Thursday, September 15, 2011

Spanish 1A

A few years ago, I went to a small public school, which encountered a fair amount of problems. One of them is no spanish teacher ever stayed for more than a year. They left for a variety of reasons, but not one stayed for more than a year until I left the private school for a public middle school middle school.
The thing with the spanish teachers is each one, though talented at having us memorize words, not one of them taught building on what the previous one had taught. That meant that each summer each student in my class would forget what happened the previous year, and, with no re-enforcement, only new words which were tested then forgotten, the end result was a lot of studying, but nothing stuck.
The end result was, in middle school, which I came in to a year after the language programs had started, I was put into spanish 1A, which was basically a class for students who had failed spanish the last year and had to take it.
The kids in the class all look really seedy and mean, like criminals before they had a chance to drop out of high school. This is an over exaggeration, there are three kids in that class who are really smart, but that is what most of the students seemed like.
On he third day I walked in with a shirt from dartmouth, which is an ivy league school.
"What's that shirt form?" asked one of the students.
"Dartmouth, it's a college," I responded.
"Wow. Are you going to go to college after high school?"
"Yeah, aren't you?"
"Of course not!" the student seemed to find the idea appalling.
I kind of dread going to this class every other day, but I think it is good for me, in a way. Going to a private school has reminded me that not everyone is concerned with their education and really wants to reach their full potential. As you heard me say in one of my previous posts, I think that whether or not you an intellectual individual depends on what your parents show you is important in life. My parents, luckily, are both teachers, so I am set on getting a good education, but I have to remind myself that not everyone is so fortunate. Plenty of people have parents (Or other influences, such as piers) who don't care about them, or give them bad advice.
Oddly enough, after that class I have enriched language arts,  the two seem to be exact opposites. Language arts is about thinking, spanish is about memorizing, enriched means the best students, spanish 1A mainly has the slackers.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

9/11

First off, sorry about all the posts in which I say I've got nothing to say. I'm going to stop doing those, so sorry.
Now, I know that the ten year anniversary to 9/11 is tomorrow, but I feel like I need to write it all down now and post it, because if wait until tomorrow I might have forgotten some of my ideas.
Sometimes I read books or watch movies that mention New York before the disaster, and I am struck by the fact of how they show the twin towers as a fact. Its existence is not questioned, and if you went up to someone the morning of September 11, 2001 and said that someone would blow up the twin towers, they would either laugh or think you are crazy. They do not question that it is there today and will be there tomorrow. I guess all people think about things like that. But its not the Towers that were the big loss. I mean, sure, it was great to have the world trade center in our own country, but we could do without it. What really struck us hard is the people.
We never expected that people could just be killed in such large numbers. I mean, wars can wipe out far more people than that, but wars have happened before. Disease can wipe out more people as well, but disease has happened before too. What hasn't happened is just all of a sudden an airplane crashes into a major landmark of a huge city. That really took people off guard.
If you walked up to any American and asked "Do you think if hell exists the suicide pilots of September 11 belong there?" I would say you would get almost none who say no. 
But I say no.
I say no because they thought they were doing the right thing. They thought their god would reward them. They thought it was the right thing to do. So yes, they were wrong, and their mistake cost us thousands of lives, but they thought with all their heart (If they didn't they wouldn't have killed themselves) that this was the right thing to do. It scarred out nation and will for years to come, but I would forgive any of them. ANd if you disagree with me to a point of extreme anger, I will remove this post immediately.  

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

100th post spectacular

As you might be able to tell, I do posts about big issues on every big major mark (I posted about gays and lesbians on number 50) and this time it is the old testament.
It all started when I looked up Mark Osler (I was wondering what else he did) And came across this article about gays and lesbians at Baylor, and how they feel scared about being found out and kicked out. It is an excellent article, and if you want to read it I will put up  a link for it, but one of the comments really appalled me. It was by a guy called doc Joseph. It one part goes:
"That Old Testament, which Christians would like to edit to remove the "bad parts" or explain away with platitudes ("It was a different time...") still tells you what God, the Hebrews, AND Jesus thought about homosexuals."
Sorry, but for the rest of the post the text is stuck like this. 
Obviously this guy believes in a completely serious interpretation of the old testament. He says that christians "Like to cut out the bad parts" which is, in fact, exactly what I do. And I would agree with him, if I had not read one book.
It is about greek myths.
If you compare the old testament and Greek myths, they are surprisingly similar. I can't quote one part of it to show the similarities, but the way it is told, like a history, is really similar. And not just that. In both books, the gods (Or god) take sides of certain people and slay their enemies. How can this be, if one is supposedly all fact and the other fiction?
Simply because that is the way people interpreted life back then. They couldn't think about what made the great things of the universe, so they had god do it. And the world they lived in was violent, so the creator must be like that too. And wouldn't it be good if this creator(s) was on their side and used the violence on others?
You see? they made it up the exact same way.
The thing is, Jesus said that the Hebrew religion was right, so would he lie to us like that?
No. 
So god must exist, and do some of the same things as i the old testament, but the people changed it to meet their needs (Make them feel like god was on their side) Until certain parts weren't even his any more.
As for cutting stuff out, it's not like the stuff I choose not to believe is about love or acceptance or anything that would make the world better. It is about a vengeful god killing people. In fact, the reason that christianity succeeded to become the worlds most popular religion (That fact comes from my sunday school teachers) is because it isn't about an angry god, but rather teachings that help us be better people. 
Of course, this isn't condemning other religions (Other than greek mythology) as worshipping an evil god. In fact many of the people who practice other religions (Muslim, Judaism, Hinduism) are actually very nice people. Those people have seen things similar to Jesus' teachings of love and peace, and are attracted to them. And if anyone fro another religion is offended by this post, lease comment. I will remove the post immediately after I read the comment.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-osler/gay-christian-students-baylor-university_b_941141.html

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Hypocritical

Originally this was going to be a post apologizing for the decreasing amount of content in my posts. But then I realized that, seeing as this has no content itself, I think that would be very hypocritical.
But what the heck, I'll do it anyways.

Friday, September 2, 2011

Exposure

Sorry its too late to do a serious post today, but I will provide at least a tidbit of content.
It's kind of weird, a few years ago to get a book published you had to go through a whole long process. Now you can publish a book on the kindle for free and no editing required.
See what I meant by a tidbit?

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Stats

It's kind of weird, I don't do this anymore, but I used to obsessively compulsively check my stats. I don't know why I did this. Who should I care how many people read my blog? It's not like I'm getting paid or rewarded in any way by who reads my blog. Heck, I don't even really have to blog at all. But I still felt an intense happiness when when my stats were up, and a sudden disappointment when they were down.
So why did I rely on how many people were reading it? the same reason that people post links to their own work when reading other peoples stuff on the internet. Because they want exposure.
Not to long ago, if you could do something really well, short of doing it in the street in front of a crowd, you would need some organization to show it off. Say you can review books really well. You would need to work hard to get it in a magazine or other form of distribution. Now, you just type it up, put it on a blog or other website. Instant exposure to tons of people.
The only problem is, you need to get people to see it. If you get people to see it, they might like it and you might be a world famous reviewer. Of course, I do not expect my blog to get really big, but I still cared about exposure.
Now, I realize it doesn't really matter how many people read it. What matters is I like writing and so I blog.
Not that I'm complaining I don't get enough views.