As we all know a night crawler is just another worm that could beat up a rattlesnake any other day of the week. When I was 7 my mother saw this gigantic night crawler that came right out of the ground and grabbed a chick weed in my mother’s garden and pulled it into the ground with it (kind of funny I’m remembering this now, maybe because I didn’t have a blog at 7)! When my mother told me this I was thinking OMG! hide your wife, hide your kids there snatching yo’ people up. Unfortunately I didn’t see the worm again but I’ve got a picture for you. As a final thing to everyone: there’s defiantly something in the water.
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The Wave is in it’s final stage and it is final chapters 13-17. Laurie has gone to the high school football game and she finds out that she has to give a salute to be let in the stands. She gets really mad with Brad and when he says that she can go up without giving the salute she is so angry that she doesn’t want to go in the stands and stomps off. At her house she holds the emergency meeting and asked why several members didn’t show up. Turned out they were afraid of The Wave. Laurie began to list through the special edition of The Grapevine and remembered that that there was going to be a story on the anonymous letter from the junior. She also thought to herself that the paper would be out at lunchtime. The next day before the paper came out at lunchtime Laurie gave a paper to Amy to read so she would come to her senses. She read it and said that she couldn’t say things about The Wave like that but Laurie argued that they were true anyway. But Amy said that Laurie was only against The Wave because she was no longer a star student. Laurie tried to argue and but Amy didn’t listen and so Laurie said she published the paper anyway. Later Ben was reading his copy of The Grapevine and he got a headache from learning of the sophomore getting beaten up. He thought this was terrible and as he was leaving he heard the football coach and another man steaming about The Wave. After going into the faculty room bathroom he looked into the mirror and asked himself if he had somehow slipped into the role of a dictator. Outside David was thinking to himself why people had to attack The Wave. Robert was upset and said that Laurie shouldn’t be aloud to say these things and she must be stopped. Brian said that him and David were going to have a talk with Laurie. Christy came home and told Ben to stop The Wave but Ben said he couldn’t stop now because he would get the students confused and upset. But Christy told him that he better hope principle Owens agrees with him because principle Owens wants to see him early the next morning. At the publications office Laurie was busy cleaning up the mess from the party they just had. After that she went to her locker and there and the word “enemy” was written on her locker. After that she began to get paranoid and got out of the school feeling safer outside. David then waited for Laurie to come to the route that she takes home and came out when she came along and tried to stop her from writing about The Wave. But she says she won’t and then they begin to start yelling at each other finally causing David to push Laurie on the ground. But when he did that he realized what he did and what The Wave was doing. After he asked her if she was okay and she said she was fine. At the Ross home Christy said to Ben he had to end The Wave tomorrow or principle Owens would. She also began pointing out all the risks he has created by doing the experiment. After thinking about it he thought about his plan and told Christy that he had a plan that might work. After Christy went to bed Laurie and David knocked at the door and told Ben about what is happening with it. So Ben told them he was going to end it tomorrow but they had to trust him without letting them know. He eventually got them to go home after getting them to trust him. At principle Owens office principle Owens threw a fit about what the parents are asking about and what everyone else was saying. After listening to principle Owens Ben apologized he then told principle Owens how he could fix it. At the history class Ben told his class that The Wave was not just a movement in this school but The Wave was actually a national movement and there was going to be a rally and see the national movement leader on closed-circuit TV. Horrified by this Laurie and David tried convincing the other students that Ben was lying which earned them glares and a trip to the principles office. After their little stop at the principle’s office they decided to head home and when they were walking through the park Laurie said she wanted to go back and see the national movement leader for herself. At the auditorium Ben saw all The Wave members come in and sighed at the thought of messy homework again. Christy came in and said to Ben good luck and when Ben walked to his podium he told Robert to turn on the TV’s. Laurie and David came to the doors and unfortunately found they were locked. After looking at the TV’s for a few minutes a student yelled at Ben and said “There is no leader, is there!”. Two Wave guards came over and kicked the guy who said there was no leader out of the auditorium and during the confusion allowing Laurie and David to slip in. At that moment Ben said they did and on the TV an image of Adolf Hitler appeared and Ben explained the idea of this experiment and how they all would have made good Nazis and how this is something that has the possibility of happening again and again in history. After learning this the students left feeling bad and horrible. When everybody finally left Ben noticed Robert leaning against the one of the TV screens with tears running down his face. Ben offered to take Robert out for lunch and told him there were some things they need to talk about. That is the end of The Wave.
