Isabella

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__Sunday, 17th June 2012:__
So I thought last week would be the last week for journal entries. However, as we are now in three unneeded days of school, it has become necessary to write another journal. I don’t particularly mind because I’ve come to enjoy writing about whatever I want. It’s nice to have a word limit no specific topic to write about. Although, that being said, I haven’t exactly followed any kind of word limit this year.

This journal doesn’t have much of a purpose. I suppose I’ll talk about my summer. I’ve been asked quite a few times about where I’m going, so now I think I want to talk about what I hope to accomplish as well.

I’ve started compiling a list of things I wanted to achieve over summer about a month ago. These are three of the things I have on it:

Finish and Edit my Novel Last November I wrote a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. I reached a little over 50,000 words and I was near the end of my novel. However, after writing the novel straight for 30 days I couldn’t bring myself to finish and/or edit it. This summer however, I intend to finish writing it, edit it, and put it in a corner for no one to ever read. Perhaps I’ll let someone read it someday, but I’m fairly certain it needs quite a bit of work before, because when writing 2000 words each day you tend to write some rubbish on your not-so-great days.

Install Rosetta Stone So this summer I’m going to a Spanish immersion camp in Costa Rica, so I’m going to be speaking quite a bit of Spanish. However, I still want to improve my French. When Charlotte and Louis talk in French to each other or with their families, I can usually follow along, but I lack the ability to respond in French or understand completely what they’re saying. So my French hasn’t completely gone away, and since I don’t want to lose it forever, I want to start learning French again, by installing the French Rosetta Stone I have on my newly de-imaged Mac!

Get Better at Guitar I really enjoy playing my guitar. Right now I’m okay at it. I can play quite a few things and I can pick up new songs fairly quickly, but I’m nowhere near as good as I’d like to be. This summer I intend on having my guitars strapped to me the entire time (or so to speak) so I can improve and be really good.

I have quite a few things I’d like to achieve this summer. I hope I can achieve most of them, if not all of them by the time school comes around in August.

So I suppose I won’t be bored this summer.



__Sunday, 10th June 2012: Final Journal?__
It’s been a good year. It’s been a great year. I don’t know if this’ll be the final journal entry for Grade 9 English 2011-2012, but I’ve decided to treat it as such because I’m sure that even if we are assigned the journal next weekend, the majority of my classmates will not see the need to do it as teachers have to finalise non-exam grades this Thursday, so it won’t be included in our grade. Due to this, I don’t think we’ll be asked to do it next week, thus making this my final journal entry (probably).

I think I may be being a little more nostalgic than the majority of my classmates, and reluctant for the year to end and for summer to start. Don’t get me wrong – I want exams to be over and I want to be able to relax, but I don’t want to leave Grade 9 this year. Everyone else, understandably can’t wait for school to end, but I feel like after school lets out next Wednesday we’ll never have this grade nine again, because five or more of us are leaving and more people are coming.

Our class has changed a lot over the years. I came three years ago, in grade seven. There were about eighteen or nineteen of us. The only people who remain who were here in grade seven are Tyla, D’Andra, Manley and I. It’s strange because in the grand scheme of things, I really haven’t been here that long, yet I’m one of the people who’ve been here the longest. Over my three years here I’ve had many really good friends leave. Luckily one of my best friends lives up in Florida, so I can see her every so often (although that’ll change now).

Last year we were all friendly and no one really ever had trouble with anyone else, but we were separated into groups, so the only time we really mixed was in class (and often not even then). This year, probably due to our smaller class size, we’ve all become better friends. I’d say we’re all pretty close. We all hang out on the weekends, we all sit with each other at lunch, and tease each other in class. I think some of the shadow students who came may’ve been a little intimidated by how we are with each other, but I like to think that it shows how close we are as a class.

By far the hardest thing about moving is not always leaving the place, but leaving the people. Now I hope Seya never reads this, because she’ll probably kill me for saying this, but things will never be the same as they were this year. This is both a good and a bad thing because it’s been one of my best years at AISK and I don’t want to leave the friendships I have with pretty much everyone in our class. However, change is also good, and things obviously can’t stay the same way forever, because even if I were to stay, it wouldn’t be the same. So things change no matter what.

I guess all I’m really trying to say is that I’m really going to miss everyone here at AISK, and I hope I can see all of them at least once more over summer before I go. I am really excited to be moving to a new country and a new school, but it keeps getting harder to leave my friends as I get older.



__Sunday, 3rd June 2012: 'The Adventures of Sebastian Cole'__
This week I watched a movie called ‘The Adventures of Sebastian Cole’. I found out about it through our English project, because the actor we chose for Curley – Adrian Grenier – stars in it. I partly wanted to watch it because I wanted to see if I could use it as a reason why he was good for the part, but mostly because the description of the movie sounded good.

‘The Adventures of Sebastian Cole’ is a teenage angst-y movie – with a twist. Sebastian is a seventeen-year-old boy who lives in a small town in upstate New York. His parents are divorced and both are remarried. His father’s never around, and his sister and him live with their mother and stepfather, Hank.

The night before his sister is due to leave for college in California, Hank announces that he is going to have a sex change operation. After the announcement everything changes. Sebastian’s sister leaves almost immediately to California with her sleazy boyfriend on the back of his motorcycle with none of her things, and Sebastian’s English mother decides to move back to England with Sebastian. They leave quickly, but a few months later, after living with his now-drunkard mother, Sebastian moves back to the town to live with Hank, who is now Henrietta. Then the story //really// begins.

The movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, so you can probably guess that it was more of an artistic film. By artistic film, I mean that it was one of those films where they have long landscape clips and silence when people are on screen. This doesn’t make it bad – I actually found that it made the emotions more intense.

It was a really good movie. Sometimes when directors try to make these artistic films, they end up making it long and boring, but the director of the film kept it interesting. I did find that there were some jumps in the storyline – where it jumped from one scene to another and the two scenes were months apart in the storyline and you had to fill in the gaps and figure out what happened. That being said, I don’t think it affected the story too much because it gives the viewer the freedom to imagine parts of the story how they’d like, and not how the director envisioned it.

I’d recommend it to anyone who’s interested after reading this review. However, if you’re more into action-y, special effect filled movies, then I don’t think you’ll enjoy this movie that much. That being said, the movie is still witty and entertaining. There aren’t any special effects, but there are a few parts with some action in it. So don’t get thrown off by my description of it as an ‘artistic movie’, it really is a good movie.



__Sunday, 27th May 2012: Movies, Movie Theatres and Movie Theatres in Jamaica:__
This weekend, I went to see two movies. The first was ‘Battleship’, and the second was ‘Men in Black III’. Both films were very good. They were a little predictable – which as I understand is what most people are criticising them for – but what they lacked in surprise, they definitely made up for in action and special effects, and the plot lines were good, which I suppose at the end of the day is what you watch movies like ‘Battleship’ and ‘Men in Black III’ for.

Watching the movies two nights in a row, made me start thinking (not for the first time) about movie theatres.

I’ve been to many movie theatres across the world. In some there are many similarities: the entranceway with the snacks and the ticket vending machines or vending people (depending on where you are) is always much more elaborately decorated and much larger than the rest of the movie theatre; the movie theatres probably make more money off the food than the movie tickets themselves; and they like to serve lots of food.

In the United States, each size for the food at the snack bar is about three times larger than the same sizes everywhere else. If you get a small drink, it’s short, but it’s very wide, so it’s almost the same size, if not bigger than the medium. The large cup is very tall and very wide, so it’s like you’re drinking from a jug. I cannot imagine why someone would ever EVER want that much soda in his or her entire life.

The same goes for the large popcorn bags. I was in a movie theatre in Miami last summer, and as I was throwing something away, I happened to notice that there was a large popcorn bag with a large soda cup inside of it – so one person had bought a large drink and a large popcorn and eaten it during the course of one movie. I’ve never wondered why a lot of Americans are obese.

But although cinemas in the United States have large amounts of food, Jamaican cinemas still confuse me the most.

A regular movie nowadays is about two hours long. Before the movie starts, they usually play about 15-30 minutes of advertisements and movie trailers, so almost everywhere in the world you’re already spending about 2 hours and 15 minutes in a movie theatre.

In Jamaica, they have thirty minutes of advertisements, and a fifteen-minute intermission halfway through the movie (this halfway point is chosen at random, and occasionally in the middle of speech). So you’re spending about forty-five extra minutes in the movie theatre than you should have to. So if you go and see a movie that starts at about 8:30, you get out of the cinema at 11:00, which is a very long time to be in the movie theatre for.

Some people say they like the intermission because they can get up and go to the bathroom and go and buy more snacks if they want. But is it really worth spending that much extra time in the theatre instead of missing maybe two minutes of a movie to get up and go to the bathroom or buy the extra food you shouldn’t need if you bought what you needed at the beginning? The intermission really, is just a way to make more money. It isn’t done for the convenience of the moviegoers, it’s done so people go and buy food because they have nothing better to do. In fact, when the intermission comes on it says ‘Intermission. The snack bar is now open!’ When in fact, the snack bar **never** closes, so if you really need that extra drink, you can go anytime you want; you don’t need a special time to go. It isn’t a play theatre, why is there an intermission?

I’m also curious to know why they play the national anthem. I know that it used to be the standard a while back, but I could only find mention online of one other place that still does this, and only in certain areas of the country. The country was India.

I understand that maybe playing the national anthem is meant to invoke national pride, but if you think about it, why does national pride need to be invoked when watching foreign movies? National pride should be something that’s gained through being proud to be a citizen of your country, not through constantly hearing the national anthem being played (which may actually have the opposite effect to what was intended).

