One of the biggest, yet one of the less controversial questions of Hawaii politics this year.
The tag: "Relating to the Board of Education." A very unappealing line, concealing an amendment that would, in a nutshell, change the BOE from being elected to being appointed by the Governor, whoever said Governor may be.
*COUGHDUKEAIONACOUGH*
This amendment will be on the November 2nd ballot, among the infamous elections.
My view? At first, I was leaning towards the status quo. After all, the people need a voice in electing our education representatives, right?
However, here's the problem: the people do not and have not used their voice in the slightest. Out of the already-lower-than-%50 of Hawaii's population actually voting, less than %50 of THAT actually voted for BOE members. That's less than (less than, less than, less than) %25 of Hawaii's population using their voice in the Board of Education Elections.
Out of the 6 finalists for the Board of Education from the Primary Election, 3 will emerge victorious.
Assuming that the votes are distributed across all 6 candidates, EVEN LESS than the %25 who vote for the BOE will choose the reps for the next few years. That's democracy for ya.
Really, what type of accountability does the BOE have now? A few people coming to their meetings and ranting on issues like furloughs and air conditioning?
Now, on to an APPOINTED school board. Now, I'm leaning towards this, simply because of the ensured competency of the representatives, and the direct accountability of the board to the Governor.
Ideally, the Statewide Board of Education should just be completely abolished and replaced by specialized local-level boards.
Only the Worldview Academy Southern California 2010 attendees would understand that title. And boy, is it a LEGIT inside joke.
Anyways, I had an absolute BLAST at Worldview Academy this year. Because I attended the Seattle WVA last year, I had an inkling of what to expect this year. However, because all of my buddies from Washington stayed in Washington, I didn't think that I would know too much people. That was really my only negative thought prior to camp.
Boy, was that thought erased quickly.
After I checked-in at camp, my first actions was to check the names of the male attendees, posted on the front door of our dorm building. There, I saw the name "TJ Metcalf," one of my good friends from Hawaii.
*Insert cheering and whooping here*
Not to say that I was bored of Ricky and Lucas, (Both Hawaii buds) the latter of whom I had traveled to the LAX with, and the former of whom we stayed with for a couple of hours after getting off the plane.
Far from it; I was just wondering if there was anyone else that I knew. I did NOT expect TJ to be there, so it was an extremely pleasant surprise.
Halley and Christa, two friends who lived in Hawaii, attended as well. They, however, don't count. They're girls. I won't see them 3/4ths of the camp. No sexism intended.
Ummm......
*Run away and hide until the "hell-hath-no-fury" passes.*
So, after checking out our dorm and unpacking, I socialized, (hard to believe, I know.) said "hi" to Luke, a staffer I knew from the previous year, (he was a student with me at Seattle that year... dude's a genius.) and chilled until the staffers called all the students together.
Thus began the BEST week of my life. (A very bold claim, I know. But... yeah. I am obligated as a student of WVA to say that.)
Now, covering every single event, as I did with the food camp, will turn into an incredibly lengthy and bore-some paper. Thus, I shall only review the noticeable parts of camp.
First and foremost, my small group. Man, I made an incredible group of friends this year. Led by Nathan Moller, (I THINK I got his last name right....) we totally ROCKED Point Loma Nazarene University with our epicness. Treeman, Coolman, Bigot, Decreed, Tim and Timmy, Brian, Lucas, and Benny.... I'll never forget those guys. (You remember that inside joke in the title? Message me on facebook or something, and I'll tell you what it is, now. It has everything to do with these guys.)
Second, the lectures. Ah! Aaaaahhhhhh!!!!! They were SO AWESOME!!!!! We had Jeff Baldwin, Jay Winslow, and Brandon Booth address us as our main speakers, and MAN were they excellent!!! We covered a variety of topics, ranging from postmodernism, to deception, to the Christian character. They were all extensively long, but I believe that it was absolutely worth it. I just wish those rows had more leg room. >.<
Third, FREE TIME!!!!!!!! You gotta love those times when you can just kick back, chill, and do whatever you want to do. During the free times they gave us during the mid-day, I played some Volleyball, Ultimate Frisbee, Mafia..... hoo-wee, after about 4 hours of lectures, I needed that down-time.
