Turn it Off

I walked down into my basement this morning and saw my brothers sitting and playing Call of Duty. I then asked how long they had been playing and the said, “I don’t know, let’s just say I didn’t really sleep last night”. I see this lot with many ages of people. Some people it is the addiction to the T.V. Others it is to a video game on the x-box or a handheld device. Whatever it is I have learned that it is not healthy and we should try to stop these nasty habits if we have any of our own.

                I will admit that I even have some of these nasty habits. Sometimes I get so caught up in a T.V. show that I neglect what really needs to be done. Whether it’s So You Think You can Dance, American Idol, or Lost, we need to learn how to say no, or just pace ourselves with how much we watch. I am not saying that T.V. is bad, because there are a lot of positive things about it too! It shows all of the important news events going on, and after a long hard day of work it is nice to be able to cool down with some T.V., but too much could end up hurting you later in life.   

                T.V. sometimes affects people lives in that they can affect grades, if you neglect homework to watch it, household duties, and other important things. Just monitoring how much T.V. you watch can be a really good idea if you have a problem with too much. But video games are another story.

                Video games are insanely addictive. In a way, they are kind of like a drug. The more you do it, the more you are addicted to it. Sometimes when my brother is on Call of Duty, it shows how many players around the world were playing. The whole entire globe almost lit up. When I saw it I was surprised, but then I started to realize just how much people really do play. My brothers don’t usually have a problem with too much but I know many people do. For some people, Call of Duty and other video games are all they do. This can eventually start affecting your life.

                Some people can hold good grade point averages until video games start coming into their lives. This just shows how addicting video games can really be. I am not going to lie; I think that video games like the Wii and Kinect can be super fun and just a great time to play, but too much of any good thing can end up being bad.

                I think that having schools do the turn of T.V. week and video games is a great idea! It gets kids to be more active which really does help kids in every aspect. I know that when I am up and doing other things I always feel better about things! So turn off the T.V. and video games and do something new!

               

The Cold

The Cold

 I really can honestly say that I HATE the cold weather that comes with the month January.  I love the snow but I wish that it could just be warm.

A perfect winter:

1.       Still felt like summer.

2.       It snowed warm flakes.

3.       There was no ice to slip and fall on.

4.       We never had to go outside in the cold.

5.       Cars are automatically preheated in the morning so no one would ever have to come out to a cold car.

6.       January didn’t indicate that school was ONLY half way over and third term was just starting

These are all things that would make the winter a little better in my opinion. I do enjoy the snow and snowboarding but sometimes It just gets so cold that I can’t stand to even go outside. Then I am forced to go to school, dance, tumbling, and a number of other activities that I would really appreciate it if I didn’t have to go. Don’t get me wrong… I love to dance and tumbling but just the thought of going outside makes me shiver! I hope the groundhog says an early spring is coming this year because I don’t know how much longer I can last through the winter!

The assassination of Abraham lincoln

            April 14, 1865 was a sad day. This was the day that our beloved President Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. As President Lincoln sat watching a play at Ford’s Theater, Booth snuck up past Lincoln’s light security and shot him in the back of the head. The event was tragic and devastating to so many Americans.

            As I researched Abraham Lincoln’s death, I discovered that Lincoln was in fact anticipating an event such as this. Only three days before his assassination, he had a peculiar dream. In his dream, He heard people mopping and sobbing, but he didn’t see any people. He looked and looked for them, and finally, he discovered a covered corpse with soldiers stationed around it, many people surrounding it and mourning. President Lincoln went up to the guard and asked him who had died and he responded by saying: “The President. He was killed by an assassin.” It may have just been a dream, but since then Lincoln knew something was going to go wrong.

            Abraham Lincoln was a huge part in bringing slaves to freedom and uniting the country we have today. His ways were not popular with everyone during his time. People even began to believe that the Civil War was his war. That he was only fighting it because he wanted to free slaves. As times have progressed, it has become very apparent that President Lincoln’s motives for doing what he did were extremely just. He was a genius, great politician, and amazing leader that many look up to this very day.

Sout and Salamanca Comparison Essay

 

After Reading To Kill a Mockingbird and Walk Two Moons, I realized how the two main characters of each book are both similar in ways, and very different. Scout and Salamanca are both very observant girls. The two girls see everything that is going on, but sometimes do not always understand it. Neither of the girls has a living mother, but still tries for what they want. The girls are same in these ways, but these things also make them very different.

                Scout and Salamanca are alike in that they both are very observant girls who see the world in their own ways. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout describes things in a way that does not always sound her age. Right before the accident with Mr. Ewell, which really defines the book, she was at a pageant. Scout says, “The ladies were cool in fragile pastel prints: most of them were heavily powdered but unrouged; the only lipstick in the room was Tangee Natural.” This quote just shows how much Scout goes into detail about her surroundings.  In Walk Two Moons, Salamanca is also very observant. The way she describes places and people makes you really just want to see it in real life.  Salamanca says, “Mist hung about the ground, finches were singing in the oak tree beside the house, and there was my mother, her pregnant belly sticking out in front of her, she was strolling up the hill swinging her arms and singing.” The passages from each book really show how these two girls are quite the same. They just have different ways of showing it.