I was surprised by the part where Brad had told Laurie that to be able to go into the stands for the football game she had to give The Wave salute to the members in the stands. But I was not surprised when Laurie was so mad she didn’t want to go into the stands when Brad told her she didn’t have to give the salute. I was surprised by this because now this a sign that The Wave has gone into overdrive and this is even worse than before. This has also given me a surprise because when you think about after you read the book because you notice it’s just Wave members in the stands and they are shunning all other non-members. I also think this surprising because what if this got to the point where The Wave members made other non-Wave members sit in a specific stand to show they aren’t Wave members.
I was also surprised by the part where even with The Wave the Gordon High Gladiators had lost to Clarkstown 42 to 6. I was surprised by this because I expected The Wave to cause the football team to become a awesome team. I was also surprised by this because all it did was getting their attitudes adjusted. I guess it makes sense because it takes more than a good attitude to win you also need to be able to play the game good. I was also surprised by this because I was sure that The Wave would be more strong if they won the game and this would make it a bigger threat.
I was surprised by when Laurie had shown Amy the special edition about The Wave in The Grapevine. The part that surprised me in that section was when Amy said she couldn’t say these things about The Wave. Like when she said that the only reason that she was against The Wave was because she wasn’t a princess any more. Another surprise was when she tell’s her that before The Wave half of everyone’s parents kept comparing their kids to Laurie. The other surprises included was how Amy got so defensive over The Wave. Another was when she acted like a complete stranger and said she needed to leave right away.
I think that the quote “There is no leader, is there.” was very meaningful in this book. I thought this quote was meaningful because it showed that person had figured out that this wasn’t real. I also think that this was a meaningful quote because Ben didn’t even expect a person to say that to him. Also because the student only said that because that person was frustrated. I also think this was meaningful because Ben even uses this to his advantage and says “Yes you have a leader” and shows a picture of Hitler on the screens.
Another meaningful quote in the final chapters of the book I thought was “There he’d been, denying that The Wave could hurt anyone, and at that same time he had hurt Laurie, his own girlfriend, in the name of The Wave!”. I thought of this quote as a realization to David of what was really going on inside The Wave. It also surprised me that it took so long for him to realize what is happening to people when their in The Wave. When the author described the effect of The Wave on people he said it was like a “trance” and I thought he was right about The Wave being a trance. This was also meaningful because this shows that all members of The Wave at this point would do the exact same thing that he just did and they might not even realize what they had done like David did.
My feelings on the “meeting the leader” is how scary it was to think that if Ben hadn’t ended it and this wasn’t a plot to dissolve The Wave it could be quite dangerous. It was also scary thinking that maybe The Wave members wouldn’t end it even if the Ben told them any ways. I found that it was also scary how David acted trying to get Laurie to stop writing her negative articles on The Wave and thinking that all The Wave members would act the same way too. The other scary parts on the final chapters of The Wave included when Ben had thought up a very risky plan on ending The Wave and when Christy had pointed out all the risks of The Wave had been given to Ben on his reputation as a teacher. But the most scary part was how Robert had said Laurie must be stopped from saying all those things about The Wave as if she must be destroyed.
Well this is my last post on The Wave, I hope you enjoyed my posts on this novel.
Sincerely, Siegfriedline
The Wave is now in part 3 and it is chapters 9-12. Ben Ross is now thinking about what has happened in his “little experiment”. He has also realized that his students are no longer falling behind in his class. Even the football coach is thanking him for The Wave. After he thinks of all this he then begins to day dream about The Wave showing up in a Time magazine article on education. At the publications office Laurie is trying to get her staff to focus on a story for The Grapevine which is becoming due.
When nobody comes up for a story someone suggests that they should do a story on The Wave. Laurie thinks about it but the staff makes the decision for her and she gives in. She agrees to make a story on The Wave and tells them to ask people what they thought about The Wave. At home Laurie’s mother came in and told her that she wasn’t comfortable about The Wave. She explained that if people took this seriously and only excelled in The Wave and when they left The Wave for the real world they would be devastated. Laurie had digested that fact and had told her that it was just a fad and she had nothing to worry about.
