President Elect Obama

I read an article from the Los Angeles Times called "Obama inauguration in January - but DC travel rush underway" that talked about how even though Obama wont be the official president for another two months, people are already planning on going to the inauguration ceremony. This is so great. This tells me that people are already completly supportive of the soon to be president. The only question I have is are people going to stay supportive. For instance, with Bush people still voted for him the second time her ran, but by the end of that term I would be willing to bet most people hate him and hold him completly responsible for putting this great countries economy down the drain. Something else that I think Obama's being elected has done is something that supposidly ended long ago. I think that the first African American man becoming President marks the true end of the Cival War. Until now black people had acomplished nearly everything that white people had. And after all wasn't the point of the war to win black people all the rights given to Americans? Well now they have done everything that they have had the right to do.

Bears Eat the Vikings

In this Sundays NFL contest between the Bears and the Vikings, the Bears came out on top. The Chicago Bears played an outstanding game scoring 48 points to tie the record for most points scored by the franchise. Although the Vikings running back Adrian Pederson ran for 121 yards and scored 2 td's (first running back to run for 100+ yards on Bears defense this season) and the Vikings also beat the bears in almost every combined stat, the Bears had two special teams touchdowns that in the end gave them the win. With this divisional match up the Vikings record moves to 3-4 at second place in their division and the Bears move to 4-3 tied for first in their division (these teams being in the same division).

I am slightly mad that the Bears beat off the Vikings because (aside from the Broncos) the Vikings are my favorite team. Plus on paper, the Vikings were supposed to win this game. They have an outstanding 2nd year running back in Adrian Pederson and an extremely good defense that is really good against the run and pass with Pro-Bowlers in the secondary. It all comes down to the 2 special teams touchdowns that Chicago scored. Without those 2 td's, the score of the game is 41-34 with the Vikings coming out on top. This would have put the Vikings tied at first place in the division and the Bears in second place instead of the other way around which would be really interesting standings.

Scholar Center?

On Mr. Fisches blog today, he talked about how the LPS CIO wants to change the name of "media center" for the library to "Scholar Center" or "Scholar in Residence". He says "I don't even like the term media center because the emphasis is still on the containers of information..." (Dan Mass). My opinion is that we shouldn't be focusing on things as little as how we refer to our library. In the big scheme of things, does the name really matter? Most kids that I know don't even call it the media center, it's just the library. When I see people focusing on things as little as the name for the library, it really makes me mad. Not because I don't care, but because there are a lot more other issues that we should be focusing on. For instance, school budget. As far as I know, budgets are pretty low at schools (not including grants). Dan Mass should be helping to find a way to deal with this; the problem of sports programs being cut of not funded properly is also an issue that needs to be dealt with. This is something that is a great problem to me because I have always been athletic and loved watching and playing sports.

To answer his question "So, if we were going to write a new job description for the Scholar in Residence at your school, what items would you include?", I would say that they should help students that struggle to deal with any technology, books, or anything of that matter. I would also say that they would need to be extremely good at working with kids and computers. This is the 21st century and they should know their way around a computer because unfortunately a lot of kids haven't had the chance to get educated in the use of "the tool of the future."

Nation Turns More Towards the Jackass

In this article I read on the Los Angeles Times called "Obama increases lead over McCain slightly since debate", it talked about how after the debate on Friday, Barack was ahead in the polls to win the election even more so than before. This makes me really happy because if I could vote, Obama has my support. This is just a personal opinion but Obama is truly the way to go. He has a slightly weak foreign policy but he has a running mate with a strong one. Anything he lacks in himself he found in his V.P. I also think that considering where George Bush got us, can we really afford to put someone in the white house that has almost the exact same views? McCain would just keep us where we are at this very moment, which is a bad spot to be in. We have a pointless war going on, our economy is basically trashed, and the rich are staying rich and the poor staying poor. You can't honestly look me in the eye and say that George Bush was an even decent president. By putting McCain in office, that would be like putting George bush in office for another four to eight years. People can say this because McCain "Voted along side Bush 90% of the time." Obama is a strong candidate because he is an extremely strong speaker, has solid views on the war and the economy, has a known and established running mate, and he is confident which is helpful because America could really used a boost right now.

