Archive for January, 2011

WARNING: Wall of Text

January 29th, 2011

Ok, so last time, I thought I was going to write a pretty short post, and it ended up being >1000 words. This time I expect the post to be kind of long, so I don’t know what that means for actual length…


So, starting off, one of the biggest things that everybody has been talking about lately is Amy Chua’s book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Everybody includes a bunch of my teachers, along with seemingly every major news publication and TV show. So, naturally, this blog cannot ignore the issue, especially considering the demographic of the writers/readers of it.


If you’ve been living under a rock for the last few weeks, the book is a memoir written by Chua about parenting her two daughters. As you can tell by her name, she is Asian.  Though she was born in America and is a professor at Yale University, Chua’s parents were immigrants, and she raised her kid in the same style as her parents, the style that all of us are familiar with.


Chua’s book came into national attention when an excerpt from her book was published in the Wall Street Journal, under the title “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior.” Yeah, if you haven’t already, read it. Basically, it involves extreme punishment during practicing piano, for those of you who haven’t read it yet and were too lazy to do so when I just told you to. This triggered a national outcry, some people were angry, others contemplated if this was the reason China was so ahead of the U.S. acadmically. Everybody had their opinion on it, from those condemning her, calling for charges of child abuse, to those arguing that all Americans must follow her model, or we’ll be taken over by the Chinese. That’s enough time summarizing, so if you want to witness the media firestorm of opinions, Google News “tiger mother.”


So, after everyone’s written and/or yelled into a camera their opinions already, here’s mine. Like in many cases, those on either extreme are wrong. Children should be allowed to enjoy their childhood, to have fun, to socialize. Disparaging them or forcing them into activities they hate are clearly not healthy. Neither is banning TV or sleepovers, as this results in children who are unable to connect with the outside world. On the other hand, absolutely neglectful parenting also has consequences. I’m going to use the stereotypical “Drop out of PCC, work at McDonald’s, become a drug addict and then a hobo” example so I don’t have to come up with my own. Parents are responsible for their children, so they must care for them, and hard work and responsibilty are indeed important values to teach.


So, what’s my solution? Well, clearly, I’m advocating moderation. But where on the scale of moderation, you ask? “Your solution is vague, it can fall anywhere on the scale from 1-10, with 1 being ‘You must practice piano/violin 4 hours a day, and get a 4.0 GPA, no use of electronic devices, and if you disobey, I’ll beat you’ to ‘You got a D+? That’s great! Yeah, go ahead and take the pickup tonight, I don’t care where you go. Oh, want some of this beer?’ ” Yes, that is exactly my solution. There is no one solution. Parenting isn’t a cheap baseball cap; there is no one-size-fits all.


Parents must look at their child, and see who they are, what they are like, what they are capable of. From this, you decide how to parent, what standards to impose, how much pressure to give them. You can’t just read a parenting book and expect to know exactly how to parent your child. Or even worse, you can’t read a Chinese newspaper, or listen to Chinese radio, or hear from a friend. There is a tendency in the Asian community to hear, through one of those aforementioned channels, about how some kid got into Stanford, had a high GPA, was an expert pianist, had a high SAT score…and this was what his parents did.  This is what you have to do to get into a good college.


Well, guess what? That kid’s parents don’t necessarily know why their kid got into Stanford. Maybe it was the piano, maybe he wrote a really insightful app essay, maybe he just happened to get lucky. But more importantly, that wasn’t your kid.  No matter what you do, how closely you try to follow the advice of those parents, or of parenting experts, or of “parenting experts” on Chinese radio/newspaper, your kid will not be somebody else’s kid. No crazy, magical parenting method will get your kid into a good college. If you want to parent your child, you must actually parent your child. Get to know them, accept them, learn what it takes to help them. Figure out what drives and inspires them. Maybe that’ll help them into Stanford. Or maybe they’re just not the type for high-level colleges. See what alternatives there are for them to be happy and successful.  


Yes, this will require a lot of effort. But you were the one that brought your child into the world. Don’t expect a quick and easy solution.




Next, the State of the Union. You should all  watch it because it’s you know, the state of our union. It’s an hour long, but President Obama stated that the two top priorities for the country should be innovation and education. That we must progress our scientific innovation, and also educate our kids better. That “we must stop getting rid of good teachers, and stop making excuses for bad ones,” that we should better support these good teachers.


