Today in class we read a short story called “The Bet” by Anton Chekhov and were told to write a post about it and things to do with power and relationships. The story was originally written in German, but over time it has been revised into the English language.

In this story, a banker and a lawyer are discussing whether it would be better to die immediately or to be locked in a jail cell and draw the life out of you for years and years. The banker thinks that it would be better to die quickly, but the lawyer disagrees. The banker says that he would give the lawyer 2 million rubles, which would be about 10 or 15 million dollars today, if he could stay locked up for 5 years. The lawyer accepts, but raises it to 15 years. So the lawyer gets locked up in a wing of the banker’s home that was being watched by a guard that could bring him things that he wanted, but they had to be allowed by the banker. So the lawyer was locked up on the date of November 14, 1870.

After the 15 years had almost passed, the banker had very little money left because he had lost it all by gambling. So the night before the lawyer was to be set free, the banker decided that it was time to kill the lawyer so he wouldn’t have to pay him. He snuck into the wing of the house where the lawyer was locked up. He was sleeping in his chair, so the banker was going to throw him on his bed and smother him. He walked over to the lawyer and saw a note on the table. This is what the note said:

“Tomorrow, at noon, I am to have my freedom. I shall have the right to mix with people. But before I leave this room, I want to say a few words to you. My conscience is clear, and I stand before God, who sees me. I declare to you that I despise all that your books call the blessings of the world.”“For fifteen years I have studied earthly life. In your books I hunted deer and sang songs. In your books I climbed Mt. Blanc. I saw from there how the sun rose in the morning. In your books I worked miracles, burned cities to the ground, preached new religions, conquered whole countries-“

“Your books gave me wisdom. I know that I am cleverer than you all. You are mad and gone the wrong way.  You worship things, not ideas. You take falsehood for truth and ugliness for beauty. So do I marvel at you. You have traded heaven for earth. I do not want to understand you. “To show that I despise all that you live by, I give up the two million I once so desired. Can your money buy wisdom? No. I shall come out of here five minutes before noon tomorrow.”

So the purpose of this assignment was to tell who has the power in this story. I think that the lawyer has more power because he can have his freedom whenever he wants, but if he wanted and needed the money, he could have waited the 15 years and got the money. The point of the bet wasn’t so the lawyer could make money; it was to prove that if you have power, you can control someone into doing you something or doing something for you. The lawyer left 5 minutes before he was to be let out just to prove to the banker that he could do it.

Sara

Sim City is a computer game that we have been playing in school the past few days where you are the mayor of a town that you created and you have to run the city like a real mayor would. If your teacher said one day, “We’re all going to play video games in class this week!” you would think that it’s awesome and you’re just playing games and it will be so much fun and your brain won’t have to work one bit. But the truth is, you really learn a lot.

First of all, you have to start with a small town so you have enough money to spend on expenses that you will need in order for people to move there. You also need money to fix things that are going to happen in your town. For example, if there were a fire in your town and the building burnt down, you would have to pay to get it back. You also have to control things like if a car gets stuck, you have to pave a road underneath it, which does cost money. You also have to make more roads so it’s easier for cars to get around.

You also have to make sure that the people that are going to move to your town will have a school if they are kids, and a good job if they are adults. You can make houses for them to live in, commercial places where they can have businesses, and an industry so they can work there. But many people don’t like living right next to an industry, so you have to make sure that your houses aren’t too close to it. But no one would like to spend all their money just on buying gas so they can drive all the way across the town or city just to go to work. So it’s pretty hard to manage things like that, but if you imagine the things a real mayor would have to do, when you play Sim City you’ve got it pretty easy.

I think the hardest thing to control on the game is the taxes. If you have very high taxes before anyone even moves to your city, no one will. As soon as you get some people into houses, you may be able to raise them without anyone really caring. I found that it was the hardest to get people to start building in the commercial areas, but I wasn’t sure why. So I had to keep lowering and lowering the taxes there until something actually started happening.

So when you think about it, this game is a very educational one. So when you go home after school, and your parents ask them what you did at school today, and you tell them you played computer games, tell them to try playing it and see how much they learn.

Sara

Hey,

My class and the class from L.A. that we’re working with are creating things called VoiceThreads, and I finished mine, so here’s a link for you to go check it out:

http://voicethread.com/view.php?b=7266

 I hope you like it! Leave me some comments about what I could have done better and what you liked.

Sara

Many cities have different ways of living because their beliefs are all different and that is what they were taught. The way they live is their culture. Since they do different things than we do, it may seem strange to us why they do those things. But it is really just a way of life, just like it is for us to do what we do in our life. Some people don’t have a culture, because they have different beliefs and some of them come from different cultures so they don’t really know what they should be.

In some places, some kinds of cultures aren’t allowed because the government does not approve of them. So some people who are that culture have to hide because the government doesn’t want anyone to be that culture. But most people do because that is just their way of life and they don’t feel the need to change it because they feel it is not fair. But in some places, you can be whatever you want to be and no one can do anything about it. I think it should be like that everywhere.

Some people of different cultures become a society with a group of other people of the same culture because they all have the same beliefs so they join together. When you are in a city you see a lot of different cultures and societies. There would be more in a city instead of a town because there would be more people in a city and in a town there wouldn’t be as many people of the same culture.

Here is a link about different societies coming together.

http://www.youthlinks.org/article.do?articleID=1504&sl=e

Hey people,

So we’ve been told to write a post about how reading and writing are similar and different from blogging. So here goes:

Reading & Writing

So when you think of reading, what comes to mind? Probaby a book or newspaper, right? And when you think of writing, probably like a pen or pencil. But back in the olden days, if you asked someone that question they might say that a fountain pen or one of those feather ones that you dip in ink, and for reading they might say something like a scroll or some sort of hand-written book of some kind and whatever else they used. So obviously things have changed a bit. Actually, a lot. Because somewhere out there a couple years ago some computer geek said he wanted to make something for people to write things about themselves or their lives. And then, blogging was created. So, you’re probably wondering what the heck I’m writing about. Well, here it is.

Blogging

Blogging is the new way to tell the world about you, your life, etc. So why blogging? Because when you do things on the computer, you can just click spellcheck instead of having to read through your whole paper and be either an excellent speller or get a dictionary and look up EVERY word so you know what you spelt wrong. Because most people can type faster than they can write. Because you can save paper by sending your work to your teacher through e-mail. Because it’s awesome! I mean, if you want to write a story, then go type it on Microsoft Word. But if you post it on your blog, it’s going to get some publicity. If you type it up and just save it on your computer, all it’s doing there is wasting space on your hard drive. The only difference between blogging and writing is basically a keyboard, mouse, and a screen instead of a pen and paper. You’re still doing work and all it’s saving you is a few weeks’ less finger cramps. So, BLOG IT NOW!

Sara

Hey everyone!

Okay, so this is my very first blog post ever, so I’m not really sure what to write about just yet, but I guess I’ll just start somewhere. My name is Sara, I go to JHK and I live in a little town in the middle of nowhere called Snow Lake.

My class is going to be blogging for the year, so I’ll be posting a lot, whether it’ll be at school or at home. I think it’s a good idea because that way everyone that will be working with us on a project can learn things about us and we can learn about them before we start working together. Also it’s a way for friends to learn stuff about people or their friends that they never knew.

This year I am going to be in junior girls volleyball for the first time. I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to at first, but some of my friends are going in so I thought I’d give it a try. I hope it will be fun so I will have something to do other than watch TV and go on the computer all the time.

So expect a lot more posts and things about me and my life in the future. Bye!

Sara