Getting Organized: My Nightstand

I have never been the most organized person, and by that I mean most of the time my floor is nothing more than a fond memory that has been taken over by my clothes, magazines, and any other objects that I got bored with. So, when I started this organization adventure, it seemed like a refreshing opportunity to do something i normally wouldn't. The hardest part was choosing which daunting task to decide tackle. In the end I chose my nightstand because I have been meaning to get rid of most of the junk sitting on it anyways and I would like to use it as a place to put my laptop.

My first step to organizing my nightstand was to discard anything that I did not need anymore. This included many past months' issues of Seventeen magazine as well as old worksheets that had happened to find their way over to my nightstand. I have a habit of holding onto things out of fear that the minute they're gone I am suddenly going to need them. However, surprisingly, it felt good to finally throw out all the things that had just been sitting there for months that I had yet to use.

Once I had gotten rid of everything i no longer needed (about 85% of what was on my nightstand) it was time to organize the remainder of what i had. My nightstand has a shelf underneath, which i used to put all of the books that I decided to keep. Then i had a shoe box that i used to put the rest of my magazines and put that under the nightstand. Finally, i put my scrapbook in the drawer of my nightstand and everything else back to where it belonged (i.e. DVDs in the basement, jewelry in my jewelry box).

At last, I had a place to put my laptop when I am not using it, where it can can charge. To my surprise this was a rather pleasant experience for me. Somehow having less clutter in my room created a sense of less clutter in my mind and left me feeling a little relaxed. I played music while I was cleaning and after a while, it stopped feeling so much like work. Overall I'm very pleased with myself and I am going to work hard to try to keep it as organized as it is now.

iMedia: Funny the Way It Is

"Funny the Way It Is" is a song mainly about irony. The song in itself is ironic because it is talking about sad things but it has an upbeat tune. In the song dave says, "Funny the way it is if you think about it, somebody's growing hungry someone else is eating out." However, when he says that this is funny, he is really trying to point out what a confused world we live in, where great things can be happening to people somewhere, and terrible things can be happening to other people at the same time.

The main question that this song makes me wonder is if this is really just the way things are in the world and we should accept it. Should we accept that some children are dying from constant violence and warfare, while other children are smiling and running around pointing their imaginary guns at their friends? Personally, I think this song is meant to open peoples eyes and say that it is not okay to have this attitude of: well, that's just the way things are.

Another thing that struck me about this song was the ending when Dave says: "Standing on a bridge, watch the water pass from underneath, it must have been much harder when there was no bridge just water. Now the world is small compared to how it used to be.." I am not sure why but this has always been my favorite part of the song. Maybe its because it just shows how now we are all connected to each other, so there is no reason that we should not care about what is going on somewhere on the other side of the world.

I believe that this song can affect our culture because it says a lot about how we are as human beings. Most of us do not take the time to really think about what is going on somewhere else at the same time as we are living our normal lives. It talks about the irony in the world, and how bad things are happening at the same time as good things, and it should make people wonder what can be done about this.

Connection: King Lear and the Aging of Populations

Today we learned about a very important concept in King Lear: Incrementalism. Incrementalism is defined as a process of making gradual changes to make a big change. Often the subjects of incrementalism do not realize what has happened until it is too late and the big change has been made, because they were oblivious to the little changes.

The example we are dealing with in class was in King Lear how Lear gradually loses his power to his daughters and does not comprehend it until they are giving him commands and taking away his knights. Once Lear realizes how unaware he was that his kingdom was slipping through his fingers and into the hands of his power hungry daughters, he goes mad because by this point, it was too late for him to do anything about it.

There is incrementalism in our world right now, and the most important thing is to notice it before it becomes too late. One example where it is too late is the aging of population in Japan. It used to be that only 4.9% of Japanese were over the age of 65 in the 1950s, with the majority, about 60% being between the ages of 14 and 64 and about 35% under the age of 14. In 2009, however, the number of people age 65 and over had increased to 23% while the number of people under 14 dropped to 13%. When these numbers are put next to each other, they seem like such an obvious change, but considering that they happened over a 59 year period, it went by almost unnoticed.

Japan's aging population has had many effects on their country. It has forced a higher dependancy ratio among their citizens and changed government spending so that much more has to be spent on nursing homes and providing welfare. It is projected that by 2025, 27% of all national income will be spent on social welfare.

Japan did not notice their problem until it finally hit them, but there is hope for other aging countries such as China, Korea, and even the United States. The first step is to recognize what is about to happen when the large population of adults in our countries become seniors and start to plan now what can be done about it. The most important thing to realize about incrementalism is that small changes can lead to big disasters, just as King Lear taught us.

360 Degrees: Should the US Continue to Fund NASA?

Today in social studies class, we discussed how NASA is requesting that the

united states spend more money on new innovations, stating that continuing to fund

them the same amount would produce no real outcomes. They promise reasonable

gains from space if the amount they request is met. Can this funding be justified?

There are many different factors to consider when trying to form an opinion

about this. One is, whether or not the outcomes of exploring space are beneficial

enough to justify spending $10 trillion over the next thirty years on space exploration.

Some of the advocates are claiming that we will need to be able to colonize other

planets when Earth is finally destroyed, and we need to be prepared.

However, why should we spend money to fix problems that do not exist yet instead

of taking care of the ones we have now? Some argue that this money would be

better spent on our military or paying our debts owed to other countries. Although,

I have to wonder that even if this money is not being spent on NASA, what can

guarantee that our government will not waste it on something else instead of

spending it on fixing our problems.

Another factor to consider is the jobs that will be lost if NASA is not continued.

NASA employs around 18,000 Americans, and many more work for them as

government contractors. If the government decides to stop spending on them,

many of those people will be without a job. It can also be argued however, that

the money saved from not funding NASA can be used to create more jobs, but once

again, there is no guarantee of where the money will be spent.

Perhaps if the government decides to stop funding NASA at the moment and

focus our money on more immediate issues, then after our country gets back up on

its feet, it will be able to afford the luxury of space exploration. Maybe at that

point, America would be able to fund NASA fully and get the complete benefits from

what it has to offer for our nation, and possibly the whole world.

There are many different ways to view this NASA dilemma, and all of them

are points that must be taken into consideration when deciding whether or not it

would be beneficial for our country to continue funding NASA at the same rate it

has been for the past 20 years, fully allow all the funding that NASA is asking for,

or to stop funding NASA completely.