What Are the Purposes of Religion?

Well, I think that the purpose of religion is to make sort of guidelines for the faithful people. By guidelines, I mean rules that tell people how to live. This may sound like some sort of religious dictatorship or something, but it's not. Here's what these rules look like; be nice to people/treat them like you'd want to be treated, don't ever steal or break government laws, etc...

Now, you, the reader, may be wondering "what does the god/s have to do with religion? Where do they come in?" Well, what they do is write all these laws, which are now in holy books like the Quran, Tora, Bible, and so on. And if you're confused, they don't actually have the ORIGINAL writings in the handwriting of god in the books, they are copies.

That's basically it for this subject, so until next time, I'm out.

This I Believe

The podcast that I found most interesting, from the ones I listened to, was by a man named Penn Jillette, who talks about the absence of an all powerful man in the sky who we all should pray to. I personally agree to him, what with being an atheist myself, but perhaps don't care about the topic enough to try and disprove there being a deity/s, unlike Mr. Jillette, who seems to be searching for all sorts of reasons to criticize and just find any holes in the fabric of religion to unravel the whole thing and show it as a fake. I chose this podcast because I am atheist, as I mentioned previously, so I do agree with Mr. Jillette, but unlike him, I don't really speak my thoughts about religion, due to its being such a sensitive topic. I respect other people who are religious and just think to myself, "each to their own opinion." If they want to belong to a faith, they can, if not, they don't have to. That's how I think of it.;

Domiknow Profile Thingy Hooberdoob

1. I learn best when......

I am with one or two people are like me in terms of learning styles, and are competent and hard workers. I also like to have all the instructions in a step by step way that has a lot of detail in them.

2. I need to .....

To learn well, I need to maybe do group work with one or two other hard workers, and not people who can get on the incompetent side. Because that just gets me into a foul mood, and I'm not nice when I'm mad. However, I only like to work in groups with people when we are doing a project like making a model, or making a film. Sometimes, even for those aforementioned activities, I like to work alone, I also prefer to work alone on writeups, and not have to work with another person and rely on them to write other paragraphs.

3. The strategies that would help me in my learning....

Would be giving me projects that incorporate lots of detail and are challenging, like an essay on personal opinions or maybe models of famous monuments. In essays that are that sort of genre, I really tell the reader how I feel about certain things, say, a world leader, and let all my feelings flow into the paper.

4. I would like my teachers to know this about me.....

I do not, to be frank, suffer fools well. If I am with someone in a group who is not overly competent, I am susceptible to losing my head and becoming quite bossy and even rude to the person. It is a flaw in my personality that I loathe, but sadly, I seem to be stuck with it. So, my message to my teachers would be to put me in a group with people who are good workers and really want to do the best they can on projects.

A Summary Thing

Hercules went into the swamp and met his old friend Iolaus and stayed at his house for a little while before killing the Hydra. In his first attempt to kill the Hydra, Hercules cut the heads off, only to see two new ones grow back. So he went back to Iolaus's house and persuaded him to come with him to the Hydra armed with a torch. When Hercules went back to the Hydra with Iolaus, he cut off the heads and made Iolaus put the torch on the stub that was left. When he put the torch on the stubs, it sealed them shut, so heads could not regrow. He and Iolaus repeated this process until all the heads on the Hydra were gone, and weren't growing back.

10 AWESOME MEMORIES

I remember my dad punching me in the stomach when I wanted to ask him a question. He thought I was going to sneak attack him and punch him.

I remember smelling cookies in a guard's house in a parking lot.

I remember always skipping to the most violent parts of movies.

I remember having a dream about falling and when I woke up I was falling.

I remember making my first LEGO stopmotion for YouTube.

I remember being in a plane and possibly experiencing a microburst during the decent. Really scary.

I remember getting my desktop computer.

I remember getting my iPod Touch 4G.

I remember making my first order for LEGO supplies for my movies on the internet.

I remember driving a golf cart with my family in it down a steep hill.

Personal Poem

Cameron William
Creative, Intelligent, Hilarious, Friendly
Loves art, his parents, and his 3 cats
Needs LEGO, computers, TV, and his relatives
Feels happiness when with friends, and watching his favorite user’s videos on YouTube
Who fears the dark
Would like to own a Huf Haus, a Willys Jeep, an iMac, and $1,000,000,000,000.
Who shares no personal information with no one.
Is a brickfilmer, a collecter, and a cat fan.
Is a resident of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
McCutcheon.

