Matthew's Amazing Awesome Blog

Saad:Strengths and Challenges  Nick: Strengths and Challenges

One of the largest "hits" for my freshman year was the research paper. I genuinely enjoyed writing that huge research paper about technology in the cold war. I think this is for a few reasons. The first one being that WWII and Cold War history is something that I am very passionate about (I can blame my Dad for that). The second reason for me enjoying the research paper was because I believed that I was good at writing something like that (not to brag or anything). One of the things that I most improved on while doing this paper were my citation skills. That was definitely something that I had almost no experience in until writing the research paper. The writing project that I had the most trouble with was the literary analysis. I really did believe that the paper would have been the death of me. One of the main reasons for this is because I had a very strong feeling about the book that I couldn't necessarily put into writing (or say for that matter). This is because I

I believe that one of my greatest strengths lies in the context of the rhetorical situation. Rhetorical situation is a group of categories that are required to be accounted for whenever a writer writes a his or her writing. These categories are purpose, audience, genre, stance, and design. I thing that I generally do well on all of these things. However, I believe that my strongest strengths are understanding who my audience is going to be, and also expressing my stance on a certain topic. One of the most strong categories of writing that I posses is giving my stance on a particular issue and then backing up. This is something of which that I know for a fact that I lot of people have issues with across my generation. However, not only do I present and back a stance, I generally believe that I do a fair job at realizing who is actually reading what I am writing. It is crucial to understand this for a lot of things that I write since a lot of it is very controversial. Some of the thing

I found this reading section to be both the most action packed and most disturbing section so far. The most disturbing thing to me (besides Ade Coker dying), was the hypocrisy of Papa throughout the entire book. It just appalls me to the level of disgust. One of the most gruesome scenes occurred in this section. We see Papa beat his daughter to a point to where she almost dies. She even had to stay in the hospital for a prolonged period of time while everyone else thought that she was in an accident. We see Papa being a hypocrite throughout the entire story. He has a version of self righteousness that justifies his actions "in the name of God". These actions are ruthless and abusive towards his entire family, and they somehow put up with it (that will most likely change soon). Papa will go through with these actions to fight against his wife or his children committing sins (at least by his standards). After he does these actions, he says things like "no one will ever h

I would have to say that my most favorite video game at the current moment is Arma 3. There are only two other people who I know in our grade who play this game. I find this very surprising because Arma is by far the best game to ever exist in the current moment. I would even say that it is better than any COD or MW game. There are a few reasons for this, all of which surpass the capabilities of any COD or MW game. Arma 3 is better than these games because it looks better, it is more realistic, and it is by far the most customizable game to date. Arma 3 just looks better. No doubt in my mind about that. This is obviously because Arma runs on PC hardware (not console) which already means that it looks a million times better than any console game such as COD. Arma 3 is the most realistic military FPS to date. Everything down to fatigue and walking speed is carefully tuned and altered at the most precise time to simulate real life. Also, there is no jumping (because you actually don'

Thomas G: Gun Control Gregory F: Police Shootings

I chose an article from Vox. Vox has been known to many as a reliable news source and has been cited by multiple politicians is the end all be all of news sources. The article which is titled America's gun problem, explained , attempts to give a large number of statistics and then links these "facts" together to form a statement (I will come to this statement later). There is also a video from Vox that accompanies the article, and I will include all of the facts and statements that they make there into this blog. The first claim that Vox makes is that America's gun problem is completely unique compared to the rest of the developed world. They do this by comparing homicide rates between countries (in the article) and by comparing mass shooting occurrences between countries (in the video). After this claim, they then go on to claim that more guns means more death. They even show an entire chart of all of the states and shows that a larger percentage of legal gun owner

