Issues And Blogs

We have been asked by our teacher to find a few blogs that we think are important topics for our class to go on and read. They have to be blogs that we like and blogs that we find have important issues that we think our class needs to know about.

Animal Cruelty

While searching around I found a really good blog that talks about an shows animal cruelty. I picked this because I think it is an important issue because people are taking innocent animals ad are torturing and even killing them. I think we should know about what people are doing to these animals and how we can stop it from happening.

http://www.stopanimalabuse.blogspot.com/

Child Labour

I think child labour is a very important topic for us to learn about because last year I did a slide show about it so I know how bad it is for some of these kids. Sometimes kids need to go into labour to help feed their selves and their family but some of them are taken away from their home and are sold for money to dangerous jobs which can risk their lives.

http://www.weightofsilence.wordpress.com/

Global Issues

While I was searching around I came across this one place that has everything on it. I thought it was a very goo site because there are many different important topics for you to read on such as poverty, war, environmental issues, war, and politic and social news from all around the world.

http://www.globalissues.org/

These are the blogs I think our class should use and that I think are important and have very useful information about these issues around the world that we need to know about.

Happy New Year

Well it looks like another great year has come and gone. I hope you made the best out of the old year and are ready to welcome the new one in with a fresh mind and new ideas and goals. I hope you have a good year with many great things and accomplish everything you want.

Happy New Year, 2009

Troubles With Teens

These days teenagers, and younger kids are starting to get into drugs and alcohol. Living in a small town like Snow Lake we keep on seeing more of it each day. On the weekends and even on school days kids are going and getting people to buy beer for them, or else they are stealing it from their house and are going out and getting so hammered that they don’t even know what they are doing. They are also getting their selves into trouble and are getting in trouble with the law. They are also getting really stupid and are attempting things that are dangerous and plain ridiculous like going out and vandalizing and breaking things and trying to be cool. Now these kids are even getting into smoking and drug use. When these kids are going drugs and drinking they are passing out and they don’t know where they are which is not good at all. Most of these kids are getting pressured into it because they think it is a way to be cool or to fit in but it has many consequences and it makes people loose their trust in you and it may even make you start to loose trust in yourself and it makes you regret everything because you are too hammered to know what is going on and what you are doing. Once you start to get into these kind of things it is hard to get out then you just keep on doing it until you end up being an addict or loosing your job. So try to stay out of these things because they can really screw up your life.

Christmas Is Finally Here

Well it is starting to get cold outside and everyone is starting to take out their ski doos, and put up all of their Christmas decorations getting ready for the holidays. Our last day of school here is this Friday. We get to have a potluck for our grade then go down to a pep rally which is usually really fun. Tomorrow night the school is having a dance so I think that should be fun too. Over the Christmas holiday I get to celebrate my birthday on December 22 so that should be pretty cool. On New Years my families friends and me are all going to have a fire so it should be pretty cold. Then on New Years Eve I have to babysit so I should be getting lots of money over the holiday season. We then come back to school on Monday January 5 so I will make it last as long as I can!

In A Striking Moment

In a well known tourist area in southern china called Hangzhou on November 15 the only things being heard around the 100-meters-long–50m-wide section of the subway tunnel that had been under construction for a while was a big BANG and the cries of people running away in panic. The subway tunnel had collapsed in an at least 20 workers were trapped inside under all of the falling cables and bars, and because the subway was under an eight lane road by the riverside the road had collapsed in and many cars had fallen through. The water also started pouring through and since it was mixed in with silt pured in made peoples escape almost impossible. Cranes came in to help pull the people out but it was too slippery for them to hold on. In the end more than 40 people managed to run out but there were still about 21 people were reported dead. Why did this collapse happen? why didn’t anyone do anything about the cracks being reported?

This post really caught my eye because before this big collapse happened many people were starting to notice cracks around the roads and no one seemed to be doing anything about it. If some one would of went up to the construction workers and reported this they could of stopped those 21 deaths that happened and they could of saved the subway station. I think people have to be more careful when doing stuff like this or when they are going to build a subway station I think they should take a closer look at where they want to put it and at all the dangers that are possible with it. It is little things and mistakes like this that are creating many tragedies around the world and that are taking peoples lives because people aren’t thinking enough about all of this they just want or need something so they decide to build it and they probably didn’t have one clue that this was going to happen.  All that this left behind was  the memories and the big mess from the station and the river which doesn’t do anyone any good.

The Seniors Turn To Party

On November 7 2008 the Nata village had its very first annual senior citizen appreciation day. There were approximately over sixty people in the sixty five and above age group that came out and celebrated this special even for their selves. They celebrated the day by having a few laughs and dancing around having fun. They also had a few speeches that were done by the Kgosi and other members from the community. After the speech they all sat down to a big and delicious lunch made by the Post Office and hoped for this holiday to be another great success next year.

I think events like these are very important because it is recognizing all of the seniors in our society that have been around for a long time and experienced special events and stories like in the war which they can tell us and share their memories with. These people are starting to get old and into bad shape so they wont be alive for too much longer so we should appreciate them as much as we can before we loose part of our generation and move on to a new one. It is also important because in places like Japan that have the longest living life span in the world because their diet consists of such foods as fish and rice, people in places like Africa have very poor diets and like in the Nata village almost everyone has aids so they do not have as long of a life span so it is much more important to have these events before we start to loose our senior population and make room for new ones.

