Blind Alley By: Iris Johansen

The story Blind Alley is a very interesting story that has an OK ending. This story is about a serial killer that thinks the main character, Jane, is an ancient actress from Herculaneum that was reincarnated into Jane's body. The cereal killer, Aldo, had a dad who was obsessed with this actress, Cira, so much that he would forget about Aldo when he was a little child. Aldo soon hated Cira and wanted to kill anyone that looked just like her, and Jane looked exactly like Cira. The whole story is about Jane trying to trick Aldo into believing that she is Cira so he could get caught by the police and be killed. The only problem with the ending was that Aldo is killed about 30 pages before the end of the book, so the rest of the story is pretty boring. I think that Aldo should have been killed about 5 pages from the ending so that the last 5 pages would be more interesting. That is the only problem with this story, but the whole story made me laugh and made me really scared. I think that people should read this story because it is very interesting.

"The Great and Terrible Beauty" by: Libba Bray is good story that would make you want to read it every second of the day. In the beginning of the story the main character Gemma lives in India and is having her 16th birthday soon. Something terrible happens to Gemma's mother and she is sent to a boarding school in England. There she finds out that her mother was in a special group called the "Order". Gemma realizes that she can see things in the future but everything that she sees is terrible things. She can also see dead people, but she sees them as normal people in a different world. These dead people that she sees help her figure out what happened to her mother and also help her find out more about the school. The last 30 pages are the most intense part of the book but you have to read the whole book first to understand what is going on. I would prefer that girl's should read this because there is some romance in it that is mixed in perfectly with everything else that is going on in the story. This book is the first book of a series that Libba Bray has written. I haven't read the other books but I can assume that those other books will be just as amazing as this one is. I would most definitely prefer this book to anyone that needs a book to read.

Our Boo-Boos

Rachel Rundell

11/26/08

Mrs. Lindsay

Definition- Pain

Our Boo-Boos

 

            What is pain?  Is pain a boo-boo that you get from falling on the ground?  Or is there pain from losing a loved one?  There are many ways of having pain. Pain can mean many different things in many different cultures and genders.  The definition of pain according to Webster’s dictionary is a physical suffering or distress, as due to injury, illness, etc.  To a little kid, pain can be falling on the ground and getting a scrape on the knee.  A parent that is looking at the little kid could think that type of pain doesn’t hurt at all.  There can be emotional pain from a death or low-self esteem which can be very hard to get over.  For women and girls, pain is something that could make us try to look hotter than girls sitting next to us.  Pain can be thought of in many different ways to many different people.

             Many athletes have many types of pain.  From personal experience, pain can be your muscles straining to be in an uncomfortable position for a very long time.  To a soccer player, pain can be running around a soccer field for 4 hours.  A football player can think of pain as getting tackled and thrown onto the ground.  All athletes and ordinary people understand that breaking a bone is a terrible type of pain.  People of all ages can understand physical pain, but it is very hard, especially for little kids, to be able to understand emotional pain.

            Emotional pain is a pain that is from the inside and not a lot of people can tell if you have emotional pain.  I think about medical doctors when I think about emotional pain.  Medical doctors, to me, can understand emotional pain the most because doctors save lives and if they see a person die in front of them, it’s hard to get over that.  Imagine thinking that it’s your fault that someone died.  Another type of emotional pain that a lot of teenagers can understand is low self-esteem.  Every once in awhile, a teenager goes through a stage where they think that they aren’t good enough for the world.   A lot of teenagers think that nobody likes them and they are worthless.  Sometimes emotional pain can lead to physical pain, which isn’t good for the body.  For example, some teenagers cut themselves or beat themselves up because they think they have low self-esteem.  Emotional pain can be hard to get over sometimes and can get out of control also.

The pain that women go through for beauty can be easier to endure than emotional pain, but beauty pain takes a lot of courage and patience.  I remember the day when my mom first plucked my eyebrows.  My eyebrows hurt badly the next day. I sometimes wonder why women go through pain.  A lot of times girls think that they need to look the hottest compared to the girl sitting next to them.  I find that sometimes teenage girls try to look their best for a man.  Many high fashion models go through pain just to get booked by a top designer.   When girls see stick skinny models, they want to look just like those models.  They don’t realize all the pain that those models went through to look like that. 