Interestingly enough, Point Loma University overlooked a beautiful beach. Unfortunately, it was off-campus, which means..... *Dun dun dun* we couldn't go to that sandy paradise.
*Insert moaning and groaning here*
Fourth, the special WVA events. These ranged from team competition, to a staff vs. students game of ultimate frisbee, to the infamous evangelism practicum.
During camp, the student body was divided into 4 color teams: Red, Blue, Green, and Yellow. Each competed for the ultimate trophy, to be given to one team at the end of camp: The SPAMLEY CUP!!!!!
(Pay no attention to that terrible pun behind the curtain.)
To win that famed possession, the teams competed in team color trivia, a cheering contest, and a relay. Man, was that intense. I was quite surprised at the end results, though. Throughout the week, my team, the green team, placed consistently in 4th place. This was probably due to our team's lack of trivia hardiness. However, through an astounding turn of events, (Or perhaps our winning the cheering contest and losing the relay) we ended up in 2nd place, with Yellow trumping us. (Hey, coming from far behind to destroy two of the favored teams is pretty good, in my eyes.)
Then there was the staff vs. students frisbee game. 11-3..... yeah. That was painful. Nuff' said.
And finally, the evangelism practicum. Latin for "Real Evangelism," the students received a pamphlet, and were sent out onto the streets with one purpose in mind: to implant one question into passerby's head. That question is: "What happens when you die?"
Reflecting last year's results, my partners and I were either waved off after a short conversation, or by an immediate "no thanks," or "not interested." every time we tried to approach someone. Disturbingly, one of these quick rejections was by a self-professing Christian couple.
Needless to say, we were quite disappointed by our lack of substantiative conversations with others. However, one thing was engrained into our minds: Obedience is Success. In other words, just by obeying God's command to preach the gospel, we already succeeded.
Besides, those guys aren't going to be rid of a haunting question like "What happens when you die?" anytime soon.
All in all, it was a GREAT experience. I'm already missing my excellent buddies from WVA, but hey, there's always Heaven.
I would definitely recommend Worldview Academy to any teenager. If you are interested in going, later on this month, I can get you a $100 dollar discount from tuition if you are a first time student.
I'm planning on going to Seattle again next year, to revisit me old chaps. Care to join me? :-D
First of all, here is the youtube video that basically started the whole "Congressman Etheridge Assault" fiasco:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v60oNUoHBYM
Now, I think that it's pretty clear that Etheridge assaulted the student. I mean, grabbing a student's arm and the back of his neck, while asking a question that clearly violated personal information, claiming that he "had a right," (Even though they were, as the student said, on a public walkway) is pretty much physical assault.
I didn't see any real, substantiative reason to assault the student. It was merely a question that requested his viewpoint, although a lot more broad than most questions of that form. Maybe the presentation was a bit more blunt than I would like. I will give the good congressman that. BUT, did that give him justification to grab his arm and neck?
Ummmm..... common sense would dictate a resounding "NO."
Of course, you will always have people defending a failing position, such as these people here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bOEL8Hbh8Q (MSNBC)
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/06/16/1503378/sorry-congressman-an-apology-just.html (Mark Washburne)
Perhaps it was a set-up by the Republicans. Okay.... no. If the GOP had actually set up a trap for Etheridge, how did the Republicans know that Etheridge would act that way, in that manner? And even more ridiculous, some are saying that the GOP struck a deal with Etheridge!!!! (Need I explain the logic behind that?)
Now, as Washburne asserts, some view the student's interview as "menacing." Menacing!!!! It may have been blunt, but watch the first video again, and tell me honestly that you think the students were "menacing." Did they reveal any knives or guns? No. Did they threaten the congressman? No. Did they verbally abuse the congressman? No. So, how can you call the interview menacing?
Now, the students blurred out their faces. Granted. Now, WHY did they do it?
