The weather report for this weekend claims it is going to snow again. Personally I think that is a bit absurd. After all the cold weather, the ice, and snow we as a society deserve some amazing weather. At this point I even think someone could throw together a strong argument to why global warming is not real. It wouldn’t be based in reality of course, and there wouldn’t be any sort of scientific data to back that argument up, but at first glace it might sound probable. Eventually though the weather will warm up, the ice will thaw, and there will be that period of mud and such, but after that it’ll be nice outdoorsy weather. Then people could start doing summer activities like camping, biking, fishing, or whatever. I am a fan of lakes so I can’t wait for the ice to melt. I also am a fan of Frisbee. Right now it is way too cold to do anything in a park, but when its warm out I like going to the bigger parks and playing ultimate Frisbee. We get a big group of friends together and generally spend the whole day playing Frisbee. We play until it gets too dark to see then we go to someone’s house to relax and watch a movie or something and the next day do it over again. At this point though we would be happy with some fifty-degree weather to play a game or two of Frisbee, sadly the weather doesn’t seem to be on our side.

I read an article about renaissance art the other day. Something I think is funny about art is how people tend to read into it. It seems to me like people these days give way more credit to famous artists than what is due. Making a work of art is a process that requires some thought, but the amount that it is assumed was put into whatever work of art being discussed is generally, in my opinion, absurd. For instance someone can look at a painting that is just paint splattered in canvas and say it is a representation of the chaos in the world around us, when in actuality someone just through paint on canvas with no control where it landed. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if some artists paint vague things like that and wait for others to come up with the back story for the so called “creative process” involved, and simply take credit after the fact.  Or the Mona Lisa for example, people are constantly asking the question why it she smiling. My question to those people is why do you smile for a picture? It’s probably because whoever had the camera told you to smile, so you did. So perhaps she’s smiling because Leonardo da Vinci was like “Hey you know what might make a good picture? If you smiled” and as a result the women modeling for the painting smiled. Now many years later people are overthinking her reasons for smiling when for all we know it was something as simple as she was asked to smile.

On Monday I read an article about social networking and its affect of productivity in schools. The article was written by Laura Lefkowits, who brought up some pretty interesting points on the topic.  She mentioned that this new culture built around social media can benefit the student body in many ways. It was brought up that when social media has a clear purpose it can be used to accomplish tasks that normally could not be done by one single individual. Tasks like combines the physical world, things like textbooks and other learning tools, with the intangible part of learning such as community, and parental involvement. Ultimately Lefkowits said that social networking in schools is the future but right now the world just is not ready for it yet.    

Personally I do not see how that is a place for social networking in education. Its like when computers originally got combined with education. Yes computers are a valuable tool for learning, but at the same time when a student is in class with a computer in front of him or her there is always the temptation to play games, watch videos, and of course get on social media sites. In the case of social networking in education I think the bad definably outweighs the good sine the point is to stay connected with friends and other leisurely activities. Basically what I am trying to say is that in the case of social media and education this might be one of those things that is better kept separate.

The winter Olympics started in Sochi a litter while back. Personally I am a huge fan of the Olympics. I prefer the summer games but the winter Olympics are pretty fun to watch too. Winter games wise I am a huge fan of hockey and speed skating. I like watching sports like luge and bobsledding but I don’t really understand how someone practices something like that. To me all it looks like is you go to the top of a hill and sled down it but the mystery of how someone trains for something that makes it more interesting to watch.

The next summer Olympics is supposed to be held in Brazil. I think that that games there could go one of two ways. Either the games will be amazing and Brazil will do a great job of hosting, or it will be a huge disorganized mess. Either way the 2016 Brazil games will be interesting to watch. During the summer I primarily follow fencing, archery, track, Ping-Pong, really anything that seems slightly interesting. Part of me also thinks they should have a few BMX style sports added since they have a few during the winter games like snowboarding so why should skateboarding not be allowed. Ultimately though I would like the games to be held in the United States again so I could see them. Not that I couldn’t see them elsewhere but I would be considerably cheaper to travel somewhere inside the U.S. Since the last few games have been all over I have a feeling eventually the U.S. is due to host a game sometime in the near future of the Olympics.   

Today I am working with the Metamora robotics team. Robotics was something I was involved in during high school so when I graduated I came back as a mentor for the team. This year’s game involves throwing an exercise ball into a goal for points. Primarily I help out with the actual building of the robot as opposed to the programming, or modeling of it. Basically if it needs to be welded together I get to help the students with it. Unfortunately since I’m not a student anymore I don’t get the perk of being able to leave school to travel to the regional to watch the robot compete. Luckily one of the regional competitions is in Pekin this year so I can just drive to it. Sadly I won’t the fun regional inn Wisconsin so I guess this year I’ll have to watch it online since all the competitions get steamed live on the internet.

This year I’m not too sure how the team will do. The first year no one had high expectations and the team did amazing. We made it all the way to the final competition and ended up in eighth out of the entire world. Last year everyone was too ambitious and we barley had a robot done in time. We competed in two regionals that year and lost them both. The first one we were still figuring out how to control the robot, and the second one the robot decided to start falling apart. So there’s no real way of telling how this year will go.