THE END OF THE LINE

Well, after a loooooong year of work and essays and stuff like that, it is finally time to get on a plane and head off for an awesome holiday. This blog is mainly going to be a reflection on what I have done during the year and why I'm proud of it.
First off, my favorite piece of work that I have done this year would probably be.... hmmm.... my imaginative narrative. We wrote this narrative in November to December, and it was a piece of writing that we wrote based on a prompt given by the teacher. Mine was a sci-fi/horror story about a disembodied foot that went around turning people into monsters and in the end everyone died, except the main character, who went back to Earth and lived happily ever after.
Next, the greatest challenge I faced during 6th grade was definitely division in Math. I had sooo much trouble in that unit, and my grade in Math may as well have jumped off the Golden Gate bridge it fell so much. And it took forever and a half to get it back up to a acceptable grade. I was definitely not happy with that this year, and I sort of overcame the challenge at home, but I still didn't do well on the tests at school.
I learned that I had a hidden talent, I guess you could say, in drama. Apart from forgetting my lines in a performance, I think I was half decent as an actor. I never knew that I would actually be good at being an actor, but now I know! Hooray!
Now about my work habits. I think that my behavior in class is near perfect, I mean, I always listen attentively, I rarely get off task during when I work. This only happens when people start to talk to me through chat or physically. I find it very annoying.
Participation-wise, I always participate actively in class discussions and always ask questions whenever I don't understand something. I always give decent feedback for people when they show the class projects, and give input that applies to all the people in the class.
Organization: Oooh boy, this is going to make me sound like a slob. My organization needs serious help. My locker looks like someone dropped a bomb on it, then a hurricane went through it, a tornado struck in there, a plane crashed into the locker (minus the fire), and then someone nuked it. It is a pigsty in there, with books lying on there sides, and papers strewn all through it, and my pencil always gets lost in there. Maybe next year I'll make an effort to keep it clean, but only if I get around to it. Fortunately, I haven't lost much homework in there!
Effort: I usually try to do my best on projects, but what really takes the fun out of it for me is having to make projects where all the options are projects that are computer based. I like to make 3D models out of clay and dioramas, not make a comic on the computer. I think that our latest Tic Tac Toe could have been far more awesome if I had had the option to make a diorama of the Parthenon like I did in our first Tic Tac Toe for the cavemen times. Quite frankly, I really dislike the way all of the work is computer based, and because of that, sometimes I don't feel as motivated to do a good job, because I just find it kind of boring.
I have two goals for grade 7: 1, I'd like to become more organized with my locker, and not have it look like a landfill anymore. I don't want to have any more homework being swallowed by the pit that is my locker.
My second goal is to improve my confidence in Math. For years now I've had a problem with my confidence in Math. I always say I suck at it and that in turn brings my grade down, especially in division. I always score very badly on division tests because of my confidence.
There isn't really much that I'd like my teachers to know next year, just my confidence problem, and that I know a lot of the stuff in Humanities classes, probably 'cause I watch a lot of Nat Geo and History channel. I know the most about WWII, not as much about prior times, like the middle ages.
My favorite class activity in Humanities this year was the first Tic Tac Toe project. I got to make a diorama of a cavemen camp. I had a dead boar and a cave that they lived in and a load of little people. That is the sort of thing that I enjoy, not making comics on a computer and having everything be computer based. Now before I start ranting, let me move on.
The activity that I wish we could have spent more time on was the first Tic Tac Toe project. I wanted to put on some finishing touches for my diorama, but we then ran out of time and I couldn't touch it up and make it perfect. D:
My advice for the class of 2018, the new 6th graders, would be to STAY ORGANIZED AND DON'T USE ME AS A ROLE MODEL! They have to be organized so that they don't lose any homework in their lockers, which, quite frankly, stinks. That's pretty much it, advice-wise, so thanks for reading, if you made it this far, and goodbye!

Books in all Their Glory

This book made me think about the threats of global warming. This book mentions global warming a lot, due to the fact that the main character is trying to win an environmental lawsuit, but somehow finds himself with a bunch of terrorists who are planning an attack on the United States. I am not quite certain on what it is about quite yet, because I am only half way through and a load of stuff is going on.

This book has challenged me as a reader because of its very, very advanced plot, and finding out how everything is linked together isn't exactly easy, but the book is definitely worth reading. A load of things are going on in the book at this point and, as I said before, connecting everything is quite hard to do.

