Changing Style

Normally I write my posts in paragraphs, and I just realized how in paragraph form the words are often cramped up and are usually harder to read.

Therefore, for the first time in a while, I decided to change the layout of the blog. I didn't change much– I merely changed the spacing as well as the font size.

I actually planned to use a new font too, but I just couldn't get used to looking at the other fonts and at the end decided to keep Arial. Anyway, I made the font bigger and the line spacing larger, and I think now my blog posts are a lot more easy to read.

Look at the comparison:

Isn't the new one a lot easier to read?

To see how I changed the format, see my other blog post:
http://randuff.blogspot.com/2011/05/blogger-changing-line-spacing-for-all.html

Blogger: How to Change Line Spacing

How do you change the line spacing of all your blog posts? Well, follow these simple steps:

1) Go to Dashbord → Design → Edit HTML

2) Search for .post-body and you should find something that looks like this:

Your code doesn't have to look exactly the same as the above example. You can change the spacing as long as you can find line-height in the brackets.

3) Next, simply alter the value after line-height. Usually blogs have 1.5 or 1.6 spacing, but of course you can change it to whatever you want. :)

4) Save the template, and all your posts should have their spacings changed. Hope this works!

Special Notes:
- This basically changes the default setting of the posts. So all of your current and future posts will be affected by this change

- However, there are exceptions. If you have altered the HTML codes of specific posts to change the line spacing, those posts will not be affected by this change, and you would have to change the HTML codes of those posts individually.

- This method of changing the line spacing is much easier than using custom CSS. Custom CSS can mess up your line breaks and it also doesn't change your posts immediately. So don't use custom CSS unless you are changing other more complicated things

Different From vs. Different Than

Once I read in a grammar book that "different from" was more grammatically correct than "different than," and since then I have always been using "different from" in my sentences.

However, I have noticed that many people around me—including my English teacher—prefer to use "different than, " and this has led to me wanting to find out what is actually correct. ---

From what I have read in the Internet, some people think that both usages are fine, while most of the others agree that "different from" is the grammatically correct way, and that "different than" is less formal or is improper.

I will post the clearest explanation that I have found:

"Differ" takes the preposition from (exclusively), for the simple and logical reason that, as the verb "to defer" implies, it sets apart by exclusion rather than by degree of comparison. As in – This is different from that. When something differs, it implies another, from which it is distinguished. 

The fundamental question: How does something, be it a state of being, a quality, a quantity, an action,…differ from another thing? Answer, comparatively, by contrast. The contrast is either by degree, or by total exclusion; if one thing is excluded (outside the set which includes another) from, it is different. The preposition "than" is used with greater or less; the preposition, "from" is used with different.

Taken from a comment in: http://data.grammarbook.com/blog/adjectives-adverbs/different-from-vs-different-than/

Yay, another question solved. :)

Careers ISP

What career do you want to choose?

For my careers ISP I have to conduct research on a certain occupation and do a presentation about the occupation. Surprisingly, even though there are still many stupid components within the project (for example, you have to talk about all the other stuff that you have learned in the course, as if you have actually learned something in it), I actually don't think that this project is a bad one. It allows you to understand an occupation better, and perhaps let you have a better idea of who you may want to be in the future.

I am still not sure about the occupation that I am going to choose. On one hand, I want to choose occupations that I find interesting, such as mathematician, economist and accountant. On the other hand, there are certain requirements in the project that may make it harder to write reports on these occupations. For example, you have to talk about volunteer works that are related to the occupations, and I simply can't think of any that's related to being an economist.

Words of Wisdom

I just noticed this in my career text book:

Words of Wisdom

Q: How do you eat an elephant? A: One bite at a time.

This is a saying about goal-setting, about how you should break your goal into manageable chunks. It is very straight-forward and understandable as the analogy is pretty accurate.

At the same time, I find it pretty funny. If you have never heard of this saying/riddle before and just randomly see this in your career text book, you'd be wondering "Why the heck is this in a text book?"

Drowsiness

Last week I made a post, Lack of Energy, about how I was gradually becoming more easily tired. And now it's even worse!