Mrs. Saunders took that in too and told her she was just glad Laurie wasn’t so caught up in it. After she goes back to her studying she begins to think about what her mother said and she began thinking was it really just a fad? Ben was having coffee and was called down to the principle’s office by Mr. Owens. After being called down Mr. Owens asked about The Wave and Ben explained why he had started it. Mr. Owens thought about it and asked Ben to make sure it wouldn’t get out of hand and Ben promised it wouldn’t. When Laurie had gotten to the publications office she found a note and read it.
The note was written by a anonymous person who was pressured into joining The Wave but didn’t work and even threatened by a senior trying to convince him. Laurie’s thoughts on The Wave were beginning to come into focus. As Ben had come out from Mr. Owens office he saw The Wave members putting together their banners and posters up Robert came to him and asked if he could be Ben’s bodyguard and after explaining why Ben said okay since it would enhance his image as a leader. Laurie was at her locker and thinking to herself then in the gym two guys were fighting and one of the guys yelled The Wave motto as a teacher broke them up. She found David beside her and he explained what he thought they were fighting about. When David asked if she was coming into the gym she said know and they got into a argument and so David left to join the rally.
At the publications office Alex and Carl came in and Laurie told them that they are going to have an emergency meeting about The Wave. At home Mr. Saunders talked Laurie and told her that he was told that there was a boy beaten up at school that day. Then he told her that the boy was Jewish which appalled her and told him that she was going to expose The Wave. Mr. Saunders told her to be careful and she said she would. That is chapters 9-12.
I was surprised by when Robert had asked Ben if he could be his bodyguard. I was surprised by this part because what could happen to Ben in a school. I was also surprised by the fact that Ben had let Robert be his bodyguard. Not to mention what is Robert going to do now he is a bodyguard. I also think that Robert is taking this too seriously, even for him. I think he also surprised Ben when he had asked him that question.
I was also surprised by another part when David had told Laurie what he thought the guys in the gym where fighting about. He believed that they were fighting because Deutsch was trying to steal Brian’s position in football all season and was just being a jerk. He also believed that this was coming to Deutsch for being a jerk. But in reality Deutsch was being beat up for trying not to join The Wave. What surprises me is the fact that David is so caught up in The Wave he is blinded by the fact that he got beaten up.
I think one of the most meaningful quotes in the story is “Welcome to The Wave-or else”. I believe this quote is meaningful because it shows what one of the characters in this story think of The Wave. I also believe this quote is meaningful because it shows what this group will ultimately turn out to be in the story. I also think this is also meaningful because it shows that people are afraid of not joining The Wave which plays a big role in this story. I also think this quote will play a larger role later on. This is also meaning full because people will think of this when they see The Wave.
Another quote is “ We’re going to put out to put out a special issue of The Grapevine. We’re going to expose this whole thing.”. I liked how she said the word “expose” as if it was a scam. I think that this is meaningful because it shows that The Wave is like a complete sham that everyone has been lied to about. I think this is also meaningful because everyone is going to find out what a lie this group was. I also think this is meaningful because Laurie is treating this all as a big lie to everyone. I also think this is meaningful because they believe The Wave is for the good of everyone and yet everyone is too scared to say no to it.
My next post is going to be the final four chapters of The Wave.
Sincerely, Siegfriedline
The Wave is back and it is now chapters 5-8. The students walk into the classroom thinking like it is going to be a normal day and then on the blackboard it said “STRENGTH THROUGH DISCIPLINE”. The students were wondering what it was about and so Mr.Ross told them that he was going to teach them about discipline. Everyone groaned and a few guys did a wisecrack. So he called up Amy and so he showed them a posture that he wanted them to try. After Amy did it everyone else began to try it as well.
So then he tried an experiment by telling them to walk around the room and then telling them to go back to there seats as fast as they could and after the first time told them that it was the largest mess he had ever seen. For the next twenty minutes they kept trying and trying and Mr.Ross even used a stop watch and putting them out into the hallway. Their final time was sixteen seconds. Then Mr.Ross then began a quiz but the students had to say Mr.Ross first and had to say it quickly as well. By the end of the class everyone is doing perfectly and they even stay after the bell rings. So he has to tell them that their dismissed.
