Kermit

If you're a right-handed person, is it possible to efficiently teach yourself to write with your left hand (or vice-versa), or is this hard-wired into our brains at birth?

I'm curious about teaching myself writing with my left hand as a side-hobby.

You should've read the graphic novel. I did, around 200 pages long, and a true epic. I think the movie deviates a bit, though.

In no order..

1. Joy Luck Club

2. The Godfather

3. The Back to the Future trilogy (they count as one as it's the same story)

4. Raiders of the Lost Ark

5. Spaceballs

I think the challenge for you is to find the way to see something "familiar" with a set of new eyes' date=' as you said the last time you read the book was 8th grade. I would hope that the ensuing years has led to greater intellectual development and that you can apply this to your current analysis of the work (even if not required by your teacher).

 

I can relate this to my students when given pond water to look at under a microscope, they will often quit after 30 seconds saying "I've done this before". There is just so much more to observe and learn for those willing to put the time and effort into something they have done before.

 

Challenge yourself to find those new insights, to see things unobserved before, and you'll find your classes and life much more interesting.

 

Good Luck[/quote']

 

I understand what you're saying, Roadstar. I'll try to look at the book with whatever i've learned in the past (which isn't quite much) and try to see it in a completely different light.

 

And yes, ffsjoe, it's year 11. One more year left.

 

Now that the challenge part has been dealt with, how can we explain that more kids in my class know about the Wiccan story of creation than about the Big Bang theory? I can clearly remember the looks on their faces when I corrected the teacher several times about the Big Bang theory when we were discussing some backround information before reading Inherit the Wind a few months ago. I could clearly hear people saying "nerd" behind my back as if though it was a bad thing, while a kid was able to go on and on about the Wiccan BS for about five minutes uninterrupted while the entire class paid attention to him (And yes, I know, the Wiccan stuff has nothing to do with Inherit the Wind, but we were discussing evolution, creationism, and the big bang).

 

I'm slowly starting to notice an anti-intellectual streak in America, though it just might be my reading of too much Sagan. Anyone care to elaborate?

I didn't say that the lenght of the book determines its quality. I'm just saying that the general subject matter in Of Mice and Men is more suitable for a younger audience as opposed to, say, Macbeth, which really challenges you.

Out of curiosity, what's the US school system's ranking with other countries? I think I heard somewhere that we're actually beaten by a South American country or two, but just wondering.

Oh, and I expect the ranking to be pretty low. It's kind of obvious.

I blame sparknotes. Sparknotes.com is solely responsible for why people can graduate without reading a goddamed thing. My graduating class is 47 people, 47. Out of them, approximately 8 have never read a book in their life.

As I said, we're teaching a nation of idiots.

Why read a book? Goto Sparknotes.

Why do arithmetic? Get a calculator.

Why read a dictionary? Go online and copy and paste stuff.

To create a resource there has to be someone around to be knowledgeable on whatever it is. You can't have an average person write a book on chemistry, you need a professor. But after a while, aren't we going to reach a point where everyone has been dumbed down by Spark Notes and its equivalents in other fields to the point that nobody is going to take an active interest in whatever that field is, so that when we need to find a resource from that field nobody can understand it?

Anywho, day 2.

Our homework? Unimaginably hard. "Bring in your copy of Ethan Frome tomorrow to be exchanged for Of Mice and Men." Funny thing is, half the class probably won't even do it. As for that vocabulary homework? Wasn't even collected, wasn't even checked. What if there were errors? Come to think of it, there won't be any -- the teacher actually ENCOURAGES you to just copy and paste from a dictionary website. How the hell is that teaching?

My question now is, with the apparent "goals" of the American public school system, what the hell are we trying to create? What are we trying to accomplish? Creating complete conformity that doesn't prepare for the future, and doesn't even try to teach critical thinking? No damn wonder we're chock full of fundies and creationists -- people can't even think for themselves now. If any of you have read the last few chapters of Carl Sagan's book The Demon Haunted World, you'd know what I mean when I say that we're raising a generation of idiots.

That's horrible, starbug.

Okay, lemme rethink my question.

What I mean to ask is, how the hell is any of this intellectual? I want to learn in school but all I get is that crap. It's a waste of a day.

I'm in highschool. Junior year. However, i'd like you all to look at this list of vocabulary words that we have to define for the current chapter of the book we're reading.

