10, 11, and 12.

10. I believe the world is going south. We are going into a recession, and it will keep going down. Hopefully not much more.

11. I am happy. Even though sometimes I am not happy, most of the time I am. Which in whole, makes me happy.

12. I don't really have any traditions, except Christmas dinner. I don't do anything besides spend time with my family.

Topic 11 and 12

Topic 11:
So I don't really have a controversial issue that comes to mind that I can discuss so I will default to the second alternative question and state my opinion of the state testing this week. I HATE IT! I don't like reading uninteresting stories that I don't like. You can't measure peoples knowledge by something they don't want to read, because personally I think that if they found an alternative way to test people, that actually caught my attention, I would have done a lot better. I mean, they gave me a story about commas, like the punctuation commas and how it's so amazing and great and all this history on it. Yeah commas are needed in life but really? You had to give me a story about that? I don't know.. honestly I think they need to pick stuff a little bit more interesting.

Topic 12:
Christmas traditions! I love Christmas, it's one of my favorite times of the year. One of our families Christmas traditions is every year my aunts and uncles figure out a house we can go to on Christmas eve to do presents and such, and this year it was at our house. Anyway, I have two younger cousins who still believe in Santa Clause, and my dad always dresses up like him and comes in with a big bag and gives everyone presents. It's really funny because every year my brother and I, or sometimes my uncles, get on the roof and stomp on the roof like Santa's sleigh has just landed. It's always fun though because my dad always asks them to go for a ride in Santa's sleigh and this year they were both up for it but my aunt didn't want them to figure it out so she wouldn't let them go. Anyways, Santa's visits are always a Christmas tradition in our family.

its funny, how on Christmas eve, i cant actually think about Christmas. It feels like Christmas wont happen, so i almost always forget that Christmas is tomorrow. Same with the vacation, i just read and play video games, and gain maybe 15 pounds of something. These arnt my traditions, i will post those after Christmas morning, for id like to experience them, and not ruin them for me by thinking about them. Man, im jittery from that soda, and chocolate muffin. Lord im just rambling lol

#11: Internet Privacy, #12: Christmas Traditions

Topic 11

The topic I've decided to do for my argument is somewhat controversial; the government would say one thing, while we, the people, would say another.

My topic is internet privacy.

Here's my argument:
I think that Internet Service Providers should not track our internet usage. It's an invasion of privacy and we have a right to privacy. Doing this also acts like keyloggers, viruses, or hacking, which are all illegal. It is also not the ISP's job to monitor internet for illegal usage; that is the job of the police and other law enforcement agencies. In saying this, the ISP is encroaching upon the job of law enforcements.

Ok, I was finally able to load this, so I completely forgot lots of stuff...


Topic 12

Christmas traditions? Well, one, I most always write a letter to Santa, until this year, I believe. Just for fun. And we always have ham, mashed potatoes, yams, and such for Christmas dinner. I get to open one present Christmas Eve. I always get at least one thing I want for Christmas, and we always hang the stockings over the fireplace on special stocking hangers my mom bought years ago. Sometimes I'll get up really early by accident, like around 7AM or 9AM, and my parents are still asleep. I wanna wake them desperately, and I most always do :P  I always get my parents a mushy Christmas card, too. Most of the presents under the tree are mine, because my parents never really want anything for Christmas and I have no siblings, so more presents for me! :P

Another tradition is that every year, I get a cat ornament! Turns out my mom bought me one this year, but forgot about it, so bought me another one! :D I get both!

I also always get $50 from my Grandpa for Chanukah and $25 from my Aunt Heidi for Christmas!

book project

ya ... i have a question .. when does the book project need to be donbe .... cuz i dont remember what were supposed to do anymore

Chrismas traditions

At my house most of the Christmas traditions are religiously orientated and are therefor somewhat unique. At our house we write letters to the Christ child and have a model manger in which we place a tuft of hay in for each good deed we do for someone else.

Another rather unofficial tradition we have in our house is listening to our mom saying how we are not going to celebrate Christmas at our grandmothers this year and how she isn't getting us anything this year (with the exception of books). So far she hasn't come through on any of these threats yet.

At my grandmothers, where we go every Christmas Eve, she bakes kolache among an abundance of other dishes and pastries. After dinner one of my uncles suits up as Santa Claus and ends up spooking the younger grandchildren.

Christmas

Everyone in my house has different amounts of Christmas spirit, so we don't do too much before Christmas. My sister Alexis goes nuts with singing and playing her Christmas music, which she makes a new CD of every year. While my other sister, Sarah, gets annoyed and yells at her to shut up. Sarah thinks Christmas starts the night of Christmas eve and ends the day after Christmas, while for Alexis, it starts the day after Thanksgiving. I'm somewhere in the middle.

We always open presents on Christmas eve at my house. It used to be so that we didn't lose sight of the true meaning of Christmas, but now it's tradition. Every Christmas eve we eat and go to the candle light service that my church puts on. Its my favorite service of the year! And then we come home and open presents. The next day we make food, eat, play games, and watch movies. It's one of the few days that we can all get along (for most of the day). Christmas is my favorite holiday.

Christmas and what not (:

We put up our fake tree, because everyone in my house has allergies. We put up lights, decorate the inside with lights as well. We watch Christmas movies such as A Christmas Story and Christmas Vacation: they are both so funny. This year, I'm not really into getting presents, but giving. I dislike caroling, because I can't sing lol.

Christmas

I have a pet peeve. That pet peeve is listening to christmas music before december 1st. This year my family started putting on music TWO DAYS! before december 1st! I was so mad and i wouldn't sing along. Which is something that my sister and I always do. We usually put our tree up on the first but with such busy schedules, we ended up waiting until the firat weekend to put it up. My mom is haaving us do this thing where everyday from 12 days before christmas until the 25th we open this little present thing with a scripture that we read aloud and a goody that goes along with it. On the 23rd this year everyone in my family except for my dad (who finds such things boring and a waste of time) is going with another family minus their dad to go see the OBT performance of The Nutcracker! My mom and sister and I have done this together for four years now so it's kind of a tradition. Then on the 24th we make sure the whole house is clean for 'santa' and then whoever wants to help my younger brother and me makes cookies to put out with the milk for him. We read the Christmas story from Luke and then we go to bed. The kids all sleep in the same room usually mine and my sisters. My brother always wants to stay up talking but I try to sleep because I know that I'm no fun to be around when I'm sleep deprived. Then we 'sleep' until anytime after 7 or 8 because we are not allowed to get up until then, and we go into my parents room and they bring us breakfast. My dad goes out to light a fire in the fireplace and then we line up in the hallway in order of age and cover the eyes of the person in front of us. We just trust caitlin to keep her own eyes closed. Then we walk in to the livingroom and open our stockings! They are handmade by my grandma except for my brothers who's was made by my mom and is actually a little smaller than mine and my sisters. After we are done with that, Isaac, the youngest chooses a present for someone else in the family and they open it and then it is my turn to choose one for someone else and then my sisters and all the way up and again until all the presents are opened. Then we start writing thank you cards and we eat lunch. For the past two years, we have gone downstairs and watched movies for the rest of the day. We rarely watch television and though we watch movies more often, we don't often get to watch them all together as a family.

How About We Start Vacation With An Essay?

I just (at 7:15 on Saturday morning) finished my first book of the vacation.

Don't worry, I was already halfway through it yesterday morning; I've only read 92 pages so far this vacation. I'm sure Will Charbonneau and Josh Hooker are already over 500.

No, I actually wanted to talk about this book, rather than the number of pages I have looked at so far. It's titled The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America, written by Phillip K. Howard and published in 1995. That's a bit scary, actually: because the problems he described when he wrote the book fifteen years ago are even worse now.

But you see, I have an opportunity, here. Because I'm a teacher, and I have an audience of people who are generally pretty bright and motivated and capable, and who therefore have the potential to make some kind of change, to begin some kind of movement. That would be you folks. So if you'll indulge me a little, I'd like to give you the gist of this book, and see if I can strike a chord with anyone, maybe start a few snowballs rolling downhill.

The premise of the book is that this country has, over the last fifty years or so, made a serious mistake in the way if handles the law and government regulations. We got the idea into our heads that the people in government who managed things, who inspected and regulated private industry, who doled out and supervised social services, were basically untrustworthy. They were incompetent, they were corrupt, they were biased in one way or another, and therefore, the decisions they made were unfair. So in the name of fairness, which is a perfectly honorable and valuable goal, we set about correcting the problem. The mistake we made was in how we tried to solve the problem, and it's a mistake we are still making today.

Now, the reasonable thing to do when you come across a corrupt government official would be to fire his cheatin' behind, and replace him with someone else. You can also go back and fix the problems he might have caused, by hiring a new contractor or by changing an unfair ruling, something like that -- though it's interesting to note that corruption doesn't always lead to a bad outcome, even if it might be an unfair one. For instance: let's suppose that, oh, say, Michael Kirby paid me off to get an A in the class. I happily take the bribe (please note that this is made-up stuff: I would never take a bribe, and Michael would never offer me anything more valuable than a CD of "Ice, Ice, Baby.") and give him the A, and Michael goes on to college and becomes a successful coach of the U.S. rugby team. Who exactly was hurt by this? Michael's A wouldn't affect anyone else's grade, and if he couldn't do the work on his own without the bribe, the A wouldn't do him much good, as at some future point, he would fail because of his own incompetence. Or he might become the 43rd President. Just kidding. Not really.

