recognize past guests. What happens when you can’t tell artificial intelligence from an actual living and breathing human being? Imagine, just imagine, someone decides to change the entire Madame Tussaud, a wax museum (by the way, people already get confused by whether the wax figures are real or not), into AIs. Just thinking about it gives me the chills.
This problem is something that we’ve got to keep in mind. We’ve created these machines to do all these tasks and finish all these jobs for us. Yet, we somehow seem to be distracted from the fact that this would be very unfortunate for so many families and people out there.
It is estimated that 73 million U.S. jobs would be taken over by robots and automated by 2030. Yes, I actually mean millions. So for every job operated by automation, that’s another job lost for someone or their family. But here’s the wildest thing, the estimate for 73 million jobs lost is just in the U.S. alone. Looking at the bigger picture, a new report claims that, worldwide, an astonishing amount of 800 million jobs would be lost due to automation.
You read that right. Robot. Dogs. How cool does that sound? Very much, I agree. Having a robot dog eliminates most of the migraines that you would normally get from a normal dog as it wouldn’t have to do his “business”, everywhere, if you know what I mean. The two main things that you wouldn’t have to worry about anymore would be the robot dog’s health and its hygiene.
Sony has actually announced that they would be releasing their robot dog. With a price of $2,899, they have made major improvements such as adding touch sensors for when you pet it, facial recognition for it to know its owners, a camera mapping which it uses to memorize your house’s layout, and it even has voice commands!
Yup, self-taught. The advancement of the technology that has been put in their system has actually allowed them to teach themselves. They no longer need us humans to put more information for them, they can learn what they want to learn. Remember the AI robot I told you about earlier, Sophia? Well, according to the supposed first photographer who stepped inside the Hong King-based Hanson Robotics, Sophia might have self-taught herself what a camera was.
Another example of this would be the AI system that Google has made which taught itself to play Atari 2600 games. A study funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), showed that their program for their robot was capable of watching videos on how kitchen utensils work and able to properly copy what it saw without any humans to help them out. They even said that by 2029, because of AI increase of knowledge, they would have the same intelligence as us humans.
The algorithm based on trial and error is what the robot uses to check its system and repair itself. The researcher’s idea is that the robot would act something like an animal and adapt to being broken as they “learn and iterate based on self-reflection”. They have been able to successfully adapt a method similar to this to AI.
Another way that robots were designed to heal themselves was by what material they were made out of. What roboticists did was create soft robots. Soft robots work by heating itself for about 40 minutes at a temperature of 80°C, then after a day when the temperature is at 25°C, the robot would restore after its damages.
An amount reaching $2 billion dollars is said to be spent alone for AI systems in weaponry. One of the main reasons why the Pentagon and the U.S. military wants to invest this much for their weapons is to stay ahead of other countries around and be more advanced. Even though this would be helpful for an increase in security, there are still dangers that come along with it. The machines that are given the power to control their own actions may put the lives of innocent people at risk, as well.
Once our fellow AIs roam the earth and we can’t seem to tell if they’re human or not, there’s a high chance that most people (as in human beings) would have some type of relationship with an AI. Whether it’s romantic or not, the more we put in research and push for these robots to be made, it’s going to be inevitable to not have some contact with one AI or two. There are actually a couple of movies out there that show a glimpse of what people predict the futuristic love life of most to be, such as, Her or Ex-Machina.
According to the report of Dr. Ian Pearson, he says that “by 2050, human-on-robot sex will be more common than human-on-human sex”. Eventually, this idea would be so casual yet looking at it now just seems a bit weird. It looks as if we’re all planning to slowly steer away from humanity and merge as one with technology.
Claiming for military purposes, a research conducted at the Georgia Institute of Technology by Professor Ronal Arkin and his team have successfully implemented this deceptive behavior into a robot. Professor Arkin and his team first tested out this deceiving behavior with squirrels and birds and when they got the results they also were able to do it with robots.
This is definitely something remarkable yet scary. Even though we are programming this for when they are out at war or during some military business, they can also use these skills if they go rogue. And, how dangerous might that be? Very dangerous, very much indeed.
These artificial intelligence machines are becoming better and beating us at our own games. Literally. These are the very games that we’ve created. The games that only a small percentage of us have actually mastered after the years of practice. It’s all fun and games until it’s not. Right?
There is an artificial intelligence division within Google that is known as DeepMind. The advancement of AI has shown impressive results. They’ve been able to successfully beat our best players at chess, Go, and even Jeopardy using the skill sets that they now acquire.
One of the more famous cases would be google’s AlphaGo computer program designed to play the game Go. This game is something you’d really have to put your brain power to use as proper strategic planning is needed in order to win. And, here’s the craziest part, after just a couple of hours of training this program was able to defeat the world’s best player.
