American Education

I just remembered I do have something to write about. This weekend the founder of FIRST Robotics and an inventor of many things Dean Kamen, was in Hawaii. I was able to go to two of his presentations on Saturday but was unable to go to the main one yesterday because I was taking my AP Physics test. Although his presentation may not have been much differnt I better understood his message. The main idea of FIRST is that the problem with the American education system is not that education is not properly available, but that youth do not want it. The main problem is the culture of american. America almost spends more money on education than the rest of the world combined. More students want to be celeberties and athletes than scientists or engineers. So the main idea of FIRST is to get students interested in science and technology through means that people are familiar with. FIRST was created to be a sport with a short season, TV friendly competition, and an element of luck involved in the game. Since then, FIRST has been extremely sucessful. FIRST alumni are 50% more likely to go to college, 3X more likely to major in engineering, and many other statistically significant changes to peoples lives.

Bored

It may seem that with only one class left I would be having the best time of my life. It is nice to have break all the time, but after being programmed to go to class everyday according to my schedule, I am not sure what to do. I know I should be kicking back now since I have barely anything to do, but I still feel like I have a lot to do. I know I probably never said anything meaningful in this post but I am not sure what to write about.

AP Exam

It has been about a month since I have written anything on here. This post may not have relevance to many people. I may have only finished one of the three exams but I still feel somewhat relieved. I barely studied for this past exam but maybe that is why I am so glad to be through with it. When I reflect over the past few hours of my life I try not to try to correct my answers in my head because it will not change what I put in the test booklet. I know I have another test tomorrow and it is probably best if I get some sleep. I don't know why I am concerned at all because AP exams do not matter. That is, they do not give me any credit for courses next year. One of my classmates suggested I should just turn in the booklet blank because the test doesn't matter. The only reason I wouldn't do that is because that is not the point of the exams. The college board wants to know if we were in an AP course over the past year and the test proves that. In a way a test is a way for us to show how much we know. And well, college course credit is a reward that can follow. By now I am starting to view school differently, one such reason would be that grades do not have nearly as much significance but yet, I am still maintaining my first semester grades. School is a lot more interesting when I do it because I am genuinely interesting in learning about the subject. I really am such a nerd. Rather than relaxing or cramming for the test tomorrow I was dead set on trying to understand the derivation for the surface area of a sphere, which I did not accomplish. anything that isn't immediately important is somewhat more interesting. I suppose in the back of my mind I am starting to think about preparing myself for next year. After all it would be a shame to have cruised through calculus only to be stopped by multivariable.

Easter

Easter is a holiday that is being diluted with commercialism. I think the creators of South Park got pretty close with this past weeks episode. (Due to Viacom's copyright enforcement I am unable to post a link to the You Tube video.) I have realized that there is not much connection between the Easter celebration at church and the celebration at the mall. It is my theory that at one point there was some basis for the easter we celebrate at the mall and the easter related to Jesus. The egg thing is pretty easy to relate because it has to do with rebirth. The color scheme that we see around the shopping malls and the easter edition candy relates to spring. Not that the trees, birds and butter files turn pastel, but that it brings about a cheery feeling to it. Spring, like the egg is where people not here but on the mainland, see trees and grass regrowing again. But the bunny is a bit of a stretch. I suppose I could make the claim that since bunnies repopulate really quickly, then they bring about a lot more life than other animals. But, then I suppose the same is for all Lagomorphs (actual order rabbits belong to) and rodents(believed order they belong to.) But, honestly, who would want a rat giving out Easter treats at the mall? For an answer to this troubling question I resort to wikipedia, and I find out that the Easter bunny is actually a hare not a rabbit. Also I found that the easter bunny comes from German folklore. Well that's the answer, it is one of those immigrant folklore customs that lead to another opportunity to get consumers to the stores associated with the other holiday relating to Jesus.

Big Envelope

It is impossible to describe to anyone who has not gone through the college admissions process what the past few days have been like. The season started early with a decision I had expected to be positive. In the case it had been negative, I would have serious doubts about the next few days. But several days past before I got the first rejection. I was ready to receive it because I was not expecting to get in. Furthermore, my close friend who is much more qualified than me also got rejected. But then the unexpected happened. I got a big envelope from a school I had not expected. At that moment I was no longer worried about all the other schools because I was accepted to one of my top choices. It is still hours after being accepted but I am still smiling. I do not intend to be boastful by writing about this topic but I just feel so happy that I am finally certain about something in my life. There still may be a lot more issues I have to face but for this moment I am alright.

