Slang Words

     Slang words are often used in high schools and are popular throughout the world. However they are most commonly used with teenagers. Many of the slang words, an average high schooler starts off not knowing. If I were to create a new slang word which has a meaning with nothing to do with what it actually means and then started to use it in casual conversations, what do you think would happen? Would people pretend they know what it means and start using it? I believe that this would happen because it would seem possible since no one wants to be the person that is not up to date with their slang words/phrases. This would mean that people would just play "Follow the leader" and they would just go along with what other people say. No one wants to be the person that has to awkwardly ask their friends what somethings means (Which is usually me, unfortunately). Sometimes the person who doesn't know the word would look the word up on the Internet after hearing it (Urban Dictionary, I think people use...) and they would try to avoid asking a friend. By asking a friend, it means that you are not 'cool' or it could just be that your friends are trying to trick you into using it because you don't know the real meaning. Plus for all you know it could be a) not a universal slang word or b) a made up word used to mock you if you use it without knowing what it really is, and since you don't ask someone you embarrass yourself...so the lesson gathered from all of this, would be to not degrade the English language any further by using slang terms, or to at least find out what the actual meaning of the word is, before you start using it. 

100 Books that Everyone Should Read

I found this list online, so I was curious as to how many I have read. I have read 32 books out of the 100. I know that that is not good odds, but hey, it’s not bad for being only 17 years old. Plus, I definitely plan on reading more. Apparently though, The BBC believes that most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here. Despite that it shows my nerdiness, I am extremely proud of my 32 books that I have read! The books in bold, represent the books that I have read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling 

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible (Most of it, from all the times that I’ve gone to Church and had to study it)

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (Next year! Woot! J )

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (Most of them, so I guess I can count it?)

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien 

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (Unfortunately…I appreciate this novel though)

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (When I was younger, my dad would read to me out of this book)

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma -Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis (Wasn’t this part of #33?)

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (I heard that this was really good though,…I have been meaning to for a while)

40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown ( I started it but never finished it)

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery 

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood 

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (Not a favorite at all)

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck 

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac/

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (I own it but never read it)

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Inferno - Dante (Here you go, Noah…I guess reading it counted for something)

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (Bits and pieces but not the whole thing)

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White (Read this in middle school or elementary school! Yay for us! Look at how we read such literature at a young age!)

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom 

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (I've read bits and pieces of different stories)

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (Almost read it, but never got around to it…)

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (Again, I meant to read it, but have never quite done so…)

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (Wasn’t this mentioned up above previously?)

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (Okay, I saw this in London! It was amazing! But I haven’t read the novel…so no matter how badly I want to bold this, I can’t…darn it… L )

Light Pollution

     So I was talking with one of my friends, Isabel, and she  brought up an article about a major type of pollution affecting us as of right now:

Light Pollution

     I had never thought about it that way before...I mean is it really a type of pollution? Her reasoning was as followed: 

• That it makes sense, since with technology and growing cities (and a growing population) that more of the Earth stays lit even after the sun has set. 
• Cities don't even get to see the stars because of all the excess light. It's kinda scary to think that some people never get to see a starry night. Even in Aurora, both of us feel that we still don't get to see as many stars as we could, if we weren't in a higher populated area. 
• The article apparently mentions the effects of near constant light. It's not just astronomers who need dark-sky in order to observe the stars that are affected-it's animals as well whose biological clocks are affected by light. Back before the light bulb ever existed, and gas lamps, it was still possible to see plenty of stars in cities. It's no wonder how scientists were able to map out the path of planets, and determine that the Earth orbited the sun (and not vice versa). They could see all the stars and planets clearly, because of there was little (if any at all) light pollution to affect their view of the nighttime sky.

      In conclusion, both of us hope cities try and reduce the amount of light pollution they emit-not only will it clear up the night sky so people can stargaze again, but it can also reduce the costs require to light up a city. Plus, we need to be able to enjoy the nature surrounding us as much as possible before things change! 

Flowers

     One sure sign of Spring is when all the flowers begin to bloom. I love flowers because they are usually so pretty and beautiful, and because there are just so many types. I like a lot, and I suppose my favorite flower depends on my mood, but I really like roses and daisies. I also really like orchids, which are much more exotic. Flowers are very meaningful, and each have their own meaning and symbolize something. Another thing I like about flowers is how they often have a nice fragrance to them. Sometimes, it can be strong or unpleasant, but I find that many flowers smell sweet and nice. Plus, with the ones that don't smell as pleasant, it's still a new sensation of smell that I get to experience, and for that alone I enjoy it because it is broadening my senses.  
     One downside to flowers is that they don't always last. Most flowers die after a week or so, and unless you dry them and press them, they won't last. Some people don't really care for flowers, and I can see why, because they die after awhile.  But, I think that just adds to their beauty. You have to appreciate them while they are still alive, and you only have so much time before they do die. However dead flowers should also be appreciated, because each organism is precious in it's own way. It's similar to how to look at life, as you have to appreciate things that come and go and the things in the present, instead of looking towards the future or always looking at the past. I always feel like flowers are a quick fix to a bad day, as long as they are alive of course!