Monday, August 27, 2012

Vocab List #3

Accolade: any award, honor, or laudatory notice
Ex/ Kelli is super smart so she was given the highest accolade in the state.
Acerbity: sourness, with roughness or astringency of taste/harshness or severity, as of temper or expression
Ex/ Alyssa sometimes gets acerbity with her annoying sister
Attrition: a reduction or decrease in numbers, size, or strength/wearing down or weakening of resistance
Ex/ There is an attritionof pimples on the boy's face since he stopped eating twinkies.
Bromide: a platitude or trite saying/person who is platitudinous and boring
Ex/ It was hard to focus on the man's speech, for he was such a bromide.
Chauvinist: a person displaying aggressive or exaggerated patriotism/biased devotion to any group, attitude, or cause
Ex/ Her grandfather was a real chauvinist and her grandmother dislikes it.
Chronic: constant, habitual, inveterate/continuing a long time or recurring
Ex/ Alyssa has the chronic habit of chewing her nails.
Expound: to set forth or state in detail/to explain, interpret
Ex/My Dad cannot expound he word expound.
Factionalism: splitting into factions
Ex/ The nation's economic and political stability was threatened by the internal factionalism.
Immaculate: free from spot or stain; spotlessly clean/free from moral blemish or impurity/free from fault or errors
Ex/ Madonna's album was titled Immaculate.
Ineluctable: incapable of being evaded; inescapable
Ex/ Cancer is overall ineluctable, even if you can get rid of it.
Mercurial: changeable, volatile, fickle, flighty, erratic/lively, animated
Ex/ The mercurial ways my brother tells stories makes him hard to stand.
Palliate: to relieve or lessen without curing, mitigate, alleviate
Ex/ When I complained about my wisdom teeth coming in, my mother told me that some aspirin and ice should palliate the pain.
Protocol: the customs and regulations dealing with diplomatic formality, procedure, and etiquette
Ex/ You must follow proper protocol when performing the task at hand.
Resplendent: attractive and impressive through being richly colorful or sumptuous
Ex/ Adam Levine's music is amazing and resplendent
Stigmatize: to set some mark of disgrace or infamy upon
Ex/ Pit bulls are stigmatized even though most are actually very sweet.
Sub rosa: confidentially, secretly, privately ("under the rose")
Ex/ I tell my best friends all my secrets with sub rosa.
Vainglory: excessive elation or pride over one's one achievements, abilities, etc., boastful vanity
Ex/ Some people have vainglory beyond belief.
Vestige: a mark, trace, or visible evidence of something that is no longer present or in existence/ surviving evidence or remainder
Ex/ Dinosaur bones are vestiges, and an amazing find always.
Volition: the act of willing, choosing, or resolving; exercise of willing/choice or decision made by will
Ex/ No one expected him to, but he asked the less popular girl to prom by his own volition.

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Beowulf Questions ( took years to do)

1. Shield was in charge because he was the fiercest  warrior of them  all, for his funeral, they put him on a ship with his beloved treasures and armor then sent out to sea. Hrothgar was Shield's great-grandson.

1. Hrothgar had the great mead-hall built an it was attacked by Grendel for 12 years. The Danes responded by moving out of the mead hall.

1. When Beowulf heard of Grendel's attacks, he decided to go and defeat the ugly beast for the Danes.
2.When Beowulf and his men arrive they meet a watchman in Denmark, the watchmen, with his spear, asked what they are doing there. The Gears asked to see their leader, to tell him they are there to try and defeat Grendel.
3. Hrothgar's herald, Wulfgar, told Hrothgar that the Geats have asked to see him. Hrothgar says he knows who Beowulf is and was a friend of his father's.
4. Beowulf told Hrothgar of some past battles against some giants, and says that he could defeat Grendel unarmed. Hrothgar had sent treasures to the Wulfing tribe to make amends after Beowulf's father killed one of their members.

1.Unferth accused  Beowulf of losing a contest with Breca in the ocean. Beowulf said that he killed a sea monster after it dragged him underwater and after that 8 more monsters. He accuses Unferth of being drunk.
2. Queen Wealtheow passed around the ceremonial goblet and thanked God for Beowulf's arrival.

1. There isn't arming scene, because Beowulf decided  to fight without armor or weapons.
2. When Grendel arrived at Heorot, he fond the floor packed with sleeping warriors, he killed one. Beowulf grabs Grendel's arm and Grendel tried to run away. His arm was torn off and left in the great hall, Grendel went back to his lair to die.

