Last Senior Reflection Blog (#4)

So my last senior blog yay!

Well just been thinking about the summer recently, can't wait for it to happen! Got beach week with some friends going down to Myrtle (2nd time this year, since I went there with the band a month ago!), have my the family vacation to the caribbean in july, and just hoping to relax right before college. I'm totally psyched for college right now, yet I'm really looking forward to beach week and the rest of summer to hang out with everyone here, because I might not even see half of these people again! Just 2 more weeks to go, 9 more school days if you think about it! :) So I guess it's cheers to graduating high school and good luck to all of my friends out there, I'll definitely miss everyone a bunch

Senior Reflection Blog #3

Alright well, senior years closing up, and I'm practically done with every class, because every final exam is basically a project. But! My point is I just recently finished my music theory final project, which is to make an original composition of music. What I did for it was I wrote a brand new drumline cadence titled: "Snickerdoodles" for the drumline next year, but I don't know if our drumline we'll be able to play it next year, i've made it pretty hard...Either way I'm very proud of myself, it was a long 7 hours of hard work between 2 days to write it all! Hopefully it's an A haha... Although I'm not majoring in music in college, I do hope I continue to do music related stuff like this for fun!

4th Quarter Current Event #4

Ok so the last current event of the year awesome!
Well for the last article, I chose one out of the Washington Post on a movie review of the movie "Up". Up's just came out on May 29th and it's the 10th Pixar Movie by Disney. The review was mainly a summary of the movie more than a review, but the bits of review portion of it did give it positive feedback on the movie. I'm usually a fan of Pixar movies, all of them were better than decent, so I expect this one no different. I've seen trailers for this movie too, and it seemed pretty funny, despite it's a children's movie. If I get a chance to see it, hopefully I won't be disappointed!

Senior Reflection Blog #2

Well, this is sort of a random thought that came across me today while I was at school. To start off, if some did not know, I was drumline captain for Herndon for the 2008-2009 marching band season. Now today I was asked by Cailin Clinton, one of my friends who is applying for the job as a section leader for the band next year, wanted me to look through her application that was going to be turned into Ms. Schoelwer our band teacher. So I thought hey simple enough, shouldn't have many errors, what I found was how much paper work and how many essay were required to even apply to be section leader or drum major. As I read through her essays I thought wow, when I applied for drumline Captain, I was only asked to write 1 short essay not 3 with also a open tryout infront of judges, requiring some conducting use even if you were not applying for drum major. Also as I thought, there isn't really a point of learning basic conducting either with the drumline, we have always used metronomes and relied on our own tap offs. Although I guess this is a price that comes with change seeing how Ms. Schoelwer had just finished her first year here with the Herndon Band. But, definitely a dramatic difference in the application process for captains/section leaders. Just a thought I had about comparing band a year ago, to now

4th Quarter Current Event #3

So this week's current event is on a article on how Bill Clinton sold his saxophone at the Cannes Film Festival for $180,000 dollars to support finding a cure for AIDS. The title of the article is called "Clinton's sax sold at auction for AIDS research" found in the May 22nd issue of the Washington Post. Although it was titled that most of the article contained more about how a lot of other celebrities and stars helped out as well, not just Bill Clinton focused. Other stuff sold were a Fiat 500 car, which sold for $110,000, tennis lessons from pro players Monica Seles, and Jelena Jankovic for $50,000, and a Karl Lagerfeld guitar case filled with Dom Perigon champagne, for $70,000. Lastly, Quentin Tarantino’s new World War II movie, “Inglourious Basterds” had a special screening which raised $84,000. It's definitely sure a good thing celebrities and stars are helping by raising the awareness of AIDS and helping to find a cure!

4th Quarter Current Event #2

OK! so this weeks current event is about the Star Trek movie, and I found an article on Star Trek's amazing box office opening! So partly why I chose this article was that I saw the movie this weekend and I was VERY impressed by it! It made a total of $76.5 million on opening weekend, and even beat Dark Knight's gross money from IMAX showings, now that's intense! Another well important fact from this movie was how well it did on reviews, especially Rotten Tomatoes' 96% on opening weekend on positive ratings, (Which was a 100% at one point on the Opening day, and is now currently still holding strong at 95%).
As for myself I give a great thumbs up to JJ Abrams on the work of this movie. First of all, I'm sure it appealed to major Star Trek fans as much as it did to the general public. As for myself who has no idea about Star Trek, I didn't need to know anything to see the movie. Another thumbs up to the amazing casting of this movie. Chris Pine who had the leading role of Captain Kirk, did amazing in one of his first leading roles. Hopefully it won't be his last amazing leading role considering how well he did! Other roles who did very well was Spock's by Zachary Quinto, Dr. McCoy's by Karl Urban, Sulu's by John Cho, and Simon Pegg who was Scotty.
Lastly what I also loved was the movie's soundtrack, as for being in band, I usually always love a movie with a good orchestral soundtrack. This movie's soundtrack was easily as good as Pirate of the Caribbean's or Lord of the Ring's. So I HIGHLY recommend you see this movie if you love action and a good general movie, don't be turned off just because it's Star Trek!