Of course, I totally agree with this. The future of this country depends on the education of the young, and on what developments can be made to keep ahead of the rest of the world. I fail to comprehend how politicians turn to education when they need to cut money to pay off debt. As we all have experienced, the American public education system is flawed.  And now, with budget cuts, not only is college tuition becoming ridiculous, teachers are being fired. And of course, this goes by seniority. So newer teachers are let go, despite being highly competent and motivated, while older teachers can stay despite being less qualified to teach than most of their students. In freshmen year, when pink slips were being handed out, my history and biology teachers received one, even though they were both great teachers that worked hard and cared about their students, while my math teacher, who did nothing, was completely safe. Along with a bunch of other teachers, including my future AP biology teacher, whose incompetence I could write a whole post about.


The good thing is that the Los Angeles Unified is, I believe, getting rid of the tenure system, so that poor teachers can be eliminated despite their seniority. Hopefully this can stay, as I know the teacher union is mounting strong opposition.


It’s not all about the teachers, though. I’m  curious to see what Obama’s plan is, to restructure the education system, to advance learning so that those innovations can be developed, to change attitudes about education, to make higher level education affordable. It’s clearly not an easy task, but it is a very important one.


And even if you don’t care about this, or the rest of the President’s speech, he called for high speed internet nationwide, something I think we can all approve of.




Now, onto a common topic of mine: Asian-Americaness.


I don’t remember the context, but recently, my mom stated that my brother was “an ABC.” Just in case, that means “American-born Chinese” in this case. My dad quickly responded, that no, he’s not. And I agreed with him.


This may be nitpicking, and I don’t want to get into SAT grammar crap, but in that phrase, “American-born Chinese,” Chinese is the noun. The American-born is just modifying it. That means that the person is a Chinese. That just happens to be born in America. Yao Ming is a tall Chinese. Jackie Chan is a tough Chinese. Hu Jintao is a powerful Chinese. Person X is an American-born Chinese.


Yeah, well Person X is not my brother, I’m 99% sure. And I’m 100% sure that’s not me. I am an American. If you, for some reason, need to label by race, I’m an American of Asian descent. Or if you really need to, Asian-American. Chinese-American. Whatever. But I am not a Chinese. I am now getting into the territory of my debate with Tim, which he has adamantly dodged attempts to continue. So I want him to post his response on this blog. Or just in our IM, I guess, but he hasn’t had a post yet, so we might as well conduct our debate through the opinion section of the Leafwood Times.


Anyway, the point is, I was born in America, I was raised in America, I will, barring something life-changing, (Admission into Cambridge, alien invasion of only North America, etc.) continue to live in America. I am American, not Chinese, no matter what my physical race is. In a conflict between the two countries, I know which side I am on. I do not consider myself Chinese. I do not consider myself a part of Chinese culture. Maybe you guys feel differently, I want to hear your opinions.




Finally, I wasn’t sure if I wanted include this part, because it involves the stupidity of stupid, loser sophomores. To quote Jon Stewart, after seeing a video of a radical right-wing 13 year old at the Republican National Convention, “Is he even an acceptable target?” Or another Stewart quote, after seeing Glenn Beck do another stupid Glenn Beck thing, “Fuck it, it’s not worth it anymore” to mock him. Also, yeah, it may be kind of loserish to devote a section of this post to their stupidity. But I’m still going to do it, because it’s just too funny.


So, yeah, this is based off a facebook convo between two sophmores that got into my news feed, due to one of my fb friends having one comment in it. I can’t figure out how, if it’s even possible, to upload pictures from my hard drive to here, so yeah, it’s in the Life Sucks Group, if you want to see it.


Oh, nvm, copy and paste works well. Meh, think I’ll take out names and pictures. Text in red is my commentary.


  •  
  • I’m sorry but if you dont watch Ghost in the Shell, Akira, Appleseed,
    And all you do is watch Bleach or Naruto, then you are NOT an anime fan.
  • Oh, good, anime elitism…almost all elitists are stupid, but yeah…anime elitism. They like Bleach and Naruto. Bleach and Naruto are animes. Sounds like they are anime fans.
  • 2 people like this.
    •  

       id say more if you dont know who osamu tezuka is then youre not an anime fan.