You could argue, I suppose, that everyone else's class rank would be skewed by one, and you would be right if you said this situation would be simply unfair to everyone who worked for his or her A, but: life is unfair. Grades are unfair. Students get sick, students get hurt, students get dragged along on extended family vacations that make them wish they were sick or hurt, and in all of those cases the students miss school and their grades might be lowered because of it, and it would be unfair. Take this little Winter Break reading challenge: any of my students with uncorrected vision problems, or dyslexia, will not be able to read as quickly as I, and so will not be able to earn the extra credit. That's not fair.

But that's the way it goes. At least, we used to think that way. And what we used to be able to do was: use our judgment, on a case-by-case basis, and try to adapt the circumstances to meet the needs of everyone. Let's say Cole drops a Mento in a two-liter of Diet Coke (Saw it on Mythbusters, of course) and the resultant foam jet sprays right in Will's eyes, blinding him for the rest of the vacation. I could, if I were trusted enough to make decisions, set up a special deal for Will, that would give him another two-week window to read as much as he could, and try to top my page total; I might have to give him three weeks, as he would be in school during that special time and would lose reading hours because of it. Seems reasonable, doesn't it? But it's against the rules, so according to our government, I can't do it.

The people of the United States decided that we didn't trust our government officials, our bureaucrats and regulators, to make decisions. We didn't think they could use common sense. So what we did was: we tried to write laws that were specific enough to handle every possible outcome, so that everything was planned out in advance and there was no room for anyone to mess with the system by making exceptions; no room for corrupt officials to take bribes, or prejudiced officials to discriminate.
Take the federal drug laws, for instance. We didn't like that one judge could give one drug smuggler six months and a fine, and another judge could give another smuggler twenty-five years in maximum security for the same crime. That seems unfair, and maybe the judges were corrupt or prejudiced. (Any reason why we couldn't find out if the judge were corrupt and fire him if he were? And overturn the decision? Anyway . . .) So our legislature created a grid that determines absolute sentencing for all federal drug offenses. You take the quantity of the drug in the person's possession, determined by weight, and cross-reference that with things like prior offenses, if the defendant had a gun or used it during the crime, that sort of stuff, and you get a definite sentence. Perfect, we thought: no way for a judge to screw it up, no way for anybody to get an unfair decision. Everyone gets exactly the same treatment, and no human error is involved.

Except it doesn't work that way. The point of this book I read is this: nobody can possibly predict all future scenarios well enough to know the right decisions to make in all cases. Nobody can deduce all possible factors in any given situation. And when you try to set everything down in advance, with iron-clad rules, when you take common sense and human judgment out of the mix, you get an unlimited number of unfair results and potential windows for corruption -- exactly the things we were trying to avoid by creating the strict laws in the first place.

For example: LSD is a liquid, which is infused into a solid medium -- usually small pieces of paper, or sugar cubes -- and then sold that way. The same quantity of the actual drug, carried by two dealers, can result in completely different prison sentences, if one dealer sold LSD in paper, and another sold LSD in sugar cubes. Because sugar cubes weigh more than paper.

And what is America's answer to problems like this? Do we allow a judge to use reason to make exceptions to the rules? Of course not: we can't trust a judge to know the right thing to do. He might be corrupt or prejudiced! We create another rule to fix the hole in the first (I'm making this part up, by the way, but the sentencing grid and the sugar cube/paper example is reality): we require law enforcement to extract the LSD from whatever medium it was in so that we can weigh the drug by itself, and we sentence people that way. Except the process for extracting it is expensive, and destroys some of the drug, so the sentences are still not fair -- and police officers start letting LSD pushers go, since they know the conviction won't be strict enough and will require too much expense for the department. Or dealers start mixing LSD with something else, call it WTF, that is destroyed in the extraction process but gives the same drug high to users as pure LSD. And maybe WTF is a thousand times more harmful than simple LSD, causing people's eyeballs to melt. So we find out about WTF and mandate a new process to extract the WTF from LSD, and harsher sentences for people who deal WTF, and we produce new "Faces Of WTF" videos and show them to kids around the nation. But now the police can't afford to convict all of the dealers of WTF and LSD because of the cost of the extraction process, and some LSD dealers appeal their convictions based on the new laws that put harsher penalties on WTF, arguing that their simple LSD wasn't nearly as harmful, and now we have to pay for the court battles for all of them, as well, and soon our jails are full of WTF dealers -- while people on the streets are now using crack.

You see? This stuff goes on and on and on, with no possible end in sight. We keep thinking, if we can just make the law specific enough, and plan carefully enough, we can handle every possibility, and things will work like a well-oiled machine, without any human error or corruption. And every time we add more rules, we make the situation worse.

There's a lot more, and if you folks are interested, I'll get into it. But this is the point I wanted to make to you: you do not fix problems by setting down strict, unbendable rules, and you do not fix the problems in rules by adding more rules -- that's the definition of insanity, trying to do the same thing (add more specific rules) and hoping for a different result. We need to stop doing this, as a country. We need to stop thinking that a longer law is a better law. What's the current health bill up to? 2000 pages? Compare that to the Bill of Rights, which is the best and most important set of government rules we have. What is it, one page? Two? Think of the First Amendment, which reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." That one sentence, 45 words, defines and protects no less than four of our most important rights. And the Founding Fathers thought that might have been too specific, since the listing of individual rights that are protected from government abuse implies that there are other rights that the government can take away.

The First Amendment works because it simply describes a goal, and allows specific people to figure out how to reach the goal. The First Amendment relies on common sense. This is how democracy is supposed to work, and it is the reason for much of American success and prosperity: trial and error, and human judgment figuring out the error and creating a solution -- which we then try again, and again.

This is what we need to get back to. We are drowning in rules and regulations and red tape, and somehow, we are just not learning from our mistakes any more -- hmm, maybe because we have built a society founded on the idea that individual human judgment is untrustworthy? Look at the recession, which was started by people using poor judgment, or no judgment, but who were all entirely within the law. People found a way to exploit the law for their own benefit, and they did it -- and because they were within the law, they will not be punished. And if our government fixes the holes in the law that allowed people to abuse our economy so badly, all that will happen is the next generation will find new ways to screw everything up all over again.

What we need to do is stop relying on rules. We need to start forcing our government to rely on people's judgment. Look, corruption and prejudice are very bad things, but they are also pretty easy to remedy, so long as you can point out the corruption and remove the person responsible. But you can't fire a rule, and adding rules don't make the first rule better. We've got to start taking rules away, and asking people to make decisions again; then we hold the people responsible for the decisions they make.

That's what I want you all to start doing. Start taking away rules. Start thinking of your lives, our country, the world as a place that might be better off with fewer rules, and see if there are ways -- small ways -- that you can eliminate a few. Now, that doesn't mean anarchy, that everyone can do whatever they want; there should still be some regulation and control over people's behavior -- but it should be handled by people working together toward a goal, not by rules that set down exactly what should be done. You all know the problems with rules like that, because you deal with them all the time: these are the reason you have to take state tests, and pass them regardless of any unusual circumstances (Test anxiety? Problems using computer? Sick for a month during Sophomore Year?), in order to get a diploma. They are the reason you have to study mindless things, things you don't want to study and teachers don't want to teach -- because the rules say we have to. Like lockdown drill procedures, or grammar.

These specific, common-sense-free rules are the zero-tolerance policies the school has, that suspend one student for five days for carrying marijuana on campus, and suspend another student for five days for carrying Advil. I saw one of you pushing pills during the assembly -- you know who you are! -- and according to the rules, I should report that person, who would receive a suspension. But the pills were Advil, or something similar (Tylenol, aspirin, whatever), being handed to a friend, and I used my judgment, based on my knowledge of the student involved, and broke the rule by letting the person go. I think I did the right thing, and I am willing to take responsibility for my decision if I should turn out to be wrong -- maybe those were Oxy-Contin, or something, and I just didn't see the money change hands. I doubt it, but maybe. Now which do you think led to the better outcome, and protected the ideals of the school? The rule, or my judgment?

So there you go, and I'm sorry this was so long; I really need to work on my editing. Actually, now that I think about it, I suffer from the same mistaken idea: I think the more specific examples I give, and the more detailed my explanations are, the clearer my message is. Huh. Now I feel stupid. I should make a rule for myself.

No, wait. I'll just remember, and I ask you to do the same: common sense, not rules. I'll make the best decisions I can, and try to fix the ones I get wrong. I will rely on my mind to do my thinking for me, not the book of rules.

How does that sound?

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”-United Stated Constitution
This Phrase taken for our United States Constitution My question to all of you, is what do you really know about this statement? When you read this, an uneducated person might say, “well the government aint got no business getting all up in my church!”. However one might also say,”Then why are there all of these bloody Christian ideas and beliefs popping up in our government. If the Constitution SAYS, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, then why is our government PROMOTING this particular religion? Why the hell do candidates running for government positions use their religion as a way to gain votes? Why did Congress pass an official act in 1956 to change America’s motto from "E Pluribus Unum" (From many [come] one), to, “IN GOD WE TRUST”? WHY?
To fully understand the power struggle around religion and government, you must first understand that what our fore fathers meant when writing this statement. In the 18th century history the "the Church" meant the Religion Christianity. The people that left England as religious outcasts, left with the idea of religious freedom. , they The Church was referred to as the whole Christian faith. This meant all branches of Christianity . However, the term "the Church" has changed over time, and in today's society includes all religions. Back then when the Constitution was written, we ignored the Native Americans beliefs, and thought of religion as Christianity.

