Jez's Blog

North Korea is one of the few countries that are still be ruled under dictatorships. Which means that the leader of North Korea takes all the power of controlling the country.

News1. North Korea Heading Towards Famine: Report
[By Reuters. 30th, Apr. 2008]
The soaring global food prise and the reluctant donors are pushing North Korea back towards famine. The leader of North Korea were focusing on developing nuclear weapons, which costs a lot of money. Therefore, the economic support for the other needs of the citizens has been terminated. Which included the economic support of the foods. In which is causing the citizens to die from hunger.

News2. Bush Says Syria Nuclear Disclosure Intended to Prod North Korea and Iran
[By Steven Lee Myers. 30th Apr. 2008]
North Korea is still developing nuclear weapons, secretively. However, there are not only North Korea that is having nuclear weapon developments. Syria and Iran are also being involved.

According to the 2 newses about North Korea, I found out that as an result, the citizens are suffering because the leader, or you can say the dictator, keeps focusing on developing the nuclear weapons. Even though the development is not allowed, and the U.N. had also negotiated with North Korea that if it (North Korea) quits the development of nuclear weapons, it (U.N.) will fully support the needs within the country (North Korea). And in which tells us that the leader in dictatorships might not be concentrating a lot on the needs of the citizens. And instead, they mostly concentrate on what they want.

Today in class, just as usual, we shared the current events that we'd found. And then, we continued to work on the researching for our individual topics. My topic was 'The End of WWI', I didn't think that it was a hard topic because the information about it as actually quite to find. However, for doing this assignment, there is still a part that was quite hard, which was to think of a question about the topic. I found it's hard was because that I still need to earn a lot of things about my topic first. I had to learn about the history of WWI, the Treaty of Versailles..etc. And although I'd already read some of the informations from the textbook, I still have a lot to learn. And by the way, as a active learner, I was also seeing that if I could learn something else from the website.

Do animals have rights? If so, what're their rights applying to foods? Do we have the right to kill animals to eat?

I agree that animals have rights, especially the right of living. But when they are in the case of producing meat or other products for food, then well.. I think it depends..

It depends on how they were treated when they are producing these productions because there surely are more than just one way of producing animal productions.

Think about farming, farms are the most common source of animal productions. But there are also difference between these farms. The size of the farms, the processes of farming, and the animal cares...etc. And to compare a big farm with good animal cares and good farming process, with a small farm that lacks of animal care and with vise farming process, I'd say that obviously, the animals in the big farm has more rights than the animals in the small farm. And on the other hand, it seems that the animals in the small farm are not having any rights at all! So the products which are made from the animals that are having more rights, may be more expensive. And by the way, it make since also, because animals aren't living for producing animal products for humans. Therefore, we, as the humans, should respect their lives!!

And moreover, think about hunting, the other source of animal products. What right do the animals have during hunting?
Well, I'll say that they have a lot more rights than the animals in the farms. Instead of just the right of living, eating, and being somehow protected, they actually have the right to protect themselves by hiding, running or even attack the hunters. However, the hunters have the right to hunt for food, though they'll have to pay more effort for it.

Click HERE to see the TRUTH of the animal productions that we are using..

After I went to this Bloom's Taxonomy website, here is a list of examples, of my learning that fits each following thinking levels.

Creating:
Using different elements to create a project. For example, the Greece Researching iMovie.

Evaluating:
Checking the rubric for the Greece Researching iMovie and tried to follow it while I was making the iMovie.

Analyzing:
Mind mapping on Mindmeister. Using the mind maps to break down a certain unit of Ancient Greece into different topics. And then penetrate deeply into each of these topics.

Applying:
Using my notes and the informations either from the textbook or the other sources to answer my own questions about the unit.

Understanding:
Summrize the informations that I've learned from the WWII movie into notes.

Remembering:
Reading facts on textbooks, websites, and other information sources.

What is a right?
Well, a right is something that you deserved and allowed to, which means that you don't 'earn' a right. However, you can still somehow loose your right. For example, if you are a murderer, you may loose your right of freedom, or even your right of living because when you murdered a person, you'd just taken it's right of living. But different beings has different rights, for example, a mosquito has the right of sucking our bloods, and on the other hand, we also has the right of defending, which would usually be killing them. But in this case, we won't loose our right of living just because we'd killed them.

And now, for my animal anatomy, there are 2 following questions:
1. What animals would we have the right to dissect? Why?
2. Which animals don't we have the right to dissect? Why?

For question 1, what animals would we have the right to dissect, and why..?
Basically, I think the animal that we would have the right to dissect are the animals that has less rights, well.. at least in our point of view. I'm also wondering how can you define ones' right? I mean.. it seemed like the 'right' is already there, people define other beings' rights by their own point of views. For example, I love dogs, so I think that dogs has more rights than certain other animals, but for someone who eats dog, they might think that dogs has no rights because they've already define dogs as a kind foods.
Anyways, since we couldn't really define the actual rights for different animals, I'll say that the animal that we would have the right to dissect would be the ones that are defiantly not one of the endanger species, and perhaps, the ones that has already been 'used' for dissections, normally.

For question 2, which animals don't we have the right to dissect are defiantly the ones that are one of the endanger species, and ya.. basically, they are the ones that we think that has more rights.

