One Way Not To Spend Christmas Vacation

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Maybe it was the time the taxi dumped him at the Iraq-Kuwait border, leaving him alone in the middle of the desert. Or when he drew a crowd at a Baghdad food stand after using an Arabic phrase book to order. Or the moment a Kuwaiti cab driver almost punched him in the face when he balked at the $100 fare.
But at some point, Farris Hassan, a 16-year-old from Florida, realized that traveling to Iraq by himself was not the safest thing he could have done with his Christmas vacation.
And he didn’t even tell his parents. Article

NINETEEN THINGS THAT IT TOOK ME 50 YEARS TO LEARN

This has been around for awhile but since this is an introspective time of the year, it just came in over the net again, some people with short attention spans are bored with the Christmas Creature thought it deserved a republish. If you know who actually wrote the list keep it to yourself, once it hits the group chain email circuit pretty much in the public domain.

1. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

2. If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be "meetings."

3. There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."

4. People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.

5. And when God, who created the entire universe with all of its glories, decides to deliver a message to humanity, He WILL NOT use, as His messenger, a person on cable TV with a bad hairstyle.

6. You should not confuse your career with your life.

7. No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.

8. When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy.

9. Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.

10. Never lick a steak knife.

11. Take out the fortune before you eat the cookie.

12. The most destructive force in the universe is gossip.

13. You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.

14. You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.

15. There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age eleven.

16. The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above average drivers.

17. The main accomplishment of almost all organized protests is to annoy people who are not in them.
18. A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person. (This is very important. Pay attention. It never fails.)

19. Your friends love you anyway.

Merry Christmas

Christmas 2006

Making One Laptop per Child a reality

Part of this is a self serving "look how good we are" for Linux distributor Redhat but it does show some promised for the future as the cost of information plummets. A $100 laptop you can barely buy two text books for that price.

When Nicholas Negroponte, the chairman and co-founder of MIT's Media
Laboratory, dreams, he dreams really big. And he dreams in red. As in Red Hat.
The One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project is Negroponte's big dream, and Red Hat
is helping the dream inch closer to reality every day.
So what is the OLPC
project? It is a program to enable all children, everywhere, have the best
education possible. Creating and distributing inexpensive laptops will allow
students to become more active and creative, letting them take their learning
beyond the walls of their schools and off the pages of textbooks and writing
tablets. These $100 laptops will serve as libraries, music studios, art
galleries and communications devices, using an open-source software platform
that the students can customize and expand as their learning needs and
programming skills grow. These machines will permit students to move beyond
static, information-centric views of computing and learning by providing a
vehicle for experimentation and collaboration. Article

Emily Goes To The Movies

KING KONG

Review by Emily Trosprel 8th Grade BHMS

Three hours have never gone by faster in Peter Jackson’s epic remake of the classic story, King Kong. Kong begins in the Depression-era where out of work vaudeville actress Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) becomes desperate enough to attempt to steal an apple. That’s when Carl Denham (Jack Black) notices Ann and offers her a role in his film, and Ann, desperate as she is, accepts. They travel to the mysterious and undiscovered Skull Island along with screenwriter Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody). There they encounter hair-raising natives who eventually kidnap Ann and offer her up as a sacrifice to Kong himself. Then the action really starts to pick up as Jack, Carl, and the rest of the crew encounter dinosaur stampedes, giant insects, and repulsive, man-eating worms while Ann and Kong run into trouble themselves, namely three ferocious T. rexes.

While Watts, Black, and Brody are brilliant in their roles, the real star is Kong thanks mostly to Andy Serkis. He embodies Kong, and when you look into the ape’s face, you can truly see sadness, love, and pain. Not to mention that the special effects that create him are completely convincing as are all the numerous CGI creatures which leads to many edge-of-the-seat action sequences that never seem to let up. All of that makes for an exciting and entertaining film, but what truly makes King Kong epic is that, amidst all of the expected action, the heart of the story is still one of love and is, quite simply, beautiful

FOUR stars out of four for KING KONG.

Now if you want to compare it to the real King Kong

Yet Another Gift Suggestion

County Opposes Longswamp Sewage Plan

The Berks County Planning Commission has voted to notify the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection that it disapproves of Longswamp Township's plans for a new sewage treatment plant.

Planning commission members also said the township has not given enough consideration to expanding and upgrading the Topton plant.

“We disapprove of this plan because it is a continuing inconsistency with our comprehensive plan and because of the inefficiency of redundant dual-treatment plants,” Scott said. Article

Have A Merry PA Christmas

Wasn't going to do this because of the flak over the mistake with the Thanksgiving turkey but what the heck. Article

Lifelong Learning

For the perpetual student with a continuing thirst for knowledge on your Christmas list try a lecture series from The Teaching Company . Excellent series of lectures from some of the best authorities in each field. They have courses on Business, Fine Arts, Music, History, Literature, Philosophy, Religion, Science, Mathematics and the ill named social sciences.

