Books that are good by CyndaCargo https://padlet.com/korben_d_worthington/Leadership2 Surviving Minecraft (eBook) en-us 2018-09-04 12:42:45 UTC 2019-01-11 18:05:33 UTC hello@padlet.com https://padlet-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/icons/Rafaelo.png Background Information - 9/4/2018 korben_d_worthington https://padlet.com/korben_d_worthington/Leadership2/wish/277518994 I feel like I need to give some background information for the rest of the things I put on here to make sense. I'm currently reading the 2nd book in the Hitchhiker series, "The restaurant at the end of the universe", which takes place immediately after the first book. In brief review, the Earth is destroyed, and the last 2 humans, Arthur and Trilian, along with Ford Prefect, Zaphod Beeblebrox, and the ship The Heart of Gold as they go around trying not to die and learn about why Earth was destroyed. It's pretty funny, and so far the first book has been funnier than the second. However, neither has been better than the other, just different settings and times. Currently, as of page 203, they have just reached the restaurant, and think they're dead? It's an interesting place.]]> 2018-09-04 12:51:14 UTC https://padlet.com/korben_d_worthington/Leadership2/wish/277518994 Blog Post 2 - 9/16/2018 korben_d_worthington https://padlet.com/korben_d_worthington/Leadership2/wish/281975494 Our band of Hitchhikers have finished their dinner at Milliways, gotten into a ship that was destined to fly into a star, and have since been teleported an unknown distance from each other. I think it’s interesting how accurate most of the information is in the book, as well. There was a point where a fault was ruptured on a planet, releasing both magma and clean water, transforming the desert into a lush grassland. While that sounds implausible, it’s actually pretty factual, strangely. The main part I wish to talk about, though, is the unfortunate race of beings on that planet, who were amazingly smart and powerful, but were cursed with telepathy, meaning they had to never stop talking in order to prevent people from reading their thoughts. It’s an interesting allegory for the world we live in today, where many of us seem to prefer talking instead of thinking. This, in turn, leads to their brains not functioning as well, so they end up making dumb decisions, and causing someone close to them or themselves to get hurt. It’s sad. However, I feel like this is a good place for the issue to be brought up, in an alien world that is strangely similar to our own. Overall, I’m liking the book so far and I hope I get to finish the series before the school year ends. Cool.

 

]]> 2018-09-16 17:19:39 UTC https://padlet.com/korben_d_worthington/Leadership2/wish/281975494 Blog Post 3 - 9/23/2018 korben_d_worthington https://padlet.com/korben_d_worthington/Leadership2/wish/284759426 What’s up gamers, welcome back to Family Feud. This week, our protaginists have managed to get off the ship with a perpetually bathing captain, and have landed on a planet with the man who makes all the most important decisions in the Galaxy. He’s mostly scatterbrained and simpleminded, which I found strange. However, upon further thinking, followed by thinking about it some more, I realized that the reason he most likely is as he is is because of his amazing knowledge of the universe, and how his knowledge of the universe he lives in has negatively affected his life as a result. As stated before, he often makes some very important decisions posed by other people who comoe and visit from time to time, and almost all of the decisions he are brought are those that impact the future of the Milky Way, but he seems to live alone with his cat in a small metal shack, not caring much about what’s going on around him. I feel this is a good representation of the pursuit of knowledge by the human species, as we most likely would find that knowing every thing there is to know about the universe would probably blow our minds, and really bring in the scale of how useless, meaningless, and unimpactful we are as a single human being. It’s a very interesting conjecture. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

]]> 2018-09-23 15:48:32 UTC https://padlet.com/korben_d_worthington/Leadership2/wish/284759426 Blog Post 4 - 10/1/2018 korben_d_worthington https://padlet.com/korben_d_worthington/Leadership2/wish/287549895 Howdy big boys, welcome to the blog post that totally isn’t late because the weekends are supposedly for the boys but are actually for feeling lonely because none of the people you like like you back and you’re not sure what to do with yourself. Today, we’re going over the end of the second Hitchhiker’s Book, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. The end followed Arthur and Ford playing primitive scrabble, before realizing that if Arthur grew up on Earth he must have kept some of the messages that Earth was sending from its core, specifically after spelling a crude word for defecation by complete random. Ford had the idea of pulling all of the tiles out of the bag and seeing what was spelled, which ended up spelling, “What do you get if you multiply six by nine”, with the essential answer being 42. This makes no sense, which sort of makes sense in the context. Six times nine isn’t even forty-two, it’s fifty-six. It shows how nothing in the universe makes a lick of sense.