So in closing, I think that movie theatres are just trying to get your money. You go there to watch a movie, and end up staying there at least half an hour longer than you need to or want to, paying for things you don’t need. I think movie theatres should become public, where you still have to pay to see the movie, and people can still buy food, but a company doesn’t get to dictate how the movies are played and how many advertisements to play. Watching movies would be a lot more pleasant and easier.

(As a side note, after reading Seya’s journal, I’d advise you not to watch ‘This Means War’. I haven’t actually seen the movie, but the plotline is as follows: Two spies fall in love with this girl (for no apparent reason) and fight over her with spy equipment. It sounds terrible, even if the actors are good-looking, as Seya mentioned (I don’t actually know who’s in it). I didn’t want my brain to melt, so I didn’t watch the movie. I recommend this to everyone.)



__Sunday, 20th May 2012: MUN in NYC__
This past week I went to the Model United Nations Conference in New York City. There were fourteen of us that went on the trip, including Hunter, Seya and D’Andra from our class. AISK was representing Venezuela in the conference.

I was in the General Assembly First Committee, and Simone Phillips was my partner in the committee. We were discussing an Arms Trade Treaty (as the real UN will be discussing this July in New York City). What we basically had to do was to write a resolution about our topic and have it passed by the whole committee.

We paired up with various Latin American countries to write a resolution, and eventually we merged with African and Asian countries to form our final draft resolution. It was passed in the end by the committee, with a clear majority for the resolution.

One of the things I didn’t like about the conference was that quite a few people weren’t arguing their country’s position, they were arguing their own. There was this one ridiculous resolution that was put forward by the United States, China and Bangladesh, which wanted to put forward a grading system. It completely discriminated against developing countries and deprived them of their right to defend themselves, but everyone seemed to think it was a lovely idea because it sounded like a good solution (if you weren’t thinking in terms of a developing country), and the resolution was passed.

You did get quite a few serious people as well though. There were these two girls, who were representing Zimbabwe (ironically), and they were from Japan. They were really nice and they also debated their country’s point of view well. In addition, the delegation representing the United States, although their resolution was not the best, they were pretty serious as well.

Being in New York City with friends from school and participating in the conference, as well as going to the UN building, was an amazing experience and I had a lot of fun. Anyone who wasn’t too sure about going this year should definitely look further into doing it next year - although I warn you about the wake up times – we had to wake up at 3AM this morning to catch our flight – 2AM Jamaican time, after going to bed at midnight last night.

The entire delegation in the UN GA Hall

__Sunday, 13th May 2012: American Idol and the Bias of the Pre-Teen Girls that make up the Majority of its Voters__
I used to watch American Idol. I started watching the show probably in its third or fourth season, from the auditions straight through to the finale. The last season I watched fully was the sixth season when Jordin Sparks won. Two years ago I picked back up watching American Idol – the tenth season – and I watched right up until the top five, when I lost interest.

The top ten that year consisted of two country singers, three pop singers, two jazz/rock singers, two soul singers, and one rock singer. By the top five they’d kicked out everyone but the country and pop singers, who weren’t nearly as good as anyone else. This disheartened me and I stopped watching.

By the time it reached the top three, I’d heard by word of mouth that there were two country singers left and one pop singer left. Two were seventeen and the other was twenty-one. In the end, the seventeen-year old country singer won.

Looking back at past American Idol winners, I’ve noticed that half were country singers and the other half sung pop or R&B. Most of them (except one or two) was in their twenties (or younger) when they won. So from that tenth season and the past seasons, I’ve deduced that the only people who win American Idol are young country or pop singers – or, over the past few years, young male country or pop singers.

I have no actual statistics on this, but I think the main reason for this is because the majority of voters for American Idol are probably pre-adolescent and adolescent girls, who vote for the ‘cutest’ singer or the country or pop singer. I have no idea what’s going on this season (and frankly, have no interest in it whatsoever), but they always kick out the interesting and different people. If someone without a country or a pop voice ever won, I’d be very shocked.

So now I’ve had a rant about American Idol winners, I’m going to end off this week’s entry by simply saying that for once, I’d like to see someone different win.



__Sunday, 6th May 2012: 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time' by Mark Haddon__
This weekend I read a book called ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’ by Mark Haddon. I found it when I was up in Miami in Barnes and Noble (I’m one of those people who still shops at book stores). I had decided that I wasn’t going to read books from the teenager section anymore because I couldn’t look at any of the teen books after reading the back of the 500th book about a teenager girl falling in love with a vampire/werewolf/other fantasy creature.

‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’ is about a fifteen-year-old autistic boy whose next-door neighbour’s dog was killed. He decides to investigate to find out who killed the dog. There is so much more to the story, but I don’t want to give anything away.

What made the book so great was not necessarily the plotline, but the main character and how the other characters acted towards him. The main character is a fifteen-year-old autistic boy named Christopher Boone. The story is told as if Christopher has written the book himself, so you get to see the world through his eyes.

Christopher, like many other autistic children (and adults) has many dislikes and likes that may seem strange to us. He can’t stand the colours yellow and brown, he hates being touched and he won’t eat certain food if it’s been touching other food.

Christopher is also extremely intelligent, and excels at math and science. The book contains a lot of comparisons between what’s happening in Christopher’s life and scientific/mathematic phenomenon (which is very interesting).

Christopher also doesn’t understand jokes or metaphors, and when he’s asked a question that uses an expression but doesn’t out-rightly ask the question, he answers it literally. Here’s an exerpt from the book so how it is narrated can be understood:

//‘I find people confusing…. Siobhan… says that if you close your mouth and breathe out loudly through your nose, it can mean that you are relaxed, or that you are bored, or that you are angry, and it all depends on how much air comes out of your nose and how fast and what shape your mouth is when you do it and how you are sitting and what you said before and hundreds of other things which are too complicated to work out in a few seconds.’//

I really, really enjoyed the book. Anyone who wants to read it should read it. Most people don’t usually take my recommendations on books (because they don’t read), but this time I think they should pick up the book and read it because it really is great book.



__Sunday, 30th April 2012: Age Restrictions on Facebook and How No One Really Follows Them__
So I know I’ve talked a lot about reading and lot about technology over the past few weeks – social networking in particular. Nevertheless, today I’m going to talk once again about social networks.

I recently read an article called ‘Facebook: Parents Help Children Break Age Limits’ ([]), which I found quite funny. I only found it funny because it talked about how parents are setting up Facebook accounts for their young children, when in actuality, it’s the children that are setting up their own accounts without asking their parents.

To have a Facebook account you need to be thirteen years of age or older. The only proof you need that you’re thirteen years or older is your birth date (which you don’t have to prove) and ticking a box agreeing to the terms and conditions of Facebook. So basically, nothing’s really stopping you from getting a Facebook account.

It is not illegal to make a Facebook account when you’re under 13, Facebook also won’t seek you out and kick you off their site for being under 13. So anyone who wants a Facebook account can make one and fake their birth year. So I’ve rarely heard of parents setting up Facebook accounts for their underage children, it’s usually the underage children setting up the account themselves.

I created my Facebook account when I was 10 or 11. I mostly just made it because my older brother, who was around 13 at the time, made one. I used it for about three days at first, and then quickly got bored of it. I only really started using it again when I was 13.

I joined in 2007, when no one used Facebook, which is probably why I got bored quickly. However, since everything’s online nowadays, I don’t see why 10-12 year-olds can’t use Facebook. I have some Facebook friends that are under 13 years old – younger siblings of friends and some 6th and 7th graders that go to AISK. All they do is post pictures of themselves and their friends and play games on Facebook. I don’t see any harm in them using Facebook, as long as their privacy settings are set to safely protect them.

The article I read was concerned with children posting inappropriate photos and status updates on Facebook. I suppose that people objecting to under-13-year-olds using Facebook don’t think that children can differentiate between what is appropriate and what is not appropriate, and are worried that they’ll post something that they can’t ever take off. In response to that, I say that teenagers and adults post things they shouldn’t all the time. Whether they’re old enough to know better is immaterial – they’re still doing it. I think that children should be allowed to use Facebook and other social media sites at a young age so they can learn how to use Facebook safely and appropriately and so they don’t post things they shouldn’t when they’re older and at the Facebook age.

So if parents are setting up accounts for their children, we can only assume – and hope – that they are also teaching their children how to use it safely. Also, I’m sure that younger children are learning how to protect themselves online better though using sites like Facebook at a younger age than Facebook would like. You make your mistakes while you’re young, so you don’t repeat them when you’re older and you should really know better.



__Sunday, 22nd April 2012: Why I Stopped Reading (and Why You Should Start)__
Last week I read a book. Which book it was and what it was about is irrelevant. What is relevant is that it was engrossing, and that it reminded me why I stopped reading in the first place.

This reason is something anyone who picks up a good book soon finds out: **__reading is addictive__**.

Let me put it like this: Imagine your favourite TV show ever - that one TV show that you can’t stay away from and can’t stop thinking about. Now think about not having to turn on the TV or put in the DVD to watch it. Imagine not having to wait a week for the next part of the story. Imagine being able to watch that TV show whenever you want, wherever you want, from wherever you left off with no extra equipment needed. That’s what reading is like.

You start an incredible story, and you become familiar with the characters and the story and you don’t want to stop. Whenever you want, if you see your book you pick it up and you carry on with the story you’ve come to love. That’s the reason people read and that’s part of the reason I stopped.

This book that I read last week I couldn’t put down. I started it on Sunday night, which was not such a great idea since we’d just come back from Spring Break. I read considerably late that night (seeing as it was a school night). I did the same on Monday night, despite being exhausted. Then on Tuesday, we had no homework due on Wednesday, so I read from the moment I went home until I went to bed (with a few breaks for dinner and other matters), and I finished the book.

On Wednesday morning I was exhausted, and on Wednesday afternoon I was mad at myself for not doing any of the homework that was due Thursday on my free day on Tuesday. So some of the things I should’ve done, and it probably could be said that I had to do, I didn’t do and I read instead. That’s the power of reading; it makes you forget what you need to do. That’s a part of the reason I stopped reading.