      4 hours ago
  •  Introducing, guy number 2. He’ll be interacting with the original poster throughout.
    •  
    •  

       Lol, yeah
      GO ASTROBOY, lol

      4 hours ago · 1 person
    •  Original poster again. It’s pretty much these two losers going back and forth, unless otherwise indicated.
    •  

      do you know how many “otaku” i talk to who dont even know about him? how do you not know about the father of modern anime and manga and call yourself the ultimate anime fan.

      4 hours ago
    • How do you call yourself the ultimate anime fan at all?
    •  
    •  Theyre poopheads

      3 hours ago · 1 person
    •  

       That was really necessary…
    •  i think its more of the fact that its really really old and hard to access

      3 hours ago
    •  This is a third party, with some *gasp* logic. People might prefer to watch newer animes instead of something really old? What is this madness.
    •  

      Yeah, its sad that american kids watch bleach and naruto, ( which is getting too old ) and think they are otakus. SCREW YOU GUYS

      3 hours ago
    •  
    • Sad? I think this convo is a lot more sad. I also like the way he uses “American.” We’ll get back to that later. And another unecessary insult. Even if you disagree with these people,  they haven’t done anything to you…
    •  

      thats a negative thing…. but okay
    • 3 hours ago · 1 person
    •  
    • This is logical person again. Yeah, I like this guy…they’re being really anal about qualifcations for being  an “otaku” when the majority looks on this group negatively…shouldn’t these extreme standards for who is part of a group be reserved for something else?
    •  

       Naruto and bleach are decent animes, but they are praised too higly, alot of these fake otakus say bleach and naruto are SUPER actionpacked. FUCK! Ghost in the Shell takes action to a different dimension!

      3 hours ago
    •  
    • To a different dimension? Is there 3d anime now? Ben, fill me in.
    •  

      The correct term for Naruto/Bleach fans are known as Narutards and Weeabos. Get it together.

      3 hours ago · 2 people
    •  

      Ok, this is a 4th guy, another anime elitist. Random unecessary insults again. 
    •  ‎:D

      3 hours ago
    •  
    •  

       Yeah, i got sick of those two animes

      3 hours ago
    •  
    •  

      im happy with only bleach and naruto.

      3 hours ago
    •  
    • Yeah, this is the guy that’s my fb friend, lol.
    •  

      Seriously? There’s even elitism over ANIME AND MANGA now?

      3 hours ago · 1 person
    •  
    • Yay, another logical person. You echo my thoughts exactly.
    •  
    • i actually like bleach(the manga anyways) the only thing that actually makes either of those 2 series bad is the fans…and the fillers. buts its how stupid the fans act that make people judge the quality of the show. bleach actually has a pretty good changing and evolving storyline, intense and wonderful artwork, a wide range of character to the point the main character isnt the only person who has a back story and it can still be pretty funny at times.

      3 hours ago · 1 person
    •  

      Ok…WTF? The only reason you it’s bad is because of the fans? That makes no fucking sense…so you’ll not like something that you say is great otherwise…because of how fans of it think. Yeah, I don’t think I even need to explain this one…yeah, I don’t think those people should call themselves “otakus,” because they watch it for enjoyment, not to participate in some wierd system of feeling socially superior to compensate for failing socially in real life.
    •   
    •  I like how weeaboos think they know japanese culture because they watch bleach or naruto

      3 hours ago
    •  
    •  

      they do?

      3 hours ago
    •  
    •  

       
    • Yes. Some of my friends think japanese culture is better than western culture, and i dont think theres nothing wrong with an opinion like that, but they only think that because they watch anime. they havent even been in Japan or have been in a japanese home, so how would they know?