Don't read this book if you are someone who reads shorter books with larger text and fewer big words. Also, if you don't really read books with the most advanced of plots, I would definitely not recommend this book. This book also contains a fair amount of coarse language, so if you don't like that, don't read this novel!

Literature Circle 4 Blog

" Gabriel's breathing was even and deep. Jonas liked having him there, though he felt guilty about the secret. Each night he gave memories to Gabriel: memories of boat rides and picnics in the sun; memories of soft rainfall against windowpanes; memories of dancing bare-footed on a damp lawn.

"Gabe?"

The new child stirred slightly in his sleep, Jonas looked over at him.

"There could be love" Jonas whispered.

The next morning, for the first time, Jonas did not take his pill. Something within him, something that had grown there through the memories, told him to throw the pill away"

In two (or more) well structured paragraphs explain how the above quote and the rest how chapters 16 ~ 18 relate to the themes of freedom and choice.

This quote relates to the theme of choice because Jonas chooses to throw away his pill, something that no one in his community does. No one chooses for themselves, they do as they are told. The quote tells us that in one of the memories, somebody chose something, and that part of the memory grew in Jonas's mind. In this particular quote, he doesn't know what it is that made him throw the pill away. This is because no one in his community knows about choice, as I said before. It is as alien as flowers shooting lasers out of their petals, a completely ludicrous idea.

The quote relates to freedom as well, because the freedom implied is the ability to make your own choices. Like when Jonas gives the memories to Gabe, he feels guilty about the secret, because he is making his own decision and throwing caution to the winds, in a way. He is making his own decision here because he wants the little baby to be able to fall asleep successfully, and not wake up screaming in the middle of the night. He is not just thinking that the baby will be able to fall asleep by itself and forgetting about him. He is trying to help the baby fall asleep, and the only way to do this is by giving the child pleasurable memories. This means making a choice. He could easily have been like everyone else and stuck to the rules and let Gabe sleep on his own. But he made the decision to help the child, which shows that he has his own free will, and can make his own choices.

My Thoughts on the Society of the People in The Giver

Would you want your future to be decided by others ? Why or Why not?

No, I wouldn't want someone deciding my future for me. To me, it would seem like I was being treated like a child, having others choose everything I do in life, including my job. If there is one thing I would like in life, it would be to be able to choose my job.

For example, what if there was a guy who wanted to be a... traveling salesman and he got the job of a garbage collector. I realize that people do not always get the jobs they want, but it is a worthy price to pay for getting a choice on what job you get. It would be kind of crummy if you had been working and practicing on being a traveling salesman by selling things to your neighbors for years and some guy you don't even know says, " Oh sorry, you can't be a traveling salesman because we think you don't have the talent for the job, so we made you a garbage collector. Good day to you, sir."

Gee, I'd feel almost vengeful if someone said that to me if I had my heart set on a certain job and some guy said I couldn't have it and gave me a job that I never wanted! If I was the man, I'd be very, very mad and I would protest, saying, " I wanted to be a salesman and all I get is a garbage collector? I wanted the job of a salesman, I practiced for years and years, and all I get to do is ride around on a garbage truck, picking up people's smelly waste from street corners?"

I would then ask them to possibly reconsider their decision and that I would come back in a few days. And I would make sure that they realized that I was not happy with the job they chose for me.

So, in conclusion, I would not want other people to chose my job for me. I would like to have a choice of what job I get, even if I don't get that particular job. I think people should always have a choice over what job they get, and not have someone pick it for you.

iMovie Reflection

I think my partner and I did fairly well on this blog, given that we had less than one class to do the whole thing due to our first project disappearing mysteriously. I think we got mostly 4s on the rubric, with the exceptions of some 3s. We had a couple of small squabbles on who would do the voice recording for the next slide, but we always came to an agreement. One thing that didn't really work on our video was the background "music". It made the recordings of our voices sound like they were echoing, which was a little strange and distorted our voices, which sounded a little weird.

Part 2: The Review
For this part of the blog, I have to do a review on someone from my class's project. I'll chose Jung Hun and Shivank's iMovie. Their video was quite descriptive and had an amusing video about the assassination of king Tut. The narration was quite good, albiet there were a few awkward pauses and sniffles in the video. Overall, I would give it a 8.5/10.