For the past few days, right after I arrived home from school, all I wanted to do was going to sleep! Since I was so tired when I arrived home, I couldn't do anything except lying on the bed. Then, gradually I would fall asleep— for two whole hours! I have read somewhere that if you took a nap for too long, you would feel even more tired/drowsy after, and unfortunately this was what would happen to me each day. Everyday, after the two-hour nap, I would actually feel even more tired and at the same time have a small headache, and this condition would not wear off until about two hours later!

Arrgh I wonder what has happened to me. This is very bothersome and it has disallowed me to work on my assignments/projects efficiently. And, to make matters worse, I have two major projects due the following week! I really hope that I will be able to recover during the weekend.

Victoria Day

Next Monday will be Victoria day, and I am so looking forward to it!

Well, ever since I came to Canada, every year I would get one day off of school because of Victoria Day. However, even though it was a much-appreciated holiday, I never really knew why this holiday was for and I never really bothered to learn more about this holiday until today. So shame on me.

Anyway, the origin of Victoria Day is quite simple—it's Queen Victoria's birthday! Her birthday was on May 24th, and her birthday was first celebrated in 1845.

In 1901, Queen Victoria died, and May 25th became Victoria Day in Canada. It became the day for Canadians to remember the "Mother of Confederation."

Then, in 1952, Victoria Day was changed to being the last Monday before May 25th every year. This has not been altered since then.

---

I don't  know why they made it the last Monday before May 25th every year. I am guessing, though, that it was so that people could have long weekends.

APA Bibliography—Complete Guide From the American Psychological Association

As we all know, it is essential that we cite all of our references so that we would not be flagged as plagiarists. However, not only is it important that we have a reference list, it is also important that we do our referencing properly. While this may not sound like an extremely difficult task, it actually is because it is very hard to find a correct formatting guideline. This is especially true for today where thousands of different guidelines are floating on the Internet, and it's simply impossible to determine whether a guideline is correct. 

Fortunately, there is a simple way to cope with this problem. For references in the APA style, the guidelines from the American Psychological Association (APA) website will never be wrong— the APA is the organization that makes up all the rules! Therefore, by formatting our reference lists according to the actual APA guideline, we can ensure that our reference lists will correct.

So here is APA style guide:
http://flash1r.apa.org/apastyle/basics/index.htm

In the website, the first ten pages or so teach you about the other elements of the APA style, such as headings and reducing bias. Then, for twelve straight pages, you get a referencing guide! With this, you should be able to complete your reference list without problem.

Stupid Assignments

Many text books have utterly stupid questions that are unnecessarily elementary and/or repetitive. For example, in my math text book, there is a section where you need to "explore" the different transformations for different types of functions. It asks 8 questions, which require you to predict the look of 48 functions, draw them, and describe their transformations. As you might have suspected, it's easy, yet repetitive and time-consuming.

That's how text books always are. They always assume that students are morons , and they always have "investigations" and "explorations" to help students learn. Yes, "investigations" and " explorations" are helpful toward students' learnings, but only when they are not on frivolous matters. Unfortunately, textbooks always take the easiest concepts and turn them into these investigations and explorations. They always assume that students are three-year-olds who cannot understand easy concepts just by reading them.

Oh gosh, I feel that if I haven't written this, I would have had slammed my text book onto the ground.

NOTE: part of this post was taken out!

Zamzar—Online File Converter

Link to Zamzar: http://www.zamzar.com/
I find all the Microsoft updates to be very annoying—they make new file extensions that cannot be opened by the older versions of its software. For example, Microsoft Word has always had the extension .doc, but they changed it into .docx about three years ago, and now people are beginning to use these .docx documents more often because that is what's provided in their new Microsoft Office Packages.

This makes sending files to and from my classmates a lot more difficult. Often when working on group projects or when editing each other's work, we need to send files via email so that we can see each other's work. However, since I have the old Microsoft Word version, I cannot open the .docx files that many of my classmates send me and I often need to ask them to cut and paste their material into the pieces of mail that they send to me.

Even though the above method is time consuming, it usually works and that's how I have been dealing with the problem during the past year. However, when the file in qjavascript:void(0)uestion is a powerpoint (.pptx) file, it's simply impossible to copy and paste all content into the email. This is why I find Zamzar essential.

I found Zamzar a few days ago when a member of my chemistry presentation group sent me a .pptx file containing the powerpoint that he had done. Since .pptx was the extension for the new version of Microsoft Powerpoint, I could not open it with my old Powerpoint version and had to find a way to convert the file. Therefore I went onto Google and searched for a file conversion program, and surprisingly I found Zamzar, which was an Online converter!

