What Happened to Ethics?

To read the original article, click here: http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/Departments/eLearning/Default.aspx?article=WhatHappenedEthics&GT1=27001

Everyone has the ability to be ethical and truthful. Whether it is something we are born with, or something we are taught to recognize, I am not sure. Either way, I think the reason that people behave unethically is partly because they have not been shown the necessity of ethics, and therefore do not understand the difference. However, I do think that everyone has a conscience. By that, I mean that everyone recognizes, even if only subconsciously, that they are doing something wrong. Therefore, I do believe that ethics should be taught in school, but really, school is only one means of instilling the understanding of the importance of doing the right thing. Everyone is teaching everyone else about what is acceptable and how important or not important it is to do the right thing everyday by our actions. This is especially true for adults' actions around youth.

Ultimately, it necessary to be truthful for two main reasons. First, people operate based on what they are told and what they perceive. If you show people something that is false, then you not be treated as you wish to be treated, as who you really are. Second, the truth seems to always come out anyway. When someone discovers information that is conflicting, they are likely to speak up, to try o understand. This is particularly apparent in the national news. What goes around, comes around.

What Do You Hear?

Distant noises, then foot steps.
Hey, someone is talking in Spanish!
More foot steps doors shutting.
I think that last one was the Men's bathroom door.
"Aooooo...," someone yelled.
"Aachuu!" Oops, I sneezed!
Ow, there is a loud screetching and thud of the door next to me.
Now it's the Women's bathroom door opening.
And a very different sound:
The squeaking of someone's shoes as they head for the stairs.
Bang! A door in the distance, followed by loud talking.
Now this musical piece turns to the accompaniment, and away from the melody.
Now I hear all of the sounds of the school at work.
It is alive, and changing. But even that fades, and there is a moment of relative silence.
Some soft footsteps come near me, but i was enough to break the moment.
Doors begin banging again,
Providing the percussion.
"Squeak, squeak, squeak,"
A high piteched noise about the rest.
"Click, click, click, click,"
The rhythmic click of heels, off set but the shuffling of sneakers.
"Bang, ca-ching, cough, blah-balh."
"Bang, bang, step, step, step."

Current Event

Skyrocketing Oil Prices Stump Experts
Wahingtonpost.com
Steve Mufson
Thursday, May 22, 2008

Subject: The article discusses the cause for the abrupt rise in oil prices.

Summary:
Everyone is pointing fingers, but no one is exaclty sure why the oil prices have recently skyrocketted. Several factors include the declining dollar, the rise in Chinese oil imports, and the effect of investment bank forecasts. The reason, according to Jeffery Rubin, that oil has gone from $20 a barrelto $130 a barrelis that the demand has grown substantially, but the supply has not. This change, however, has not stopped consumers from buying, partly because machines and cars are becoming more fuel efficient and partly because many consumers are not seeing the market price. Edward Morse, an energy economist, explains that the signs indicate that this is just another 'bubble', albeit a large one. The prices will eventually coem down, but the drop will be proportional to the rise.

Significance:
Just like global warming, the alarming rate that humans are using up oil, and the skyrocketting prices (just 40 years ago, you could get gas for $.25 per gallon), have become a huge concern. The newest jump in gas prices has only increased that concern. Just a few weeks ago, I didn't worry too much about how much I was spending on gas when I would stop at a gas station. Now, however, I've started thinking about riding my bike more often, and I wish there was a way to take a cello on a bike.

Change?
For the most part, I understood the article, but some of the concepts specific to oil and gas exchange (imports and exports, etc.) were not quite clear to me. I believe that most people who read it are familiar with the language, but I'm not, and I'm actually interested in the topic.

Prediction:
Well, the experts are predicting a huge drop in oil prices. I think that is possible, but at the same time, the drop can't be that big, because we are using up Earth's supply of oil. It seems like prices can really only go up from here...
URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/21/AR2008052100386.html?wpisrc=newsletter

Vocabulary Week 17

A circle can be described as interminable, because it has no ending. This circular pattern in particular gives the circle a feeling of motion, if you stare at the dot in the center.