I never consciously made the decision to slow down the pace at which I read (I didn’t completely stop reading, I just didn’t read as many books in a period of time as I should’ve). It was more or less a series of poorly written books one after another and more homework that lowered the amount of books I read.

That all being said however, none of this changes my love for reading and my desire to carrying on reading. So, for anyone who doesn’t read, see what you’re missing out on? You’re not getting it all from TV shows or movies. Think of it this way: books are like TV shows, only far better. So start reading.



__Sunday, 15th April 2012: Book to Movie Adaptations (and vice versa)__
First off, I would like to start this journal entry with saying that (in relation to my last journal entry) they are making a movie out of the book ‘Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children’. It’s still in the writing stage, but it has already been decided that it is to be directed by Tim Burton, which I think is quite fitting. So now, someone needs to read the book so they can come watch the movie with me… in 2013.

Anyway, my journal entry today is going to be about book to movie adaptations.

Everyone knows that the book is always, always better than the movie. An example of this is ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’. I read the Harry Potter books after I watched the first five movies. I remembered, from watching the movies, that after the third movie, the movies were terrible and made no sense (I never understood the Goblet of Fire or the Order of the Phoenix). When I read the books, however, I loved the fourth and fifth novels (the sixth was probably my least favourite – but it wasn’t bad).

I went back and watched the movies after I read the books, and I found that I understood the fourth movie better because I could fill in the gaping gaps it had left in the story with my knowledge from the book. This is just one of very many examples of a good book and its bad movie.

Probably the only good book-turned-movie I’ve even seen was ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’. I read the book before I saw the movie and thought the book was excellent. Then, when I watched the movie, I really couldn’t complain too much about it. It more or less captured the mood and all the moments (with a few discrepancies), and I found that the movie was even sadder than the book. However, all that being said, the book was still better, but not by a huge amount, unlike some other movies based on books have been.

In general, when I read a really good book I usually do hope they make a movie out of it, even though I know I’ll be disappointed 90% of the time. I’m anxious about the movie based on ‘Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children’ coming out. Tim Burton is a pretty good director, so hopefully it won’t be a terrible movie. However, sometimes these famous directors try to make a film too artistic, so it becomes either really boring or really bad. I hope that won’t happen. I wish every book that was turned into a movie was either worked really hard on or left alone, not done half-well and then thrown out into the world.

vs. **vs**.

__Sunday, 8th April 2012: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs__
Over the past week I read the book ‘Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children’ by Random Riggs.

‘Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children’ is probably one of the strangest and at some points, creepiest/ books I have ever read; yet I really enjoyed the book. I think the best way to describe it would be strangely wonderful.

‘Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children’ is about a teenager named Jacob, who, after a tragic incident involving his grandfather, goes on a trip to a small island off the coast of Wales to visit the island where his grandfather grew up. There, he visits an old children’s home in a remote part of the island that barely anyone went to. In the old home he finds a collection of old photographs that are puzzling and extraordinary.

The really unique thing about the book is that it uses pictures and text to tell the story. I find that usually in books, if the characters find a photo, the author describes the photo, but in ‘Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children’ the author has added all the photos the main character sees to help tell the story.

I think he mostly uses photos because the majority of the photos are very strange. Some of them are so strange it borders on creepy and disturbing, and I imagine it would be difficult to pass that effect on better through text. I’ll include some of the photos from the book at the bottom of this entry.

‘Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children’ is a really good book. It is extremely strange, and I give credit to the author for coming up with such a creative way to tell his story, but it is still an excellent book nonetheless. Even though some of the pictures did creep me out a little (in context with the story), I really enjoyed the addition of the pictures. I found that Riggs also described the setting very well – because throughout the entire story I could picture the cold, gloomy, foggy and wet island that Jacob trekked around.

I recommend this book to anyone who doesn’t scare easily – IT IS NOT A SCARY BOOK – but some of the pictures may be found a little creepy. Other than that, I think everyone should read the book – or at least one other person so I can have someone to talk about it with. I think there is going to be a sequel, but the book was published this year, so I expect I’ll have to wait a while for the sequel.

**Some of the photos from the book:**

__Sunday, 1st April 2012: Social Network Addiction__
Today I am going to discuss social network addiction.

A social network is a website that is designed for users to informally interact with other users of the site – basically to share things with your friends and talk with them online. Social networks include sites like Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.

In my personal experience (I have no formal evidence to back this claim), I find that everyone is on Facebook ALL THE TIME (I’m no exception to this statement). I think the majority of people check their Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr account the moment they get home (I’m a part of that statement too) or when they wake up on the weekends or holidays (I don’t do that one). Most people seem to then leave their Facebook page open for the rest of the time they are online or on their computer. Some people don’t even bother closing their Facebook or Twitter page when they leave their computer, and leave the page open all the time.

I don’t think this addiction to Facebook is particularly healthy. There seems to be this obsession that one must be on Facebook at all times or you will miss out on finding out what your friends are doing (your friends who are probably on Facebook as well) or you’ll miss out on a comment someone made on one of their photos. The majority of people recognise the unhealthiness of this addiction, but they carry on do it anyway. For example, I’m sitting here writing a journal entry about how unhealthy it is to always been on Facebook all the time – with my Facebook news feed open on the computer next to me. However, don’t let that undermine what I’ve been saying though, I really don’t like how much I’m on Facebook.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about what life back before computers and video games must’ve been like. I don’t know if I would’ve found something to do to occupy my time. Maybe I’d spend more time reading, maybe I’d do more sports or be in more clubs, or maybe I’d actually hang out with my friends.

I’m sure a whole new world awaits those who get off their computers and TVs, but even after writing this entry, I’m not so sure that I’ll be seeing that world anytime soon.



__Sunday, 25th March 2012: Misleading Advertisements__
One thing I find with advertisement (not all the time, but frequently enough for it to bother me) is how it can be very misleading about a product or whatever it is that it’s advertising. Just to be clear (and so my examples make sense), advertisement is ‘a notice or announcement in a public medium promoting a product, service, or event or publicizing a job vacancy’ (Mac Dictionary Application). So basically anything trying to get people to buy something, take part in something, look at something, etc.

There are many forms of misleading advertisement, but the one that drove me to write this journal entry is the titles of articles. This does count as advertisement because the first thing you see is the title of the article, and you decide based off the title whether or not you want to read it.

What I generally find, especially with articles about entertainment or lifestyle, is that the article title leads you to expect so much more from the article, or leads you to expect something completely different. For example, a while back I saw an article titled ‘The Best Place to Sit on a Plane.’ Seeing the title, I expected something about how if you sit in the middle the chances of you getting an armrest are low, or if you sit by the aisle you spend 40% of your plane ride getting up to let the other two people go to the bathroom or do other things. Instead, the only thing the article talked about was how something like 17% (I don’t remember the percentage) of people develop blood clots when they sit by the window because they’re telling their body how high up they are. It then went on about that with many quotations from doctors about how it was true. Whether or not it was true is immaterial; the title of the article was very misleading.

Another example of misleading advertisement is those ‘psychics’ at amusement parks or carnivals. They have signs over a booth and they claim to be able to guess your age, weight or birth month accurately. They also say on their signs that you pay them money, and if they’re right they keep the money, but if they’re wrong you get your money back. They advertise that they get to keep the money if they can guess your age within three years, your weight within 5 pounds (I don’t remember the specific number) or your birth month within 4 months. This doesn’t sound too bad, so it leads people to think that the ‘psychic’ won’t guess their age, weight or birth month correctly. However, what these psychics have very cleverly done is almost certainly ensured that they get the money. Most people are sensitive about their weight, and quite a few older people are sensitive about their age, so the majority of people would probably choose the birth month option. Guessing within four months doesn’t sound so bad if you’re walking by the sign and you reckon the ‘psychic’ won’t be able to guess it. But if you think about it, it makes it very easy for the ‘psychic’ to get the money. If you’re born in December, the ‘psychic’ could guess August, September, October, November, December, January, February, March or April. So they’re only three months out of the twelve that would make the psychic wrong. That gives the psychic a 75% chance of being right. So he doesn’t have to know when you’re born, he can take a wild guess and there’s only a 25% chance that he’s wrong.

It’s the same kind of thing with the age option, if someone were to choose it. You can more or less tell which decade someone is in (0-10, 10-20, 20-30, etc) and you can usually also tell whether they’re in the late part of the decade or not. If a psychic were to guess my age, he would see that I’m a teenager, so that’s from 13-18. It doesn’t particularly matter past that point, because if he guesses 15, he’s right because if I were 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, or 18 he would be right. Really with age all he’d have to do is identify the decade, and then choose the middle age in the decade – 5, 15, 25, 35, etc, and he’d be right the majority of the time. Probably the safest one to choose if you feel like having a ‘psychic’ guess your age, weight or birth month, would be to guess your weight. However, ‘psychics’ were very smart in having two other options with larger percentages of the ‘psychic’ being right because most people are sensitive about their weight and wouldn’t choose the weight option. So the brackets that the psychic give for each option are very misleading for passerbys who think it’d be fun to have a psychic to guess one of the things, because the ‘psychic’ has a very high chance of being right, whether it’s a wild guess or not.

Anyway, I guess really the only real way to avoid being misled by advertisement is to really think about what exactly it is that you’re buying or doing. It’s probably also a good idea to stay clear of anyone claiming to be psychic too.

Unfortunately, you do get people who spend money first and think later or don’t bother thinking at all. I guess those are the people mainly targeted by misleading advertisers (that or [in the case of article titles] they appeal to interest and the unsuspecting reader/buyer has no way of knowing any better).

(Sorry this journal entry's so long.)