Chapter 1

1. [sycamores]

2. (Recumbent)

3. [Wearily]

4. (Bindle)

5. (Morosely)

6. [Droned]

7. [Triumphantly]

8. (Pantomime)

9. [Contemplated]

10. (Brusquely)

11. (Imperiously)

12. [Whimpering]

13. [Elaborate]

14. [stake]

15. [Yammered]

Words in brackets are words i've learned in 4th grade, words in parentheses are words that i've learned in 6th grade. Also, those words are for Of Mice and Men, a book i've read several times already. But not in 11th grade. Not in 10th, not in 9th but in 8th grade. I'm going to remind you that other classes in the school on my grade level are reading Shakespeare, yet we're going back to a 107 page book i've already had several times.

What did we read before this? A book called Ethan Frome. A book fit more for a 7th grade class. In that time that we read that, guess what we got to do as a class? Yes, that's right, we got to get into groups and got to have fun with, *GASP*, COLORED PENCILS. A friend of mine, Harry, had a debate with the teacher over this, and that slug just went, "Well, some people just learn better visually."

This class is incredibly boring and unstimulating to the point that my grades for it are just dropping. Most people would say, "Hey, that's a blessing to do Kindergartener work! Why don't you ace that class?" But my answer is simply this: "It's completely uninspiring."

In my old school, we had a teacher named Dr. Katz. And quite frankly, he was the best and only stimulating English teacher that i've had in my entire life. We actually got into very intellectual class discussions and enjoyed what we read. But nowadays? Now what? "Pass the Regents. Pass the Regents. Conform." That's all they expect us to do. Read their textbook garbage, not absorb anything, and then pass a test of intellectual conformity. How is this an education?

Do I deserve this? Does anyone deserve this? Share your opinions with me.

Guess not.

Have there ever been cases in which a thermophilic bacteria was able to invade a host organism, trigger a fever, and multiply?

Maddox did a hilarious article on this, didn't he?

You know what you should read concerning this topic? "The Demon Haunted World: Science as a candle in the dark" by Carl Sagan. He debunks numerous pseudoscientific fields, one of them being "ufology".

And here's another intriguing point, one that i've though of. Why are we able to pronounce the names of these supposed aliens and their races with human vocal chords?

And at times when you have conditions like sickle cell anemia, your blood cells don't have as much hemoglobin and so you feel more and more tired due to less oxygen circulating.

From what I can remember, you can find loads of interesting simulation software that's free on SourceForge. Some of it might be in alpha development stages but it's always worth it to look around there.

Interesting question, really, though a bit more philosophical than scientific or logical. It'd depend on the way you view consciousness in relation to the organism itself.

A related topic would be if someone was to become a vegetable in which they lost a lot of brain function but all their other organs worked, such as in that Terri Schiavo case. Is that person dead if they can still blink their eyes or babble aimlessly? Can that person really perceive what's going on around them? Would we know?

Can't you use a Dewar flask or whatever it was called? That thing they use to keep liquid nitrogen cold. Doesn't use electricity, but instead uses a vacuum between two layers of insulating materials.

Heck, even a thermos should work. Unless of course it's for a scientific application. What're you trying to keep cold?

Among other things, one would need to confirm that the "huge ecosphere" would actually sustain the people. Biosphere II failed miserably at this.

Not sure if anyone else replied to this, just glancing through, but I believe the only reason that the Biosphere failed was that the iron in the soil absorbed the oxygen in the air slowly and after a certain amount of days the amount of oxygen was dangerously depleted. I'd have to check my sources on that, though.

I think there should be a few things that survived after the fallout. Maybe mutated rats and roaches?

And if you can remember that Twilight Zone episode with that guy who just wanted to read and have time and had his glasses break, guess what he ate? Wonder Bread. Have the few food items that haven't been irradiated be chock full of preservatives and other horrible stuff. You want to make it sheer hell for your main character.

And to make an added twist, don't even bother trying to let him live. All the post-nuke novels have the protagonist live. Let him live in the most horrible conditions and then kill him off in a hopeless death.

I.. uhh.. tutor fellow students in chemistry, seeing as to how I get ridiculously high grades in it. Other than that, i'm really just the stereotypical highschool nerd.

Then again, there are numerous occaisions in which there's homosexuality in nature. From personal experience i've had lesbian hamsters.

Besides, how would you define it as "unnatural"? From what i've read in the past, sexuality, sex identity, and a lot of other things are hardwired into their brains in the womb.

Don't take my word for it, though, there might be something on Wikipedia.

When I first saw the title of the article, my mental image was of me pointing at Hawking and in a stuffy voice going, "Not again, Mr. Hawking!" and he'd type in "Uh oh."

I still doubt i'd be able to get permission to do that. Anything less explosive?