One of two possible reasons: First, they wanted to hide their identity to go along with the huge conspiracy planned by the GOP to bring down one minor member of congress. Second, they hid their identity TO PROTECT THEIR PRIVACY.
Common sense would dictate the second option. I mean, wouldn't it make sense to conceal who you are so the national media doesn't start banging at your door while you're taking a shower? Seriously.
Anyone know what Occam's Razor is? Anyone? Good.
Occam's Razor is basically a logic deduction tool, which states that if you are presented with two scenarios to try and explain a situation, more often than not, the simpler one is the real explanation.
So, what are the two situations?
First, Etheridge isn't to blame, because the two students assaulted him to play along with a massive conspiracy by the GOP.
Second, two students needed to do a political science report project, and they happened to see Congressman Etheridge. They asked a blunt question, and he lost his temper?
Which one is more likely?
You decide.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/06/17/giuliani_if_this_was_bush_he_would_have_been_impeached_by_now.html
I simply don't understand why the liberals in the administration are so dead-set against repealing the Jones Act in order to call in foreign help to fix this BP mess!!!
"I wanna know who these people are. I wanna know who these experts are."
Girl. DOES IT MATTER?????
BP has a very vested interest in fudging the facts; they want to keep what little reputation they have above the water. With that kind of mentality, there is almost no way that they can do everything to fix it without putting themselves at blame. And if they have truly been doing all they can, then it is, quite frankly, not good enough. CALL THE EXPERTS!!!! We have tons of people overseas who can run things over here a lot better than BP can!!!!! Call them!!!! Repeal the Jones Act!!!! All that stinkin' piece of legislation is doing is stopping us from getting expert help to help expedite the process of cleaning up this oil!!!!
Quite frankly, reading "bring your own mess kit" on the checklist for the ‘Āina Ho‘ōla o Mā‘ilikūkahi 2010 youth delegation confused me already. I mean, besides not being able to pronounce the conference name correctly, why in the world would they make us bring our own plates, forks, cups, bowls, and spoons? (In no particular order.) Turns out, this conference, affectionately termed "Hands Turned to the Soil," (An English alternate name, thank the Lord Almighty) consisted of a LOT more hardcore stuff than I had initially thought it would.
Because they wanted to minimize paper waste in the name of "conservation," they urged every youth attendee, or "delegates," as they called us, to bring our own plates and utensils to eat off of. And they made us clean our own eating materials. Quite frankly, with me and my noob wash-the-dishes skills, I think I would have been more "conservative" with throwing away a paper plate and fork, then wasting a gallon of water on a plate.
And that little detail was only a miniscule part of an exponentially larger Aina-awareness theme during the 3-day, 2-night overnighter camp.
I must admit, I was a wee bit skeptical of this conference, mainly because of the two Hawaiian chants that we had to memorize for the camp, to be used for conference opening and for blessing the food. Not only could I not memorize them, (I can only memorize things when the words make sense. Those Hawaiian words, even with the translation, made no sense whatsoever to me.) the words were giving thanks for the food, or the day, or the wisdom that we would take in. The problem? They never mentioned explicitly who or what they were thanking. (Unless they did, and they said it in Hawaiian. Me=Clueless.)
If they were thanking some obscure Hawaiian god, I would have voluntarily stayed out of the chants. However, I heard some mention of "Ke Akua" in some 'Pules afterwards, too. If that Ke Akua is the same Ke Akua that I serve, then hey! I'm good! (I still didn't memorize the chants, though. They were just too hard.)
Anyway, our first activity was a very interesting talking and listening activity. One that, I think, even proficient debaters would have had trouble with. Our leader assigned us a random, generic topic, and made us talk for about a minute, average, without stopping, to a partner who could not respond verbally. I got the topics "youth" and "Where you came from," and had to talk for about 1:30 minutes each. You would have no idea that it was massively difficult to talk for more than a minute on those topics without prep time, unless you actually tried it.
After a few minutes of that tortu... *Ahem* ACTIVITY, we went over a few ground rules and regulations, and headed to the back of the kitchen for our very first working activity of the day. Scaling and gutting Tilapia.
