April 2004 Archives

Well, I resolved on Wednesday that I was going to take every action possible to end Mrs. McFarlane's teaching career. Then I started to feel a little guilty. Then I started to feel angry for feeling guilty. The woman's infinite stupidity once again adversely affected my test grade. This time, I was cheated out of an entire 6%, giving me a paltry 88% for a test on which I deserved a 94%. Because she's such a lousy teacher, one can retake tests for full credit, so that's what I'll be doing. There were very very light lines through my work on a problem for which I got the right answer. This of course led her to believe that I had crossed the work out, for some mysterious reason, despite the fact that there was nothing else written for my work on the problem. The last attack on my grade occurred when I wrote "unreal answer" instead of "no solution" (I'll have you know that I was actually more right than her: there was an answer, but it was unreal). She also deduced points for my writing of an equals sign, instead of an approximately equals sign (that was a legitimate, if picky, judgement). So arm yourselves with pens because the petition plan is back on!! Save the students!!

I think I lost Lindsay's zines! I paid $1 for the most recent 3 issues and I think I may have left them in the school library when I was on the internet seeing if my hold on the book Gravity from the Ground Up was ready yet. But I lost them! Gah!

The US History AP exam is the biggest load of crap ever! I'm running through a practice test and there are all of these questions on cultural things and colonialism. I swear, that's half the test right there. Where are the questions on policy?? I don't care about The Jazz Singer or the Chesapeake Bay Colony. Where's the questions on policy, the Constitution, or better yet: post-WWII foreign policy. Call me a... a... Nixonian, but foreign policy where the good stuff is at. Actually, I find constitutional law more interesting, but I admit it's not as relavant to a survey US history course. Gah!

Junior Class Officers for 2004-2005:

President: Adam Anderson
Vice-President: Paul Clem
Secretary: Lindsay Baltus
Treasurer: Leeor Schweitzer

Note: Dom McKoy will be the student body vice-president

Gah!

Music is finally going to be cut in its entirity. In 1990 our school's jazz band was the 1st in the nation, and given the nickname: "The Green Machine." They performed for then-president George W. Bush. And here we are 14 years later... with nothing. It's a travesty really. Whatever the costs, Mrs. Parker must be FIRED! And she must be replaced with someone halfway competant who can rebuild things at least a little. Gah!

For some reason, I had to wake up in the middle of the night to write this. It's finally occurred to me in the past 3 days how pathetically puny and devoid of life my mind really is. Gah!

Why does John Kerry have to be such a crappy candidate? I mean, considering that George W. Bush is quite possibly the worst president in the modern history of the United States of America (from an accurate, albeit somewhat opinionated perspective), you would think the democrats could put out someone a little better. But no. If President Clinton was a -10, George W. Bush would be a -20, and John Kerry would be a -17. Why does the world have to be so screwed up?

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, people... welcome. I, your current sophomore class president stand yet again before you running for the office of junior class president. Oddly enough, I also stand unopposed for this position, so I shall dispense with the incessant pleas for votes. Let me be brief.
We stand on a rather precipitous point in time, where among other instabilities, there is the tendency for youths to be denied a voice in their own fate in society. It is all too common for decisions to imposed upon us without our opinions being voiced. It is imperative that through this system of representative democracy we uphold our right and duty to determine our future. Therefore I believe that the roles of leadership must be expanded; not just to plan dances and assemblies, but to be a council for deliberation on things of more meaning to you.
In addition, leadership must maintain its traditional roles such as planning dances, assemblies, or other school functions. I must admit I have gained immense knowledge during my year in class office on these topics. Although, I still can’t classify myself as a bone fide partier, I have learned many of the ins and outs of the word “partay”, improving my capacity at giving you an adequate environment in which to... how should I say this... “boogie”. In respect to assemblies and fundraisers, I look forward to using new ideas, so that we may further enhance our experiences at Wilson... because in the end that’s what it’s about: it’s about you. This whole process is about improving your life and times here. And so, I honestly look forward to serving you for the next year, as your junior class president.

At the beginning of this year, there was no doubt that this would be a "rebuilding year" for speech and debate team. Last year was the 2nd year of existence for Wilson speech and debate and we place 5th in the state, won several invitational tournaments, and broke some PIL's district records. The problem was, however, that nearly half of the team graduated, leaving very few people with proven success for this year. Accordingly, we fluctuated around a 5th placing at each of the tournaments we attended. This was until the Mt Hood CC Tournament, where we dominated, taking 2nd and crushing our primary opposition in the PIL: Madison (speech teams in PIL: Grant, Lincoln, Madison, Roosevelt, Wilson. Grant and Roosevelt aren't that good. Lincoln has a number of good people, but the team as a whole is too small to be effective.). The Mt. Hood Tournament was the last tournament before the district and state tournaments. It was nice to end the "regular" season on a high note. You can read my previous exhaustive entry on the district tournament: we did well (2nd), but lost severely to Madison. We ended up qualifying 11 entries to the state tournament out of roughly 21 entries to the district tournament. So when heading out to the state tournament at Linfield College (Boo! U of O is a much better place to hold it), I surmised that our team would be lucky to place in the top 10 in the state (there were 60 or 70 schools at the tournament, to my knowledge), and we would probably be somewhere in the top 15.