1.  Sigemund and Beowulf are alike because they both slayed beasts. Beowulf is not like  Heremod in anyway, because Heremod was an evil king that turned on his own people.
2. Hrothgar thanked God for his delevering of Beowulf getting rid of Grendel. He told Beowulf that he would be rewarded with gifts of treasure, and he held Beowulf in his heart as a son. Unferth is humbled after Grendel's defeat.
3. In the story of Finn, the Danes lost in battle to Finn and the Frisians. The Danish leader Hnaef was killed, and they agree on a truce with the Frisians. Finn's wife, wants her brother Hnaef and her Frisian warrior son burned together on the same bier. After a winter of Frisian rule, the Danes rose up and defeat Finn. Hildeburh  returned to Denmark. She married  Finn to try to end the feud between the peoples.
4. Queen Wealtheow asked Hrothgar not to promise his throne to Beowulf, because he believed his reals sons should receive the throne next.
5.  Beowulf gives the necklace that Wealtheow gave him to the warrior Wiglaf, right before Beowulf died. Wealtheow  asked Beowulf to treat her sons well and to help guide them in life.
6. Many of the men remained sleeping in the hall that night because they had assumed they were safe since Grendel was dead. This is a horrible mistake because Grendel's mother arrived at the hall that night to avenge  her son.

1. Grendel's mother went to Heorot for Grendel's avengence.
2. Hrothgar asked Beowulf to find and kill the beasts monster, because she killed Hrothgar's close friend and battle counselor, Aeschere.
3. The mere was a swampy moor with bloody water and  magical atributes.

1. Beowulf told Hrothgar that if he didn't  succeed in the fight with Grendel's mother, his armor would be stripped from him and returned to Hyglac.
2. Before Beowulf entered the mere, he killed one of the sea dragons with an arrow.
3. Beowulf armed himself with full armor, and the seasoned, poison-edged sword, Hrunting.
4. Beowulf dove into the mere and found an underwater hall empty of water and torchesthat lighted the way to the beast's lair.
5.  Hrunting failed to do any damage to the beast for the first time ever.
6. Beowulf happened to escape only because his armor protected him from Grendel's mother's dagger.
7. Beowulf escaeps from the beast and used the giant's sword that  hung on the wall to behead her. He fiound Grendel and took his head with him and the giant sword's hilt too. Grendel's mother's blood dissolved the blade.
8. His men  lost hope and did't expect Beowulf tocome back until they saw him  thanked God then carried his helmet and armor for him.

1. Beowulf gave Hrothgar the head and the sword hilt.
2. Hrothgar told Beowulf that he had united the Danes and Geats. Hrothgar told him the story of Heremod, who ruled by slaughter of both enemy and ally. He said that the cruel and selfish rulers lost the approval of their followers. He warned Beowulf to "guard his soul against greed, fame, the devil, and selfishness in general". Heremod died when he was banished by his subjects.
3. When he left, Beowulf returned Hrunting to Unfterth.

1. Hrothgar predicted that Beowulf would be a great king.
2. Hygd is Hygelac's wife; she is the queen of Geats. She is unlike the legendary Queen Modthyrth, who tortured and killed her own innocent subjects. Hygd is young, beautiful, and wise.
3. Beowulf tells Hygelac that Hrothgar plans to wed his daughter, Freawaru, to Ingeld, so their clans may get along better. Beowulf does not see this working out: he feels that seeing each others' possessions (gained through plundering) might incited fighting between the Danes and Heathobards again. We might be seeing a new side of Beowulf during this report. So far, we have not witnessed him giving out thoughts like these, having little faith in others' decisions and predicting poor outcomes.
4. Beowulf reports his battles with the giants to Hygelac, particularly emphasizing the monsters' ferocity, the fact that Grendel had sought them out, and the magnificent treasures he had been rewarded with. His reports about the adventures weren't particularly inaccurate, but he did choose to emphasize certain parts that might have made him appear a fiercer warrior.
5. Beowulf  gave much of his treasures to Hygelac and Hygd, and in return, Hygelac gives Beowulf a sword prized among the Geats and his own land to preside over.