]]> 2018-10-01 12:20:33 UTC https://padlet.com/korben_d_worthington/Leadership2/wish/287549895 Blog Post 5 - 10/7/2018 korben_d_worthington https://padlet.com/korben_d_worthington/Leadership2/wish/290123074 What;s up gamers, It's me, the kid who forgets about doing this during the week so forces themselves to do it late on a Sunday when they should be going to sleep. This week, we've started the third book in the Hitchhiker series, Life, the Universe, and Everything, which begins with Arthur and Ford finding a couch that teleports them to the same place on Earth, but 2 million years or so into the future (present?). They land in a cricket game, followed by several alien landings, one of which include robots that play cricket and 🤬 a few people, and the boarding of Slartibartfast's ship. It's one of the most advanced ships out there, as it uses Bistrometry to do its calculations, which basically means it simulates and Italian Bistro to run numbers and such. The idea of this is interesting, as the thought of using seemingly mundane things to us to create things that are completely alien is pretty nicely portrayed here. This might even be an allegory for our operations here on earth, as many things that are incredibly complex to someone from the past, such as driving, is completely mundane and ordinary to us. The fact that we have the power to just end someone's life, and have to use that power to get to work i the morning, it's sort of scary. However, rather than make computing smaller like everything we seem to be doing, this is making computing a-thing that runs on the actions of waiters and angry customers. So, yeah, these blog posts, frankly, are dumb, thanks for coming to my TED Talk.]]> 2018-10-08 03:01:26 UTC https://padlet.com/korben_d_worthington/Leadership2/wish/290123074 Blog Post 10/24/2018 korben_d_worthington https://padlet.com/korben_d_worthington/Leadership2/wish/296484381 Hey hey hey it's your favorite gamer, the one who finds things unfair and wishes to voice their opinion but nobody listens because it's only bad for one person and therefore is not a problem at all, welcome back to the blog posts. I've started reading the Alchemist, since the 3rd Hitchhiker's book was starting to get really slow and uninteresting. Anyway, the book is about this shepherd who goes to Africa to find some treasure in the pyramids of Egypt he keeps having dreams about. Along the way, he meets a man who goes by Melchezideck, the King of Salem, who gives him reason to follow the dream and go to find the pyramid treasure. He talks a lot about following omens, as they are the language of God. This becomes a main theme throughout the book, as omens are what lead Santiago, the main character, to every point in his journey. He gave up shepherding and sailed to North Africa from Gibraltar as a result as well. All of this talk of omens is interesting though. Many things are seen as good omens, including the flight of a nearby butterfly, the stones Urim and Thummim, and many other things. Having omens guide ones life is supposed to be seen as following ones Personal Legend, which is the true path in life, which is different for everybody. I like this interpretation of fate a lot more than the North American idea of "Your life is set in stone from the start", and the idea of, "You'll find your true path of you learn to find it" is a lot more reassuring and encouraging.]]> 2018-10-24 14:53:46 UTC https://padlet.com/korben_d_worthington/Leadership2/wish/296484381 Blog Post 11/4/2018 korben_d_worthington https://padlet.com/korben_d_worthington/Leadership2/wish/300788439 Before I being, yes I'm aware that the actual post date is on the 5th. I started writing this Sunday, but passed out because I felt like a dumpster fire, and was too sick to do anything until just now.

