Wild, Wild West
Lebron James and the powerful Cleavland Cavaliers came to Boston to face our beloved Boston Celtics. Although Lebron made NBA history by being the youngest player to score 10,000 points, the Celtics were able to hold off the rest off his team and come away with a 92-87 victory. Kevin Garnett solidified his own place in history by grabbing his 11,000 career rebound,becoming only the 28th player in history to achieve this.
Prior to this historical win, the Celtics faced some serious dilemmas while traveling the Western part of the U.S. Coming off of the all-star game, the Celtics suffered three straight losses to teams they’ve already beaten. Even though the losses to the Denver Nuggets, Golden State Warriors, and Phoenix Suns were all close games, the Celtics proved that they were a better team over the course of the season. The Celtics showed that they were still at the top of their game by defeating the young and talented Portland Trail Blazers, and crushing the Los Angeles Clippers.
In my opinion, this little skid the Celtics experienced was nothing more than a prime example of players being tired. It is almost impossible for basketball players yo maintain a high level of intensity for an entire season. I believe that the Celtics will get back to their winning ways and continue to dominate the entire league.
I don’t want it back
I have not had a social life for the past three months. As I am a junior in high school, the following information might shock you: I liked it.
DO NOT POKE THE DAMN BEAR.
It’s February 29th. This day comes once every 4 years. And if Randy Moss isn’t wearing Patriot colors next year, it will be remembered as the worst mistake in franchise history.
Today marked the beginning of NFL unrestricted free agency, and the biggest name in need of a contract has the possibility of leaving Foxborough. The Patriots decided against placing the franchise tag on Moss when they had the opportunity to last week. He could be guaranteed to be back for next season already. Instead, Pats brass decided to gamble with house money by allowing Randy Moss, without a doubt the best receiver on the Pats and possibly in the league, to become an unrestricted free agent at 12:01 AM on February 29th, 2008.
And if he leaves, prepare to see the Patriots dynasty collapse.
Before the angry mob starts to form after that last statement, consider how important Moss is to this team. The usually reserved Tom Brady went so far as to say that he and Moss “are a package deal.” If there is any argument about Moss’ importance, there is none about Tom Terrific. He is the greatest in franchise history. He could set records for Super Bowl Championships when it’s all said and done. And oh yeah, he is coming off a 16-0 season in which he threw an NFL record 50 touchdown passes (23 of which landed in the hands of one Randy Moss) while led the Pats to within 35 seconds of the greatest season ever.
If Tom wants Randy, give him Randy. The last time Brady publicly voiced support for a receiver, the Pats sent Deion Branch to the Pacific Northwest for a first-round pick in the 2006 season. Brady, upset by the trade, struggled with a mediocre receiving core and failed in the playoffs for just the second time. Moss is more important to Tom than Branch ever was. The Pats have two options: repeat the mistakes of the past and watch an MVP fume, or resign the best receiver in the game and aim for a fourth title.
I’d take option two, but maybe that’s just me.
Conor
Delay, Delay, Delay
With one of its biggest products yet, Apple has been made a huge imprint in the cell phone industry with its revolutionary iPhone. Over 5 million phones have been sold to date without any noticeable decrease in sales since its release last year. Apple produced the first phone in which the service provider is involved limitidely. AT&T only manages the communications aspect of the phone, leaving the operating system and applications up to Apple. This is great, however there are some issues.
Primarily, Apple has too much control. Hackers have figured out how to install their own applications, however Apple consistenly creates updates to prevent this. Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, stated that the iPhone would officially be open to developers. This was in February. This developers kit was never released however. Jobs then told the press that at next weeks conference (March 6), it would be released.
Many are arguing that Apple is falling into Microsoft-syndrome, defined as the continual delay of products in order to “make them better.” Apple’s new operating system, Leopard, was delayed multiple months, coming out last October, as opposed to late summer. Although it was a success, Apple is slowly becoming known for delaying its products and applications.
