Nim Vs. Zan

After reading half brother and watching Project Nim It makes me realize how unrealistic Zan actually acted in the Half Brother compared to Nim. Nim is a lot wilder than Zan but I kind of expected that since in real life chimps are way crazier. For a long time Zan was just a little guy making mischief every now and then, he didn’t really bite too many people. Nim on the other hand did a lot of crazy things, he bit open a girls cheek and also jumped on a girl named Laura and smashed her face against the ground. Zan was more like a human than was a chimp but Nim was more like a wild chimp who was really rough and hurt a lot of people. Zan was kind and didn’t really do any weird stuff but Nim smoked weed and did all sorts of things he shouldn’t be doing. Zan didn’t go to a research facility, he only went to Dr.Helsons place and then he went to a sanctuary. Nim ended up going to a research for a while and then he went to a sanctuary. In the sanctuary Nim had a heart attack and died which was way different from the book because in the Half Brother Zan signed to Ben that he loved him. Zan did not have very many similarities compared to Nim because they were just so different, Zan was kind and loving and Nim was wild and harmful. Nim reminds me of Zeus from the Half Brother because Zeus was large and scary, he was also rough and dangerous. Over all Zan and Nim are almost like entirely different chimps, they share almost no simularities.
  

My Eyes!

Recently in the Half Brother we have seen a lot about animal testing and how wrong it is. I think it is wrong for many reasons. One of them is because when they test products on them the animals get sick or die. When they test hair spray they spray it into the animals eyes to see how much it takes to make them blind, they do the same with stuff like eye liner and make up. For medicines they inject a disease into the animal on order to test there new medicine. When it works the animal is ok but if it doesn’t it will stay sick and maybe die. Animals would be force fed pills to see how much you should consume daily before you get sick. I even saw one picture with a bunny that had its ears burned badly.

I suppose you could test on them, it makes sense that you would want to make sure your products are safe. But the damage it does to the animal you test it on is horrific. I can see why people do it, if your product isn’t safe and you make it for sale it could possibly not work or hurt someone. It is worse if it is a human being killed then an animal I suppose. You could find a cure that could save someones life and that would be great for who ever has the disease. You would figure out how to cure someone from there illness and could become something much larger like Tylenol.

I don’t think that people should test on animals because if you put yourself in the animals place you would probably scared out of your mind. I don’t think anyone would like it if someone were to spray hairspray at your eyes until you are blind. Imagine if you were a monkey having needles constantly that have diseases in them and then having more needles to see if it cures the disease. If the cure doesn’t work there would be a possiblility that you would die. It would be extremely terrifing if I was abused in a horrible manner. Animals have feelings just like anyone else and they can feel pain that is inflicted to them. I absolutely hate needles, they creep me out imagine if the animal was scared of needles as well, it would be feeling the exact same thing as you when you get a needle.

The First Half…

The first half of the school year was not very exciting. Most of the work I did not really enjoy. The work that I did enjoy how ever was learning about ancient Egypt, but most of the work was not as great. The exams we had to do were long but not as hard as I remember they were last year. The only exam I found a challenge was the Social Studies exam. This year I got extremely good exam marks, I got 98% on my ELA exam which is strange because I dislike ELA a lot. I got 97% on my Science exam which is also strange because that is not even close to a subject I enjoy. I got 90% on my Social Studies exam which made me a little mad because it is my favourite subject but my lowest exam mark. On my math exam I got 98% which is an incredible mark for me.

The first half of the year went by extremely slow at first but now that I look back it actually went by very fast.  The time between Christmas and September went by slow but after December it seems like time goes by quickly. I think that the time after Christmas is going to go by quicker than the time before Christmas, atleast I hope. By the time December first rolled around I just wanted to get out and enjoy our 2 week Christmas Holiday.

We were required to write a 6 word story of the first half of the school. Mine was “It was a feast of boringness”. As you can tell by the six words the first half of the school year was boring as it is most of the time. But the other half will go by quicker again as it usually does. When spring break comes I will be asking myself where did the year go? In September and October I was tired all the time and did not want to get out of bed. I felt like I would just doze off and fall asleep in class.
   

What Will Half Brother Be Like?

     Half Brother is a book about a family lets a monkey into their family and treats it like its a person. We are going to be reading it soon. I think the book is going to be like a documentary where it says the amount of days they had the monkey for and it tells the events that took place. I think they are going to treat the monkey like it’s a baby and give it a crib. Eventually I think they will get rid of it mainly because as it grows older it will probably become a lot more harder to handle and when it got mad it could become very dangerous. I think that the monkey will know a lot of sign language and will be able to communicate with the family.