            Pain can be defined in many different ways.  A way that pain can be most related to is in physical pain.  Physical pain can be scraping your knee on the ground, or it can be soreness of the muscles from keeping them in an uncomfortable position for a long time.  Emotional pain can be understood most by adults and some teenagers.  Emotional pain is pain that is hard to see from the outside.  This type of pain can be from a person dying, to having really low self-esteem.  Women go through pain just to look beautiful.  The world is full of pain, but pain is different for each person. 

Oil and Gasoline

Oil and Gasoline

In 1999, the price of oil hovered around $16 a barrel. In July 2008, it reached a peak of $147 a barrel. In the months that followed, as fears of a global recession grew, prices plunged to the $75 a barrel range, a roller coaster ride that left both producers and consumers confused and wrung out. Prices were still far higher than they had been a few years earlier, but oil-producing countries that had reshaped their economies around the huge influx of revenues faced a suddenly altered landscape.
Many factors contributed to the long buildup between 1999 and 2008, including the relentless growth of the economies of China and India and widespread instability in oil-producing regions, including Iraq and Nigeria's delta region. The triple-digit oil prices that followed appeared to redraw the economic and political map of the world, challenging some old notions of power. Oil-rich nations made enjoying historic gains and opportunities, while major importers — including China and India, home to a third of the world's population — confronted rising economic and social costs.
Managing this new order became a central problem of global politics. Countries that need oil clawed at each other to lock up scarce supplies, and were willing to deal with any government, no matter how unsavory, to do it.
In many poor nations with oil, much of the proceeds were lost to corruption, depriving these countries of their best hope for development. And oil fueled gargantuan investment funds run by foreign governments, which some in the West see as a new threat.
Countries like Russia, Venezuela and Iran that were flush with rising oil revenue saw that change reflected in newly aggressive foreign policies. But some unexpected countries reaped benefits, as well as costs, from higher prices. Consider Germany. Although it imports virtually all its oil, it has prospered from extensive trade with a booming Russia and the Middle East. German exports to Russia grew 128 percent from 2001 to 2006.
The high price of gas became an important issue in the presidential campaign. Senator John McCain in particular made energy a focus, proposing to suspend the gas tax during the summer. He also made fervent calls to expand domestic drilling for oil, while his opponent, Barack Obama, emphasized the need for alternative fuels.
The surge in prices hit automakers hard, as sales of the truck-based models that had been Detroit's most profitable product dropped sharply. Mass transit systems across the country reported a sharp increase in riders. As prices fell in the fall, the question facing Opec and car makers alike was whether those shifts would reverse, as they had in previous downturns, or whether a tipping point had been reached.

Poor Freshman :(

Girl, 14, Is Struck and Killed by a School Bus in Queens

Jasmine was hit on her way to school, crossing 57th Avenue near 90th Street in Elmhurst.
The girl, Jasmine Paragas, was hit at 8:10 a.m. as she crossed 57th Avenue near the Queens Center mall in Elmhurst, the police said.
She was pronounced dead at 8:54 a.m. at Elmhurst Hospital Center, the authorities said.
Officials said the driver of the bus, George Sederino, 62, stayed at the scene after the crash. A police spokesman said that there was “no alcohol on the guy’s breath. ” He was issued summonses for equipment failure and failure to yield to a pedestrian.
The police said the bus, a yellow minibus, was northbound on 90th Street and made a left onto 57th Avenue when it struck Jasmine in the crosswalk. It was not clear whether the light was green, but the police were investigating.
Margie Feinberg, a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Education, said Jasmine was a freshman honors student at Francis Lewis High School who excelled in foreign languages and English.
“She applied for and was accepted into the school’s University Scholars Program, which is an accelerated program for high school students at Francis Lewis,” Ms. Feinberg said.
There were four adult passengers in the minibus, headed to a center for adults with special needs, she said. None were injured, the police said.
The bus belonged to the JEA Bus Company, which has a contract to transport students, but it was not carrying any students at the time, Ms. Feinberg said.
A woman who answered the phone at the bus company, in Gravesend, Brooklyn, said, “We don’t have any information at this time.”
Ms. Feinberg said that the principal of Francis Lewis High School, on Utopia Parkway, spoke to Jasmine’s parents at the hospital and sent letters home with students about what had happened.
“Everybody’s in such shock,” Ms. Feinberg said.
Jasmine lived with her parents and 10-year-old brother on the top floor of a three-story house a few blocks from where she was hit. The family immigrated from the Philippines about six years ago.
A neighbor, Showkat Kazi, said that Jasmine’s mother, Connie, walked with her every morning across Queens Boulevard because she feared its speeding traffic. She would leave Jasmine at the Q88 bus stop and then head to work, Mr. Kazi said. She did so on Thursday, only to find out later that Jasmine had been hit.
“She’s in the same class as my daughter and just yesterday she got a 96 on her report card,” Mr. Kazi said. “My daughter got a 95 and they were talking about their grades, and I was so proud of them.”
“This is a total disaster for this family,” he said.

