My Thoughts On Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Pancreatic Cancer

Okay so it's a pretty important job being a supreme court justice. A lot of people truly look up to those people sitting up there on that bench. A few weeks ago, we, the American people, learned of one of our judges having pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cancer is right now the number one deadliest form of cancer known. There is a five percent survival rate among people developing this form of cancer, heck there is even a higher survival rate of brain cancer, and everyone knows that you can definately not live with out your brain.

I am a definate liberal, and so is Ginsburg, the current break up of liberal to conservative is 5:4, with John Roberts, the Chief Justice, being conservative. Now if Ginsburg dies, the ratio will become primarily equal, though I would say it would start to lean towards the conservative side.

The good news is that if Obama has a chance to appoint a new Justice, then he wil probably choose another liberal, that would be a very good thing. Also in my opinion the Supreme Court needs some young blood to refresh it, if we could get a youngish liberal into a seat then it would be very good for some important issues that we will see hit the supreme court sometime in the next few years (i.e. Same-Sex Marriage, as to my knowledge four out of the five current liberals in the court are pro gay marriage, while only one conservative is).

The other issue that might come up is the fact that only one of the judges on the US Supreme Court are not Christian and that is Ginsburg, who is Jewish. The Supreme Court might start to show a lacking of diversity also because Ginsburg is the only woman currently on the supreme court, though Sandra Day O'Conner is still in a position to fill when needed.

So basically if Ginsburg retires or dies, the Supreme court could be a toss up between liberals and conservatives but I'm just hoping that my side will come out on top.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2009/02/13/2009-02-13_supreme_court_justice_ruth_bader_ginsbur.html

Why I Blog

Before this year I never thought I would be one to blog, well let me rephrase that, I never thought I would be required by one of my teachers to blog. So far I have had both positive and negative experiences with blogging and it might be something I will continue later on in life even after I'm done with AP Lang.
Why I like blogging;
It lets me put my personality out there and kind of have a free flowing thing. I am an extremely random person and am capable of talking about a bunch of nonsense, my blog lets me express myself and yet allows me to stay a little personal.
I also like to complain a lot, and many of my past posts have been ones dealing with complaint. I have a lot to say about the world around me and many, many people to call stupid. I like blogging about my complaints because it lets me sort out my feelings about something and this way it makes me think a lot deeper about the actual issue. It helps me to blow steam, without actually blowing up at someone, like I tend to do even though I don't really mean it.
I like the freedom of choosing topics, in the being of choosing a topic I remember hating what I was writing about after only a few days of writing about it. Not hating the activity, just hating writing about the activity. So I was able to kind of change my topics at the turn of the trimester. Even though I have definately gotten away from my topic currently chosen, writing biographies of SuperHeroes, I do like having the ability of changing topics when I really want to.

My Negative Thoughts On Blogging
I don't like people really knowing what I'm thinking because I usually try to stay impersonal and out of the spotlight, that is why I have left my blog closed to everyone except for the people that I have chosen to read it. It makes me feel kind of self-concious in a way, and like I don't have backbone to just freely state a lot of my opinions.
Another reason why I don't like it, is not because I don't like it, but because I am really lazy for the most part and It is hard for me to post when I'm not motivated at all. I know what my parents would say to that though, "You should be motivated because it's your grade at stake," and yes I know grades should be somewhat of a motivation, but I don't really have to worry about them that much because I have such a high gpa, now that I would have to fail like all of my classes to get below a 3.0, and then I could always just try a little harder next term/year to make up for that. But since I don't really want to fail any classes because it would look really bad on my transcript, I'm kind of motivated by that.
The last reason why I don't like blogging is because I want more freedom when, where and how I right. I remember dreading when we picked our topics because I don't really know much about anything besides complaining, Tae Kwon Do and music, the latter two are kind of boring to talk about, but when I chose my other topic, Super Heroes, I got bored of that within two weeks, so I feel like I've been completely off topic most of the time and I don't like feeling off topic, though I know that being off topic can sometimes be a good thing.
Oh and before I forget, I also don't like having a word count because I makes me feel like I stretch out my little knowledge of some topic over about four hundred words, just so I can get something done. Then my post turns out to be really really crappy.