Our country has kept to the phrase "Church separate from the State.", and has never had an Official religion. However, if your question is if we are separate from the Church, my answer is yes. If your question is " Was the United States founded on Christian beliefs, and should those beliefs and labels be followed today?", I would answer you no. Things like the phrase "In GOD we trust", that appear on our currency, on our presidential seal, should not appear, in my opinion. I feel that in most ways, it does violate our Separation from the "Church". It refers exclusively to the Christian God. I can be verified by you copying this Link to your address bar, and going to our United States treasury web-site, and finding the origin of the phrase, "in GOD we trust".
A counter argument I have for my argument, is what Jefferson Really ment when he wrote the phrase “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”. In the federalist papers he wrote explaining his intentions for the constitution he made the statement Separation of Church and state. His intentions were to have the phrase “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”, go both ways, and have our government separate from any kind of church.
The questions asked, must now be out into an action. Ask such questions to your local government official. Challenge them . Challenge the Supreme Court. Give them the argument to change and amend this particular phrase, so that it incorporates both, No interference, and no promotion of a certain religion.

Christmas

Hmmm... Christmas. Our Christmas changes a little every year. Every year someone in our extended family hosts Christmas Eve, (an aunt, our grandparents, etc.) Never us, though. We don't host. We rarely even attend.. When all of us kids were younger and before we moved to Oregon, we would go where ever the party was, exchange gifts, make cookies, and just hang out with family before our big feast of a dinner. The extended family still does it every year. But alas, we did move and we aren't so young anymore, so we stay home. It is easier, less expensive, and hey... we don't really like our family too much.

We're definitely the outcasts of our family, but that's okay. We have our own traditions now. My Dad usually has to work Christmas Day so we'll either open presents the night before or wait until he gets home. Christmas Eve is usually uneventful. We might have a nice dinner or something, but it's pretty relaxed. We still make the rounds with the extended family, just not on the day of, it's usually a few days after. We still get the mountains of cookies from my grandma. i don't know what i'd do without this year's cookie supply. Oh man.

Anyhoo, yeah, our Christmas is pretty calm, we just stay at home and spend time with each other for the most part.

#12

Hm.. my christmas traditions are, we open prestnts christmas eve and our stalkings christmas day. Of and we tend to get into a huge fight.. like every holliday. I dont like christmas because of this. I miss my dad.

#12, My Christmas Traditions

On Christmas eve, my dads side of the famiy ( his older sister and her husband, his younger brother, and his mom) all come over to our house. We eat Chinese food and open presents from my grandma, uncles and aunt. Then we go over to my mom's mom's house in Yankton. At her house is my moms brother, his wife and their kids. My Step- Aunt, her useless husband and her two kids. Sometimes my dads side of the family will come up too. (it depends if it's snowing or not)

The next day-Christmas day- we all sleep in at my house. When everyone wakes up, Nolan, Brandon and I open our stocking first, then my parents do. When the stockings are done, we move to the presents under the tree. Whoever buys the presents wraps them. So far this year i've wrapped four presents. (i have no clue what to get my oldest brother)

When we're done opening presents, everyone helps make breakfast. Usually it's french toast. Christmas night we go down to Fat Boys, my aunt and uncle's old pizza place downtown. They invite a bunch of friends, us, my moms family, my dad's aunts, uncles and so on. We all eat Ham, Potatoes, and a lot more good stuff. After dinner we go to my grandma's house (my dad's mom) and open our stocking from them. We stay a while and talk, then say our thanks and go home. Overall, it's a great two days.

New Year's Eve, we light fireworks at my house. Then New Year's Day, my brothers and I go mudding.

Christmas Traditions

The only thing that my family does that even remotely resembles a tradition is that we all open presents and have a big christmas dinner. Not very exciting.

Wal-Mart

Just as an idea, totally out there, and random. wouldn't it be funny to have a guy in a movie obsessed with wal-mart? And in the end it 'fails' him. lol It would be amusing to me. There's also fredmeyer dude, but that's another topic for another time...

Wal-Mart has become a bad force to this world. Wal-Mart gets It's toys and such from china as we all have figured out, hopefully. This increases child labor which is a wrong and ileagal act. Also, the Wal-Mart building its self poses an issue since it is so large. Many buildings and parking-lots cover arcialogical sites and artifacts. Though the Wal-Mart in st.Helens provides jobs for people who wouldnt be able to get jobs anywhere else, the srores treatment of employies in the U.S. is bad. Such as low pay, inseficiant health care, and poor working conditions. NOt to mentoin it takes business away from small businesses. Thus, wal-mart should be... reconstructed if not partially abolished.

Suicide

I think we all agree that the world is getting worse. If you think it's getting any better, you have your own little world and we already know about you. The question is why the world is getting worse. Personally, since I'm not a blaming person who has to find someone in particular to blame (like a president, George Bush, you judgmental people. Even though I do agree he did some ridiculous stuff. Who makes up their own words and expects to get away with it??). So I blame everyone. we all know how to save the planet, but we don't do it. We as a world could save, preserve, and restore earth, but we are just to lazy! How many times have you seen a piece of trash and kept on walking? We as a nation and a world are killing our selves and we all know this, and I've stated it before. Pollution from cars, dumping toxic waste into river, Pesticide run off from farms. Need I go on? Not to mention the over use of plastics. All you have to do is go on a boat trip from California to Hawaii and notice the plastic specs that never end. We are killing our selves.

Topic #11

Well, I wasn't home on Sunday until 10:00 and by that time I decided that I was going to fall asleep in front of the computer if I tried to make a post, so here it is now.

I think my topic for the persuasive essay will be on the topic of conservationists and what they suggest for society. We are constantly bombarded with concerns of overpopulation and how it effects the environment and animal populations. The problems with overpopulation have been overly dramatized; however, countries such as Russia and Germany are offering monetary incentives of thousands in American dollars for people to have children. This is how desperate they are to bring there population levels up.

These people go so far as to even suggest the removal of Bonneville dam, one of the main sources of power to this area and even as far as California, to make the migratory journeys of salmon more natural. The dam facilitates salmons journeys already and the removal of it would not produce a significant reduction of hazards to the migrations of salmon.

This is only one example, but there are many more examples of environmentalists attempting to remove such boons to humans which do not harm animals or nature. There are many more ridiculous examples like attempting the removal of non-harmful windmills. These energy sources most definitively are a good supplement to others such as reactors and coal-burning ones.

My holiday traditions

Holiday Traditions..... Hmmm.
I have many of these. My favorite holiday tradition is when my mom, step dad, and my sisters and step-brothers go out to some tree farm around Rainer or Goble and we pick out our tree. Every year my little (step) brother Jaysn always tastes the tree. He sticks a branch in his mouth and tries to bite it. Thats how he tells if the tree is good or not. Since there is 6 kids and two adults we each take turns to pick out the tree, it starts with the youngest and then goes to the oldest of the house.

Another one of our traditions is decorating the tree as a family. We pick a night that all of us are going to be home and then we record us decorating it. Its not always fun being recorded but oh well, we can always have memories to look back on.

Every year we go christmas caroling with my church. We all meet at the church and the get some hot chocolate and eat a doughnut and then go around town to various old folks homes and sing up and down the hallways. Then we go back to the church get some more hot chocolate and say good night to everyone and go home and sleep. I always hated christmas caroling cause of the singin but then I noticed how much all the old people liked it and I really appreciated singing for them.

One of the other holiday traditions that we do is every christmas eve we go to The Christain Church and have a christmas eve service. Its nice and relaxing to go there before and amazing night when SANTA CLAUS comes and puts presents under or tree and fills our stockings full of fun cool things. Also on christmas eve we read The Night Before Christmas and each get to open one present of our choice and then go to bed. Every year we take turns on reading the book.

Last tradition but not least is that n christmas mornig we have to usually sleep in till eight and then we all get up, we CANNOT go down stairs and we read the Christmas story from the bible, (which seems like it takes forever) then skip breafast and go and open pressents!!

We put up lights every year. My step dad is a little on the competitive side and every year he has to go and buy at least three new boxes of lights or new blow up things and raindeer and all that fun stuff. He gets the ideas from driving around and looking at all the christmas lights that are set up around town. Its really quite funny when he gets it the mood and DECKS out the whole inside and outside of the house.

All in all I have a very good christmas and its a fun time to be with family and enjoy the memories.