__Sunday, 18th March 2012: Photorealism__
Last week and the week before, our art teacher, Ms. Robinson, was sick and did not come to school. Consequently, we had a substitute teacher (ironically also named Ms. Robinson), and Ms. Robinson (our art teacher, not the substitute) set us work via email. One of our assignments for the week was to research two art movements and two art cultures. Whilst doing my research, I came across the art movement of ‘photorealism’, which really struck me as quite amazing.

Photorealism is an artistic movement that started in the late 1960s/early 1970s in the United States. It is a style of painting based on photography and the usage of cameras to make paintings look realistic. It is basically a painting that looks like a photograph.

The reason the movement really struck me is because I think it’s amazing that people can PAINT paintings that look so realistic. At first glance, I thought the paintings were pictures - until I read their captions. I then set one of the paintings as my desktop background, and showed it to other people. I would first amuse myself by watching them try to figure out exactly what it was I was showing them or watch them smile and act like it was really cool when they actually had no idea what exactly it was a picture of. I then told them that it was a painting and they’d become really shocked and would lean in closer to see if there was anyway to tell it that it was a painting.

I originally decided not to write anything about photorealism for art class because I didn’t think I could draw/paint anything similar to the paintings I saw (which was also part of the assignment). However, after browsing through some photorealistic paintings and saving a few on my computer I decided that I would try to draw in a photorealistic style because I really enjoyed looking at different paintings in the style.

I don’t think I’ll be able to draw in a photorealistic style, but I like the style nonetheless.

My main purpose for this journal entry was to share a few of these paintings with everyone else in the class, so a few that I consider some of the best are below (and I promise they’re all paintings):



__Sunday, 11th March 2012: Pride and Prejudice - The TV Series__
For Christmas, when I was in the middle of reading Pride and Prejudice, my aunt gave me the 1995 TV series version of the book as a present. It was both ironic and fortunate at the same time, as after reading the book I was meaning to watch the movie/TV series anyway. It took me a while to read the book (mostly because I didn’t //really// start to read it until January-ish), so it has also taken me a while waiting to watch the TV series, because I didn’t want to watch it before I finished the book.

I finished the book about two weeks ago, and this past weekend I decided to watch the TV series. The TV series came out in 1995. It has six episodes, each about fifty minutes in length (the shortest episode is 49mins and the longest is 55mins – this is a little longer than the regular 40 minute TV shows). The series stars Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennet, and Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy.

As far as TV shows/movies based off books go, this is actually a very good series because it is so similar to the book. What makes it so similar to the book is that it’s a TV mini-series. Movies based off books usually do not have enough time to tell the whole story, so they have to abridge the story. As a result of this, they have to make up some parts of the story to fill in the gaps or to help cross over from one point of the story to another. This leads to a completely different story, and it’s almost always never as good as the original story itself.

Books that are made into TV shows, on the other hand, are equally not very good. Television networks try to make these TV shows as long as they can – usually trying to give them around five or six seasons minimum. So what happens here is the opposite of movies – the writers that adapted the book(s) for TV end up adding a whole lot of things that weren’t in the original book to make the show last longer. Once again, this extended version is almost always never as good as the book.

So the nice thing about the Pride and Prejudice TV mini-series is that it can afford to stick straight to the book and not have to add or cut out any parts. This makes the series almost identical to the book, which I enjoy (it’s rare to find a movie/TV show exactly like the book it was based off of). Each of the characters’ lines are almost identical to what they were in the book. Additionally, even things they think in the book are said in the show (without having to go to the voice-over that is used quite often in the film versions we watch of Macbeth), like the first line of the book ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.’ Elizabeth says that to her father in a joking manner in the first episode. I think that the book may as well have been the script for the TV show because the two are so much alike.

I also enjoy the acting in the show as well. They chose well with each of the characters. I really like Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennet because I find she plays the part well and can portray Elizabeth as I imagined her. Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy was also a good pick. He does a very good job of acting the role of an English man from the upper class falling in love, although in the first few episodes I find he stares uncomfortably at nothing a little too much. Another good actress in the show is Alison Steadman as Mrs. Bennet. She’s almost exactly how I imagined her and I find her every bit as annoying in the show as I did in the book.

Some of the cast I don’t particularly like (or I don’t think are too good at the roles) are Crispin Bonham-Carter as Mr. Bingley, Lucy Scott as Charlotte Lucas, and Benjamin Whitrow as Mr. Bennet. I find that Crispin Bonham Carter as Mr. Bingley smiles far too much in the show, and it's not a pleased smile, but an overjoyed ecstatic smile – and he never seems to be not smiling that ecstatic smile. I don’t like Lucy Scott as Charlotte Lucas because I find she portrays Charlotte as a little stuck-up, which I didn’t find her at all in the book. Finally, I don’t like Benjamin Whitrow as Mr. Bennet because he isn’t how I imagined him either because he seems more exasperated and less kept together in the show as he did in the book.

Anyway, other than a few of the actors who I have minor discrepancies with, I think it’s a very good series, and is as close as any television/movie remake of the book will every be to the actual story. I have the DVD and can lend it to anyone who wants to watch it, but I won’t lend it without first insisting that they read the book first, because the book is always better, despite how good the TV series is as well.

**Left:** Crispin Bonham-Carter's Mr. Bingley smile. **Right**: Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, played by Alison Steadman and Benjamin Whitrow.

__Sunday, 4th March 2012: Saturday and A Defence for Manley__
In my journal entries I don’t usually talk about my weekend, but this week I’m going to make an exception. As anyone reading this will probably know by now, if they’ve been through some of the other journal entries, Da Bin, Werner, Manley, Reuben, Louis, Charlotte, Hunter and I went to Hunter’s house on Saturday to play video games and do homework (which we never actually did).

I’m not going to talk about the different things we did, because that’s already been detailed in other journal entries, but I am going to provide a rebuttal to many statements made in some of the boys’ journal entries.

Firstly, it was supposed to be the boys’ hangout on Saturday. So don’t believe Hunter when he said it was only Louis who was jealous of not coming to Seya’s birthday celebration. All six of them were jealous and decided to throw something at Hunter’s house.

That process in itself took them forever. On Facebook the class has one chat that we talk in on a daily basis. When we were planning Seya’s birthday dinner, us four girls created a separate chat so the boys wouldn’t have to read through all our planning. Our planning consisted of: ‘Ok, let’s go here.’ ‘Ok, cool.’ ‘When?’ ‘7:30.’ ‘See you then.’

The boys, on the other hand, did not have the courtesy of creating their own separate chat, and so the girls were subjected to their tiresome planning. This consisted of: ‘What should we do?’ ‘I don’t know’ ‘Me neither.’ ‘I want to play videogames.’ ‘Yeah me too.’ ‘But I need to do my homework.’ ‘I don’t understand the homework.’ ‘Maybe we should do it.’ ‘Yeah, maybe.’ ‘Maybe we can use Hunter’s house again.’ ‘Yeah, maybe.’ ‘You guys, this plan is stupid, let’s not do it.’ ‘Yeah, you’re right.’ ‘Actually, let’s do it.’

That entire conversation repeated itself over and over again for a day or two for hours.

Aside from that, almost every boy that went is now accusing Manley of inviting the girls. Firstly, I resent the way the majority of them put it because they make it seem like we’re some kind of fungus that Manley brought to the party that no one wanted there.

When Manley first made the suggestion, the guys online agreed and were quite happy for the girls to come. We didn’t come just because Manley said it was alright, we went through the process of emailing Hunter (who has accused Manley of inviting us with no forewarning) and asking if we could come. We also told him that we wouldn’t be offended if he said no, because it was their guy thing.

Anyway, Hunter gladly accepted our request and invited us along – so //Hunter// invited us to //his// house, Manley simply suggested it. If they hadn’t wanted us there, they could’ve said so, so I don’t understand why they’re acting like they didn’t want us there and are now blaming it on Manley.

I’d also like to remind them that I brought the Cheetos and a bottle of coke, and that they actually had fun when we were there, we didn’t just sit there stopping them from playing the videogames (which we didn’t do).

This journal entry is quite harsh, but I’ve recently re-encountered what it’s like to be ganged up on by a group of people all blaming you for the same thing, and I’m also a little offended that they act like it was so terrible that we came. Next time, if they don’t want us to come, THEY SHOUDLN’T INVITE US.

I had a lot of fun on Saturday; it’s only really their journal entries now that act like we dampened the mood or something that have bothered me. Although that could probably be told by the long journal entry I just wrote.

(I realise some of the boys said they didn’t mind us being there, so they can go ahead and ignore everything above. Also – perhaps they didn’t intend as much as I detailed above, but this is how I’m interpreting their entries.)



__Sunday, 26th February 2012: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen__
It is about time I’m writing about Pride and Prejudice. I’m sure Mr. Bennet was expecting an entry about this about four months ago, but seeing as I am returning the book on Tuesday 28th, it’s only fitting that I write about it now.

It took me a while to read the book, not because I didn’t enjoy it, but because there were a series of circumstances that prevented me from immediately reading it. When Mr. Bennet gave it to me back before the Thanksgiving Break in November, I was reading two other books at the time. I wanted to finish those two books first before I went on to Pride and Prejudice, and by that time it was the Christmas Break and I had to go away and I didn’t take it with me and then there were exams. Now here we are in February.

So before this entire entry becomes an excuse for having the book for four months without finishing it, I’ll write about the plot of the book:

‘Pride and Prejudice’ is a novel about the Bennet family, living in England in the early 1800s. The story centres on Elizabeth Bennet, the second of five daughters in her family, who lives with her mother, father and four sisters in their house in Hertfordshire, England.

