PI DAY!

HAPPY PI DAY!!

For those of you who don't know, pi is a number that goes on forever. It starts with 3.
1415926538... The digits commonly associated with pi day are 3.14. the date is 3/14/12. Ignore the 12. But small super-nerds in my class (me included) are celebrating pi second! So I will post this post during pi minute for you, because the auto poster thing isn't that precise. (pi minute is 1:59, and pi second is 1:59:26). So, have a very 




HAPPY PI DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 










Oh, and if you want to know more about pi, here are the first bazillion digits: Lots o' Numbers

Slathbog's Gold

Slathbog's Gold by M.L. Forman

I'm sick today, so I'm using the time that is usually  filled up with being bored to death in math with working on my blog.
Slathbog's Gold is a pretty good book, and the first novel written by Mr. Forman. It is about this guy named Alex, who is like me in that he is bored with some of his life (probably math) and wants to do something interesting. So he goes to the bookstore, where he sees a sign that says ADVENTURERS WANTED and that interests him. At first he looks away, and then he goes to look at it one more time, and it magically changes colors (I think) and now says ADVENTURERS WANTED:  APPLY WITHIN. So Alex goes in and tries to ask the bookstore keeper about the apparently magical sign outside. I say tries, because he fails miserably. The bookstore keeper, Mr. Clutter, pretty much signs a form for Alex. He could be evil, and just signed away Alex's soul, but he didn't, which is a pity, because that would make a very interesting book. he only got signed on to an Adventure, of which he knows nothing of, and is magically teleported through the back door with a dwarf and an elf, into a place called Telouse, where he buys a magic bag, a sword, and all the gear in the world. The magic bag allows you to hold lots of treasure and supplies and stuff weightlessly. I need one of those for my math book. The sword just happens to be an ancient magical sword, and the armorer said that he could also use a staff, which means he is a wizard, which means that he is ridiculously over powered. Oh, and the quest that they are on is to kill a dragons, named Slathbog, hence the title.


Some stuff I don't like


First of all, everyone can read everyone's emotions like a book, which is a little unreal
Secondly, everyone is super respectful, which is also a little unreal.
Third, people on a quest that needs to be finished do not go party all summer in the elven lands! They do their quest!
And finally, something that gets more problematic in later books in this series, is that Alex can literally destroy anything! I mean, even Eragon,  great dragon rider and stuff, gets bested in sword duels, has at least four people that he is afraid of, and he gets reprimanded by dragons! It seems more real if your hero/heroine has some problems!

Lord of the Flies

Lord of the Flies by William Golding



      Apparently, this is a classic, one of those books you are told that you have to read by the time you start getting a job and having no time to read and stuff, but when you finish them you start to wonder why these things became so famous, because they are really not that great, and it had a lot of repetition and metaphor and all that good stuff. Now I have nothing against metaphors, they are perfectly fine. But olden metaphors either make no sense, or they go on for so long that you forget what they are metaphoring. For example, do you really need an entire page to say what the wind is like? Really? So as you can see, I am still me, and I still require at least a paragraph to actually start writing anything about the book I intent to write about in the first place. For example (sorry, I get sidetracked easily. Like that one time...), This entire blog was supposed to be about books, but at least one fourth of it is about something else entirely. But anyways, this time for real...

Lord of the Flies by William Golding




      This one is a classic (see above).  It starts, and this is a little confusing, with some (two) school boys walking along on what they think is an deserted island, after there school plane crashed because it's World War Two and 50% of all planes crash, not including the ones that just crash into the end of the runway, and the ones that just explode when they engine starts. This is clear to the 19whenever-it-was (maybe 1960?) reader, because planes full of schoolboys were constantly crashing into islands (?!) at the time.
      So anyways, they find a conch shell, which they blow into, and all the little schoolboys come running. They form something that seems vaguely like a supposed democracy, that is actually a dual-warring dictatorship (a dictatorship run by two dictators who are subtly battling for power), with a touch of hippocracy, because that is just a word spelled wrong that sounds good in this situation, not because there were any hippos, political or otherwise. Basically the whole story is just the two popular kids, one of them that is moderately intelligent, and one who is moderately strong, fighting for dominance, and the only person who has any brains at all, you guessed it, the unpopular nerd (GO NERDS!!!) attempting to stop them all from dying. I think something sorts of dramatic happens at the end, but I was reading this kind of late at night, so I was half asleep. So I cant spoil it for you.

Leviathan

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld


But on to the book. It takes place in the age of Steampunk, which you should google if you've never heard of it, and I would google it for you, but the google at the coffee shop I'm working in is broken. So do it yourself. The two main characters, Alek of Austria-Hungary, and Deryn, a girl who is pretending to be a boy so as to get into the British Army of Britain. Europe is divided onto two factions, the Darwinists and the Clankers. The Darwinists cross-breed animals, such as flying whales (more on that later), and the Clankers make big machines, like the Stormwalker, which is really just a giant tank on legs. The story starts with Alek being kidnapped by his fencing instructor, who tells him that his parents (the important people of somewhere) were assassinated, which, in the course of a few weeks plunges all of Europe into war.Then, on Deryn's side of Europe, she is being tested into the British Air Service, which means that she must fly a Huxley, one of the earlier and harder to control fabricated beasties, way up in the sky, where she gets blown arounf in a storm and rescued by the Leviathan, the biggest airships in the world, and she is whisked of into an exciting adventure through the skies blah blah blah. And Alek goes on an exciting and dangerouse mission blah blah blah. But it's still a good book.