      3 hours ago
    •  
    • Ok, uh…first off, have you been to Japan? Based off a comment you’ll see later, it seems like you haven’t either. And second, “I don’t think there’s nothing wrong with a opinion like that” is a double negative, a disguised way of saying “I agree with them, but I want them to agree EXACTLY the way I do, and also, an incredibly stupid statement.
    •  
    • No, my arguement is not that he’s an idiot, because Western culture is better. I’m not going to resort to a stupid arguement like that. As you guys know, I think that anime and manga and a lot of Japanese crap is stupid. But seriously, it’s stupid to say that either culture is “better.” How can you say a culture is “better”. It’s simply different. It’s how a group of people chooses to behave. You are in no position to argue that it is “better”. You can prefer one culture to another, but you cannot say a culture is better or worse, unless one of the cultures is North Korea, or something. But Japan and the U.S. (and Europe, since he said west) are both places with highly developed, civilized cultures. They both function fine, and to say that one is better than the other is childish and idiotic.
    • i mean i have done alot of research into japanese culture and history and i believe that the eastern(japanese culture) were a alot more honorable before the westerners came but i dont think im an expert on japanese culture based on anime.

      3 hours ago · 1 person
    •  

      Watching anime doesn’t make you an expert, but your hours of reading wikipedia pages on Japanese culture does…
    •   
    • Yes, i agree, watching anime doesnt make me a native. These retards think japanese culture is all cute and fun and games, it certainly can however, but they dont realize that japan is a very, VERY conervative society. When they think theyve watched enough anime, they’ll go to Japan and embarass themselves in public and wont even notice it. they’ll eat a big fatass bag of of chippy brand potato chips and drink ramune WHILE walking in public out on the streets.

      3 hours ago
    •  I’m assuming, based off the first sentence, that this confirms that hasn’t had the experience of living in Japan that he previously referred to. And as for the rest of it…uh…I don’t even know. I’ll leave everything else for our anime/Japan expert, Ben. What’s your commentary on this?

 

Yeah, it probably wasn’t worth it to explore that stupidity. Oh well, it led to some somewhat meaningful ranting about society and culture.

So yeah, that’s it. I don’t know if there was something else I wanted to talk about, but I think this is already way too much writing.

This is another one of those “sorry for not posting in forever, let me summarize my fantastic life” posts.

January 27th, 2011

Here’s the compulsory apology. Sorry for not posting in forever; let me fill you in on what’s been up.

So my last real post was back on the midpoint of winter break. The week after that I told myself, “Okay, gotta write a post summarizing my winter break.” Never happened. Then a week later “Ugh I should post about my awesome week.” Never happened either. “Crap this week sucked I need to pour my grief out onto my blog.” Nope.

So here’s Ben on the Thursday of finals week, reporting live. Let’s jump back three weeks. Latter half of winter break. One of my favorite things to do was to sit on the dinner table next to the window and read my chemistry book. My only gripe was that there wasn’t wifi there (that place is the southwesternmost part of my house). So I took one of my family’s old routers and put it in my parents room (right above the dining room). Set up some weird Windows tunnel thing that didn’t work 90% of the time. Yeah, so basically it was a waste of time. But it would’ve been cool. Well, it kind of works. When the computer is on (cuz basically the computer connects to my room’s router and shares it with the router through the ethernet port). But only sometimes. Sometimes. Yeah.

Oh, another high point of my break was watching The Count of Monte Cristo. I think I’ve talked about that before, however, so I’ll leave it at that.

Next week, the week after finals, for some reason every day that week I woke before 6; usually at 4:30 or 5am. That’s amazing, considering how I usually woke up at 7:50am, ten minutes before the late bell for first period, with a 15-minute drive and dash through campus. I think it had something to do with my setting the alarm to play classical music on Pandora at 4:30am, but I haven’t been able to reproduce it. Seriously, after that last Friday, I have never been able to wake before 7am again, up to the moment. (In fact I’m writing this at 3am…)

Another event in that first week after break was my persuasive essay speech in Jeng. I think I thought I was good at speech-making (I mean. I did win the SC presidency in middle school. Right?). Well, I didn’t do too bad. I didn’t prepare much, but I tried to put my very best into delivering the speech (which is on a VERY RELEVANT TOPIC and I have yet to post the essay that goes with it). I hope Ms. Jeng was able to fully receive my feelings towards the topic.

Other stuff also happened that week, like me doing math contests and wasting time. The next week I tried (LOL “tried”) to focus on something very important to me. My focus didn’t completely narrow until the following week though. I think this was dead week. Anyways, I think I got more work done in class (hiding it from the teacher) than I ever did at home. Too many distractions. Do you know how annoying Skype is when you’re trying to work? No wonder our lives suck… j/k.

