Wednesday 13 June 2012

This school year's evaluation



This year I have learned a lot. I love the way our teacher has used social medias, like twitter and blogs to inspire us to write English. School is so much more fun when you can mix it with things you like.
My advice to my teacher is just to keep on with what she is doing. Don't change anything really.

Tuesday 12 June 2012

Why we should allow the use of internet when testing

I recently had an exam where internet use without communication was allowed, and I must say that I found it very helpful. Even if I didn't use it that much, it was nice to know that I could use it if I wanted to.  On one of the tasks I used a document I had written before with internet use as help. So if internet wasn't allowed, the examiner would probably question why I knew so many random facts.

In real life you have the opportunity to use internet all the time, so it would be logical to allow it on test. When you are working, no one tells you that you can't Google it. The fact that internet was allowed made me very calm, on the exam. Because if we hadn't had internet I would be afraid that we would get questions I couldn't answer.

Monday 7 May 2012

A private affair

The book a private affair is about four different persons, with very different personalities and stories.  Sam Morland has everything. She is pretty, she has a great career, two homes and more money than she could ever ask for. She's single and is to busy to find a guy. Abby Barclay is the perfect army wife, and is used to put her husband before everything else. Meaghan Astor is also an army wife, but she does not have the same background as Abby. She has taken a chance on an young army officer, and follows him around the world to get away from the farm where she grew up. Dani Stemo is a survivor. She grew up in war-torn Sierra Leone, and is used to seeing soldiers everywhere.
But even though they are so different, they have one thing in common. A man.
The book gives you an insight into the British army. It's not a normal love story, but instead an insight into the lives of army wives and the effect loneliness can have on people.

In the beginning the book was a bit difficult to read. The stories was jumping back and fourth, and i didn't really understand what the girls had in common, and why had wrote the things that they had written. But as i read more, it started enjoying it. The author has done a good job in keeping the reader interested. You want to know what happens next, so you can't stop reading.  

innocent?


In February 2012 Trayvon Martin was shoot, and killed. Trayvon was an 17-year-old African American male. Trayvon was walking home to his girlfriends father, when the George Zimmerman, noticed him.  Zimmerman is an hispanic male who was the community watch coordinator, and he thought Trayvon looked suspicious because he was wearing a hoodie. We can't know for sure what happened, but it ended up with a confrontation where Zimmerman shot Trayvon in the chest, and killed him. 

Zimmerman says that it was self-defence, and that Trayvon had attacked him. When the police came to the scene, Zimmerman was found with a bloody nose and a wound on the back of his head. But it seems very unlikely that a young man would attack a man twice his size. So we don't know what really happened because it's one mans world against a dead perso



In this video, you can hear Zimmerman's call to the police before he had shot Trayvon Martin. He is saying that Trayvon is acting very suspicious, and that he has probably taken drugs. The police tells him to not do anything, but  Zimmerman follows Trayvon anyways. So he can't say that it was in self-defence, because he was actually following Trayvon. If he was really scared he could just have run the other way. And I can't believe that Zimmerman was threatened by Trayvon because he did not even have a gun. Like, what was he going to do? Hit him to death with his icetea?    

Tuesday 27 March 2012

Into the wild

The movie "into the wild" is about a man who leaves his life behind to go live in the wilderness. He does not like "things", hates "society" and he rejects his parent's lifestyle. Nobody knows were he is, because he has discarded his identity, and made up a new one. Alex Supertramp. 
Alex starts his journey to an unknown destination. The only things he has is what he can fit in his backpack, and he eats food that he finds in the woods. He meets a lot of fascinating people along his way, who live like hippies.

Alex ends up in Alaska. Here he finds an old bus in the middle of nowhere. Someone has lived in it before, so it has the necessary things that you need to live, like a bed and an oven.
I really don't understand why Christopher McCandless would trade his bright future to go to Alaska and stay there in an abandoned bus in the woods. But I guess he just did not want to be a part of the society that is destroying the planet. I don't think I would end up in his situation, but if I did, I think it would have been important that my family knew about it, so if wanted to go home, I had the opportunity to do so. And even if I knew that they would try to dissuade me, I would have told them, because I think that they have I right to know. If I had decided to go, I would have done it no matter what my family, because it is my decision.