Welcome welcome to the near end of the Alchemist. Our boy Santiago has come a long way form his shepherding origins in Iberia, now in an oasis camping ground. Here, he was done many important things. 1) he met his love, Fatima, 2) he met the alchemist aforementioned in the title and by the Englishman he was traveling with, 3) he helped prevent an ambush and subsequent death of many. He saw a vision of soldiers riding toward the camp for a split second in the desert, and read the omen given to him by the desert. The language of omens in the book is interesting. It speaks of them as being the "language of the world", and that reading them is the way to achieve true happiness and achieve one's goal, or Personal Goal. The entire journey has been lead by omens, mostly after Santiago's meeting with Melchizdeck, the king of Salem. Overall, I feel the author is trying to teach that the best way to find more about yourself is to travel, and see what happens from there.]]> 2018-11-06 01:05:42 UTC https://padlet.com/korben_d_worthington/Leadership2/wish/300788439 Blog Post 2018/12/9 korben_d_worthington https://padlet.com/korben_d_worthington/Leadership2/wish/312663045 Howdy there all y'all cowboys super gamers, it's me, your favorite least favorite student back at it again with something that I don't quite keep up with because it slips my mind anytime I leave the classroom. I finished the alchemist maybe 2 weeks ago, and it was pretty good. The ending, while a tad anti-climactic, is metaphorically significant. Santiago actually makes it to the pyramids and starts digging for the treasure, but is met with a bunch of thugs who beat the absolute 🤬 out of him. They then ask why he's there and tells them that he's, "following his Personal Legend by seeing this place in a dream." The head of the thugs scoffs, and tells Santiago that, "He had dreams of a great treasure under a tree in Andalusia (I think that's the name), but he knew that it was just a dream." After being horribly beaten, Santiago goes back to his pasture in Andalusia and finds the treasure there. This book is certainly more about the journey, and not the destination, as I've been told. It's supposed to show Santiago and the reader that the real treasure was where he had started, in the place he knew best, his home. Other than the treasure, he had learned how to speak Arabic, read omens, found a girl named Fatima, who he would later go back and marry, just not in the contents of the pages, and how to listen to people. So, yeah, this book is much more about appreciating omens and following them across your destined journey, which only you have the control of following. Sounds pretty cool, huh? Maybe I can use the fact that I love the smell of formaldehyde to work at a morgue or something.]]> 2018-12-09 16:56:03 UTC https://padlet.com/korben_d_worthington/Leadership2/wish/312663045 Blog Post 2019/1/11 korben_d_worthington https://padlet.com/korben_d_worthington/Leadership2/wish/319664822 What's up drama alert nation, I'm your host, and I'm quite behind on the 2 things I've read since November. So, the main thing that I actually finished during that time was horribly written, spelling mistaken rife, unrealistic, cliche, uninteresting-yet-kept-me-reading-because-I-like-to-torture-myself fireboy and Watergirl fanfiction. No, I'm not kidding. It all began on my way to watch The Grinch movie with my friends as a joke when it came out. One of us had the god-awful brain query of, "Is there Fireboy and Watergirl fanfiction?" It turns out that the beloved Coolmath games attraction has a large following of people who write about said characters. I decided to read the first one that showed up to my friends, jokingly, not knowing what was going to come of it. It was very bad. There were many spelling mistakes, some that broke the entire sentence. There were many logical inconsistencies. I kept reading. I kept reading so that I could get a leg up on the ""lore"", as I was jokingly the expert on it. Now I've finished 13 incorrectly numbered chapters and 5 author's notes. So, let's go over the plot.

It begins with Fireboy and Watergirl at recess (in middle school?). They are both monologing about how they're royalty and they have one tragic event form Elementary school that's ruined them forever. Their family lineage is very confusing and hard to understand. Apparently the king of fire and the queen of water eloped, and vice versa with the other royal family. Thus, watergirl and fireboy have both fire and water powers, and are more powerful then anyone else. As you can already tell, this is basically ripping off literally every other teen elemental story that has ever existed. So, we follow the two protagonists as they go through the 🤬 that is school. It turns out that they have adjacent lockers, the same lunch, recess, and some classes together. Of course, being fanfiction, there is a romantic subplot that becomes the overplot. There are also ""school bullies"" that are nothing more than cardboard cut-outs of human beings that have no personality other than unga  bunga me be mean to main characters. So, with all of these overused tropes, cliches, deus ex machinas, and unoriginal story, I wanted to stop reading it. I couldn't.

I wanted to stop reading, but by the time I passed the threshold of the dreaded chapter 4, I couldn't contain myself. I kept hitting next chapter. I wouldn't let all of my brain power that was once used to read this horrid story not finish the story. I was trapped. Ok, now actually the plot.

FB and WG both go through school and deal with an electric elemental, Leonard, who torments them for reasons listed above. Apparently, everyone hates FB and WG for no reason. The two of them find out more about their family secrets and controlling their powers, but they somehow made the intriguing stuff on paper be horribly boring in action. Both the royal families want to prevent FB and WG from seeing each other, but of course it doesn't stop the two children. They are eventually sent away to Earth to do... something? It's not really said what their goal is. They go to Earth middle school, (which still has recess??????) except even then most of the students at their school are of elemental heritage or ability. ]]> 2019-01-11 14:06:38 UTC https://padlet.com/korben_d_worthington/Leadership2/wish/319664822