A New Year Approches

Good bye 2008!!! In central time there's one and a half more hours until 2009. It's been a fun year. A successful orbit of the sun.

But I thought . . . ?

It seems strange that the governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich can still name his choice to fill the vacated senate seat of Barack Obama, even after he has been accused of trying to sell that same seat to the highest bidder. Today he named his pick for the seat, Roland Burris, the first black politician to win statewide office in Illinois with a cautious approach to politics and a background in banking.

It's sort of strange that the guy arrested for trying to make a profit off the senate seat can still decide who will fill it.

Innocent until proven guilty huh?

By the way. . .

Images from: http://senatus.wordpress.com/2008/12/12/minnesota-canvassing-board-meets-for-key-decisions-in-senate-recount/
http://hidates.com/i/6-1.gif

Minnesota still doesn't have its second senator. Today Franken pulled ahead in the recount, not that its final because he's ahead by only a hundred or so votes and the Coleman campaign has challenged hundreds of ballots.

Perhaps it is time to start thinking about flipping a coin?

And Merry Christmas To You

Picture from: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/12/19/santa-zoom.html

Researchers at Texas A & M university think there might be a good chance the reindeer pulling Santa's sleigh are female. Why? Because bull reindeer typically shed their antlers before Christmas. However, the reindeer could also be castrated males known as steers. Young steers and non-pregnant females loose their antlers around February to March while expecting mothers keep the antlers until the calves are born.

Apparently, tis the season for strange thoughts about flying reindeer.

A Person of Importance

Picture from: http://www.time.com/time/specials/2008/personoftheyear

Barack Obama was named Time Person of the Year for 2008. I can't really say I was surprised. There was so much publicity about him during the election season, he made some historic breakthroughs during his campaign, and his story is very compelling.
His election was exciting and uplifting for the country. Hopefully he can survive his first days in office dealing with two wars, global warming, and the economic slide.

Shoes

Image from: www.reuters.com/news/pictures

Apparently, in Arab customs one of the gravest insults you can commit is to throw a shoe at somebody. That is probably why the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President Bush is being detained. He actually got off a pretty good throw if the article that I read is correct. I quote, ". . . flung one shoe at Bush, forcing him to duck, followed by another, which sailed over Bush's head and slammed into the wall behind him. . ."
Among Iraqis there are mixed feelings about this act. Some people are hailing the journalist as a national hero, and staging protests for his release. Others (such as the government) are calling the act "barbaric".
I can easily see how people would be angry at the U.S. The journalist was angry at the president for bringing in troupes, starting a war, and causing the deaths of Iraqi citizens. Many people echo this view point while other oppose it.
Personally, I'm rather impressed the journalist got close enough with his shoe to make the president duck. It's sort of hard to aim a shoe, because of the shape, and isn't there supposed to be security around? Wouldn't people wonder what you were doing if you suddenly took off your shoe in the middle of a press conference? Speaking of security, wasn't the security around there rather bad? What if somebody had thrown something other than a shoe?
Flying shoes and all, this only reminds me why I never, ever, want to be a politician let alone president.

What if the INTERNET crashed?

I was reading the paper and came across an article. Some researchers from the University of Minnesota (at least I think that's where they're from, I wasn't reading closely) thought there was a possibility of increased solar storms in the near future. So much increased activity that the storms might interfere with the Internet.
Reading that made me think, "What would happen, in this day and age, if the Internet crashed?" I don't mean personal wireless routers. I mean the whole global Internet system. What if, suddenly, there was a poof, and no more Internet?
For somebody who goes to an online school and lives by my computer, that's a scary thought.

Recount over, Still no winner

We still don't know whom Minnesota's second senator will be. Norm Coleman or Al Franken? And the elections were like what, a whole month ago. The problem is that the race is SO close. During this month, there has been a ballot recount, where volunteers go through all the ballots by hand and count them. (sort of strange because human counting has a greater margin of error than a machine) The outcome should be solved by the recount right? Well not when both campaigns are challenging the authenticity of any ballot that goes to their opponent. To make things harder, an envelope containing about 135 uncounted ballots has disappeared and nobody can find it. Normally, 135 votes wouldn't make a huge difference, when the margin between candidates is usually thousands of votes. But when the recount started Coleman was only leading Franken by roughly 215 votes. Yes, a rather smaller margin than normal.

The thing is, that during the campaign, these two candidates were really, really nasty to each other. There was a lot of accusations, negative adds, mud throwing, etc. Because of all this, the third party candidate Dean Barkley got a higher percentage of the vote than he would normally. However, it was still not enough for him to win. Most people probably didn't vote for him because they were afraid that if they did, the other major party candidate would win.

It seems sort of bad, but no matter who wins this recount and the senate seat, more than half of Minnesotans will be unhappy.

I'm not sure I would be happy with any of the candidates from this election (senate only). It really was a very negative campaign season and that was not pleasant. None of the candidates stuck out as being very original or having especially good ideas. (Besides how best to smear their opponent that is)

I guess we can only wait and see how the recount turns out. Hopefully we'll know before the new senators are supposed to be sworn in on Jan. 6th.

Legislation for Charter and Online schools

EdVisions Off-Campus High School is a pretty different school from the norm. Actually, it's the only project based, online school in the whole United Sates.

I sort of take the school for granted, because I've been homeschooled so I don't really realize or notice as much as other people how different it is from traditional school. It's interesting to really look at this school once in a while and think, "wow, this is really an amazing school."

The reason I'm thinking of this right now is because the state of Minnesota is projecting a 935 million dollar budget deficit. And the thing that the state spends most money on is education. EdVisions Off-Campus is a charter school, which means it gets its funding from the state and taxes. When the state is in financial trouble, programs are going to be cut and new money saving legislations are going to arrive. That's not a bad thing necessarily, but it does mean that our school might come under scrutiny because it's so different from all the other schools. We are affected by legislations for charter schools, and legislations for online schools.

It's sort of strange all the things that the government has charter or online schools do to make sure they're meeting the standards. It is good to have things like that, because the schools are using tax payer's money so they should be doing a good job, but sometimes it just seems like busy work and it doesn't even help show if the school is actually helping all its students or not.

It's really weird, all these economic problems. It's not like there is less money in the world now. There is still the same amount I think. I don't think all the bills and coins disappeared over night did they?

It's December!

November is over! The novel is complete! Hopefully I will get back to updating. Hopefully.