Can we come up with a new plot?

     In my American Studies class, this week, we talking about authors writing about their own lives. How did they chose what part went into the book? Why did they pick those selected parts? This week I was watching the TV show The Walking Dead and I started thinking about how writers come up with plot ideas that are non-fiction. However they create their idea, a lot of writer must think a lot alike because now-a-days there are a lot of shows, movies, and books about post-apocalyptic societies.
     On TV right now there are about ten shows about post-apocalyptic societies. I think that we can blame all of these shows on the Mayans prediction of our upcoming apocolypse. A lot of the plots especially focus on apocolypses with zombies. I wonder if these writers actually believe in what they are writing or if they are writing to entertain?
     I wonder how so many shows, books, and movies can have the same plot and can be so popular?

The Cuban Prisoner Crisis

     In my American Studies class we just turned in a paper about  civil liberties in perilous times. One of the historical examples I used in my paper had to do with prisoners at Guantanamo Bay during The War on Terror. The U.S. government was not giving prisoners the same rights as American citizens. In the news this week, I read an article about an American man who is being held in prison and needs the U.S. government's help to be released.
     Alan Gross, the prisoner, has not had any help from the U.S. government for the three years he has been there and is still waiting for some. The prisoner was arrested in Cuba for "smuggling sophisticated satellite and other telecommunications equipment into the country to give to the island's tiny Jewish community"(article). However, Gross claims he was trying "increase internet access" and he claims he was a pawn in a U.S. government program to change the Castro regime. I think that no matter what is true the U.S. should help Gross even to just get a trial because as an American citizen he should have to his constitutional rights. 
    Other than the fact that Gross just wants to come home, he also has a sick mother back in the U.S. who he wants to see before it is too late. Do you think the government should start helping Gross to be released? Do you feel that Alan Gross is guilty?