Listening

From the last post I was writing about listening to the conservative radio show podcast of Dennis Prager. I started listening to his show one day, when I was flipping through the radio in my car. I first noticed the station because it was something other than music that I am not interested in listening to. I do not specifically remember the talk show that was airing, but after listening for a while, I became interested. After that, I began listening to this radio station when I drove somewhere. Most of the time I would be going home in the evening, because I wanted to stay later at robotics, rather than getting a ride from one of my parents. Drager's radio show airs during this time, so that is what I would listen to. This would be a weekly routine because I usually only stayed late on Fridays, and his show only airs on weekdays. After the second time I listened to it, he began to talk about something that I completely disagreed about, global warming. After hearing it for a few minutes, I was drawn into the show, because I wanted to understand how he justified his argument. Even after I got home I was still thinking about the claims that he was making. One such argument that he brought up, was about how in Al Gore's movie, Inconvinient Truth, some of the claims he made were not entirely truthful. The issue that Prager brought up, was that when Gore claimed that the the scientific community had complete agreement about whether people are responsible for the climate change, was based on a flawed study by Naomi Orskes. After reading more about this specific study, I found out that what he said had some truth to it. In her study, she said that she used the search term, "climate change," when she really used "global climate change," thus, decreasing the amount of articles that would be relevant to her study. But even if the study may have had a few articles that disagreed with the current consensus on climate change, there is still a strong argument for agreement. Seeing this did not change my opinion but got me to re-examine my opinions.
What this showed me, was that news and the media we come in contact with have some bias. That does not mean that media sources that tend to lean in one direction cannot trusted, but that both reports present some form of what is happening. Nation Public Radio, may interview wounded soldiers, or report about the latest bombing, to present the truth that Iraq is unsafe. But what Fox News, or other conservative media outlets will report on how the government is cracking down on death squads, or how Baghdad is becoming safer after Bush proposed the troop surge. I might draw a conclusion either way about whether the war is successful or not based on which news source I listed to (assuming I accepted everything I heard). When what is really happening is that the insurgents are moving their attacks to focus on areas other than Baghdad, so NPR is truthful about the harm done to people, and Fox is truthful about the reduced attacks in Baghdad. By listening to the conservative stance on current events, as well as the liberal stance, I can get a better understanding of what is actually going on.

Podcasters

Lately I have been getting into watching or listening to podcasts on iTunes. I mainly listen to the comedy ones or political podcasts. My favorite podcast is "the show with Ze Frank." This video podcast is really entertaining using various types of humor. Sometimes it will be funny just because he says something awkward or strange. Other times he pokes fun at politics. If I tried to explain a few of the scenarios they would not be nearly as funny as watching them. Another comedy podcast I enjoy is The Onion Radio News. Prior to subscribing to the podcast I had read a book with a bunch of Onion articles. These are usually about a minute or less long so they do not get very deep. They usually just skim the surface of a topic by reporting about a similar situation but in a very strange context. Most recently there was one titled "Nation's Substitute Teachers Would Like To Know Who Threw That." And it is basically a joke about some association of substitute teacher getting angry in a similar fashion to how they would get angry in the classroom situation.
The other podcast I listen to is very interesting to listen to. When I am done listening to the comedy podcasts for the day I might listen to the conservative radio host Dennis Prager. My reasoning for why, and my reaction to listening to it will take up another post so I will write about it later. By the way, I am fairly liberal so listening to conservatives is difficult sometimes.

Red Tape

Today we were instructed about all these restrictions that well, I can no longer say the institutions name that said we are not allowed to do a bunch of things. All these restrictions remind got me thinking about the restrictions we also faced in robotics. Besides the fact that both are related to technology, both are new things at, (shoot, I cannot complete my sentence) my school. The new idea of using a blog for school work is a very different way of learning just as robotics is a very different activity than other clubs and sports. We have run into trouble on many things because the old rules that this school set up are difficult to follow with our new club. One such thing was our website. On this website we mentioned this institutions name, which we were not suppose to do. We face the same restriction in composition. on our website we also spoke about sponsors. This is a major violation of my schools rules but the rule poses a challenge. In order to talk about donations now we have to tell the people who want to donate, that they have to donate it to the school, and then have the money directed toward us.
Another issue we face with finances is purchasing supplies. this is probably one of the rules we have broken many times. The usual procedures for purchasing things for reimbursement requires our mentors to create a request slip, send it to some office to get it approved so that we can hear from them in a few days and go out and purchase it. This is extremely inefficient because when we need to buy something like a box of bolts, we cannot wait several days to hear from them to purchase the bolts. So in many cases we just break the rule and our mentors get in trouble but it is alright because it is not worth wasting our work time.
Another issue we had where we got in trouble was with our room. The reason why we chose the upstairs of bishop was because that was where the robotics elective class was. However, after the semester ended along with the class, we continued to stay in the room. This was against their plan because they wanted to use the room for a photo lab. What they did not realize was that after we set up the main game piece, which we call, "the spider," it would be very difficult to make us move. The spider is about 9 foot tall structure with an octagonal base.
Our positive breakthrough that we did have is we were given team status. Yay! This is gives us more privileges which use to be only open to sports teams. But since it is team status, and we are also a team, it is appropriate.
[my schools] Robotics is in its infant state and is still growing. I can see that in the future the administrators will get more use to things and change so that our team can be more efficient. Hopefully the same thing will also happen with the technology that is being integrated into the classrooms.

