BLØG

Recently, the Egyptian Academy of Scientific Research and Technology (ASRT) started a brand new experiment in Egypt with solar panels. The idea is to create 1 megawatt of energy a day, which is 1.000.000 watt, and desalinate 250 cubic meters of water. At the same time. With the same machine. A part of the production might go to various countries in Africa. The other part? So far, undecided.

I think it’s great that Egypt is experimenting with solar energy, even though you wouldn’t expect a country like Egypt to do that. You would think that the general interest in clean energy is higher in Northern America and Europe. This is in my opinion a fantastic example of how cleaner energy is spreading all around the world.

Even though it’s great that all of these things are happening, I still have questions about several things. First of all, what does the rest of the country, and the world, think about the 28 million dollar spent on this project? I am not surprised that such an amount of money is invested in this project. In fact, I think it’s great! But that’s my opinion, what is yours?

Second, I wonder how they desalinate water and create electricity at the same time, with the same machine. How did they develop it? How did they construct large amounts of solar panels in a short amount of time? These are some questions that are on my mind, which sadly enough can’t be answered by reading the original article, which is here; http://www.enn.com/business/article/44390.

But do these questions even matter? I doubt it. I personally think, that the fact that cleaner energy is spreading around the world matters much more.

Some things, we shouldn’t demand

So rude, you simply can’t

These things, you can only get

From somebody, who you already met

 

Trust is an example of that

But where is it at?

And what actually is it?

Can we find it? In a dungeon, barely lit?

 

I think that trust is made

With sword and blade

By two people, side by side

Together, forever allied

 

So there you go

You know what I think trust is

But I planned more then just teaching in this poem

There was a task in it

 

A task where I trusted you with

To read this poem, until the end

Until stanza  the fifth

And further, my friend

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Authorities in Dhaka have removed more then 100 slum-homes for the extension of a road. The promise of only 10ft expansion on both sides of the road was not kept. 10ft on both sides turned into 50 ft on both sides. The result is more then a hundred shops and homes from people gone, several injuries, one possible death of a young girl, and the delay of everyone’s study and work. The question is of course, “Why did the authorities lie about the distance the road would expand?”

The sad news is, nobody has an answer to that. I don’t even think they have a logical reason for it. Perhaps they thought that the people would not agree on 50 ft and therefore only said 10 ft. I think that the authorities should have told the people their plan about 50 ft anyway, since they would at least have an excuse for destroying their homes then.

I also wonder whether the builders/destroyers and the riot police had any idea of what was going on or whether they just thought they were doing their job and the locals were breaking the law. Did they know about the change of plans? Didn’t they feel guilty about destroying all those homes when it was obvious that nobody moved anything after 10 ft?

And also, what was the opinion on this whole situation from the builders/destroyers, the police, and other locals who didn’t live there? I am very curious whether they support the authorities or whether they are against the authorities.

 

In 1865 slavery was ended in America. Now, 147 years later, there is still a form of slavery going on in South Sudan. Strangely enough it is not considered slavery in South Sudan, they call it a “tradition” that has been going on for years. Even the people with a higher rank status, government officials, mayors, etc, trade family members to solve conflicts. The women who get traded usually try to commit suicide because of the horrible treatment they get.

I think that somehow the treatment white people gave to black people in past 300 years has effected the black people of today. Is it a possibility? Would they see their own people as slaves, because they can not have white slaves?  I am very curious if there wouldn’t be slave trade 300 years ago whether this conflict would be in South Sudan now.

Some people are now starting a campaign against this “tradition”.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that they start a campaign, but shouldn’t we tell people to not trade family members instead of helping campaigns? They are less likely to listen to campaigns, since these are just started by women, the ones that they trade.

 

Sometimes I am jealous of the people who witnessed the beginning of the gaming evolution. The people who played the NES and can now proudly say a sentence that contains the words, when, I, was, and young and not be cut off by the child-gamers of today. The people who actually know the very first 8-bit games and not the 8-bit games that were made today. The people who can make the best April fools’ joke ever, by pretending that an 8-bit version of Google Maps will come to the NES; Google Quest.

In case you have no idea what I am talking about, let me clear everything up a little bit for you. NES stands for Nintendo Entertainment System. It was one of the very first gaming-systems, and still one of the most popular. Everthing on the NES is 8-bit. That means that per certain area, per “block”, there are only 8 pixels. Minecraft for example, is 16-bit. You also have 32 bit, 64 bit, 128 bit, etc. And if you do not know what Google is, I suggest you Google that.

