Gonz

WCTU

Organized in 1874 under Annie Wittenmyer, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) advocated abstinence from alcohol, arguing that women needed to attack the saloon to protect the home and family from husbands, sons, and brothers who drank away their wages and sometimes subjected their families to violence. With Frances Willard as its president beginning in 1879, the WCTU moved away from a religious approach and viewed alcoholism as a disease; the organization increasingly expanded its activities to address related social problems for the poor and homeless, establishing women’s reformatories and sponsoring day nurseries as well as industrial schools for women, medical dispensaries, and lodging houses for the poor. In pursuing temperance, Willard’s organization also became a vigorous advocate of woman suffrage. Composed entirely of women, boasting more than 150,000 dues-paying members, the WCTU constituted an important and powerful force for American women. By the 1890s, Willard’s leadership had legitimized women’s concerns and left the WCTU with a strong legacy of political activism.

Saturn, Neptune

Saturn is the least dense planet (only 0.7 times the density of water) and is mostly hydrogen, with some helium plus other elements. Its rings and equator are tilted at 27 degrees to the plane of the solar system so that sometimes we see the rings edge-on (so they are barely visible) and sometimes they are more nearly face-on. The rings are bright due to a layer of reflective ice on the rocky debris. They are within the Roche limit, which is the distance from the planet within which moons cannot form and debris will not combine into larger objects due to the large tidal pull from the planet. One of Saturn’s many moons is Titan, which has an atmosphere of mostly nitrogen (like the Earth’s) with some methane, argon and other compounds, but unlike the Earth it is extremely cold (- 180 degrees Celsius).

Neptune is sometimes considered to be Uranus’ twin, because it is approximately the same size and composition. It is a deeper blue (due to a slightly higher concentration of methane) and is colder and appears to have more weather features (such as a “great dark spot” and clouds of methane crystals and winds up to 700 mph). It was discovered around 1845 and has 11 known moons and a faint ring. One moon, Triton, has surface features of water ice with nitrogen and methane frost and geyserlike nitrogen “volcanoes”.

Skateboarding…

Skateboarding is not as easy as it used to be… I find myself taking more pleasure in just rolling around, carving, cess sliding, little ollie’s here and there… I’m not interested in the big trick, the impressive flips, or the big ollie pops… I’m reaching back towards my roots, looking backward, moving forward, up or down, left or right… It’s fun… It’s exercise. I never thought of skateboarding as exercise all those years ago… I would skate 12 hours a day, all weekend, 5 hours after school during the week… It was my life… It was why I existed… Because of skateboarding, I made it through the horrific high school years… Skateboarding was a lifestyle in which I found a home… I’ve never let it go, and it shaped the person I am today (for better or worse)… It was a counterculture movement that the fringe found solace in… It was individualism and freedom and inspiration… It was more than fashion, and deeply rooted in music… It was about learning and teaching… Skateboarding will always hold a special place in my heart…

I do find it strange how skateboarding has become such an accepted recreational activity these days… The amount of kids skateboarding, girls wearing skateboarding shoes or clothing, skateboarding on advertisements for credit card companies, fast food chains, department stores, computer manufacturers, the list goes on and on… It’s a huge part of popular-culture… In my county alone, there are 4 skateboard parks for the kids to enjoy their “hobby” (don’t get me wrong, this is an amazing thing, though I have to wonder why it’s so easy now, sign a waiver and skate, though in my day a waiver wasn’t good for anything, so they always told us, that’s why skateparks were never built)… It’s a 180˚ from the days when I skated, the “old days”… Seeing skateboarding on TV was something you set your VCR for, you knew when it was coming, and it wasn’t very often, skateboarding was never portrayed positively in any form of media, very few girls would give a “skater” the time of day, and on and on… The counter-culture movement has become popular-culture fodder…I think this might explain the observed change in skateboarders attitudes these days… Kids that skated in my day were left (or right) of center… There was something in them that delivered them to skateboarding as a way of life… They certainly weren’t in it for the ladies, or the popularity contest, they were in it because in one way or another, it was who they were… Today, I’m not so sure… There’s a competitive spirit that wasn’t so prevalent before, there’s an attitude that concerns me… Granted, this isn’t referring to the entire skateboarding community, just the small sampling I see in my local area…

There’s good and bad everywhere, and I’m certainly not disparaging an entire community… Just observing, from my point of view, with my history in mind… Something so big will always have a weak spot…

Again, skateboarding will always have a special place in my heart… whether or not it’s on ESPN.

Venus as a boy.

Venus has 95% the Earth’s diameter and 82% of the Earth’s mass, and so to some is considered the Earth’s “twin”. But, as Carl Sagan mentioned, if Venus is the twin, then Earth is heaven and Venus is hell. Venus has a “runaway Greenhouse Effect” because of its dense atmosphere (the atmospheric pressure at its surface is 90 times that of the Earth’s) of carbon dioxide (the main “greenhouse gas” on the Earth as well as on Venus.) This gas allows the Sun’s radiation to pass through it but it absorbs the infrared radiation that is emitted from the surface, and therefore traps the “heat rays” in the atmosphere, which causes warming. Venus is the hottest planet at its surface, with a temperature of 464 degrees Celsius, due to this effect. It also has sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid in its clouds, which varies in concentration probably due to volcanic activity on its surface. Its surface is mostly lava rock. (For comparison, Earth’s atmosphere is 79% nitrogen gas and 20% oxygen gas, with smaller concentrations of other gases and water vapor). Venus rotates “backwards” very slowly, unlike all the other planets except Pluto and Uranus. The dense cloud cover of Venus is all that can be seen from Earth, but spacecraft have used radar to penetrate the clouds and map the surface features to better than 100 meter resolution (Magellan mission).