The drive out was fun. I drove out with Joe Sackett and some other people after school on Thursday and we have some humorous moments, like switching lanes really fast, losing the car that was following us, performing radio shows via cell phone to another car, and some other things. We got down to McMinneville (a very sad little town of 25,000) where Linfield is, and we got set up in our hotel. It appeared that Dan and Catherine (who had left that morning to go to the debate portion of the tournament, starting before the speech portion) had gone 3-1 in public debate, and indeed they qualified for octafinals. We stayed up until about 1:30 AM and did some did some interesting things. About 12:30 AM, Dan, Leeor, and Kadish started their calculus, and they did that for an hour before going to bed.

The next day, the draw for my 1st round was at 9:30, so I watched Joe and Clara be amazing at dual as usual. Then I found Shiyuan of Lincoln and we got stuff set up for our extemp. round and strategized. I was 6th speaker in my room, and this was the 1st extemp. speech I had every given in competition and the 2nd ever. I got a good topic for the speech and got a little bit extra prep time because the speeches ran slightly late. Dan, Leeor, and Shiyuan came to watch, probably out of friendly pity. I was miserably nervous, but it turned out well for a first speech. The two judges rated me 3rd and 4th out of 7 in that room, which was good because there were some really good speakers assigned to that room. The speech was decent although it had its rough edges. I then ate lunch at one of Linfield's cafeterias of sorts.

Dan and Catherine's octafinal debate was up next. At this point they were in the top 16 of the top 40-ish teams in the state. Unfortunately they were up against another PIL team. The topic was whether marijuana should be legalized, and they were arguing in favor of the resolution. Being the smart individuals that they were, they set economics as the value of the debate. With excellent, well-defined economic arguments, fabulous clarity in delivery, the opposition's failure to stick to an economic debate, and the opposition's poor delivery, Dan and Catherine easily won the debate (although it was stupidly decided by a 2-1 vote).

The next extemp round was up, and I proceeded with great nervousness. The question that I picked was "Should the US or the UN is the world's foremost peacekeeper?" The grammatical error in the topic provided a little leeway in definition, so I changed "is" to "be" to answer it. There was some pretty solid stuff in my bin and in my head on this topic, so I was able to craft some good support. Since I was the 5th person to speak in the room, I was able to get a bit more time to practice and a peanut gallery consisting of Catherine and Shiyuan. The speech went relatively well, although it had its hiccups. I did really well in the room though. Both judges rated me 2nd out of 7 in the room. I hung around for awhile before going out to dinner, but everyone ditched me because of lack of car space. So, I went to a grocery store with Colin and grabbed a sandwich, then came back for the semifinalist announcements and After Dinner Speaking finalists. Hannah incredibly managed to make it to finals in ADS (her first ADS ever), and she gave an excellent rendition of her piece. I am especially fond of it because it's about language and mentions Esperanto. I have a personal connection with that piece... But anyway as it turned out, we got everyone into semifinals... kind of unprecedented, especially me, considering I had no experience (but then again, I doubt that experience makes very much difference anyway). It was really cool.

So we went back to the hotel and made platonic love over conversations about speaking, chemistry, calculus, and debate. We also watched part of this hilariously stupid movie called "The Passenger" on HBO. The acting was incredibly bad, although we found some deep symbolism in the color of the walls of the protagonist's house... Then mysteriously it was the next day!

Our alarm had failed to wake us up, probably because the snooze button was jammed down, so we had approximately 20 minutes in which to dress, eat, and pack. After some initial troubles, some of which involved Jon dazedly stumbling around getting the hotel keys and his car keys confused, we got back to Linfield. My first round was at 9:30, so I had some time to watch the Prose semifinal. Clara gave an excellent rendition of her piece from some prequel to the "Ya-Ya Sisterhood." Then it was off to my round. I was only the 2nd speaker in my room, meaning that I got slightly less time to prepare. The topic was not my favorite either: "To what degree should the US support the current Afghanistan government?" It asked a question in a matter of degrees, which is harder than a yes/no question. Leeor and Dan once again were kind enough to be my peanut gallery, but the speech wasn't great. My introduction was less than ideal, but I salvaged things in the end. Because this was a semifinal round I was also going up against the top 1/2 of all the speakers that qualified for state. When all of the factors added up, I ended up being ranked 4th, 5th, and 5th by the three judges. As Dan later calculated, this put me at about 10th in the state for extemp: I can't complain because that is just awesome. This is definately going to be my event for next year. I should have listened to Kyle Stoneman a year and a half ago when he tried to get me to do extemp. Anyway, I went was part of Shiyuan's peanut gallery and then went back to the common area.

