Noblitt is very good at giving me stuff that makes me think. and what i think of makes me very pissed. watching that thing by Naomi Wolf the other day in class (Patrick & Co. remember it, if you'd bothered to pay attention) started it, and reading this chapter in the Cold War book is bringing back that outrage.
here's my problem: "Those who would sacrifice their rights for safety deserve neither." i wish i could remember who Noblitt quoted when he said that. that's been in my head for the past three-ish years, because i agree wholeheartedly with it. i won't go into the rant about how much bullshit the Patriot Act and such was, but that was my problem watching the lecture documentary thing in class.
reading the Cold War book added another, similar one. when you compromise people's rights in order to defend yourselves from authoritarian governments, you become NO better than your enemies. i can't emphasize that enough. Machiavelli may have been smart, but for the love of God if you violate the Constitution, we've got some problems. the President is NOT above the law, gawddamit! -veinthrob-
Patrick, i really wish you had paid attention to that movie. this is stuff that happened in your lifetime, and will probably continue to happen. apathy is what has allowed horrible things to happen before, and if you don't learn from history's mistakes, you'll end up shit outta luck and wondering how in the hell your world just got turned upside down.
-deep breath- i needed to get that out. i was really pissing me off. now i'll finish reading my homework.
4.19.2009
4.13.2009
mrow
not too incredibly much to report since my last post. i'm sure there's been enough to fill up a few paragraphs, but since i haven't gotten around to (forgotten to) post i've mostly forgotten the stuff i planned on posting. ain't ADD grand?
anyhow. there is one thing i remember in sufficient detail: the ordeal of the IB Internal Assessment. Ma, Patrick and co. have already gotten an earful of that, but i'll repeat it for the sake of complaining.
one thing is certain: NONE of the other people in the 20th Century class have ANY right to grouch about doing theirs. if they do i might start ripping throats out. -eyetwitch-
okay, here's what happened: about two weeks before the end of March, Noblitt told me that of the people who are taking the IB history test this May (i'm the only one taking the class this semester who's also sighed up for the test) six of the Assessments from those people are going to be sent in and actually graded by the IB folks. the history ones are headed to Ghana.
here's the fun part: they were supposed to be ready to send out on April 1st. Noblitt told me that morning that he'd just found out, so he couldn't have let me know sooner.
at that point, i was very frustrated. it was all well and good for the ones who took the class first semester, 'cause theirs were done already. but this semester hadn't been in but for three months. since it's IB (keyword being international) it might have been that they didn't factor in the fact that there was a new batch of kids taking the class who'd barely started working on it, since a lot of other countries have a much more logical way to run their schools, but that seems like a stretch. and if they were aware of the semester change, would they really have just assumed that the teachers would make all of us taking the test do this project whether we had the class then or not? it makes no sense.
the kicker for me was that Noblitt had set the due-date for the first two sections of the Assessment for April 2nd.
so i basically had two weeks to do most of this Assessment. and this Assessment isn't like the research essays we're used to, either. i wish it had been, it would've been much easier to get done on time. but nope! the point of this was to pick an event in history, take a certain viewpoint, and pick it to bit. the parts went so: introduction, a basic overview of the event, doing an OPVL on two sources, analyzing the event from your viewpoint, conclusion, and bibliography. no less than 1500 words, no more than 2000. in two weeks. Noblitt had said before that we'd need to look outside our usual places to find sources -- the detail we'd go into, we'd need a more extensive collection of info than the Huss or Gaston library, and something more reliable than the crap on the intarwebs.
so the 28th, i took a roadtrip to UNCC. that trip was a saga in and of itself that i'll get to. but it took the rest of Saturday and Sunday to make sure i had my resources and research in the right place, and Monday and Tuesday to write it. i managed to turn it in to Noblitt on the first like a good little bean. i got word week before last that mine was one of the six being sent to Ghana -- joy.
like i said before, after i had to do pretty much the while damn thing and turn it in when the first half was due for them, no one else in that class has room to complain about the deadline. at all.
and now, to my adventure at UNCC. it was pretty much my first time driving on the interstate after that rather nervous few passes when i was still in driver's ed, so there was that. needless to say i didn't leave the house without taking my pill.
