Blogging Around: 12/9/12

 Mackenzie O

She wrote about how humans and technology should never be combined.

Comment:
I agree that technology is becoming very important and is even required to be used in some homework assignments. I think that using newer advanced technology should only be used medically for replacement heart and bones. What I do not agree with is that kids one day learning everything they need to know in the click of a button being a bad thing. One, because if that were ever possible there would be no point in living, and Two no one would ever create that for reason one.


Anne E

She wrote about her opinion of the book Sophie's World.

Comment:
I wrote a very similar article to yours Anne and was surprised to see we agreed upon pretty much everything. This book contains so many facts and plot twists that as soon as you seem to be getting bored of the book you suddenly read a about how Alladin is roaming around in the woods. It is a strange but insightful book.

Get Organized: Memory

My room is a total mess. Clothes, posters, papers, cables and cords all around taking up space and making my room look like tornado just hit it. Garbage would be the term used for at least have the junk in my room. Something needed to be done.

I started out thinking the project would take hours of time I could have been spending doing, anything else. As I made a dent in the cleaning it started to feel good and almost cleansing. It felt like I was moving on with my life and that this is how I would be able to start it. I may have been cleaning my room, but I was really taking a trip down memory lane. Memories I had forgotten about. As I would place them somewhere else or in the garbage I felt as if certain memories could be thrown out. Like they were a simple object, but that object had a story and its own past. 

The half-way point. I feel like I have so much space now that I should have just left the stuff there than try and put it somewhere else. Although maybe the emptiness in the room could be filled with new clothes, new items, and new memories. Getting rid of old memories to make fit for the new ones. New ones some day later on I would be forced to get rid of as well to make room for even newer ones. It makes me wish I could remember everything I ever did, but in a sad way remembering everything is bad. If you could remember everything you would always be being held in the past. Never being able to move forward.

The room is organized. I feel ready to start making it a mess again even though I am promising my parents to keep it clean this time. I guess we will just have to see what happens in the future.

iMedia: Breaking Bad

One of the greatest shows of all time is Breaking Bad on AMC. This show has incredible writing as well as amazing characters which are perfectly casted. It brings to life what no other show has every tried to do. Drug Dealing. With its many twists and turns that are almost unpredictable until moments before the event which drive its viewers to continue watching. It is currently in its fifth season which has been split between this year and next year. This year's half has ended, and all I can is that I cannot wait for next year to already be here. It has been nominated for 78 awards and won 32 awards, as well as 2 Golden Globes. Now let me back up and tell you a little more about this show from the beginning.

Walter White, played by Bryan Cranston, a school chemistry teacher has an accident while at his second job at a car wash. After a recovery at the hospital a doctor tells hims he has developed lung cancer. He is shocked and scared to the point where he wants to hide this from his family and find other means of getting the money. While taking a police ride along with his DEA brother-in-law Hank, he witnesses a drug bust of two meth cooks, but one escaped which Walter witnessed. Later Walt finds the cook who escaped which you learn is a former student, Jesse Pinkman, played by Aaron Paul. He then purposes to Jesse to cook meth with him in order to pay for his treatment. It later grows from just them in an RV to an entire business covering their actions and more than just paying for Walt's cancer. They gain millions of dollars and are constantly going through extreme life changing experiences. 

It really makes you think about what you would be willing to do to protect your family from a dark secret you might have.

Best of the Week: Philosophy

Before starting Sophie's World this week I was nervous that I would very much dislike the book to a point where I would never read it. People told me that it was their least favorite book of the year. So when I began to read it I started to notice why people hated the book. It is a book that is basically just questioning everything that is. People get bored by that kind of stuff. It is not interesting to hear how other people think about the world, but we want everyone to know our own opinions. It's a cycle.

I on the other hand am very interested in questioning the world and philosophy and why things are the way we portray them as. So this book is starting to become a very important book in my life. To add on to the fact that it is always keeping you thinking about what is and what is not. It is developing a mystery to it. A man or philosopher is sending 14 year old Sophie letters about questions the world and who she really is. Creepy is the only word to describe that. Sophie some how continues to think about the questions in the letters yet she does not question why he chose her. The mystery really is, who is this man? That is what has caught my attention the most in this book. So during the week when we had a reading day it was the section where Sophie is told his name is Alberto Knox and that he Hermes his dog would be delivering letters now and not him personally. WAIT! The means he was at her house on a daily bases. Again, very creepy.

Metacognition: Procrastination

I react the same way every time I find out I have a project or an essay due. "This is going to take forever....." also known as Stage 1. When I'm home and actually look at what I have to do for the assignment I realize it is not as hard as I think. I understand that it is simple in some ways, but overall will take sometime to complete. Time I would have to take away from TV, friends, and other fun activities. Time I begin to realize I would not want to give up for more homework. Thus begins Stage 2.

Stage 2 is procrastination. Every teenagers best friend who always stabs them in the back by the end and yet we continue to be friends with them like it was an honest mistake. Procrastination is the worst thing that could happen when doing a long term assignment. Avoiding to do a project can cause a lower effort when doing the project which means a lower grade which leads to patterns of procrastination. I cannot help, but procrastinate. There is always something more fun to do that an essay about a book I'll have to half make up, because I procrastinated reading it. 

