Moving

Vinquaint's Hearts is going to be moving to a separate server. As I want to start customizing and expanding the site, I need a separately hosted and fully configurable version of wordpress. All posts and the one finished page are over there, more stuff will come soon, including a layout by yours truly.

http://vinquaint.neptunian-dreamscape.com

Also, my stats tell me that more than a few people are viewing the blog. If you even click that link, please do me the kindness of leaving a comment over there? Just to reassure my ego? Please. 

Senior Projects

I am a Sophomore in high school. When you attend my school there is one thing you think about. Senior projects. Senior projects for those of you whose school does or did not have them, are like the college thesis of high school. In a Senior project at my school , you are required to write an essay greater than ten pages, and create a fifteen minute PowerPoint presentation. Senior projects are written about a social problem. In a senior project it is your responsibility to explain the problem, explain its causes and effects, explain solutions that are currently being used, and come up with your own solution.

Now, so many students hate senior projects, I on the other hand think they are very intelligent. I think being able to express yourself is one of the things that school needs to prepare you for. I plan to continue my education after high school, and will inevitably need to do things like this in college. That is one of the main goals of the senior project, college preparation. Not to say I don't fear my senior project, presenting is one of my greatest fears, and I hate exposing my writing to criticism. I will survive however, and hopefully learn from it.

Yet in spite of all this, there is a problem. Senior projects were, before now worth one fourth of a senior's English grade. As of next year they will be worth half of the English grade, for me, in the graduation class of 2008, one half of my English grade will depend on this, and without passing the senior project, graduation will not be available. This is a problem, not for me, but for the school as a whole. In our school half of all dropouts happen in senior year. This is because of senior projects. With even further stress being put on senior projects, does MHS expect any graduates next year?

Senior projects, and high school in general, is meant to prepare students for college. However, I think they have missed the mark here, the school board forgets that attending college comes after graduating high school. Their goal should not be to force college upon all the students, but to first ensure they get a perfunctory high school diploma. College is not for everyone, but high school should be. If a student does not graduate from high school, they have very little chance in life.

Obviously these decisions are not made by people. These sort of decisions are made by beaurocrats and paper-pushers. Are these paper-pushers the ones being affected by their rulings? Are they the ones who have to enact their rulings, or see the effects at home? No, they are not parents, students, or teachers, they are politicians. In my mind there is something deeply wrong with an educational system run not by educators, or educatees, but by an alien beaurocracy. It is perverse, and ultimately fails.

Teachers and students agree on this, and surely parents too. We of those three groups are the educational system, why do we have no power to control our welfare, for the interests of education and not agendas?

Christians, or Neo-Nazis

Recently, when attempting to look up some demo graphic information regarding minorities in prison, I came across a site that brought out a most disgusted feeling in me. This site, the homepage of the so called "Christian Party", begins it's page with a quote from George Washington's farewell address.

'Don't
let anyone claim to be a true American. Don't let them claim the tribute of American patriotism if they ever attempt to remove religion from politics.'"

While I have to respectfully disagree with that statement, this site then attempts to show that they invoke the word of god, not surprisingly as they do call themselves the Christian Party.

 

But now I am writing you that you
must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or
greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even
eat.

 

What business is it of mine to judge
those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside?

 

God will judge those outside.

"Expel the wicked man from
among you."

 

This quote from the bible, commands that a Christian should not judge those outside of the church, that the right to judge is god's alone. However as you venture further into this site you will see that these people has blatantly disobeyed that very rule. Calling themselves the 'Christian Party', they go on to speak the most unchristian things I have heard. On the first page they state that their goals include the ending of interference with a father's right to control children and wife in any way. They state that in the aims of gender equality feminists have empowered liar and criminals, and that the so called 'Christian Party' wishes the end of all gender and racial equality achieved in unholy ways. As you read this site, it is chock full of such Neo-Nazi nonsense. It disgusts me and I consider more offensive than anything, the name.