I think the project will be a success. I think the monkey will be just like a normal person and will act similar. I don’t think the monkey will go to school though because I don’t think it would be able to the any work. But the monkey may become home schooled. I think the monkey will become smart and have feelings similar to a humans. I think he will be able to do normal human functions such as eating with utencils. He may even be able to write words on a piece of paper. I think he will be wild and break a lot of stuff like throwing vases maybe pushing the kids around and biting them, flinging fieces at people.

Over all I think that this book will be pretty interesting becuase im curious of what will happen. I hope that the project is a success  and the monkey improves a lot on the way. I want to see the monkey learn new skills and have a human like behavior.

My Experience in a Group Far Away

For the past 2 weeks we have been working with people from a place called Wingham, we are currently doing a presentation. Honestly I have to say I have not enjoyed working like this very much. The people I am working with are good but I have had way to many tech problems. Some days I couldn’t get it to work until we had to go. But now that the computers we have in our classroom have a browser called Mozilla Firefox things should be a lot better. Another problem I had is when I used Internet Explorer I would try to edit our presentation but it would only let me view it as a slide show. So I would have to sit next to one of my partners in our town to see what everyone was editing on the presentation.

Working on the document was good because I could actually edit it and go into the chatroom without having any problems what so ever. My partners that I work with are good to work with because there nice and they don’t delete stuff that you did without telling you. My partners get a lot of work done but in the past 2 weeks I have’nt got any work done, but now I think that should change.

When we actually present our presentation I think it will be good but I think I will be a little nervous becuse they live very far away and I do not know them very well. I know the people in grade 8 because I worked with them last year but the grade 7’s are new to me. I don’t really know how we are going to present our presentations but I think it will be on Skype. Im pretty sure you just have to read the speaker’s note at the bottom of the presentation because they cannot see it but you can.

Over all I think it was’nt that great of an experience but the parts where things did work were pretty good. I did’nt get as much does as I wanted to get done which was’nt that great. I did’nt really get to talk to the other people in my group that much because I could almost never get into the chatroom, mainly because of  tech troubles.

Things in Common

At ideahive.org I filled out a servey with 57 other students and I found a lot of us have things in common with eachother.  Lots of people play Call of Duty and I do to. A few people have cats and I also have a cat as well. Every one brushes there teeth every day at least one time I brush my teeth twice a day. Im the only one who’s favourite tv show is America’s Funniest Home Videos. The person most like me is Edi because we both like to play Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. But I still wonder what most kids in Wingham do other than school and working on the farm.

My Passion is Modding

Lately I have been modding my xbox controllers and ps3 controllers. Modding is when you take something like controllers and you make them better in a way like giving you an edge on video games. I have painted many of my controllers some are camos and others are random designs. I have put differnt colours of leds in them because the originals is a green that isn’t very bright. But the most recent thing I have done is a five mode rapid fire mod. I mainly use it for a game called Call of Duty Modern Wodern Warfare 2. The mod lets me shoot very fast and it gives me a huge edge on lots of shooter games. Im not sure but I might even make my thumbsticks light up. I made a website called Ninjacontroller.webs.com where people would send me controllers so I can pay them for $20 instead of spending over $100 for a controller. My set is currently still under construction but you can still see what it looks like at the moment. I like to get some of my stuff from a website called http://www.mycustomcontroller.com/. That’s my only passion for now but I will probably have more in the near future.

Stuff About Me

My name is Riley, my favourite thing to do is go outside or hangout with my friends. when I am not hanging out with anyone im play on my Xbox. My favourite game at the moment is Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. My favourite tv show is America Funniest Home Video. My favourite movie is most likely Hot Fuzz because its hilarious. My favourite food is anything pasta. Im not much of a book guy so I don’t really like any books except recently I’ve been reading a series called Amulet. I do not have a favourite colour but if I had to choose it would be blue or red. When it is summer I bike and go swimming with my friends. We also go quading and dirtbiking sometimes. Me and my family go boating and fishing. When its winter we go ski-dooing and ice fishing. I dont go outside very much when its winter because it gets really cold. That is everything you need to know about me and what I like to do.