Cyber Scene

What is with our generation? We find someway to take a really neat idea, and manage to use it to objectify ourselves. The technology I am talking about is blogs, specifically social blogs such as MySpace and Facebook. These technologies have a good intention of widening the field by making meeting people much easier. This is generally a good idea, except when you begin meeting or wanting to meet people because of the picture they display in the top corner. This turns looking for people you are interested in, into looking for people who look interesting. This wouldn't be a problem if looks were not a major part, but we are not in such a world. Problems arise not from posting a picture of your self, but several pictures which are highly appealing to internet predators. But the female gender is not entirely to blame, but the males who promote an environment where girls feel they have to dress a certain way.
Our generation may be at the beginning of the technological age with new advances in biotechnology, computers, and materials sciences, but with all these new developments, the moral fabric of society is decaying. Now I am not some radical evangelical who is asking for dramatic changes, but I do not want to see society to continue to decay socially. In a era where people can send a message through cyberspace in a fraction of a second, people are not taking a minute to question things in their life. Young couples are not questioning whether they really want to get married so early, despite the statistics that suggest a higher divorce rate for young couples. Many young girls do not think about the implications of the way they dress because their friends, older sisters, or celebrity whores dress in a similar distasteful fashion. And young men do not think about the impact of leaving their wife and newly born kids. Our generation needs to do something about this problem; otherwise we will just be a part of it.

Reflecting on Robotics

Before robotics started, I had to make an incredibly challenging decision. Most people don't realize how difficult this was for me, as well as how uncertain I was about the decision. If I was not doing robotics, I would be doing wrestling. I have wrestled for the past four years. The same weekend I started coming to robotics was the same weekend I would have to decide if I was going to do wrestling. Even though I had already hydrated, I never weighted in, so it never counted. But what would have happened had I not quit wrestling is not important because I decided to do robotics.
The reason I was open to changing activities was I had gotten to a point where I was not interested in wrestling. This may seem absurd because I had done it for four years, but over the years I began to lose interest. Not changing what I was use to would be the only reason to finish wrestling. However, I took the risk to try something different. I am not concerned that people would think less of me for quitting wrestling to participate in robotics. The previous year I had quit judo to do botball. I was already not taken very seriously in wrestling. I was always the one to entertain the team with my obscure remarks. One example of this is when coach Oney (who is a math teacher) told the team that our pushups were so off time that it looked like a sine curve. Jokingly, I replied, it looks more like a cosine curve. My robotics team would have fully appreciated the humor behind my comment.
The only thing that I miss in the robotics room is a team that is more focused. The wrestling room also contains individuals who lack focus, as well as a team that can also lose focus. But since our robotics team has not been around long enough, we are in the process of leaning how to lead. What makes focusing in robotics especially challenging, is that since so much has to be done, more people have to be responsible for getting something done. Because we are working on a group project and we are not training for a sport focused on the individual, when someone does not work, it hurts the team. Robotics, unlike wrestling, taught me to work independently without needing a whistle to tell me to start.
Side by side the two cannot be compared in the same ways. Wrestling requires commitment as well as devotion to the team. Robotics requires commitment because it takes up not just requiring more time after school everyday, but also on Saturdays and Sundays for longer periods of time. Wrestling requires mental strength to keep going. Robotics requires mental strength to figure out design as well as build a drive train that will keep going. At wrestling we learn techniques and do drills. At robotics we discuss strategy and design, and we use drills to build. But robotics always makes me leave a meeting wondering and thinking about the next problem we are going to solve.

Finally done!

I am finally done with my homework for this weekend. This is a very strange feeling because I usually do not finish all my homework that is due tomorrow. I usually have to use my breaks to finish homework. I could have taken the easy way out of two tests by being sick tomorrow. But that would not help out in the long run because then I would have to make it up later. I feel crappy right now because I am sick, but I am willing to live with being sick if I get all that I need to do done. I did not think I could do it but I did it. There isn't much else to say except that I still have not learned how to create an applet. Maybe next week, or the following week I will have time to learn how to do this. But before I can do this I have to learn html better. I currently do not know html even though I am good at Java. Java is a complicated language where as html is not even classified as a language because it is too simple. I just have not gotten around to learning it.