From the NC...

10:31AM - All hail the Nerd GOD!!!

7:06PM - I always knew it.

Your results:
You are The Joker

The Joker 60% Mr. Freeze 57% Magneto 56% Apocalypse 49% Riddler 47% Juggernaut 40% Dr. Doom 40% Mystique 40% Dark Phoenix 39% Venom 33% Lex Luthor 28% Green Goblin 28% Kingpin 24% Poison Ivy 20% Catwoman 15% Two-Face 12%

The Clown Prince of Crime. You are a brilliant mastermind but are criminally insane. You love to joke around while accomplishing the task at hand.

5:25PM - What kind of magic spell to use?

9:33PM - Save the internet!

Save the internet!!!

http://www.wearetheweb.org/embededPlayers/theVideo.swf

5:05PM - MacGuyver rules.

You ARE MacGyver! You scored 92 variable 1!%

Congratulations! You've made it to the top: You've single-handedly saved the country from a waste spill, deactivated a missile from its hidden launch site, and you've still got duct tape left to spare. You're about as close to MacGyver as it gets. Except I hope you don't dress like you're from the 80's, too. But if anyone could pull that off, it'd be you. I salute you.

1:25PM - I have many names. And many deaths.

'What will your obituary say?' at QuizGalaxy.com

'What will your obituary say?' at QuizGalaxy.com

'What will your obituary say?' at QuizGalaxy.com

'What will your obituary say?' at QuizGalaxy.com

8:34AM - My portrait?

Take the Quiz and build your portrait!

I never wear hoodies. And I have blue eyes. But, not bad.

5:56AM - Livejournal now private.

Due to some subterfuge by a student of mine, who will remain nameless, I've made most of my posts private. Not that I have anything to hide, but if a student wants to know anything about me, they can ask.

10:00AM - Ethical Philosophy Selector.

Your Results:

1. Kant (100%) Click here for info
2. Jeremy Bentham (61%) Click here for info
3. Ayn Rand (59%) Click here for info
4. Plato (57%) Click here for info
5. Prescriptivism (56%) Click here for info
6. St. Augustine (56%) Click here for info
7. Spinoza (55%) Click here for info
8. John Stuart Mill (54%) Click here for info
9. Stoics (52%) Click here for info
10. Aquinas (52%) Click here for info
11. Jean-Paul Sartre (43%) Click here for info
12. Aristotle (36%) Click here for info
13. Ockham (36%) Click here for info
14. Cynics (33%) Click here for info
15. David Hume (33%) Click here for info
16. Epicureans (33%) Click here for info
17. Nietzsche (33%) Click here for info
18. Nel Noddings (31%) Click here for info
19. Thomas Hobbes (8%) Click here for info


So THAT'S why I'm the #1 Kantian Ranger.

http://selectsmart.com/PHILOSOPHY/

1:34AM - So... Much... To... Write... Just quotes, though.

I waited too long to start this journal entry. Well, can't turn back time. Youse guys will just have to wait. Yes, my SubProfile is dead. I've killed it, as I never liked updating it anyways. Plus it had all those darned popups. But, I did want to save my quotes, so heres they's be:

"He had good luck, a sharp wit, and a magic ring, and none of those are bad things to have in a pinch." --JRR Tolkien, The Hobbit

"Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly."
-Isaac Asimov

"My purpose is teaching. True happiness comes from love." --Robert A Heinlein

"With the pleasure of responsibility comes the burden of obligation." --Hank Hill

"When I look into a child's eyes, and see the light of knowledge I have planted there, then I know that no worldly pleasures, no amount of gold, and no desire can steer me from my true purpose: teaching." --Maria Montessori

"Love Justice and do Mercy." --Hebraic proverb

"There's no folk for talking like good hobbit-folk." --JRR Tolkien

"Deserves it! I dare say he does. Many that live deserve death. And many that die deserve life. Can you give that to them? Then be not so swift to deal out death in the pursuit of justice, for even the wise cannot see all ends." -JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

"He who breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom." --JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

"Though these young men unfortunately fail to understand that the sacrifice of life is, perhaps, the easiest of all sacrifices, and that to sacrifice, for instance, five or six years of their seething youth to hard and tedious study, if only to multiply tenfold their powers of serving the truth and the cause they have set before them as their goal - such a sacrifice is beyond the strength of many of them." --Fyodor Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov.