Taking into account all the great progress we’ve done for both the advancement and improvement of Artificial Intelligence is truly remarkable. However, there have been expressed concerns by some of the best minds out there that going through with AI research and development may lead to our ultimate doom.
Stephen Hawking has said that AI is pretty much spelling the end of our human race. Bill Gates is very worried and knows that AI going to pose as a threat to humans. Elon Musk(LINK 20) has thrown concern and warning after warning that continuing on this path to develop AI is dangerous and even compares it to “summoning the devil”.
Artificial Intelligence has already learned to lie, self-study, create, destroy, fight, self-heal, and even think for themselves. We can’t tell the future. We can’t say for sure right now whether this would be the best thing or the worst thing to happen to us. But, what we do know is that our decisions daily to proceed with AI developments is going to affect what happens to us later on. And one day we may have an AI apocalypse but also we might not.
This is our future we’re talking about. Are we willing to risk it all? Hmmm….
spread your awesomeness!
Yours truly,
L.O.A.S.H
© Elizabeth Anne Villoria
Heeeyyyy!
So I guess we’re on a roll with these US History episodes huh.
Awesome, am I right? Heh.
Let us proceed.
Vocabulary & Terminology
Enlighten – to shed light on the truth, free from ignorance
Truth – how things are
Intellect – power of the mind to understand through the use of reason
Reason – to explore the cause & effect of things
Revolution – a dramatic change of practices or beliefs
The Enlightenment: It was from the 1700’s to the early 1800’s in Europe & America that intellectual revolution occurred which was known as the Enlightenment. It was also known to stem from the Scientific Revolution from the 16th & 17th century.
Age of Reason: The Enlightenment was known as an intellectual movement because it challenged traditional authority, encouraged individualism & ability to think for oneself, proved man’s ability to reason & discover the truth, and they had realized that people’s liberties to be protected by law. (Yo, shout out to all the nonconformists for a good cause back then!)
Founding Fathers: The Enlightenment influences the Founding Fathers and applies ideas to both the revolution and constitution. Who are the Founding Fathers exactly? They led the American Revolution against the United Kingdom. Of all the Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin is the most known for his scientific discoveries & inventions: he proved lightning was electricity, and he was a member of the Declaration of Independence Committee. Other notable Founding Fathers:
___Important Peeps Profiles___
John Locke:
– “What worries you, masters you.”
Baron de Montesquieu:
– “To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.”
Jean Rousseau:
– “What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?“
Cesare Beccaria:
– “It is better to prevent crimes than to punish them.”
Voltaire:
– “I might disagree with your opinion, but I am willing to give my life for your right to express it.”
Enlightenment in the USA: The constitution is based around the idea of democracy & the idea that the power to makes laws should be in the hands of the people. The idea of separation of powers was used by the United States when drafting the new constitution (Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Branches). It is guaranteed in the U.S. Bill of Rights 1st Amendment that people have the right to freedom of speech & press. Another thing the Bill of Rights includes is that torture was outlawed by the 8th amendment. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence drawing on the philosophy of natural rights and states that all men have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Stay awesome & positive peeps! ✌️
Yours truly,
L.O.A.S.H
© Elizabeth Anne Villoria
Yup, I know, this is like the fourth blog in a row that relates to Python. BUT, it’s okay! This one is really fun. The program we will be making today is Hangman. The code is shown below:
import random
def print_game_rules(max_incorrect,word_len):
print("This game we will be playing hangman!")
def display_figure(bad_guesses):
gallows = (
"""
+----------+
|
|
|
|
|
================
""",
"""
+----------+
| o
|
|
|
|
================
""",
"""
+----------+
| o
| +---
|
|
|
================
""",
"""
+----------+
| o
| ---+---
|
|
|
================
""",
"""
+----------+
| o
| ---+---
| |
|
|
================
""",
"""
+----------+
| o
| ---+---
| |
| /
| /
================
""",
"""
+----------+
| o
| ---+---
| |
| / \
| / \
================
"""
)
print(gallows[bad_guesses])
return()
def prompt_for_letter():
print("")
player_guess = str(input("Guess a letter in the mystery word: "))
player_guess = player_guess.strip()
player_guess = player_guess.lower()
print("")
return(player_guess)
animal_words = ("horse", "mall", "desktop", "apple", "earth", "tree", "sun", "can", "love", "dog", "door", "house", "mansion", "beach", "computer", "window", "keyboard", "airplane", "hotel", "cat")
theword = random.choice(animal_words)
word_len = len(theword)
letterguess = word_len * ["_"]
max_incorrect = 6
alphabet = ("a","b","c","d","e","f","g","h","i","j","k","l","m","n","o","p","q","r","s","t","u","v","w","x","y","z")
letters_tried = []
number_guesses = 0
letters_correct = 0
incorrect_guesses = 0
###############################
# PROCESSING SECTION
# Branching code: if/else
# Looping code: for-loop, while-loop
###############################
print("This game is hangman.")