Japanese Internet Satellite

In the article posted on the Fisch Bowl, it told me about how Japan launched a program that will allow people in rural areas of Japan to get the extremely fast internet speeds that the grids in big cities have long since had access to. This program is called "Kizuna" meaning "ties" or "bonds" in Japanese which makes me believe that Japan is a country that is so developed that everybody needs to constantly be in touch with each other. The internet program will get Net download speeds of 155 megabits per second. This is incredibly fast. Japan has the fastest internet in the world now because of Kizuna (that is available to the entire country). Why can't America be like this? We have the power to do so, but corporate America is so tight that they charge a ton for someone to have access to something as "necessary" as the internet. If Japan and America would just work together I bet that there would be such a thing as a hover car right now. By the two leading industrial and "electronic" nations banding together, the world would be so much farther advanced. We could help third world countries along the way to being a country that was truly worth something. Now, I am not saying we could end poverty, but helping them to create jobs would allow poor people to get jobs because with more jobs, the necessity for more workers appears. 30 years ago, the internet barely existed, and now it is time the world realizes that it has world changing potential.

5280 Pledge

After reading an artivle about how Denver mayor John Hickenlooper kick off a program today called "Mile High Parents", the first thing that came to my head was "That is an awsome idea!" This program is something where parents make a pledge to spend 30 minutes a day with their children focusing on their school work. This to me is a great idea because I think the most important thing in a proper education is the involvment of the paretns. If parents spend 30 minutes a day (which in a school year coincidently comes out to 5280 minutes) then it will probably help kids become more focused and possibly find a great way to bond with thei parents. The only question I have is will parents actually do it? Or will they just sign up because they feel obligated to since "everyone else" is doing it? They could always just say they were spending the time helping their kids when in actuallity they aren't. I know this is a terrible thought that a parent would lie about spending time with their kids (something they should already do), but peer pressure is everywhere and everyone is subject to it. I don't think a lot of parents would actually lie so I bet in the end this plan to get parents involved in their childrens school work is a really good idea and will end up sparking the creativity and passion for learning is the young minds of America.

Shanghai Metropolis

After reading another Shift Happens Statistic, I was once again shocked. In one city in Shanghai there are more skyscrapers than the entire West Coast of the United States. For the last six years, a 30+ story building has been completed every 12 days. Think about the resources it requires for the people living in that city to build all of those skyscrapers! That is a lot of steel, glass, drywall, and everything else that goes into putting a building up. I think that if I lived there, I couldn’t stand it. There would be constant noise and debris falling from the construction sites. Life would be made so much more difficult if you ask me. There would be roads that were constantly being shut down so that nothing fell on the cars or whatever the reason is that roads are closed due to construction. But when I really think about it I just come back to the shock factor. One city has used more resources than the entire West Coast! That is Washington, California, and Origen. I find all of these statistics that Mr. Fisch posts extremely fascinating and I hope to find more of them to respond to in the future.

Web Pages in the Google Index

Today when I read the article Shift Happens Statistic of the Day, I was honestly not surprised to find out that there are 1,000,000,000,000 web pages in the Google index as of July 2008. One thing that did surprise me is that that number is growing by "several billion" every day. That means that for every person on the planet, there are approximately 166 web pages just linked to Google! To me that means that our society today is becoming completely dependent on the internet. What would happen if Google just disappeared one day? Would all those people going on to those 1 trillion sites just have to guess to figure out the answer to their problem? I truthfully don't think that most of the world could survive without the internet. Some people wouldn't be able to work, and a lot of people would probably just go insane due to the loss of communication and "information super-speed way." I personally use the internet almost everyday either for school, or to chat with my dad online, or for just pure entertainment. I don't see the number of web sites dropping at all... EVER! It will just continue to go up and up and up! Some day people will probably live off the internet. They will never leave their homes because they simply won’t need to. People are already working out of their houses and you can talk online. So in 50 years or so when the sources to be able to do everything you do in life online, what will be the point? I hope that that isn't the way everything turns out, but it is definitely possible.