Frankenstein!

Hey guys!

Hope you are doing well, and are hard at work writing your Frankenstein alternate endings! Make sure to email me with any questions about your writing, it is due December 18th--the last day of school before the winter break!

bbb

The Higgs Boson with some time travel implications...

The Hadron Supercollider (HSC) in, or rather under, Switzerland, has experienced setback after setback as scientists try to figure out just what happened during the much postulated "Big Bang". The Higgs boson is a particle that makes up other particles that makes up slightly bigger particles that are found in atoms, which are the basic building blocks to all matter in the universe. But, and this is the strange thing about the article, scientists think the Higgs boson doesn't want to exist, and is influencing events (including disruption of the HSC) from the future so that it can't come into existence.

It all sounds like the grandfather paradox we read about during the last unit, and I feel the article is cool enough for ya'll to take a gander at!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/science/space/13lhc.html

Travel Writing

Hello everyone!

As we continue our work on creating our travel agencies and brochures, I want to put up some good websites that I think really contain some good examples of how to write about a hotel or destination with as much gusto and flourish as is humanly posisble--it borders on shameless, actually. But, that is what you want for your own brochures--writing that bursts from the page with as much description and positivity as possible to entice the prospective client reading your brochure to fork over his or her money on the strength of your company's sales pitch!

Here are three websites that do a great job with their descriptions and pictures to get people to spend money on their product. Try and see if you can't glean some inspiration yourselves!

bbb

http://www.jumeirah.com/en/Hotels-and-Resorts/Destinations/Dubai/Burj-Al-Arab/


http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/sjojw-jw-marriott-guanacaste-resort-and-spa/

http://www.virgingalactic.com/flash.html?language=english

The Lighter Side of the News

Every once in a while I enjoy reading a news piece that is just plain silly. Here is a funny one about a real news paper running a fake news story. Lets this also serve as a warning to you that everything that glitters is not gold on the internet!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8237558.stm

Also check out the "fake" news site the story was pulled from, The Onion. There are always some funny headlines on there to brighten your day.

www.theonion.com

bbb

Time Travel

Hello everyone!

I hope you are enjoying our unit on time travel so far--I think there are some interesting things to learn about. I hope you liked The Sound of Thunder as well, Ray Bradbury is a great writer and I highly recommend checking some other books of his out when you have the time.

Now, I want everyone to check this website out and read about some of the more finer details of the theory and concepts of time travel.

http://scifiscience.co.uk/themes/timetravel/detailed.html

Now for the assignment. After we have watched the small video on time travel (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGrBNtJjsU0) I think we will be ready to speculate on our own personal time traveling goals. I want each student to make a presentation on either PowerPoint or Keynote that will answer a lot of questions about why you would time travel and who you would like to meet. Pay attention to the example I show in class and use it for a basis for your own work. Some of the important questions you should ask yourself are:

“Where would you go?”
“To which year or period of time would you travel?”
“Who would you want to meet or what event would you want to witness?”
“Where would you find this person or see this event?”
“Why would you want to meet this person or witness this event?”
“How might you change history?”--This is a really important question to ask (and answer!) for the presentation. Really think about if your actions will create a paradox, if they will have consequences and what might happen to the future you return to...

We will work on everything in class this week, if you have any questions just email me:

b.brown@atscholen.nl

Remember what Einstein said, "Everything is relative"!

Welcome to the new school year!

Hello everyone,

This is the first of what I hope to be many posts for our class blog this year. It will be a chance to learn new or interesting things, share your own work and ideas, and communicate with other students and people of interest around the world. I hope we can use this to the best of our advantage and enjoy ourselves as we become better writers and thinkers!

The first thing I would like us to look at is at one of three news stories from today and write about it in your own blog, which we will set up in class. Reading and keeping up with the news is one of the ways we will use the outside world to inspire our writing in class. As well as being important to know, the news can help us grow learn about things we never knew about. So, take a look at one (or all three if you're feeling up to it) of the stories below and write 250-300 words about the story. This means the who, what, when, where and why of course--but also what you thought of the story, how it might have a greater impact on other things or on you yourself.

1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/athletics/8219937.stm

A debate over the gender of a female runner in the 2009 World Athletics Competition going on now.

2. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/business/24julia.html?em

Julia Child, a famous cook has a book on the best seller list--and it was written 48 years ago...

3. cool and mysterious cloud formations

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/morninggloryclouds/