Little Brother Review..Kinda

It's 2:04 am and I've had all week to make this post. Yet, I'm doing it just now. And I haven't even finished the book. I'm on page 111 for anyone who cares to look and see how far I am.

I didn't want to do any work over Thanksgiving break. I'm definitely paying for that right now.
SO. MUCH. HOMEWORK.

Anyways. The book. I absolutely love it, which is why I'm not horribly upset to still be awake right now. I really want to go buy the hard copy sometime. There are so many plot twists it's freakin' crazy. I have no idea where we're headed right now. I know that I'm really upset that Ange has been left behind and that Marcus is with that pink haired b..witch. I'm hoping something more will happen with Daryll before this is all over as well.

I think it's really cool how some of this ties in with stuff that we have going on now concerning the school monitering our internet usage. I know that it's not safe to (illegally) download music on campus because the school moniters the downloads and you'll get caught in no time. I also know that it limits the amount of internet you can use. One of my friends was trying to download some patches for a computer game she plays and she wasn't even able to using UT's WiFi. We had to go sit at McDonald's for two hours lol.

I wonder if there's a way for us to get around this stuff? I'm curious..

Reading this is an awesome way to waste time.

It's one in the morning. I have to be up at five. I have a psychology exam at eight in the morning.

And I can't sleep.



Have you ever randomly thought of a word, usually it having nothing at all to do with what you're doing or thinking about, and realized you actually have no idea what it means? Maybe it just sounds cool and you really want to use it one day, but to do that, you have to know what it means. I do this a lot, but I had a really bad case of it about thirty minutes ago.

I was about to wash my face and get ready for bed (but not sleep, obviously) and out of nowhere the words angular momentum pop into my head. Where the hell did that come from? I have no idea. I've never even taken physics. But it's a really cool phrase and, if used correctly, could make me sound totally smart. I had to know what it meant. "Ok, just break it down and you can figure it out. No big deal," I thought to myself. My internal argument continued like this:

 Angular: obviously, it deals with angles. Easy peasy.

Momentum: a little more difficult to define..it's not really speed it's..it has to do with consistancy, right? Yeah that sounds right..

So..the constant movement of..an angle? A constant angle? Maybe I'm forgetting something..triangles?

Screw it. This is what google.com was made for.

So I looked it up. Surprisingly, I was close. Kinda. I shoulda guessed circles instead of triangles. Angular momentum measures an object's tendency to continue to spin.

Don't ask for an example because I have no idea. But next time I see some one spinning a basketball, believe me when I say that I'll go up and tell them all about angular momentum and they better damn well listen.

If you actually read through all this, kudos to you. :]

TEDtalk. Music is everything.

I love that we get to pick our own topics for these papers and that it is a HUGE deal that we hold interest in the topic we write about. I always hated the English papers we were forced to write in high school that I had no interest in.

I went to ted.com and immediately searched for "music." It is truly a major component in my life and I am very passionate about it. I clicked on the first video that came up and, after watching it, knew it would be the video and topic I would choose to write.

Robert Gupta talks about how influential music really is. Music is just not notes and sounds put together, but it is a movement and a catalyst.

I'm still not completely positive how I'm going to turn this topic into a six or seven page paper, but I know I plan on talking about how music brings us together, tears us apart, gives us understanding or piece of mind, how it can help with disorders...and a few other things I haven't thought of yet.

What do you guys think of the video?

Lust: That's a Sin, Remember?

I've been racking my brain the past few days trying to come up with a topic for our next assignment. I understand what and how we're supposed to write, I just can't think of a good topic. However, I think I might have found something.

I've always been intrigued by Donte's The Inferno and the Seven Deadly Sins and things like that. I believe that the sin of lust could be incredibly controversial, especially when viewed from different time periods, cultures, and moral standings.

I like this first picture a lot because it includes a kind of definition of the sin. I understand what lust is, but not very well, so this was helpful to me. However, I don't believe I'll use this picture for my paper. I'm going to continue searching and find a better, maybe more realistic one.