This picture shows the crew of a ship in Antactica working laboriously to cut a channel for the ship through the ice. Ice can be such a hard substance, and I can imagine that it would be very tiring to break that much of it.

This girl's eyes, and hold on the tulips have a reticence quality. It looks like she is afraid the viewer will throw the flowers on the ground if she hands them over, and she doesn't want to hand them over, or consent.

This turtle's shell looks senescent with all of its dirt and scratches. Also, the word seems to apply to the natural world and is used more in science and research than as an everyday meaning of old.

The left side of this picture shows a very famous shroud that is supposedly the one Jesus' body was wrapped in after he was taken down from the cross.

This tortuous road almost looks like a purposeful design on the hill, or maybe even a strange scar. I think it would be really cool to drive up it, though I don't think my mom could handle all of the turns.

I took this picture last summer at my family's camp site near Mono Lake. This creek runs right by our tents, and I often sit on one of the rocks and just listen to the water. It gives me an amazing sense of tranquility and calmness, especially if we just came back from a hike.

1.interminable-adj.--incapable of being terminated; unending.
2.intuit-v.-- to know or recieve by intuition.
3.laboriously-adv.-- requiring much work, exertion, or perserverence.
4.proximity-n.-- nearness in place, time, order, occurance or relation.
5.reticence-adj.-- disposed to be silent, or not speak freely; reserved.
6.senescent-adj.-- growing old; aging.
7.shroud-n.-- a cloth or sheet in which a corpse is wrapped for burial; something that covers or conceals like a garment.

-v.-- to cover, hide from view.
8.situation-n.-- condition; case; plight; state of affairs.
9.synchronously-adv.-- occuring at the same time; coinciding in time; simultaneous.
10.tortuous-adj.-- full of twists, turns or bends.
11.tranquility-n.-- calmness; peacefulness; serenity.

In Response To "Classrooms Have Become Unnecessarily High Tech"

Link to orignial article: http://www.mercurynews.com/community/ci_9034769?nclick_check=1&forced=true

Yes, I very much agree with Matt Baxter!! It is completely unnecesary for elementary school students to be taught how to use computers. The school I attended from kindergarten through 8th grade does not allow the use of computers in school or, ideally, at home. As a result, I did not touch a computer until the summer after I graduated 8th grade. I do not have much knowledge about programs like Adobe PhotoShop, or Fireworks, but Iam proficient in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. In short, I don’t feel at all cheated, now that I’m in high school. I spent my childhood learning other valuable things.

Baxter also makes an excellnt point about the amount of money and effort we put into keeping schools up to date with technology. I can see where it is nice to use the new materials out there to help a teacher teach a concept, but teachers have been teaching the same subjects for hundreds of years without needing the help of technology. I would go as far as to say that many of the teachers teaching today are less knowledgeable about their topics because of new technologies. It is easy to let the internet and videos do the teaching.