You don't even have to worry about delays in shipping just download and burn them to CD. We are all born not knowing but dying that way is a matter of choice.

Emily Goes To The Movies

Seems like Ms Emily couldn't make it to school because of the snow but she could make it to the movies.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Review by Emily Trosprel 8th Grade BHMS

The enchanting first installment in the masterpiece by C. S. Lewis comes to life in an adaptation that is nothing short of stunning. It is World War II, and the four Pevensie children, Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy, are sent away to the country for their protection. They live in the house of the eccentric Professor Kirke where Lucy discovers a wardrobe while playing hide-and-seek. When she steps inside of it, she is transported to the magical yet troubled world of Narnia where an evil witch is keeping the land is a state of perpetual winter. Soon, all four siblings become involved in a war against the witch, aided by the great lion, Aslan.

Tilda Swinton is particularly impressive as the White Witch, who plays her character with more then enough unearthly intensity, and the four kid’s performances, though not perfect, are much better then could be expected. The movie manages to not be dominated by special effects, yet it has plenty of them and first-rate ones too. They are most noticeable in the final battle which is visually spectacular, though it pushes the PG rating as far as it will go. The plot sticks pretty much to original story with only a few things changed or added, and those few things only make the film more enthralling. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is well worth the price of admission.


Three and a half stars out of four for The Chronicles of Narnia.

An excellent gift for someone on your list would be the box set of this classic by C.S. Lewis. Hey I have to keep Ms Emily in movie tickets somehow.

Have A Good Long Weekend Kids

An early Christmas present School is Closed today.

When 4% raise is really a 2% raise Continued

Back on November the 9th we discussed when 4% raise for teaches is not as clear cut as it sounds. Mainly because how without out any increase the budget for salaries would have grown hy 1.7%. Salaries would have remained the same but teachers with under 14 years experience would have moved up a pay grade based on their experience. An amount greater then this had to be negotated in order to fund any raise at all for teachers with 14 or more years. About half the teachers fall into this catagory.

Subtracting the 1.7% from 4% gives 2.3% which is approximate the raise teachers in the upper brackets received. The following are real numbers for teachers under the new 4 year so called 4% contract at the top of the ladder with 14 years or more

Teacher with a Bachelors + 24 additional hours
Previous Contract $61,600
2004-05 $63,027 2.3%
2005-06 $64,668 2.6%
2006-07 $66,298 2.5%
2007-08 $68,127 2.8%

Similar percentage increases for the other pay grads
Masters, Master +12 Masters +30 and the final grade

Master+60
Previous Contract $67,100
2004-05 $68,704 2.4%
2005-06 $70,442 2.5%
2006-07 $72,217 2.5%
2007-08 $74,210 2.8%

These people also face higher home prices, higher taxes, higher oil prices and are effected by general inflation. As previously mentioned about half the teachers fall into the maximum experience bracket. This is good because they bring years of experience in helping young people but quality always comes at an extra cost.

If virsuses and spyware was not bad enough

you now have to worry about ET exposing your child and filling up the hard drive on your computer with alien porn.

Dr. Richard Carrigan, a particle physicist at the US Fermi National
Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., said efforts to decode signals from
space by means of programs such as Seti@home could leave computers running the
software open to attack from alien viruses. Article

Throught at first if this is all Dr. Carrigan had to worry about he was in pretty good shape. Then paging through some of the recent comments in the Topic Secion I think he might be on to something.

December Board Meeting

Alane Falcone and Rose Lamaestra were sworn in tonight as the newest board members along with returning members Roger Bollinger and Mke Sacks.

Afterwards Mike Grossman was elected President and Robert Lowry Vice President.

Bullet Invitational Tournament

Matt Toggas' was one of four champs for the host Bullets, who finished a distant second to defending tournament and PIAA Class AA champion Northern Lehigh.

Matt Yocco won the 103-pound title and the tournament's Outstanding Wrestling Award by scoring four falls in 2:54. He needed just 49 seconds to dispose of Abington's Kevin McNutt in the finals.

Nick Yocco (112) and Brad Stoudt (189) also won titles as the Bullets went 4-3 in championship bouts.

Brandywine Heights finished a solid second with 212 points. Northern Lehigh, which had five champs and 11 wrestlers place in the top three, had 266.5 points.

Since we don't have a sports reporter you can read the article featuring senior Matt Toggas in today's Reading Eagle

Have A Nice Weekend

hope to see you in April. The last one to the store gets the rotten egg.

From the weatherservice.
A MORE SIGNIFICANT WINTER STORM MIGHT AFFECT OUR AREA MONDAY AND MONDAY NIGHT. METEOROLOGICAL WINTER MAY JUST START IN ERNEST. PLEASE USE THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS TO PREPARE YOURSELF AND YOUR HOME FOR ANY WINTRY WEATHER