Although it is irrefutable that Apple is considered as an industry leader, most notable in its growth over the past few years, they have been maintaing this solely through great products. Hopefully Apple will have success with the release of a developers kit, but only time can tell.
Lost in this show
I have been watching Lost since the beginning of this season, but before that I had never seen it. At first, when I started watching it, I was really confused and had no clue what was going on. Then I saw Lost in 8:15, that summarizes the first three seasons into 8 minutes and 15 seconds. After seeing this I recognized how great a show Lost is. Although I have only seen about 5 episodes now, I can surely say that this past episode on Thursday, February 28th was the best of all time.
This episode was about Desmond being stuck between time and jumping back and forth between 1996 and present day. Each time he goes into the past and then back, the time shortens. His brain will short-circuit unless he makes a constant connection with someone from both times.
I don’t know why I thought it was so good, but it was. I absolutely loved it and would suggest everyone join the Lost bandwagon.
I will probably talk about Lost next week also. Check in soon,
~Anthony D.
Apparently Russia doesn’t share our alphabet?
Ok so first I would like to apologize for not having a blog on the website until now, but I wasn’t invited, and then I just forgot to post it when I was invited. I’ll begin this post by talking about the play I just saw.
It was actually really funny, which should be expected of the drama people at our school. It’s called Infomercial and it chronicles the journey of a hopeful salesman through an infomercial convention. It had just enough of a storyline to be enjoyable without getting overly complicated. The only thing I can think of that I didn’t like about it was that there were people behind me that kept talking. Yeah, that’s all.
In school this week, we had a completely unfair quiz to follow up the ridiculously hard one that we before vacation. Maybe the next one could be even more fun by being ridiculously hard and completely unfair. I won’t say which class it was in for the teacher’s discretion, but I think you all know what I’m talking about. And most likely agree.
I really hope that the NEASC comes to our Spanish class next week to see how the windows are covered with garbage bags because the school wouldn’t give our teacher blinds. Maybe then they can send a message to all the people that don’t want to spend a little extra money for a new school that says “pay up, a**holes.”
Has this blog deteriorated into me just complaining about school? Yes.
Is that a bad thing? No.
Did you finish reading this? Apparently.
конец
Inadequacy
I’d like to start off this entry with a bit of an apology to my readers: I am sorry that this blog has morphed into, essentially, a place in which I complain about my life. It’s easy to see me as little more than a whiner.
But there’s so much for me to whine about, I can’t really help myself.
For example, last night I started filling out my National Honor Society entry form. NHS is meant to be an honor, a forum for students to help their community, be a good person, and all that fun stuff. But instead, it’s just a way to feel inadequate.
A grossly hyperbolized synopsis of the form reads as follows:
Part 1: List the five hundred different ways you show your leadership qualities.
Part 2: List all the different ways you support your community, include service projects, self-flagellation, etc.
I work really hard, in school, in sports, at work. But I’m not sure how I’ll fill out every one of the blanks on the NHS form. Instead, I just feel unworthy. I can’t help but panic, convinced that I don’t deserve to be a part of the group.
And maybe I don’t deserve NHS, maybe I’m not good enough. If so, that’s okay; it’s fair. But it would be nice to receive an honor, be invited to join a group, and have it end there. I don’t really think it’s fair to couple that honor with a form that can’t help but damage my self esteem. I know they need to do something to whittle down the group, and make it a more manageably sized group of people actually committed to the goals of NHS, but come on.
Do they need to feel bad about themselves too?
A Humane Solution or Murder?
Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk announced that South Africa plans to reverse the 1995 ban on killing elephants to help control their exponentially growing population. In 1995 there were only 2,000 elephants, but today their numbers total near 10,000.
Van Schalkwyk stated that their immense numbers pose a threat to the local vegetation, as well as ever-growing conflict with people over the land.