                Both these girls are observant, but sometimes don’t exactly get what is going on. Scout, from To Kill a Mockingbird, finds herself in sort of a sticky situation when a bunch of white men come for Tom Robinson. She doesn’t understand how dangerous the situation is, and just goes about her normal business. Scout has a conversation with Mr. Cuningham, one of the most dangerous men there.

She says, “Hey, Mr. Cunningham, How’s your entailment getting along?” Scout goes on to have a very normal conversation with him, and ends up being the reason the bad mob left. She does not know it but she avoided a very bad situation. Salamanca does kind of the same thing. She sees everything around her, but does not always understand. She can’t understand why her father would want to be around Mrs. Cadaver, whose name means dead body. She says , “Margaret nearly fell over herself being nice to me, aren’t you sweet! I wouldn’t sit down and I wouldn’t look at Margaret.” Salamanca did not like Ms. Cadaver just because she was in a place she didn’t like. Ms. Cadaver was really the only connection with her mother that her dad still had, but Sal did not realize it. Her mother was dead and Ms. Cadaver had known her, but Sal does not listen. Sal does not figure it out until the end of the book when she is older, or at least she would not admit it.

                Both of the girls had lost their mother.  Not in the same way, but their stories are similar. Scout did not ever know her mother well, but always talked about her like she was great. “My mother died when I was two, so I never felt her absence.” The difference between Scout and Salamanca was that Salamanca did know her mother, and felt her absence everywhere when she was gone. Salamanca goes on to say, “That is one of the reasons why we left Bybanks, Kentucky. We could still feel my mother’s absence everywhere in the house and everywhere around us.”

                Both Scout, from To Kill a Mockingbird, and Salamanca, from Walk Two Moons, are very similar girls. They are also different. They had many of the same things happen to them. They experienced many of the same emotions.  By reading the two books, I got to know the two girls very well.  Although their problems come about in different ways, they have some of the same things happening to them and they face those situations differently. They might be similar, but they are nowhere near the same. That is why Scout and Salamanca are alike and different.

Fire and Ice

Where did all of the water on earth come from? This is a question that Emery, a scientist from Knoxville, Tennessee, is very interested in and that leads him to a very important discovery.

            There has always been a question of how water really did come to this earth. I am here to tell you that by watching a news article on a website called news.science360.gov. I have realized there is one more theory that should be considered. Some scientists have found that there is actually a fair amount of water in asteroids. Some people believe that we could have gotten water from the asteroids hitting the earth a very long time ago. This is a very interesting inference that may explain where we got water.

                       

            I personally have never really been big on needing to find out exactly how our earth was made, and where we got our water. It has never really been a huge interest of mine. After I read this article, I realized that it might be more important than we would think. Finding out where the water came from and how our earth was made is a big step to being able to know more about this interesting world we live in. It was a very recent discovery that showed there is water in and on the asteroids. This can mean that there is a still a lot more to be discovered about where our water really came from.

            In this article, the main scientist mentions what a great feeling is once you have made a discovery.  You then know that at that certain time you are the only one in the whole entire world who knows about it. They really believe that this research is very important.  Emery, the scientist from Knoxville, Tennessee says “Now we are thinking that asteroids are very rich in water, which is a very probable cause of where our water came from.” In the article, it says how this information can help with later discoveries.

            This was a very interesting article to watch and I enjoyed watching it very much. Space science really interests me, so I really was interested in this article. I hope that the research on this can be continued so we can figure more things out about our world and how it was created. This could also help us figure out more about asteroids and how they play a role in our lives.

           

The New Year 2012

The New Year is a time for people to start fresh, to fix old mistakes. Sometimes it is easier to break a habit, start a new hobby, or just simply want to change something about yourself when a new year starts. It feels like a brand new sheet of paper that you want to fill with positive things throughout the year. It is important to set goals at the beginning of the year because then it gives you something to work on throughout the year. You can make goals big or small. Some goals are small like I don’t want to drink soda for a whole year. Other goals are bigger like I am going to five days a week the whole year. It takes a little more effort than other goals.

                Some goals are academic too. You can set a goal to get a 4.0, or to be a student of the month for a certain class. Sometimes when you have trouble with a certain class it is good to set a goal to just focus better on one class specifically. There are so many things that can be done to make the New Year a good one!

A new start is always a good thing to have. You can look back on the previous years and see what you have done wrong that you can fix for the next year. Reflecting on the previous year is a very important thing to do when deciding what goals you want to set for the next year. If we never set goals we never have expectations for ourselves and that gets us nowhere. When we have something we can work towards we can always get better. There are many things that can help us with achieving our goals. We mainly need to just work hard and keep the important things in sight. Sometimes we only think of the now but we really need to think about the future.

                When we just think about the now we end up doing some stupid things that can even ruin our future. It all comes back to setting goals. When we set goals we are thinking about our future and looking forward to the New Year. We need to forget what we did wrong and just keep moving forward in the New Year 2012