While I am not a Christian, I have read the bible in great detail. It has been my opinion, that despite certain moral conflicting in the Olde Testament, Jesus preached values of acceptance and equality. The very values that our nation was founded on, despite the separation of church and state, the laws of our land prescribe to Christian values. However these people would have you believe that it is Christian, and American, to discriminate against females, to exile african AMERICANS, and deny the slaughter of 6.4 million Jewish people. This disgusts me as an American and a human.

Ick

 

Pandora

Pandora is the single greatest accomplishment of man kind. Pandora is simulated Internet radio built to your tastes. When entering in the name of a song or artist, you create a music station. This station will draw on artists and songs that have stylistic or human connections to your inputed song or artist. It also learns your taste via adaptive inputs. If you don’t like a song it plays, you give it a thumbs down, and songs immediately related to that song will stay out of the station. Respectively, song you like get thumbs up. After listening to a station for ten minutes, you can already see the program understanding you tastes. after an hour or so unwanted songs cease completely, and you get songs you’ve never heard of, but invariably love. Check it out. Pandora…

Parenting

 

This question has been something that has passed through my mind again and again recently. What makes a good parent? What innate qualities are necessary to raise a child well, what techniques should a parent employ, should a parent employ techniques or be more laissez faire with their parenting? For me being a parent is my ultimate goal in life. I see that as the ultimate reason for human existence, the continuation and improvement of the species. Were I to fail as a parent, I would in my eyes fail as a human. Given, this is a ways off for, me, but that doesn't keep it out of my mind.

This question is so difficult to answer though. I know good parents and I know bad parents, and I know how their children have either suffered or benefited from the actions of their filial guardians. However, I know that parents aren't always the only factor in the development of their children. However, I do think that other factors are in some way influenced by the parents. Yet for a parent to attempt to control the factors under which their child develops to strictly is often detrimental. To do so is not to raise a child, but to attempt to create a clone, which in no way serves the purpose of parenthood; improving the species.

To attempt to control a child is the largest mistake a parent can make in my mind. I see the consequences of it daily in classmates in high school, children are pushed and manipulated by parents, and they are messed up by it. Either; as is the nature of children, they rebel to a greater degree, negating any positive intentions their parents may have had; or much worse, they fully obey. The children who obey rarely do it gladly, they obey like a calm broken horse, because they don't want to do anything else, they have no spirit left for fighting. A child with no spirit will grow up to be an adult with no initiative, no ambition, no motive for self betterment, or the pursuit of happiness.

This is not to say a parent can not guide a child. This is the key role of a parent, to act as a guide. A parent must not push, but direct, giving a child advice, encouragement and the benefit of great experience. A parent can even attempt to guide their child in a direction the parent wants, not forcibly, but encouraging the child by showing them the benefits of that direction. A child must be left in the long run to captain their own life. If a child chooses to follow the path their parent has shown to them, this is wonderful. In this the ultimate force behind reproduction has been met, to improve upon the past. A child has then taken a well worn path, and improved upon it.

However their is equal benefit in a child choosing a unique an original path. In this, the child has laid a platform to improve their own life and the lives of future generations. Even in this the parent's role has not been neglected. The wisdom imparted to the child, in wahtever, way direct advice, or generall attitude, will influence the child forever, effecting even the unique path. For this reason, a parent must have no motive or want other than the wellfare of the child. A parent must not get cought up in the reflections of themselves in the child, a parent must not have a one minded view of what is best for a child. More importantly, a parent must have no ego, a good parent cannot assume that they are better suited to make decisions than their child, at any age. For if this is true, has the parent not failed in the rasiing of the child, if that child is inferior to the parent?

The truth is that a child is never inferior to the parent. The child in fact has the potential to become greatly superior to the parent. A child is born with a greater potential than that of the parent, simply becuase they have more generations behind them upon which to build. It must be the only motive of a parent to allow the complete fulfillment of that potential. The role is not to fulfill the potential, but to guide the child in such a way that they are given the opportunities to fill that infinite well of potential of their own volition, and of their own power. Such allowance is not the end all to parenting problems, however, a parent that fully embraces that ideal can never be said to be a bad parent by nature.