Mr. Bennet, Elizabeth’s father (not the English teacher), is a very serious and thoughtful man. Secretly, Elizabeth is his favourite daughter (most of his other daughters he looks down upon because they’re ‘silly’). Mrs. Bennet, Elizabeth’s mother, is only concerned with one thing (or five things, depending on how it’s viewed): finding a husband for her five daughters.

Jane Bennet, the eldest daughter is twenty-two and extremely beautiful. Kitty and Lydia Bennet, the third and fourth eldest sisters are considered to be ‘silly’ and not particularly smart. A regiment is stationed in the nearby town of Meryton for most of the novel, and the two spend their days chasing officers in the town. Mary Bennet, the youngest daughter, is fourteen at the beginning of the novel. She isn’t considered to be very pretty, so she’s made up for her lack of beauty by being incredibly studious and by practising music.

Elizabeth herself isn’t described as extremely beautiful, but she is still very pretty. She’s also pretty intelligent and does not adhere to social pressure to do what is deemed right.

The novel begins with Mr. Bingley, a young wealthy bachelor, moving into an estate in the Bennets’ neighbourhood with his sisters and close friend, Mr. Darcy. I don’t want to give away too much of the book, so I won’t give much away after that.

The novel basically follows Elizabeth’s realisation and discovery of the nature of the world around her and on such topics as marriage, pride, prejudice (obviously), class, education, manners, etc. It also follows the various love affairs of all the Bennet girls and other issues her family face, through Elizabeth’s eyes.

I really enjoyed the book and would recommend it to anyone. It is written in English from the early 1800s, but it doesn’t really matter because it has been edited so the words are spelt the same as they are today. Maybe some of the ways certain things are said may be difficult to follow because they aren’t out rightly stated like ‘Elizabeth was upset with this,’ but even so you can still follow the story.

So it’s a really good book and a classic, and I would recommend that anyone who is even vaguely interested in the book should read it.

My aunt gave me the DVD for Christmas and I’ve been waiting to finish the book so I can watch it without ruining my images of the characters and setting, so I’m looking forward to doing so this long weekend.



__Sunday, 19th February 2012: Grammar__
It really bothers me when people make common grammatical errors and couldn’t care less about fixing their mistakes. So in my journal entry today, I’m going to talk about the common grammatical errors, and some fun errors that no one really notices (those are at the end if you don’t care about the first seven).

So first the obvious ones:

Your vs. You’re This is by far one of the most annoying grammatical errors ever. Your = possession; you’re = you are. This is //your// notebook. //You’re// very interesting. It’s pretty straightforward. There have been many instances in which I have pretended not to understand what a person is saying because I want them to notice what they’ve done wrong. An example: P1: Your nice. P2: What’s a nice? I don’t own one.

It’s vs. Its This is similar to the one above; it’s once again possession vs. abbreviation. Its = possession; it’s = it is. This is //its// home. //It’s// a very interesting book.

They’re vs. There vs. Their This is another one of the possession vs. abbreviation grammatical errors; it’s also one that teachers like to tell students a lot and that Microsoft Word corrects for you. They’re = they are; there = location; their = possession. //They’re// interesting people; your notebook is over //there//. That’s //their// notebook. This is another fun one to use to make people realise their mistakes. P1: There nice! P2: Where?

Could’ve/Could have vs. Could of This mistake bothers a very dear friend of mine very much, and I have to agree with her about how annoying it is. I’m not quite sure where the ‘of’ came from, but when someone says they ‘could of’ gone to the movies last Friday, they mean they ‘could’ve’ gone, coming from ‘could have’. I don’t see how it makes any sense to have ‘of’ in there. Even if you’re spelling it phonetically, surely you can see how wrong that looks. Could’ve = could have; could of = wrong and not grammatically correct in any sense. I //could’ve// gone to the movies last Friday. I could of gone to the movies last Friday.

Then vs. Than Once again, two very misused words. Then is most commonly used in both places and than is hardly ever used. Then = at a moment in time, at a time, etc; than = a comparison. Back //then// I used to knit. I would rather eat pasta for dinner //than// chicken again. (//Then// could be used in the last sentence, but it would give the sentence a different meaning, saying that the person would rather eat pasta then eat the chicken again afterwards.)

Where vs. Were This one bothers me a lot as well (from now on it should be assumed that all of these bother me). Where = location, a questions regarding location; were = past tense of ‘are’, to have been. I don’t know //where// I got that CD from. They //were// pleased with the CD I bought them.

Know vs. Now This is the last common one I’ll name that annoys me (I promise). I’m not sure how this one is mixed up, because the words are pronounced differently, unlike all the other errors I’ve listed. Know = to have knowledge of something; now = in the present moment. I //know// that Isabella isn’t too fond of grammatical errors. //Now// I think I’ll try harder not to make these errors because I know the difference between the words //now//!

Here are two errors that are used in advertising, which don’t help with selling the product:

Two times better! An example on a website I found says that a toothpaste company advertised its product as making your teeth ‘two times stronger!’ It should be ‘twice as strong’ because if it makes them two times stronger, how much stronger is one times stronger?

Four times slower! This error is quite funny because the error gives the product the opposite effect that was intended (if you pay attention to the error). An Internet service provider was advertising that the Internet service from the popular service provider was four times slower than their Internet. This makes no sense because one times slower is not moving at all, so four times slower would be the speed three times in reverse. So how exactly does the Internet load in reverse speed?

So now not only do you know more about how grammatical errors annoy me, you also know that I found jokes about bad grammar funny. I doubt that anyone read through all of that, but I hope that maybe someone will find what I wrote above helpful and will maybe start using ‘you’re’ when they should.

(Just as a disclaimer - yes, I do make grammatical errors too, I'm not going to claim to not make errors. No one's perfect.)

__Some sources I used:__ [] [] []



__Sunday, 12th February 2012: Music and Work__
Today, right before I sat down to do my homework, I plugged my iPod into my speakers and started playing my music so I could listen to it whilst doing homework. Almost everyday when I do homework I play music.

In class, the majority of teachers don’t like students to listen to music in class. Most teachers claim this is because listening to music affects concentration in class. So I’m going to debate that point in this journal entry.

I’ve looked at a few websites so far (I made sure they were reliable this time) and have found more or less the same information.

The most common point made is that music helps pass time. If someone is doing a tedious and/or boring task they are more likely to enjoy themselves and are more likely to find that time will pass faster if they have music playing in the background that they like.

There was a study done by a doctor who studies ADHD in adults that found out that playing music in the background while the adults with ADHD were doing work caused the release of a hormone in the brain that improves focus. Whether this works on people without ADHD was not stated. However, some adults with ADHD did not respond to the music.

Opposing the view that music helps concentration, was a study done in 1997, and later backed up by a study done some time between 2002-2012 that found that people test better in silent environments than with familiar background music.

So in general the majority of studies show varying results. In most cases the studies have come to the conclusion that it depends on the person. Some people prefer listening to music they enjoy while working because they find it helps their productivity – which has been proven. Some people find that they can’t listen to music when doing work because it’s too distracting – which has been proven as well.

So productivity in relation to music depends on the preference of the person working and the music they’re listening to (if they like the music productivity is better).

As I stated above, I personally enjoy listening to music while doing homework and occasionally in class (I don’t listen in class because the iTunes library on my Mac isn’t great) because I find that I have more fun doing the work if I have background music. The genre of music doesn’t really matter to me, as long as I like it. I listen to music when I do work and it doesn’t affect my schoolwork.

In class teachers should allow the listening of music to students who want to listen to it, because the effect on productivity depends on the student. In general people who can’t concentrate with music won’t listen to music, so no concentration should be lost in class.

Music is not bad.

__Sources:__ http://www.healthguidance.org/entry/11767/1/Will-Background-Music-Improve-Your-Concentration.html http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21508527 http://www.helium.com/debates/129680-is-listening-to-music-at-work-calming-or-distracting http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19759431 http://edition.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/worklife/03/23/cb.tuned.in.at.work/ http://jrscience.wcp.muohio.edu/nsfall05/LabpacketArticles/HowMusicaffectsConcentrat.html http://musicatwork.net/ http://pom.sagepub.com/content/33/2/173.abstract



__Sunday, 5th February 2012: Sleep and the Credibility of Websites__
Today I was extremely tired. It was probably due to many factors, including but not limited to Blue Mountain, staying up late on the weekend and my natural inability to fall asleep before 10:30PM on a regular night.

So since all I can really think about right now is sleep, I find it appropriate to talk about sleep for this blog post. I found a website listing a few interesting facts about sleep, and I’m going to choose a few of them to talk about (see the facts on the website at []).

So firstly there is ‘Naps improve memory’. The website doesn’t really give any reason for why this is true, but assumes that the reader will believe it anyway. Apparently naps also lower the risk of heart disease, but this has even less of an explanation than the statement above, so that fact should probably be ignored. But if naps do improve memory it may not be such a bad thing to fall asleep while studying for exams. However, it also stands to reason that if naps improve memory then sleep must improve memory as well – in which case you may as well just go to sleep after studying and it should have the same effect.

Now after looking close at the website I realise that it’s probably not even worth going into the other facts because there is absolutely no proof backing up the claims they make. I suppose it serves me right for using the first website I clicked on. So instead, for this journal entry, I’m going to digress into the unreliability of the website.

The first thing I should’ve noticed was that there were various spelling and grammatical errors in the text. This may be seen as ‘knit-picking’, but generally a good, reliable website will have spell checked their information.

The second thing I should’ve noticed was how the first two facts have scientific backing to them that makes a reasonable amount of sense, but the other facts after it have no reason whatsoever for why the fact may be true. In turn, this makes me question the credibility of the explanations for the first two facts.

A fun example of a fact that the website states is ‘people who sleep for more than 9 hours a day are more likely to develop Parkinson’ (note that it should be Parkinson’s, not Parkinson). This is the only sentence about this fact, so the author of the page didn’t seem to know why this was and expects the reader to believe it without any proof or reasoning as to why the fact may be true.