When I was watching the movie, I was quite shocked although I've already expected that we were about to see something 'fearful'.

In the movie, I saw different ways of how dictators take up their powers in each dictatorships of different countries. For example, the Nazis in Germany, led by Hitler. When I saw the mass parades of the Nazis, the education for the youth from the Nazis, and the way of people showing that they worhip Hitler, which was to rise up your right hand with fingers closed.

I wondered why would these people join the Nazis? It doesn't seem to make their life better anyway, and in fact, it has seemed to make people's life harder and meaningless! Because everyone in the Nazis were just following Hitler's orders. But however, on the other hand, the people that disobeyed the Nazis may somehow be killed. Because under Hitler's power, there were secret polices everywhere and anywhere, the scariest part is that they could be anyone! Which means that it could also be your best friend! And these secret polices would report to Hitler about whoever were insulting him or his dictatorship.

Today in class ,we were watching a movie about World War II for most of the time in class period. And then in the end of the class, Mr. Carpenter showed Jordan's and mine Greece researching video. I think I've been demonstrating as a person of high character because I prepared for the class by fixing my Greece reaching video, and for finding a way to fix it, I even went to Mr. Truchon for installing iMovie 08, the iMovie that I've been using before, which I'm more familiar with. But.. during this process, it didn't went through very smoothly. First of all, Mr. Truchon was in a meeting, when he lent me his iPod flash drive for installing the file. But the file loaded so slow so I was afraid that even the bus was leaving, it wouldn't be done either. Therefore, I quited the installing and returned the iPod flash drive to Mr. Truchon. After that, I sent an email to him to tell him that I quited it before it finished installing. And then, I couldn't find another time to meet him again because there was a field trip to the Taipei Zoo. However, as an critical thinker and problem solver, I used my flash drive and copied iMovie 08 from Lydia(my roommate at the time)'s laptop, and installed it into mine. Then, I used iMovie 08 to redo my video.
During movie in class, I was demonstrating as a person of high character because I was being quiet all the time, I only spoke when I was answering questions or giving my ideas in the discussions. And also, as an active learner, I was taking notes while Mr. Carpenter was brain storming the video.

Wang's two-hitter leads Yankees to win over Red Sox
12th, Apr. 2008 1:06am

Looking at the pictures of this current event, I saw Wang was having a 'good job' hand-shade with his teammate, Jose Molina, in the first picture. And for the second picture, Wang was celebrating with his teammates, Jason Giambi, Alex Rodriguez, and Jose Molina after defeating the Boston Red Sox. Therefore, befoe I read the article of this current event. I sort of had this foreshadow from the pictueres, which told me that this event is going to be a good news about the Yankees. And especially about Wang.


'He was as good as I've seen him,' Yankees manager told the reporteres.
'I think this is my best game so far,' said Wang.
Wang Chien-ming pitched a two-hit complete game to lead the New York Yankees to a 4-1 victory over the Boston Red Sox on Friday in the first meeting this season between the heated American League rivals.

[Writing by Gene Cherry in Salvo, North Carolina; Editing by Greg Stutchbury]

Today in class, we were working on our iMovie for our project. I'd say that I was an active learner because I the iMovie that I was using was in a different version with the one that I've been using before my laptop was broken. And so, when I was using it to do my project, I was also learning to use this version of iMovie, by myself. I would have asked questions if I had any problems, but I didn't seemed to have a lot of problems. However, the only question that I've had was 'how to record my voice by this version of iMovie?' But Mr. Carpenter taught me before I asked him, so I didn't really ask him anything during class. Bascally, I was just working on everything on my own during the class. :p

Look at myself as a parent one day who has runs a democratic form of 'family government'.
My family will be ruled by democracy. My husband and I will basically take the leadership in my family together. My kids, as the 'citizens' will have the right to vote for that do they want, and of course, my husband and I will definitely listen to their voices and come up with a fair decision. The positives for this kind of 'governing', I think is that everyone in the family will be involved for everything that's going on within the family. They can share their voices and opinions to the 'leaderships', and enjoy the life in the 'society' of the family. However, the problem that may occur is that there might be too many different opinions from each members of the family, and so, it could be really hard for the leaders to make a certain decision without being disagreed by the ons that are having a different opinions.

For the Greece researching project, I've chosen my topics, which are Trading and The Athenian Revolution. For the topic-Trading, I've asked 3 questions about it. 1. How did they trade? 2. What did they trade? and 3. Who did they trade with. And for the other topic- The Athenian Revolution, I've only asked 2 questions about it. 1. Why did it happen? and 2. How did it end up?
So far, I've done my researching on all these 5 questions and I've put the answers as notes on my mind map os Greece researching. I've also finished the researching of images that fits my answers. And so, the next thing that I'm going to do, probably in class, is to work on my iMovie for the final presentation of this project. I'll put the images that I'd found into the iMovie, record my voice of answering the question and perhaps, introducing the images.

Active learner
In Progress-Demonstrate.

When there's an assignment that contains researching, I do the researches on my own. I've been learning things from the websites, books and even from answers of people that I'd asked for help. I've also been asking questions during class, though it's not very often. And moreover, I started to read about current events from news websites and also been listening to them from the radio in the morning, on my mum's car during the ride to school.