As a high schooler: I am seeing a disturbing trend: rampant and unapologetic cheating.
Like this morning, I was in French 2 and we were playing a jeopardy style game. The boy in question had his vocabulary sheet out and was reading to two different teams the necessary answers. He is the popular jock in the class, if reduced to the typical stereotypes. He wants it that way.
The teacher asked if someone had been cheating, and I went up after class and told her quietly what I knew. Unfortunately for me, she immediately singled him out and told him not to do it again—a warning was all—and I was standing next to her.
“Did you tell?” He asked me incredulously.
I saw no sense in lying: “yes”.
He got very mad, asked why. I replied: “it’s wrong and dishonorable, and you shouldn’t get away with it.”
Him: It’s just a game!
His Friend: He was helping you guys [my team] out too!
Me: So? It’s still wrong!
Him: God, it’s just a frickin’ game! Supposed to be fun!
Me: It’s not fun when people cheat. And it’s not like you learn anything.
So, now I am the official rat of the class, condemned socially, and shunned. Well, just another day at school.
It’s hard, sometimes. To do stuff like that. I know it’s going to make things very difficult for me, considering his posse of jocks.
But I’m not going to apologize for doing the right thing. He wasn’t punished. Hopefully he won’t do it again, at least in that class, because he knows I’m watching. Maybe he might learn something in French. But if none of that happens, it’s okay. Because I had enough respect for him to say: “that’s wrong, and it’s not okay. C’est la vie, as they say.

I think it was two weeks back, but there was this big hubaloo about the newspapers about the “right to know” “freedom of the press”, and whatnot. Before people get up in arms, I will say this: I believe that there are many issues that citizens do have a right to know on, and I strongly value freedom of speech as well as freedom of the press. That being said, there is ‘but’ to all of that.

During this week, I read many times the banal cries about how the government is classifying more documents than it did five years ago.

Well, five years ago we weren’t at war. We are in this thing, a “war on terrorism”, and the same newspapers that are making a ruckus over the lack of proper intelligence and security will in the same breath critize this protection of information.

Information on our intelligence. Information on our counterintelligence. Information on our security.

I wish sometimes that the people who sprew this crap (pardon my harsh language, but I am irritated) would realize just how much freedom of information there is in this country.

For an example, I am wearing a shirt right now from the Titan Missle Museum near Tuscon, Arizona, that I saw on my trip there. How many other countries would allow its citizens to take tours of a completely preserved missle silo? Let me answer that for you: none. There were no restrictions on photos. We were told the entire process of a missle launch, the chemicals invovled. I could sit down with the Chinese or the Iranians, tell them this, and not get prosecuted for it. Go to China or Iran and try to get a look at their nuke facilities.

All truth deserves to be revealed. But there is a right and wrong place for it. If we intend to preserve our intelligence, then we must preserve its secrecy. If we intend to preserve our freedoms, then we ought to protect sensitive information from those who would use it to take those freedoms away from us. Information is valuable: but when determining what is released and when, we ought to ask this question: is this more valuable to the citizens, or is more valuable to our enemies?

Patterico’s Pontifcations has asked bloggers to make a pledge that even if the FEC limits bloggers on freedom of speech, that they will keep blogging their opinions. The FEC will have to pry the keyboard from my cold, dead fingers.

And the government will have to pry my gun from my cold, dead fingers as well, if it comes to that. Gun control really means using both hands. Or so said a sticker in Vegas.

As you can see, I’m back from spring break, and I had a blast. I have been loosely following the Terri case with increasing dismay. I think the media has been reporting this horribly; I am not convinced she is in a vegetative state, and even of the legality of pulling her feeding tube.

I bought some wonderful books during my time away, The SAS Manuel of Mental Endurance, which is basically taking the skills used by the British Secret Air Service (at least, I think that’s what it is, someone correct me if I’m wrong) and putting it in word form. Interesting, and definitely useful. Another is What Every Person Should Know About War, which is compiled by Chris Hobbes, I believe his name is. No political junk, just hard, cold statistics about war, torture, and death. A little disturbing to read at time, because you are forced to think about things that perhaps you’d rather not. However, I have found it immensely valuable.

