Thursday, January 31, 2008

Okay guys, this is my revised speech. Well part of it. Read it and tell me what you think.

Why me? Why not? Jake Raynor

“Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies - or else? The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.” A quote by Martin Luther King Jr. Why are we still fighting wars, when we are supposed to be setting aside our differences?

After so many years of fighting wars, you would think we would have gotten smart enough to realize that fighting is not the answer? Look back at some of the most famous wars in history like the WW II, WW I, and even the Revolutionary war. How did each of these wars end? They ended with a treaty that both sides could agree upon. Now, I understand that they didn’t come to that agreement at the beginning, and thus resorted to violence, but the problem is that they didn’t agree on a solution not that they couldn’t. They instead decided to kill one another, ending many peoples’ lives needlessly. Here’s an example of something that might have happened during the revolutionary war.

‘A man is running through the forest, panting heavily, his arms pumping up and down, and adrenaline flowing through his body. He is a Loyalist, and is running for his life. The troop he was assigned to was attacked, and he just barely escaped. The gunshots ended a few minutes a go, but the cheers did not sound familiar, and the man was too scared to see who had won, so he just kept running. After a little while, he stops and hides in a bush, catching his breath. He had left his gun at the camp, and he had no food. It is just a matter of time before either he starves to death or is killed by the colonists. A nearby town is 6 miles away, but the militia is between him and the town. Thoughts were racing inside the man’s head, like “What about my family? Can I make it back to town without the colonists attacking me? Will I ever see my friend Joe?” As these thoughts are racing though his head, thoughts of his wife, his daughter, of days long past of playing in the stream with Joe, and even the fond memories of eating dinner with his wife and daughter, the time Joe had brought food to celebrate the daughter’s birth. All these thoughts motivated the man, urging him to take the chance and head to the town.

With these thoughts motivating him, he turns around and starts running, listening to every sound, every crunch of a twig, looking around him like a mad man. After a while of doing this the man hears something. He stops and listens. It’s the sounds of the militia’s camp. “So the militia did win.” He thought. A tear crept out of his eye at the thought of his dead comrades. He quickly wiped away the tear with his sleeve, and sat down at the base of a tree. Worry and exhaustion finally caused the man to sleep, with his face in his hands to block out the light.

A short while later he is roughly woken up by a colonist militia scout. The scout says “come with me”. The man, in his confused state, complies with the man. After a few minutes of walking the man is pushed out onto the dirt road leading to town, with a militia camp in the middle of it. By now the man is wide awake and alert. He is pushed on to the ground and men come to tie up his hands and feet. Then the man is forcefully pulled up by his hair. A man looks into his face and says “Loyalist, do you have any wishes you want us to do before you die?”

The man says “yes. I want someone to tell my wife and child I love them, my last name is Hearst. Also please tell Joe Leaderman that I want him to look after my family. They are in the village the road comes from.”

Right then a sob could be heard from among the soldiers. The voice of the scout said “Please forgive me Earl. I’ll watch over your family.” When Earl looked to where the voice was coming from, he saw Joe, with his hands covering his face. And that was the last thing Earl saw.’

there you go.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

The Bloggies

Have you voted for the 2008 Bloggies yet? You haven't? Well, scoot on over to the site and let your voice be heard. There is a category for best teen blog and it's a good place to find quality blogs that you may not have heard of.
University Podcasts

This is something I have not really delved into yet but here is a promising list of podcasts of courses provided by big ole universities. Unfortunately, some require Itunes. I'm not a big fan of Itunes.

Monday, January 28, 2008

A webcomic

Today while scanning Metafilter I saw a link to a comic called Minus. Take a gander at it. You might like it.

Friday, January 25, 2008

Ursula Le Guin wants to read to you

MP3 files of Le Guin reading her work can be heard here.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Exercise idea and Meeting

I dare someone to read this blog entry and use it to come up with an idea for an exercise for one of your meetings. I double dog dare. No, I triple dog dare you.

And, yes, we are meeting tomorrow. My bad, this month just flew by. See you guys tomorrow at 6pm.
January Meeting

Yo! Ed! Is the January meeting tomorrow or not? I see no emails of blog posts and I'm getting kinda worried that I missed something.




Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Alright here's the next part of my story. I'm going to do as much of it as possible, and size restrictions be damned! muhahaha!

  " Are you ready for the upcoming battle?" Lovisa asked Marvier sarcasticly.
  Marvier just grunted in relpy. Lovisa knew that Marvier hardly ever talked unless it was nescesary.
  so they kept walking through the camp, only stopping occasionaly to check on someone or give orders, until they were at the part of the camp where the King was. King Darrin Was the kjeldoran king, and was supplying troops to Lovisa to help her complete her goal, to take down Hiedar and his Rimewind snow machines. Darrin was giving his foot soliders to Lovisa and her warhost so that they could be enhanced by Lovisa's famous warhost magic, which increases anyone who is a part of her warhost by tens timews their surrent streangth. Of course the King didn't give Lovisa all his troops. He kept a select few elite to his follow his orders. Amoung them was the kjeldoran royal guard."
  All right, i'm done for now. I know that this is not much but i want to eat lunch so have fun.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

XKCD question

Am I the only one that can read an XKCD comic about nerdy computer stuff and have no idea what they are referring to?
The Oxford English Dictionary of SF

Ever wonder where that now-common science fiction term was first used. You can find out here.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Ok, Luisa aske me to post my story that i'm wrighting on to the blog so here is partof it.

"  Lovisa marched through her warhost's temperary camp. Her arms were crossed against her chest, a serious scowl on her face. On her left side was her two-handed axe, strapped to he belt. On her right side was her second in command, Marvier, the minotuar. Lovisa was a tall woman, about six feet tall, with blazing red hair and a well built body. But compared to Marvier, who was about seven feet tall, with huge bulging muscls under his thich, coarse fur, she appeared small."

there. that's all for now. i hate typing on this since it won't use the key...
People are nuts

I think this article explains why right down the street from my cozy forty year old house with a yard and big oak trees is a subdivision filled with $500,000 ugly ass brick homes with faux Charleston architecture that have been crowbarred so tightly together that they don't even have yards. It's better to look good than to feel good.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Java drawing program

Hey guys, check out this neat little drawing program with gravity physics.

Friday, January 11, 2008

Soup Cooler

Posting from Clare's computer right now.

"Shut your soup cooler!" I told her.

"I've never heard that before."

"Really? Ed has said it several times."

"Well... who listens to Ed?"
New Reading Area

You can view the new reading area here.

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Now slower and with more bugs

Retail prankster has fun with a Windows Vista store display.
Teen Reading area update

I just found out that the area will be cleared out tomorrow. I am going to take a long lunch to get some bean bags today. Now all I need is a low Japanese type table. Where would you get one of those?
How to handle being sorta famous

Check out this advice from SF writer, Michael Swanwick.

Monday, January 07, 2008

Teen Reading area at MOR

I am happy to announce that sometime in the near future we will have a new teen reading area at the Morrison library. I discovered that if we collapse and slide down a row of shelving we will have an area about 12 feet in length that will open up down by the paperbacks in the Young Adult area here. Once the maintenance guys do the job we will put a few beanbag chairs and a table down there. It will be nice to give you youngsters an area to sit around and read in instead of having to sit on the floor.

Does anyone have any suggestions concerning the area? Anything you would like to see in there?