"There is, therefore, only one categorical imperative, and that is: to treat all humanity, even in thyself, as an end, and not merely a means to an end." --Immanuel Kant

"Well, kids, you tried, and you failed. So, the lesson is: Never try." --Homer Simpson

"I can't take his money. I can't print my own money. Why don't I just lay down and DIE!?!" --Homer Simpson

"And it never enters anyone's head that to admit a greatness not commensurable with the standard of right and wrong is merely to admit one's own nothingness and immeasurable littleness." --Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

"The conditions of conquest are always easy. We have but to toil awhile, endure awhile, believe always, and never turn back." --Marcus Annaeus Seneca

"A spiritual wound caused by laceration of the spirit is like a physical wound and, strange as it may seem, slowly closes over. And after the deep wound - spiritual or physical - has cicatrized, and the torn edges have come together, it only heals completely as the result of a vital force thrusting up from within." --Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." --Rudyard Kipling

"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children...to leave the world a better place...to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded." --Ralph Waldo Emerson

"America is not the land of opportunity, it's the land of redemption." --Dale Gribble

"For in those days love was ruled by a different convention than ours. In those days, it was chivalrous, adult, long, religious, almost platonic. It was not a matter about which you could make accusations lightly. It was not, as we take it now, to be begun and ended in a long weekend." --TH White, The Once and Future King

"For happiness is only a by-product of function... That is why nobody finds happiness, who who seeks it on its own account." --TH White, The Once and Future King

"Some people enter your life only to leave it again. And no matter how tight you hold them, you'll never be strong enough to make them stay." --Try Seventeen

4:28PM - List o' books bouncing around. I bolded the ones I've read. Italicized the ones I only own, but will read in the coming year.

1984, George Orwell
The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
Animal Farm, George Orwell
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery (I ain't reading this one!)
Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
The BFG, Roald Dahl
Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
Bleak House, Charles Dickens
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
Catch 22, Joseph Heller
The Catcher In The Rye, JD Salinger
Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
Dune, Frank Herbert
Emma, Jane Austen
Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
The Godfather, Mario Puzo
Gone With The Wind, Margaret Mitchell (Won't read this one, either!)
Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire, JK Rowling
Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling
Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
His Dark Materials trilogy, Philip Pullman
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Douglas Adams
The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
Holes, Louis Sachar
I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
Katherine, Anya Seton
The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, CS Lewis
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
The Lord Of The Rings, JRR Tolkien
Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
The Magic Faraway Tree Enid Blighton
Magician, Raymond E Feist
The Magus, John Fowles
Matilda, Roald Dahl
Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
Middlemarch, George Eliot
Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
Mort, Terry Pratchett
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
On The Road, Jack Kerouac
One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
Perfume, Patrick Süskind
Persuasion, Jane Austen
The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
Pride And Prejudice, Jane Austen
The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
The Ragged Trousered Philantrhopists, Robert Tressell
Rebecca, Daphne Du Maurier
The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Secret History, Donna Tartt
The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
The Stand, Stephen King
The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
Tess Of The D'urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee
A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
The Twits, Roald Dahl
Ulysses, James Joyce
Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
War And Peace, Leo Tolstoy
Watership Down, Richard Adams
The Wind In The Willows, Kenneth Grahame
Winnie-the-Pooh, AA Milne
The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

Someone's personal reading list, no doubt. I think I'm pretty well spread out. But, they include a lot more sci-fi than I would expect ouf an assembly of classics, and far too many children's literature books for me not to suspect that this is from some elementary school / high school reading list. Probably high school.

2:55PM

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
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What's YOUR geek code?

12:49AM

Got my first solo taste of Morning Dew this evening. Me likey. I will certainly return there, and grace it with my presence every evening that I can afford the one dollar beverage. Though I did not see the facist "One drink minimum" signs that were a regular at my old haunt. We shall see. Many good looking women were there. And some Jazz. I got nothing against Jazz. I do got something against their dimming the lights, though. Come ON, I'm READING, here!!! It should be interesting. And, it'll get me from out behind THIS thing while I'm in W-S. Not a bad place, really.

7:03PM - Opportunity

This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream:--
There spread a cloud of dust along a plain;
And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged
A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords
Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince's banner
Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes.
A craven hung along the battle's edge,
And thought, "Had I a sword of keener steel-
That blue blade that the king's son bears, -- but this
Blunt thing --!" he snapt and flung it from his hand,
And lowering crept away and left the field.
Then came the king's son, wounded, sore bestead,
And weaponless, and saw the broken sword,
Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand,
And ran and snatched it, and with a battle-shout
Lifted afresh he hewed his enemy down,
And saved a great cause that heroic day.