Finals were posted and EVERYONE except for me and one girl in one of her two events made it to finals. Now that was simply amazing. All of the observers went to watch the Prose finals which were amazing, and then the Dual finals which were even more amazing. It was amazing, oh yes. (You can tell that I'm getting tired of writing, even though I've done this at multiple sittings) Afterward Dan, Leeor, and I went to this awful burger restaurant with a monkey on display. It was classic low-calibur semi-rural American food. The monkey and it's proximity were really the only attractions, seeing as we could have gone to any one of several good Thai or Japanese joints in "downtown" McMinneville. (confused? Yes, the main attraction of the place was the monkey that they kept in a plexiglass room, although "Elvis" was not out) We quickly returned for the awards ceremony. So without delay, here were the results:

ADS: Hannah Hickman finaled
Expos: Emily Davis got 2nd
Extemp: I made semi-finals
DI: Joe Sackett got 2nd
Prose: Clara Hillier and Natalie Heikkenan finaled
Dual: Joe/Clara finaled
Radio: Emily made semi-finals
Congress: Megan made super-congress
Public: Catherine/Dan made quarters (top 8)

Things were looking pretty good for us. I was a little disappointed when we failed to take 5th place as a team. I though it was over for our hopes of winning a trophy. But then they announced 4th place, and lo and behold, out of 60 or 70 schools, we placed 4th. It was really cool. Then what was almost as cool was the fact that Madison placed 2nd, making the PIL the uber-dominant district of the speech world. Ashland won 1st, but that's mostly because they unfairly won the top two spots in dual. The Oregon Shakespeare Theater is in Ashland which kind of makes them just a little good at drama/speaking competitions. This is their 11th 1st place finish since 1990. Blah, blah, blah. So that was that. We went home, we partied, we had fun... Yay!

" New pop sensations Equilibrium have burst onto the scene with their hit song, “Pressurize My Love.” Equilibrium may seem like a typical boy band, but the group has one unique feature: its members seem to change almost constantly. As difficult as it is to pinpoint who is in the group at any given time, Ice3 managed to meet up with current members Charles, Dalton, and Graham to talk about their recent success.

The Destiny’s Child-esque lineup alterations have spurred much criticism. Many fans have found it hard to remain loyal to the group when their favorite member is phased out, so to speak. The question must be asked: why is it necessary to keep changing the group’s roster? Charles takes this issue in stride. “They told us when we joined that we’d be kicked out in a month or so, so it’s not like we’re offended by it or anything. It’s what keeps the group new and fresh. And we are pretty fresh. Every couple weeks, a new guy joins with new ideas and slammin’ dance moves. That’s why were called Equilibrium, man. It keeps us balanced,” he says.

The group’s latest album, entitled “Equilibrium Shifts,” has inspired questions from fans and critics alike. Many of the songs seem faster than the group’s previous work, which consisted mostly of ballads. When asked what has brought about this change in musical style, Dalton responded, “There has just been so much more pressure put on us since we’ve gained success. We started making dance music ‘cause our manager said that would make us hotter. Plus, he told us that’s what the ladies like.”

As if Equilibrium doesn’t experience enough changes, the boys told Ice3 that they’ll soon be engaging in a complete “shift.” “Part of the reason our album is called ‘Equilibrium Shifts,’ other than that’s just a really badass name, is ‘cause they told us pretty soon the group would be totally different,” Graham reflected. When asked what the total difference would be, he paused as if in thought. “Uhh… Oh yeah! We’re adding new members!” he exclaimed.

The group’s manager recently let out a press statement expressing that Equilibrium would soon be changed from a three-boy bunch to a five-member ensemble. When asked why this change was occurring, Equilibrium’s manager, Dave La Châtelier, sighed. “The boys say they’ve been stressed out with this change in pressure. So I figured I’d add more members to minimize the stress. Plus, those girls just can’t seem to get enough of their hotty-hotness. This way, there’ll be even more candy for the eye. And these boys are solid hunks of liquid sexy, if you know what I mean. Even if they do occasionally emit an unpleasant amount of gas.”

We at Ice3 couldn’t agree more."

--Lindsay Baltus, in a chemistry assignment.

"The assignment in question is really indicative of a larger trend in education and society. First I would like to point out that during the period of work for this project, the instructor was found playing the game "Unreal Tournament 2004" over the school network. The trend that I mention however, is the trend of appeasment. Education is becoming so important in modern society, that people cannot do poorly and still succeed in life. There is thus a greater desire to make things more accessible to the general population, so more people can succeed. Therefore, education is being diluted to the point where it hardly bears the mark of being a misshapen bastard of the orginal concept. One can sum this up on a theoretical level as an inverse relation between masses understanding of what is being taught, and its level of depth and complexity. But if there were more good teachers we probably wouldn't have this problem."

--A. Anderson; my gift to you Colin. I've got to go to state for speech this weekend. Since you're gone next week, let's start our editorial on the following Monday at lunch and/or after school. Does that work for you? Down with CIM, down with waste, down with George W. Bush, and down with HYPOCRISY! I'll never know why people fail to see the light that seeps through the cave opening and onto the wall, and see the metaphorical extra dimension.