Traditions

My christmas traditions are as follows: In the few weeks preceding Christmas, my mom, my sister and me make cookies like there is no tomorrow, we go to a few Christmas parties and visit family. As the day gets nearer, my siter and I drown ourselves in Christmas movies. The good ones, the classics (It's a wonderful life, Holiday Inn, White Christmas). Then, Christmas eve, everyone in the family opens a present each after returning from midnight mass. Now finally, Christmas day. I get up early, and then get everyone else up :D We eat a quick breakfast, do the dishes (it's painful with all those presents there) and then gather round. We read the Christmas story from the bible, and then the fun begins. Yesss. I LOVE Christmas.

good ol christmas

i like christmas time. its good to be with my family and be relaxed. every christmas eve, we always go over to my grandparents house and have dinner and open presents. we usually watch the game and relax. its really awesome. then on christmas....well im not sure that we really have a specific plan for christmas. but either way, i find it the most relaxing time of the year.

santa clause and haunnakah bunny

haha .... well as most of you know i am Jewish and Catholic ... i refuse to pick a side in religion as i do not chose to hurt my parents feeling in the matter. I celebrate both holidays and enjoy the cultual experience of them both. Most people are like "You celebrate both ... you must get double the presents!" But i don't... my moms side gets me christmas presents and my dads side gets me haunnakah presents ... its just 2 different religions thats all. I find it reather funny that most people say the holidays arent about presents its about family, yet the first thing they ask me is "you must get double the presents!" for haunnakah we noramlly have a party with our friends.
for christmas we make cookies, decorate our tree, put up lights (we have haunnakah ones too), and
decorate our house. Some familys open there presents on christmas eve .. but my family opens them in the morning .. cuz i dont understand how santa clause gets their before they open them. oh .. and on christmas eve my whole family goes down to grace baptiat church and make christmas dinners for less fortunate familys

topic # 11 ...

well ... i woke up this morning realizing i didnt do my blog yet and it was a day late .... so here i am ... trying to save my points in english class.

my topoc is currently this blog. because for me personalyy i am the most foregetfull person when it comes to this. one of my reasons is because its not on a paper in front of me saying DOOOOO IIITTTTT!!!!

plus im a totall sapcer ... and wheni get on here my parents say get off the computer and they think im wasting all my time on the computer

christmas

when it comes to christmas i am not really too fond of the religious aspect of it but just the tradition and spirit of it i really enjoy. the night before we always read the night before christmas then go to bed whenever. my parents always try to push the wake up time later and later so they can sleep in but it never works and we wake up as six anyway. then after we open presents and stuff we go to my grandparents for the huge family dinner. that's just about my whole christmas experience.

Oh Gosh.

This is how Christmas used to work for me:
Christmas Eve arrives;
We sit around waiting until 4 PM to go to my grandparents house in Columbia City where my Papa and Grandma, Cousins Joey, Elise Jordan, and AJ would wait. Oh and their father, my Uncle Joe. We'd sit around and eat Christmas Eve dinner then we'd open presents.
After that came some dessert of some kind. Then we'd leave for home, where we'd open presents under our tree. By this time it's 9 PM or so and 'time for bed' though I never sleep that early except for Christmas Eve.
Fast forward through my dreams and sleep sequences to sometime between 2AM to 5AM.
I am always the first up to go downstairs to the living room to see what has been left by 'Santa'. Everything left by Santa is set up. There is my corner, Max's corner and Haley's corner. It's quite obvious who's is who's. After rifling through my goodies, I head back to bed to sleep until one of the ragamuffins come and wake me up, thinking I am stupid enough to not have already beat them to the prize.
Anywho, then we'd have breakfast after rifling and playing with goodies again. We'd use to always go to my dad's parents house in Vancouver for Christmas day presents and brunch...

In the last three years, a lot of that doesn't happen anymore. My grandfather passed away and that same year, my grandma decided the only way to let go was drive across the country. Which she did and now does annually for Christmas... My dad's parents moved to Arizona and I rarely see my step-grandma (though I have no issues with it) or my grandfather..... My cousins; or the two eldest ones have decided to become young teen parents and disappear irresponsibly.

So Christmas has been reduced to missing and wishing for me though I am grateful for my parents and siblings. Last Christmas, a really important friend came home for Christmas and I was able to spend Christmas Eve with him and that made things... nice.

In all honesty, I can't remember a Christmas that hasn't made me feel melancholy even though winter is my favorite season and this is one of my favorite times of year...

Topics 9, 10, 11, & 12. I'm just a little behind.

I might have forgotten about the blog for the last couple weeks. So now I've got to make up for my stupidity.

Topic #9: Food
I love food almost all of the time. It's so good. I find that a lot of the time I eat too much. I could never be mean and choose a favorite food. It depends on what mood I'm in, but I will always eat no matter what. Unless it's my Grandma's ham hock lima bean soup that makes my body want to turn itself inside out then curl up into a ball and die. Seriously, it's gross.

Topic #10: Direction
I think our world is going south. Things are only getting worse, and everyone puts the biggest idiots who can't even think for themselves in charge. I honestly think each day we are getting that much closer to this world coming to an end. At the rate our world is going I'd give us a decade before everything collapsing and we are hurled into utter chaos. But on a lighter note I like to ignore all that bad stuff, even if it is going on right here in our town, and have a fun and be happy. I like my life because I have pushed my way through all the bad things that have been going on and now I'm in a euphoric state of "aww yahh."

Topic #11: Are You Happy?
As I stated above I am particularly happy this past week or so. I'm hoping it continues. It's not to say nothing bad is going on because, trust me, everything in my life is slowly crashing down around me, but I'm pretending it's not. Although this method is most likely extremely dangerous and is probably gonna cost me years of therapy in my later years, it seems to be working at the moment so I'm running with it. My psychologist says I'm fine, but then again, I did lie to her as well. haha.

Topic #12: Christmas Traditions
My family has lots of christmas traditions. I'll spare all the details and crap. I absolutely love Christmas time with all my heart. Every year I look forward to it. Every one is always so happy and togerth-ly-like. It's just great. Christmas joy and not to mention the toys. haha. Okay I'm done. Once I start breaking out the cheesy rhymes I need to stop.

Topic #12: Days of Christmas

Hah! Worked out perfectly, didn't it? Yep, had it planned that way the whoooole time.


For our twelfth blog, we will be discussing Christmas.

Oh crud -- can I talk about Christmas on a school assignment?

Well, never mind. Religious or not, Christmas is an ancient tradition, and the holiday season in general, between Thanksgiving and New Year's, is the epitome of tradition: this is a time when people try to hold fast to their roots, when they think of childhood and family and revisiting the past. It's almost unavoidable; even if you have no particular traditions, our society's focus is so intent on tradition at this time of year that we still speak of the lack of traditions as a tradition -- we say it's our family tradition to eat Chinese food and go see a movie, or even "We don't do anything to celebrate -- it's tradition."

Now I've said "tradition" too many times. It's starting to look weird. Hang on: thesaurus gives me custom, usage, convention, habit. Excellent.

When I was young, my family had many traditions: we went caroling every year with our church, even after my brother and I stopped attending church services regularly. We had several meaningful ornaments for the tree: one each for my brother and I that represented our birth years, on which my father had scratched our names and the date of our first Christmas (I still have mine); several of the ornaments we had made in elementary school, which I believe my mother still has; and a group of hand-blown glass ornaments my parents bought in Italy, featuring the ultimate prize: The Martian. He was a weird little ornament, shining silver with black tips on his limbs, which included both a tail and a trunk, though he stood upright and had massive eyes that dominated his face. My brother and I took turns putting the Martian on the tree, and it was a pretty big deal whose year it was. Until he hit adolescence, and everything became lame. Then it was always my year.

Christmas morning started with breakfast, usually around 9:00. My parents would mark out une present each for my brother and I to unwrap early, so we'd be occupied and let them sleep in -- they regretted the year they gave me a drum set. After breakfast we'd empty our stockings, which always had toothbrushes, nuts, chocolate, and a huge orange in the toe, along with small gifts. Then we'd hit the tree: we shared presents out one at a time, in order of age (alternating as well, from oldest first, to youngest first) while my father wrote down what everyone got on a graph-paper chart he'd make. As the youngest, I always had the most presents, which was quite the point of pride for me, because it meant I won Christmas. After presents we'd scatter -- my mom usually worked Christmas Eve night, so she went to bed, while my dad called family to wish them Merry Christmas, and my brother and I played/read/watched TV. Then we'd have big Christmas dinner that night, though there wasn't any definite food; it could be anything my mom felt like making, from roast beef to lasagna to stir fry.

And that was my Christmas. My wife and I now have some traditions of our own; we follow the same present pattern, except we unwrap presents the second we are both awake, because she's impatient; every year we buy a new Christmas Bear (or moose, or penguin) and put it around the tree with all of the ones from past years. We're getting quite a pile, now. The dog gets his own presents, which my wife wraps, and every year we try to get him to unwrap them, but he never does. He's too well-behaved to rip paper, which he knows he's not supposed to do. Then, somewhere between Christmas Day and New Year's (Last year we did a 10-hour marathon on New Year's Eve), we watch all of the extended editions of The Lord of the Rings trilogy on DVD.
So that's your topic: what are your traditions for the holiday season? Do you put up lights? Trim a tree? Give presents? Wrap them? Sing songs? Watch movies? Forget the holidays and hide in your room? Tell us.


This will, by the way, be the last blog topic until after Winter Break, though I encourage all of you to check in and post how your vacation is going, and comment on other people's posts. I'll see you all in about six hours, but I'll say it now anyway: have a happy holiday season, and a wonderful New Year.

Issues. Im not sure what I want to argue. Things that come to mind seem unimportant and unsatisfactory.
Some include:
Make-up
Government(Schooling, Religion)
2012

mandatory P.E.

So for my argument I am aruging why we should not have mandatory Pe. I hate Pe! The games we play do not help me learn anything. I like being active though. I run, swim, and bike. I'm not at a lack for an oppourtunity to be active. I would rather spend my mandatory time doing classes that will prepare me for college.

Topic Due Date Change

In case you didn't hear: Following the eminently logical suggestion of one of our class members, we will be changing the due dates of these blogs to midnight on Sunday, rather than Saturday. The new topic will be posted Monday morning.