Then it’s finals week. That week was so unproductive, counterintuitively. However, I enjoyed going out to lunch on Thursday and Friday with my dad. On Thursday we went to the Korean BBQ restaurant next to the CVS on Baldwin and Naomi, and on Friday we went to a Thai restaurant that was extremely cheap and extremely good. Oh yeah, I was going to talk about my Monday of perfection.

So the Monday of finals week was like the perfectest day ever. (I like how spellcheck didn’t catch “perfectest”. Spellcheck also caught the world “spellcheck” as wrong, although I guess technically it’s “spell check”.) Anyways, everything that day went splendid. Just wanted to throw that out there. (This paragraph is so short because, due to my short term memory loss, I remember no particular details of why that Monday was so fantastic, except that it just was.)

Oh, on the Friday of that week I did something interesting, I applied for an internship in less than one hour. Or maybe one and a half, if you were timing. Seriously… an entire internship in one hour! Essays and all! My mom and I are amazing, and I felt so good about that, even though that day was the deadline for the application, and the post office wouldn’t accept the package at 4:30, so the postmark was after the deadline. But I still felt good about it. It felt good.

The last Saturday and Sunday were spent working on USAMTS problems (I wasn’t able to completely finish #6 due to one last annoying step in the proof that I could just never figure out) and studying physics for the F=ma competition to select the members of the US International Physics Olympiad Team. So yeah, I ditched my friends and studied. Like a loser. Haha, but no regrets.

Competition was on Monday. I know I got at least one question wrong (source: Alfred). It was quite a simple question too… I’m a fool. After the competition, I did absolutely no work at all. None. Nada. Nil. I messed around and watched anime (A LOT OF ANIME) and did cool stuff like that in celebration of my hard work (cough).

I had an ortho appointment yesterday (Tuesday). It hurt a lot, but hopefully my braces will be off within a half year. That’s, what, four years of braces? *frown*

Oh, and today’s Math Team meeting was interesting. Hank and I (and Calvin and a bunch of freshmen) did Research, and I explained a problem with Calvin. Ate three bags of chips (very satisfying). Then we spent a long time discussing the next meet at Arcadia.

And I went home and refrained from doing work, and Mr. Zhang came by and gifted me a ticket ($40 worth!) to the Chinese Parents Whatever Club and their annual Spring Festival Whatever Dinner. I just KNOW what’s going to happen there… swarms of Asian moms are going to mob me, and I will be assailed by countless questions on how they can torture their kids more effectively. I’ll just hide in the bathroom and play with my phone, I guess. Hopefully the food is good. Maybe I’ll flash a ROM or two in the stall, just for kicks. Hopefully AT&T has signal in the community center. Think they have WiFi?

[end at 3:41am.]

Anime Log

January 25th, 2011

All stuff I watched today. Yes I really watched that much.

To Aru Majutsu no Index uh latest 2 episodes
FRIGGIN. AWESOME. UGH. Awesomest anime ever.

Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka Episode 01

OMG! Mahou shoujo with a chainsaw! BEST. IDEA. EVER.

Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka Episode 02

“Yes, I’m a vampire ninja.”

This anime really has everything… lol.

Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka Episode 03

Why is this anime so nice. The title sounded so stupid too.

I hope all Winter 2011 animes are as good as this.

Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica Episode 01

O. M. Effing. G. What everybody said about this anime was right.

Crap. Yuki Kajiura music is unbelievable. There’s nothing I can say against this anime. MUSIC IS AWESOME… ughhhh

I love the pencilly linework. It makes the artwork of this anime look really special and nice!

Ok time for my lame commentary.

From far away Madoka reminds me of Luna(r). Of course huge personality gap. Akemi’s personality reminds me of purple-hair whatshername from Bakemonogatari.

My headphones aren’t high-quality enough to enjoy Yuki Kajiura’s awesome BGM… you need like $500 headphones to give the BGM the quality it deserves XD;

Strange magical creature makes me miss Yuuno. But it’s so ugly.

Interesting anime that functions unlike any other as a masterpiece of art. However as for catering to the masses, I’m not sure this anime will enjoy popularity (but then again, look at series such as Haruhi etc).