I think I'm falling into one of my highly critical, cynical, and nihilistic states. The hypocrisy in the world really demands that one behave in this fashion. It's kind of fun though... just running around insulting people for their insolence or stupidity, preaching original radical theories, and engaging extreme and superfluous actions... like the election speech that I'm going to give. I am running unopposed for junior class president after all. But something interesting happened in chemistry today. Ted and Mr. Wilson gave Kadish a referral for his alleged "belligerent" and "violent" behavior of hitting Ted's arm repeatedly when Ted was trying to reboot Kadish's computer to make him lose all his work. The referral finally specified "execution" as the recommended form of punishment for the action. Needless to say, the whole affair really was humorous. However, I've played a mildly humorous trick on Ted, which I'm sure he'll realize as he reads this.

Do I still love people? Or do I heart them? Of course I still love people. But can I heart them? Or should I heart them? We'll see in another 50 years.

I just got home from seeing A Chorus Line at school. It was quite good. Leeor's criticism of the production is certainly accurate, but only to a degree. Everything is truly a matter of degrees though. It's like the uncertainty principle for human society. The thing with A Chorus Line, is that what's mostly good about it is the dancing (and the gold tuxedos of course). If there are two things in my life that I hate most, they are poetry and dancing. It's a personal preference. Nevertheless, I did surprisingly enjoying the play quite a bit. It was well worth my $6. It was fairly crowded, which was good but explicable by the fact that it was closing night. Most of the main floor was taken, so Evan, Owen, and I sat mostly alone in the front row of the balcony. I never realized how big the balcony is. We surmised that it must be 300 or 400 seats. It provided a good view too. I was surprised at the selection of A Chorus Line for the spring musical though. Not only did it contain a quantity of "adult material" that I would have thought would be nixed early on (even so, apparently quite a lot was cut for this reason), but the nature of the play isn't suited for high school. There is no set, and the costumes are either 80s street clothes or one of 2 gold-colored uniforms. Furthermore, there's little dialogue, and a bunch of loosely connected dancing and singing scenes. But it worked and was surprisingly effective. I'm going to bed.

I've found some interesting esperanto radio stations online. One can listen of course to Radio Polonia from Poland, but there's also Ĉina Radio out of China, and even radio broadcasts from the Vatican in Esperanto.

I finished Slaugherhouse-Five yesterday. It was probably the best sci-fi book I've ever read. It actually had a point! And the use of 4-dimensional time travel as a many-sided anti-war metaphorwas pretty cool too. Read it if you haven't.

You know what I've realized? Books are really expensive. A new paperback book almost always costs at least $10. Therefore, I almost never buy new books. Used books are definately the way to go.

Today kind of lacked a realistic element. I don't know what it was. We had a substitute in Spanish with a horrible accent, we had a lecture over some boring equations on circuits that I already knew, we wasted time on that infamous project in chemistry with a odd substitute, we had a rather difficult (only because it was on stuff from 3 weeks ago) test on which I got a 42 out of 45 (a tie for the highest at that point in the day; broken later I'm sure though) in US history, we took a reasonably easy test in math over vectors, triangles, and complex number coordinate planes, and in English our student teacher taught us for the very first day and we began a really awful book. After school I went downtown. On the busride down I had to listen to Malcolm drone on about some exchange student from France and how he was going to spend a quarter in France seeing relatives. I wandered around downtown for a little over and hour. I stopped in Powell's and bought a ancient used copy of Brave New World Revisited for $2.50. I almost bought the Dover thrift edition of Thus Spake Zarathustra (it was brand new and only $3.00 too), but decided against it because I have too many other things to read. The Dover thrift editions really are amazing. I think Shakespeare is about $1.25, and things up to about 400 pages are typically not more than $4.00. Then I looked at some physics books and wallowed in sadness from the fact that I haven't learned any calculus yet (But I can and do understand special reletivity, which mostly doesn't require it... Yay!). The thing that annoys me is this: there's all this really awesome physics literature that puts incredibly complicated things like string theory and puts them into words and ideas that are understandable to basically anyone; i.e. they have no math. The problem is, is that this gets old after awhile. Without math in physics, you can understand things conceptually, but it's very difficult to understand why they happen. I can tell you that you can't go faster than the speed of light, but why is that? Well, if you read Relativity, by Einstein (a really good book too; it does the math and explains it all very well) then you know that it's because you divide by zero, which occurs because of the way you derive the Lorentz transformation and fit it into the theory. With that mathematical knowledge, one can make their conceptualizations. Physics lacks meaning to me without math. Unfortunately, much of the most profound and cutting-edge physics (from my knowledge) requires calculus and more higher level mathematics. So if I want to go outside my physics class and gain useful knowledge with a mathematical basis, it is fairly difficult to find stuff that I can fully understand. That's changing though, as I learn more formulae from physics and slowly (very unfortunately) enhance my mathematical knowledge. Besides, math is more beautiful than words anyway. But back to the point. I wandered around Powell's some more. Afterward, I walked over to Djangos but they've closed! Just totally empty. I found them on the web, and it turns out that they're this giant company with tons of stores and a major online store. But the store by Burnside is now closed. So I walked up to the Musik Centur, a sheet music store, for a few minutes and then went home. Buying trumpet music online is really the way to go, I think.