Social Darwinism

It is quite a coincidence that this week, we in my AP US History class, talked about the concept of social Darwinism, and that Thursday was the bicentennial birthday of Charles Darwin.
Social Darwinism is a concept derived from natural selection and survival of the fittest. Both concepts say that only the strongest and most adapted species will have a great chance of surviving.
During the eighteen hundreds people began to apply these terms in relation to racism, specifically against African Americans. Social Darwinists believed that whites were altogether superior to blacks and thus acted on it that way. This created a drift that made many white come to believe that they were an altogether greater species than the African Americans and thus African Americans shouldn't be allowed to have the same rights as whites.
With various civil rights movements the Social Darwinists turned away from just believing that African Americans were below them. Many upper class white men thought that they were on the top of the food chain, that everyone below them was inferior to them in some way. They thought that they had greater genetics than the average person, so thus they were entitled to the finer things in life.
This was clearly a lacking of morality, since many Social Darwinists believed that things like welfare and other programs designed to help the poor and sick were only keeping the "inferior" species alive. They furthered this belief system to include the thought that, if things were not done to help cleanse the world of these inferior beings, that world and society would be flooded with the inferiors species.
The term Social Darwinism is also applied to the United States imperialistic thoughts throughout the late 19th and early 20th century. Some members of the US society thought that culture based from the European countries, especially England, was meant to be spread. People thought that by Americanizing other parts of the world, the world would be a better place and easier to survive in. This fueled the US's ever expanding imperialistic policies towards other nations, the US was now destined to spread white culture.
Social Darwinism was not a totally outrageously malicious thing. It did do much good towards America, some people such as Andrew Carnegie, took it upon themselves to better society. They believed that it was their job to help other people in society and not just look after there own interests. Many hospitals and research facilities were built during this time, in an effort to build up society rather than tear it down like other Social Darwinists believed should to be done.

Happy Birthday Charles Darwin

Today, February 12th 2009 is the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin, our beloved forefather of the evolutionary theory. He laid down the foundation for much research after him and is seen as the key figure in the development of the evolutionary theory.

Charles Darwin was born in 1809 and died in 1882. He was an English naturalist who derived the idea of natural selection. Natural selection is the process by which organisms with favorable heritable traits reproduce in order to pass on the favorable trait. A favorable trait is any trait that will allow an organism to have much greater chances to survive. Some would say that those with favorable traits have the greatest advantages in the populations to survive, survive in a way that it is a competition to keep from dying and not being able to pass on your genetic material.

From the theory of Natural Selection we get another idea, that of the survival of the fittest. The strongest organism, or the one with the most desirable traits will be the one to survive rather than the one without. It can also be expressed as the organism who has the most over time adapted to it's environment. This doesn't necessarily mean that the organsim less adapted to it's environment will not be able to survive, for if you think about life in a broader spectrum, it is our goal as a member of our species to find a mate and care on the genetic code. The organisms while being able to carry on the genetic code must also be able to produce a large enough amount of offspring to keep the species continuing.

Another key thing to the theory of evolution is the adaptability of an organism to its environment. Everyone knows the story of Darwin's finches. While he was on his expedition he noticed that on every of the Galapagos Islands there was a species of Finch. While the finches appeared somewhat alike, he noticed that the beak shape varied greatly. Some had long skinny beaks, other had wide, and broad beaks. He assumed that the finches had at one point shared a common ancestor and then as the Galapagos islands broke apart, the environments changed and the finches were forced to adapted to survive. He assumed that the primary reasoning for the change in beak structure was linked to the availability of food on the islands. In the circumstance of the finch with the tough, broad and wide beak, and the fact that it ate mainly nuts, it was established that the finch most likely adapted so that it would have an easier time opening the nuts. While the finch with the narrow and long beak, ingested pollen.

We have these great ideals that have added to the debate on the way man began thanks to the forefather of evolution, Charles Darwin.

Fundamentalist Disrupts Darwin day

This is part two of the three part youtube clip and is it gave me a lot more laughs than the part one. The Fundamentalist Christian Preacher who disrupted the Darwin Day celebration on the Florida State University campus, is now being followed around and read to from Darwin's book, "The Origin Of Species," while he tries to preach to the crowd.

Watchmen Trailer

I still say it looks like it'll be good
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4blSrZvPhU

Watchmen

So there is a totally cool movie coming out, the watchmen, though I'm not quite sure what to expect since I've seen plenty of cool movie trailers that turn out to be really really crappy movies. For instance the league of extraordinary gentlemen had an amazing movie trailer, yet the movie itself was a horrible disaster.
Not only does it seem that good movie trailers can make horrible, horrible movies, but some amazing comic books can become horrible movies also. Taking for example the hulk, it's truly an amazing comic book, but the movie sucked. The plot line didn't mesh with any of the comic books at all. The actors were horrible in it and the scenes seemed choppy, plus half the time it had poor lighting so I couldn't see like anything on the screen.
There of course have been plenty of comics that make amazing movies. Spider man was an absolutely great and amazing movie, and it also kind of follows the plot line of the comic books. The X-Men another great movie, completely follows the plot line and also had amazing actors. Completely following the plot line doesn't automatically make a movie great, in the case of the Electra movie, follow the plot line all the way yet was not the greatest movie, in fact it was dead and dull and I would never watch it again. The fact that, that movie was weird because I was in love with the prequel, Dare Devil, though my love for Dare Devil probably set too high of expectations. That's another thing that bugs me, while one movie can be great the next one in the series can be horrible.
The lack of a plot can also be amazing like in the case of the new bat man movies, the bat man movies don't follow any of the comic scripts. The movies were absolutely stunning and all of the actors did amazing jobs.
I'm not qutie sure what to expect of the watchmen but it looks like it'll be good.