while (incorrect_guesses != max_incorrect) and (letters_correct != word_len):
letter = prompt_for_letter()
if letter in alphabet:
if letter in letters_tried:
print("You already picked", letter)
else:
letters_tried.append(letter)
if theword.find(letter) == -1:
print("the letter", letter,"is not in the word")
incorrect_guesses += 1
print("***********************")
print(incorrect_guesses)
else:
print("the letter", letter,"is in the word")
for i in range(word_len):
if letter == theword[i]:
letterguess[i] = letter
letters_correct += 1
else:
pass
else:
print("Please guess a single letter in the alphabet.")
x = ""
print(x.join(letterguess))
a = ""
print("Letters tried so far: ", a.join(letters_tried))
if incorrect_guesses == max_incorrect:
print("Sorry, too many incorrect guesses. You are hanged.")
print("The word was", theword)
if letters_correct == word_len:
print("You guessed all the letters in the word!")
print("The word was", theword)
display_figure(incorrect_guesses)
Honestly, this was a challenging project at the start and I had quite a few obstacles that were highly annoying but eventually here we are!
Pssst, don’t forget to be awesome today.
Yours truly,
L.O.A.S.H
© Elizabeth Anne Villoria
Hiii!
Functions are so useful and cool at the same time and right now I’m going to teach just how to make one!
But, before we go there, what exactly is a function? It’s somewhat like a pre-made command that you get to customize yourself. For example, you wanted to make five circles, imagine you would have to make each circle repeating how big you wanted it to be, the color, locations, and others. But, if you had a function, you would make it so much simpler in just adding the code and copy-pasting the function.
Here’s the code for a function:
[remember: WHITESPACE is very important in Python]
# This hastag is a comment and won't affect the code # We start making function by defining it with the word def # The thing written inside the parenthesis is called the argument # Remember to put the colon then the indentation will be proper, too def list(alist): # Here, I'm setting the variable a to number 0 a = 0 # This is a for-loop and the i just stands for index for i in alist: if i > 0: a += 1 else: pass print(a) # Here is the actual function in action! # Test section mylist = [2,-4,5,-16,-20] mylist2 = [2,6,8,-4] mylist3 = [-5,-6,-7,-8,10] list(mylist) list(mylist2) list(mylist3)
This is just a simple example of what you can make of a function. Try it out!
Don’t forget to be awesome!
Yours truly,
L.O.A.S.H
© Elizabeth Anne Villoria
Quote of awesomeness: “The fears we don’t face becomes our LIMITS” ~ Robin Sharma
Fear.
*dramatic music*
We’ve at least experienced countless times throughout our life. Right? I mean, it can come from the smallest of things. Like, that time you checked your bag for your phone and couldn’t find yet it was in your hand or right in front of you the whole time. Or, that time you left the house, locking the door but then you stop in your tracks, eyes widening in horror as you feel uncertain if you brought your house keys out with you. That feeling of fear which drains your face making you look pale as if you’ve seen a ghost. That’s the feeling which most would experience when faced with such circumstances, but is this always a bad thing, is it a good thing? Yes and no. Huh? I know, confusing. But, it’s okay we’ll clear the confusingness in a bit.
The California Science Museum is a great place which has an area all about what this thing called fear is. Let me tell you what I learned when I visited this (very very very awesome and educational and fun and cool) museum! It seems that in society, the feeling of fear grows stronger as more people get scared or afraid? And, just a simple tweet or news from the media, some politician, famous person, or interest group could easily spread such feeling of fear. However, fear also does have a role in today’s entertainment and an example for this would movies! Yes, people do buy tickets to watch that new scary movie which they would probably regret later on as they leave the theatre on purpose. And, because of how fear grabs our attention even though we might not enjoy it all the time, it helped in forming what shows in movies, television, magazines, books, and even popular novels. This shows how fear and culture have shaped each other.
When faced with a scary or dangerous situation, the three responses which most do are Fight, Flight, and Freeze. Let’s put the three responses to action! Scenario time!!:
One day you find yourself hiking with your friends. It’s a beautiful sunny day and you start wondering why you tried to stay at home earlier as your friends bugged you on coming with them. You and your friends are having an awesome time as you lead the way going back home. Suddenly, in the corner of your eye, you spot a spider a few feet in front of you. The thing is you have arachnophobia which is the fear of spiders and this odd feeling in your stomach starts to overcome you and you suddenly:
|3 RESPONSES|
|Fight|
Cry? Kick? Scream?