The Wave, The End

This response takes place between chapters 13-17.
Laurie went to the football game and wanted to talk to Amy on the bleachers but was stopped by Brian. Brian said she could only go on the bleachers if she did The Wave salute but she refused to. Laurie and some of The Grapevine staff turned the Saunders home into a newsroom. They were making a special edition of the paper that was almost entirely about The Wave. The special paper would include the story about the anonymous junior and a report about the sophomore who got beaten up. Laurie showed Amy the stories that were in the paper but Amy still wanted to be in The Wave because she likes the way everyone is equal and no one is better than someone else. Ben could here two people in the hallway talking to each other, they were talking about how Ben had “brain washed” the kids. David, Robert and Brian were talking about how they would have to get rid of Laurie because she wrote the bad things that The Wave had done. They insisted that David would talk to Laurie to try and get her to stop writing bad things about The Wave. Ben’s wife told him that he should bring an end to The Wave. Ben knew that he should put an end to The Wave but he had to figure out how. People were resigning from The Wave and The Grapevine staff celebrated their success. When Laurie was going to leave the school the word “enemy” was painted on her locker and she became scared. The lights started to go out and she ran out the doors. David and Brian were waiting in Brian’s van outside of the school for Laurie to come out. David tried to convince Laurie to stop writing bad things about The Wave but she didn’t want to so eventually David got mad and pushed her to the ground. That’s when he realized that The Wave had made him into a different person. Christy told Ben that he had to put an end to The Wave or Principle Owens will. Ben knew how he was going to end The Wave and still make the kids feel like they have learned a lesson. David and Laurie came to Ben’s house and told Ben that he had to put an end to The Wave, Ben told them he knew he had to but he didn’t tell them how he was going to. He told them that they would have to trust him. Teachers had been complaining about The Wave and Principle Owen told Ben he had to stop The Wave, Ben told him the plan that he had to end The Wave. Ben was telling The Wave when the rally was going to be, he also told them that they were going to show the new national Wave leader. David and Laurie told everyone he was lying but instead they were escorted to the principles office. Laurie told David that she wanted to see The Waves new leader. At the rally there were guards and all of the doors were locked. The leader never popped up on the screen so a kid yelled out that there was no leader so two guards took him out and Laurie and David were able to slip in. A giant picture of Hitler was on the screen Ben told them that all of them were becoming little Nazi’s. That all of them had come close to becoming something as bad as this. Everyone was shocked and some in tears. When everyone left Ben saw Robert crying and cheered him up and Ben asked him if he wanted to get something to eat with him.
A lot of interesting things happened in the past 5 chapters but my favourite part of the chapters was when Ben told everyone that they were becoming mini Nazi’s because he gave a very inspiring and powerful speech. It was so powerful that some people even broke into tears. My favourite character in these chapters is Ben because I began to see the good in him. He finally understood how far The Wave had gotten and ended it in a very powerful way and he made a speech that made me want to keep on reading. A part that I really liked in the book was when David pushed Laurie down because he was so shocked when he figured out what The Wave makes you become. A part in the past chapters that surprised me for a few pages was when Laurie and David was in Ben’s when he said he was going to put an end to The Wave but instead he continued telling what was going to happen in the rally. A part that made me nervous was when the word enemy was painted on and all the lights in the hallway went off because I thought Laurie was going to get hurt by someone.

Welcome to The Wave -Or Else

This response takes place between chapters 9-12.
The Wave began to grow larger because of the recruitment of other students in other classes. The whole class was improveing in preparation and also class participation. The members of The Grapevine were trying to come up with stories for the school paper. Laurie had a talk with her mom about how Roberts mom saying he was a new person and Mrs.Saunders suspected that he had joined some sort of cult. Principle Owens wanted to speak to Mr.Ross about The Wave. Principle Owens wanted Mr.Ross to explain what The Wave was, he also told hims the benefits of The Wave and how it is affecting the people in his class. Laurie Saunders got a note from a boy telling her about a person who was harassed by a member of the Wave because he was not interested in joining. Robert said the he wanted to be Mr.Ross’s bodyguard, Mr.Ross was a little unsure about this but he knew it would make Robert feel good so he let him. Brian and Deutsch got into a fight, Laurie and David also got into a fight about the rally which made them break up. Laurie and some other people from The Grapevine wanted to make a group to stop The Wave. Laurie found out that a kid was beat up who was Jewish, he was a “dirty Jew”. Could this be the start of a new mini Nazi group?
In these chapter my feelings about the characters have changed, I don’t really like David that much any more because he seems to be to caught up in The Wave. My favourite part was when Laurie found out that a Jewish boy was beat up because this could be a start to something major. It interested me that Mrs.Saunders thought that Robert Billings may have been in a cult because of his sudden personality change. Could this mean that The Wave could be something bad like a cult? I didn’t understand why exactly Mr.Ross let Robert be his bodyguard because that says that the kids are hypnotized kind of and are like slaves. It scared me when a junior sent a letter to Laurie about when he was harassed by a member of The Wave because he did not want to join them.