Screenshot of Zamzar

Zamzar was very easy to use. I simply uploaded the .pptx file and specified what type of file I wanted it to be converted into. There were many types of files that you could convert, such as audio, video and image files. Anyway, after selecting .ppt as my desired extension, I entered my email and in a few minutes I received an email containing a link. From the link, I just downloaded the converted file.

I find Zamzar to be very convenient because it's online and does not require any membership. However, I do notice that the converted files tend to be a lot larger than the original ones, which can be quite a disadvantage if you have limited Internet usage. But overall, I am sure that I will be using it in the future.

Exam Schedule

I got my exam schedule today. I can't believe that exams are approaching already! I mean, it seems that the semester has just started a week ago and that I have barely done anything in the classes. Well, I guess that's good news because these exams will mark the end of grade ten, which means that I will soon be in grade eleven!

Anyway, back to the main topic. Exams will last from June 14th (Tuesday) to June 20th (Monday), and I will be writing three exams: one in Tuesday afternoon, one in Thursday afternoon, and one in Monday morning.

Or, to make it more clear, these will be the days on which I will have exams:

• June 14th
• June 16th
• June 20th

That's about a month of study time! I probably wouldn't start studying until the start of June though— I have to work on many projects at the end of May and there are still some topics in school that haven't been covered yet.

Encryption

Due to privacy concerns, I have encrypted some of my posts, mainly the ones that reveal personal information. This is something that I really don't want to do (because it makes the blog look ugly), but I am afraid that if I don't do so my classmates are going to recognize me if they happen to be on this blog.

I wonder why Blogger doesn't even have the basic feature of setting the privacies of certain posts. For example, if a post contains personal information, that feature will allow me to lock/protect it so that only people who know the password can read it. I know that many other blog providers, such as WordPress, have this feature, and I simply don't understand why Blogger hasn't kept up with those blog providers yet.

Well, for the time being, encrypting some of the posts may be the best option for me. So if anyone happens to be  a regular visitor of this blog (which I doubt), I will say sorry in advance for the messiness that you're going to see.

Lack of Energy

I don't know why, but for the past few days I have been feeling quite tired and fatigued, even though I have been having the normal amounts of sleep.

For example, today I couldn't read more than thirty pages of a book about the Korean war without dozing off or wanting to do something else. Even when I was doing something I liked, I got tired or disinterested pretty quickly.

I really hope that this will stop as soon as possible. It's very frustrating and I haven't accomplished anything significant since I started to have this lack of energy. At a time when I have so much to do, I simply can't let this continue!

Related: Concentrate!

Google Code Jam

Official Website: http://code.google.com/codejam

Google Code Jam is an online programming competition that starts in May and ends in July. It's completely free, and it's very convenient because you can participate in this competition at home (unless you get into the finals).

I originally wanted to do this competition to see how good—or rather, bad—I am at at programming and also to improve my programming skills. Its problems in the earlier rounds are considerably harder than the ones in school competitions, yet many of them are doable for me if I spend enough time on them. This year I my goal was to get through the qualification round.

Unfortunately, because of all the school work I had, I totally forgot to sign up for the competition! I just found out that its signup ended last Saturday, meaning that I will be unable to participate in this event this year. :(

I will, however, look at all the problems once I have more time at hand. That shall still give me the practice that I need.

Nose Bleed

Urgh I hate nose bleeds! Yesterday at about three o'clock, I suddenly woke up from my wonderful sleep and found that I was having a nosebleed. Not only did this disrupt my sleep severely, it also stained my pillowcase and my bed sheet.

 Nosebleeds are annoying and unfortunately I have them a lot. I think I have had more than seven this year! If I was lucky, I had it when I was using a computer and I could just continue using it while having my left hand pressing my nose. However, most of the time I was unlucky and had it in school, and I had to rush out of my class embarrassedly to go to the washroom.

 I looked up on guides that teach you how to prevent nosebleeds. Most of them basically tell you how to keep your nose moist. I hope that if I follow these guides, I will have a significantly lower amount of nosebleeds.