Zoe: the march Emma P: My love for Fat Cow

I really did want to go to the event. Not because I support gun control, however. All across our nation people have protested for gun control. Just think about that for a second. People are protesting to have their own rights taken away. The rest of this entry will be the reasons on why gun control is stupid and completely useless and also why we even have the right to bear arms. All of my statistics come from the FBI crime center or other reliable sources. The first point that I want to touch on is the fact that guns do not kill people. A gun can physically not sprout legs and decide to kill someone. Also, a guns main function is not to only kill people. Often, a gun can be used to intimidate an aggressor to prevent an altercation from even happening in the first place. It is only logical to assume that if a possible defender has a gun, then a possible aggressor will hesitate because of the fact that he/she may be shot at after he initiates. But the world is not logical. Often there

One of the most interesting things to me in Purple Hibiscus is the fact that they are living in a very unstable Nigeria. I have previously learned about Nigeria before, but my knowledge is still very basic and limited in the fact that I never really knew much about the politics of Nigeria until just recently. In Purple Hibiscus , we see that the recent military coup is extremely oppressive in nature. We see people being jailed for criticizing the government (like Ade) and we see people being killed for nonviolent crimes such as drug dealing. I began to research so that I could understand just what coup occurred in the time frame of this book. I thought that if I could understand the government of Nigeria more, then I could better understand what exactly is happening to the people of Nigeria. One of the first things that came up whenever I searched about this topic was oil. Oil was the essential driver of these military coups. Each coup was driven by the greed for money and power.

I saw the gold gullies gushing over with the rainbow water I knew so dear. Now I see, The oil. I saw the lush water gush over the bright beaches. Now I see, The tar. I used to be down with the mainstream oil Now I see, Corruption. I thought I would see change, I see nothing. Assonance Enjambment Consonance

"You've Got a Friend" by James Taylor Lyrics Song One of the first main points that I would like to bring up this song is just the entire soothing melody of it. This fact will be used later in my explanation. One of the first tools that I see used in this song is euphony. The lyrics just seem to flow well and along with the music seems very soothing. The entire song, in my opinion, is spoken through the eyes of James Taylor himself (I will explain why later). Another thing that is crucial into understanding this poem is that there is a very interesting structure to it. There are multiple examples of enjambment that specifically call on words that are important to his point. The first and most obvious one is when he excludes the phrase "You've got a friend". The phrase is the main point of the entire song and it is important that he brings more importance to this. This brings me to the entire point and purpose of the song. James Taylor has already stat

Ethan: Free Post EHS Soccer Season Charlie: LAUNCH Reflection

I am sad to say that War Strike 2 is essentially dead. War Strike: A WWII Story was honestly not very successful. And combined with school and family matter I don't believe that putting my time towards a game that will not be successful is worth it. Therefore, I have begun to work on something very, very large. Something that I believe will be more successful than War Strike. I also believe that the only reason I am able to do this is due to the math that I have learned so far during high school(and during middle school). I say this because a lot of the work I am doing involves working with terrain generation. My goal is to make a game about exploration and planetary battles. To make a more immersive game, I need terrain generation that is efficient and terrain generation that actually looks good. To do this, I am using an algorithm called Dual Contouring. For length purposes, I will keep my explanation of this algorithm simple. First, I create a 3d grid(like a piece of graph pap

I honestly had no idea what to expect for Launch day that was just this past Friday. I was honestly very entertained by the wonderful seniors that presented their presentations that they had been working on for over a year. I honestly can not stress the fact enough that these seniors really did put a ton of their time and energy into giving us a day that taught us wonderful and interesting things. This brings me to which Launch Day presentation that interested and inspired me the most. Most interested me the most was the presentation on how social media can influence the stock market. He gave multiple examples (such as tweets from Trump) that clearly showed that there is a correlation between how social media portrays certain stocks and the stock's price. What was more interesting to me, however, is when he began to talk about how an anonymous person made an actual AI that auto trades based on tweets and market strategies. Being a novice programmer myself, I began to research a b