College is getting more unaffordale n America! :S

College May Become Unaffordable for Most in U.S.

Over all, the report found, published college tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007 while median family income rose 147 percent. Student borrowing has more than doubled in the last decade, and students from lower-income families, on average, get smaller grants from the colleges they attend than students from more affluent families.
“If we go on this way for another 25 years, we won’t have an affordable system of higher education,” said Patrick M. Callan, president of the center, a nonpartisan organization that promotes access to higher education.
“When we come out of the recession,” Mr. Callan added, “we’re really going to be in jeopardy, because the educational gap between our work force and the rest of the world will make it very hard to be competitive. Already, we’re one of the few countries where 25- to 34-year-olds are less educated than older workers.”
Although college enrollment has continued to rise in recent years, Mr. Callan said, it is not clear how long that can continue.
“The middle class has been financing it through debt,” he said. “The scenario has been that families that have a history of sending kids to college will do whatever if takes, even if that means a huge amount of debt.”
But low-income students, he said, will be less able to afford college. Already, he said, the strains are clear.
The report, “Measuring Up 2008,” is one of the few to compare net college costs — that is, a year’s tuition, fees, room and board, minus financial aid — against median family income. Those findings are stark. Last year, the net cost at a four-year public university amounted to 28 percent of the median family income, while a four-year private university cost 76 percent of the median family income.
The share of income required to pay for college, even with financial aid, has been growing especially fast for lower-income families, the report found.
Among the poorest families — those with incomes in the lowest 20 percent — the net cost of a year at a public university was 55 percent of median income, up from 39 percent in 1999-2000. At community colleges, long seen as a safety net, that cost was 49 percent of the poorest families’ median income last year, up from 40 percent in 1999-2000.
The likelihood of large tuition increases next year is especially worrying, Mr. Callan said. “Most governors’ budgets don’t come out until January, but what we’re seeing so far is Florida talking about a 15 percent increase, Washington State talking about a 20 percent increase, and California with a mixture of budget cuts and enrollment cuts,” he said.
In a separate report released this week by the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, the public universities acknowledged the looming crisis, but painted a different picture.
That report emphasized that families have many higher-education choices, from community colleges, where tuition and fees averaged about $3,200, to private research universities, where they cost more than $33,000.
“We think public higher education is affordable right now, but we’re concerned that it won’t be, if the changes we’re seeing continue, and family income doesn’t go up,” said David Shulenburger, the group’s vice president for academic affairs and co-author of the report. “The public conversation is very often in terms of a $35,000 price tag, but what you get at major public research university is, for the most part, still affordable at 6,000 bucks a year.”
While tuition has risen at public universities, his report said, that has largely been to make up for declining state appropriations. The report offered its own cost projections, not including room and board.
“Projecting out to 2036, tuition would go from 11 percent of the family budget to 24 percent of the family budget, and that’s pretty huge,” Mr. Shulenburger said. “We only looked at tuition and fees because those are the only things we can control.”
Looking at total costs, as families must, he said, his group shared Mr. Callan’s concerns.
Mr. Shulenburger’s report suggested that public universities explore a variety of approaches to lower costs — distance learning, better use of senior year in high school, perhaps even shortening college from four years.
“There’s an awful lot of experimentation going on right now, and that needs to go on,” he said. “If you teach a course by distance with 1,000 students, does that affect learning? Till we know the answer, it’s difficult to control costs in ways that don’t affect quality.”
Mr. Callan, for his part, urged a reversal in states’ approach to higher-education financing.
“When the economy is good, and state universities are somewhat better funded, we raise tuition as little as possible,” he said. “When the economy is bad, we raise tuition and sock it to families, when people can least afford it. That’s exactly the opposite of what we need.”

Bad ad #3

This is a bad ad because it's not really selling the poduct. The product is selling Metamucil. I am not even sure what Metamucil is! From what it looks like it helps you lose weight. What it shows is some guts lying on an operation table. If you are trying to lose weight then why are you showing guts and saying that they are sexy? This ad is very confusing to me. Plus dietary things like this Metamucil don't even work to make you look better.