South Africa’s plan is to remove an elephant from its herd, fly over in a helicopter and shoot the elephant in the head— because they consider this the most humane solution.
Can someone explain to me where the humanity lies within this plan? Elephants are known for their family based social structure, along with their keen cognitive powers much like those of dogs, dolphins, and apes.
The ballooned elephant population in South Africa is not the same case for many regions in the North and West, where poachers have diminished elephant populations to dwindling numbers. I think before the government makes the effort to “humanely” kill an unannounced number of elephants, they should perhaps focus on eliminating poaching so they can redistribute the elephant population across Africa.
How many characteristics do we need to have in common with a species before “humane killing” becomes murder?
To learn more on efforts against the plan visit Animal Rights Africa.
Too Many Questions
So I find myself slightly stumped about what to write this week. I don’t really have any exciting volunteer opportunities to talk about so instead I think I’ll write about my vacation.
This year my vacation wasn’t exactly a break from anything. My track season continued so I had practice all through vacation and was supposed to have a meet on Friday (it was post-poned until Monday due to the snow). I also skipped two days of practice to go look at colleges, which equals more school.
I’ll admit, I’m still at the point in the college process where anything is possible and my list of places I want to see is overwhelmingly (and unrealistically) large. My family had planned a vacation to Vermont before my track schedule “ruined it” for them so that’s where we went for our days off. I saw Williams College, Middlebury College, and the University of Vermont.
I actually did have fun because these were the first schools I’ve seen so it was really helpful to get the first few tours under my belt. But at the same time my parents questions just overwhelm me. So what did you think? What kind of a learner are you? Do you want big classes or small classes? Compare and contrast the two campuses. What did you think about the size? Does this school seem too rural to you? And you get the idea…
Sometimes I couldn’t even explain my answers or why I liked a certain campus. Its something I’m still trying to figure out and I don’t know how they expect me to have all the answers already.
Jay Z coming to Boston
On April 3, Jay-Z is coming to the TD Banknorth Garden. The show is part of a nationwide tour with Mary J. Blige, and the majority of the music he plays will probably come from his recent American Gangster album.
On Monday, I recieved an email from Ticketmaster, which I initially assumed was junk, but I decided to read it anyways. It told me that Jay-Z was going to be playing at a concert venue in the Boston area soon. Any member of the Ticketmaster site can sign up for free to recieve an email, notifying them when a specific band is playing close.
Unfortunately, after I looked into it, I realized that I won’t be able to see him play, because this is the same day I leave for the German exchange trip, but this isn’t real reason to complain.
It was only recently that I became a Jay-Z fan. For the first fifteen years of my life, I thought he was merely like any other mainstream rapper. Since then, my opinion has altered and now Jay-Z is all over my Ipod. When my brother first introduced me to him, he told me that he had a well-known “flow.” This meant nothing at all to me, but I later realized my brother was making a true statement. This flow is Jay-Z’s tendency to make the verses of his rhyme better by twisting the pronunciation of words. Commonly, rappers attempt to do this and fail Contrarily, Jay-Z captures a lot of listeners using his natural flow.
Although Jay-Z has lost the flare that consistenly put him at the top of music charts, a ticket to his show would be a worthful purchase, because he is not limited to playing his recent music.
Back in the late 90s, Jay-Z was releasing album after album, each of which had great songs. For example, my favorite Jay-Z song, “So Ghetto,” is a track Jay-Z wrote for his Volume 3 album, and it epitomizes his early talent. However, he is not the only person credible for the song. DJ Premier produced it and put together the unique beat, which Jay-Z raps over.
In my opinion, Jay-Z’s peak was the Black Album. Ever since he came back out of “retirement,” his music has been an ok attempt at a new sound. As a whole, the Kingdom Come album was pretty good, but relative to Black Album it was pathetic. It was limited to few tracks worth listening to like “30 Something” and “Kingdom Come”. I cannot bring myself to write anything about American Gangster. Simply put, it was awful.