Yay.
After getting poked twice by their protective fins, and scaling/gutting about 10 slimy fish, (and learning that we would eat those for lunch,) we went back to our little meeting place, a rotunda called the "halau," and debriefed a little bit before lunch.
Surprisingly, that steamed and fried tilapia was quite excellent, despite my Father's conviction otherwise. (He grew up near the Ala Wai canal, you see.)
After cleaning and drying my mess kit, I hung around a bit, made some new friends, and met back up with the group an hour later. We then proceeded to do a "leadership traits" activity, in which we partnered up in pair, and discussed our individual leadership traits to post on a paper "cape" on the wall. It was basically a huge motivational poster, meant to spur us to reach higher standards.
After that little pep time, we started something a bit more challenging: planting a garden.
Now, it we weren't working with this little nice plot of brown soil, with a few weeds here and there. That dirt had to be the worst dirt I have seen in my entire LIFE.
We were working with crushed coral and stone, which tinged the ground gray. Stones lay everywhere, in all shapes and sizes. About an inch under the entire area we worked at, a huge rock impeded our digging process. The whole place was basically a massive quarry. We had no Oh-Ohs to hack away at the rock, and only one pickaxe. So, we switched to plan B: Making mounds to plant in.
After extensive iron raking and digging, (We had enough rocks to build two expansive rock barriers for the plants) we finished with all the mounds for our plants. Using compost from our earlier lunch, we fertilized our plants and watered them. That ground was so dry, that the water actually changed the color of the dirt from a light gray to a dark brown.
However, we got it done. In less than 5 hours, our group had planted an entire garden of trees, plants, and herbs. And no artificial chemicals; after all, one of the conference's theme was to raise "organic awareness."
That was the last significant activity of the day, we had dinner, debriefed, set up our cots, and went to sleep. (Boys and girls slept in separate tents, although the "separation" was only about 50 feet.)
I woke up at 5:00 for some strange reason, even though the "wake up" time was 6:00. I took the opportunity to shower, get dressed, brush my teeth, and all that good stuff. Soon, everyone else woke up and followed suit; we met up in the Halau at about 7:00.
After discussing the upcoming activities, we Pule'd, and had breakfast.
After the meal, we broke up into 5 separate groups, each group going to different places on the island to learn about different things, for about 5 hours. I stayed at the campsite, to learn more about aquaponics.
My group spent about 4 hours building two full-fledged aquaponics systems, and fine-tuning them. We took that extra hour to eat some much-needed, (Need I say?) organic lunch.
After each group finished at their separate sites, we all gathered in the halau, debriefed, and had an hour or two of free time. Many of us took that time to go to the beach park right down the road. A couple of teens, myself included, played some basketball with some random guys already at the outdoor courts for about an hour.
After walking back and refreshing myself with a shower, our group convened yet again, to 'Pule and eat dinner. (Hawaiian Luau'..... MAN, that was good.)
After the meal, each group who had attended the separate activities during the afternoon were asked to define the term "food sovereignty" for ourselves, and to relate that to 4 things: Connection to the Aina, (Land) Connection to Kanaka, (Others) Connection to Information and Education, and Action.
My group gathered our thoughts, and came up with a solid definition of food sovereignty: Freedom to choose what you eat, without any external influence. We presented that idea to the entire youth delegation, and received some great feedback, which caused us to refine our definition to external DIRECT influence, rather than just external influence.
After an interesting game of broken squares, (I can't tell you what it is, you need to find out for yourself. :-P) our group watched some videos on food sovereignty, and closed for the night.
Again, I woke up at 5:00, did my daily hygiene routine, and waited for the 'Pule. We were asked to think about a commitment to present to all who would attend the conference in the afternoon, (the planning committee brought in food speakers from around the island, and had many adults attending) that related, in some way, to food sustainability. We 'Puled, and had breakfast.
Throughout breakfast, I thought about what I should commit to. Finally, I decided on a bold, daring commitment. I wrote it down, and gave it to my chaperone, Aunty Lyn.
