Friday, June 5, 2009

Don't Raise The Driving Age

The legal age for driving should not be raised to 19, and there should be less restrictions on new drivers. As a young adult it is hard to grow up and learn life lessons if you have to be constantly chauffeured by your parents. You will rarely get out and experience life lessons for yourself if you are constantly being watched. At your final years of high school kids should receive more freedom to find out who they are and how to handle this responsibility properly. If you let people start driving when they are nineteen then they may be over loaded with too much responsibility. They will be moving out on their own, they will be able to go out to the bars, and they will be able to drive. Many may make some improper choices that could affect them for the rest of their lives, also all these responsibilities cost money. Many people learn how to manage money in high school due to driving. They learn how to budget their money because they have to pay for insurance and gas. If we didn't let kids start driving till they are nine teen, what would they be responsible for? All there money would just go to random spending and they would form bad spending habits. So when they become nine teen and they have to pay for housing, insurance, gas, and food how will they know to manage their money. They would probably get into money problems and end up living back home, broke, and having to start from square one all over again. Also the restrictions on drivers already are pretty harsh as it is, and to raise the punishments for breaking these rules is absurd. Most people these days are really worried about the environment, but the restrictions to only allow a new driver one passenger inhibits them to car pool. This means that there will be more cars on the road congesting traffic and putting more harmful emissions into the environment. So really all that they would be doing in enabling the kids to learn there responsibilities, and harming are environment.

Friday, May 22, 2009

Znarf the Magical Pixie Frog

Znarf the magical pixie frog was the ruler of the beautiful kingdom of Znarfia. He ruled with an iron webbed toe and showed no mercy to his subjects. One day Zvag the knight from down under slayed Znarf and freed the kingdom. Zvag then became ruler of the kingdom and everyone lived happily ever after.

Friday, May 15, 2009

Black Out

Electricity is a recent discovery. There are many great new inventions in the world but most of them require the power of electricity. Video games, T.V's, C.D. players, and even computers all reliant on electricity to function. So my question is what are twelve things to do when the electricity goes out. The first thing that comes to my mind when the power goes out is to take a nap. Everything is dark and quiet and it makes a perfect little nap time. If I weren't tired I guess my second option would be to go out side and play some ball hockey. With no electricity it is a good time to just go outside and exercise. My third thing to do if the electricity goes out is to play a board game. It is a relaxing yet time consuming way to pass the time. If you are more of the outdoorsy type you can go outside, enjoy the sunshine and camp. If you are more of the artistic reader type, you can light some candles and catch up on a really good book. If you are in to gardening there would be no better time to just go frolic in you lilacs and enjoy the tranquillity of your garden. If the power goes out and you just feel the need to get away, hitting the links is a great stress release and just a great way to have fun. When the electricity goes out sometimes all you need to do to kill the time is just meander through a local park or just one of your favorite areas. One of my personal favorite things to do when the lights are out is to go play HIDE AND GO SEEK in the dark! Every corner is a mystery and you don't know who or what waits for you around the corner. My final and favorite thing to do when the electricity goes out is grill baby grill. When the meat in the freezer has defrosted just start cooking those t-bones and have a big old barbeque! These are just some of the things that I suggest you try when the electricity goes out but there are so many more to try!

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Synthesis Paragraph

The connection I have made between the book "The Road" and the poem "The Winners" is that they both demonstrate how people fight when really there is nothing worth fighting for. The second stanza of the poem says that "Those only win who see the goal, beyond the baffling fog and mist". This quote would represent the part in "The Road" where the father and the son face all these obstacles, but have no goal in sight. The father often ponders that "life and death are one" because there life is so horrible and painful that living is almost worse than death.



"Who drive through fear and doubt and sin, until the darkness closes in." is another quote that directly relates to the book. This quote alludes to many parts of the story but mostly the ending. When the cart is stolen from the father and boy there is a sense of panic through the father. He is unsure how much longer he will live for because he is becoming weaker and starting to cough up blood. He knows without the cart he will die and the darkness will consume him and then shortly after it will also consume the boy because there will be nothing for him to eat and no one to protect him.



