Review: Week 14

Graphic: My favorite graphic from this week was the Latin proverb about dragons. It introduced me to a Latin prose that I had not seen before and I like the meaning behind the proverb: one does not improve his own standing without harming someone else

Source: Go Proverbs!

Video: My favorite video from this week was the musical version of the Epic of Gilgamesh performed in Sumerian. I read and studied the Epic of Gilgamesh in an Ancient Near East Civilizations class I took a few semesters ago. And on top of already enjoying the Epic of Gilgamesh, I also really love to listen to folk music from around the world.

Famous Last Words: Week 14

Most of this semester has been quite hectic. On top of trying to keep up with school work, I have been traveling across the country with the softball team. But this week was especially hectic. Typically, we leave for our weekend series on Thursday afternoons. This week though, we left early Wednesday morning to play a mid week game in Wichita and left straight from there to Ames, Iowa. In any spare time I happened to have, I tried to chip away at the vast collection of homework I had, including all the extra credit assignments in this class (because I still haven't given up on getting a B in the course). I have tried extremely hard to keep my procrastination to a minimum and I have missed out on a LOT of sleep but I think I managed to get everything accomplished. I am proud of the story I wrote to wrap up my storybook and hopefully I spent enough time on it so that I might not have too many revisions to make. Unfortunately, I don't have much time to catch my breath. This coming week looks to be just as hectic and I have just as much, if not more, homework than this past week. To be completely honest, I'm kicking myself every time I think of how much easier it would have been if I had just gotten hooked up earlier in the semester. I would be considerably less stressed and would still be a normal sleep schedule. But I understand that those are the consequences of prioritizing things other than school. But I am determined to see it through to the end of the semester. Somehow, I will try to find a way to get everything done. I can smell the finish line and rest is just around the corner.

Image Source: Christianbook

Wikipedia Trail: Hellebore to Herbicidal Warfare

Hellebore - I changed my iPhone background to one of the default flower wallpapers. I was interested in what type of flower it was. It turns out that the picture I chose is of a hellebore which is a poisonous flower native to Europe and Asia

Siege of Kirrha - Apparently, in 585 BC, during the Siege of Kirrha in the the First Sacred War in Greece, hellebores were used to poison the water supply of the city. This is one of the earliest instances of chemical warfare

Chemical Warfare - Chemical warfare has been around almost as long as war itself has been waged. The pinnacle of chemical warfare is most likely the devastating mustard gas attacks during the First World War

Herbicidal Warfare - This is a specific type of chemical warfare in which neither people are not the direct targets of the attack. Rather, the attacker attempts to destroy the enemies crops using herbicides in an attempt to cripple war efforts. This was a common tactic used by the United States during the Vietnam War.

Hellebores. Source: Home Depot

Learning Challenge: Reading Out Loud

I have always thought that I read slower, mostly because the way I read in my head is the same way I would read out loud. But, I found that when I read out loud, it was as if I was telling the story to myself. It took longer to read the story but I felt like I got more out of the reading. I used inflection and pauses when reading the dialogue and I held a certain tone while reading narrative parts. Reading out loud helped me to understand the story on a deeper level than just the plot because I had to build a character's persona when I read for them. I also found that I noticed, and remembered, more details about the story after reading out loud compared to reading other stories silently.

Image Source: Joel Goldman

Growth Mindset: Acronym

Take
Advantage
of
Comprehensive
Talents

To be tactful means being adroit in dealing with difficult issues. In order to be tactful, you have to be thoughtful and able to find solutions to unique problems. One must use their talents they already possess to their full potential in order to solve a problem. This acronym just reminds me to 1. be tactful and 2. use my strengths in problem solving.

Quote from Isaac Newton. Source: Quotes Cover

Tech Tip: YouTube Playlist

Besides Google itself, I visit YouTube more than any other website. I created this playlist as a collection of my girlfriend's high school softball highlights mostly to embarrass her. Most of the time, I use playlists to organize videos that I might come back and watch again. I also utilize YouTube's default playlist of liked videos to find old videos that I think are funny or really interesting. Having all of those videos in one place is really handy when I remember seeing a video I liked and would like to watch it again or share it with someone else.