Guide: http://www.wikihow.com/Prevent-Nose-Bleeds

Canada and the First World War—Changes in Women's Role

Women used to be considered as far less capable and inferior to men, but this totally changed after the first world war. During the war, about 2000 Canadian women went overseas and became nurses. They treated wounded soldiers and a lot of times had to protect these soldiers from rats and insects. Their work was also dangerous as they often needed to treat soldiers near the front and hospitals were sometimes the targets of attack. They proved to be capable as they bravely helped to save the lives of thousands of soldiers.

At home, women also proved their ability, but by a different means. Since at the time workers were predominantly male and a lot of men volunteered to go to war, there were not enough workers left in the country. As a result, over 30000 women were hired by munition factories and they were able to carry out tasks that were usually done by men. This made them more confident and disproved the beliefs that women could not do anything important.

Furthermore, in 1917 the War Times Elections Act was passed, which granted many Canadian women the right to vote.  This gave them a lot more power and allowed them to have a voice in politics.

Overall, in the first world war women proved themselves to be just as capable as men and were no longer seen as people who wore dresses that couldn't complete difficult tasks.  After the war, women became more confident, more powerful, and more equal to men.

Canada and the First World War—War the Home Front

The first world war was a total war that affected not only the lives of Canadian soldiers in the battlefield, but also the lives of Canadians at the home front. During the war, food supply was limited and rationing was introduced to the Canadian society to ensure that there was food for the soldiers fighting overseas. Families would receive food vouchers every week, which regulated the amount of food that they could purchase. For example, they could only have 1.8 kilograms of meat and 26 litres of oil per week.

Also, women at the home front contributed to the war significantly. Since many men volunteered to become soldiers, there was a lack of male workers and women filled this gap by working in munitions factories, where they would make artillery shells and other weapons to be used in the battles. They also made organizations to contribute to the war in other ways. For example, in the Dorcas Club, they would sew socks and pyjamas for the soldiers at war.

Furthermore, even the children participated in the war. They were given boxes to collect unwanted metals, bones, glass, and paper, which would be recycled to produce war materials. They also went through meatless and heatless days to save food and fuel, which were both essential for the army.

Overall, the first world war significantly affected the lives of Canadians living at the home front, and it was a war to which every Canadian made contribution, a war that brought all Canadians together to fight for one single cause.

Canada and the First World War—Changes in the Economy

 

The First World War changed the Canadian economy significantly. Since during the war there were large demands for food, Canada’s farmers had to produce a lot more wheat and other agricultural products to supply the army, and as a result Canada saw an agricultural growth with a 300% increase in agricultural output. The farmers also purchased more advanced machineries to help them with farming, and this allowed the farming industry to be more efficient and increased the agricultural capacity of the country.

The country saw an even larger increase in the industrial output. During the war the manufacturing of ammunition was very much needed, and hundreds of new factories were built to increase the amount of ammunition that the country could manufacture. As a result, Canada saw a 500% increase in the industrial output! Even though the demand for ammunition was only temporary, and the industrial output would soon decline after the end of the war, the industrial capacity of Canada was increased significantly and Canada turned from a more agricultural-based country to a more industrialized one.

Furthermore, to raise money for the war, the government introduced many new taxes, such as the income tax, business tax, and taxes on products like tea, tobacco and alcohol. Although some of these taxes were intended as temporary measures for the war, all the taxes remained in the society until today. These taxes were the foundation of our taxation system today and they had a huge impact on the lives of Canadians.

Overall, the First World War had a tremendous impact on the Canadian economy. It significantly increased the Canadian productive capacity, and it set the foundation of our taxation system. It revamped Canada economically.

Horrible Marks

Note: This post has been encrypted

Relevance

My math teacher is known for her annoying tests. What she usually does is that she takes a normal test and add extra components to it to make "more fun and more challenging." However, none of these extra things are relevant to the subject and they just make the test super long and difficult to be finished in time. For example, during a unit in which we needed to use the formula of a circle, all the questions were supposed to be somewhat easy because they were all quite simple and straight-forward, and involved at most three steps. However, my math teacher had to turn almost half of the questions into questions that asked for the equations of the incircles of triangles, and this made the test extremely long because the questions became ten-step questions, with every step being quite long. Doing one such question would have had taken about 11 minutes (and that's if you wasted absolutely no time), and imagine doing five of these questions plus five other questions in 75 minutes!

