BHMA -- Blogmeister

Every second week of October, we celebrate a holiday based on mass genocide. Columbus Day, a holiday celebrated for Christopher Columbus's "discovery" of the Americas, is a controversial holiday, and for multiple good reasons. One reason that this holiday should not be celebrated is because Columbus did not actually discover America. If he discovered it, then why were people already living there? All he did was conquer the people living there!

The next big reason that this holiday should not be honored is because once Columbus got to the new world, the first thing he did is killed all of the natives! Native Americans celebrating Columbus day is like Jews celebrating Hitler Day! Anyway, Columbus thought he had found India! I-N-D-I-A. not A-M-E-R-I-C-A. He went and told the whole world that he had discovered a whole new way to get to India, when really he found a whole new way to kill innocent people. Why would we celebrate an accident? Columbus just took credit for Europe's newly discovered, resource filled playground.

The biggest reason that this holiday shouldn't be celebrated is because all Columbus went and did is replaced true American culture with European Culture. Columbus Day is a holiday that should not be celebrated, because it doesn't represent American culture! America's oldest inhabitants were the natives who crossed over on a land bridge from Asia. Aren't these Americans? Why do we act like Europeans are Americans when all they did was stole America from its natives, took all the natural resources, and settled all of their people there? That doesn't seem much like its in the American spirit, but is Columbus is considered American, I guess this country isn't so great after all.

BOOK AUTHOR GENRE

Lord of the Flies ..............................William Golding ................... Realistic Fiction

Mister Monday ......................................Garth Nix ...........................Fiction

King Dork ..........................................Frank Portman ...............Realistic Fiction

The Chronicles of Vladmir Tod .............Heather Brewer ....................Fiction

The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy ............Douglas Adams .............Sci-Fi/Humor

Bridge jumping is an excellent pastime for the extreme. This awesome hobby involves jumping off of bridges (duh), but not off of bridges that are so high that is will kill you. For example, you would not jump off of the Golden Gate Bridge in California, because it would kill you to death. A good bridge to jump off would be Rye Harbor Bridge.

The first time I ever went bridge jumping was in the summer of fourth grade. On the last day of summer before fifth grade, one of my friends called me up and wanted to know if I wanted to go bridge jumping with him, and some friends. I thought “Why not? It sounds fun.”, so I quickly agreed. Because it was my first time, we went to Rye harbor Bridge, and we jumped off of it 20 times. This was one of the most awesome experiences I have ever had. I began going bridge jumping more and more.

The highest bridge that I have ever jumped off of was Sagamore Bridge, or “The singing Bridge”, connecting Portsmouth with downtown Portsmouth. This bridge does not appear high, until you are about to jump. One you are there, you begin having second thoughts about jumping. I still jumped once, and it was totally worth it.

All in all, bridge jumping is a super fun thing to do for those who like swimming, and scaring themselves with the height.

HIGGINS MUSEUM ESSAY

The Higgins Armory Museum is a museum in Worcester, Massachusetts. It was founded by John Higgins in 1929, when he finally moved his vast collection of arms and armor to one building and opened the higgins armor museum. This is a vast collection of thousands of peices of arms and armor from all different time periods. At the museum you can learn lots of stuff, like how jousting armour is different than normal armor, what a duel is, and why armor stopped being used as much.

There are three different types of armor: armor used in tournaments (jousting armor), armor used for battle, and armor used for celebrations or parties. The armour used in tournaments is very thick, and leaves you little or no room to move about. Armor used in battle usually protects you rather well, but sacrifices some protection for mobility. Finally, the celebration armor is armor made and used for one reason: to show off how rich and important you were. This armor was made overly decorative and impractical, and would be little help in a fight.

There were a number of weapons used back in medieval times, both for knights, and against knights. Weapons used against knights were designed to first get a knight off his horse, and then pierce his armor. A halberd, or a polearm was used to knock a knight off his horse, and was essentialy a club of metal with some spiked protrusions coming out of it. After the knight was on the ground, they would mob him with their spears. A knight used two main weapons, a lance, a long stick used in tournaments, and the sword, for close combat. The knight dominated the battlefield, and was worth a good deal more than the foot soldiers.

