High School

     High School is supposed to be the time of our lives and we are supposed to be enjoying ourselves. I am hoping not to enjoy myself too much, because I want to graduate with the highest diploma that is possible. I want to be able to get into a great collage because if I don’t go to college then I am not going to be able to get anywhere with my life. I need to be able to support a family when I am older and I am hoping to get a great paying job that I will be able to enjoy doing. I don’t want to be stuck doing a job that I am going to have to wake up every morning wishing I was dead instead of going to work

     I am hoping that my high school experience goes well for many reasons. First, the choices I make there are going to follow me for the rest of my life. If I go downhill there, I’ll continue plummeting for the rest of my life. Also, I want to enjoy going to school. Right now I hate going to school every day. I find it extremely boring because it seems that I am never learning anything new. Maybe next year I will be pushed to my full ability and I will actually be able to learn something. Another reason I am excited for next year is because I hate being with a group of kids who are extremely immature. It bothers me about how much time is wasted in class because of everyone else’s idiocies.

      Jordan is a great high school to go to. It has a good student body and some amazing teachers. I am excited to be able to go to such a fun school and it will look good on a college application that I will be graduating with a high diploma.

      I am excited for high school to be over with. Being this age, it feels like I am being held back from the rest of the world and it sucks. I want to be able to do what everyone else can. I want to drive, I want to live on my own and I want to be free. Being a teenager Is stupid because we get stereotyped and judged and we have to live with people who really don’t care. When I am done with high school my life will finally begin.

     I want to go to a good college that has a lot of good programs. I am hoping to get a scholarship during high school because college is expensive and I want to be able to get a good education. I want to be able to graduate from the University of Utah and then move to Florida to become a marine biologist. I am hoping to get a firm foundation for my education at Jordan high school. My high school education is what is going to get me started in life and it is going to keep me going. The friends I make and my choices are what is going to be affecting my entire life from here on out.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Yitta Schwartz! Baby Maker!

Yitta Schwartz wasn’t just anybody’s mother. She had 15 children and more than 200 grandchildren!  She was a member of the Satmar Hasidic sect, whose couples have more than nine children on average and their ranks of descendants can multiply exponentially. But even among this group of people, Yitta Schwartz’s family was one in a million. (Literally)

     Yitta lived through the Holocaust and she generated one of the largest clans of any survivor – a thumb in the eye of the Nazis. Her descendants are all ages. Her daughter is 76 and her newest great-great-grandchildren are just a year old. As far as we can tell, the family still lives in the same Satmar community as she had lived. Except for a few of her grandchildren live in England.

     One of her daughters, Nechuma Mayer, is 65 has 16 children and more than 100 grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Everybody fights over Yitta at family festivities.  Parties happen all year round for Mrs. Schwartz was devoted to Hasidic rituals, which include: circumcisions, first haircuts, bar mitzvahs, engagements and weddings of her descendants. With more than 2,000 people in the family, such events occupy most of the year.

     Yitta Schwartz has an amazing family and the tradition of having large families will probably go on forever. May Yitta Schwartz rest in peace and her memory will be carried on for centuries through her descendants.

Slanderous Uzbeck Photos

     Children in ragged clothing, beggars screaming for change, bodies laid in the street… Is this truly how Uzbekistan is? Or is it just a foreigner that is unfamiliar with the sights of the land? A photographer was found guilty for the slandering and insulting of the Uzbek people. This enraged people throughout the region. The charges for the photographer have been sentenced to three years in prison, but the judge waived the penalties. The judge said that the photographer had been granted an amnesty in honor of the 18^th anniversary of Uzbek independence. “There was a fear of going to prison. But to tell you the truth, I feel insulted, that’s the main thing. I don’t aunderstand how my creative work could have brought me to this courtroom,” said Ms. Akhmedovea – the photographer.  The Uzbek authorities have done this type of thing in the past. They have prosecuted artists who have bashed the country. For example, a folk singer named Dadakhon Khasanov wrote a song about the 2005 crackdown (an antigovernment demonstrator in the city of Andijon, in which hundreds are thought to have died.) The case of Akhmedovea is said to be an example from the government to scare its people. Is this true? Does the government have something to hide? Maybe the people in Uzbekistan should keep an eye out for what may happen in the future.