There was a better example in grade nine. During one unit where we were supposed to find the volumes of various shapes, my math teacher made all the measures into variables, and in order to to obtain the measures, we would have had to solve systems of equations first. This made our test very, very long as another "solving systems of equations test" could actually have been made just from the first steps of the questions.

I really wonder if my math teacher understands what's important or not, as all these extra stuff that she adds onto our tests are pretty irrelevant to what we are learning. By adding all these stuff, not only does she makes our lives a lot harder, she is also diverting the focus of our learnings. I just don't get it. What's the point?

Changing Functions of Keys!

In my previous post, I mentioned how the 'm' key on my laptop was half-broken and that I didn't want to type that key too often. However, since 'm' was a letter that was used relatively frequently, it was impossible to simply avoid using the letter.

Therefore I decided to find a way to change the function of my keyboard so that when I type another key, it would be as if I have pressed the key 'm.' Fortunately, I quickly found a program that could do the exact thing. The program was called SharpKeys (click here to download), and it worked perfectly. You would basically have to select (or type) one key, and then specify what key you want it to be turned into. After that, you would just need to re-login or restart the computer and the key should be changed.

In my case, I changed the "page down" key, located beside the enter key, into the 'm' key. The "page down" key was a key that I never used, and its location was relatively good. And yes, all the m's in this post are typed using the "page down" key!

Unfortunately, my right hand is feeling unusually tired right now, and I am suspecting that it's because I have to press the "page down" key when I want to type an "m." Maybe I will change the right alt key into an "m" too, and see whether it'd be easier for me to type.

Nevertheless, I am really thankful for this program. It has helped me a lot already even though I have only used it since yesterday night. Without it, I would have to type unusually slow to avoid damaging the "m" key, and  this would just be painful.

Thank you, SharpKeys!

Broken Key

Notice: If you actually have a broken key on your laptop, go to 
http://www.laptoprepair101.com/laptop/2007/03/20/key-fell-off-keyboard/

Yesterday I was cleaning the keyboard by tilting the keys and removing the dust. When I was cleaning the 'm', I placed too much force onto the key and it half-fell out, meaning that the cap was still attached to the keyboard but that it was permanently tilted toward one direction. This was nothing new, as I often cleaned my keyboard and I have encountered this a lot of times:


At first, I just pushed the key cap very hard, trying to get it in place. However, I never heard the "click" sound that I was supposed to hear, and saw that my usual method did not work.

I then examined the key more carefully, and saw the problem: the two parts of the retainer were not put together properly! I have encountered this several times as well, and during the previous occurrences all I did was tilting the key caps toward the opposite directions that they were leaning toward until I heard a "click" sound. This time I tried to do the same. However, the 'm' key was unusually fragile, and even the retainer fell out!

I knew I was in trouble then. The last time that I had this problem, I was almost unable to get the key back in place. And in fact, even though I managed to assemble it properly, the membrane was detached from the keyboard and today it still feels strange whenever I type that key.

This is the membrane

I was determined to fix the 'm' key though, for the obvious reason, and I began examining the parts of the retainer. And I saw this scary thing:

 

This meant that unless I bought a new retainer, it was impossible for me to fix the key properly. So I quickly assembled the key in a way that it would still be attached to the keyboard, but that it would be permanently leaning toward one direction.

Now I can still type the 'm', and in fact it feels quite normal when I type it! However, since there are some broken parts, the key can fall apart at any time and I don't want to type the key too much. 

I hope that my parents will never discover this broken key. If they do, I would be in a even bigger trouble...

Avogadro Contest

Official website: http://www.chemistry.uwaterloo.ca/outreach/avogadro-exam

Past Contests and Answers:  http://science.uwaterloo.ca/chemistry/outreach/avogadro-past-exams-and-solutions

I am going to be writing the Avogadro contest on May 19th. The Avogadro contest is hosted by the University of Waterloo, and is intended for students who have completed grade 11 chemistry. It is 75-minute long and consists of 40 multiple-choice questions, on topics such as "Structure of Matter, Bonding, Reactions, Solutions, and Gases, and a general knowledge of current affairs. "

Since it is only comprised of multiple-choice questions, it should not be too hard for students to get a perfect score if they know their topics well. However, many of the topics covered in this contest have not been taught in my chemistry class, and for me many questions are almost impossible to do.

