We're ba-ack....

     Dreams.  Dreaming is a truly amazing concept when you get down to it.  There is so much involved in dreams.  They are such completed functions of the human brain.  There are four main types of dreams: Nightmares, Lucid Dreams, Recurring Dreams, and Prophetic Dreams.  Each is unique and utterly amazing to think about in its own way.  Now, we'll take a glance into the mechanics of each.
     Nightmares.  We all have them.  We all loathe them.  Those nights when we wake up abruptly, in a cold sweat, fearing for our lives or the lives of our loved one.  Nightmares are the embodiments of everything our concious minds despise: fears, anxieties, etc.  I've had countless nightmares about my friends and family dying....and in every circumstance, I am inadvertedly the cause of their death.  I may have given them something to cause an allergic reaction or not given them an full oxygen tank if we go deep-sea diving.  I never directly do the killing, but I always know it's my fault.  I've never experienced the trauma of losing someone close, so I don't know why I have these dreams.
     The next type of dream I'm going to cover, the Lucid Dream, reminds me of the movie Inception, where the main characters' job was to realize they were in a dream and plant something into the mind of the son of a corporate giant.  While I've never had this type of dream before, I certainly try.  However, it's been learned that when the brain realizes it's in a dream, it does whatever it can to wake you up because it doesn't like being in a hallucenogetic state.  Maybe I've had this dream before, but I woke up before I could think to remember it.
     Recurring Dreams are apparently quite common.  While I personally have never had the same dream twice, I can see why it would pose some significance to those who have.  The fact that your brain repitively comes up with these images might lead people to believe that the dream is predicting the future, or may have some other secret meaning.  Speaking of predicting the future, let me come to my next dream topic: Prophetic Dreams.
     Prophetic Dreams are dreams in which the dreamer seems to predict the future in a way.  It is theorized the humans piece together facts and information during the day and come to conclusions they wouldn't have in their dreams, conclusions that are going to happen.  There are five very important people in the world of dream studies.  John Allan Hobson, Robert McCarley, Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, and Alfred Adler.

A Summary on the Debate I Epically Failed On

1. I feel the debate went amazingly for the first time we did something like this.  The other teams seemed amazingly organized and all of the debates flowed nicely and kept my attention throughout.  The only person who's debate I didn't like was my own.  I know I did pretty horribly.  I liked the time frame in which we were given to complete the research and I believe everything came together nicely on the three days we presented.
2. I feel as though this was a tremendous learning experience for me and that now that I know what it'll be like, being up there in front of an audience, I'll be able to better prepare myself and my speeches ahead of time so that my audience may take in the maximum effect of my words.
3. I feel as though I personally performed the closing statement the strongest, not because I did well on it, but because it was better than both of the other two times I spoke.  I feel as though my cross examination was disgraceful.  I had a plethora of amazing questions to ask the opposition, and they were all on paper in front of me; I don't know what happened.  My mind went blank in the heat of the moment.
4. I would change the amount of time I spent practicing to improve my delivery.
5. I would like to improve everything about my performance and my brief because I know both could have been significantly better.
6. I feel as though the rubric touched upon every major and important issue that people should be assessed on during debates.
7. Two debates that were particularly intriguing to me were as follows:

Resolved: the United States government ought to provide for the medical care of its citizens.

AND

Resolved: as a general principle, individuals have an obligation to value the common good above their own interests.

Thank you! I really enjoyed this activity and I can't wait to redeem myself by actually doing well on the next debate we have! Have a nice day! 

Outliers Summary (Chapter 6) and My Cultural Legacy

http://malcolmgladwell.com/

In the first chapter of the second part of Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell discusses cultural legacies, namely in the small Appalachian town of Harlan, Kentucky.  The Howards and the Turners, two of the town's founding families, had an infamous history of violence towards each other, and Gladwell explains why.  It was because of the culture of honor, dating back to these families' roots.  Generation after generation, they were taught and encouraged to protect their own above all else, to form a sort of clan that doesn't have faith in the goodness of humanity.  They were taught to be paranoid herdsmen, always with their guards up, expecting attack at all times.  A legacy like this was safe, but it wasn't healthy.  These families formed hatreds of each other neither could quite comprehend.  Lives were lost, enemies gained, all over a version of pride called honor.  They say pride is a man's greatest weakness.  In this case, it exemplifies years of purposeless hate, and for what?  A few dozen lives lost?  Cultures of honor are mysterious things, things Malcolm Gladwell attempts to decipher.

Later in the chapter, Gladwell tells us of am experiment conducted on cultures of honor at the University of Michigan.  Were they still common, and where?  Why did hatred from those two families last for so many generations?  The results of the experiment showed that boys from the South were more sensitive to insult and were more likely to turn to violence as a means of solving problems instead of standing back and letting them happen.

By my interpretation, "cultural legacy" is exactly that: a legacy left by past generations for future generations by your culture.  My culture legacy would be the morals my parents have taught me that I proceed to pass along to my children.  They've taught me to be open, kind, caring, responsible, and harw-working, among other things.  I plan on passing these positive values along to my children as well, and my family's culutural legacy shall go on for many generations to come.

FIRST POST REQUIRED!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hello, Internet. My name is Joy (I won't tell you my last name because this is the open internet). This is my superbly amazingly awesome brand spanking new blog for Gifted and Talented Seminar 1.  Let me tell you a little bit about myself.  I'm a student at a school who's doing this for educational purposes (again, open internet, no specific information).  Some things I like to do outside of school are read, write, read AND write, and other nerdy educational stuff.  This post is done now because I can't think of anything else do say.  Good-bye, Internet.