I look at all the lonely people.

Gabagoo

Gabagool

I’ll take an ‘A’

So the B on my first AST test is an A… Good job. Thank you.

78, moderate chop on bay and inland waters…

So, for my first US history test, I received a 78… Not bad, but not good. I didn’t study enough, this I am certain of (I only read the chapter summaries on the text’s website)… But, I have yet another gripe about this disorganized class…

First off, the videos were messed up, and we didn’t have working copies until almost one month into the semester. Next, as I was taking the test, the last 15 questions (roughly) were stuff I didn’t recall reading at all… it was completely foreign to me… Seeing as I only read the chapter summaries, I figured perhaps it was just something that wasn’t covered in the summaries… but there were a lot of questions I had no clue how to answer! The test had 80 questions on it, and we are to answer any 55 of them… Fine, so I answered the 55 I was most comfortable with. Here’s the kicker, where the disorganization in this class annoys me once again… It turns out there were a bunch of questions from chapter 20 at the end of the test (a test that was to cover chapters 16-19)… Well, jezz, no wonder I didn’t recognize the material. How does the good Dr. rectify this situation? We get 5 extra points on our test. 5 points. I’m certain there were at least 15 questions that were from chapter 20. If ALL 80 questions were from the chapters the test was supposed to be on, I bet I could have gotten a better score then I did, because I would have had 80 questions to answer any 55 from, instead of 65 questions to answer any 55 from… You know? I’m half tempted to complain.

Also, now he (the good Dr.) throws it on us that the next test will now cover chapters 20-25, instead of 20-24. Why is this? Why not just leave everything as it was. You screwed up the first test, did you now recognize that you screwed up the next test as well? Actually, he told us all the tests (there’s 3 more) are going to change. Great.

This class is leaving a bad taste in my mouth…

Congratulations…

Kidnapped…

Studying for my US History test has been an okay experience… Reading about some of the horrible things that happened, not all that long ago, both sickens and amazes me. I can’t believe shit like that went down. Certainly I learned of this before, and I’m well aware of the horrific treatment of African Americans as well as Native Americans, but reading/learning it again is embarrassing and sad…

Taken from my text’s chapter summary:

Chapter Eighteen opens with a vignette about Native American students at the Indian boarding school at Hampton Institute in Virginia, a school designed to assimilate the children to white, Christian culture. Opening its doors to Indians in 1878, the Hampton Institute had originally been used to educate newly freed slaves. Indian parents resisted relinquishing their children to white control, which led the military or Indian police to kidnap Indian children and send them to assimilation schools by train. Stripped of their clothes and identities and with their hair shorn off, Indian children were clothed in constraining uniforms and shoes. Their Indian names, too, were changed to Anglo ones. Boys were taught agriculture and manual arts, while girls were trained in domestic skills—an effort to make future generations of Indians self-sufficient and independent of U.S. government aid. The Carlisle School in Pennsylvania, founded in 1879, encouraged assimilation by having Indian students live with white families during summer vacations. Despite their educations, however, graduating students found it difficult to be accepted into white culture and no longer felt at ease on reservations. The settlement of the West and the resulting clash between white settlers, Native American peoples, and Hispanics as well as other immigrants were emblematic of the many issues facing Americans throughout the country in the Gilded Age.

I’m lost…

Instead of watching Lost tonight, I’m studying American History… It’s hard to ignore that HDTV box sitting over there, but I’m doing it…

School has changed… Back when I went to school there weren’t websites that accompanied the textbooks, that had neat little practice tests and chapter summaries and glossaries and so on… It’s been quite helpful so far… Tomorrow’s test will be the real test.

Back to work.

‘A’

I got an ‘A’ on my AST presentation and paper. Not bad.
Had a test last Monday night. I foresee a ‘B’… I flaked on a couple simple things, I know it.
We have quizzes every night, with the exception of test nights, and I’ve gotten 20 out of 20 points on those (10 points each quiz)…

Now, only if the history class could go so well…

Made a dream last night…

Last night I had a crazy dream… My Grandma and Grandpa were there, but they were a lot younger… We were at their house in Nokomis… My brother was there… I think there was a Corvette in the driveway… The more I type, the less I’m sure of…

I am sure I miss my Grandparents…

AMH 1020, the joke’s on me…

I made my own bed… I’ve done what I’ve done and that’s all that I’ve done… and not much of it has been spent studying for my upcoming US history test (tomorrow night)… The first of four tests… (This particular test covers chapters 16-19 and telelessons 1-7).

The telelesson fiasco was finally sorted, and now instead of VHS tapes, we get video CD’s, with WMV files!! Lovely. I checked out all the CD’s and copied the files to my hard drive, now I’m set to watch them whenever I want. I watched one last night… It’s horrible… I think history can be interesting, but it has to be told in a way in which it’s interesting… You know? Well, the author’s of the text, and the makers of the videos don’t know how to tell a story… Certainly there was drama, suspense, interesting characters, witty dialogue, femme fatales, blah blah blah…

Well, I’m going to try and not fail the test… I only care enough to pass… and if it’s a C, so be it… Bad attitude? Maybe… but at least I’m surviving… Right?

Once I start dealing in my major, I promise to not be so lazy… I can blame this laziness on the fact that this is my first semester back at school in over 6 years… (sounds good to me)…

To prove my commitment to passing this test, I’m not going to watch Lost tonight, or Veronica Mars… They will wait until tomorrow night, after the test… After I’ve done so poorly I feel horrible about myself, and start thinking I’m too stupid to try and go back to school at my advanced age.