Google Quest is a game that is inspired by Dragon Quest, which also was a game for the NES. (In America better known as Dragon Warrior.) Google Quest is an 8-bit version of Google Maps. Sadly enough Google Quest was only an April Fools’ joke, but luckily you “play” it in Google Maps too! Just go to maps.google.com and select “Quest” in the top right corner. If that doesn’t work, use this link: http://maps.google.com/?t=8&utm_campaign=8bit&utm_source=yt . I think it’s amazing how they didn’t just made the map 8-bit, but that they also made Street View 8-bit! I tried it out on my home and here’s a picture of it.

If Google Quest would be an actual game, with characters, story, etc, I would definiatly play it!

Just because Nintendo was somehow involved with Google Quest doesn’t mean that they are my gaming heroes again. I think (and so do many other gamers) that Nintendo went backwards with their productions. They went from cool 8-bit to absurd Mii’s. Isn’t that crazy?Oh Nintendo…What have you done?

I think that you could compare Google Quest as another of Google’s jokes. Like, “Do a barrel roll.” I think that this April Fools’ joke was the best I ever saw. For a moment I actually thought that Google made a game for the NES! Oh well, I guess Google just likes to troll their customers from time to time.

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve a parent-child and a teacher-student relationship, which have connected them for years. This event, to separate and to become equal humans are provided by the Laws of Nature and the will of the child. The will of a child, to become free, and to become equal to the rest of the world. Therefore, we, the students of SSIS, must write a Declaration of Independence.

 

We are all born equal, with the rights of liberty, life and the free pursuit of happiness. We were not stolen from our rights, we were simply delayed. Now, the cracks have shown in your system of delaying our rights. Now, is the time to stand up.  We are no longer slaves of the delaying system. We are sick of the towers of homework that we were forced to do. We have no interest in hearing speeches for every act we do. It is not just our will to get our rights back. It is our duty. It is our duty, to fight back for our free pursuit of happiness, our liberty, and our lives.

 

We have no problem with teachers, nor parents. But with the rows of lists, tasks, and perhaps even punishments that were given to us, you leave us no choice but to open the curtain, and to show everybody else what is going on.

 

-We received too much homework, and too little time to complete the assignments.

-The assignments were sometimes not carefully picked, we were forced to waist our time on useless “study” material that would have no use in our further lives.

-They had no interests in our point of view from our personal and/or school problems. Therefore, they almost  always misjudged us and gave us unfair punishment.

 

Even after all our warnings, all the signs we gave of our pain, you still didn’t act. You did not listen to our complaints, and did not watch our peaceful protests. We have questioned everybody we could, but nobody helped us. Therefore, we must help ourselves.

 

We, the Representatives of all the students in the United Classes of SSIS, have decided during school, in a Skype chat room, that we must break free from our chains, in the name of all the students, and by the authority of Chuck Norris. We, publish and declare, the United Classes of SSIS are, independent. That we are free of parents, teachers, and everybody else who wants us as a slave of the system. It is not for the first time in history, that students are threatened by parents’ and teachers’ behavior. But it is for the first time in history, that your behavior has gone to such an extent that our lives, our future, and our planet itself, may change forever. We’re faced with choices. Choices that will affect all of our lives, our offspring, and those to come. Our choice is to become independent from parents and teachers. Even if we have to sacrifice our fortunes, honor and lives for our choice.

 

 

Anger is a very unpredictable person. You never know when he turns up, or what he does.
He wears various weapons and a black and white sweatband with a race flag pattern.
He is also recognizable by his brown leather jacket and his black Fedora Hat.
Robbing is one of his favorite and best abilities. Even though he has tons of money, he does
not have a large house. He has various outposts, but only so big that they have his needs
and nothing more.
Anger is sometimes considered the exact opposite from other people. That what makes other
people angry, makes him calm. What makes other people cry, makes him laugh. Anger prefers
to be alone. He thinks he has a curse that only he can cure by himself, but the fact is,
that if Calmness is with him, he slows down. He transforms from Anger into Wisdom. Calmness
is the exact opposite of him, but she realizes he needs her. Else, he might become even
angrier and might destroy the whole world.
—————————
Lazyness looks like an old bag of chips. He slaunters around instead of actually walking and he smells like a dead cat. In my opinion, it can look quite amusing, but I also feel sad for him at the same time. How is he ever going to get a job? There is a good chance though, because lazyness isn’t stupid, he just doesn’t want to do anything.
Whenever he has to do make a school assignment, he doesn’t do it until the last moment possible. His parents think he should wake up and realize that once he is a grown man he won’t be able to take care of himself like this. Not that Lazyness cares, he just wants to sit in front of the TV and watch the latest episode of “How I Met Your Mother.”
Lazyness wears a simple white shirt and jeans. He once got a watch, but lost it. His shoes are always untied and covered in a thin layer of either mud or dust. His bed is NEVER cleaned and there are always random clothes lying around his room. His computer has more production hours than his brain has. Teachers say he his a horrible lazy student and don’t even bother to help him anymore. Except for one teacher, Mrs. Continue. She always makes her student continue working and she never gives up. Myth says she never sleep and is always continuing her work. She is trying to help Lazyness, but he simply doesn’t want to do anything. And that, drive Mrs. Continue insane.