Japan's Tragedy

    

      On March 11, 2011, one of the world’s most horrific disasters was thrust upon the coast of Japan. A 9.0 magnitude earthquake shook the cities and demolished buildings all over Japan. Shortly after the earthquake happened, a tsunami came that no one was prepared for.  Water flooded the remains of the shattered country and swept away millions of people, all left unmoving under the cold waters. The waves were over 120 feet high, reaching heights almost unheard of.  The Japanese National Police Agency has confirmed 13,591 deaths, 4,916 injured and 14,497 people missing, as well as over 125,000 buildings damaged or destroyed. The earthquake and tsunami caused extensive structural damage in Japan, including heavy damage to roads as well as fires in many areas, and also a dam collapse. According to Tōhoku Electric Power, around 4.4 million households in northeastern Japan were left without electricity. Rolling blackouts began on March 14, due to power shortages caused by the earthquake. 40% of the electricity is used in the greater Tokyo area is now supplied by reactors in the Niigata and Fukushima prefectures. The reactors at the Fukushima were automatically taken offline when the first earthquake occurred and have sustained major damage related to the earthquake and subsequent tsunami. Rolling blackouts of three hours are expected to last until the end of April and will affect Tokyo and many other cities in Japan. By March 21^st, 2011, the number of households in the north without electricity fell to 242,927.  Japan declared a state of emergency following the failure of the cooling system at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, resulting in the evacuation of nearby residents. Cooling is needed to remove decay heat after a reactor has been shut down, and to maintain spent fuel pools. Without being able to cool the Power Plant, there was some monstrous detrimental damage to the plant and the area surrounding it. Firefighters rushed to try to cool the plant down along with many other people. Danger and fear raced through everyone’s blood streams as the tension raised anticipation for fright of the overheating of the plant.

     Don’t just pray for Japan, pray for its people. I am honestly ashamed for the Americans that are concerned about the aftershock from Japan affecting the US. Every other country shames us, and they have good reason to. WE ARE JERKS! I think it is time to turn this stereotypical prejudice around. We can help Japan in so many ways. Simple things like water, food and medicine are running scarcely low. Every donation counts! The change in your pocket could be going toward someone’s life, someone’s child, and overall – helping a country in need.
    

     There is a very popular man on YouTube and his screen name is Nigahiga. He made a very extraordinary episode of his show to show how much he cared for Japan. He went out on an extremely busy street in his city and held a sign that said “Honk for Japan.” For every honk that was heard, he donated $10.00 to the Red Cross. I thought this was an amazing effort to help people around the world down in Japan. It really touched me how he could be so selfless and how other people helped him help other people.
    

     In my opinion, everyone should at least make an effort towards helping the Japanese. I can’t help but think of bodies upon bodies washing up on the shores, and children not being able to find their parents. I don’t know what I would do if that was me. So hopefully everyone can take a little kindness and love out of their hearts and give it to those people who really need it.

Japan VS Pripyat

     With Japan’s recent disaster, people are comparing it to the disaster in Pripyat that happened on April 26, 1986. On that day so long ago, 50,000 people had fled after Chernobyl’s No. 4 reactor exploded I a devil’s brew of cesium, strontium, iodine and plutonium. The city was new when it was destroyed, only 16 years old. Now grass grows through cracks in the streets and dry leaves shudder from the memories of the dark past in this not-so-forgotten city. Many people are comparing the horrors of Japan to the dramatic tragedy of Pripyat because of the money it will cost to reconstruct the city. “As a rule of thumb, the more developed the country, the higher the cleanup costs will be,” said Grimston. “However, it will be hard to separate out responsibility and costs between the earthquake, the tsunami and the responsibility to the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which operates the Fukushima No. 1 plant,” he said.