Tanya Research Question Tristan Research

How did the technological advances during WW2 prolong the Cold War? WW2 is so interesting to me because of how they had the most similar technology to what we have today. The plane, nuclear, and computational technology sectors were all fast tracked because of the immediate need for war technology. This, however, had many consequences as the war after WW2 was far larger in scale and in length. The technology developed during WW2 prolonged the life of the Cold War because of the nuclear efforts, vehicle research, and rocketry programs that occurred during WW2. The most interesting aspect of this entire research project is the fact that all topics point towards nuclear efforts. The vehicles that were produced before and after WW2 included the nuclear technology that we still use today. This was a huge improvement over conventional ways of moving. The rocketry programs of both the US and the Soviets all had one goal in mind. That was to launch a nuclear warhead at each other and make

One of the most interesting aspects of the setting of ATDPTI is that story so far has been set in an Indian Reserve is Spokane, Washington. I found this to be very foreign to me mainly because I haven't actually experienced what these Indian reserves were like. So I thought that one of the most productive things that I could do to better understand the environment of the book is to actually research Indian Reserves and specifically the one in Spokane. One of the first things that I looked into when it came to the Spokane Indian Reserve is the actual organization of it all. At the current moment, the 2,874 citizens that live there are split among six organizations. There is the Tribal Government, Spokane Tribal Enterprises, Spokane Indian Housing Authority, Wellpinit School District, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Indian Health Services. All of which are government controlled and funded. So far in ATDPTI, I have only seen three of the six sections so far.

Tanya: free post Robert: Free Post - Why eSports Are Still Sports

Evan: Is Water Wet? (hint: it is not) Charlie: The Fake News Awards (hint: most news is fake)

The media has been all over Bitcoin. They constantly rave about how the price has hit the sky, and some media outlets say that it is a complete scam. The only problem is that a lot of people don't actually know what Bitcoin actually is. Yes, Bitcoin is a completely decentralized crytpcurrency that uses blockchain technology. It creates an entire financial system that is void of a central authority. It does this using blockchain technology. Block chain technology works by using computing power(from miners that put their computer hardware power up to the network) to validate transactions between two parties. After this validation is done, miners are compensated for the services they provide in Bitcoin. This is how more Bitcoin is put into circulation. The main aspect of all cryptocurrencies that I am interested in is mining. The basic approach that most miners take to mining is that they should invest into hardware, and then achieve that fastest ROI that they can. The only problem

At the current moment, my research is going very well in terms of the amount of organization I am putting forth. I am usually very unorganized whenever I do any type of work, but this seems to be very different because of whats at stake(my grades). What is also going well is just how interested I am into my topic. I am never interested in school work and yet I still find myself surfing the internet trying to find more info for my research paper(more on this later). One of my biggest problems is actually finding in depth information on certain aspects of my research paper. I think this is mainly because most of the stuff that I need to know is probably still classified by either the Russians or the US. One example of this is the complete lack of knowledge of how the Russians actually attained the means to create their V2 clone. The only thing that I could find was a picture, and it was questionable about whether it was actually the clone or just another V2.

The first thing that I learned about being a highschool student is that this is an entire different level of intensity. Middle school was easy compared to the first semester I have had. The second thing that I learned is that time is more valuable to me at this point in my life. This mainly has to do with the fact that I have twice the amount of work that I had in middle school. The final thing that I have learned is that I have a lot more freedom than before. My goal for the next semester is all about time. I felt like last semester that I did not properly utilize my time. This year I am hoping to buckle down and finally be able to get my work done quickly and properly. Another one of my goals is to improve my grades. Without going into too much detail, I think my grades could be better.

Gregory: Describe what Utopia would look like and why. My utopia would actually be today's America with a few minor changes. I would certainly keep the system of government that we have at the moment, but I believe that some of the other systems that America has in place are very unnecessary. The first system that I would abolish as President would be welfare(I will explain this later). The second change that I would make would be lowering taxes substantially(I will also explain how this will work). The last change that I would implement would be to give business more control over their actual business. By this I mean that they can hire who they want to hire, serve who they serve, and not be withheld by government restrictions. Abolishing welfare and lowering taxes are two things that go hand in hand. Once business taxes are lowered, then employee wages will rise. This will then cause the need for welfare to go down. People will then have to stop depending on the government. Th