City Connection Reflection

Recently in Humanities, we made a PowerPoint project about a city we lived in. I chose Singapore because I lived there for a while, eight years to be precise.
One thing that I think I did well on was providing ample information in the project. I also made sure that all my sentences were grammatically correct and had good spelling. I also chose a background that was simple and I didn't put any images or backgrounds that had lurid colors in them. I believe that presentations should be visually appealing, and not have a blue background with bright red polka dots, which would look hideous.
I think that for future presentations, I should choose some images that blend in to the background a little better and maybe have a little more information on what I am doing, not that I didn't have much in this presentation!
I learned that even if you don't have much time to do a presentation, you should always do the best job you possibly can. If you only have a limited amount of time to complete the presentation, you are more inclined to do a rush job of the presentation than you are to do a good job, but you always have to do the best you can, or your presentation will, quite frankly, stink.
I learned some things from other people's presentations as well. One thing that I learned was that not all cities with a population over 100,000 have an airport, some can be quite remote and are only accessible by train or road. I used to think that most cities today would have an airport that at least one major carrier would go to, but no.
I met the requirements of the rubric by putting all the things that it required in the presentation! I put graphics and maps in, and the historic and environmental factors.
I think that I did the organization of the PowerPoint quite well, it did not have busy colors and it was relatively simple. And also, the sentences were not too long and I didn't put too much information into it, I put just enough. One thing that I think I should work on is trying to find images that blend almost seamlessly with the background, not having a red background with a black and white picture for example. Overall, I think I did pretty well on this project, considering that I did not have too much time to do it and how much information is needed for a PowerPoint presentation like this.

Learning Profile

  I learn best when we do a fun activity or experiment in a class like science. When we do an experiment or activity, I remember things that we have learned far, far better because we would have done something memorable instead of just sitting there listening to a teacher give dull lectures. I find that when we don't do an experiment or activity, a lot of the stuff I learned in that class I simply forget!
  I need to be able to keep things that I learn in my head, especially in math. I hate it when I forget a bunch of stuff that I have learned and then do poorly in a test. Information just seems to migrate away from my mind and blow away in the wind.
  The strategies that would help me in my learning would be to jot down notes on a piece of paper and then look over them later until the information is imprinted in my brain permanently. But I never seem to remember to do this. Maybe I should write down a note that tells me to write down notes in class.
  I would like my teachers to know that I am always wanting to extend my vocabulary and learn how to use advanced words in the proper context, which I sometimes don't do. I also want my teachers to know that I like to do activities in class and not just sit in a chair listening to a teacher go on and on and on about some dull subject that we covered several classes back and we have been working on for several days.

 This is an image of my learning profile letter and all my dominant body parts. They are all on the right side.

My New Years Resolution Post

  My first resolution for the year of 2011 is to get more organized. My locker is a shambles, so is my room, and I always seem to find myself hollering questions about where my iPod or other things are at home. And on top of that, my parents are always telling me to get more organized and I don't. So I think that I should make an effort to get more organized when we move into our new house this year.
  My second resolution is to be able to retain things that I have learned in class for tests. It isn't that I am not listening, no, it is that I simply forget what we learned, especially in math class. My results on tests have not been the best, and I want them to improve, and it isn't because my parents are saying that if I want a certain present at the year, I have to get better! It is because I want to get those grades up and be able to retain information successfully. 
  This Christmas holiday was quite good. I went to Yunnan Province in China and visited Kunming, LiJiang, Shangri-La (no, not the one with the elixir of life!) and Dali, a small town in between LiJiang and Kunming. The best part in my opinion was Shangri-La. We got to stay in the Banyan Tree: a very, very luxurious hotel for a total of two nights and got a room with two floors. The upper floor was the living area and the beds, and the lower floor was a huge bathroom and one room. There was also a nice rock garden with a small patch of snow. But I didn't think that that measly patch was enough, so I climbed over to the next room's balcony, went down the stairs to the rock garden with a container, and scooped up lots of snow and brought it back to our room. It was very cold in Shangri-La, though and whenever I exhaled, a big cloud of steam would come from my mouth.
  One talent I possess is making LEGO animations. I make them frame by frame and upload them to YouTube on my channel CWMmedia. It is a very tedious process; taking a picture, moving a minifigure slightly, taking another picture, and so on. But in the end, all the hard work pays off in the form of a nice and smooth animation. I just made an order for minifigure parts for my next film, with the US Army on the island of Guadalcanal in World War 2. I think that this film will be a good one and I am looking forward to making it.