Enjoy your Sunday. Remember you can always post any other statement you'd like to make, any time you feel like it. Purple monkey dishwasher says so.

Topics 10 and 11 :)

Topic 10: I dont think the world is going in the right direction right now. The economy is getting very bad. I think the government is making bad decisions and I dont think the United States is going to be the same in a few years...I dont know whats gunna happen.

Topic 11: Happiness...Um I dont really know where to start. I think happiness is different for al people..i think happiness is something unique and everyone has there own stlye of happiness. People do different things to get happy or say things to be happy and make other people happy. But I think its different for everyone. There are alot of things that would make me happy but there not what would make other people happy... I think most of the time, I am a very happy person. One of my nicknames is Permagrin, stands for permanent grin. Because I am usually always smiling, well I was when I was little. I've grown up a little bit and dont smile as much anymore.

Dont be sad...get.....

Well, am I happy? Sometimes I'm happy, a lot of the times I am not. Right this minute no, the sore throat is killing any happy and the fact that I got very little accomplished today. Monday I might be happy getting to come back and see all my friends, but that will be a temporary feeling. I don't think anyone can be "happy" that it isn't really a consistent word, but a momentous one. So maybe someone can only be truly happy if they're on those happy pills...


P.S. Does anyone remember who it was that did the audio voice recording for a book project in Mr. Sanderson's 8th grade, 7th period english class? Michaela was it you? I would love to know what the name of the website you used to make it was. Really need to know, and if anyone else knows a good voice recording site I'm welcome to suggestions!!!

Happy

If I were to weigh the pro's and con's in my life relating to my level of happiness, pro's would win by far. I have it good. Really good. As boastful as I feel saying that (sorry) it's true. Things could be millions of times worse, but they aren't. I could make a humungo list of what makes me happy. Right now my life is especially happy=) Im not saying I have a perfect life because I dont!! If I did I wouldn't be grateful for the good things i posses. Im just stating that i shouldn't be selfish. Happiness is very much an emotion. It's very changing. That emotion it's self changing moment to moment, but generalllllllly im an okeydokey goin going life living happy person=P

I have NO idea what topic im going to write on =( Any ideas????? Im very indecisive and when it comes to sticking stongly to one side I find it difficult. This is a challenge...

Random post i posted on a Facebook Topic, and i like it ( About Love)

Since no one can really give you answer, its irrational. When some one truly loves someone, they cant really explain it. So asking what it love is, is naive, for no one can give you the answer your looking for.
We ruin it, by over analyzing, trying to come to an answer. That's why i am a firm believer of just going with it (though never have and never will perfect it, since being in love makes you irrational)
However, when i feel love for someone else, i happen to make shitty decisions (IRRATIONALITY) , and end up ruining friendships. Like Tony, Ive bad luck, and so, i chose to stay away. I feel like Ive confused you with my first post. I don't try to rationalize love while i am in it,because i know ill ruin it (however, i still do, because it is apart of who i am to find answers). When i strive to know why i love someone, and think about to much, I ruin my chance with them. ... See More

I personally think to much. I over analyze things, and end up finding that i cant explain it. It bothers me that i cant do and it bothers me when I ACT, and think irrational.

Me Happy??

This year really has NOT been a happy one for me. Latley a few things have been looking up though thats good. :) I have some amazing people in my life they make me happy. Over all my answer to the question has to be sometimes depends on the day.

happy

I think I'm happy. I don't really have anything to complain about. I have good friends, and although it's hard to admit sometimes, I have a good family. So, I would have to say that I'm pretty happy.
:)

State Testing & Happy

I felt like doing both so here it goes. I dislike state testing very much, because, it takes me about three times to barely pass the damn thing. I was stuck in math workshop all year last year, and it took me three times to pass. Science this year, well, I couldn't even get to MEET standards. For English, I passed by a lot, but didn't exceed! I think its stupid how they want every kid to EXCEED, now some kids are thinking, "Its easy! I guessed and I exceeded over five points!" For me, its hell, though I am smart, state testing just isn't my cup of tea. It frustrates me, because I do TRY and I don't guess, and I have never exceeded a state test in my life.

Happy? Well today I'm frustrated with adults, and all this butt load of homework I have, but I am happy. Why? Because my great friends are still by my side, my family is still here telling me things could be worse. Though today was a total dud, and tomorrow might be as well, I'm happy. If I can still laugh, I'm not fighting horribly with my mom/step-dad, and I don't feel hopeless/nothing will get better, then I'm happy. I really am.

happiness

Am I happy? Well I guess I am. I have good friends, I live in a pretty nice place and I dont have that many problems that arent school related. (problems being mainly homework) While I would like more excitement in my life I'm kinda happy I dont. I'm a bit lazy and excitement when it happens to me usually turns my life to crap after a while. But other than that my life is good enough that im happy living it and thats all good.

Good stuff...

before i start into my argument i just wanted to say that the state testing i a f***ing joke. just because u "passed" or "exceeded" some fatasses expectations doesnt make u smart or stupid. now, back to my original idea which i aparently havent even started typing about. im doing my essay on whether hunting is harmful to the enviornment/animals and i just have to say it is not. according to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, only 1% of all big game DEATHS, not the entire population, but DEATHS of big game animals is a result of hunting. that means 99% of the animals are dying some other way(in other words, we aint killin em all). and i could continue to list facts and data about this subject but that would be basically giving away my essay. so i'll stop there. and i would love it if people commented on this so that i could shoot thier statment down and correct em.HUNTING IS NOT A BAD THING!

...... topic 11 ......

Hapiness.
Am I happy. Yes, over all I am very happy. I may have my down times but I am still satisfied and happy with my life and grate full for everyone thats in it.

Debate topic.

Abortion:
People shouldn't get abortion no matter what age you are.

I think people shouldn't get abortion cause its there fault that they got prego in the first place.
I also think that if you are prego and you didnt want to be that way then the prego belly is the way to show people you messed up (unless your raped, but that cant always be your excuse).
And if your raped then you can always give it up for adoption.

#11

I am planning on writing my essay on creation vs. evolution. I am on the creation side as my religion states. i would say more but the bells gonna ring...

Go to your happy place.

I am relatively luckily when it comes to the life I lead. I have been raised well in a family that cares about me and my future and I control my mental state of being enough to a point that I can handle. I have an excellent network of friendships and I stay active.
Like anyone, I have a downer day everyonce in awhile but that's just 1 out every 10. Unless it's a particularly crappy week... But those weeks test your ability to handle stress.
Anywho, so yes, I am indeed content. I think happiness may be more, something that you have to acheive when you're truly without family and friends always behind you... Kinda like finding yourself.
But content is good enough for a fifteen year old. At least this one.

PS, I had a better title than this one, but Nick made fun of it.

i hate state testing because now that the school is making all sophmores pass, it puts more pressure on us and people might get too stressed out and fail, just to test later that year and mess up again. just because the school wants a higher overall test score doesnt mean that all sophmores have to exceed, why cant they make everyone else exceed?

happy

I honestly don't know if I'm happy. I like my life and the people in it but I can't tell if I'm truly happy. It doesn't matter too much though cuz I plan on living a good life so I'm pretty sure I'll eventually be happy anyway.

somedays, i am happy. somedays, the world is happy. i doubt both can happen at the same time.

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?

This is a harder question.... I would have to say yes, I think. Despite the fact that i am fighting for my job ,or that i am striving to get my grades from all "F"s to something of higher stature. I blame my happiness on a girl that some how makes me feel good even though I am feeling bad, and friends that know when i need a pick-me-up, and are quick to deliver one. Besides, things could always be worse, and that thought keeps me in high spirits.

Am I Happy?

yes. 

yes, I am happy.

I'm a happy person-most of the time.

But overall, I'm happy.

Abortion:

Women should not get abortions.

1) It's not the baby's fault two people were stupid and don't know how to use a condom.

2) If a woman gets raped, she can just give it  up for adoption. Again, not the baby's fault.

3) If you aren't ready to deal with the consequences of sex (getting preggers), then you shouldn't be having sex.

Happy happy joy joy.

I would have to say I am happy. I have good friends, a caring family (although it is not perfect, but whose is?), and I'm rather healthy, I mean, there's nothing to be upset about.

Sure, I'm annoyed at certain circumstances occurring in my life, but I at least try to overcome that sort of stuff and I attempt to think positively, though I am not very good at that.

10 & 11

10: hmm, well, i think the world is not going...well? But i do think many people are trying to fix it. I don't think many people want the earth to go under, but meh.
11:Happiness, i guess i'm happy, what more could i really want. Food on the table roof over your head and not much to worry about. Preettty sweet.

yes i am

i am a happy person. there are a lot of people who have completely good lives and they still say they are unhappy and they find things to bitch about. i really don't have anything to complain about, my life is fine. sure there are some problems like with family or school things like that but they really don't bother me. i am a happy person.

Happy?

Eh. Uh. Hmm. No, I wouldn't say so. Not totally, at least. Not yet. Hopefully one day I'll just wake up and say I'm happy but you never know. There are definitely certain aspects in my life that make me happy, but I think that in the back of my mind, somethings always there, though I'm not quite sure what it is.

late topic #10 --> Progress it's wonderful...

Progress it's wonderful  ...  or is it

I think that there are many arguments that could state that our society is heading for the better and probably just as many or more saying that it is getting worse Personally I feel that much is getting better, yet much more is getting worse, especially government; It is just getting more "politically correct" and better at hiding things and lying.