Senior Reflection Blog #1

Ok well, this is going to be some recent news, just some teenage angst that we all gotta deal with at some point as a teenager.
So you know how they always say, in your first year of having your license you will most likely get pulled over and at least get one ticket, or get in an accident. I got my license awhile ago in April last year and luckily I made it through the first year, happy fun stuff right? Never got a ticket, never been in an accident, sure am lucky to be me! Well today (May 14th) I got into my first accident...rather disappointing news when you think you're out of the clear! Thought I had enough room to back up hit the parked car behind, I said to myself "great...". I guess it also had to do with my frustration with losing my invisalign retainers a few minutes before, loss of focus. Now I have a huge dent on the side of my bumper, but luckily the car I hit only took damage to the license plate. Not quite sure how that adds up in equal damage, but I am sure lucky that his car was not worse. I just talked to the owner of the car, seemed like a pretty nice person, so I think things will be ok.
Overall I view this as an important life lesson. Karma sure does comes back around,and I definitely shouldn't let my stress get me so frustrated. But, hey it's an experience thing, had to go through an accident sometime in life first right?

4th quarter Current Event #1

So my article this week was found in the Washington Post website on some pregame speculation on the 3-3 tied series of the Capitals vs the Penguins in the Stanley Cup conferenc semifinals. I am personally really excited to watch this game. The Capitals have been possibly the best team of all sports in D.C. for the last few years. Teams like the Nationals, or the Redskins (who I'd wish would do better than just getting to the first round of playoffs :( ) never get as far or have as much of a success as the Capitals. As predicted in the article and most likely by all, this will come down to a close game, in overtime or a late goal in 3rd period, especially because every game except for one in this series of the Capitals vs. The Penguins has been decided down to 1 goal margins. Also 3 of the games of the 6 so far have been decided in Overtime.

Editorial Blog #5

My article for this week is on the SAT posted online on the USAtoday.com editorials section. The new policy on the SAT now is that they do not have to send all their scores to applied colleges, you only have to send your best, which poses an advantage for current SAT and future SAT student takers compared to years before. The new policy of the SAT by CollegeBoard is called “Score Choice”. Score Choice though has a bias to benefit more well-off families because it involves retaking the SAT multiple times, which means paying fees again. College Board waive the $45 SAT fee twice for students in need, but that doesn't necessarily solve the problem. Although the board gave high school seniors 221,962 fee waivers last year, that total doesn't count an additional 170,000 test takers from households that earn less than $60,000 a year.

The writer of the article thinks that rather than define the SAT in a scramble for customers and repeat business, College Board ought to redouble its efforts to measure academic potential, using proven gauges of academic success such as the standardized essay-writing portion and tests on advanced-level subjects.

After reading this article I agree with the writer’s opinion on certain aspects. I do think that College Board should focus less on business status and work more towards their original attempt in gauging academic success with the SAT. However in our state of the economy, it’s probably tough for families to pay for their sons’ and daughters’ test fees in the first place, and they need a new way to start up business. I being a student also think this “Score Choice” is a good idea because I had to send in all of my test scores for my colleges even with my bad ones, this helps students a lot more in the application process because they won’t judge them on bad scores even if they did really well on one. Although if you think about it, all students have this benefit so it makes it harder on the application choice if all students send all their better scores, so this actually might make the application process for colleges harder on students.

Editorial Blog #4

President Obama recently confirmed this idea and the U.S. is at the moment considering it, but as the writer says, there comes both promise and peril in this action. The positive outcome of this would be the U.S. could somehow replicate the successful results of the agreements with Sunni leaders in Iraq that snapped their alliance with al-Qaeda, dramatically reduced violence and advanced political stability. The negative setbacks that might happen is that we could provoke the Taliban more, because Pakistan’s government has made deals with the Taliban which caused a way for the Taliban to attack Afghanistan more often. Right not the most likely appealing strategy is to work with the lower-level ranked Taliban, but we and our allies are unaware on how many such people of that exist, and people who will work to cooperate with us. The Taliban in general is focused on establishing Islamic domination, unlike the Sunnis who yearn to re-establish the political power they had under Saddam Hussein's secular government.

As for the writer, he/she believes that U.S. and NATO need to keep up with the military pressure in Afghanistan for now so that it will eventually lead to talks with the Taliban and extremists like a key to open a door. Also the writer believes that the best thing for now might be to leave the negotiations with Afghani leaders for now.

I definitely agree with the writer on this point, it’s definitely too soon to start to act on this idea. Using the U.S. and NATO military power we can use it as a foothold over the Taliban to sort of force them into coming into terms and agreements with us and our allies, one step must lead into another and something cannot be solved by jumping a step or relying on one idea.