This means that I have really need to study hard during these two weeks before the contest. I am really hoping to get a good score in it-- maybe 90-95 percentile? I don't know, but either way it's not going to be easy for me to study well for the contest, especially considering how much homework I have during these two weeks.

School Project Experiences

Relating to my history ISP topics, I really think that it is interesting that throughout the highschool years, everyone would have such different experiences and would learn such different things from their projects. For example, for my English ISP, everyone had to choose a different book to write an essay on, and everyone's experience was different because we all chose different books and took different approaches.

What's more interesting to me, however, is the fact that a lot of times our experiences can change drastically just because of one little thing/event. For example, for my English ISP, I was originally going to choose Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, but because it got chosen by another student, I chose Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury instead. If I had decided my ISP book earlier, I would have written an essay on Flowers for Algernon and I probably would not have thought about Fahrenheit 451 as much as I actually did, assuming that I was going to read Fahrenheit 451 anyway. This is the same for my history project. Had partner J. not been so ardent about doing the topic about Canada and peace keeping, my group would have just stuck with the topic about Canada-America relations. To me it is just fascinating how one's high-school experiences can be dependent on these seemingly unimportant things.

This lets me have more beliefs in fate. Was it really just coincidence that I decided to choose Fahrenheit 451 for my English class? Or was there a higher power that had long decided that I shall do my English ISP on Fahrenheit 451? And what would have been different if I have chosen Flowers for Algernon?I do not know the answers to these questions at all. What I do know, however, is that my English ISP turned out to be successful, that I actually learned quite a lot of things from it, and that I would always have this special connection with Fahrenheit 451.

History ISP Topics

For my history ISP we have to get into groups and each group has to choose a theme in modern Canadian history and do research on the theme. On top of that, each group member will have to choose a different topic from the theme and write a research essay on the topic.  The available themes/topics are listed as follows:

Canada: Conflict and Peace Keeping

- Canada and the Cold War (NATO)

- Canada and Bomarc Missiles & The Avro Arrow

- Canada's Role in the Korean War

- Canada's Role in the Suez Crisis

- Canada and the Gulf War

- Canada and War in Afghanistan

Canada in a Global Context

- Canada's foreign policy

- Canada and the United Nations

- Canada and Globalization- Canada's role in the G8 & G20

- Foreign Aid to nations in Crises Canada's responses to international crises

- Canada: Technology and Space

Status of Women 

- Women's Movement and Gender Equity

- Women and the Law

- Women in Politics and Business

Aboriginal Issues

- Creation of Nunavut

- Self- Government

- Land Claims

- Health & Welfare & Residential Schools

- Meech Lake Accor and Charlottetown Accord from an Aboriginal Perspective

Canadian- American Relations

- Free Trade & NAFTA

- Auto pact

- Environmental Protection

- The "Manhattan" Episode

- The Iranian Hostage Crisis

Canadian Sovereignty and Culture

- The Northwest Passage & Arctic Sovereignty

- Brian Tobin and the Atlantic Fishing Crisis

- The North Pole Dispute

English/French Relations

- The Quiet Revolution

- Bill 101

- Separatist Movement 

- October Crisis

- Referendums 1980 & 1985

The Changing Face of Canada

- Multiculturalism

- Canada Military Organization

- Canadian Music

- (list too long)

Social Contract: Constitutional Political Change

- Canadian Prime Minister from 1945- 1999

- Meech Lake Accord

- 1982 Constitution and Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the "Notwithstanding" Clause

So obviously theme-choosing is one of the most important parts of this project as all your work is based on the theme that you choose. To ensure that we'd choose the right topics, our group made a list of preferences:

1. Canada: Conflict and Peace Keeping

2. Canadian- American Relations

3. Canada in a Global Context

4. English/French Relations

After Two Years

Once in middle school I had to do a debate about whether smoking should be banned. I was lucky to be on the side that supported the banning of smoking, because I could simply search up all the bad things that smoking caused.


These disadvantages included health issues, personal financial issues, and environmental issues. For the environmental issues, I simply typed "smoking environment" into Google and clicked on the queries.  Eventually I found some sites that were very organized and informational, and I wrote my arguments based on these pieces of information that I found.