Later Laurie, Brian, David and Amy were talking about how weird the rush of energy from Mr.Ross’s class felt. Then when David went to the washroom he saw Robert there combing his hair and acting like he was still in Mr.Ross’s class. Later at Mr.Ross’s house Ben was surprised about how his class had acted earlier that day and Christy was warning him that he might have created a monster. The next day at school Ben saw the students all organized and so he decided that he was going to keep going with the experiment and added “COMMUNITY”. He also told his class that there new symbol would be a wave. They had also practiced their salutes until they got it right. He also told them that they would do the salute when they see another Wave member.
Then at football practice David and Brian told everyone about The Wave and told them the motto and everything else about The Wave. That evening Laurie told her parents about her last two days of history class. Her mother had told Laurie that she didn’t like it but Laurie just told her that she didn’t understand. At the Ross residence that evening Christy keeps talking about how this experiment is going to completely turn upside down for them but Ben wants to see how far he can get this experiment to go. The next morning on their way to school Laurie and David were discussing about The Wave Laurie told David that Mr.Ross was brainwashing them and David told her that her mother was being ridiculous about it. At Mr.Ross’s class Mr.Ross was wearing different clothes and had added on the board “ACTION”.
He also handed out cards to all of the students and explained that the cards with the x’s on the backs were people who told Mr.Ross if other Wave members were misbehaving or not. At lunch all of The Wave members sat together at the same table and they discussed about The Wave and what Mr.Ross said about Discipline, Community and Action. That concludes chapters 5-8.
I was very surprised at the part where Mr.Ross was handing out The Wave membership cards and the people with X’s were informers. This is a part where Laurie can’t trust anyone who is a member in The Wave because if she goes to anyone an informer is going to know about this . This is also bad because now nobody can misbehave anywhere because most of the time they are with the other Wave members. I also believe that Laurie’s mom has every single reason to be concerned about Mr.Ross’s class right now. I agree with Laurie’s mom because I don’t think that I would want my kid being taught a taste of Nazi Germany at this level of extreme. But I would be freaking out not just being concerned about it.
In my next post I will do chapters 9-12.
Sincerely, Siegfriedline
42 years ago an incident had happened in Palo Alto that disrupted an entire school… 12 years later that exact incident had been turned into a novel with it having the events completely the same as it happened… today that book is now a story that just horrifies everyone as the event did 42 years ago… and it was known as The Wave. The Wave is a story about a high school history class that can’t under stand why the German people could have followed Hitler or the Nazis. So their history teacher creates an experiment that replicates how the Nazis organization had managed to gain a positive attraction from the Germans (you can just tell from this sentence that it’s not going to end well). So this is how the book begins. Laurie Saunders is chewing on the end of a Bic pen in her high school’s publications office and it says she chews on all of her pens and pencils. But she says that it’s better than smoking.
Laurie is just a bit mad at the people who are supposed to be working on the school paper: The Grapevine but instead enjoying the beautiful day outside. Laurie has been on staff for three years for The Grapevine and for three years it had always been late. Laurie gives up on anyone showing up and leaves for her next class. When Laurie went to meet her friend Amy Smith for their next class she decided to cheer her up due to the boring French class that Amy was in and shown her some funny faces during class. But the French teacher had seen her but saw her doing but before he could do anything the bell rang and everybody left for their next class.
Ben Ross was teaching history class in the high school and had been trying to put a role of film through a projector but got mad and gave up and decided he would wait for a student to help him with it. Then he began to think about grades and homework where many students didn’t bother about their homework or assignments. When they came in Ben asked David Collins (who is Laurie’s boyfriend) to set up the projector for him then when Robert Billings (the class loser) had come in and asked if they were watching a movie a boy named Brad said back a very nasty comment to Robert. When Ben had finished handing out homework assignments he talked to them about homework which very few paid attention to he counted that as the third time he had to talk to them about messy homework. The history class was watching a WW2 film on the Holocaust which had stunned everybody in the classroom. After the shock the students began to ask questions why the German people didn’t stop this but Ben couldn’t give any good answers to his students.