An argument saying that our society is getting better would be found along with many others in the ancient world. Society was indefinitely not at its best at this point. A prime example of this can be found in the Colosseum. Thousands of people were killed here for various "crimes" (such as being a Christian) and for the people's entertainment. Most people would instantly say that since we don't do that any more society must be getting better in those areas. This, however, is not altogether true.


One thing that many people overlook when they think of this is the fact that the romans for forbidden by the government to kill a pregnant woman. Human life before birth was respected even by the Romans. It is a travesty to think that the same is not true today. We hide it, give it the name "choice", but the fact remains that we are in this aspect no better and in fact worse than the Romans who horrified the ancient world.

Another thing which is said to be unthinkable for America to do is religious prosecution. The Romans undoubtedly prosecuted people for their religions, and were in fact very open about what they were doing. America, however, is supposedly more civilized than that and all religions are allowed by the constitution and the US government. If only this was true.

Just this week, two teacher at public school were brought into court and were pressed with criminal charges for prayer in school, even when no one else was present. One of these teacher had just lost her two-year-old child was practically inconsolable and despite her lost child, she had to return to work. The only way that she could find comfort was in prayer. To avoid criminal charges she and a fellow Christian coworker were forced to pray in a closet, an attempt that failed. They were brought into court by the ACLU (the so-called American Civil Liberties Union). If the ACLU is trying to defend our liberties then why is this prosecution happening? They ACLU hides its deplorable actions and intentions under its name and slogans.

Lastly is they aspect of they violence and killings in the Colosseum for the Roman people's entertainment. Unfortunately this evil form of "entertainment" is not unlike that which we have in modern America. The Roman people went to these free "games", and American's now days pay for equally horrifically repugnant entertainment with ratings of M for mature. (Don't ask me what a mature person would be doing watching something like that, or what businesses anyone would have looking at it!) Even though people are not killed or physically harmed to produce movies, they are equal to the worst Roman game's atrociousness and quite exceed them in their salaciousness.

Our government is to be for the people and it cannot function properly if it hides things from them. Our founding fathers fought and died for the liberties which we now enjoy, and through deceit our lying government (which is no longer a government for and by the people) is slowly taking them from us. That is not society getting better!




(By the way Mr Humphrey is there a particular reason why you chose Saturday for these posts to be due. I find it rather confusing for something to be due in the middle of the weekend.)

Happy?

I am happy overall, I am just okay with my life right now (yes it's possible) . I am quite pessimistic and stressful things have been happening, so I haven't been very happy lately....but I am very blessed in the life I'm in. So, yes. I suppose I am happy. Short and sweet and to the point.

Am I happy?

In all, I think I am happy. I have my moments of sadness and down time but I try to pick myself up and make the best of it all. I know that it could be a lot worse and I am fortunate to not have to go through what a lot of other people do. I know I do not have it the best but I can only do so much and telling myself how "terrible" it is wont help anything. I like to be optomistic and keep in mind that my future is what I make it.

The world - for better or for worse.

I feel that the world is taking a turn for the worst. As a whole, we're covering up our past and trying to hide our mistakes instead of taking the time to analyze and learn from them. Who does that help? It puts us in a bubble and sets us up to make the same mistakes over again. I don't like the fact that we can be so sheltered and hidden away from the truth. Who knows what is real and fake anymore?

I have no idea.

Thanksgiving

The food is plentiful and delicious!! I love the aroma of the kithen lingering throughout the house the entire thanksgiving day and the night leading up to it. Eating the leftovers for the next week is even amazing. I love having all my family together, the laughter is a bonus.

Topic 10 and 11

Topic 10:
Personally I believe the world is getting a lot worse, but better at the same time. I think that it's getting more worse though. I think we are trying to figure out ways to cover up the mistakes we made in the past. And another thing that kills me, is thinking about how wasteful humans are, and I try to catch myself in the act, whenever i'm being wasteful, and do the right thing, AND I also hate thinking about how unequal the world actually is. How America has so much, and other countries don't and how most Americans take it for granted. I don't agree with the all the wars that are going on, and I just think the world is mass chaos right now. If people would come to their senses, maybe it could all work out, but that's very unlikely. Unfortunately..

Topic 11: Am I happy? I guess things in my life could be better. But over all, I consider myself a very happy person. I don't really like to take things for granted, and I like to realize the good things in my life that other people may not have, which keeps me going. Sometimes I have a good day, and sometimes I have a bad day, but that doesn't take a toll on my life. I guess you just have to move forward and take things slowly.

-Lauren :)

Topic #11: Topics

Wow, I'm late on the posting this week -- I actually slept in, for once.  I never do that.  I think I have something of a cold, though.

At any rate: I was most tempted to ask the same question of you all that Clarisse asked of Montag: are you happy?  It seems to me an extremely important question to have the correct answer to, and the fact that Montag does not know his answer right away is indicative of his situation and personality; as he struggles with it, he begins to have an epiphany.  I like that.  On the other hand, I know from past blogs and discussions that many of you have already explored the thought for yourselves, and thus any insights have already been -- er -- inseen, which would make this topic dry and dull for you.

But wait!  We have uncountable topics to discuss!  Well, not really uncountable -- there are probably right around 35 topics.  But that's a lot, and this is a good opportunity.

You are all thinking about possible controversial issues to use for your persuasive essay (Don't forget about the homework!  Due tomorrow!  Tell your friends!), which we will be writing this week and next.  Perhaps the hardest part of writing persuasively is coming up with your arguments; so many of our opinions are simply that -- opinions, based on how we feel, rather than on sound reasons.  So many of the opinionated people in the media function on that level, as well, which leaves us with a good sense of how we feel, but not much of why.

So I'd like to take the chance to debate it, just a little. Your assignment for this week is to post at least one controversial issue you are thinking of writing your essay about, and state your claim.  I am hoping that your classmates will be able to respond with reasons and support for or against your claim, so we can all help each other brainstorm good arguments for the essays.  And maybe have a little fun arguing.  If you do not want to share your persuasive topic with the class, that's fine (though it makes this week's blog a little more pointless for you), simply choose some other controversial issue and make a claim.  Then try to help your classmates out.  If any of you are particularly knowledgeable about a topic, please be sure to share what you know, especially if you can point someone to a resource, a website or article or information source that would give good information on the topic.


Once again: post a controversial issue and a claim, either your essay topic or something different, and then try to respond to other people's posts and claims.  DON'T be insulting.

EDIT TO ADD:


Right, so it seems there may be some reluctance to post argument topics; I suppose some of you don't want to get your opinions shot full of holes. Understandable, but come on: that's how you learn to support your opinion and win arguments! Sigh. Well, let's have some alternatives for those who don't want to post arguments.

Alternative #1: As some people already have, answer Clarisse's question. Are you happy?

Alternative #2: We are doing state testing this week. Go ahead and air out your opinion of that.

the world is going in a way that is freakish to me. i was that puppy and rainbow child, and then i was put in school, and told that people die because other people kill them, and where babies come from, and wow. thankfully i have people who stand behind me when i get overwhelmed, and i love them for that, but somedays i dont understand why the world goes round still with so much hate in it. it seems to me that the world would have grind to a halt by now, by the steaming hate that presses down on all of us. 

Some concern for others.

I think people in society today care too much about themselves and not enough about other people. We have so much here today that many people don't have. And I'm not just talking about the millions of starving people around the rest of the world. Here in America we have thousands of homeless people too. A lot of those people are people that had plenty of opportunity for making a life for themselves and screwed up so now they just don't try they eat out of the hands of others. Those people should have some sort of correction facility or help finding a job for themselves, council to help them want a life for themselves, some direction to help them start off. We shouldn't just hand them the food and shelter they want without them having to earn any of it. What we need to do is make them try. Most people think that it was their fault entirely that they ended up where they are now, but it doesn't mean they don't deserve help. It may be the society we're raised in, how in a lot of cases we're told to put ourselves first and get our life all planned out that we forget about all the other people out there and then maybe that becomes habit. So maybe we should also be frequently reminded of all the other people and that even though you can't visibly see it; other people have and can have more problems than you.

Should the Church be seperated from The State?

My question to all of you, is what do you really know about this statement. The idea of separation between these two powers in the world, is that one has nothing to do with the other. So that the state has no control over the church, and vise versa. It protects the United States citizens from being FORCED to believe in a specific religion, and the government from declaring a United States Church of (_____), and having control over peoples faith.

To fully understand anything about the two, you must understand what The constitution meant by "the Church" and "the State". The Church was referred to as the whole Christian faith. This meant all religions that believed in Jesus and that story, or had a different view on the intentions of God sending Jesus to earth, fell under the title "the Church. However, the term "the Church" has changed over time, and in today's society includes all religions. Back then when the Constitution was written, we ignored the Native Americans beliefs, and thought of religion as Christianity.