Anyways, back to the paper. I know this may seem like kind of a sketchy topic, but really, it works very well for what we need to do. Lust has always been a sin, and is adressed in religions such as Christianity. Fifty years ago or so, it was completely unheard of to even think about sexual things with someone who was not your husband or wife, and to do so would ruin your reputation and your family's. Today, however, it doesn't seem like a big deal at all. In fact, it's almost a trend. Look at all of the shows on TV. Name one that doesn't involve random people hooking up or a couple sleeping together after just a few dates. It's hard to do isn't it? It's almost as if today's culture is promoting this kind of behavior when, in actuality, it's a sin and morally wrong.

What do you guys think? Do you agree?

Children of Men

Today we started watching Children of Men in class. I'm also super behind in my blog stuff, so I figured this was a good subject to use to play catch-up.

The movie is incredibly intriguing so far, and I really don't understand how I hadn't heard of it before. Was it in theater? Did I just not hear about it? Anyways, I love the plot. I'm a big fan of apocolyptic-type films, but the cause behind the end of humanity in this movie is completely original. The cause isn't some sort of stupid disease or mutant zombie people. It's more practical than that, except we don't know why the women went sterile..yet. Hopefully we'll find that out later. What would happen if women across the world suddenly weren't able to produce children anymore? Would you look to the government for help? Or would you place blame on them? Would it be better to act out and kill more people, such as with the bombs? Or would it be best to keep to yourself in your own home? Is it a sign or punishment from God? Or is this completely humanity's fault?

I believe I would keep to myself and form my own opinion about who's fault it was. I wouldn't blame the government completely, but, let's face it, I'm sure they had a pretty major hand in the cause. Killing more people with bombs and acting out in such a manner isn't going to help anyone. All that accomplishes is the end of the human race even quicker. I don't believe it would be a punishment or sign from God. After the Great Flood, the Lord promised never again to wipe humans from the face of the Earth. Because of that, I can't bring myself to think that God would do something like make all the women of the world sterile.

I can't imagine how the women of the world would deal with being sterile. For years, I had a scare that I myself might not be able to have kids. The thought of not being able to have my own children some day absolutely devastated me, and I was only a teenager when thought was brought to my attention. If I was older (old enough to have kids) and was told it wasn't possible, my heart would be broken. However, after many doctor visits, blood tests, and ultra sounds, we found nothing was wrong with my body. I was just too active and did not possess enough fat for my body to function like a normal female body. Only this past year did everything begin functioning properly.

Anyways, as we get further into the movie, I believe I'll be able to make a better assessment of it.

Rhetorical Analysis

     So, I'm not the best when it comes to understanding rhetoric, but this cartoon seems easy enough to write about. Thus, this is the one I chose for the assignment.
     As you can see, the cartoon depicts a soldier and a colllege graduate standing side by side. The soldier is armed with a rifle and his orders, while the graduate holds only his college diploma and an expression that could be descirbed as uncertain. After reading the soldier's words, I can't help but wonder how true they may actually be. In today's economy, finding a job is an extremely difficult process in most places. It's not uncommon to hear of people enlisting in the military just to be able to provide for themselves and their families. One can also obtain a college degree through the military, so couldn't the soldier reallly be better off than the graduate? Like he said, it's not difficult to find a war to fight in these days. But that's just it: he's going off to war. Which, out of the two, seems a better choice to him than staying home with his family, going to college, and attempting to find a job. What does this say about our economy?

Disney movies can teach us all sorts of things.

        In English class on Friday, we watched a video about copyrights made of a mosh-up of many different Disney movies. It was a little difficult to follow at first, but finally I stopped focusing on the different movies and let the words run together to make complete sentences. The video clearly explained the different rules that apply to a copyright and did so in an entertaining way. I thought it was weird at first, but the more I thought about it, I realized that if they hadn't used Disney movies, I wouldn't have been the least bit interested in copyright rules. Well, I'm still not really interested in it, but at least I was able to pay attention to the video. If the video had just been of an old man sitting in a leather chair, I would've taken a nap instead.

By the way, can anyone explain to me why in like 90% of Disney movies, the (sometimes) main character only has one parent??