tirsdag 24. november 2009

MILK


Harvey Milk was an important person not only to the American gay society, but to gay people all over the world. He was one of the first men to give the gay people a voice, and hope about living a normal life like other people. The gay people was not treated right in the time before Mr. Milk started his work. The police would attack them with no reason, other people looked down on them, and they usually had a childhood with memories of getting bullied with. In one way you can compare it with the Afro Americans living in the USA some decades earlier. Only they did not have the same rights as these gay people had. The gay people only got looked down on. But both these groups of people have worked hard and fought many fights to come where they are today. Still there is many people who do not like gay people and think they are just faking it. But what can they do? They can not change other people.

tirsdag 10. november 2009

The winner takes it all

In the British election they do it in a different way then we do it in Norway. With the topic "the winner takes it all" I mean how they divide the power between the parties. When a party in Britain gets the most votes, the party win the whole election, and all the power. Compared to Norway this is very different. We have the power divided on all the parties that receive more than 5% of the votes. So the party with the most votes get more power and the other way with the parties with the least votes.

onsdag 28. oktober 2009

Lions for Lambs

1. Lions for Lambs is a 2007 American drama film about the connection between a platoon of United States soldiers in Afghanistan, a U.S. senator, a reporter, and a California college professor. Explain how they are connected and what the soldiers are doing in Afghanistan?

The three stories in this movie is twisted tightly together at the end of the movie. They affect each other and create consequences for all of the people in the movie. It begins with the college professor who is trying to make his promising student more engaged to the class. The student, Todd Hayes, puts the blame on the way of college life. He is busy with being the frat house president, his girlfriend, being social, and just living life. The professor called him in for a meeting one morning, and offered him a deal: "I'll give you a straight B in this class, and you do not have to do anything more, not attend class and do not turn in assignment. The other option is to come to class more often again".

He also tell this student about to students he once had, Arian and Ernest. They had fought their way all the way up to get a scholarship and attend a college. They were not A students, but the professor remembered them. They had potential, and was not like all the other students who got their education paid of the parents. The came from bad conditions and had grown up in a not so good neighborhood, and still they got an education. Apparently they had become close with the professor, he had really gotten to them. One assignment they got was something like this: find out what was necessary in the world, what would make a difference? And what will you do to try to make a change? They chose to sign up for the army.

The professor felt like he fail the two students that actually had a potential. When Arian and Ernest join the war, they are assigned an extremely important mission in the war against terrorism and Taliban in Afghanistan. When they are flying over the mountains in Afghanistan, hidden Taliban soldiers starts shouting at the helicopter. Ernest falls out of the helicopter, and Arian decides to jump after him. Together they try to fight the Taliban soldiers as they are approaching. The army back at the base are watching what's going on from a satellite. They send out rescue planes that bombs Taliban. But the last one does not reach Arian and Ernest in time. They get shot right before they bomb the last of the Taliban soldiers.

At the same time a US Senator get a call, informing him about what happened with the mission he just executed. He is in a private meeting with a TV journalist. The Senator has a purpose, quoting;" My honest effort to keep the press better informed about mistakes, and to talk openly about fixing it, step by step". This mission is the way of correcting the mistake of going into Iraq years ago. If they don't do anything with this problem now, they can expect a shattered Iraq, a hopeless Afghanistan, and a nuclear Iran. And the meaning of this meeting was to have her write an article about this mission, not questions about it, but straight up hard facts. Something she has problems with.

As the connection throughout the whole movie the sentence "What do you stand for?" says a lot. The professor also mentions that its better to fail trying then to not try and fail, the important thing is that you did something at all.


2. The professor asks Todd to get involved. What can he do?

The professor notices that Todd is not attending as many classes as he used to earlier that year. Todd was the one student that the professor saw some potential in. He wanted to make Todd realize how things he did today, would effect the rest of his life. He was now a grown up. There were no legal guardians anymore, it was just him, and he had to make his own decisions. He didn't want Todd to waist his time at college with the potential he had. The professors goal wasn't to make the students become something great, but to become something that is important to them and has a meaning in their life. He wants them to become lions, not lambs.