I really liked this movie. It is a movie that makes you think about things. I find I fascinating to see someone live in the wilderness all alone. Even thought I would never do it myself, it is nice to see that it actually is possible. In 2012 we are so dependent on materialistic thing, so it is refreshing to see someone live completely without them.

Tuesday 7 February 2012

Mystery illeness at Le Roy high school, New York

Erin Brockovich is an American legal clerk and environmental activist. She was born June 22. 1960. In 2000 Julia Robert played Erin in a movie, where she was solving the biggest case in America against Pacific gas and electric company (PG&E), in California.
Recently she is trying to solve a case in New York, concerning at Le Roy High School. 15 students has experienced a sudden mysterious tic-like illness. The symptoms include outbursts, shaking and tics, like eye-blinking, head-jerking, eye-darting, shoulder-shrugging and yelling or throat-clearing.
The school district superintendent says that they think they have been exhibiting neurological symptoms. Brockovich thinks that the illness is caused by something environmental, and thinks that it might have something to do with the toxic chemical spill that occurred near the school 40 years ago, thereby contaminating the water and ground.  
Erin Brockovich said to USA Today "when I read reports like this that the New York department of health and state agencies were well-aware of the spill and you don't do water testing or vapor extraction tests, you don't have an all-clear."
Le Roy High School, New York
We feel sorry for the teenagers who are experiencing this mysterious, tragic illness. It's weird how the illness has affected 14 girls and only one boy. It shocks us that they have not taken any tests of the ground after the spill, even though they see how the spill might have been the reason for their suffering. And we think that they don't do enough about the case, and don't do enough to help the affected people. It's outrages that they can't find the reason their ill.  
We also think is strange how people think that they are faking it. If they are acting, what is it in it for them? We don't think that they are faking it because it has developed into such a big case.

Here is a video that says that they have found a cause, but they can't tell people because of a privacy policy:

Tuesday 17 January 2012

Lamb to the slaughter

Roald Dahl's "lamb to the slaughter" is short story about Mary Maloney, who kills her husband with a lamb.

a picture from Hitchcock's movie
Here are some questions that I want to answer

  • what had the husband said to his wife, before she killed him?

I'm really wondering about what made her so upset that she actually killed him. The first thing that came to my mind when I read it, was that he had had an affair. And we also watched an film of Hitchcock's interpretation, and apparently he had thought of the same thing as me. Anyway, he said something that really upset her, and made her so mad or scared that she killed him. But could it be something  else that Roald Dahl thought of when he wrote it? Maybe he just didn't love her anymore, or that he didn't want to be a father.

  • what happened to the little bloodstain that they found on his head?

This really didn't make sense to me at all. Wouldn't they find that out that the blood wasn't his, but that it actually belonged to a lamb? I mean, i does seem quite odd. And when they had found out that is was blood from a lamb, wouldn't they realised that that lamb was in fact the lamb that they had eaten? It just doesn't add up for me.

  • Did it seem like Mary Maloney had a well-thought plan when she first knocked out her husband?

No, not at all. I think she just made it up as she went. I don't think she had planned to feed the policemen the lamb when she hit her husband with it. And she was actually just lucky  that the policemen accepted the offer. What if they had said no thanks? Then no one would have eaten it, and maybe they would have figured out. An that's not the only thing she was lucky with. What it the grocery man noticed that something was wrong? Or what if someone knocked on the door before she left, and foundt the body? So I don't think that she hade planned anything before right before she was doing it, but that doesn't mean it wasn't smart done.

 I really like this short story. I have read it before, but i still enjoyed it. It's just something about the policemen, who tries to figure out what has happened, eating the murder weapon that I find funny every time.