"Anything too stupid to be said is sung."

--Voltaire

"I want everyone who reads this to ask me 3 questions, no more no less.
Ask me anything you want. Really. I'll answer anything.
Then I want you to go to your journal, copy and paste this allowing your friends (including myself) to ask you anything."

--And thus I give in to rampant chain messages/blogging.

Here's my economic theory on oil. I do not guarantee that all parts of it are correct, but it seems to make logical sense to me.

The government spends a significant portion of money on subsidies for the oil industry ($11.9 billion in 1995, excluding the cost of protecting Persian Gulf supplies). This has created oil prices that are much lower than in the rest of the globe. I believe that the US government should eliminate all subsidies directed at the oil industry entirely (something similar to this was advocated by Dick Cheney in the 1980s). Furthermore, I believe that all federal gas taxes should be eliminated, if not a constitutional amendment banning all gas taxes: federal, state, and local. This would essentially make gasoline in the US track world oil prices nearly exactly. Due to the cut in subsidies, gasoline prices would increase dramatically, and they would become much more volatile to the consumer. If these actions were carried out, it would also be essential for the federal government to return all money saved by the elimination of oil subsidies to taxpayers. Through this system, people would theoretically still be paying the same total amount of money on average (instead of paying money to the federal government to pay the oil industry through subsidies, they would just pay the oil industry directly), although gas prices would be much higher.

My advocation of this system is largely due to its psychological effects. People would think they were paying more for gas in general because the gas prices would be higher. As a result, they would become much more conservative in their gasoline usage, and overall consumption would probably go down. The additional price volatility would also encourage this. Cars would become much more efficient; we would not have these Hummer H2 things, whose existance I simply can't understand. The shock of skyrocketing oil prices would speed development of alternative fuel resources. I am a ardent believer in the Republican policy of free-market economic incentives, and this would help disengage the role of the federal government in advancing innovation while forcing it upon industry. Hopefully, in this process oil companies would either die or transform into "energy companies" that would develop new forms of efficient technology and energy. The alienation of oil companies by the federal government would also reduce possible corruption by government "being in bed" with industry. And maybe someone would discover practical fusion technology along the way... So there you have it: my latest thoughts on the topic of economics and the like.

Leeor's campaign slogan for his drive to become Junior class treasurer needs to be:

"Vote for me because I can integrate your finances (and find their derivative)!"

Would you consider the ability to interperate a wind chill table a "reading/literature" skill?

"Thank god I'm an atheist."

--Ted Sanders

AHA!! Übergut!!

You know, I'm going to write another editorial for the Oregonian. Forgive me for saying so, but I am soooo damn sick of the incessant standardized testing. In English alone we will have lost the equivalent of 5 days this year to CIM. The test is the most poorly designed piece of tripe I have ever taken. After doing about 40 questions, there are at least 2 that either have no answer or multiple answers. Reading test continues tomorrow... science test starts tomorrow. Ah, now I've made myself angry: an editorial it is.

Congratulations to Dom McKoy for being the 1st sophomore (junior next year) to be elected for a student body office in a long time. I should have run for something, but to class elections it is for me. All of the speeches were painfully bad... no offense to anyone, but they were. And for the second year in a row too! I'm starting to dislike the direction that Lovelin is taking Leadership. Rather than my vision of semi-corporate-style brainstorming sessions and doing interesting and tangible things, it's kind of turning into something like "let's improve our leadership skills through expensive seminars and camps, then trying to unify people through 'spirit-building' activities, and use our crappy useless new knowledge to continue to do the same boring things slightly differently." I realized that it was time to resist when Lovelin started talking about "leadership camps" over the summer. It's all too people-oriented and not idea-oriented enough. We should be spending more time thinking of ideas for doing, rather than interpersonal relations building. It's not that the latter is not of use, it's just that I find it miserably boring and generally useless. So support the cult of thought and ideas, not... whatever the heck this other thing might be called. But to give Lovelin some credit, he is making the whole affair more student-run, and cleaning up the disastrous mess of laziness and ineffectiveness that is the legacy of the former activities director.

"I have this theory of why Mr. Wilson has created this little instance of alternative education. He claims that it's to give others who don't do so hot with the "standard" class model (daily homework, big tests, and all that) a chance to do something well. I believe that Mr. Wilson is resentful of those who do do well with the standard model, and in part envious, because they challenge not only his superiority in the classroom but also his very legitimacy as a teacher. His lack of "gifts" makes him feel inadequate, so he abuses his power as an educator. So, because he so envies us smart kids, he screws us over with a bizarre new assignment.

Plus, so far, it's not working. The very people he aimed this project at (the slackers) are doing just that: slacking. And they still give themselves 3's on their daily self-evaulation. My internal need for parity feels violated."