i chose to go on Saturday for several reasons: on weekends, parking is free in UNCC. also, Saturday morning is one of the less busy times when driving on I-85. so the drive up wasn't especially bad, except for the few times when people decided to play musical-lanes right in front of me.
it took me a minute of wandering and a phone call to find a parking deck in UNCC. it took me about half an hour of wandering in the drizzle to realize i wasn't getting anywhere, so i found a map of the campus, which is what i should've done in the first place. after consulting the map, i found a new parking deck and scampered across to the Atkins library.
i had never been in ten stories of books before. it was amazing. i decided, as i was hanging out in the UNCC library and doing my research, that when i got to UNCA i might live in the library there.
i needed to make copies of the books i'd found. i went up to a copier, but it needed a card of some sort. this frustrated me for a minute or three, until i asked a desk and the chick pointed out a rather brightly-colored machine on the far wall that would give me a card to use if i gave it money. so i gave it a $5 bill and it gave me a card, out of which i could get over fifty copies. so i copied the snot out of the two books.
in the process of doing this, i ended up helping out a guy who came over to the copy/printer and asked me how to work it. i asked him what he was trying to do, and he said he had something on the computer he needed to copy. copy onto paper, i asked? he said yes. so i pointed to the laminated paper on the wall next to the copier and helped him figure out how to make the copier print. when he thanked me, i admitted to him that i had never been here before -- he looked flabbergasted. i felt a sort of sympathy for him, because he obviously was unused to technology; i know he drove the library folks to distraction trying to figure out how to work the computer.
the drive back from UNCC was a different ordeal from getting there. it was mid-afternoon, so traffic had picked up again. in and of itself, that wasn't so bad. but it had started drizzling shortly after i got to Charlotte, so i had to drive back in the downpour. not cool. if it had been raining any harder, i would've pulled over and either waited it out or called Mom and Mike to rescue me. on top of that, as is usual for the people in this area, they completely went nuts. the drove even more idiotically than normal, in the rain, with the cars packed more tightly in some places than was really necessary.
under normal circumstances, it bothers me when people play musical-lanes and merge across several lanes all in one swoop and apparently without looking. usually, when they do this, they come far closer to the cars in front of them, behind them, or both, than is good for my nerves. but when they do it in the rain, it's downright scary. i really don't know what possesses these people to ride each other's asses going sixty-five or seventy miles an hour. it's a pile-up waiting to happen. and i especially don't like it when an eighteen-wheeler is involved. and why in the wide world of sports they disregard the rain and the effects it could have on their wheels and brakes is totally beyond me. i managed to keep my head through this whole mess and sighed in intense relief when i turned onto New Hope, where the speeds were sane again. and, after this, i can at least say that i have driven on I-85 in the rain and come out alive, which is more than far too many people can claim.
that seems to be all, i think, besides the fact that the more i visit UNCA the more i love it. i'll blog about the admitted student day this past Friday. eventually.
anyhow. there is one thing i remember in sufficient detail: the ordeal of the IB Internal Assessment. Ma, Patrick and co. have already gotten an earful of that, but i'll repeat it for the sake of complaining.
one thing is certain: NONE of the other people in the 20th Century class have ANY right to grouch about doing theirs. if they do i might start ripping throats out. -eyetwitch-
okay, here's what happened: about two weeks before the end of March, Noblitt told me that of the people who are taking the IB history test this May (i'm the only one taking the class this semester who's also sighed up for the test) six of the Assessments from those people are going to be sent in and actually graded by the IB folks. the history ones are headed to Ghana.
here's the fun part: they were supposed to be ready to send out on April 1st. Noblitt told me that morning that he'd just found out, so he couldn't have let me know sooner.
at that point, i was very frustrated. it was all well and good for the ones who took the class first semester, 'cause theirs were done already. but this semester hadn't been in but for three months. since it's IB (keyword being international) it might have been that they didn't factor in the fact that there was a new batch of kids taking the class who'd barely started working on it, since a lot of other countries have a much more logical way to run their schools, but that seems like a stretch. and if they were aware of the semester change, would they really have just assumed that the teachers would make all of us taking the test do this project whether we had the class then or not? it makes no sense.
the kicker for me was that Noblitt had set the due-date for the first two sections of the Assessment for April 2nd.