Nearly 10,000 reported killed by China quake

CHENGDU, China (CNN) -- Rainy weather and poor logistics thwarted efforts by relief troops who walked for hours over rock, debris and mud on Tuesday in hopes of reaching the worst-hit area of an earthquake that killed nearly 10,000 in central China, state-run media reported.
Setting out from Maerkang in Sichuan Province at 8 p.m. Monday, the 100 or so troops had to travel 200 kilometers (124 miles) to go before reaching Wenchuan, the epicenter of the quake, also in the province, Xinhua reported. After seven hours, they still had 70 kilometers (43 miles) to go.
"I have seen many collapsed civilian houses, and the rocks dropped from mountains on the roadside are everywhere," the head of the unit, Li Zaiyuan, told Xinhua.
Added CNN Correspondent John Vause: "The roads here are terrible in the best of times ... right now they're down right atrocious. They've resorted to going in one man at a time on foot."
Nearly all the confirmed deaths were in Sichuan Province, but rescuers were hindered because roads linking it to the provincial capital, Chengdu, were damaged, Xinhua reported.
Local radio quoted disaster relief officials as saying a third of the buildings in Wenchuan collapsed from the quake and another third were seriously damaged.
The earthquake was powerful enough to be felt throughout most of China. Many children were buried under the rubble of their schools.
The Chinese government said the death toll was sure to rise.
An expert told CNN the 7.9-magnitude quake at about 2:28 p.m. Monday (6:28 a.m. GMT) was the largest the region has seen "for over a generation."
Residents as far as Chongqing -- about 200 miles from the epicenter in Sichuan Province -- spent the night outdoors, too afraid of aftershocks to sleep indoors.
Local radio in Sichuan quoted disaster relief officials as saying a third of the buildings in Wenchuan collapsed from the quake and another third were seriously damaged.
The state-run Zhongxin news agency reported that a survivor who escaped Beichuan county in Sichuan Province described the province as having been "razed to the ground."
The Red Cross Society of China, coordinating some of the international aid efforts, encouraged financial donations because of the difficulty of getting supplies to those most in need.
At least six schools collapsed to some extent in the quake or aftershocks that followed, Xinhua reported.
At one school, almost 900 students -- all eighth-graders and ninth-graders, according to a local villager -- were believed to be buried.
At least 50 bodies were pulled from the rubble by Monday night at Juyuan Middle School in Juyuan Township of Dujiangyan City, Sichuan Province, Xinhua reported.
"Some buried teenagers were struggling to free themselves from the ruins while others were calling for help. Eight excavators were working at the site. Devastated parents watched as five cranes worked at the site and an ambulance waited," Xinhua reported.
"A tearful mother said her son, ninth-grader Zhang Chengwei, was buried in the ruins."
Meanwhile, 2,300 people were buried in two collapsed chemical plants in Sichuan's Shifang city, and 80 tons of ammonia leaked out, Xinhua reported. Six hundred people died there. The plants were among a series of buildings that collapsed, including private homes, schools and factories.
The local government has evacuated 6,000 civilians from the area and was dispatching firefighters to help at the scene, Xinhua reported.
Much of the nation's transportation system shut down. Xinhua reported there were "multiple landslides and collapses along railway lines" near Chengdu.
Sichuan Province sits in the Sichuan basin and is surrounded by the Himalayas to the west. The Yangtze River flows through the province and the Three Gorges Dam in the nearby Hubei Province controls flooding to the Sichuan -- though there were no reports of damage to the world's largest dam.
Monday's quake was caused by the Tibetan plateau colliding with the Sichuan basin, Zhigang Peng, an earthquake expert at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia, told CNN.
"Earthquakes in this part of China are infrequent but not uncommon," he said.
The last major earthquake in the region occurred in the northwestern margin of the Sichuan basin when a 7.5-magnitude quake killed more than 9,300 people on August 25, 1933.
President Hu Jintao ordered an all-out effort to help those affected, and Premier Wen Jiabao traveled to the region to direct the rescue work, Xinhua reported.
"My fellow Chinese, facing such a severe disaster, we need calm, confidence, courage and efficient organization," Wen was quoted as saying.
"I believe we can certainly overcome the disaster with the public and the military working together under the leadership of the CPC Central Committee and the government."
Peter Sammonds, professor of geophysics at University College London, called the earthquake "tremendous."
"Particularly in the more remote, the more mountainous part where this has taken place, a lot of the buildings are built on sediments that are quite unstable. They're probably liquifying, causing the buildings to collapse. You might expect landslides to occur, which could actually stop the relief efforts going through on the roads, so this could be very grim in the remoter, more mountainous parts of this province."
While many of the most immediate efforts were focused on Sichuan Province, Xinhua also reported dead and injured in Gansu, Chongqing and Yunnan provinces.
A provincial government spokesman said they feared more dead and injured in collapsed houses in Dujiangyan City in Wenchuan County.
A driver for the seismological bureau said he saw "rows of houses collapsed" in Dujiangyan, Xinhua reported.
Bonnie Thie, the country director of the Peace Corps, told CNN she was on a university campus in Chengdu about 60 miles from the epicenter, in the eastern part of China's Sichuan province, when the first quake hit.
"You could see the ground shaking," Thie told CNN.
The shaking "went on for what seemed like a very long time," she said.
Bruce Presgrave, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said this quake could cause major damage because of its strength and proximity to major population centers. Also, it was relatively shallow, and those kinds of quakes tend to do more damage near the epicenter than deeper ones, Presgrave said.
An earthquake with 7.5 magnitude in the northern Chinese city of Tangshan killed 255,000 people in 1976 -- the greatest death toll from an earthquake in the last four centuries and the second greatest in recorded history, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Tangshan is roughly 995 miles (1,600 km) from Chengdu, the nearest major city to the epicenter of Monday's quake.
After the quake struck Monday, the ground shook as far away as Beijing, which is 950 miles (1,528 km) from the epicenter. Residents of the Chinese capital, which hosts this year's Olympic Games in August, felt a quiet, rolling sensation for about a minute.
Thousands of people were evacuated from Beijing buildings immediately after the earthquake.
At least seven more earthquakes -- measuring between 4.0 and 6.0 magnitudes -- happened nearby over the four hours after the initial quake at at 2:28 p.m. local time, the USGS reported.
A spokesman for the Beijing Olympic Committee said no Olympic venues were affected. The huge Three Gorges Dam -- roughly 400 miles east of the epicenter -- was not damaged, a spokesman said.
The earthquake was also felt in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Taiwan, and as far away as Hanoi, Vietnam, and Bangkok, Thailand, according to the Hong Kong-based Mandarin-language channel Phoenix TV.
URL: http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/05/12/china.quake/index.htm