Bad ad #2

This ad isn't as bad as the first but still. It shows a man and woman doing something and the man is getting the gum out of her back pocket. Everything is black and white except for the tango gum. This ad is saying that you should be have sex to get some gum. All you need to do is ask for a piece of gum! This ad does show what is being sold but in a bad way. To me it would be just a little bit easier to just show the gum without all the people. The only problem though is that our generation doesn't want plain and simple. We always want something that will catch our eye. Apparently this is the only was to catch someone's attention.

Bad Ad#1

GR!! I hate ads that use women as a toy! This ad has a women in a bra and tiny underwear posing in a really gross position. The background is black and the women is holding a box (I am guessing it's blush?). What I hate the most is what it says at the top right hand corner!! OMGSH!! What type of women wants to be a guys toy! I know I don't!

Handwriting vs. Computers

There seems no question but that handwriting essays, which has existed since who knows how long, is on the way out. Laptops, PC's, Mac's, IPhones, PDA's... no one wants to handwrite anymore. Every time you look up someone is texting. When was the last time you received a handwritten letter from Grandma? School work is done on blogs and other forms of technology and even children take keyboarding in first grade.

Most people haven't received a handwritten letter for years. In fact, handwritten letters are referred to as "snail mail". E-mails have replaced the traditional handwritten letter for several reasons. They are significantly faster and easier. E-mails travel at the speed of light. Compare that to "snail mail" which travels at the speed of a truck or a plane. E-mails are also free as opposed to the cost of postage for a letter.

Classwork is expected to be typed for several reasons. Typing on a computer is neater and can be more creative because of the different fonts and colors. Typing on a computer is much faster than handwriting. A student can easily type fifty words a minute whereas a person can only handwrite about thirty words a minute. Before you turn a paper in you can use spellcheck. If you skip a word while handwriting you have to erase everything and re-write. Compared to a computer where you can use insert to type in a missing word.

Children are learning at an early age to type. There is a reason for this. Keyboarding helps the children get prepared to type essays in the upper grades. In addition to this, children are becoming more familiar with technology. The children are learning skills that will help them in the future.

Technology has caused this shift from handwritten work to typed work. Technology has made typing on a computer easy, fun, and fast. E-mails have replaced handwritten letters. Typed assignments have replaced handwritten assignments and children are learning keyboarding skills all because technology has made typing more convenient than handwriting.

Tolerance

Tolerance means to put up with a person's ideas and to have freedom from bigotry. Forster wrote this essay during World War II when there was no Tolerance around the world. Forster describes Love in his essay also. He says that some people think that love can save the world. But Forster disagrees with that saying. Forster says that love should be a personal thing instead of trying to make it a public thing. I agree with Forster about Love not being able to save the world. How can we love someone that we don't even know? We should have tolerance with one another in order to have peace in the world.

"Pain" by: Diane Ackerman

Diane Ackerman explains Pain in a very creative way. I like this essay because it is a very strong and eye-catching essay. Just the first paragraph gives an example by using a quote from a movie. Pain is something that hurts but it depends on how hard you think about it. For example, when you run if you think about the pain that is surging in your legs then it will hurt. But if you think about the positive, about how you will look a lot better after running or you will fell a lot better. If depends on how you take the pain. If you think about it in a positive way then there will be no pain but if you think about the pain negatively than the pain will surge through your body. My opinion is pain is just mental and there is no physical pain. Block Out the Pain!!

Letter to Mr. Kristof

Dear Mr. Nicholas D. Kristof,

Although I completely disagree with Obama being president, I was reading your article and I do agree that we need more intellectual people to run the American government. Your article has made me think hard about what President Bush has done and what Obama might do with America. To me, having an intelligent man in power can help America, and I agree with Obama being president for that reason. I like what you have said about many presidents that have had an intellectual background and have tried to hide it. My opinion is, if you are smart or if you have a special talent then you need to use it to the best of your ability. People, especially presidents, shouldn’t be afraid of hiding their intelligence so they can fit in with others. Like I have said plenty of times, and I apologize for it, I agree that we need more intelligent people to help run our government and America. Finally, I would like to say that I do like this article and it has made me think long and hard about how Obama will do as the president of America and I hope that he will do well and help the country.

Rachel Rundell,
QSI International School,
Sheckou, Shenzhen, China