so i basically had two weeks to do most of this Assessment. and this Assessment isn't like the research essays we're used to, either. i wish it had been, it would've been much easier to get done on time. but nope! the point of this was to pick an event in history, take a certain viewpoint, and pick it to bit. the parts went so: introduction, a basic overview of the event, doing an OPVL on two sources, analyzing the event from your viewpoint, conclusion, and bibliography. no less than 1500 words, no more than 2000. in two weeks. Noblitt had said before that we'd need to look outside our usual places to find sources -- the detail we'd go into, we'd need a more extensive collection of info than the Huss or Gaston library, and something more reliable than the crap on the intarwebs.
so the 28th, i took a roadtrip to UNCC. that trip was a saga in and of itself that i'll get to. but it took the rest of Saturday and Sunday to make sure i had my resources and research in the right place, and Monday and Tuesday to write it. i managed to turn it in to Noblitt on the first like a good little bean. i got word week before last that mine was one of the six being sent to Ghana -- joy.
like i said before, after i had to do pretty much the while damn thing and turn it in when the first half was due for them, no one else in that class has room to complain about the deadline. at all.
and now, to my adventure at UNCC. it was pretty much my first time driving on the interstate after that rather nervous few passes when i was still in driver's ed, so there was that. needless to say i didn't leave the house without taking my pill.
i chose to go on Saturday for several reasons: on weekends, parking is free in UNCC. also, Saturday morning is one of the less busy times when driving on I-85. so the drive up wasn't especially bad, except for the few times when people decided to play musical-lanes right in front of me.
it took me a minute of wandering and a phone call to find a parking deck in UNCC. it took me about half an hour of wandering in the drizzle to realize i wasn't getting anywhere, so i found a map of the campus, which is what i should've done in the first place. after consulting the map, i found a new parking deck and scampered across to the Atkins library.
i had never been in ten stories of books before. it was amazing. i decided, as i was hanging out in the UNCC library and doing my research, that when i got to UNCA i might live in the library there.
i needed to make copies of the books i'd found. i went up to a copier, but it needed a card of some sort. this frustrated me for a minute or three, until i asked a desk and the chick pointed out a rather brightly-colored machine on the far wall that would give me a card to use if i gave it money. so i gave it a $5 bill and it gave me a card, out of which i could get over fifty copies. so i copied the snot out of the two books.
in the process of doing this, i ended up helping out a guy who came over to the copy/printer and asked me how to work it. i asked him what he was trying to do, and he said he had something on the computer he needed to copy. copy onto paper, i asked? he said yes. so i pointed to the laminated paper on the wall next to the copier and helped him figure out how to make the copier print. when he thanked me, i admitted to him that i had never been here before -- he looked flabbergasted. i felt a sort of sympathy for him, because he obviously was unused to technology; i know he drove the library folks to distraction trying to figure out how to work the computer.
the drive back from UNCC was a different ordeal from getting there. it was mid-afternoon, so traffic had picked up again. in and of itself, that wasn't so bad. but it had started drizzling shortly after i got to Charlotte, so i had to drive back in the downpour. not cool. if it had been raining any harder, i would've pulled over and either waited it out or called Mom and Mike to rescue me. on top of that, as is usual for the people in this area, they completely went nuts. the drove even more idiotically than normal, in the rain, with the cars packed more tightly in some places than was really necessary.
under normal circumstances, it bothers me when people play musical-lanes and merge across several lanes all in one swoop and apparently without looking. usually, when they do this, they come far closer to the cars in front of them, behind them, or both, than is good for my nerves. but when they do it in the rain, it's downright scary. i really don't know what possesses these people to ride each other's asses going sixty-five or seventy miles an hour. it's a pile-up waiting to happen. and i especially don't like it when an eighteen-wheeler is involved. and why in the wide world of sports they disregard the rain and the effects it could have on their wheels and brakes is totally beyond me. i managed to keep my head through this whole mess and sighed in intense relief when i turned onto New Hope, where the speeds were sane again. and, after this, i can at least say that i have driven on I-85 in the rain and come out alive, which is more than far too many people can claim.
that seems to be all, i think, besides the fact that the more i visit UNCA the more i love it. i'll blog about the admitted student day this past Friday. eventually.
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