book review

The Glass Castle makes readers thankful for what they have, and fills them with hope that hard work can really transform the standard of living in a family. This book reveals a part of American society rarely glimpsed by the more fortunate. In today’s economic climate, this book is a warm reminder that perseverance and sweat allow anyone to improve their condition, and attitude is the main key to change. Anyone struggling with family issues, poverty, or downright hopelessness will find this book to be a reminder that the American dream is more tangible than a mere fantasy. Jeannette Walls inspires dreamers to stop half-heartedly wishing on a star, and start working towards a planet.

Halloween

When it comes to Halloween, my family  doesn't go all decoration crazy or anything. Right now we have one pumpkin sitting on the porch, and that's it. Halloween is an excuse to eat massive amounts of candy. My best Halloween memory is running around the neighborhood with huge pillow cases in which we collected the goodies, then taking inventory of each bag and bartering to get the best stuff. (the best sweets, In my opinion, will always be milk duds, chewy sweet tarts, sour skittles, and anything made of chocolate) Smashing squishy pumpkins in the woods after the holiday is pretty fun, too.

education

I believe that the most important arguments made in "2 million minutes", "I just want to be average", and "For once, blame the students" were on the topics of incentive and culture. In the documentary, Apoorva says she wants to get rich. It seems like all of the asian students are pressured by their parents to do well in school. My parents want me to "get a life". I am beginning to see their point.
Daniel Pink's speech, "Pay for Performance" highlights the importance of intrinsic motivation in business environments. (You have to watch the video to understand what I'm saying about it. http://2mm.typepad.com/usa/2009/10/daniel-pinks-insights-on-pay-for-performance.html ) It would be so awesome if we had "fedex days" at school. They would help students to become interested in what they learn about every day. The candle experiment shows the importance of thinking outside the box and never using extrinsic motivation in an innovative environment. So, it is kind of ironic that east indians look up to Bill Gates (an innovative and intrinsically motivated person), but they are motivated by money and parental standards.
It seems like both American and Asian students have an unbalanced view of education. Americans favor sports to the extreme, while Asians desire knowledge above all else. American culture supports an unbalanced view with "Ferris Beuler's day off", "the Simpsons", and the old tv show "Recess". Peer pressure here deals mostly with sports and physical appearance, while in Asia students desire to be the best in the class. If American and Asian cultures merged, both would benefit by becoming more balanced.  

Another weekend blah

I just read about how we're supposed to have two looooong paragraphs on the weekend blog. Then I saw the comics link/ the oatmeal thing. I read "what it means when you say litterally". Holy guacamole. I will never use the word litterally again unless I have rehearsed how to say it in my head so long that the conversation has moved on. In, other words, I just won't say it. That website has sooooo many swear words on it. They bug me. They have been over used so much that they have lost all originality/significance/meaning. Really truly, they make your intelligence and ingenuity seem a bit lower whenever you use them. The comic characters often don't have completed eyes, so you can't tell where they're looking. I am running out of things to put in my loooong paragraph.
Oh, I know. I spent most of the morning reading "The memory keeper's daughter"....fabulous book! It is probably the only sad book I have ever read that I liked, which is probably due to the fact that this book has so much suspence in it! Who would ever have thought of a sad AND suspenseful book, it's the perfect combination though. I'm about half way through it, and I can tell that every character is at a point where they all go down together, or something starts to go right. I admire the author because she is so good at showing you what is going on, instead of telling you. Everything is connected to everything else, but you can't anticipate what happens next until it smacks you in the face and you're like, WHAT! I really hope that it ends in a way that won't leave me banging my head against a wall in frustration over the lives of made up characters. Litterally.

Deutsch muzik

When you think of German music, you probably imagine techno or the polka, if you ever think about german music. There are many other genres in Germany, though. I just learned about the diversity of German music this year on a website that you can find by googling "step into German". Even if you don't understand many of the words, the music videos are pretty cool. I put the youtube URL's to a few of my favorites below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVQtIwaumJE
This one's by Kira. It doesn't have a video, but her voice is so clear and beautiful!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V66cr41DNnM
This one's by Paul van Dyk and Peter Heppner.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-I3cLiptlM
This is by Clueso. I can't figure out how they made the video, and it's really bugging me.

When listening to songs in a language that you're still learning, it makes you appreciate how words sound, not just what they mean. Hope anyone who reads this enjoys it.

Obama's Speech

• cadence: He lowers the pitch of his voice at the end of a sentence when he is trying to emphasize the point he just made. He does not do this when he is giving examples to prove his points.
• gestures: He waves after he is introduced to the audience, he points at the audience when he says  "you" or "now". In the middle of his speech it seems like he waves his hands in small circles because he doesn't know what to do with them.
• setting: The members of the audience that are used as the president's background are all kids, multi-cultural, and wearing suits or dress shirts. The president is speaking at a very successful highschool. All of these are beneficial to the president's message, but the expressionless and fairly bored faces in the audience are not.
• enunciation: He makes sure that he pronounces every word accurately, but he makes a few grammatical errors. He says "uh" and stutters several times. He says "ethics is about", "a non-for-profit", "you will be the one who are", and "got that algebra formula properly.".
• climactic order: He doesn't go through a long chain of events, instead choosing to skip straight from now (school) to the future (careers). Later on he places college and extra curriculars in the middle.
• repetition: He repeats thoughts of America's dependence on students, the importance of education, and the idea that "we" are counting on "you". He repeats the words "you", "future", and "education" a lot to emphasize his point.
• parallelism: He compares his ethics class to the presidency, and he compares classes in general to different careers.
• figurative language: Holy guacamole, he uses a ton! Just to start with he states that tests and projects are "just around the corner", students should "color outside the lines" (whatever that means), students should look for subjects in "what makes you come alive" (Aren't we already alive?), students should start "expanding horizons", parents "love you to death", and in school "one hour you can be an author, the next hour, a scientist". It bugs me when he says "I met" or "I sat down with". He talks about the person who indroduced him, saying that he learned something about her when he sat down and talked to her, when he really only heard it from her indirectly in her introduction a few moments ago.
• eye contact: He spends equal amounts of time looking at the audience and looking at his notes. It seems like when he looks at his audience he looks into the distance, never daring to look into the front row.
• pauses: The largest pause was before... Twitter, which was used for a humorous effect (the audience laughed, but I didn't get it). The pauses in his speech were placed like the ones in MLK Jr.'s speech. He says "it is great... to be here." The pause in the middle makes you ask "Why is it, or what is great?". After the pause he answers your question with an obvious response.
• posture: He stands up straight, shifts his weight from one foot to the other, and holds the podium.
• voice inflection: This is similar to cadence. His tone gets higher when he gives a command or makes a key statement, and goes lower when he illustrates his points.