After everyone left Robert tried to sneak by Ben he failed and Ben tried to tell Robert just to try in school. At the Cafeteria Laurie and David and had a talk about that movie. Laurie is still upset about it but David says just to get over it. Later at the Publications office Amy is smoking a cigar (tsk-tsk) and so a couple of boys come in a startle Amy making her mad at them. Later Ben begins to get bothered by his students questions and so he decides to do an experiment on his students. At Ben’s house Christy Ross she see’s Ben’s reading a book and remembers him going through crazies about certain things and realizes that he is reading about WW2 she wonders what he’s going to be doing… and that is chapters 1-4.
I think my favorite part was when the students realized that life isn’t just candy an nuts and you can just go do whatever you want. I think that these teenagers have just realized that this is what life is really like in the really world. Well in my next post I will include chapters 5-8. Later.
Sincerely, Siegfriedline
Some of you haven’t heard about this story yet because on CBC it’s already in the back of the headlines. Those of you who’ve read the story know what I’m talking about. Israel has been developing and testing a computer worm that is meant to take out Iran nuclear centrifuges, and has apparently worked. Last Sunday the New York Times reported that the Stuxnet worm (funny how it looks like Skynet from Terminator) has shut down a fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges in November. The newspaper reported that the worm had been tested for the past two years at a heavily guarded secret nuclear plant at Dimona in the Negev Desert. So far, there has been no offical response from Israel on the worm probably because they don’t want to give a reason for Iran to invade.
Experts interveiwed by the newspaper told them that the Stuxnet worm caused the nuclear centrifuges spin out of control and cause 20% of them to self-destruct. I hope those centrifuges had no people in them when they self destructed. The worm also had another feature, when the worm was inside the system, it has the control screen saying something like no danger while the worm is the system. Apparantly the worm is so effective because the Israelis had tested out themselves. A nuclear weapons project may be in progress in Iran by 2015, hopefully it will never happen even though they say it’s for energy reasons.
What I don’t understand is why someone can’t just go over to Iran and make sure that Iran isn’t making nuclear weapons or supervise their production of uranium. Either way I think it is a bad idea to let Iran handle uraninium, but of course, I have a bad feeling about Israel as well. The one thing that Iran doesn’t realize is that if it does start nuclear warfare, no one will win. But know that I think about it, Iran could threaten with nuclear weapons to rule the world but of course, the six world powers might just crush them. Of couse we could just keep sending Stuxnet worms at Iran until they come up with a powerful fire wall, but until then we better hope some neogotiations might change Iran’s or till they get a new leader. Let’s just hope Iran doesn’t turn into a time bomb like North Korea.
“Remember, I’m pulling for you. We’re all in this together”. -Red Green
Sincerly, Siegfriedline.
Conflict in The Book Thief is very interesting, Zuzak writes it very well as he layers the conflict but still manages to hold the story together. But what is even more interesting is the way he deals conflict with Death. In life there are four types of external conflict and one kind of internal conflict, man vs. man, which is basic fighting. Man vs. nature, fighting against nature by being lost in the woods or trying to shoot an angry bear. Man vs. society, like someone fighting against a society such as say a person hiding a Jew in Nazi Germany. Man vs. technology, which is like technology ruining our lives.The internal conflict is man vs. self which is like someone fighting their own guilt. With Death as a character in the story you have a lot of internal conflict but a little bit of external conflict.
With external conflict Death, Death told God he doesn’t understand why he has to do this and God replies that it isn’t his job to understand which would be man vs. man conflict. With Death and his conflicts with nature, Death always has to collect souls which could have been killed by something in nature such an angry bear or a virus. When Death has his conflicts with society, Death needs to collect souls executed by governments for what ever reason. Finally, Death’s finally external conflict is with technology, due to new ways and developing ways to kill and execute people which Death still has to collect. For Death and internal conflict Death consistently is unhappy with his job and is always depressed with job because he feels guilty he has to take souls away from people.
Death, I think, is the character with the most amount of internal conflict and least amount of external conflict and I think that’s what makes Death unique in the story. I Know that that Death has al these different types of conflicts in the story, but I can’t what to read what other conflicts turn up.
Sincerly, Siegfriedline.