SIDE NOTE: Browsing the recommendations and reviews on MAL really gives an indication of how deep and thought-provoking animes really are.

Also watched 3 episodes of Kurenai today. The impression I got from whatever anime reviews I read that made me start this is totally different from my judgement of the actual anime. I initially hated this, but it’s not so bad. No action or romance, or school life, or any generic themes at all. I guess that makes Kurenai kind of a strange anime… “genreless” if you will.

Hi, Ben

January 20th, 2011

This is your friend Kevin from the future. I know current Ben won’t check this site, so the only way you would be reading this is if 4th grade Ben was able to perfect time travelling e-mail, which I think is a plausible idea. So hi, 4th grade Ben. You know, you should talk to girls more. Don’t stay in all day programming, trust me, it’ll be fun. Oh, and don’t sign up for honors or AP English when you get to high school, it’ll only cause trouble.

Um yeah, enjoy the rest of recess.


Of course, I’m actually posting this on the blog, because the contact us page on the original leafwood failed, which means 4th grade Ben couldn’t time travel, which defeats the whole purpose of this.


Life sucks.

-0.00

January 16th, 2011

school internet by AUSD, in partnership with CSU.

$10,000s of taxpayer money/yr.

home internet by TWC/RoadRunner.

$400/yr.

mobile internet by AT&T Wireless.

priceless.