--Colin Corbett, making a perfect explanation of the problems with Mr. Wilson's new educational strategies

For the 3rd or 4th time in a row, my math teacher has failed to give us all of the necessary notes to finish our homework. Fortunately she never checks homework anyway until the end of each chapter, but it's still really annoying. But unfortunately DeMoivre's theorem and the theorem for nth roots of a complex number are somewhat difficult to teach oneself. But I've placed my finger on what I dislike about her so much. She doesn't know how to derive anything, and doesn't know any proofs. She can't explain why anything is the way it is. To her (and she literally says this), it's just about understanding the process so you can do the problems from the book and get an A on the test. Someone asked her why you obtain a particular set of vector components when you project a vector onto another vector, because theoretically there are an infinite number of vectors that add to a given resultant. She said something to the effect that she didn't know, she didn't want the person to ask that question because vectors are "a physics thing", and it was just some "math thing" that was "just the way it was". This is absolutely unbelievable to me. The very definition of vector components is that they are orthogonal, so a projection of u onto v gives a vector w1 on vector v and a vector w2 is orthogonal to w1. w1 and w2 are thus the vector components of u. This won't make any sense to anyone who hasn't studied trigonometry recently, but that's not the point. The point is that the very definition, the underpinning of what we are learning is not understood by my math teacher... Because she just learned a bunch of processes when she decided erroneously that she could switch from teaching PE to math 6 years ago, never truly understanding what she was doing. Having math reduced to a bunch of linear processes to be memorized has really made this year unfortunately dull, but made me all the more excited for calculus next year.

I'm beginning to dabble with some new authors. I'm reading some Vonnegut and liking it a lot, and I checked out some Nietzsche today. There really is an amazing set of German thinkers from the 19th century into the early 20th century: Freud, Marx, Nietzsche, Goethe, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenburg... the list goes on. Of course, the rest of German society went through sort of a series of mental breakdowns in the World Wars, but it's still pretty amazing that such a reletively small society could have such a profound impact on the modern world.

Speaking of the further decline in education, there is my chemistry project. Instead of actually teaching us at all for the next unit, our teacher has come up with a "really good idea": have us make a chemistry newspaper that addresses "learning objectives" by "creatively" incorporating chemistry ideas into things that one would find in a newspaper, like ads and crossword puzzles. We have every day in class for 2 weeks to work on it, and we "self evaluate" ourselves on how efficient we were in class. Furthermore, the project is not actually graded by the teacher; rather, it is "peer-evaluated". Alternative learning (as Kadish, Ted, and I have branded this) needs to die and rot in hell. It teaches hatred of the secondary education industry, not chemistry.

The answer to my conundrum at MUN involves Brave New World Revisited and some other things.

MUN is now over for this year. It was certainly nothing short of interesting. We are also officially representing the Russian Federation. If circumstances require it, we may also have 1 more country: hopefully the Holy See, North Korea, Afghanistan, or Cuba (the top 4 choices in that order of preference). Ian and I will be on the Security Council. But enough of the future happenings, because the past is more interesting. In conference this year, I got to be on the General Assembly B, and I have decided that the General Assembly is not nearly as interesting as the subordinate committees. The most annoying this is the sheer obnoxious and audacity with which many people approach things. We spent approximately 1/3 of the time (without doubt) dealing with points of order and procedural quibbling of nasty little nations like Liberia. The proper representative (the representative from General Assembly A spent most of her time in General Assembly B too) of Liberia had at least 3 resolutions struck in their entirity because of minor formatting errors. One girl spent nearly a minute speaking of some "fatal error" with this one resolution, when it turned out that the "fatality" was a comma being where a semicolon should be. Then there was the length of the speakers list. At one point, the wait to speak was 1 hour, meaning that there was an eventual wave of people who had to yield their time to the chair because they didn't have anything to talk about anymore. And the rest of the Arab block was full of total idiots who were essentially advocating voting for worthless resolutions because they would "instill hope" in the Palestinians. Somehow I think that passing something that does nothing only accomplishes the opposite. Vatican City also made several attempts to strip Palestine of voting rights (it was granted voting rights in a previous MUN conference, but not the real UN), and attempted to launch a crusade against Palestine. The scary thing was that they had over 60 nations signed up for it. Nevertheless, I gave several speeches against the western infidels, women's rights, and the restriction of Palestinian "activist" organizations. Saudi Arabia is the most efficient nation on Earth. I also cut off all communication of notes with the United States (who never made a single speech...), and had quite a few notes thrown away by the pages (i.e. youngs subserviant messengers) for various reasons. I took matters into my own hands and delivered my own notes. In the process, I arranged for the sharing of Wilson and Lincoln extemp files for the state speech tournament (seeing as there's only one person from each school in extemp at the tournament, it seemed like a good idea).