    

Alexa Loo

            Alexa Loo was your average 15 year old when she started snowboarding. She kept snowboarding and then she tried qualifying for the 2002 winter Olympics but she missed it by 11-hundredths of a second. 4 years later in Italy, she became the first Canadian woman to compete in the parallel giant slalom and came in 20^th. Sadly, Loo tore her knee ligament in early 2007 and was forced to re-evaluate the way she raced. She did physical therapy and returned that September with renewed focus. Because of the lost time while she was out on injured leave, she lost her financing in 2007. She needed to finish in the top 16 in the world to qualify for her $18,000 that was stripped from her past financing.

   

           Two Chinese brothers had heard her story and began putting her profile on the re-usable bags that were sold in their grocery store. This really helped Alexa in getting her money back and she won a World Cup Silver Medal in Austria. For 10 years, Loo walked her Olympic journey alone. Now because of her bummed knee, the Chinese brothers, and those of her community, she will now snowboard for the city that kept her journey going.

~LIBYA~

                     As many people know, Libya is going through one hell of a time right now. Not many people are following the tragedies and hardships that these people are going through and I don't really understand why. I guess it could be because it is a small country, or because it isn't by us or maybe because people are ignorant enough to think that they are more important enough than those people in Libya. Well, I am here to share my opinion on the subject.
                     I watch sxephil on YouTube and he tells news stories that are the most popular from the last couple of days. He always mentions those in Libya in his videos and sends his good thoughts out to them. He encourages support of Libya and that is how I keep updated on what is going on there.
                    I hate how people are making jokes about this and saying that they deserve to be bombed? WHAT THE F*** AMERICANS? What is your problem? People are in trouble and you think it is funny? I also don't think bombing was a good idea in the first place. Reasons:
                                                                  1. The missiles were crazy expensive and got us into a ton more debt. Great move Obama, try digging us out of this one after getting that health care plan finalized. (This will never happen.)
                                                                  2. You hurt the citizens just as much as the people you are aiming to bomb in the first place. I don't understand how this is helping the rebels at all, you are just depleting their numbers even further.
                                                                   3. WE ARE GOING TO GET BOMBED BACK. DUH, THEY ARE GOING TO BE PISSED THAT WE ARE BOMBING THEM AND IT IS GOING TO BACKFIRE.
                    Id also like to point out how it took us so long to even notice any of this was going on when it has been happening for years. Americans are lazy, stupid and selfish and we only care about ourselves and now our only solution for anything is weapons, machinery and the constant intake of Big Macs.
                    And what is up with this insane Gadhafi guy? Why do people have all this lust for power? You ruled a country for a while; it should be checked off your bucket list. Ruling the world is an old fashioned idea and I think that it is very clear that it is IMPOSSIBLE. Nobody likes you as their ruler, wouldn’t you feel bad and want to step down anyway if people were trashing you like that? I would. Plus, his pedo-stache seriously scares me.

Wait for it....Wait for it....Wait for it....Wait for it......

                      SEXY POSE!

 

                   Rebels are also running low on guns and ammo; there really isn’t a way for them to fight back efficiently without these things. Also Gadhafi has been supplying the citizens who support him with guns to attack the rebels with. Plus Gadhafi’s men have tanks and all this other stuff they are using to attack everyone else.

            On March 19, 11, French military jets were preventing forces from attacking the rebel-held city of Benghazi. The world leader meeting was in Paris and they were discussing the course of action to take against Gaddafi, this meeting didn't include President Barack Obama. The Leader of the Free World is on an "official" trip to Latin American countries that includes a stop in Rio. While Obama is ogling Brazilian hotties, the French President assumed the mantle of leadership, and announced that French military jets are going flying over Libya. America shouldn't go to war against another Muslim country, our troops and military resources are already over-extended in a war that is currently going on. (Obama still has not been successful in bringing our troops home, as I may point out.) He also made the decision to participate in enforcing the no-fly zone over Libya, so Obama should show a little at least a bit of leadership. Maybe Obama can set the suntan lotion aside for a couple of moments, and at least get off his lazy @** and help us get help to the situation in Libya.