There are many other things that make the website seem less credible as a source, but are too many to name. So to sum everything up, when searching for information it’s probably a good idea to make sure the website’s reliable before you end up halfway through writing about the information when you realise the information’s bad, but by then it’s too late to start again.



__Sunday, 29th January 2012: SOPA, PIPA, ACTA and Online Piracy__
This week during my usual browse of the news sites for an article to write about, I seemed to be unable to come across an article that wasn’t about SOPA, PIPA, ACTA or some other online piracy act.

So in response to the anti-piracy crackdown that seems to be filling the world at the moment, I’m dedicating my journal entry this week to talk about my opinion on the anti-piracy acts.

First of all, I have not actually read any of the acts, but I’ve read various summaries on all of the acts and have a pretty good knowledge of what they’re about.

So first there are the American acts: SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act - the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act) that have been highly publicized by internet blackouts on websites like Wikipedia and statements from Google and other popular websites.

Then you have ACTA (the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) a less publicized act in the US and surrounding countries. ACTA is pretty much the worldwide version of SOPA. It was first developed in 2006 and the final draft was created in 2011. ACTA has been highly criticised because it was negotiated in private by non-democratically elected officials.

The countries that have signed ACTA are the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Morocco, Singapore and very recently the European Union. The EU signed ACTA this past week, and was followed by protests across the EU, especially in Poland. An activist group in Poland hacked a few government websites in protest of all the 22 member states of EU signing on to ACTA. The ratification for ACTA in the EU comes up in June this year.

I read an article today that was titled ‘Is ACTA the new SOPA?’ In reality, SOPA was the new ACTA, or the American-only version of ACTA. However SOPA (and PIPA) have been halted in the US congress, and ACTA is still being signed by large countries across the world. It just isn’t receiving much attention by the US, or not nearly as much attention as SOPA and PIPA had. ACTA affects the world, not just the US.

What SOPA, PIPA and ACTA do in short, is give the government the right to shut down websites that have any copyrighted material. So for example, if I share a song on Facebook with my friends, the government has the right to shut down Facebook because of my one little share (out of the millions of people that use Facebook). The acts also hold Internet service providers responsible for the content viewed by the computers they provide Internet to. Due to this, Internet service providers would have no choice but to block certain websites so the Internet service providers don’t get arrested. This leads to censorship – the main point that people across the globe are protesting. We don’t want to live in a censored world.

On the other side of the argument are the people who argue that people who download copyrighted material illegally just want free stuff and that they’re making musicians hungry by not buying their music. Firstly, musicians are not going hungry – just watch MTV Cribs for proof of that. Secondly, if I were a musician I wouldn’t particularly care about not making money off selling my albums, I would be happy that I’m able to share my music with people who enjoy it and that people are actually listening to my music. Also, I would make money off concerts – album sales are not the only source of income for musicians (I also imagine that concerts are more fun to play in than in a studio). The musicians that are complaining about their music being illegally downloaded are in it for the money, not the music.

So really every act that is out there today that is trying to tackle online piracy if enforced would bring about censorship on the Internet. The Internet is not something any government should control. Piracy is bad, but they have to come up with a way to tackle it that does not involve depriving the public of free knowledge.



__Sunday, 22nd January 2012: Illegal Names__
Firstly I would like to point out that I wrote this entry on the 23rd January, but I like having all the dates with Sunday on my wiki page. Besides, Monday is close enough to Sunday for me to get away with saying the date is the 22nd January.

So, over the weekend during my extensive amount of time online I came across an interesting article. It’s name was probably what drew me to it: ’10 Illegal Baby Names’. Before reading the article I wasn’t even aware that it was illegal to name babies certain names. After reading the article I now know that there’re strict naming laws in a lot of countries around the world.

The article listed many names, with ten of the names being their focus. I have taken the names and ranked them from 1-10 (1 being the most ridiculous and 10 being the least ridiculous out of the 10 names). Here they are:


 * 1) Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116
 * 2) Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii
 * 3) Anus
 * 4) Chow Tow (Smelly Head in Malay)
 * 5) Ovnis (UFO in Portuguese)
 * 6) Akuma (Devil in Japanese)
 * 7) Gesher (Bridge in Norwegian)
 * 8) Venerdi (Friday in Italian)
 * 9) Miatt
 * 1) Miatt

Having naming laws does seem a little strict and like it’s taking away a right from the people to name their children whatever they want, but looking at the list above makes it seem a little more reasonable. The name at the top of my list is apparently pronounced ‘Albin’, athough I have absolutely no idea how. As the article points out, it looks like someone fell asleep on the keyboard. If that name had been allowed I can only imagine the teasing that poor child would have gone through – and the pain of filling out forms and the pain of having people try to pronounce it. I’m sure naming your child Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116 borders on child abuse in some way.

Not very far off though is Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii. That doesn’t even make any sense. At least the first name I listed was one word, but why would you burden a child with a five-word first name that is just ridiculous. It sounds like a movie or a drink or something, not a name for your baby.

Next on my list is Anus. I don’t think I need to even bother explaining what’s wrong with that name. I think that is most definitely child abuse. What on earth could make you want to call your child Anus?

The next name - @ - was from China. I suppose it makes sense to try and find something different with all the people in China. Apparently it also looks like the Chinese symbol for ‘love him’. Despite this, the name was banned. I suppose it is pretty ridiculous to name your child with a symbol.

The other six names on the list are extremely ridiculous as well. If you’re looking for a unique name, don’t go with UFO or Smelly Head. Or Bridge.

I think all of these names are examples of parents exploiting their right to name their child by naming them something stupid or nonsensical. The only name on the list that isn’t so bad is Miatt, which was only banned because Germany, the country where the child was born, has strict naming laws and the government declared that you couldn’t tell the gender of a child named Miatt, so they outlawed the name.

So maybe naming laws do have some use. They wouldn’t need to regulate the naming of babies though if parents were sensible in naming their children. They need to think about the poor children that will have those names for the rest of their lives. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have one of the names listed above.

I have enough trouble with Isabella, which isn’t particularly a hard name. Some people spell it with two ‘s’s or with a ‘z’ or with one ‘l’. It gets frustrating because I really don’t see what’s so difficult about saying/writing Isabella. Emphasis on the ‘la’ because most people must decide that it must be some sort of mistake in the spelling of my name and there shouldn’t be a ‘la’ at the end or they must forget to read it. In fact, in Tanzania, my school I’d been going to for two years in my third year decided to change my name – officially – within the school to ‘Isabel’. That was extremely annoying because it didn’t even make any sense why they would suddenly decide to change my name AFTER I’D BEEN GOING THERE FOR TWO YEARS UNDER ISABELLA!

That being said, I do like my name. At least it’s a lot better than Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii.

(Read the article at: http://uk.lifestyle.yahoo.com/blogs/yahoo-lifestyles/10-illegal-baby-names-194006397-3.html)



__Sunday, 15th January 2012: Online Shopping__
In Jamaica and other countries it is often quite difficult to find certain items in stores due to the items being out of stock or just unavailable in that country. For this reason, many people turn to online shopping for these items. Online shopping is the act of buying any item off a website on the Internet. One of the most well known online shopping websites is [|www.amazon.com].

You only usually have two approaches to online shopping: those who think it’s great and buy items semi-regularly from online shops and those who think it’s unsafe to share private information online.

Every online shop in which money and an item are exchanged requires the full name of the person buying the item, the person’s credit card details (including credit card number and security code), the person’s email address, the person’s phone number and the person’s physical address, for the very least. This information can be risky to share online because if any person with bad intentions were to see your information you could very quickly become a victim of identity theft.

I am in favour of online shopping, but I can certainly see where anyone who distrusts online shops is coming from. Some websites are designed to steal your information and others are put up by a questionable source. Also, you have websites like eBay where any third-party source can sell their items online. With this it’s not necessarily whether or not the person sends you the item or not, it’s who the person is. If they don’t send you the item there are safeguards in place where you have their physical address, name, and phone number to contact them to make sure you get your item. But if the person has no intention of sending any item and is only out looking for personal information then they can easily get it. Whenever you buy something on eBay or a similar website, the seller gets your physical address or mailing address so they can send the item. This alone is quite risky because one day you may just have someone show up at your front door. For the sake of the argument it doesn’t really matter what they intend to do once they show up there because you most likely don’t want them there to begin with.

Then there is also the threat of reliable companies being hacked into so personal information can be stolen. All online shops obviously have firewalls in place to avoid this from happening, but no firewall is 100% secure. Very recently the Amazon-owned online clothes store, ‘Zappos’, was hacked into and the names, scrambled passwords, email address, mailing and shipping addresses, phone numbers and possibly partial credit card numbers (but not full numbers) of its twenty four million customers were stolen. Zappos has sent out emails to every one of their customers asking them to change their passwords. Even so, doing so won’t bring back the stolen information. Now any one of their customers could be vulnerable to identity theft and other serious threats. (See the article on it at: [].)

Despite all of this, I still trust online shopping. Most online shops aren’t out to get you and most are pretty secure. Nowadays you have people shopping for groceries online and having them delivered to their front door. Online shopping, like a lot of other technological advances, has made life a little easier for some people (and a lot lazier for others).

Really shopping online is a matter of common sense: you go to well known online shops and you stay away from anything that offers you free items as part of a ‘special offer’.



__Sunday, 8th January 2012: 'Eon' by Alison Goodman__
As of today I have not finished reading ‘Pride and Prejudice’ yet. This is mostly due to the fact that today I planned on finishing off the book, yet I spent of my time today in another way (I was doing something productive though). So instead of writing about ‘Pride and Prejudice’ today, I’m going to write about another book that I read over the holiday: ‘Eon’ by Alison Goodman.