“SPIDER!!!!!!”, you scream so loud the ground seems to tremble.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that you start punching the spider, although that would be quite hard considering the spider would see you coming and try dodging you. Also, considering the arachnophobia, going nearer to the spider or even touching would probably not be the best or first idea to come to mind. To fight could also mean to just cry or scream. This response would be on the more responsive side when faced with a situation such as this.
|Flight|
run. Run. RUN. RUN!!!! – yours truly, brain
The spider seems to agitate you as you look directly at it. You get this feeling that it the spider is giving you an intense scare which makes your heart skip a beat. Suddenly, the only message your brain fires at you is: run. Run. RUN. RUN!!!! You take one more glance at the hairy creature minding its business (possibly nibbling on a leaf, if spiders even do that), a shiver going down your spine, and you start running as fast as your feet could go. Your friends watch as you zoom past them as if you were the flash. All you want to do is get as far away from the spider. This response, my friend, is the flight (no you don’t actually fly, though that would be cool) when faced with situations like this, you run.
|Freeze|
don’t. move.
You take one look at the spider. You stop talking and the thoughts of the beautiful sunny day and the joke your friend just made which made you send a thunderous roar of laughter fades away. Your heart is pounding and you just want to scream or run but your feet seem to plant in its place and your mouth stays shut. The fear slows the flow of blood to your skin redirecting it to the skeletal muscles causing the color of your face to be drained, and causing you to look pale. Your eyes are wide open and glued to the spider as if you were anticipating its next moves. Your friends wave in front of your face as sweat drips down your brow. “Don’t. Move.” this is what your brain seems to signal throughout your body as faced with a fearful situation such as this.
|QUESTION|
Which response would you do?
Fear helps us because it keeps us safe. Like, in the movie Inside Out with all the emotions going on in Riley’s head, fear was able to keep her safe a few times. An example would be when she was running but then the fear emotion suddenly stopped her as she came close to a wire, fearing she would have tripped.
The museum even has like these small hubs with different fears like the fear of sound! I sat down then suddenly this loud sound when off and yes I jolted which was also recorded then showed to me in slow motion.
Stop laughing, it’s not funny. I mean, fine, just a little. But, anyway the fear is innate as it’s been with us since birth- I read it in the museum so my reaction was completely (very funny actually, my parents and sisters couldn’t stop laughing) normal.
There are so many things to learn about this and interactive fun stuff to do at the California Science Museum. I’m sure you’ll enjoy!
Annoying ways that fear can pop up and just ruin something:
You walk up to the stage encouraged as you start to speak.
You look at the audience and the crowd seems to be astonishingly big. Then your glossophobia jumps in. And, then you end up saying:
“Friends, Romans, countrymen lend me your (suddenly your fright comes in and you say)- fears”. Huh? Wasn’t it supposed to be ears? Oh well, must have been that scare.
Hope you’re having an awesome day, afternoon or night! Till my next blog, Bye!
Yours truly,
L.O.A.S.H
© Elizabeth Anne Villoria
In 1995, eBay was created by Pierre Omidyar in his living room as this idea went to him. In the beginning, this site was first called AuctionWeb. The main goal of the website created was for people to have the ability to post and sell on auctions. At first, when Omidyar launched his website, no one was going to his site because the link to his site wasn’t known to anyone else but himself. So then, he started creating ads which showed things about what his site could do. Omidyar created eBay “dedicated to bringing together buyers and sellers in an honest and open marketplace.”
Did you know that the first thing that was listed and sold was a broken laser pointer which was bought by Mark Fraser? Yeah. It was. And, one of the most amazing things that I found was that just in the second year of release (in 1996, around June), $7.2 million was the total value of the merchandise sold on AuctionWeb. Then in October 1996, eBay got their first office in a small suite at 1025 Hamilton Avenue in San Jose, CA. At this time, Omidyar has had his first employee and has paired up with his longtime friend, Jeff Skoll making him the president, who he knew had an excellent skill at business.
A myth went around for a while that Omidyar created AuctionWeb (now eBay) to help his wife to sell Pez, but this was later found false.
It was in September 1997 when AuctionWeb was officially renamed into eBay!
Remember in Transformers when Sam Witwicky was trying to sell some of his great-great-grandfather’s stuff? That’s right! He did that on eBay.
From 1995 to the present time, eBay has reached so many people everywhere and has even funded charities and helped nonprofit organizations. With eBay, it has been able to create this community where people trust each other more. Imagine how ideas could turn into something so much more and help so much more. This is exactly what eBay is, an amazing concept turned into reality. And, one thing that I believe we could really use here is: Trust.
Yours truly,
L.O.A.S.H
© Elizabeth Anne Villoria
Life of a Secret Homeschooler | A.K.A | L.O.A.S.H 
You must be logged in to post a comment.