Editorial Blog #3

This week editorial was found Washington Post’s issue for February 22nd, 2009. This writer talks about his/her’s support for Ken Salazar the U.S.’s new Interior Secretary. Salazar hopes to begin in starting a preservation project for the national mall of D.C. as the new Interior Secretary. He believes that the mall is a national icon, and that they need to take responsibility in keep the mall in a good condition. The article stated Bush administration’s Interior department has neglected to do much, and Salazar hopes to turn that around. Other plans of improvements to things include assisting President Obama in developing a new energy frontier and new opportunities for youth and better programs for Native Americans. It will take lots of money to start these improvements and preservation of the mall. The article ends with a quote by Salazar: “When I think about 1.8 million people out there on Jan. 20, it's an incredible statement about our nation. . . . There's something very special about this place, something very special about the Mall, and it will be a very high priority for me." What he said in that quote demonstrates how well he fits this role as our interior secretary, and I feel like we can trust this man to do a good job after saying something like that!

Editorial Blog #2

This week’s editorial that I found was in the Washington Post from the February 18th paper. The article was by Kathleen Parker, and it is called Be Calm and Prosper which is mainly about our economy right now and how President Obama is very supportive and still very positive on looking upon the future of the economy in our country. Obama has stated that there are times in this country where we have been in worse situations than now, such as what most of our grandparents have went through with the Great Depression. Obama believes we will make it through this crisis, stating that Americans are tough and resilient. The writer states that part of the greatest challenge of being President as Obama, is to convince the American people that their situation is serious while not scaring them into economic paralysis. Kathleen Parker, the writer of the article continues on remaining very supportive of Obama’s optimism and states that his optimism and faith is the best medicine for our country’s state right now and I agree with her on that. Staying positive can only bring a better output, we shouldn’t give up just because things look bleak. Obama believes that our goals are long term and our current economic situation should not be based on solely on what happens on one day in the stock market, whether it rises or falls. I enjoyed this editorial because it’s a good in hearing a different point of view on our economy rather than the average negative stuff you hear or read all the time on the news. It’s good to know someone is supportive and looking on a more positive perspective of our future.

Editorial Blog #1

So this is the first editorial blog yay! fun stuff....
Anywho my editorial was posted on USATODAY.com by a person (that was remained anonymous) on 2/4/09. It was about the Salmonella problem in our country right now and basically talks about this peanut plant in Blakely, Georgia that was shut down because of Salmonella. It also talks about the sanitation problems of this peanut plant such as various holes in the roof which could leak water into the building, mold on the walls and roof, holes where critters and animals could enter in and out, and roaches found in various places. Kinda scary to know that some of the food you eat might have came from this place...but LETS MOVE ON because I like my peanut products too much. The editorial mainly blames the U.S. government and the FDA for not taking action to put into further investigation into this problem earlier, and blames companies for ignoring the problems in sanitation. I just want to be able to eat my peanut products without worrying about Salmonella... :) On the brightside if your allergic to peanuts then this doesn't concern you as much, haha.

Here's the link to the article if you're interested in reading it
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/02/our-view-on-foo.html#more

Political Cartoon

Ok so this weeks politcal cartoon is from cagle.com/politicalcartoons

This political cartoon shows a big disgruntled hobo like guy who is welcoming Obama at the white house. The big is actually recession and as the caption says he'll be staying here for awhile. It's pretty self explanatory I guess, Big guy = big problem so Recession will be the biggest concern and problem for Obama for his presidency.

Other then that I'm glad to witness the first African-American to assume the role as our President, it is truly part of our Countries history. I definitely thought I would not see this day at my age of 18, maybe when I was like in my mid 30s or something. So I wish Obama good luck, and I hope he'll lead our country to prosperity in the next 4 years! :)

Political Cartoon #5

So this week my political cartoon is again from cagle.com/politicalcartoons.

So in this political cartoon basically says "Bush Happens" and Bush himself is at his podium by Dick Cheney above all the problems Bush faced in his presidency. Some of the problems mentioned are Wall Street's collapse and the economic recession were in, New Orleans and hurricane Katrina, Bin Laden, a soldier probably meaning conflicts in the middle east, and an Asian guy similar to Kim Jong Ill, with a A-Bomb probably meaning Korea. There's some other ones on there that I don't really understand however, but someone else could probably explain them. I thought this cartoon was pretty funny considering how they made Bush look and instead of "S*** Happens" (censored for Stroudy...haha) it's "Bush Happens"

So Obama take's presidency next week, hopefully we'll have a peaceful no problematic transition and hope for the best for America in the next 4 years! :)

Politcal Cartoon #4

So this week my political cartoon is from again cagle.com/politicalcartoons.

This politcal cartoon is a reference how 2009 will be this year. The caption of this cartoon is "Buck your seat belts! It's gonna be a wild ride!". The 2009 roller coaster is shaped with many loops and crazy other stuff. Another image is that the person who says the caption is Uncle Sam, who I think represents the U.S. In the back of the roller coaster carts are ordinary people, I guess you can say the citizens of the U.S. The cartoon seems to mean 2009 will not be easy and will be a very rough ride to get through to 2010, mainly because of 2008's problems that were not solved. Or even a prediction of new problems that will arise.

Overall we will probably have a bumpy rough start through 2009, but who knows what could happen later on, things might go for the better or worse. All I know is we graduate in 6 months now :D