‘Eon’ is a fantasy novel set in a place similar to Ancient China although only customs and geography are similar.

It is set in an empire a long time ago, in which there is a natural force that is part of everything and controls everything – the //Hua//. The //Hua// is embodied by twelve dragons – the rat, ox, cat, tiger, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dragon, dog and pig dragons, like the Chinese astrological cycle, in which the sign for each year is one of those twelve animals. In the story each dragon incumbent for the year of its animal. The Hua – the life force – in each dragon is strongest during that dragon’s year.

Regular people are unable to see any of the dragons, although they acknowledge their presence and respect them. Only a few people with the ‘sight’ can see //hua// and even fewer people can see the twelve dragons. Each dragon has a Dragoneye – a person with the sight who is selected by the dragon itself. The Dragoneye, during a ceremony, receives the power of the dragon for life.

Dragoneyes are ranked at the top of society. The Dragoneye council, made up of the twelve Dragoneyes, combine their powers to help the empire. They prevent natural disasters and use their powers in other helpful ways.

Every year a group of twelve-year-old boys with the sight train to become the apprentice Dragoneye of the dragon rising to power at the beginning of the New Year. On the first day of the New Year there is an exhibition of their skills in front of the city. At the end of the exhibition the incumbent dragon chooses one of the boys to share its power with. The chosen boy then become the apprentice of the incumbent Dragoneye and in twelve years’ time, when it is their dragon’s time to rise to power again they become the old Dragoneye retires, they become the new Dragoneye and they take on an apprentice.

The story revolves around Eon, a young crippled boy training to become the next Rat Dragon apprentice Dragoneye. He has trouble in training because of his limp leg and no one believes he can do it. He is laughed at and doubted and his master occasionally beats him. To add to it all, Eon has a secret: he’s actually a 16-year-old girl named Eona. It’s forbidden for girls to practise the art of Dragoneyes. So on top of being a cripple and unable to do the majority of the combat teachings, she is female and thus is forbidden from any activity involving the dragons.

‘Eon’ is an excellent book. I would highly recommend it to anyone. The description I gave of the book barely covers it. That’s just the beginning. The plot becomes so much more complicated with many more twists, but to say anything more would be giving the book away.

So even if my quick summary doesn’t make you want to read the book, read it anyway.



__Tuesday, 3rd January 2012: Semester Exams__
This week I am going to talk about exams (a side note to Mr. Bennet: I’ll talk about Pride and Prejudice this Sunday). All students in High School at AISK are taking semester exams from 18th January 2012 – 20th January 2012. Our first exam is almost two weeks from now. Each day, except the 20th, there will be two exams for two different subjects. There are five exams in total. For these exams we have to study all the information we have learnt over the past semester – which is approximately five months worth of classes – and today is our first day back from our two-week winter holiday.

I don’t think that exams should be held at the end of January. Two weeks is a very long time away from school. Students go into ‘holiday mode’, where we become lazy, sleep a lot, eat a lot and entertain ourselves in ways that usually have no educational benefits. So when school comes around again we have to go back into thinking critically, doing work, writing essays, solving problems and learning. This isn’t easy and it isn’t automatic because our brains are still lazy, lethargic and in ‘holiday mode’. We have to ease ourselves back into ‘learning mode’. That’s why the first week back from a holiday isn’t usually too strenuous – generally no huge tests to be taken or big essays due.

Then suddenly we realise have exams we **need** to study for coming up in two weeks. If we plan on getting good grades on the exams we need to spend those two weeks studying hard. But we don’t want to. We’re still in holiday mode and can’t just throw ourselves easily into two straight weeks of studying. Undoubtedly, we’ll have to give up our weekends so we can study. However, we need our weekends to recover from going from holiday mode to learning mode.

I understand that the exams are held at the end of January because that’s when the semester ends, but I think it would make a lot more sense to have the exams in the beginning of December before the Winter holiday. Before the winter holiday what we’ve learnt is still fresh in our minds and we’re in learning mode – we’ve been doing it for four months already. Additionally, teachers usually slow down coming up to the winter break. There is less work and slightly less learning taking place. If exams were during this time, the time could be spent reviewing so no learning time would be lost. Then after exams, we get to go holiday, a nice two-week break after intense studying and stressing over exams. Our holiday could be spent fully relaxing instead of stressing a little over exams coming in January. This could be the same for teachers as well.

So in conclusion, exams should be in December when we’re in ‘learning mode’ instead of the end of January when we’re in ‘holiday mode’. Frankly, being thrust into intense studying and stressing is unfair on the students who don’t get to rest after starting school again.

Unfortunately for this year though, being unhappy about it won’t change the date of the exams. So until exams are changed from the end of January I will be in my room studying for the next two weeks with my diagram of the human body hanging up on my wall.



__Sunday, 11th December 2011: World's Longest Concert__
In 2001 the world’s longest concert began, and is expected to finish in 2640, going on for 639 years. The piece played is John Cage’s ‘Organ2/ASLAP’ (As Slowly as Possible). The concert is being played at the former St. Burchard Church in Halberstadt, Germany.

Cage himself did not specify the exact duration for the piece. The duration of the piece was chosen because 2001 marked the 639th anniversary of the invention of the church organ.

Since the piece is set to play over a span of 639 years, it takes months for a single note to change. An organ in the church continuously plays one note for months at a time until it changes to a different note for another few months. As it is, the current note the organ is playing will only change again in July 2012.

The changing of the notes has been greatly attended; one changing in 2008 brought 1000 people to the church to come and watch. For those who don’t want to go to Germany all the way to watch, the entire current concert can be listened to at [].

John Cage is also the composer of the piece 4’33, a piece we studied in music class at the beginning of the year. 4’33 is four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence. An orchestra sits down in their seats with their instruments, the conductor starts the piece and they all just sit there for the four minutes and thirty-three seconds in complete silence.

So John Cage has quite a few pieces that are different. The thing with the kinds of pieces he creates though is that they can only really be viewed one of two ways: as the greatest piece of music ever to come across the earth or as really pretentious.

Currently I’m leaning towards the latter, because when you write a piece that lasts 639 years you don’t do it for people to listen to and to enjoy. The only purpose writing a piece of ‘music’ like that serves, in my opinion, is making a big show of itself, thus it is pretentious.

The same goes for 4’33. I understand what he’s trying to achieve with the piece – how everyone hears it differently because they’re hearing the noise around them and that, in effect, is the piece – but it still strikes me as pretentious. I can write four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence but I’d probably be told that I was being silly or stupid for doing so.

I suppose that at the end of the day, it all comes down to personal taste. As I said before, I may view it as pretty pretentious, but others may see it as brilliant, innovative and the best piece of music to come across the earth.

That being said though, I wouldn’t recommend listening to ASLAP on the website. Listening to one note continuously playing with no breaks or changes will drive you insane, I promise.

(View an article about the concert at [])

The organ that plays the 639 year long piece.

__Sunday, 4th December 2011: Global Warming__
In this week’s journal entry, I am going to attempt to briefly tackle the topic of Global Warming.

We’ve all been hearing about global warming for a very long time now, and how we need to cut back on the usage of greenhouse gases, reduce our ‘carbon footprint’, and start using eco-friendly equipment.

However, there do not appear to be many obvious changes in the earth’s environment. Sure, it’s hot in some places, but it’s freezing in other places as well. Right now, at the beginning of winter, a town in Minnesota is at -29 degrees Celsius (-20 degrees Fahrenheit), a temperature below the freezing point of water. Even here in Jamaica the temperature is dropping into the high twenties (Celsius), a drastic change from the high thirties and low forties temperatures of the summer.

Some sceptics see this and declare that it must mean that Global Warming is a myth. In my opinion, I think that is just ignorance. No one can possibly expect Global Warming to just happen overnight. It’s a gradual change in the atmosphere of the earth, made worse by humans who don’t see it as a clear and present danger. Fair enough, it isn’t a clear and present danger to us and even I don’t do much to reduce my carbon footprint, but even if it isn’t a huge problem to us now, it will be a problem in the future. The world will get so hot it will impossible to live in: sea levels will rise, deserts will grow and extreme weather conditions will preside over the earth (heat waves, droughts, heavy rainfall), and many species will go extinct due to the changing of climates in different regions (this includes the human species).

So for future generations (or maybe even this generation if greenhouse gas emissions increase with the increasing population of the world) Global Warming is going to be a clear and present danger, wiping out millions of people, and possibly the entire human species. So yeah, it may not be anything big now, but we should be doing everything and anything we can to stop Global Warming from happening in the future, if for nothing else, to save our species and our home.

I recently read an article about how China, the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter (the US is the second biggest emitter), would like to create a ‘legally binding climate pact’ on global warming with the rest of the world during the UN talks, and would like the pact to go into action as early as 2020. I suppose it’s a start. As someone who commented on the article said ‘At least they want to talk, unlike the Americans.’ (Eead the article here: [] )

So you know how people say that in 5 billion years or so the sun will explode and kill us all? That’s only if Global Warming doesn’t get to us first.

(That or nuclear warfare.)

__Top Five Greenhouse Gas Emitters in the World:__ 1. China 2. United States of America 3. India 4. Russia 5. Japan

The average change in mean temperature in the world from 2000-2009. The darker the colour the bigger the change.

__Sunday, 27th November 2011: The Fallibility of Technology and the Everyday Person's Reliance on It__
Last week I wrote about how technology is changing and advancing everyday. . Pretty much the minute you buy something, something newer replaces it and what you just bought becomes outdated. I feel like sometime in the future this quickly advancing technological era we are in will be regarded as the ‘Technological Revolution’ (similar to the Neolithic and Industrial Revolutions) because of how quickly and abundantly technology is advancing.