But that was only a quarter of the fun, because we played some quality pranks in the off-time. There are two people on MUN, known respectively by us as Greg and Pierre. Greg is a junior and quite possibly the most socially unperceptive person on the face of the planet. It's not a matter of being arrogant or nerdy, because everyone has those qualities. No, no. It's a matter of him incessantly talking over people, having no anger management, thinking and trying to act as if he is much smarter than he is, and it's a matter of his phenomenal cluelessness which ends up being incredibly inappropriate in every setting. He is also clueless of these facts, and clueless of the fact that no one likes him for it. Pierre is a freshman who I believe has ADHD, and has glasses that are at a 20° angle. He is absolutely insane and can't stop talking. He talks and talks and talks. Mostly about his "plans to take over the world" and the like, which he finds quite humorous. According to Meghan, he made a 6th grade messenger cry, and he was proud of it. He may actually be worse than Greg, apart from the fact that he never really seems to get mad... which is good. So we ended playing a few pranks on Greg and Pierre, and doing some rather rude things to avoid them...

Exhibit A: Lunch on Thursday. I was to meet Dan and Kadish at some wierd street intersection whose location I did not know, and we were to proceed to eat at this incredibly good, cheap, and authentic restaurante Mexicano. I thought that I'd try to catch them in the lobby so I wouldn't have to aimlessly wander around the U of O looking for them. I entered the lobby and looked around for a couple seconds when I sensed that an enemy radar had locked on to me. Greg walked up to me and asked me if I had plans for lunch. I didn't see anyone else I knew, so I was forced into talking to him. There were two options: A) to say I had plans. Knowing Greg, he would just invite himself along. I knew that having Greg attached to me while eating lunch with Kadish and Dan would probably result in their murdering me swiftly. B) to say I didn't know what I was going to do yet. I opted for B. I mumbled out some mostly senseless words to that effect, and Greg of course said, "Oh well then I'll just come along with you." At this point I was really sweating, so I said needed to go to the bathroom for a moment. Luckily he didn't offer to do that with me, so I went the bathroom on the other side of the building (actually the closest one), and took about 15 minutes. When I came back, he was gone. It was very mean. But I went on looking for Dan and Kadish, walking toward the block of restaurants about a 1/4 mile away. In the process I just about ran into Greg and Pierre, and had to spent about 5 minutes walking roughly 4 meters behind them trying not to be noticed. Needless to say, they're not very observant, so they didn't see me.

Exhibit B: This happened just this morning, and was quite brilliant. Greg did not sleep at all last night, like many people. So this morning he was in a bit of a zombie pseudo-hangover state (without the alcohol, of course), again like many people. However, while we were meeting loosely as a school doing some final voting proceedures with our countries, Greg had fallen asleep in this chair. His position was such that his head was back and his mouth was open. It's sort of that perennially embarrasing state of stupor which is fun to see. So we got a camera and had a little fun making some keepsake memories of Greg. Interestingly, Pierre was sitting right next to him looking equally idiotic, but awake. Pierre didn't seem to notice us taking pictures of him for some reason. (this was all done with a digital camera from the yearbook staff, but I don't think anyone would be so mean as to publish it) After about 4 or 5 pictures, Greg still wasn't awake, and we stopped to finish our voting. This devious freshman who had an infatuation with Cheese-Whiz (I have never seen something so revolting), kept around however, and proceeded to squirt the substance into Greg's open mouth. I was told that his mouth became quite full before he awoke. When he did awake, he became enraged and nearly attacked the kid with the Cheese-Whiz before Ian came to defuse the situation and decry the action. I made sure to throw in a serious glance, but the comic genius of the moment was simply too great and Greg stormed off. But here's the thing. Sure that was mean, but had it been done to anyone else in MUN, they would have found it immensely funny if embarassing. It was quite so after all.

Exhibit 3: This was a long series of actions, resulting in the victimization of multiple people. Either Dan, Ian, or Jon came up with the idea of somehow stealing 3 of the 4 pillows out of Greg's room, so they would have to fight for the right to use the last one. But how were we to get them out? There was the main door to the room, but that would be hard. So someone came up with the brilliant idea of climbing out on our balcony and over two rooms to Greg's, where we could access his room via the sliding glass door to the balcony (we were only on the 2nd floor). Dan volunteered for this duty, and after he left we (of course) locked him out and closed the curtain so that he would be trapped on the balcony with 3 pillows. But Greg's sliding glass door was locked, so our first attempt failed. I personally wanted to walk outside and wave to Dan on the balcony and just leave him there, but we were satiated after a few minutes and let him in without much humiliation. We still didn't have the pillows though. Eventually, someone else in Greg's room let us take 3 of the 4 pillows just by asking. All of the rest of the room was gone and he was about to go to bed, so he didn't care as long as he had a pillow on which to sleep. We never did hear the result of that experiment though. Maybe our efforts to temper his tempermental outbursts through repeated loosening of the wierd seriousness were succeeding.

I can only hope to Allah that Greg will not read this--which of course he will not.

"George Bush and the Republicans in Washington today have run the most
arrogant, inept, reckless and ideological foreign policy in the modern
history of this country."