there are some things nonexistent bandwidth can’t download. for everything else, there’s AT&T.

~~~

AT&T. So bad, it’s (somehow) less than zero.

(Phenomenal ping, though. Faster than the speed of light.)

Collegeboard, pt. 2

January 15th, 2011

Got two random spam emails from the collegeboard, well, actually the it says the email is from “SAT,” presumably for FOB’s and/or idiots who don’t know what collegeboard is, but will become excited when they get an important email from “SAT”.

They pretty much say the same thing, except that one of them is only sent to people with a “solid” PSAT score. I wonder what is the cut-off score for their email-sending script. Actually, maybe they send this to everyone to make them feel better, and be more likely to do the crap they’re advertising, since they feel like they have a chance on the real SAT. Yeah, that makes more sense.

So…


Hi Kevin,

We know you still have a lot to decide about college, but don’t sweat it.”

I’ve been told “don’t worry” by a lot of people about college. I haven’t believed any of them. I also have been told a lot of things by collegeboard. I haven’t believed any of them either. So yeah, guess what I thought about the validity of this statement.


“What you need is the ultimate College Planning Checklist from the College Board.”

 

No, what I need is an altering of my transcript, a time torrenting machine, and a girlfriend.



I guess that works too...



” Click here to get your FREE copy today and be sure to pass it along to your friends.”

 

Is it just me, or does this totally sound like some crappy internet spam virus thing? Along with my previous post about how nothing from collegeboard is free…yeah, I don’t think I’m going to be clicking there.


“The SAT® is accepted by the best colleges and is an excellent way to showcase your skills for admission.”

Right behind getting a good GPA, having a lot of leadership positions, having national achievements in sports, having a great art portfolio, writing a good essay, getting a recommendation from a famous and respected person, climbing Mount Everest, being an underrepresented minority, making an impressive work of film, bribing/blackmailing the school, saving a group of orphans from a burning bus, showing a passion in something the school desperately wants more of, having your last name be “Bush”, and a few other things…


“So take the time to prepare by getting into a good practice groove now

I don’t even know WTF getting into a good practice groove is supposed to mean…


“and register for the SAT when you’re ready.”

Ok, collegeboard, I will have had registered when I am had been ready to will have take the SAT, but I’m not quite sure when that time will have came. I’ll be sure to register when that has have had happens, though.


“There’s no better source to help you prepare than the College Board – the official maker of the SAT.”

 

As we’ve all realized by now, collegeboard isn’t where you look to for intelligence, but this is an exceedingly stupid statement. There’s no better source to prepare somebody for your test than you? Not the tutoring schools who are willing to analyze the hell out of your poorly written exam, and have no interest in having your score curve going as planned? The ones that do everything to try and break your system, and probably know your exam better than you do?

Hm, upon reading the other email…

“Your success on the PSAT/NMSQT® is a great reason to take the next step toward college – the SAT®.”

Yeah, I think I’m right. I somehow doubt they have a script that sends this email to everyone with a score above 200, and an email to everyone else that says

“Your failure on the PSAT/NMSQT® is a great reason to not give us $80 to us and waste 5 hours of your life.”


“Why you’re receiving this e-mail: When you took the PSAT/NMSQT®, or created a collegeboard.com account, you told us that you were interested in receiving updates from the College Board.”


Actually,  you manipulated the words so that it would make it seem like if we didn’t check the box, people would be missing out on scholarships from Harvard or something, not these emails from you. Really, I don’t think anything productive ever has come from  an email due to collegeboard’s email service, or from AHS’s college thing. I knew that before signing up, but I still did anyway. Idk, maybe I will get some miraculous scholarship offer from a college through email…


“To ensure that collegeboard.com e-mail is not incorrectly identified as spam, please add [email protected] to your address book.”


“Incorrectly identified”?  I think this ending up in your spam section is a sign that your email service has really good AI.

Technology Elitist Post-This was totally written by Ben

January 8th, 2011

Ben wanted to write a post but was too lazy to. So I’ll ghostwrite it for him.

You didn’t see those last two lines, this is Ben typing.

Those iThing users are technolgy illiterate idiots that feel superior but are actually loser posers. They use their products for the sake of looking cool, while they are actually showing their idiocy. This is just like this part of this anime I watched last summer. (Insert 20 lines of anime analogy here)

Verizon LTG thingy is awesome. AT&T sucks.


My awesome google image skills have produced a convinient picture to sum up everything

My awesome google image skills have produced a convinient picture to summarize everything.


Um…pink bunnies.

This is Ben signing off.


Yeah, that satire imitation sucked. Oh well.

College Board

January 3rd, 2011

This post is adapted from my random skyping at 1 am. Let’s learn about the organization reponsible for the SAT’s and AP’s, and probably a lot of other stuff, College Board.

What is it?

“The College Board is a not-for-profit membership association…”

What are its goals?

“measure a student’s ability”

“works with programs that claim to increase achievement”

“said to measure student performance in specific areas”

“reportedly broadening their intellectual horizons and preparing them for college work”

“showing both student’s intellectual capacity and genuine interest in learning”

“demonstrate college-level achievement through a program of exams in undergraduate college courses”

“reflect the course work of the nation’s high school students while maintaining what they describe as the test’s level of rigor and excellence.”

” Its mission, as expressed by Governor Caperton [CEO of College Board], is to prepare, inspire and connect students to college success, with a focus on excellence and equity”


Naturally, we all know that these goals are consistently reached, and that students do indeed benefit from College Board’s services just as it is reportedly said to claim. And of course, it’s purely non-profit, they’re just doing this from the goodness of their hearts to benefit American education.

 

What does it do?

“It sells standardized tests “

“In addition to managing tests for which it charges fees

“The SAT Reasoning Test is a fee-based, standardized test”

“PSAT/NMSQT stands for Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. It’s a fee-based standardized test”

“The College Board’s Advanced Placement Program is an extensive program that offers high school students the chance to participate in what they describe as college level classes for a fee

“The biggest benefit of the Accuplacer and Accuplacer Companion tests are its ability to be scored immediately through an online scoring system and taken in remote locations. While there are normally no fees for taking the test, some institutions may charge a fee to retake the test

“The College Board also offers the CSS/Financial Aid PROFILE, a financial aid application service that many institutions use in determining family contribution and financial assistance packages. This is a fee-based service to institutions and students also must pay a fee to submit it to a school.”

“Even the College Board’s College Scholarship Service Profile (CSS), a college financial aid application meant to help students pay for college, requires a fee

” In addition, due to the competitive nature of the test, many students find it necessary to take preparatory courses or to have SAT tutoring, which can cost hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars.”

“In 2006, the College Board had $582.9 million of revenue but spent only $527.8 million, leaving a $55.1 million surplus

“twelve of its executives make more than $300,000 per year

Who’s behind it?

If you are familiar with the Life Sucks Group, you should know what’s coming.




“Funded by grants from various foundations, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation”


Blame Microsoft.