1) Ice cream

Ever felt so warm in the summer that you just HAD to get ice cream? That’s exactly the feeling me and my friend Sam had. The sweat dripping from out foreheads while racing on our bicycles to the best shop in town, which was “Salute.” The ice there was absolutely delicious. Greek yogurt with cruesli. Oreo ice cream. Mars & Snicker bars. It was a delight eating that on a warm day of July. 27 Degrees Celsius doesn’t really impress the people in Vietnam, but for the Netherlands, it’s pretty hot. Anyway, as we were sitting at a table something extremely weird happened. Trust me, I’ve seen a lot of things that are crazy, but this just absolutely tops it of. You know what pigeons are, right? You see, they are really common in the Netherlands, especially at restaurants etc. As we were eating ice cream, there was this one pigeon that apparently also had it very warm. And that made it do something crazy. The pigeon flew straight against Sam’s ice cream! He just knocked it off! Just imagine that for a second, a pigeon flying against your ice cream and knocking  it out of your hand! Unbelievable! It was crazy! The pigeon was half covered in ice cream and Sam’s jacket was ruined but it was so funny. We didn’t know what to do, so we just started laughing. And we weren’t the only ones, half of the people in the shop started laughing! It absolutely made my day.

2) Old School Games are Fun!

It was Sam’s birthday,who was and is my best friend. I know he had an old PS2 in his room, that he liked a lot. It’s not as old school as a NES, but it was pretty close since everybody had a PS3 or XBOX360. I decided to buy a couple of games for him. There was a shop in town that sold PS2 games really cheap. $5 dollar a piece! I bough a couple for him, but that one that he liked the most was “Splinter Cell.” I though, “I’m crazy for buying.”, but it turned out really good! In fact, the 6 guys who were there managed to stay awake with Splinter Cell! The missions were difficult, and there was quite a lot of solving to do, and that’s the part where everybody enjoyed it. People always say that games should be multiplayer. I say, if games have to multiplayer, they aren’t good enough.

3) Triple Facepalm

 My friends and I liked going to the cinema. It’s something we did every month or so and we decided we should visit the latest movie, which I of course forgot the name from. The movie was shown late, so Sam’s and my parents insisted that they would be brought by car. We didn’t mind really mind that part . I would stay at Sam’s house after school and then Sam’s mom would bring us to the cinema. After that, my dad would pick both of us up again. No problem…So far. Anyway, me, Sam, Tobias, Rob, Erwin and Tiemen had fun watching the movie and one by one left. They all had reasons they could go on the bicycle, so they could leave directly. Sam and I waited for around 10 minutes when a big, dark-blue car drove in front of the cinema. It was, and still is, a beautiful car. We walked to the car, got in, and then suddenly. “HEY!!! WHAT THE 1#$% DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING!??!?? GET OUT OF MY CAR!#$!#$! BUNCH OF %$@($!!!!” Inside that car wasn’t my dad, it was a really fat guy that we totally didn’t know! The second we closed the car doors we started laughing. What a blooper! We just completely messed up! But how could we’ve known? It was the same car. But what we did know, was that nobody would ever find out about this. Until now.

4) Monotonic music

If there was one thing that me and Sam would hate about lunch at school, it would be the horrible monotonic music. It was absolutely horrible. There was this student on our school, who had basic knowledge about mixing music. The next thing you know is that he plays music every single lunch. The volume is so loud you can’t hear each other and the music itself is simply one note repeated trough the song with a beat. We couldn’t see how this “Dj Bob” got paid in certain dance halls for doing that. Don’t understand us wrong, we have no problem with listening to music, but the music does have to be good!