Two years later, I am in grade ten, and I am doing a project about cancer drug resistance. I have found that smoking may contribute to drug resistance, and that reducing the amount of smoking may result in lower possibilities of having drug-resistant cancer cells.


Since part of the project requirement was to relate our topics to the society, technology, environment, and economy, I have decided to talk about the effects on environment if smoking were to be banned. Again, I typed "smoking environment" in the Google search box and hit "go."


As usual, I went through the queries one by one, and suddenly, I saw a familiar webpage... it was the same website that I had visited in grade eight!


This is so cool, to go onto the same website after two years by coincidence! This unique experience had definitely made my day. Also, I need thank this website for helping me twice in school. : D


And in case you're wondering, this is the website:
Tobacco Free Youth- Smoking and the Environment

Dates

Since I have so many things to do this month, I decided to make a list of all important dates so that I will be able to finish everything on time.

Here are them:

May 9th:  Organic chemistry test
May 9th: History essay proposal
May 10th: History test
May 10th: Math test
May 16th: Resume+ Cover letter assignment
May 18th: Career grpip presentation
May 19th: History essay outline and bibliography
                  Chemistry ISP presentation
June 3rd: History essay final draft

These may not seem like a lot, but they actually are...

Canada Federal Elections

Today is the federal elections of Canada. Since none of my family members is a Canadian citizen, none of us has the right to vote and we don't really pay huge attentions to Canadian politics.However, we do keep ourselves informed about the huge events that happen. This means that I will probably be watching the television at 9 o'clock to see the results.

I don't really support any of the parties. They all have their pros and cons, and I can't really make any comments on them because I do not understand their positions enough. However, I do wish that the Bloc Quebecois will get as few votes as possible. It only cares about Quebec!

Also, my school is serving as a polling station for the area! That's quite interesting as I have never seen the voting process in Canada. Too bad that today during lunchtime I was too busy and I couldn't go to the gym to see how it was organized. What a wasted opportunity.

Busy Month

This month I have quite a lot of things to do. I have to do some chemistry and history research, as well as my career assignments. I also have to start doing my math homework because in math class we are getting into something that I haven't learned yet. The bad thing is, almost everything is due in the week of May sixteenth, meaning that even though I don't have anything due immediately, I have to start doing everything now.

I must organize my time very effectively this month. If I don't, I will not be able to do well on all these projects.
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Hopefully by making a post about this, I will be more determined to make good use of my time.

I Lost My Periodic Table

On Friday after I had the chemistry test, I had lunch. There was another chemistry class in the afternoon, and so the students from that class were still panicking about the test and were trying to make good use of every minute before their test.

One of them, A., was eating lunch with me, and he was doing more sample questions from the text book. Since these questions required using the molar masses of the elements, he borrowed my periodic table.
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Then today I couldn't find my periodic table! I think that A. has it, since yesterday lunch was the last time I remember seeing the periodic table. However,  if he doesn't have it, I will be in big trouble. I will have to borrow someone else's and copy down the content of it.

Periodic tables in chemistry class are almost like calculators in math class. You cannot lose them!

Answer Key to Opinion-Based Questions

I really couldn't think of an appropriate title for this post, so I'll start this post by apologizing for that.

Anyway, today I was doing a career assignment for which you have to interview your parents and learn about how the society has changed since the time when they were teenagers. You have to describe all these changes , plus answering some questions such as "What did you learn by doing this project, particularly as it relates to the Career Studies course and career planning?"

This really ticks me off. Haven't the people who made this assignment ever thought about the possibility that students might not learn anything from this assignment at all? Yes, I know you are supposed to talk about how it is important to be aware of the changes in society and blah blah blah, but I seriously doubt that anyone who puts this as their answer would actually believe in what they are writing. I mean, this is almost like common sense! Yet if you are honest and actually write something like "I have learned nothing at all," you will probably receive a very low mark. 

School has created an environment in which you must be dishonest to achieve something high. It has created answer-sheets for even opinion-based questions, and if your answer does not match with the one on the answer-sheet, you'll probably lose some marks. Most often, the correct answer on the answer sheet is the cheesiest one and the one that no one believes in, yet it is usually the one that is written down by most students because all these students have already memorized the correct formula for writing opinion-based questions.  

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I hope it made a bit sense to you. It's just another of my angry and rambling posts. 

Related: Doing Things That are Contrary to What I Believe?