Divergent

Divergent by Veronica Roth


This book is amazing. Absolutely wonderful. A bit of mature content, but not much.

The book is set in a future Chicago, where the city is divided into five factions, each of which focuses on a specific trait. The factions are as follows: Abnegation, the selfless, Dauntless, the, well, dauntless, Erudite, the smart, Amity, the peaceful, and  Candor, the honest.

The main character is named Beatrice, who is Abnegation, on the day she takes the test to find what faction she is best suited for. and she finds that she finds out that she can be either Abnegation, Candor, or Dauntless, which means she is Divergent, which apparently is very dangerous. She chooses:


Warning: the following may be considered a spoiler, so you might not want to read it, but maybe you do, and maybe this messege should end. Well, maybe not, but it will, Goodbye.


Dauntless. I forgot to mention that the Dauntless get around on trains that don't stop, ever. So the first test is to get on and off the train, and the second test is to jump of a building into a hole with a net at the bottom that nobody ever told you about. Then there is a grueling initiation thingamajig, and then there is a major plot twist that is


More warnings!! The following is a major spoiler that just about tells you everything that happens so yeah.


Somehow, which you would know if you had read the book, everyone is brainwashed and goes to war with Abnegation. And this is kind of a random plot change, but it works nicely. READ THE BOOK!!!! 

On the Subject of FunDip...

Yes, you read that right, FunDip. And yes, I'm actually going to right a longish post on FunDip that will be funny, scientific, and captivating. I believe that it can be done. I may be wrong.

I have discovered two fundamental rules of FunDip. They are as follows:

Rule One: Never, I repeat NEVER, put FunDip in a small cup and attempt to lick it out of the cup, followed by a sudden exhalation of air (or any gas) from your nose. This will cause the FunDip to fly up into your face, rendering you blind unless you have sufficient eye protection. You may think that breathing into the cup would force the FunDip down, but FunDip defies the law that atleast one part of any object must be remotely natural, so it may as well defy gravity.

Rule Two: Never, I repeat NEVER, I repeat my repetition NEVER, mix FunDip with water.You may assume that mixing red FunDip with water would make a red sugar water. But FunDip doesn't act according to natural rules. It becomes a murky brown substance, that when drank causes the drinker to gag violently, and when mixed just the right way, to die a horrible death. NEVER do this!!

I have thaught of some other things, namely:

FunDip is not at all natural. In fact, the only way that I can think of to make FunDip is to take some artificial dirt made of plastic substitute, encased in a glass dome to keep out all air, and anyone who enters the dome must wear protective garb to keep their naturalness out, and the must plant fake plastic substitute sugarcane seeds, followed by constructing artificial steel sugarcane, harvesting the artificialness to soak with sugar, and then remove the sugar and add this mix of chemicals that they call "Blue 1." This clearly is a poison that didn't work quite right, or an alien extract. I have to go with the latter.

So I did some research, and I found this quote:

In May of 2007 our son had a package of Lik-M-Aid (also known as Fun

Dip) by Wonka....Within a couple of hours his entire mouth was ringed by an acid burn. 

 

People are getting ACID BURNS from FUNDIP. Clearly this an alien attempt to slowly poison our planet. Yep, I can make a pretty good conspiracy theory, can't I?

According to the Urban Dictionary, FunDip is:

A disgusting American candy popular with hyperactive six year olds. Sugar, citric acid, and food coloring reduced to a powder and served with a candy "stick" to lick the powder off of.

So yes, it IS possible to post a long article with at least two quotes from good sources, a conspiracy theory, two viable laws of the universe, about FUNDIP!!! Yes, it is possible. My work for today is done.

Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

This book was written about 50 years ago, so it is in a different style of writing than more modern books, which makes it a bit of a harder read, but still a good one.

This book is in the future, but it is the future from 50 years ago, so it doesn't have aliens and lasers or anything. No new inventions, but people think a different way. Knowledge isn't worth anything, and TV screens cover all four walls in the room, and pointless facts are screamed endlessly into peoples face. The book goes something like this:

It is about a guy named Guy Montag, but he is referred to as Montag most of the time. He is a fireman, who's job is starting fires. He burns illegal books (all books) and the houses they are found in. One day, he meets a girl who makes him rethink his life, and he starts to rebel, which gets him into a lot of trouble. I really can't think of what else happens, because most of it is about how Montag is thinking, which is really hard to sum up into a summary.

It has a little bit of an abrupt ending, but the last ten or few pages give a sense of ending, so although it has an abrupt ending, you knew it was coming and were ready for it. So I think it works well.