Later there will be more parsing of news and events; I will need to go soon since my lunch break is almost over. I have more homework tonight than I’d like to think about. This is the time of year when I curl up in a fetal positions and chant: “only two months till summer, only two months till summer”, and try not to think about natural logrithms, the constant R, or why I shouldn’t speak in a passive voice. I think this part of the school year is the hardest because I just returned from Arizona, where I could have been quite content to stay, and have returned to the world of blearly glances at the coffee pot and adrenline-powered all-nighters. Alas.

Still, every now and then I pause to taste the political air, so to speak, and I find that revolution is still heavy within it. The events that are transpiring are… Well, mind boggling.

Well, it’s Saturday the 19th, and this is the week of spring break. And in a few minutes I will be on my way to Arizona for a (if I do say so myself) much deserved vacation. Oddly enough, I will be in the same city as my AP Chem teacher.

So, no posts for a week, but you can always browse the blogroll to find some fascinating people to read. Just make sure you come back here after that week is up, okay?

Here are some interesting news items worth reading:

DeLay will not give up on Terri.

Pepsi warehouse arson in India. This is why the US didn’t give him a visa, is because he’s affilated with a group that does things like this.

The Pro-Syrian Lebanese president pulls out of a summit. Hopefully he’ll pull out of Lebanon too.

Woman leads muslims in prayer. This is HUGE, and will have effects around the world. I say this is great, it adds onto the Fatwa issued by Spanish clerics.

Putin makes tricky foray into Ukraine. Tricky indeed, to borrow the word for Renolds.

Charges arise over missile smuggling. Put this next to the Putin headline, and connect the dots. I’d do it myself but I don’t have time at the moment. I’m sure that my readers are quite capable of doing that themselves.

Well, that’s all for right now. I’ll see you guys in a week and have a good time! …And some nice weather too.

BlogsforTerri has asked to spread this post around the blogosphere, and I will comply. Tomorrow, Terri’s feeding tube will be pulled, and a woman who is NOT in a vegetative state, who breathes on her own, responds to voices and touched, will be slowly, painfully killed; from a torturous death not bestowed upon the most heinous of criminals. This is a very somber, very disturbing event.

While everyone is discussing Abu Gharib and things in Guantanamo, we ought to remember that a citizen of the United States who did nothing wrong is being tortured to death starting tomorrow.

This is both terrifying and unacceptable. This is wrong.

At the Volokh Conspiracy, there has apparently been a ruling by a federal court that a school cannot ban a student from wearing a shirt depicted an M-16. I say “good.” Eugene Volokh says that the school made the mistake of thinking that wrongful violence is the same as violence. I say that the school made the mistake of thinking that a gun equals violence.

It does not.

I don’t know how many times I’ve had to explain this to people: a gun does not equal violence. Guns have many legitimete uses, including hunting, competition, and as a personal hobby. Through society we’re conditioned to think that gun=murder. No. Yeesh.

So, in celebration of this ruling, I think I’ll wear my gun shirt tomorrow. And if they tell me to take it off, I’ll tell them about this ruling. Heh.

Publius Pundit has the news, the links, and the pics. Holy mother cow of heaven. 1.3 to 2 million people are having anti-syria demonstrations in Beirut, dwarfing Hizb’allah. Banks and work is out early as well as university classes. I’ve said is before, I’ll say it again: revolution is not going away, the Lebanon Cedar revolution is not going away, but perhaps Hizb’allah it. The Berlin Wall has fallen in the Middle East.

I picked this up from TigerHawk. With Syria, Iran & whatnot, it looks like the US is gearing up for a good ol’fashioned Show of Force. I’ll monitor this to see the reaction.

Good times.

This and this: side by side.

I’m not blaming the Prime Minister or anything, but honestly. Palestinatians seriously need to do some mujaheedin housecleaning if they truly do want a state called “Palestine”. Unfortunately, I believe that Arafat damaged some so much that they would have no purpose if not for fighting Isreal.

By the way, why does everything think that Jeruselam is the capitol of Isreal? Isn’t it Tel Aviv?

Why is China so determined to piss us off? And the Europeans want to lift the arms embargo? Hello! Economic “capitalism” isn’t the same as “democracy”– even if that is what the Communist government calls it. People are in labor and re-education camps. Google is banned in China, for crying out loud. While power and influence shifts from Europe to Asia, people like Chiraq are moving it along. I firmly believe that if these trends continue, that China will be just as big of, if not bigger, adversary than the Soviet Union.