Looking Back On Blogging and RSS

Ive been blogging for two years now and have also had an I Google account for the same amount of time. When I look back on the both of them I can see my strong points, my weak points and what I have done to make them good enough so people will come to my blog.

Blogging: When I look back at my blog I saw some current stats, information and blog posts I have written. Right now on my blog I have 24 comments, 149 hits and I have left 37 comments on other peoples blogs. Lately I have also been connecting with people from South America and Australia. On my blog I like to write about issues between countries and keeping peace. I like to write a lot of my posts from a blog called global voices which is on my i google account which we need for social studies. The style of writing I have is very formal when I am writing a post that is needed for school but when I am just writing a random post or making updates it is just very simple. On my blog I think I can improve on taking more time to write posts that are not needed, writting about topics that are not always about the same thing and by making sure I add goo links that people will be interested in. Another thing I have been busy on is my I google.

RSS: My I google account is a place where I can get information daily from the blogs I like to read and too add anything i like to do or read on it and organize it the way I want it. On my I Google page I have three different tabs. On my first tab I have a few of my classmates blogs from last year that I liked and a few other blogs we had to find from last year. On my second tab there is all of my extra items like my horoscopes, search engines, calender and to do list. Finally on my last tab I have all of my blogs I need for Social Studies which have to do with different things around the world. My themes are also always fitting the mood and feel of my set up and the posts I have picked. On my I Google I can improve more by taking more time to add things I like, organizing all of my items better and by adding more blogs so I can get RSS feed from them.

I think that I have been doing pretty good with my blog and if I keep it up my blog will be a success and people will want to come back and read it.

Two Countries And A Temple

So this week while I was browsing the blogs I came across a post on the global voices blog about two countries. It was about who really owns the historic Preah Vihear Temple, is it the country of Cambodia or the country of Thailand? Both of these countries asserted ownership rights which is leading them to become enemies like in last weeks border clash in which several soldiers were wounded. Both countries have agreed to talk but this is far from over. The Thais want there people to leave Cambodia so most of the people have already done so. The Thai companies in Cambodia are also worried too. 

I think things like this are becoming a problem in our society. When there is something between two countries or something that belongs to two countries then they get greedy and want it all for their selves which causes conflicts and war. When war happens many people get injured and killed and  the countries occur problems that will take a while to fix such as damage, money issues and businesses closing down. I think for any of this not to happen the countries need to have  a meeting of some sort  like they are and sort it out so  no one gets hurt and so it is even. I think they should look back into the history and see who first owned it a long time ago. I think that country should get it. If they both have full rights to it then I think they whould sort out the land even. They should give each country parts of the building or split up the treasures left inside of it. I hope everything works out just fine without any conflict, and i also hope they each get their portion of this whole ordeal.

The Assassination:Remembering the Tragedy

While I was on l the global voice blog I came across a post that I think has a very big story behind it. It is about October 7 and why it was an important day. This October 7 marked the second anniversary of the death and assassination of journalist Anna Politkovskaya. There will hopefully soon be a trial against the alledge killer that has not been caught.

This post is very important to me because innocent free minded people get killed for doing what they love even though other people might not like it. We are talking about a girl who stood up against lies, hypocritically and rumors but dint quite fit in so she gets killed for it. What A society we have today. She was so powerful. So truthful and so willing to help do whatever she could to stop people and get new out into the open. There was nothing they could stop her with, only the single shot of a bullet. So just think about it. Why in these kind of places when somebody want the rights to their freedom of speach that such horrible things like this happen? This girl didn’t care what people thought about her. She wanted people to pay for the sins they did. She had a life, a family, and a future on the path she was on but some evil person had to take that away from her. Just take a moment to think about how lucky you are to be alive and how sometimes the things that you thrive for are not always best for you in the end.

Photostories

In school we have been working with the new grade 8 class from L.A and we have made photostories about what it is like to live in our countries. This was the first time that we have ever done a photostory so it was an experience to everyone while we were constructing them.

While I was making my photostory I actually learned a lot about what goes into them. I learned about how you need to have a good story that has meaning to you and will most likely have affect on others. You also need to have good pictures that tell its own story because it makes your photostory interesting to watch. It was also cool to pick out our own music that fit with different parts of the story when we needed it. I also think it was much easier to work with a partner because that way you can have two ideas instead of one and it also helps you see if other people will like it because your partner can be your eyes and ears of the public. I think the American and Canadian photostories were interesting to watch.

Similarities: The Canadian and American stories (watch them all here) were interesting to watch because there were many similarities and differences. There wasn’t many similarities between both of ours except the fact that a quite a few people wrote about having some sort of freedom.They talked about how free they are to live in their country but also talked about how free they are in different ways because a lot of the Americans came from another country mainly the Phillipeans. . I think the American kids had some of the stronger posts because they were talking about emigration. This takes me to the differences in our stories.

People think that since Canada and America are so close that they are very similar but by watching these photostories you can see that they aren’t. The differences between our freedom stories is that the Canadians wrote about the freedom the have living in a small town. Living in a small tow we have the freedom to stay out later and go swimming or ski-dooing since we have a lake right in the middle of town. We also wrote about the freedom of being able to watch the sky for northern lights and stars. The Americans wrote about their new freedoms after their emigration from somewhere like the Philippians. They told the story of how free there life was when they moved because before they couldn’t be any religion they felt like of they didn’t have as much freedom of speech to vote or say what they want. So when they moved to America everything changed. They emphasized how lucky they are and how much you should really cherish what you have.

I think working on these stories really made us think about how good our lives our and how lucky we are to be living where we are living.