--Edward Rowland Sill


So very, very good.

11:01PM - Philosophy of Education

Well, got bored kicking people around in Warcraft 3, so I decided to look around my computer. Found another opinion essay I'd written some time ago. Still rings true, I think. And so, I post it on my "opinion page", as dubbed by the great Andy Smith.

My Philosophy of Education
By Christopher Bennett

My philosophy of education is complicated, both in its composition and the way it was composed. Various teachers and personal experiences in education have shaped the manner in which I perceive the definition and purpose of education.
My definition of education is a simple one, shaped by my own experiences in being educated. Education is simply the attempt to teach children. Education is the act of a mentor, teacher, or professor with knowledge of a content area attempting to impart that knowledge on individuals with less knowledge. It is not an attempt to impart social skills or change society, it is simply the attempt to impart knowledge on those with less knowledge. My strict definition of education has come from years of devoting myself to my studies. Throughout high school, I considered myself an intellectual, and I placed the advancement of my own knowledge above all other aspects. My first year at Wofford, I was unable to obtain the funds to cover the expensive cost of living on campus. Because of this, the only difference I noted in high school and college was that the classes were more difficult and had a greater scope in content. When my second year came up, I passed up the chance to live on campus, because I felt that this would interfere with my studies, which I consider far more important than any social "college experience" that I might receive. In this respect, I am a perennialist, as I see school as merely a barrage of knowledge for students to absorb, which is what I am most comfortable doing.
The purpose I perceive in education has been formed by my pursuit and love of the sciences. Since the fifth grade, when Mrs. Guitard first introduced me to zoology, I have been enamored with the study of the natural laws that govern our world. Scientists look at the world in a different manner than most other individuals. In that respect, scientific investigation is an important skill for all Americans to obtain. I have come to this conclusion after my first year at Wofford, in which I participated in an interim that discussed the lack of a "pure" science class at Wofford. In this interim, I was astonished to find how very few Americans understood the simplest principles of sciences such as Biology or Chemistry. This amazed me so much, because I fail to see how anyone could get by in this day and age without understanding how even a simple TV works, something they use every day. This made me realize just how important it is for all members of our society to gain an amount, even a small amount, of the ability to question and investigate the world around us. To this end, the most important purpose in education is to teach all students the basic scientific investigative principles: theory, investigation, and experimentation. In this manner, I am like both the Social Reconstrucionists and the Essentialists, in that I believe that education can be used to further the level of scientific knowledge in the community and also can be used to progress individuals to question the world and investigate. An effective teacher is one that promotes this form of thinking.
Another aspect of the purpose of education is what people are supposed to receive education. It would be nice if all Americans could receive an education. However, this is not necessarily practical. There are individuals that are well-suited for education and there are those individuals that do not have the will and the ability to pursue education. In this respect, education should be selective. It is important for all individuals to receive some form of education, but there should be some form of selection as to which individuals receive higher education. In this way, the value and difficulty of higher education would not be compromised, allowing individuals to reach their maximum potential. I am a firm believer in equality, but I have been in the classroom and seen the difficulty that teachers face every day. Because of this, I realize how impossible it is for a teacher to teach to ALL skill levels. With the mingling of skill levels, teachers are forced to take two paths: teach to the intelligent, and lose the less intelligent; or teach to the less intelligent and never maximize the potential of the intelligent students. As is, teachers are forced to choose the lesser of two evils, or stride the middle path and meet neither benefit. However, with the separation of skill levels, this would not be necessary. I like the European system, in which students that are not academic are targeted early, and sent through a system which is more practical, to learn a skill, to avoid studying for a few years. Much the same way, this could be tried in America to maximize higher education. This would be the best way to fulfill the role of education.
My opinion of education is ground in the fact that I believe that intellect is the ultimate achievement of man. I think that for a man to lead a successful life, he must maximize his intellectual potential. And I accept that there are several levels of potential within humans, and to fulfill that potential, educators must accept that people are not exactly alike. I consider myself intellectually stimulated and I believe that I can provide stimulation for others. And I hope to carry that belief into a career in education.

Current mood: bored