"The road is long, the dream is gone, the fighting heart still carries on." is a perfect reflection for the ending of the book. After the father dies the boy at first just sits there for three days crying and mourning his fathers death. He is lost and is not sure what to do without the guidance of his father. He has now walked down the road and fought to survive the harsh elements of nature and many other obstacles but now without his father his ambition to carry on hasn't diminished. He joins this stranger that has followed them through out the book and he carries on down the road.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Hypotheical Elimination

So you are on a airplane when the turbulence light comes on. The pilots voice comes on over the intercom and asks you to return to your seats and fasten your seat belts. The plane starts to violently shake and plummet down toward the vast open ocean. Crash! You make impact with the great body of water, you reach for your life jacket and crawl past the unconscious corpses as you make your way off the plane. You jump out only to see an island far in the distance. You quickly realize that only one life raft was able to inflate and that it seats only six people. Quickly you hoist yourself up onto the raft and help the others onto the raft. The raft then quickly becomes full and starts to sink. You look around and see that there are ten people on the raft. You try to find a solution to the problem but the raft is sinking to fast. You tell the other people that there is only room for six people on the raft including yourself. This means you must help choose four of the nine other people or yourself to get left behind, so six people can make it to the island. You think to yourself that you are going to be on the island for a long time so you need to know what everyone does for a living to help you make your decision. You ask around the raft and found out that there is a black male doctor, a female college student, a fifteen year old male teen, a sixty year old rape suspect, a lawyer in the KKK, a catholic priest, a Jewish business man, a two year old infant, and a thirty two year old cancer patient. What do you do? Who do you ultimately leave for death? Or do you leave yourself because you can't send some one else to there grave? So many questions, so little time.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Cormac Mccathy

Cormac McCarthy was born in Rhode Island on July 20, 1933. Cormac attended roman catholic school in Knoxville, where afterwards he went to the university of Tennessee to pursue his degree in liberal arts. He then enlisted in the Air Force were he served for four years and spent two of them hosting a radio talk show. After his service in the Air Force Cormac returned to university were he published two stories for a magazine which he received the Ingram-Merrill Award for creative writing in 1959 and 1960. Now Cormac has found the love of his life and they moved away to Chicago where he worked as a auto mechanic. He then had a son named Cullen but shortly after that they divorced and went there separate ways. Cormac liked to often base his books on some actual facts from the history in some of his earlier works. Cormac was a great writer of his time and he received many grants to travel and further his work. He meet his second wife on a cruise boat, who is also divorced. Two of Cormac's greatest novels are No Country for Old Men, and The Road. No Country for Old Men has now been made into a movie where it has done very well in the box office. Cormac has been criticized throughout his career as a writer but overall most would say that he is a well accomplished writer who wrote some spectacular novels. He has writ en a total of ten published books which he has one eight awards for. He writes with a very different style, using a post apocalyptic, western, southern gothic genres with his books. Cormac now lives in Mexico because America is no country for old men. Ha ha

Thursday, April 2, 2009

The NHL 18 Year Old Draft Review

The NHL draft is one of the most exciting and promising times for most of the hockey franchises in the NHL but it comes with some flaws. Many people have said that the draft is the most important time of the year for teams to rebuild there rosters. Many scouts have said though that eighteen is to young for the draft. Players are not fully developed and or have not even grown into there bodies yet when it is there draft year. Teams go to the draft table and draft highly thought of prospects only to find a couple years latter that their prospect is a dud. For some reason or another people just don't want to change the tradition of the eighteen year old draft. All other professional sports leagues have shied away from this type of draft because the teams have realized the draft will be more effective if kids stay in university teams, or junior teams where they can play for longer, get more time to play and develop and a better chance to get scouted more accurately. Imagine your team comes last every year, year in and year out. Then this young eighteen year old prodigy comes along who is supposed to be the savior of your team. Then he comes to play for your team but he never grows, he never fills out his body like everyone predicted the tall power forward would. He can't keep up with the bigger higher skilled players and years down the road he is just a memory. The pressure of the eighteen year old draft is also to much pressure for a kid right out of high school to with hold. Many of these kids come out of small sheltered towns and now all of sudden they are in Tampa Bay being criticized every time they take the ice. Although some of the eighteen year old picks do work out very well for some organizations no one wants to draft another Alexandre Daigle. That's this weeks rant on the eighteen year old draft.