The Terrible Program:

When I was in school there was a program called the Gifted and Talented Program or GT for short. The thing about the program was that it was for students who were considered to be "gifted" and "talented," meaning that all those who were in the program where supposed to have above average IQs.

See the thing about the GT program is that as students we were all segregated from the rest of the student body.  The only time that we engaged with other students was either doing recess, PE, and sometimes lunch.  But for the most part, as I already said, we were cloistered up amongst ourselves.  Year after year it was always the same students, different teachers, but the same students.  Oh sure you had some students who were new, some who left the program either because it was too hard for them or because they had moved, but the majority of the students in the class stayed the same.

So year after year we were all stuck together, we never really interacted with the other students.  And the reason why this is so bad, why this program was so terrible, was because it didn't let us interact well with others who were different from us.

It was like we were set apart from everyone else, we were the GT students, the smart ones.  In fact we were even told that we were smarter than all the other students, that we were special.  The other students just weren't as creative as we were, they weren't as smart.

And this developed a superiority complex amongst us GT students.  We were told that we were better than the other students and so we believed it. The others just weren't as smart as us, we were the special ones.

I don't think I have to tell you why this was bad.

As a whole we were a pretty stuck up bunch.  We looked down on the others.  Well... Not all of us, but I can tell you it wasn't very pleasant being in that program.

It turned kids into narcissists.  Condescending, entitled, beasts who looked down on anyone deemed 'inferior,' ( a.k.a. dumber).  During award ceremonies us GT students marched up to the stage with smug looks on the smug looks on our faces as we accepted our rewards.  I remember students for others classes staring at us in the halls, with this look of awe on their face.  And we in turn, smugly head our heads high and looked at our noses at the other non GT students.

I hated it.  I finally left the program after three years, I'd had enough.  Enough of the bullying, enough of the "rules" imposed by my classmates during recess, enough of the work, the expectations, the teachers who wouldn't accept anything but perfection, (we were the 'GT' kids after all).  Enough of the attitudes of my fellow classmates... Just enough.  By the time I left the program, all dignity and self-esteem that I had once had was gone.

It wasn't too long after I left the program, left the school, that the Gifted and Talented Program was discontinued.

The whole set up of the program still irritates and disgusts me.  Basically segregating students due to their IQ is just a recipe for disaster.  We were just kids.  We should have been in the same rotation as the others.  Starting every year with a new class, filled with mostly new classmates, and maybe a few familiar faces.  But no.  We were kept together, some had even been in the same class since Kindergarten.

I don't know about the others, but I found Middle school and High school somewhat refreshing, (it was as stressful as h*ll, at least for me).  Instead of being stuck with the same students you could know choose.  If you wanted to be in the advanced English class but not the Math, then you could.  Not great at History but have a knack for Science?  Be in the advanced Science class and the regular History class.

In this way you could further strengthen the areas that you were the best in and challenge yourself.  If their was a particular subject that you weren't that great in, then you didn't have to stress about taking advanced lessons.

The best part by far however, was that you got to interact with so many more people.  Make friends you never would have made before.  I found that to be the best part of leaving the GT program behind.  I could meet new people, make new friends, and not have to worry about status structure that wad implemented in the GT classes by my own fellow classmates.  I didn't have to worry anymore about their pecking order.  I could relax more, I could enjoy some of my classes.

It was wonderful.

Okay... Maybe I Overexaggerated

Yeah, recollecting the Amazon earnings wasn't as hard or that much if a pain to do.  All I ended up having to do was do a search in my emails for notification of my sales.  And then I added everything up using a calculator.  So in the end I didn't really have anything to complain about.

Although... I can say I learned my lesson.  Never,  NEVER, create notes on an MP3 player, tablet, whatever, without also making a hard, (as in hand written on paper), copy.

The real sad thing is is that I actually can't remember the last time I wrote something down that was of any substance.  What I mean by that is writing something other than adding things to the grocery list or making small notes about, say the location of a garage sale, or the hours of a store, or writing down a book and it's author that I want to find in the bookstore.

The sad truth of the reality is that we, as a developed nation rely too heavily on the Internet and electronic devices such as calculators, computers, GPS, laptops, tablets, smartphones... I could go on but the fact of the matter is that we rely so much on technology that even simple mundane things, such a basic math are considered to be bothersome, troublesome, a 'pain' as I said in my last post.

There was no reason why I couldn't have the done the math myself. It's not like it was hard, just basic arithmetic, a word I couldn't even spell!  It took me several tries before spellcheck, another thing we rely on too heavily to figure out what I was trying to spell.

We just don't think for ourselves anymore.  We have computers that do the thinking for us, calculators to do the math, and spellcheck so that we, in effect, (affect?), see I don't even know what word to use!  You don't even have to worry about spelling anything correctly because either your misspellings will be autocorrected or spellcheck will catch your mistakes for you.