Our country has kept to the phrase "Church separate from the State.", and has never had an Official religion. However, if your question is if we are separate from the Church, my answer is yes. If your question is " Was the United States founded on Christian beliefs, and should those beliefs and labels be followed today?", I would answer you no. Things like the phrase "In GOD we trust", that appear on our currency, on our presidential seal, should not appear, in my opinion. I feel that in most ways, it does violate our Separation from the "Church". It refers exclusively to the Christian God. I can be verified by you copying this Link to your address bar, and going to our United States treasury web-site, and finding the origin of the phrase, "in GOD we trust"

http://www.treas.gov/education/fact-sheets/currency/in-god-we-trust.shtml

This Class

Honestly, I COULD not have asked to have been put in a class with such free minded people. I go home everyday thinking about how this class makes my day everyday. Its nice to know that i can leave that class with a new piece of knowledge, (can totally have nothing to do with english), and have something to research. People like Sarah Hannah, who push me to prove a point further; Karliegh, who tells me shut up constantly, letting others speak(i do not STOP once i get started, so thank you); Cassidy, who has the random thoughts about things, that makes me go, what the hell.....OMG that makes sense; Stephan who makes me laugh and always has something to add to what i say; Amanda who might be the quietest person there, but who inspires me to be who i am, ans who writes poetry that can make me question life, or make me as sad as a cloudy day that holds no rain; And Mr. Humphrey, who has totally changed the way i approach problems, and life. He has made me question everything, taught me that there WILL always be someone better, and more knowledgeable.
Thank you all, and i am sorry if i do annoy any of you, but i am the way i am.

# 10

I believe that our world is going in the wrong way, but being a christian i believe that the world is going to be taken over by the anti-christ before being saved by jesus who will come down from heaven again. But the sad truth is that before we are saved our world is going to go completely down the drain... :(

Direction of our Country???

I dont really know if our country is going in the right or wrong direction. But all I see is more people loosing there jobs and things are getting worse with the global warming. I would say that from just looking at that then yeah, its going in the wrong direction.
I cant really say anything other then that because I dont know anything other then that about how are world is going. You may say "but you live in the world, how could you not know what it going on" yeah I do live in this world but I dont pay attention to the news or anything that the president says really, I just get told about it then brush it off and I like focusing on the good things that happen to me in life.
I also know that if people dont start going green, then alot of weather changes are going to be happening and it wont be for the good. Thats all I really have to say about where the world is going...

topic 10

I once heard someone say, when evil things are eviler, good righteous things are better and stronger too. (or something to that effect.) The point is It's as bad as it is good. So, the way i see it, if things are going well in the world in some way or another, they are getting worse in others. Sort of like technology... it's amazing!!! Many good uses, but also there are several not so good uses. Also change in government and such. There can be good change and bad change. I believe in opposition and if there is a degree of bad there is an exact opposite amount of good. I feel like using "good" and "bad" to describe this is very broad and not exactly making my point, but hopefully you get the gist of it=) I perfer not to get specific at the moment even though that's what Mr. Humphrey was asking for =P buuuuuut, if anyone is even planning on commenting to start a rant... I'll take school as my example. There is so much "good" school can do for students, but the policies... why do we need SO many and rules? Why are kids so disruptive and rude and lazy? If all the students begin to not care or like school for certian reasons how will that effect the counrty, world's future??? We are the future. good=much potential. bad= lazy students, soon to have unreachable goals?? wow, im getting now where i feel like im jumping from one thing to the next. haha if this even makes sense! ok im done for now, it you read this sympathize=] im tired and it's late!!! haha

nice guys finish last.
Devil=BILL GATES

Books should be read.
Sarah Hannah- would know what i meant and would not have jumped to the conclusion that i was calling her stupid if she read more. jk

10

I dont really think we're going in a good way but i dont think that its so horrible that we're going to die in some bloody third world war or something to that extent. Humans are pretty dumb and thats one of the reasons why we're not going down the path of sunshine and daisies. But we're smart enough to learn from our mistakes and so while right now everything sucks I believe that many, many, many years from now most things will work itself and life will be better. But as I said that's far away from now.

10

Where is the country going? I'm not sure whenever I hear the news I get depressed and I don't like to be depressed. I do care in the long run where it's going but sometimes it seems like the state it's in is so bad that I just don't care!

Where is this gonna lead?

Since the beginning of America, it has gotten better. I know, DUH. But I think it will get better as far as technology and medicine.

But I'm not sure about poverty, homeless people, accidental pregnancies, STD's, etc, etc.

In the end, I couldn't really predict if it were to get better or not.

Oops

Oops! I didn't really know I was supposed to put the two arguments on the blog.

---

    Should people obey all laws even bad laws?

If a law is bad then there is no purpose in obeying it. The entire purpose of a law is to keep people from doing bad things and to guaranty the protection of people's rights. If laws fail to do this they are not fulfilling their purpose. One problem (other than the fact that these corrupt laws were here in the first place) is that people often cannot be relied on to decide accurately which laws are the bad ones. In a perfect society people would be able to reliably find corrupt laws. Then again, in a perfect society no law would be bad or corrupt, and laws wouldn't be necessary in the first place.
       An earthly utopia isn't possible, so we will just need to live with corrupt laws and government.

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    Are books necessary?

Yes. Books have always been the primary way to teach, and pass on information. They also promote logical and creative thinking in many individuals. Watching television can give the viewer some understanding; however, studies have shown that the intelligence and the vocabulary of those who read books (both informative and fictional literature) is dramatically greater than that of those who watch television instead of reading.
Book are not the only source of knowledge, creativity and logical thinking. There are people who can fare just as well without books; however, books are the primary source of these abilities. Simply put, books are irreplaceable.

---

Joy to the world and blah blah blah.

The world has not hit rock bottom, and I don't think it's coming to an end. Though I don't believe in world peace, as in, I think everybody would have to be able to compromise, be open-minded, and respect others beliefs/sexuality/race for the world to ever be at peace. I feel very sorry for third world countries, and how America doesn't try to help more, then again, we got enough of our own problems right here. There has always been people who are never satisfied with the government or who was voted for president, then they whine about how idiotic the government is. I'm not saying its great and everything they do is smart, but really, if you think you could do better than how about you try. The world has violence, depression, and all around chaos. The world is an unfair place and their will always be cruelty/insanity, but if you sit on your ass and whine about how the U. S. government is stupid, what does that make you? The world is a mess, the government has never been perfect, but people whining about how the world is coming to an end and life sucks... GET OVER IT, because you whining just makes things worse. All in all, sometimes you got to look on the bright side of things, and realize things could be so much worse.

Food

I loooove thanksgiving. Not for just the food but having heaps and heaps of food. 2 servings is not acceptable, you can get 4, 5 ,6 if you want. amazing. Also, theres no school soooo yeah

health care

well as of right now its not very important to me as im not 18 yet so i really dont know, i would say it needs work though

Blog Name Ideas

Can't guarantee how good or bad they are, just bear with me here. They're open for interpretation and change. Anything in parentheses will be a note from me.

• Luminous Brushstroke
• Transcendental Soul
• Ephemeral Perception
• Metaphysical Dream
• Intuitive Context
• Expression with Poetry
• Soul & Soup (I just found this one funny)
• Analysis of Sentiment
• Superimposed Insight

Whether or not any of these appeal to you (the class), I'd like to know your thoughts on them :)

How can I know?

The world we live in is the only one I have ever known.
I was not alive twenty, thirty years ago so I have nothing to compare it too.
Sure, there are terrible, terrible things that occure in the world and maybe more statistically horrid things happen now as opposed to then but our society seems to adapt.
I can agree in seeing facts of ecological aspects that we are doomed but I'm way to optimistic for my own good when it comes to the minds behind the future. I just like to have hope. Personal flaw...
I'm optimistic for my personal future because I know my personal self.
As for the rest of the world, I'm certainly uncertain.

Answer to #10: Negativity

In this entire entry, I risk sounding (am going to be) over-dramatic and verbose, but this is just the way I feel.

Many of us are horrible. Many human beings, not necessarily of a certain age or race. All of us as a whole.

Most humans could care less about things that matter, that are needed to better our world. But all we do is sit in front of our televisions and computers, and block out the world, with not a single glance back. I admit to almost being one of these people; I care about the world, I would love to do something, anything, for it, but I don't have the means to accomplish anything significant.

"One person can change the world." I believe this, but is this one person myself? Or anyone I know of, really? No, because we are all just going to sit back in our computer chairs and relax on our couches because we don't have anything to worry about. Oh no, the children in Africa have things to worry about, the starving and homeless, even the people whose lives have been affected by war; they all have something to worry about, while the rest of us sit down at our posh jobs and live our everyday lives. Not a care in the world... or is the correct term "not a care about the world"?

As for our country, its just rotten to the core. America is the most lavish, extravagant country in the world. Eventually... we'll just kill ourselves.

Nothing is going right in the world at the moment. Poor people are getting poorer, the rich richer, the hungry and alone are dying. We don't even care about our own kind, for god's sake!

I promised myself, that as I grow older, I would do something, anything, to help this planet... I don't even see how that could happen anymore. If the world as we know it is going to end in 2012... I don't even know. Even if this horrible event that philosophers and soothsayers predicted hundreds of years ago never happens, what are we to do? Sit there and cower in our basements until we're sure nothing is going to happen? And what of those without shelter? What are they to do? Wait for the inevitable?

Sorry, lost track of my point for a moment there... anyway, the future holds nothing for us. We're as good as dead. I can only hope that I'm not here at the downfall of the human race.

the world

I think that the world is definately getting worse. I think that people are selfish, and mean. I am Christian, so I believe that the world is getting worse and it means the end is coming, but whether that is good or bad is a whole other discussion that I don't want to get into right now. So, the world is bad and we need to work on that.

Pah. Where is the world going you ask?