After sitting through an hour of less-than-entertaining forum speakers on food sustainability, (no offense meant) the entire group broke into separate workshops, all at the campsite, ranging from cooking, to gardening, to GMOs. I attended a chicken raising workshop, a high-school and college gardening workshop, and an aquaponics workshop.
Between the 2nd and 3rd workshop, the convention, now made huge because of the adults in attendance, 'Puled for one last time, and had lunch.
After the final workshop, everyone met back in the halau, and listened to some closing remarks. The final speaker invited the students up on the stage to present their various commitments to food sovereignty. These promises ranged from giving up chips, to donating a pig to the next convention, to limiting fast food consumption.
In a crazy state of mind, (I don't know how I'm ever going to fulfill this thing) I committed to helping at least 5 people a month start an organic garden.
Anyways, the conference ended quite smoothly. I and a few others helped break down the tents and chairs, and transported some borrowed resources to other sites. I said my goodbyes, got some email addresses and facebook names, and left the conference.
I made some great friends at ‘Āina Ho‘ōla o Mā‘ilikūkahi 2010, including Uhi, Kawika, big and smaller Keli'i, Kaiwi, Sarah, Nikki, Ku'u, Kahala, Kala, Geri, Aunty Ilima, and tons of others!!!!
I really have only one critique about this conference: the level of morality. There were a couple of bf/gf today, ex/ex tomorrow relationships, as well as a few campers trying to sneak in their cell phones and hide them, (we were banned from having any electronics) and even some boys and girls trying to sleep together.
All in all, though, that was an excellent conference.
Will I be there next year?
Brah. Guarantee.
You know, I have nothing against sushi conveyers, or restaurants that use them. Quite often, the ones that use a form of conveyers have the best sushi.
However, I have noticed two things wrong with sushi conveyer belts, reinforced by my dinner tonight at Kuru-kuru sushi.
First, they put an essential element of the meal, the Wasabi, on the belt. This may not sound bad at first, but when people start taking the Wasabi off, keeping it, and leaving a space open on the belt for the chef to fill with another sushi plate, you leave spice freaks like me waiting 10 minutes for a container of Wasabi.
Also, who knows how long that Sushi plate has been on that thing? Ever try warm seaweed salad sushi? >.<
Quite frankly, I have had enough of people saying "The war is unnecessary," "The war is too expensive," or "The war is unfair," and using those assertions as justification to ignore the soldier's sacrifice.
I understand the arguments that they pose, and the reasons why the war was unnecessary. However, we are far too deep in it now. Our main enemy, the Taliban, (Which is radical Islam, whether my Muslim friends like it or not) have been angered far too greatly. They live by a war-like code, (argue that, when the Qu'ran itself states "strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them") and will stop at nothing to regain what is theirs, and to take revenge on those who wronged them. If we simply withdraw, what is to stop them from calling us cowards, or even worse, being consistent with the Qu'ran and following us to attack us on our homelands?
Perhaps the war was unjustified. Perhaps it is way too expensive. However, pulling out may prove even more expensive than we know, if the Tali follow their holy book. That is why, since we have started, we have to finish it.
You cannot say that soldiers are not heroes. Serving in the military is the hardest job in America right now, going to a foreign country, where there is a sniper around every corner that wants every intruder dead. The soldier doesn't even know if he will see his family again. They made the ultimate sacrifice, their very lives, in order to preserve your rights to talk trash about them freely. They endure hardship, suffering, and misery so you can experience peace, joy, and contentment.
Even if you disagree with the war's enactment, take this day at least to remember those who have fallen, for our independence in the past, and for our freedom in the future.
About Me
- TallguyCPO
- Me in a nutshell: Governmentally Opinionated. Ecclesiastically Inculcated. Domestically Educated. Racially August, Relatively Speaking. Call me indoctrinated, because I'll agree, doctrine is a part of ideology. Call me close-minded, I'll agree, because the truth is all that is important. Call me weird, I'll agree, because... well... I'm weird. Boy, that's a big nutshell.