The Band Carnival

The Band Carnival is always the stupidest thing in the world. It will be a complete waste of my time tomorrow. I have to spend close to six hours at Kennedy, on a saturday, preforming twice and working at a game station once. My parents are also making me help tear down, which means I have to wait until almost ten to go home. Then I have one of my parents stupid social parties with the church to go to, which means I won't get home until almost two in the mornings, looks like it's gonna be another weekend of little to no sleep.
We host the band carnival every year usually just to earn some money for the band, but from all the money the volunteers donate towards the band carnival, we would probably make more if we just had people donate money and never even had the carnival at all. On top of that it's really stressful and harsh on all of the kids that have to participate.
Fleer and Bird make us work our butts off, by going out and begging business for prizes for the drawings and I mean literally begging because most of them turn us down and we have to guilt them into giving us prizes. The reason we try so hard is because they require us to bring in some sort of a prize or else they will drop us a letter grade which totally not fair. I however do not care at all because I am taking band pass fail in order to boost my gpa because I'm taking mostly ap classes and band isn't ap at all so there's a big difference between 4 point and 5 point scales.
Then during the band concert we have to work stations and deal with kids who whine because they didn't get a prize, aww how sad, not!
We have to bring in a liter of pop too, something that I won't have to do either because I really don't care.
I also learned from the last two years to sign up really early for the jobs. This year I got a really easy one, Go Fish, the kids always win so you don't have to deal with them whining.
Even though I didn't really do anything tomorrow is still gonna suck, six hours is way to long to be at a concert.

Another Reason For Procrastination

Every time I'm sick, I usually hold my breath, say this is gonna be a crappy day, then walk out the door and go to school anyways. It truly takes a lot for me to miss a day of school. It's not necessarily because I love school or anything like that, but it's because I really really do not like feeling behind. Rushed is a feeling I can deal with, yet I cannot stand being behind. The pressure just gets to me and I want to relax so bad yet I really really can't. It makes me sit down and take a minute and then that minute gets longer and longer and I eventually end up skipping the assignments from the days I missed, altogether.
I was quite sick on Monday and that is why I went home during second hour. My mother insisted on keeping me home all day on Tuesday, despite my persistent not want to stay home. It is probably a good thing that she did, because I now know that I have been sick the past six weeks with a sinus infection that spread to my lungs and was causing my bad cough and runny nose. I got humongous pills that are 800 mg of amoxicillian. Yay antibiotics. My doctor said that it was a good thing that I came in because if I didn't take the drugs I was going to feel like shit for the next month or so.
As soon as I got to school Wednesday I knew that I was going to have a hell of a time. I got double assignments in almost every class and now I have a test in math over a bunch of crap that we all just learned in this new unit that started on last Friday. To tell you the truth I really don't remeber anything about functions and I really don't want to.
I got home tonight after skipping both my 7th hour and Jazz band, oops, and I had a plan. I had structured my night out according to homework difficulty and started working. There's only one problem. I may have gone to school today, but I'm only on the recovery of my sickness. A.K.A. I'm still sick!
I started to work on my homework and halfway through finishing my AP US History study guide/ Syllabus, I fell asleep. I was up until one in the morning last night working on my US project and got a grand total of four hours of sleep. In conclusion I have like no homework done and I still feel like crap and am totally exhausted and sick. The rest of this week is gonna be FUN! In a totally sarcastic way.

Being home sick

The worst feeling for me is boredom, when I get bored bad things tend to happen and I usually end up getting in more trouble than it's worth.
Today was the first day that I have ever left school early because I wasn't feeling good, not that I've never had a stomach ache before. This time my stomach ache was excruciating and I had to run to the bathroom and you can see where I'm going from here, not a very pretty image.
So my teacher sent me urgently to the nurse with a pass, she is a germaphobic so I saw her reach for the germ ex as I walked out of the room.
The nurse prompted me with the question, what's wrong. I told her what happened in the bathroom, excluding the disguisting and grimy details of what I had for breakfast in a puddle in the toilet bowl.
She then asked me if I wanted to lay down or call one of my parents and be excused for the rest of the day. I chose the latter of the two options. I went back to my teachers room, grabbed my stuff, told her I was leaving and then signed out at the main office.
My mom then decided she didn't want to pick me up, so I had to drive myself home in my tiny little car while I was crippled over by a malignant pain in my middle stomach region.
So I drove home and I had another incident much like the one in the bathroom only this time it was outside in the snow, and it wasn't nearly as gross but it still us putrid.
I was left at home curled up in my bed with a horrible pain for the rest of the day, on top of that my cough made it so that I couldn't get to sleep at home. About three I crawled out of bed to make myself toast and get a glass of orange juice, those were the only two things I could hold down. So that was basically my day. And now I am ending this day with this blog post and am going to bed for an indefinate amount of time, though I know I have a doctors appointment in the morning around ten.
I know I would much rather be at school that at home laying sick in my bed, rather than puking my guts out. Besides I happen to like school quite a bit.