The world is going to hell. I really think it is. This is a subject I actually feel quite passionatly about. The biggest problem is simply the government in my opinion. It has lost it's ability to do just what it's supposed to do: GOVERN. Either it tries too hard in areas where there is either no hope, or it obsesses where there was no problem to begin with, and then digs itself deeper into wars we cannot ever win., and racks up the debt while it's at it. However in other areas of the world, the government doesn't do enough, letting it's women get raped and it's children starve to death. You would think since we (the U.S) being the world power, would do something about it, but alas, no. The government is crumbling. I also have christian beliefs, and the bible says the world is going downhill, so I believe it is. What this world needs is peace. And population control......

Food

My favorite thanksgiving food is turkey...and mashed potatoes......and corn. I have to have ALL that together, or thanksgiving dinner is no good. I hear of people who eat take out chinese food for dinner, I just don't understand it. SHAME.

Topic 10: Oh What a Lovely World We Live In..

I think the world is getting worse. I feel like nobody cares what happens anymore. People could care less if there's Global Warming, if our citizens are getting killed in a war over nothing, and all the starving kids in Third World countries that need help. 

I think we care way too much about little things that don't matter, and not enough about big things that could help our people.

Our world

"Its always darkest before the dawn"-Some great philosopher

I believe that this statement, (though false in many situations) holds true for our country at the moment. I think that yes we are still in a bad economic situation. Yes we are in the middle of "the war on terror". Yes the American people are in a bad financial situation, however I believe that we can rise again. We have risen from worse; The Great Depression, the effects of the Vietnam war, and past economical recessions. From each experience, we have always come out stronger. Because people hated the Vietnam veterans for the participation in the war, they were shunned and treated unfairly. As a result of this unfair treatment, we have programs such as support your troops, and OurMILITARY. Things that we all thought would send us spiraling into destruction, has only made us stronger. Yes there will be a point that were we will not be able to return, but when that happens, that will be the end. It will not be the governments fault, but the people that elected them. We as a whole are to take the blame for our actions, and it is upon us to fix it, and i believe that is something we can come back from

I can see ze future.

I don't know much about the direction of the world, but I definitely know where I'm going. Or where I want to go.. but for the sake of staying positive, where I'm going. I have everything planned out, well okay not everything. But I have a general plan, an outline. I know what I definitely don't want to do and I know what i need to do to get there. I'm extremely anal about the future. I worry all the time but at the same time, I am really super excited to get there.

I can't wait to get out of town and do something.

every whichway.

It would be wrong to say our world is heading in the wrong direction. but we aint headed the right way either. the world is so screwd up on so many levels beyond what it ever was. but the opposite would be just as bad. this is the nature of things. nothings perfect, not everything is hell. there is chaos. there is peace. there is both mixed together.this is how things have always been. and always will be. my point is, no matter how our society changes, there will be really screwed up shit, and luxuries. so i cant say we are heading the wrong way. just that we are heading some way.

thanksgivin

yeah i like thanksgivin. the foods a plus. especially when u get to have turkey and elk for diner. god meat tastes good! that and pumpkin pie. anyone who doesnt like pumpkin pie needs to die.(ha i rhymed) its the best. so is elk and turkey and mashed potatos. but what can i say, im a redneck.

I think our country is not really going in the right direction. This is mainly because i dont think we should be spending all this money while we're already in debt by soooo much money. I don't think we should be sending more troops into the war because we are just spending money while doing so. I heard on the news the other day that it costs the country about a million or more dollars per troop to fight the war!!! Thats wrong and i think we need to think about our money issues before our health care.

the country

our country is headed in a direction that is defiantly not the right one. our country is one of luxury and greed. we use way more than our share of things and we have way more than is needed to survive. we are in no way on the top of the food chain in this world.

i am definetly afraid of where are country is headed .. i feel like itll be the great depression all over agian

Well..

I think that our country is going in the wrong direction by far. We are stupid with our money, food, healthcare, and war.
" You can blow the world into peices but not into peace"

#9 ... food

i love thanksgiving so much .. im always so stuffed .. i love the traditions of the holiday .. my family is always together .. we go shopping make the food and just have fun .. my favorite thing we eat would have to be putting mahed potatoes on my rolls .. and having orange jello

#8 ... LATE

lets see .. health care .. truthfully i have no opinion on this matter ...because i dont pay ottention to politics and this subjest so truthfully i have no reason to answer this besides for a grade .. . so ta da

Topic #10: Direction

Do you think our country, our society, our world is getting better or worse?  Are we headed in the right direction, or going the wrong way?

What is going wrong, and what is going right?

I would love to see a rant about the biggest problem you see in the world today, or a paean to the nicest thing about life, if you're feeling full of puppies and rainbows. 

Are you afraid of what the future holds, or looking forward to reaching it?

Food. Well since there are endless possibilities for food, and since i don not have a favorite, I'll just have to list a Few
Creole Chicken Fettucine
Chalupas
Putenesca(sp?)
Alfredo(with noodles and chicken)
Chicken n' Dumplings
Potato Ham Chowder
Lasagna
Open Faced Sandwiches
Stir Fry (leftovers and Rice O Roni(i think)
Steak
Ham
Pork Roast
Pies


I can make all of the above. I love to cook, and its absolutely fun.... Olivia is waaaay better at it than I am though. You need a good cake you should ask her, absolutely wonderful cake.

Late, again..

Health Care:
I don't really know what health care is, or what the whole dispute about it is, but I know it's good to have it so I believe that everyone should have health care, even if you can't afford it, because everyone deserves to be healthy, and you shouldn't put a price on good health or anything that includes living. So if Obama decides to put a tax on people who can afford it, then so be it. I can see how that would but people, and it would bug me too, but it's for a good cause, and if you put yourself in that position, you'd want there to be a tax for you too. Personally, I wouldn't mind paying a little extra to help others out who need it. It's not like it's going to a bad cause. This is one of the reasons why our country is so crazy, nobody is willing to put themselves aside, and help others. I think America is a little selfish. haha.

Thanksgiving:
My favorite thanksgiving food item is probably candied yams. Sounds disgusting, and everyone thinks i'm crazy but it's actually really good. It pretty much tastes like brown sugar and pecans. But anyways, I'm not really that big of a fan of turkey, which is usually everyones favorite part. Maybe I just have a sweet tooth, but it's true. My thanksgiving this year was kinda disappointing though. Maybe I'll have a better one next year.

:)
Lauren

Food

I like Thansgiving for two reasons. 1, We get three days off from school. 2, we get to eat as much as we want. Both of these things are good, so I like Thanksgiving.

On the topic of culinary creations...

Thoughts on food...

Well, I am not going to be like everyone else and start off by saying how I love food. The fact is that most of the time I really don't. I often regard many meals as annoying yet necessary activities (meals during Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, ect. excepted.) My preferences for food would be foods that aren't greasy, dry, or spicy. For this reason I avoid eating "food" from burgerville, chicken nuggets, and most Mexican foods (I haven't even ever set foot in Muchos Gracias.)

What I do like are foods like custards, puddings, yogurt, and tapioca; soup and stews; and weird foods like my grandmas three bean salad, which consists of three varieties of beans steeped in vinegar for a couple days. One of my favorite things to eat is cauliflower dipped in a blue cheese dip with crumbled blue cheese on top. Last but not least I like meats and sausages, particularly grilled bratwurst.

As for beverages I will drink most things. I am not too fond of hot drinks, however. I feel that the benefits of having a drink hot are outweighed by the prospect of getting a burnt mouth.
Although some people do not believe me, I have never have drunk a drop of coffee in my whole life! When people hear this they either give me a look of disbelief, a look of confusion, or a look of how-do-you-live-without-coffee! I get similar results when people hear that I don't have or want an i-pod, don't watch television, and don't have or want a cell phone.

Nothing to do with the blog, so if you will be insluted by me writing this on here, DO NOT READ

three days ago, my friends parents went through his e-mail, and found out how depressed he was. They sat him down and had a long talk with him, and asked him questions he couldn't answer, because he didn't know the answers himself. His parents asked him questions like "why don't you love yourself?", "why are you letting these girls control your life?", "whats your solution to getting better "what is really making you so sad?", and "do you wake up with suicidal thoughts?".
We talked about it afterwords, and while talking to me, he found the answers. He said that talking to his parents, he felt that he would disappoint them. This is one of his greatest fears. I askeed him the same questions, and he answer them.

Tyler-"why don't you love yourself?":

....- I don't love myself because they don't love me. They don't understand how much the affect me and everything I do. I know this is pathetic to say at 18, but i really am what people make me.

Tyler- "why are you letting these girls control your life?",

....-Becuase they are the first people that ever showed me kindess when i first moved here. i have always thought of them, and they were in my head since 3 grade

Tyler-"why are you so sad?"

....- I'm sad becuase I'm not good enough for anyone, and they shouldn't love me. I'm a failure, and a screw-up, and a complete waste of space."

Tyler-" do you have suicidal thoughts?"

....- Yes. But I don't want to die.....I'm scared

He's been alive for 3 years after this conversation, and is succsefull as he is supposed to be
today was the anniversary of this conversation, and I felt like posting
sorry if I offended

FOOD! :)

I love food. I love thanksgiving! I love my family and thats about it. . .

Health care. Late

I dont agree with the health care program right now. I think the tax is ridiculous. I dont know much but I talk to my dad about it and its not good, he says its going in the toilet and I believe him from what I hear.