Finally, Stage 3 of my journey is doing the assignment the weekend or night before. After procrastinating for so long that I finally have no choice, but to do the assignment. By the end of me completing the assignment it looks rushed and unorganized I feel the need to reread it to make sure its okay before turning it in. Suddenly my good old buddy procrastination stops by for one last visit. It says "Hey Andrew, you seem tired. You could use a rest. How about you lie down for a little bit in your bed? No worries I'll you up earlier than usual so you can read it over." Which never happens.

To some up procrastination is bad and the only reason me or anyone in the history of the world will ever to bad on an essay or project is because of procrastination.

Blogging Around

Carry It Forward: The Last American Man

By Eva Tumanova

In her blog she was talking about a book she had found that was about a man who ran away from home to live in the woods and how in the woods he had to make his own choices in order to survive. After his time in nature he came back to try and spread his way of seeing the world through transcendentalism, but people found it odd.

This was a really great blog entry. I enjoyed it the most at the end. That you were choosing to follow a dream and not go to college to become something that you are not. I admire that about you. Unfortunately I am not as into transcendentalism as you are so this book would only make me think this man is crazy for leaving society, but I understand that sometimes when you have strict parents it can seem like you cannot do anything no matter what you try. When the protagonist ran into the woods, it seemed almost like a coward thing to do in my opinion. As if he was running from his problems.

Connection: Art and Creativity

By Anne Edwards

In Anne's blog, she talked about how creativity affects art and how art cannot be made without creativity.

Anne, I cannot tell you how much this speaks to me. Ever since I was little I was extremely interested in drawing. Although, I was not very good at drawing especially three-dimensional drawings. So a lot of the time I'll have a creative idea, but I cannot execute the idea without butchering the drawing. Once every blue moon, I will have a decent drawing and will be proud of it and start to try more difficult drawings, but again my art ability is not good enough for my creativity, but when i think about it I'd rather be creative and not artistic than artistic and not creative.

Best of the Week: Prostitutes

Recently in class we watched a film about children in India in the Red Light district. If you are not familiar with the red light district it is an area where women sell there bodies to men in a sexual way. This got me thinking that in the U.S. prostitution is illegal. In the inner cities of New York, Chicago, Miami, and even more prostitution exists in other cities. It seems like in other countries prostitution is an easy way to make money maybe to feed kids and family. So why would countries not just make it illegal and enforcing it to the point where those women have to get other jobs and giving them more rights? 

I feel that prostitution is bad and should forever stay illegal in the U.S. If other countries wanted to keep it legal then that is their choice, but i prefer to stay in a country where women have more rights. It is very disturbing how it even crosses women's minds to even think about selling their body for sex. They must come up from seriously bad backgrounds which in those area might be considered more normal than in any other area around it. 

In order to fix this problem, education needs to become more of an option when young so dreams can become a reality and when everyone is educated we become a more civilized nation and world. I am proud to say that prostitution does not affect me directly.

Connection: Televisionary and Modern Televison

Recently in class we read and discussed the article "The Televisionary" in the article it talked about a man named Philo T. Farnsworth. According to this article back in the 1910's he originally created the first television which is nothing like today's televisions. Unfortunately Farnsworth was not recognized as the creator until later in the 20th century. His product was stolen by a bigger corporation, which improved his idea and turned it into a product for the public.

Television was originally in black and white and the screen was as big as a today common laptop computer screen. It had what is now know as basic cable, only a few channels by major companies like NBC and ABC. Over the years more and more stations and shows appeared on TV, like the Ed Sullivan Show and many other late night shows that would be live. These shows would showcase famous people, or up and coming famous people. Think about it as an early version of Saturday Night Live.

Live shows like that grew into prerecorded shows which would be filmed, edited and aired later. This was the development into modern television. Almost all shows are prerecorded to be aired later after many edits. Television has only gotten better after the decades it has been around. Some of the greatest shows ever from the past are being topped by many shows like, The Office, Breaking Bad, and How I Met Your Mother. Television will only get better and better as time goes on.

- Andrew Bennett

What if: Plagiarism

Today in class we talked about academic dishonesty and plagiarism. I want to start out by saying I am not okay with cheating. It just got me thinking because in the past many other people have obviously cheated on a test or stolen a paper. Teachers also have turnitin.com which allows them to know if a student copied and pasted a paper and would know based on how the anti-cheating website works if it was not the students own work. Before turnitin.com i have no idea how teachers would know if a student was cheating.

What if students created a website where you could post, from around the country, papers for others to use freely? Would that still be considered cheating? Yes it is not your own work, a valid case to claim the student is cheating, but the website is okay with the papers being used. Unfortunately, I think the school could probably careless about where you got it versus the fact that the kid used it.

What if there were a company that for a price would right your papers for you? I hear in the news kids getting caught taking the ACT or SAT for another friend, who might not be as smart, or is just to scared to try. This also occurs on the hit TV show Suits on the channel USA.  The company would be different because they would just email you the Word document that the student would have to turn in. There is no easy way for teachers to know that the student is cheating.

"Rules were meant to be broken." A man said that once and if you think about all the news on CNN, FOX, ABC, and NBC it is full of people breaking the rules. Rules are what gives us the ability to be free. In a sum up, I foresee after I have graduated from high school or even college, students will have found away around turnitin.com or any other website like it.
I believe it is inevitable.

- Andrew Bennett