--John Kerry, Democratic presidential candidate quoted in Fox News

I haven't mentioned it yet, but the cumulative results of the district speech tournament were that we disappointingly got 2nd. It looks like Madison regained their perennial title which we had the brief pleasure of stealing last year. Last year we crushed them at districts. But, nevertheless, they sort of crushed us this year. The official results were something like this (not perfectly exact):

1. Madison - 175
2. Wilson - 112
3. Lincoln - 55
4. Grant - 25
5. Roosevelt - 11

So, as you can kind of see, they gave us a little bit of a whooping. Which is surprising, because I though we were dominating until the end. Speech and debate tournaments typically do end up where you have an exponential increase in scores as you move from last to first, but I'm still deeply disturbed by this. I have resolved to do much more in order to achieve dominance next year and the year after. Currently, we have 3 sophomore debate teams and 1 senior team. The senior team is excellent but will be gone next year. The sophomore teams are all very good by any standard, so my supreme aspiration is for us to achieve a sweep of the district tournament (which would be very possible, seeing as the top 3 teams from this year are graduating). Furthermore, I am in the midst of constructing a 4th team of next year's sophomores. Right now there's Joseph Kibe, who seemed to confidently sign on for next year in a conversation I had with him. Beth will be doing Lincoln-Douglas Values debate, which should further enhance our points (if she gets good, which she will because it's a prepared debate and involves cross-examination). That leaves much need for people in IEs. We're losing a lot of them next year. We're really screwed if we don't get a suficient number of people to replace graduates. This year's debaters will be branching out into IEs undoubtedly next year (I personally have already dedicated myself to extemporaneous, for which I am going to state), but that won't be enough. So if you're reading this and you don't do speech, please consider it. It doesn't take up that much time, and if you're not good now, you will become good. The only good thing is that Madison is losing some really key people that used to win everything (Kira, Adam, Kira's boyfriend... they're the only ones who win probably 50% of Madison's total), excepting Anesh of course, who happens to be a junior. I know, it's painful. But let's analyze Anesh a little bit further. He's not that good of a debater. His HI was good but not amazing this year (it's the piece that's holding him back though). And Hannah beat him in ADS (the first time a non-Madison person has won in about 6 years). Yes, it wasn't just anyone Hannah beat. Hannah beat Anesh at ADS (he didn't even get 2nd, he got 3rd. That's a little surprising, and I'm not sure I agree with it), and she beat Adam too. That's like some young startup cyclist crushing Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France. Except it's in Oregon state high school speech. So we'll see what happens in future years. I just hope we can make a proper rebound next year.

"When you combust gasoline, you form carbon monoxide/dioxide and water. Now, if you bubble carbon dioxide through liquid water, you form H₂CO₃, which I think is carbonic acid. So, you can cut down on CO₂ emissions this way. Now, you have an acid. Great!

Here's the question: what do you do with this acid to put it to good use? I think if you toss in a chunk of alkali metal, like potassium in, the H₂ will bubble away, and you'll form KCO₃. So you form H₂ gas, which you can combust to form H₂0 and heat. Still, there has to be other useful things to do with acid to gain extract some more energy. Ideas?"

--Dan, attempting to solve the problem of carbon dioxide pollution

Well, the college rejection process is upon us! It's great fun listening to all of the people getting rejected to their Ivy League schools despite their 4.0 gpas, 1500+ SATs, and multitude of AP credits. Actually, it's only fun until one realizes that one must inevitably go through it. Apparently, Sophie Johnson got into Yale though. And then there are the lesser Ivy League schools which people seem to be able to get into. And apparently Catherine knows someone who got a full ride to Princeton (he goes to Jesuit and is in Calculus 5 though). And you know what else annoys me? According to Dan, there are 8 Harvards and 8 Yales at Lincoln. That's just disgusting. The only reason that that could possibly occur is because they go to Lincoln... no other good reason. Simply secondary school preference, or the fact that their parents are alumni. All this at a school that does not even offer calculus. Instead of calculus, Lincoln has "IB Math", which is apparently a total joke. I guess they're trying to promote IB or something. So much for a program that "tears the @#%$" out of you academically in order to get a full IB diploma. I say just take a bunch of APs. But let's consider Dan's friend Matt as a case in point. He finished Calculus 2 as a sophomore, spent his junior year in France, takes only 1 class at Wilson (simply to maintain enrollment, I guess) and takes the rest of his classes at Reed College, and he plays music. Being the kind of person that he is, he only applied to Ivy League schools and got waitlisted to all of them (the schools be Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and his "backup" Brown). Erin didn't even get waitlisted to any of them. So, I've concluded that unless you go to a certain group of secondary schools (mostly concentrated on the East Coast), have taken 5 years of calculus, or have received national fame for academics, then there is no way the Ivy League will accept you. Not that you'd want to go there anyway because of their putrid elitism, and the fact that it doesn't make that big of a difference in terms of one's undergraduate education. I'm setting my sights on MIT specifically, but there's probably the same problem there. Which means that I'd set my sights on Caltech, but their acceptance rate is even lower. Which means I'd set my sights on Stanford, but it's equally impossible to get accepted there. Which means... hmm... There's always UC Berkeley. Now that wouldn't be bad. Still very difficult to get in for out of state, but a little more managable I'd say. Or there's Dan's Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. But considering some of the stories he's told me, I'd have to think some more. I'd better go study for the US History AP... ah, the irony.