However, technology is fallible. Every single day we depend on some sort of technology and we trust it to do the job it was built for. But do we really know if it’s doing that job? We trust that the technology we are using is completing the command that we’ve given it. Something as simple as the temperature on your oven could be wrong. If you set your oven to 200 ° C, how do you really know that it’s gone up to that temperature? You could stick a thermometer in it to see the temperature, but how do you know that the thermometer is giving you the correct reading? We trust that the oven is doing what we told it to. But it’s completely possible that it’s not.

It’s not just with temperatures on ovens that we face these problems with. I’m sure that every single person on this planet who has ever used some form of technology has experienced difficulties with whatever they were using and became frustrated. We know that things won’t necessarily work perfectly every single time we use them.

But ovens with the wrong temperatures are the least of our worries. Medical equipment could, in theory, be telling you the wrong information as well. Heart rate monitors could be reading the heart rate of a patient wrong. Medical tests, which include testing something from a patient’s body (blood, skin, tissue, etc) and sticking it in a machine so the machine can test it for diseases, bacteria and other life-threatening findings, could be giving us the wrong information. We’re too trusting in the fact that machines will do what we want them to do and give us the information we ask them for.

This brings me to my next point: because we trust technology so much, we’re forgetting how to do things by ourselves. For example, people rely on calculators to do mathematical equations for them. In this case whether or not the calculator is giving the correct result is immaterial, it’s the fact that the person using the calculator doesn’t know how to get the answer to their mathematical problem without a calculator. The same could happen again with medical technology (being unable to test anything medical without technology) and other everyday things we should know how to do, but don’t have to know how to do because our technology does it for us.

If we keep this up, technology could rule the world. Not in the ‘robots overthrow humans and enslave us’ sense, but in the sense that we become so reliant on technology to do everyday tasks for us that we end up not being able to live without the technology and the world can no longer function without technology. Thus, technology will rule the world.

This isn’t necessarily a post about stopping the usage and growth of technology. It’s just an observation on the world and its relationship to technology. It’s also a hint that we should probably know how to or start learning how to do the things our technology does, even if we never have to actually do it ourselves.



__Sunday, 20th November 2011: Books vs. e-Readers__
Each and every day technology is advanced. You can buy the latest version of some technological item and a few months later its design and technology becomes outdated by the release of a newer version of that item.

Technology replaces what could once be done by people. Cell phones, and telephones in general, replace face-to-face contact and conversations in person. Email replaces mail through the post. Word processors replace writing. Technology is even replacing itself – laptops replaced desktop computers and now tablet computers are replacing laptops.

E-readers have become increasingly popular too. E-readers, like the Amazon Kindle, the Nook and others, are similar in size and shape to tablet computers but only store books for reading. The Amazon Kindle can store up to 1400 books on its hard drive. Additionally, you can now ‘borrow’ e-books from libraries to read on your e-Reader.

Tablet computers and phones also have e-reader applications on them. The Apple iPad and iPhone both have the iBook application for purchasing e-books. The Samsung Galaxy tablet computers can download the Amazon Kindle e-reader application to store and read books on.

E-Readers are everywhere and a lot of people are purchasing and using them now. However, many people still stick to books, preferring the traditional way of reading.

E-Readers are easier to carry around, save paper and are just like books. It’s easier to carry an e-reader around rather than carrying around a book that takes up more space. They also save space. Instead of having a library with 1400 books, you can have a small little machine that holds all 1400 books for you, barely taking up any space. In addition, the screens on e-readers (only e-readers, not tablets with e-reader applications) are designed to look like books. So e-readers are like lighter, smaller, more portable, more convenient books.

However, are they really necessary? Not all books are going to be heavier than an e-reader or take up that much more space. Furthermore, does anyone really have 1400 books? Many people who read a lot do not own 1400 books and are not pressed for space. People who do own 1400 books usually have books they don’t read and keep them just to fill up their libraries/bookshelves. These books wouldn’t be downloaded on to an e-reader for viewing purposes. Also, e-readers may be made to look like books, but that doesn’t make them books. You’re not turning a page or reading off paper, you’re reading off a screen and pressing a button. It doesn’t have the same feel for some people. So books can also be light, small, convenient and portable.

I personally prefer books. This may be because I’m too stubborn to want to use an e-reader, but I like to think that it’s because I prefer the feel of a book. E-readers remind me too much of laptops or touch screen cell phones. It doesn’t really appeal to me to be lying in bed, reading off of a laptop or cell phone. However, I may prefer books now, but as technology keeps advancing in the world, sometime in the future I may be reading off of e-readers instead of books.



__Sunday, 13th November 2011: 'Time Travel in Einstein's Universe' by J. Richard Gott__
Time Travel in Einstein’s Universe by J. Richard Gott is a non-fiction book about time travel. The author, J. Richard Gott, is a professor of astrophysics at Princeton University.

He starts off the book with an introduction, detailing his reasons for writing a book about time travel. Apart from being knowledgeable in the area, he apparently was receiving a lot of questions about whether or not it’s possible. Quite a few of these questions were from people who had lost their loved ones, wondering if they could go back in time and save their loved one from dying. So he decided to write the book as an answer to these people, and others, who want to know if time travel is at all possible.

The book explores all of the different theories of time travel, including time as the fourth dimension, the Multiple Worlds Theory, Novikov’s Principle of Self-Consistency, the idea of Jinn, and many others.

I’m not finished with the book yet. It’s not because it’s difficult to understand, but because you do have to concentrate when reading it. You can’t pick up the book for a light read before bed if you’re feeling sleepy.

The book has taught me a lot, and it’s interesting to read about the different theories of time travel. Some make you think that maybe time travel may be possible.

At the moment, there is absolutely no known method of time travelling to the past. Time travel to the //future// has been proven though, but the method is not very practical (it involves waiting for more than a year in a confined area at a speed close to the speed of light). However, the book was published in 2001, and a lot can change in ten years. Recently, with the discovery that neutrinos may be able to move faster than the speed of light (a feat deemed impossible until now), every theory and/or paradox explored in the book will be useless because pretty much every single theory of time travel, and theories in the world of physics as a whole, are based off of the fact that nothing can move faster than the speed of light.

**If neutrinos can move faster than the speed of light, then everything we thought we knew about the world is wrong.**

__Sunday, 6th November 2011: 'Witch and Wizard' by James Patterson__
Over the last three months I have gone through some really terrible books. It’s only not that they were boring (which they were), it’s that I’ve gone through books with unrealistic characters (this is usually due to young adult writers relying on stereotypical teenagers to be their characters) to an author who switched between the past and present tense within the same sentence, in a manner that made no sense.

This has left me quite unmotivated to read. But yesterday, I remembered that I had bought books when I was in Miami two weeks ago. I picked up one called ‘Witch and Wizard’ by James Patterson and decided to read it.

I started it last night and finished it this morning, so needless to say, it was a really good book and I really enjoyed it.

Witch and Wizard is the story of a brother and a sister – Whitford ‘Whit’ Allgood and Wisteria ‘Wisty’ Allgood – a witch and wizard. Over an extended period of time their government had been slowly changing. No one really paid attention to it until every single member of their government was part of a party called ‘The Council of Ones’. As they sought a totalitarian rule, they wanted to get rid of anyone who could possibly bring them down, including anyone able to harness magic (except their ruler, of course).

The story begins with Whit and Wisty in their home. In the middle of the night, government troops attack and take Whit and Wisty away from their home. They are charged with being a witch and wizard. They were normal teenagers up until the point they were taken and had never used magic before, so they out rightly denied that they were any sort of witch or wizard, because they truly believed they weren’t. However, as they begin to realise, they may have some sort of power after all. But now stranded in a totalitarian dystopia, Whit and Wisty have to try and escape their captors before they are executed.

‘Witch and Wizard’ is a great book. I would highly recommend it to anyone – of any age – who enjoys reading good books (hopefully that means everyone).

There’s never a dull moment in the book and the plot keeps on going in the fascinating world that Patterson created. His world is probably not so far off what ours would look like if there were an influential leader who wished to turn the world into a totalitarian state.

Nevertheless, it’s a great book. Although, a warning to those who decide to read it: it’s impossible to put down.



__Sunday, 30th October 2011: 'Citadels' by Galt Aureus__
Yesterday I checked my inbox on my YouTube account and I found that someone had shared a video with me. Not doing much on the Internet anyway, I clicked on the link to watch the video. It was a video for the song ‘Citadels’ by Galt Aureus. Usually videos shared from a person you don’t know on YouTube aren’t worth watching. This song a rare exceptions that makes me glad I decided to click on the link. I interpret the song to be about an internal struggle of a person who feels they are held in contempt. He feels as though he’s screaming but no one can hear him because everyone else is louder than him. He feels as if he’s nobody in a world that’s wasting away. Then he can’t take it anymore, and decides to stand up, //‘…this eulogy of ruin never ends, and you’ve heard enough, you rouse from an empire.’// However, everything is already in ruins and no one will follow or listen to him, so he decides to leave them behind. In spite of his decision, afterwards he feels regretful because he left everyone behind, but he realises that he’s past the point of no return. His confidence is shattered, he has no one anymore, and he feels as though the sky is pressing down on him. In the end he has no choice but to agree with what he did, because he knows his regrets will only make him weaker and won’t get him anywhere in life. //‘Regrets raise no citadels.’// Some very strong emotions are expressed in the song, and you can hear the pain in the music and in the singer’s voice as he expresses his struggle to be heard, his regret for leaving people behind when he finally is heard, and his reluctant acceptance that what has happened is not going to change and that he best not dwell on his mistakes. It is a compelling song, something that cannot be said about many songs nowadays. I highly recommend listening to it. Everyone has a different taste in music, and not everyone will like the song, but I really enjoy listening it. I hope that someone will have a new favourite song after listening to it too. media type="youtube" key="9LEmlJPhzUg" height="181" width="328" align="center"

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