10/24/10

Byzantine empire was not as interesting as learning about Rome. I think it mainly lost my attention because of its lack of power. What was interesting in its chapter was the conflict between the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Church. They fought over too many things. They almost seemed even opposite of each other. It was as if what ever the Roman Catholic liked, the Eastern Orthodox had to hate it. So far Greece and Rome were my favorite chapters mainly because they both had strong empires and a strong government. I like learning about the Persian War. The history channel was on the other day and they were talking about the Persian War. Many of the stuff that they mentioned during the program I was able to recognize. At the end of the chapter on Greece, there was a section on religious salvation. It interested me on how they knew that there was a God who would send a savior who would die to save humanity. They also believed that only one God ruled the universe. The book happened to call this a mystery religion.Rome was interesting because of how its government and control changed from kingdom to republic and lastly to empire. The Romans didn’t seem to get into any major war besides the Punic War. I liked the way that Augustus ruled because he didn’t make his form of government seem so oppressive. He actually seemed like a great leader. He disguised his absolute control with a republic. He actually let the people take part in the government. The Silk Road was so dull to me. It only got interesting when I found out that two great empires, Rome and China, were connected. The Silk Road to the Roman roads.

Speech class

One time my friend and I were in an arcade on a cruise. W had just finished the whole game of Time Crisis at the same time setting the highest score. We were walking out when my friend bumped into another kid. This kid did no look past it but decided to attack my friend and start a fight. One thing he didn’t know was that my friend was a top mma fighter in the state of Virginia they both fought and my friend soon put him into submission using a sleeper hold. The kid was going to knock out in the arcade but i stopped my friend. later that evening me and my friends were walking out of a buffet and heading to the  lobby on the cruise. That was when we were stopped by the exact same kid but this time, he had 7 other friends with him. My friend was dumb enough to start aggravating the kid. that boy got so mad he started to  to throw some punches and that was when i pushed him back to prevent my friend from getting nailed in the face. This kid seriously had anger issues. he started to cuss us out so i just told him to calm down. I  then told my friends to just pick another route to go to the lobby. Ten minutes later, we were on our way to the pool . and guess who we saw? We happened to run into that angry little troll again. This time he and his friends were all cussing us out and taunting us. The angry little troll got  into a boxing stance and started doing punches at us.  I was tired of him and ready for a fight myself because one of my friends was a girl and he pushed her around and started trash talking her. Right when he was going up to her again for the second time, i pushed him back and went to his face and said, “ Hey, you don’t treat a girl like that , and second you really don’t want to start anything with me.” he pushed my back and said, “Why don’t you go back to China asian boy!” It was the last straw. I told him softly “Lets go,” and i got into my fighting stance to intimidate him out of a fight. He and his friends started to run towards me and i took it that they were stupid enough to still want to fight after i tried to hint to them that i was black belt. So i started running back. I ran back ten feet to give me room. Luckily i was in shorts. The next move I did was suppose to again intimidate them out of a fight, so I started to flips and the famous flying and flip kicks of shoulin. The second offensive finally work. The boys backed off and ran away. later tat evening, my friend found out that those boys were caught by the security gaurd for being rowdy and loud. My style of fighting is that of which bruce lee proclaimed was his style, “Fighting without fighting.”

 

10/10/10

The last two weeks of AP World have been on the Classical Era. So far we have already studied about Persia, China, and India. To me, Persia and China focused mostly on their government because their empires were large and had a high population. On the other hand, India tried to focus itself on India but became divided by their affinity towards having a social class and their religion. The barriers between social classes were to great for the lower classes to handle and created too much stress upon them. They sought after religion to relieve their stress. Those faiths that they clung towards to were ones that had the followers disconnect with all worldly affairs and just meditate . All three main religions, Jainism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, held towards the belief of Ahimsa. By practicing ahimsa, followers were ordered to be kind to all things on earth. The common goal that the religions had, was to escape from the cycle of reincarnation.

Persia and China  both had a strong government and both lasted for hundreds of years. China lasted because of its tight control but in the end fell because of civil disorder. Persia survived much civil disorder because of the intricacy in its government. It was not overthrown my the people. It was only conquered by outside invaders. If the Persians and the Chinese were to integrated each others success in to their own government, they would have probably lasted for a few more hundred years.