Even typing this, even typing this post I haven't capitalized my 'I's, its been auto-corrected for me. I'm not typing in any apostrophes, again it's all  autocorrect.

What were to happen, what were to happen if all of a sudden we didn't have the Internet anymore?  People buys things online, sell things online, shop, pay bills.  Some people's whole livelihood depends on the Internet.  What would happen if the Internet just vanished?  Crashed?  Would war break out?  Would the world be plunged into a depression even more severe then the Great Depression of the 1930s?

So much research, scientific research, is done online, shared online, the information gathered from tests and observations is all put online.  Sure there are still medical books, and doctors who keep a paper copy of their patients' medical records, but so many lives are saved today because of the vast amount of information and knowledge that can be found by simply typing into a search engine.

Do we as a society rely too heavily on technology?  We certainly don't need it for our basic survival.  The Amish live without the modern conveniences, (another word the I don't know how to spell and took spellcheck a while to figure out what word I was trying to type), and they've managed.  In fact, people live off the grid everywhere, either by choice or by circumstances, may they be environmental, cultural, or whatever.

The point that I'm trying to make is that they MAKE DO.  They live their lives.  And whose to say that their lives are more complicated or harder then our own?  I would argue that it is actually the other way around.  By relying so much on technology, so much on the inventions of the 20th and 21st centuries that our lives are more complicated, are more difficult and challenging.

And yet here I am.  Writing this on a tablet, on the Internet, to post on a blog.

The Mystery of the Vanishing Notes

This blog is going to be so random...

Anyway... So last night while I was updating a list on my iPod Notes app, half of my notes vanished.

I have no idea how this happened.  It this something that just happens with iPods?  I know someone else who's experienced the same thing... Notes just disappearing, seemingly for no reason. But its never happened to me before... Until today.

It wasn't like I had a ton of notes on the app.  I only had eight, but it is still so bizarre that half of the just disappeared.  And what's more frustrating is the three of the four  notes were lists of various things that I had made.  Only one of which I managed to remember the bulk of and another that I have to remake with sources that I have to go around and collect. It's not like that I lost anything extremely important, it's just going to be a pain to remake that last list.

I really shouldn't complain though.  I mean, as I said I didn't lose anything vital. The most annoying thing that I lost was the list of the earnings I had made from selling books on Amazon.

Okay... So I just did a search and apparently, notes from iPods spontaneously deleting themselves is a problem other people have faced.  Why doesn't Apple do something to fix it?  They practically release new iTunes updates every other day, the least they could do is create an update so notes don't just up and vanish.

...  Trying to fix the solution.  From what research that I gathered in about five seconds, if I sync my iPod into iTunes it might just restore the notes I lost.  Might...

And... It didn't work... Curses!

Note to self: Write down the notes you make on your iPod on, *gasp*, paper as well.

You remember paper, right self?  It's the thinly sliced and processed trees that you were forced to write copious amounts of educational material on during your many years of schooling and receiving of a 'higher' education...

Ahhh!!

*sigh* Back to work on recollecting my Amazon earnings... *Curses!*  Uhg, I hate math.

Christianity: Question of the Trinity

I decided to start my blog with this post since it was the first thing that came to my mind.  For starters let me explain a little about myself.  I am a Christian.  I am also an ordained minister with Open Ministry.

Now as to the subject of this post: the Trinity.  For those of you who don't know, the Trinity in a staple in Christian doctrine.  It is the belief that God the Father exists in three forms; the Father (God), the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Ghost/Spirit.

While the first two forms are easy to understand, it is the last, that of the Holy Spirit that often confuses many.  This confusion not only is prevalent among non-believers but believers as well.

Once, the discussion of the Holy Spirit came up in my church.  My pastor remarked that he didn't think that the Holy Spirit could be truly understood by man.  Whilst thinking upon his comment on how one could explain or not explain the Holy Spirit, a revelation of sorts, came to me.

The Holy Spirit could be explained. It was as simple as water...

Water, like the Trinity, exists in three separate forms.  It exists as a liquid, as a solid, and as a gas.

I realized that the different forms of water could be applied to explain the Trinity.

The conclusion I came to, and shared with my pastor was this:

The Father is like the solid state of water, ice.  God is a physical being, always present.  He is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient; all powerful, all knowing, and always present. Ice is powerful, it was an iceberg that sank the Titanic after all, and seemingly always present.

The Son is like the liquid state of water.  Jesus, by His death, washed away the sins of all those who believe in Him. In the Bible, Revelations 7:14 states, “...they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." The Lamb, referring to Christ.  In Christianity one is also baptized with water, as a symbolic for of one's new devotion to Christ and their cleansing, or 'washing away,' of their sins.

The Holy Ghost is like the gaseous for of water.  It can not be seen but it is always present and sometimes, like with humidity, can be felt.

I hope that this post helps some to better understand the Trinity and its separate but connected parts.  For just as water exists as a liquid, solid, and gas, it is still the same element; as is the Trinity - the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost exist as three but are ultimately one.