As some of you already know of the tainted barn feed in Germany, well the story has gone a bit father than before. Apparently the tainted feed has become not only positive in poultry and eggs, but in pigs as well, so if you think of famous German sausages you get an idea of how bad this is. So to responed to the poisoned pigs, German authorites have decided to slaughter hundreds of pigs in order to prevent them from going on the market, but where are the German authorites going to but these dead and toxic pigs? They can’t put these pigs in the ground because the dioxin (cancer-causing chemical) will be in the ground and will be very bad for the enviorment. They can’t burn the pigs or the dioxin will will go into the air. 
So I think that Germany has dug itself into a hole that will be hard for it to get out of. The pigs were ordered to be killed by the top agriculture official in the Lower Saxony state in Northern Germany after testing the pigs which were found with extreme and illegal amounts of dioxin in a farm in Verden. The farm purchased food pellets from a company who was belived to have started the scandel over dioxin. German firm Harles & Jentzsch GmbH, produced the fat for the tainted food pellets, is being investigated because of the company not alerting authorites for months which could get the company nailed for failure of informing the German authorites. Samples of the produced fat had 70 times the approved amount of dioxin (which I wonder why there is even an approved amount) according to tests by the Schleswig-Holstien state agriculture ministry. 
Gert Hahne said that he didn’t know how high the dioxin levels in the pigs were but he said they were above the maximum. Authorites have frozen poultry, egg, and pork sales from thousands of farms. Authorites vowed tough legal action to nail any person related to the tainted feed sent to thousands of farms in Germany. In Denmark, the Danes are monitoring German developements after a Danish company bought the tainted feed and gave it to hens. Although, if a consumer eats an egg “there are no health problems,” said the goverment agency, the hens were used for laying eggs not slaughtering which might be the reason for no health problems so far. 
The Danes were warned by EU on Sunday about tainted food entering Denmark. My last word of advice, avoid eggs, poultry, and pork while in Northern Europe.
Sincerly, Siegfriedline
If any of you guys live in Northern Australia or seen the CBC news story you probably know what I’m talking about. Apparrantly some rivers have their water levels rising pretty high and were talking major floods. We aren’t talking about those small little southern Canadian floods, we are talking about a flood ten percent larger than British Colombia! The reason this flood has gotten so large is because the geography in Australia is flat so it’s easy for the water to distribute over long distances (you know this if you’ve spilt water on a flat surface and kept pouring) without anything slowing it down. Since this flat terrain the water can’t just go somewhere cause there’s leverage for gravity to pull the water down into a contained area. So it just sits there until it soaks into the ground or until someone finds a way to get rid of that water and that would be very difficult. 
The flood has peaked in the city of Rockhampton swamping homes and drowning cars. About 200,000 people have been affected by this flood in about 40 communites state officals say. Paul Birch says that the water is at about 9.2 metre and is expected to stay at that level for a while. Chief Supt. Alastair Dawson says that it will take an extremely long time for the water to disperse completely. After the water has finished it’s peak, a recovery task force will be used to help the state recover from the flood. The damages for this flood could estimate to 5 billion dollars and 2 billion dollars in road repairs alone!
St George is preparing for rising waters and Theodore had 300 people evacuated, a week before the flood in Rockhampton, also had specialists in helicopters check on the saftey of power, water and sewage plants in the area. Officals are still trying to figure out if it is safe for residents to return to the area due to venomous snakes staying in the area after being washed away from their habitats. This flood has caused tons of damge to Australia but also affected places outside of Australia. For example: the flood has caused more coal shares with Canada. Australia is also probably going to have to get a loan to pay off the damage repairs which will have a country making money off the interest as well. I personnally hope Australia can pull through and I hope the people caught by this will be okay.
There’s just one thing I don’t understand, why aren’t we are hearing more about this flood because this is a pretty big flood.
Sincerly, Siegfriedline
We’ve been doing stuff on what we are passionate about and in response I did my passion which is botany. I made my favorite type of plant which are carnivorous plants. So I chose to make the most famous carnivorous plant: The Venus fly trap (VFT). I made the plant out of paper mache and paper and rubber twist ties. I think it went pretty well here’s the picture.
You can compare it to this real Venus fly trap.
I chose this because I’m amazed by carnivorous plant traps and how they work. I got the idea from my grade 6 arhtropod project where I made the he picture archnide from paper mache as well. I tried basing it on the VFT from the picture above and I think it worked out well. Sadly these plants are endangered and are quickly losing their home so let’s save the carnivorous plants!
Sincerly, Siegfriedline