1. Part two takes place fifty years later; Hygelac and Heardred have passed. A new danger now exists: an angry dragon has been awoken.
2. The dragon is angry because a man was caught going through his treasure, and he ended up taking a cup. The man took the cup because when the dragon woke, he was startled, and accidentally kept the cup as he ran. The treasure came to be in the burrow because the lone survivor of a doomed ancient race had buried the treasure, for it was no use to him.
3. The dragon destroyed Beowulf's throne hall along with many other homes and villages.
4. Beowulf believes his home was destroyed because he must have broken some law that angered God. He orders a new shield because he feels he is the warlord, therefore he must retaliate. He will fight the dragon  without an army. Beowulf knows he will die, but he is going to take the dragon with him.
5. Hygelac died in battle in Friesland. After Hygelac's death, Beowulf returned home, where Hygd offered him the throne, feeling that her son Heardred was not ready to assume the position. Beowulf declined and instead served as regent by Heardred's side.
6. Heardred died in a fight with the Swedes (he had given some exiled men shelter and others responded). Beowulf planned to avenge Heardred by befriending one of the exiled men he had taken in, and they assembled an army that defeated the man that killed Headred.
7. Beowulf takes only eleven men with him to confront the dragon.
8. Hygelac's brother Herebeald was accidentally killed by their brother Haethcyn. Hrethel was immensely saddened by his son's death, and also the fact that he had to avenge his death by sending his other son to the gallows, which he couldn't bring himself to do. The fact that he couldn't avenge his son made him feel even worse. Hrethel cared less and less about his kingdom, and no happiness or reveling happened in his court until he died. After Hrethel's death, the Swedes and Geats fell into war. Haethcyn died in the feud.

1. Beowulf tells his men not to interfere; this battle was his own.
2. The first time Beowulf and the dragon fought his sword didn't work, and he was set on fire. Beowulf's companions all fled except one, Wiglaf, the bravest and most loyal warrior.
3. The second time Wiglaf stabbed the dragon in the stomach, but it burned his hand, the dragon bit Beowulf on the neck, and the men killed the dragon together.
4. While he is dying Beowulf asked Wiglaf to show him the treasure they had released from the dragon. Beowulf thanked God for the treasure that his people now had and for being able to see the gold before he died. Beowulf wanted the barrow named "Beowulf's Barrow" so he wouldbe remembered.

1. When the warriors came back, Wiglaf informed them with what had happened to them.
2. The messenger told the city that the Frisians, Franks, and Swedish would   attack the Geats. Ongentheow took the queen, Onela's mother, and Ongentheow retreated after Hygelac's army chased him. The messenger said that no one could touch the treasure without the will of God.
3. Wiglaf told the crowd that the cost of the treasure was their king.
4. They put the dragon's body into the ocean
 5. Someone sang about the doom that the battles caused and about the battles that were likely to come, then they built a gigantic fire and monument for the king the treasures were buried along with him.
6.Beowulf was described as "the mildest, most beloved, kindest, and most deserving of praise". These aren't the words we would hear about a military hero usually, most people would say things like: brave, strong, amazing, or other empowering word like those.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Socratic Seminar Comments

I thought that today's Socratic Seminar was interesting, funny, and great thing, I have never done one before or even heard of it until Dr. Preston. Also, it makes much more sense now that I've read the article.

Decision Fatigue Questions

1. I believe decision fatigue is something that happens when you get overwhelmed with having to make continuous decisions. People, deciding what to buy, and even computer objects, these things force you to make decisions constantly, draining your confidence, because sometimes you worry "Did I make the right choice?". I think social networking and just technology in general is split 50/50 being both good and bad. Yes most sites and whatnot are distracting as frick and take away from your concentration, but if you focus and use them for what you should be doing they can be an amazing tool.
2. For things out of school I would say 5-7, but in school I force myself to focus, because I AM going to UC Davis and in order to do that i need to succeed NOW.
3. Yes, that'd be awesome.
4. Well I already eat snacks throughout the day and such, I also eat breakfast practically every morning, sooo yep.

1987 AP answers

  1.E
  2.A
  3.C
  4.C
  5.D
  6.D
  7.E
  8.B
  9.E
10.C
11.D
12.B
13.A
14.C
15.A
16.B
17.C
18.E
19.A
20.B
21.E
22.E
23.C
24.A
25.E
26.E
27.D
28.B
29.A
30.B
31.E
32.E
---
47.B
48.A
49.C
50.D
51.C
52.B
53.E
54.B
55.D
56.B
57.C
58.E
59.A
60.A
61.E