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At least you get new backpacks.

I still have until the Third Day of the Ninth Month before I go back to school, and while I'll definitely miss the Summer freedom, I'm looking forward to Deutsch and War - yes, we have an elective class. called. war. it's sex - and Intro to Business, which is the saxiest class everyone has taken.

"

And also, fuck that.

METAL DETECTORS!?

Holy shit your school is paranoid. The only rights-violation we have to put up with is the education department's internet filter. It blocks sites related to games, information, forums, bulletin boards, writing and all legitimate education materials except wikipedia. I'm convinced its only a matter of time before we lose wikipedia as well.

But seriously... BAG SEARCHES?

I'm glad I don't go to Mages Nazi School. And Rommy, we don't have Wikipedia. It's too powerful for the teachers to handle. But we just use proxy sites and it works fine. Plus, you can just copy the bibliography from the Wiki article's page if you use it for a report.

To get more into the Wikipedia issue at school, it's just stupid why we can't use a fast and easy source of information for reports. Basically, Wikipedia is a collection of internet, book, etc. sources of info compiled nicely with high standards of quality, an active community that values accuracy and revision, and a bibliography. I mean, teachers are basically saying that the non-Wiki sites that you find from Google are more credible. Like, wtf? It makes no sense, and I seriously believe that the fucking librarians are too afraid of the interwebz. At least the cool younger teachers let us use Wikipedia (although officially we have to produce a bibliography and "do the research at home", but they're so awesome it's just cover for corruption). Power to the pupil! Or penis, whichever.

At least I can visit lesser-known sites, like CYS, from school. Basically once the school finds out about a site, they block it. And then I use a proxy to get through it.

I used to do that sometimes.  After my freshman year, they blocked every site I'd ever get on.  AND they fuckin' uninstalled Quake 3 from my CPU!  Bastards...

All IT students know how to play games at my school, but 3D is hard because of onboard GPUs.

It makes a good demo platform for my game Project 7, tho.

lol JJJ. I'm surprised the US hasn't had a reformation revolution already. Such a democratic society - at its roots - can't function in such a day-and-age. Well, as long as the government wants to protect its people from modern threats, even though a plastic spoon can kill just as can a handgun. You go up to someone, grab their neck quick, lurch them back, dig out their eye, jab the spoon into the eye socket, maybe smash their head for good measure, and the deed is done. Takes less training than a handgun. Hell, people don't even know how to reload a handgun.

As for metal detectors, you are aware only the shittiest of ghetto schools have metal detectors, etc., right? Where the flying finkrat do you live, mah boi?

Yeah, I doubt all this increased security bullshit does anything other than make the taliban smile with glee, knowing they are feared to these proportions.

And seriously, since when do metal detectors stop:

*car bombs being driven through the front door

*bazookas or other missiles being fired from OUTSIDE the school

*a squad of riflemen just storming the place and gunning down the security

I mean, COME ON. That kind of security does nothing to protect you and at the same time wastes govt money that could be used to TEACH you, gives the terrorists credibility and finally takes another step towards a police state.

Seriously, read 1984. War hysteria at it's worst.

I think it's just a govt sop to paranoid families. Although it will make some of them *more* paranoid, ironically...

rofl I'm reading '84 right now for school. And I have five or less days left. Fuck.

National Security, War, Espionage, weapons production. All these are acts of pumping into the atmosphere or pouring into the oceans, all the resources that could otherwise make the populace too happy, too rich, and in the long run, too intelligent.

How much do decent non-creationist textbooks cost? definitely less than a metal detector and security guards.

While I'm not a creationist, I'm pretty sure its unconstitutional in some way that creationism is not at least explained in school. I mean sure you have separation of Church and State, but I think not having creationism taught in school is an infraction of free speech, right? Then again the education system is up to the state, but does the state have the right to decline teaching creationism technically?

Either way, creationism is weird. I'm an Orthodox Christian, and I think creationism is garbage. The problem with a lot of religious explanations - or more importantly the people who interpret them and use them as their stances - is that they take the Bible, etc. too literally. At least for the Bible, which is all I can really talk about with enough understanding, the explanations are either metaphors, have multiple meanings, or are mistranslations. It's convenient that the word 'day' and 'age' are the same in Hebrew (I think Hebrew, maybe Greek), and those six AGES are the history of the world, as described with science. I truly believe that science and religion can co-exist. Religion is the basic idea, and the science is the reasoning behind it. There are several times when religion and science agree and make each other understandable. A good example is the Garden of Eden. The Tigris and Euphrates are similar to two of the rivers in the Garden of Eden, and scientists speculate that there used to be two more rivers near the Tigris and Euphrates but the other two got flooded as the sealevel rose. So it's just interesting to see the compromises, and it's not correct to take the Bible literally.

Too intelligent?!!?!?!? Yeah, over-specialization. But I think the downfall of humanity will be either war or disease. And by war, I mean domestic strife. No one is going to engage in nuclear war - humanity is smarter than that.

It's official, mage lives in a ghetto.

Well there TECHNICALLY is the literal understanding of Bible transformed into a pseudo-scientific simplification of a complex explanation for an event and time period we know nothing about, but yeah; creationism shouldn't be taught in science, rather religion class. Or, like, a world-wide culture class. Something like that.

Anubis - Science and free speech are not the same thing. Free speech means you can say anything. In science you must back up what you say with evidence.

The two terms are not interchangeable. That's why we don't teach pseudo-science in schools.

Furthermore, why teach naive high school students something which has been thoroughly rejected in the academic arena for decades? Are the year 10s going to unlock the secrets of neurochemistry? I don't think so.

Basically, teaching creationism would be like teaching phrenology, astrology, numerology or alchemy. They should stay in the stupid ages.

Works for me. But alchemy is totally real! How else could they do that one documentary, Full Metal Alchemist?

Yeah, man. What about Jurassic Park? We have real fking dinosaurs walking around onscreen, and they're saying the T-Rex is extinct?

Yeah fuck those extinct people! How do you explain Land Before Time! Hey man, these are documentaries! You got your theory of gravity and shit, but you can't even see gravity! Fuck that!

Hey, High school was NEVER that bad for us. I remember they would have drug dogs every so often but other than that, they wouldn't care too much

Sheesh, I went to a public high school in the murder capital of America and we didn't have any metal detectors there. (Though it might've changed now, don't know)

The only thing of note that ever happened was this one incident down in the basement annex which involved some drinking and a voluntary sex act between 12 guys and 1 girl, but that's a tale for another time.

Hmmm, Endmaster's first memoirs perhaps?

Today I just had my first day, and as usual, it was boring. Thanks to me having lunch EIGHTH MOD and a lack of friends in most of my classes, I feel that this year is going to be boring. Thankfully, I'll have a bunch of sexy-ass-awesome games to entertain myself at home: Modern Warfare 2, Assassin's Creed 2, Bad Company 2, Halo 3 ODST, and Left 4 Dead 2. So all sequels, but damn good sequels!

I advise you against Starcraft II, btw. No LAN support. That was not a misspelling.

Oh I know all about Blizzard's recent fuck ups, mah boi. I'm seriously believing that the leaders of Blizzard got irreparably high and decided to become business-emo by destroying everything about their company. Seriously!? No fucking LAN for STARCRAFT!?!!?!? And plus it costs $180. That's bullshit.