Best of Week

Mr. Allen, I have got to hand it to you on this one: without your encouragement to place us in an environment where it's nothing but us students, a restaurant (and undoubtedly food) and hours of discussion, I would have in no way been able to conjure up a random, untruthful response to this task of "best of week". Truly, I didn't find this week all that inspiring in class; there were moments outside of class where I was inspired, sure, but certainly not during our fifty minutes of Lear-ification. I found this week to be pummeled by tasks, assignments, and some disappointments in this class and in the rest of school as well. Now, you know I'm a very positive person, and I'm a very thankful person, especially for the bad things that happen to us. So I'm not going to say any of this work was uncalled for; that's life. But, you, Mr. Allen, suggested something incredibly simple and un-genius-like that made the essay that you gave us (cette saloperie de composition!!) (< You told us about your days in college spent going to a dive bar to figure out an essay with your friends, done while consuming large amounts of cake, nachos, and coffee.
Pretty "darn" brilliant, I thought after doing just that myself. Well, replace "dive bar" with "north-shore uppercrust uber-expensive Panera Bread" and "nachos and cake" with...bread, and you have our version of said tactic. And I have to say, Socrates was onto something when he invented his "circle of discussion" (even though I believe someone else invented it and named it after the guy) because we, as a group, came up with so much more than I would have done holed-up in a little room, tempted to escape boredom and check facebook every five minutes.
You may be very excited to hear this, that I found your method so earth-shatteringly effective in getting our minds working to produce results. *NOTE: Yes, it was productive, and we generated a lot of great ideas, but I CANNOT promise perfect essays. Good ones, hopefully. But, if anything outside of our own personal drive and determination were to get us that "A" academites seem to value over all else, it would be the creativity and comfortable, positive environment inspired by Mr. Allen's college days eating nachos and drinking coffee in bars. (And...nachos and coffee?? Really??? Great alone, but TOGETHER...??)

Connection: King Lear and James Bond

I found this particular post exceedingly difficult to provide something about which to right. It isn't everyday that we find something in King Lear that relates to some other (in this situation, obviously) insane aspect of life. So this, coupled with the fact that I've recently questioned my intelligence (such as it is) more so than ever before, which is a completely unrelated story, made me realize I had stumbled upon a great opportunity when I saw "Quantum of Solace". The parallel themes, obviously apparent upon even seeing one of the Bond films, shot me in the face as I thought about my encroaching assignment while walking out of the theatre:
Espionage!
Deception!
Violence!
Brits!
And pesky foreigners!
In addition, Bond is moved by an almost irrepressible desire for revenge against those who blackmailed and killed his love, and his decision making becomes blinded by hatred and vengeance. Much like the betrayal of Lear's daughters as a cause of him becoming more blinded by insanity (Alzheimer's...*cough cough*), Bond is chased down and put on the dead or alive list by his own boss in the Mi6 because they think he has lost control, and they want said control back.
This is not to say that if one wants to understand King Lear better, they should think of "Quantum of Solace"; there is, however, minimal to no sex in both of them, a big leap for the writers of "Bond" and also for the frequently innuendo-centered mind of Shakespeare. To that affect, there are still some things that could clear up misunderstanding about both of them in regarding the other's plot as strangely similar. King Lear becomes progressively narrow-minded as his decisions more impaired as he grows more demented, while Jaime Bonderas loses all sense of "interrogation over death" as his desire to get revenge over those who wronged him and his love intensifies. Luckily for Bond, he grows out of this. I have not yet finished Lear; I don't believe I'll be able to say the same once it is over. Either way, because of their actions, those who were formerly their most trusted allies or most faithful servants betray them and send them to the hounds, killing or interrogating their true friends all the while. And it is through new friends with a grudge of their own (or old friends disguised as unknowns in Lear's case) that they eventually begin to either regain their former glory or...well...who knows what happens to Lear, really?
So, in understanding this, one who may not particularly enjoy Shakespeare may see an incredibly enlightening relation between Lear and his/her possible favorite movie spy. IN both stories, the amount of entertaining violence, espionage, interrogation, betrayals, and xenophobia (those FRENCHIES!!!) are almost equally apparent. both are great works in their respective fields. And, I might add-- to those who find that the forensic searches of crime scenes and mapping of convoluted bank transactions among villains a little too much to comprehend, and seek to see the overall, "big" picture:
READ SHAKESPEARE. (As I hope I've shown, it may actually improve your understanding of something entirely modern and done in commoner-speak.)

TED presentations

Meh. I am someone who sees the "ideal" goal of something even if it is not met, and thus sees the worth in said project or means to get to that goal. So, I give TED a little break. Even though we do not do any giant service projects or anyhting that they advocate in TED, and we only talk abou them to OTHER people we know won't get involved. But I see where that doesn't matter. We are becoming more worldly educated. We are growing optimists out of a pool of know-it-all pessimists. THIS is something I greatly approve of, and the fact that we are enlightening our youth to see that where there looks like there is no light, no solution, there are always those who take it upon themselves to come out of left field and do somehhing great.
No no matter that TED was almost impoossible given varying amounts of effort by different people. No matter that some of the presentations came out scratchy and unpracticed. They happened, and although we didn;t save the livess of many people on those minutes, we fostered the possibility for that in the future.
Even though "collaborating" over the internet seems overrated, we now have even MORE experience doing so, and it won't be so much of a hassle in the future.
Even though it wasn't carried out very well by the teachers in terms of work load assigned, thatw as another "hard knock life" situation of school we lived through that, without having endured, we'd be a bunch of kids who always get what they want and believe that school should be entirely convenient. (*note: academy kids still act like this should be the case and that they're being deprived of their "privileges")

All in all, this shows that one may always try to make things perfect, but ghosts in the machine may always be there. HOWEVER, that doesn't have to matter. With determined individuals, and individuals who can find the positive in any experience, those ghosts might as well not exist, and that's why the TED people are here on this earth. And that is why some of us academites are meant to become them, after learning from this project, in our own little ways.