The best thing Todd can do to get more involved is to just show up in class. He is already doing his assignments and achieving good grades. Attending classes was his only problem.

tirsdag 27. oktober 2009

The Marshall Plan



The Marshall plan was a program founded in 1948. George Marshall was a secretary of state in the United States, and he was the person initiating the plan. And as you can see, the plan was named after him.

The plan had a vision of helping the western countries in Europe after the 2 World War. It was suppose to rebuild and create stronger foundation for the countries.

13 billion USD was used for economic and technical assistance to the European countries that was a member of the Organization for European Economic Co-operation. Trough the next three decades all the helped countries had reached a level that was past the wartime level.

tirsdag 20. oktober 2009

Norwegian Traditionally Sports




When you live in Norway, it's not always possible to do the sport you would like to at all times. In the winter it's very cold and snowy outside, and in the summer it's hot and nice. So it's not always easy to do the sport you would like to do. Because of Norway's looooong winter, winter sports are very popular and we have a lot of them. The oldest and most successful winter sport would be cross country. We have won several gold, silver and bronze medals in the Olympics. And on the other hand this is a sport almost all Norwegians participate in in the winter. We put on our cross country skies, pack a back pack with hot chocolate, hot dogs, and oranges and take a hike in the forests. It is also a very good way to exercise you whole body. You use your legs, arms, back, and abs.

In the summer time there is other sports that are in focus. Soccer and team handball is the most popular summer sports. I'm sure you know what soccer is, but team handball isn't a sport that is that popular all over the world. It is kind of a mix of basketball and soccer, if I'm going to compare it to other sports. You have a smaller goal than the one in soccer, but you play inside and use your hands. It's a fast sport with a lot of action.

tirsdag 13. oktober 2009

Norwegian Weather



In Norway we have a lot of different weather. Today it was freezing cold, but not any snow. I think the weather in Norway sucks. It's a short summer, where it rains a lot, and when the fall comes, its really cold and windy. Then it starts snowing in the end of November or December And it can even be snow in April- May... in June the nice weather comes, and when our summer break starts, it starts raining too.

torsdag 24. september 2009

George Orwell



Orwell was born in India in 1903. His father worked in the Indian Civil Service, and his mother had grown up in Burma. He also had two sister, Marjoire and Avril. When he was one year old, his mother took him and his siter and moved to England.

Orwell later attended college and his teachers didn't really like him. But later he became a great writer and he is being considered as the 20th century's best chronicler of english culture. His real name isn't really George Orwell, that's just his Pen name. His real name is Eric Arthur Blair.

tirsdag 1. september 2009

Compare two poems. "the solider" and "does it matter"

These two poems are very different! "the solider" is written with more difficult words and yo have to interpret in your own way, if you understand it at all. It's about a solider that says what he wants people to think about him if he dies. The second poem, "does it matter" is criticism to the war. How some people could send the worker class of to war and just keep on living their own life. Its is more generally compared to the solider, where there is a solider “talking”.

Does it matter?

Does it matter?--losing your legs?...
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you mind
When the others come in after hunting
To gobble their muffins and eggs.
Does it matter?--losing your sight?...
There's such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light.
Do they matter?--those dreams from the pit?...
You can drink and forget and be glad,
And people won't say that you're mad;
For they'll know you've fought for your country
And no one will worry a bit.

1.Losing your legs, losing your sight and losing your dreams is the three effects of the war on a soldier this poem touch on.

2.The poem reflects on the attitude that great wars were fought by working-class men on both sides and that the people they were fighting for, were often more the enemy than the people they were fighting against. This is shown in the repeating sentence: “people will always be kind” as long as you fought for you country. The poem says that the people who didn't fight in the war themselves goes on living their lives, while the soldiers have lost big parts of their lives in the war, like their dreams, legs or their sight.

3.Our theory on why this poem has become so popular now is: it was a big honer to fight in a war for your country before, and most young boys had a dream about becoming a soldier, but now more people understand what it contains to be a soldier in a real war, and how it changes a lot of people to face death and loose so much of their life as brutal as in a war.

About Myself!


Hi!
My name is Kristin. I am 18 years old and i just started my senior year. I live in a town called Asker, which lies in the suburbans of Norway's capital, Oslo. I spent my junior year in the US, and went to a high school north in Washington State. I had an awesome time there and have no regrets! I lived in the town Anacortes, and I really hope that I will go back there some day:)