Knights had a strict code of honor that they had to uphold, and it was more important to them then their life. This included when if you denied a challenge, either a duel or a joust, you were considered a coward, and without honor. Attacking an opponent with no challenge, or striking and opponent from behind was considered cowardice, and against the code of honor. Knights had to be kind to ladies, polite at meals, respect their elders, and fight for their king. They had two main types of duels, a joust and a duel. A joust was when both knights, both with a lance, rushed at each other on their horses and tried to knock each other off. although not meant to be fatal, it often was. A duel was a knight fighting with his sword against another knight. Knights had a hard time of upholding honor while still staying alive.

To finish this off, a visit to the Higgins Armor Museum is an enlightening experience, for both a history buff, and the average layman. It will give you an eye-opening experience of what armor was like at the time, what weapons were used, what it would have been like to live back then, and even more. The museum is an interesting spectacle to see by itself, being in a post-modern factory building, with interesting rooms, such as the great hall, which is an accurate reproduction of what a great hall would have been in a castle back in the medieval times. All in all, the museum is an awesome spectacle, and in going there you will learn a very good deal of stuff.

Higgins Museum Essay

Evaluation

3 -- Outstanding 2 -- Ok, but could use some improvement 1-- Needed improvement 0 --- Missing

Introduction

3 Gave the reader background and general information about the museum --- set the scene.

3 Transitions to the body of the essay. (Three things that can be learned by a visit to the museum)

Body

3 Three topics were addressed, each with its own paragraph

2 Topics were clearly explained and used researched supporting details & vocabulary

Conclusion

2 Restated topic --- What can be learned at the museum?

2 Brought closure to essay (Summed up essay)

Structure

3 Essay format followed the directions for assignment

2 Spelling

3 Capitalization (Used correct capitalization)

Comments: Godd overall format and organization of infromation in the essay. Good introduction & transition to the body. More research vocabulary would have added depth to the piece. The conclusion get off topic and brings in new information - never bring new info into your conclusion -- summarize only.

Stock Market Essay

Mark Balboni, Red

For the stock market project in math, i selected a wide range of stocks. The first one that I invested in was a DaVinci medical company that manufactures surgical devices, called intuitive surgical. I invested in it because my dad had made a large amount of money on it, and I tried it. I made 2,500 dollars on it. My second stock was best buy, which i was skechy about, but I tried it because of the wide range of products and buyers. This was a bad descision, because i made only 100 dollars on it. My third stock was Target, which i bought for the same reasons as best buy. This was slightly better, but i still made only 200 dollars.

Even though my stocks did pretty well, I feel I could have done better, and here is how. Firstly, I would keep Intuitive Surgical. It was a great buy, and I made 2500 dollars off of it. Secondly, I would have sold Best Buy, and bought shares in apple. Best Buy didn't work out too well, and Apple seemed to do very well. Thirdly, I would have sold target, and purchased some penny stocks in a company like Sears Holding Corp. One of my friends did this, and he made a lot of money, because with penny stocks, only a very small increase will make you money on all of your stocks.

If you were to invest in stocks, you would want some advice like this. First, invest in penny socks. As I stated in the last paragraph, these make money with small increases, and if you buy a lot you can make a ton. My second piece of advice is this: Do lots and lots of research. My dad gave me the idea of buying Intuitive Surgical, and it had payed off even more than expected. If I had put some thought into purchasing best buy and target, i would have known to invest in the MANUFACTURERS, not the SELLERS. This advice will get you far, even further than I did.

The earth is really, really screwed up. We are polluting it and destroying ourselves, and doing it on purpose. Earth day was 2 weeks ago, and on that day, we accepted that fact, and had a huge, worldwide, “Earthcast” to discuss ideas for the earth to be a greener, better place. The Earthcast was April 22^nd, and lasted all of the day; almost 24 hours. Kids and adults from schools all around the world participated, and there was a great turnout.

Another part to our earth unit in science class was a film festival. In this we watched three different films, all having to do with the earth, marketing, and how screwed we all are. The first video was called “the story of stuff”, and showed us the life cycle of the stuff we use. The second video was on marketing techniques, and the shopping culture of America. The third video was on how we disposed of trash after we used it. These films all tied together a unit which came with one conclusion: we are destroying the earth.

We did a project on stocks in math class. You got to spend 10,000 dollars on different stocks. I bought 28 shares in Invuitive Surgical, 27 in Best Buy, and 21 shares in Target. Since when this speadsheet was made, I have made 3,323.32 dollars. Not to brag, but I am one of the biggest winners in the grade.