Vocabulary Week 16

The thing that makes this picture amorous is the sexual nature of the scene. Being loving is not necessarily the same as being amorous. Although this picture looks a bit 'tender', the man and woman are not wearing clothes.

Aromas, smells and fragrances, come from a lot of things, but most often from flowers and food. I always find beef stew to be very aromatic, and this picture really reminds me of the smell of my mom's best beef stew!
There is obviously something wrong with this water. Water should be clear! The deleterious nature of water pollution and contamination is by now well known. Not only is this water dirty, but it is red, reminding me of blood and the 'death' it is causing to our planet and wildlife.
Honestly, bazaar paintings like this tend to creep me out. They make me wonder "What was going on in the artist's mind when he or she painted this?" This one looks like it could be a distorted landscape, painted by someone in delirium whose perception was twisted.
I know that ecstasy as an adjective describes a state of being, but the word, for me, is invariably linked to the drug and the harm that drug causes. I chose this picture because it reflects that understanding of the word by showing the brain damage done by using ecstasy.
I find this picture a bit comical. I chose it for enamored because the woman is essentially ignoring the man, who seems to care about nothing but her. Unlike adoring, enamored has a foolish, or unrealistic quality to it.
He's never going to get out of the gym that way! It is obviously quite a futile attempt, since the exorcise bike will never move.
This creepy scene shows witches chanting an incantation, a selection of words supposed to have power. In this case, they are brewing a potion. Scenes like this always remind me of the famous incantation "Double double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble" from Shakespeare's play Macbeth.

1. acquiesce-v.-- to submit or comply silently or without protest; consent.

2. amorous-adj.-- showing or expressing love, esp. sexual love.

3. aroma-n.-- an odor arising from spices, plants, cooking, etc., esp. an agreeable odor; fragrance.

4. awkward-adj.-- lacking grace, or ease in movement; hard to deal with; difficult.

5. consummate-v.-- to bring to a state of perfection; fulfill; complete.

6. conversely-adv.-- with the terms of the relation reversed.

7. deleterious-adj.-- harmful, injurious.

8. delirium-n.-- a state of violent mental agitation.

9. ecstasy-n.-- a state of elated bliss.

10. enamored-adj.-- marked by a foolish or unreasoning fondness.

11. futile-adj.-- incapable of producing any result; ineffective.

12. incantation-n.-- a chanting or uttering of words puporting to have magical power.

13. inevitability-n.-- the quality of being unavoidable.

14. infatuation-n.-- a foolish and usually extravagant passion, love or admiration.

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