AP exam!! Finally OVER! pheeww..

I can't believe this year is almost over! and I'm done with both of my AP exams! Compared to my AP Bio, this one was so much better! The essay questions were really easy; cricket and politics: did something like that ever show up before? Because I feel like at the beginning of the year, you did show us something similar like this as in sports with politics! Anyways, it was easy for me except the time when the proctor announced that 40 mins are up out of two hours, I was still writing my DBQ and analyzing the documents! I thought there is no way I could finish all three essays in next 80 minutes, but... but surprisingly I still had time to do expanded core for every essay and I did manage to finish it on time. The multiple choice were also easy! I read the first question and I knew that this is going to be easy. 

For the review, to be honest, the review games were fun! It's more fun when everyone is sort of well prepared..  I was not really prepared during the review games which we played. I knew the stuff from second half of the year, but not the beginning of the year! I did start to study from Monday night to Wednesday night and it really helped with, of course, answering the multiple choice and essay questions. People say that you can't study the whole book and you are not supposed to be studying, but I'm glad I studied. Unfortunately, it did not pay off with AP bio exam but I feel confident about this one. 

For the next year, I think may be you should cover each period each day as in take foundational period as an example. You can just go over few important points/civilizations that people have questions on and refresh the memory. Since it was at the beginning of the year, for me, I had hardest time remembering. So, I don't know how this would work out, but may be worth a try? 

Communist Manifesto!! YAYYY!

Positives!
- Graduated Income Tax: Tax is necessary for any society to survive. I believe that the idea of graduated income tax is fair enough, because people are paying the tax depending on what they earn. It would not make much sense for someone who is earning less money to pay more tax compared to the other person who is earning more - paying less tax. Graduated Income Tax is necessary.
- Abolition of Children's factory labor and providing a free school education: Free school education? Yes, definitely a positive thing, because that way, at least people would learn something. The only problem with this is that they need to get money to have free education - which could only be possible by taxes. If people are paying the taxes then once they get the money = children could get free education. Abolition of children's factory labor is also a positive thing because (well, we live in a society where there are fixed hours for children to work and certain age limit) the children are not matured enough to work in factories and may end up hurting themselves or hurting the company.
- Equal Liability: Women working equally with men? Definitely a positive thing; throughout history, women were always considered weak and not equal to men. They always got paid less or not as much as the men did. Equal liability gives rights to women to work and earn same amount as men did.

- Centralization:I think centralization is needed in order to keep any human being under control. Even though everyone is being treated 'equally' in this type of society, you still do need centralization. Centralization of transportation and communication is in state's hands.

Negatives!
- abolition of all right of inheritance: This is negative because there are some things that you cannot abolish and this is one of them. According to him, this is direct tax and it hurts the policies of indirect tax which is not true. I believe that inherited things are not for pubic; sometimes those taxes are needed or else how else is the idea of 'free-education' going to work?
- confiscation of property: I found this one to be ridiculous one! I understand that sometimes it is important to be cautious but government cannot just take property away from ONLY emigrants and rebels if they are not sure. Even if they take the land away, what are they going to use it for? Probably public use again! I don't think this is a positive thing because think about it, rebels are rebelling just because they don't like the way society works. Guess what, if the government takes their property, it is going to make more rebels and make things worse for no reason!
- free education: This could be positive and negative thing. I did say it was a positive thing but I also do believe that it is a negative thing. Free education would require a lot of money which would be impossible to get enough with the taxation and amount of labor people do and earn.
- abolition of property in land: Property tax which is paid annually would not give any right to anyone to own a property. It is for the public purpose and no single person can own property. I believe that owning property is a good thing. There are a lot of properties, how much are you going to use for the public?

Revolutionary Heroic Figures :/ din't find them much interesting

Hmm... Revolution!! :/ First of all, these heroic figures... I believe they need to show off less and learn to pose! They are posing as if they are forced to pose and Marat just looks so miserable! George Washington looks all serious and not smiling at all; the last two just look so scary! Anyways, all of them share some similarities:

Similarities:
- all the 'heroes' in all the pictures are holding something in their hands such as a sword or quill! well, three of them at least had some kind of weapon in their hand - may be representing the revolution! Marat had quill; he looked miserable and more like sacrificing type of person; I guess the reason he had quill was to show the writing of some kind of document. Speaking of written document, all the pictures also had some kind of papers (written) somewhere in picture. For example, in George Washington's picture, the written paper (probably declaration of independence) is showed on the table. Also, in the next picture which was Marat's, he is holding the paper in his hand just like Toussaint Louveture. Even in the last picture which was Bolivar's, there is a certain type of written document showed in the picture.Also, almost all the leaders look confident and doing certain type of pose except Marat.