My social life leading to involuntary procrastination

So earlier tonight was the Superbowl, yay the steelers won, but who really cares not me. I'm just happy that my band director will be in an extremely good mood tomorrow and will possibly not make us rehearse even though it is only a week until our concert, which is going to be a disaster.
I knew I had some homework to do that would be due on Monday, yet I almost completely forgot about this stupid Superbowl party that I was being forced to go to. My church was hosting it, I happen to hate my church and feel quite repugnant towards a bunch of hypocritic people who really need to get their heads out of there asses and experience real life instead of a life built around worshiping some man that walked on the Earth around two thousand years ago and can't possibly be related to today's world at all.
I had been pleading with my parents all night to let me stay home. But they kept throwing the same bullshit at me, by saying that I had plenty of other opportunities to do it, with was completely false. Yesterday I was at a jazz concert for about twelve hours and was dog tired by the time I got home so I gave into my exhaustion and slept. And earlier today I was drug to church, =(, then I went to volunteer for National Honor Society at Mission of Hope. I almost had my parents cracked and was allowed to stay home, but my mom pulled out a tatic completely not fair, guilt. She reminded me that yesterday was her birthday and she wouldn't get to see me at all, so I gave in and went to the party.
So my whole point is that the reason I still haven't even started my poster project for ap us is because my parents make me do all of these things and then yell at me when I "Procrastinate."

For the love of Chicken Wings Part II

So I've already established that the immigrants in Postville weren't doing any harm to America, but were they helping the economy. In deed they were.
Because the company was paying the numerous workers below minimum wage, at about five or six dollars and hour, they were able to sell their goods for a lot cheaper than they were selling them before. Since they were keeping the prices low, the company was selling a lot more and they were raking in more money. The consumer was also benefiting, they were able to buy the wings for a lot cheaper so they were saving money and able to have there money for other things, like house payments and stuff like that.
Another things is, how many people would actually want to work in a meat packing plant? Not me! I definitely would not want to work in a factory for the rest of my life or even part of my life, no matter how short. They are gruesome and I don't really like meat that much to begin with, I would probably quit after one day of working there and then become a vegetarian afterwards. I'm pretty sure quite a few people would agree with me on this, after do you really want to work for minimum wage or just a little above for the rest of your life, we as Americans have aspirations. I know I'm going to college and I know that a lot of my friends are, I just don't really see myself getting a degree in meat packing lol. And I know that I could never see myself, a white upper, middle class citizen working in a grimy factory.
So why don't we just let the immigrants do the work that we really don't want to do, for us. I know I would probably get yelled at by some anti-immigration people for saying that, but who cares. They complain about not having enough jobs for people, when the truth is, there are enough jobs out there but nobody wants to work in a meat packing plant, we all are just to lazy and grossed out to do actual work. Or as other people would put it, most Americans are above that and have to high of an education to be working in such a tedious low skilled job market.
So why don't we just let immigrants do our work for us?

For the past decade, the Superbowl has been the TOP sales day for chicken wings in the United States, nearly four percent of all chicken wings sold throughout the year are sold on Superbowl Sunday. Now that's a lot of wings. There's just one problem with this year, since the raid, the Postville plant hasn't been producing nearly as much as they had been, thus we are now declaring today to be a shortage of chicken wings. This means that the prices shot up over the past few weeks and it's really expensive to buy wings now, if you can even find them today. The humorous thing is that many of the people that will be complaining about the lack of chicken wings today are people who complained about illegal immigrants coming into the country and "stealing our jobs." Many of the people are responsible for the Postville raid, an therefore it is not anyones fault except for theres. They just had to go and screw up a system that was working perfectly fine, and now we are all gonna have to suffer with out our chicken wings, except for my family. I told my dad about my theory on the chicken wing shortage about two weeks ago and he went and bought some. As it plays out, they are actually five dollars more expensive today then when he bought them two weeks ago, so I told him he owes me five bucks. And now I am five bucks richer.