Extra Reading Notes: The Two Corpses

-a soldier was heading home on leave when he had to pass a graveyard in the middle of the night
-he heard a voice running up behind him saying, "Stop! You can't escape!"
-the soldier saw it was a corpse chasing him so he B-lined it towards a little chapel
-in the chapel was another corpse and no one else
-the soldier hid in the corner
-the first corpse ran in
-the corpse on the table rose and asked the other, "What hast thou come here for?"
-He said that he had chased a soldier into the chapel and that he was going to eat him
-The second corpse argued that the soldier had run into his house so it would eat him itself
-"No! I shall!"
-"No! I shall"
-The corpses began to fight
-they fought for so long that with the coming of morning, they fell lifeless
-the soldier went on his way home

"Skeletons Fighting" by Theodore Major. Source: Pinterest

"The Two Corpses" from Russian Folktales unit. Story source: Russian Fairy Tales by W. R. S. Ralston (1887).

Week 14 Lab: Creative Life TED Talks

Video 1: Copyright is Brain Damage

In this video, Nina Paley mainly discuses the need for copyright reform. She argues that claiming rights on intellectual property does not ultimately benefit the creator of the ideas and instead prohibits the continuation and evolution of art. I really enjoyed the analogy Paley made regarding information. She compared people to neurons, each one part of a vast network, receiving and transmitting information to one another to make up a "great mind." the ideas that this great mind form is culture. However, copyright is a brain disease because it allows ideas to flow into a neuron, but not to be sent out. Therefore, copyright laws must be reformed, or even abolished, in order for the great mind to work freely.

Image Source: Photo District News

Video 2: A New Theory of Human Intelligence

In this video, Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman discusses the need to rethink human intelligence. He says that in the current education model, too many kids fall through the cracks because it is unable to  properly accommodate the unique needs of what he calls twice-exceptional children: those children simultaneously having exemplary strengths and extraordinary weaknesses. The current binary system categorizes children based on ability and disability when it should be holistic and all-encompassing. The theory Dr. Kaufman presents focuses on the four C's: Capacity: the potential intelligence and aptitude; Competence: the actual intellectual achievement; Commitment: the motivation and determination to learn; Creativity: problem solving and the ability to hurdle intellectual obstacles.

Reading Notes: The Fox and the Horse

-A farmer had a horse that had grown old and weak so he turned it out of the stable

-while the horse was seeking a shelter in the woods, he met a fox who asked him why he was so sad

-the horse tells the fox that his master will not take him back unless he becomes stronger than a lion

-the fox told the horse to pretend to be dead

-the fox went to the lion and told it of a dead horse

-the fox says the lion can eat the horse more comfortably in his cave so he ties the horse to the lion

-the fox managed to tie his legs together

-the fox then told the horse to go

-the horse dragged the lion back to his masters house

-his master relented and took care of him till the end of his life

An elderly horse. Source: The Horse

"The Fox and the Horse" from Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm, an audiobook recording available at LibriVox based on a Project Gutenberg publication.

Reading Notes: The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean

-there was a poor woman who decided to build a fire on her hearth to cook some beans
-a piece of straw fell from the bundle, a bean from the pan, and a piece of coal from the fire
-each tells the other how they were almost destroyed by the old woman
-to escape her, they decide to run away to a foreign country
-on their journey, they come to a brook which they must cross
-the straw lays itself out to form a bridge
-the coal starts to cross but becomes scared half way and stops
-the straw burns because of this and the two fall in the brook and are swept away
-the bean seeing this, laughed so hard it burst
-a tailor happened to be passing and because he had compassion for the bean, he sewed the bean back together
-he only had black thread though
-this is why every bean has a black seam

Black-eyed Peas. Source: Wikimedia Commons

"The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean" from Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm, an audiobook recording available at LibriVox based on a Project Gutenberg publication.