WHY???: The artist chose to portray them in this way because people would think of them as strong leaders and respect them. Also, the artist did made them confident, serious, and having attitude, doing wonderful showy pose. The pictures are shown in such way to make them more stronger and people would listen and it would lead to success! The artist probably wanted to show the people that 'ohh, look! these are our role-models; we shall be inspired and continue with the war'.

Heroic Figures!!!: Heroic figures are necessary for the revolution because in every war, you atleast need one leader who provides guidance, who also becomes your role-model, who orders you around and has somewhat of a clue on what is going on around and what to do! Heroic figures maintain the things around so they don't go all crazy during the war. Also, they are necessary for people because people need someone to listen to or else no one will ever listen to anyone and that would be just disaster!

Ferguson and his SIX killer apps.. why only six??? :O

Okay, so Ferguson talks about the six 'killer apps' which I do agree upon on. First one was competition; there is competition everywhere in this present time. I guess it's just us humans like to be better than others and somehow bring the other one down! I kind of disagree with competition being only western thing, I mean, there was competition before the 'western side' was even colonized. For example, daimyos in Japan (couldn't think of any other example). Second killer app is the scientific revolution: I do agree with him about this; I believe this should be one of the top things because westerners did come up with a lot of things in science! Third app was property rights. I do agree with him about owning property, even though western method differed from the one in Latin America. Number four was Medicine!! Definitely a big one, though I kinda don't agree with western side being the top one behind the medicine! Ancient civilizations did use medicine.. I guess what he was trying to say was the population increased which led to more money and western side became more advanced! I'm not so sure if I agree with that. Fifth app was the consumer society: once again, I'm kind of not sure about this since I believe that it's not only west who traded and produced goods; there were others as well. And last one is work ethic which I do agree with.
Another thing he mentioned was that the Great Divergence is more political than geographical, which he proved it in his sense but if you go back in time, geography did play a major role with the success of the civilizations and even empires.
I actually liked this TED talk but one thing I noticed was that he is very full of himself! It also felt like he was taking 'west' side and saying westerners were the best and came up with everything.. you might disagree with that but hey, that's the way I felt like!

Wow! I actually get to criticize a (school) book without teacher minding it!!!

According to me, chapter 28 is a huge mess. The information given in this chapter is not organized, and really, if you look back to the chapter, you will notice that there is more information on Ottomans rather than Safavids or Mughal. So why did the textbook authors chose to put all three Islamic empires together in one chapter? - well, in order to make separate chapters, you need creative titles and may be the textbook authors just got lazy with their creativity! I do not know what they were thinking when they 'created' this chapter; may be they thought it would be easier for students, or may be they just got lazy! Because you definitely need more information in order to make separate chapters or else it would be a chapter of a page or two with the information given on Safavids and Mughals. Personally, for me, I think this chapter was a mess with all information just messed up together.

This period of global interactions was definitely a good thing; if it wouldn't have happened, people would still be living boring lives! You could say this period brought in more colors in people's lives! It is always good to exchange ideas, cultures, traditions, food products, peoples, etc; I mean that's how modern world works!

Fabian Fucan REJECTS Christianity.. Noo wayy

Fabian Fucan converted to Christianity at early age but later he considered it as his mistake! So, he condemns the Christian faith by supporting Buddhist ideas. He attacks Christianity by describing the Christian faith as barberic, evil thing! Culturally, he attacks Christianity by saying that its mission is to destroy Japanese cultural traditions and bring in "their traditions". Politically, he attacks Christianity by saying how "they have dispatched troops and usurped Luzon (the Philippines) and Nova Hispania (Mexico)". Historically, he describes how Japan was without Christianity before! And now Christian missionaries are here to destory the history as well as cultural traditions, the reason why he attacks Christianity politically as well. In social aspects, he pretty much describes Christianity as bad and 'evil' and he is trying to prevent people from converting to Christianity; according to him, Buddhism is the best!

Chapter 26 Project :)

So since we could not do showme all together, we divided up the sections of the chapter and everyone did their own! Here is the order it goes in:

Part 1 (696-700)
Part 2 (701-704)
Part 3 (705-710)
Part 4 (711-715)
Part 5 (715-718)