5) Two Ghost Pets

“Alright then Sam! It’s your turn to present.” Said Ms. Van de Noort, our favorite teacher. She taught English at our school and is always hyper. I guess you could compare her to Ms. McKinnen…sort of. But the reason Sam had to get up was because we had an English assignment. We were supposed to pick your pet (if you didn’t have one an animal) and give a quick presentation about that. Sam enthusiastically started talking about two guinea pigs he had; Flip and Skip. What they did, how they act, all their information was told by Sam. But I just couldn’t believe it. Sam had two pets? He had two guinea pigs? I came to his house at least 500 times and I’ve never even seen them! While I was wondering about that Sam finished his presentation. “Are there any questions left?” he asked. I slowly raised my hand. “How does it come I’ve never seen any guinea pigs at your place?” The whole classed suddenly looked confused, except for our other friends who apparently had the same question. “That’s because I don’t actually have two guinea pigs, Leon.” And that’s when the yelling started. “What?!” “Wait, wait, wait, you don’t have any pets?” “Why do you do a presentation about them then?” Of course there were also some lame jokes, “Haha, are you on drugs Sam? Hallucinating again?” “Hey! Quiet everyone! Yelled Ms. Van de Noort. “Sam, why do you give a presentation about pets you don’t have?” Sam looked at us a bit confused. “Wasn’t that the assignment? Pick a pet and give a presentation about it?” Ms. Van de Noort started to grin. “If you didn’t have one, you were supposed to pick a random animal.” Sam got the Ooh-So-That-Is-What-We-Were-Supposed-To-Do-I-Am-Embarrassed Look. “Everything you said was so realistic, it was like they actually did exist!” I said. That’s when the true story came out about Flip and Skip. When Sam was young, he also wanted two pets. One guinea pig named Flip and one guinea pig name Skip. His mom though never let him, because she was allergic to them. After that he started imagining about these pets because he wanted them so badly. He forgot about them for years, until this assignment, where he talked about them again. In front of a whole class. I can’t imagine many people who would be able to tell such a story.

 

Almost every Sunday, I go to visit my family. Almost every Saturday, I spend the day doing my homework. You ask, “Why would this be relevant for a blog post?” Well it is relevant with this topic, which is SSIS’s five Expected Schoolwide Learning Results. (ESLR’S)

This shows that the ESLR I am the most succesful at is Balance in Life. I can manage my time between school, fun, family and friends, which helps me too achieve various goals. Balance in Life is one of the five ESLR’s.

What was, and is, a big problem in schools all around the world? Bullying. We’ve all been trough it, either being the bully, or being the one who is being bullied. Sometimes bullying goes too far, and causes children to commit suicide. That’s why the movie company Weinstein decided to create a movie about bullying, with the very appropiate title, “Bully.” This movie was ment to be watched by everyone, but especially children. Strangely enough, the company that rates movies, MPAA, rated this movie R because of “some violence.” This movie has absolutely no use if students can’t watch this! R rating for a movie that might makes lives of children a lot easier and perhaps even safe their life? This is madness.

I think that “some violence” wouldn’t matter if you would show this to bullies or the ones that are being bullied. The ones that bully wouldn’t care less since they use “some language” all the time. The ones that are being bullied get to hear “some language” all the time. What does it matter?

Besides, I think that, “You are so (…) stupid go (…) hang yourself!” has a little bit more effect than just, “You’re stupid.” Pardon me for the language, but I really think that it will have more effect on the bullies.

The MPAA VS Weinstein conflict is almost like the American Government and the hacking group Anonymous. The American government/MPAA does something that should clearly be either not done at all or less agressively. In response, Anonymous/Weinstein protests against the government/MPAA. And in case you thought Anonymous only hacked, you’re wrong. They were at “Occupy Wall Street”, they even Tweeted it.

It also doesn’t surprise me that Weinstein is trying to get Lady Gaga and Michelle Obama to help them, help the movie and by that help the people who are being bullied.

I think that this one vote loss was really adding oil to the fire. Can’t MPAA see that students will only stop bullying if they hear it from other students? Not from the teacher, nor parents? With “other students” I mean students they never saw before, one of the bullies friends or somebody else they wouldn’t expect it from.

And yes, you read it correctly. “One vote loss”, If Weinstein would have one extra voter the movie “Bully” wouldn’t have the R rating. Where are speechers like Patrick Henry when you need them?