Alex Z

Where would I go?

2009-05-12T20:55:00.000-07:00

If I could go to any place in the world outside the U.S., I think it would have to be Scotland. I really like the weather and scenery there, and all the people have awesome accents. If not Scotland, then probably somewhere in Asia, because everything seems so different there. Also, I really like Asian food.... The only problems with going to Asia would be the mass amounts of pollution, and not being able to speak/understand anything.

Last week I went tubing with a bunch of friends on some river that I forgot the name of. It was pretty fun, I haven't gone tubing for a few years, and the last time I went was a bad experience (including rashes in various places, many insect bites, and bloody feet.).

Overpopulation

2009-04-26T21:10:00.000-07:00

Japan and China are some of the most overpopulated countries in the world. In fact, China is THE most populated country in the world! Why? because there weren't any limits on the population growth. Recently China has passed an act that limits families to only 1 child. I think that this is a really good response to the overpopulation problem, but it probably could have gone into action a lot earlier. Also, China should start making things like birth control more available to the population.

Last week, I went to a fencing tournament in San Marcos, and got 6th out of 16 people. I probably could have done better, but I had some bad luck in the direct elimination round. For those of you not familiar with this, it's where you fence someone to 15 points, then if you lose you're out for the rest of the tournament, but if you win, you fence the person who won their bout, and so on, until the last two, who fight for 1st place.( yeah, sorry bad explanation..) Anyways, I won my first direct elimination, but then got placed with the one guy I couldn't beat, who ended up getting 1st.

Darfur

2009-04-20T15:58:00.000-07:00

I think that the situation in Darfur is a huge mess of corruption, chaos, and genocide.The Janjaweed should be blamed because they're doing the actual killing. China should be blamed, because they're supplying the Janjaweed with weapons,and the rest of the world isn't doing much to help. I think that this conflict is definitly a genocide, because a group of innocent people are being killed.

Last week, I went on a ski trip with the music department of Anderson Orchestra. We went to Colorado, and it snowed a ton! We almost had to stay an extra day because there was so much! Anyways, I had alot of fun skiing, and it was just really awesome.

Culture

2009-03-26T22:08:00.000-07:00

Yay, music! I love music! I play 2 instruments, listen to music all the time, and live in Austin, TX, the music capitol of the world! I'm even listening to music while I'm writing this! I enjoy techno/electronica, alternative, trance,(some) country, rock, and other genres that I don't know the name of. My favorite band is probably Coldplay, they're pretty much awesome. I also like Embrace, the Strokes, Gomez, the Arcade Fire, and some other independant artists such as Jack Conte, and Oren Lavie. I mainly like kind of quite or mellow music, and I don't really like heavy metal, or any intense stuff.

Last week was spring break! I mainly just stayed at home sleeping, but I saw some friends, and went to San Antonio for a day. This weekend, I'm going to a fencing tournament in Houston, hopefully I'll be able to get a rating! For those of you that don't know, in fencing, you get rated; E is the lowest, A is the highest. I'm currently a U fencer. (Unrated) But hopefully I'll be able to get up to E this weekend.

My Interests

2009-03-08T17:07:00.000-07:00

I'm interested in many things, so I'll name a few. First off- movies! I love making and watching movies. It's kind of hard to make good movies by yourself, but I might have my friends help me. One kind of movie I can make by myself is animation! Right now I've been experimenting with stop motion animation, which is where you take a picture of an object in one position, move the object's position slightly, take another picture, and repeat. When you put all the pictures together, and speed it up, it looks like the object is moving on it's own. I was going to put up a sample, but blogger is being mean...

I'm also interested in reading, mainly fiction. Some of my favorite books are, "Ender's game", "Dog Days", and "New Tricks". Another thing I'm interested in is music. Some of the bands I like are Coldplay, Embrace, and the Strokes.

These past two weeks were relatively eventful. We had two orchestra concerts, once during school, and one after school. In the school concert I got lost on one of the pieces, then thought I knew were to come back in, but ended up playing on the wrong beat....oops.... Also, I missed most of my math classes last week, the first time, I left early to go to the orthodontist. Then, the next day was tax, so we didn't learn anything new. The the next day I played at the concert, and missed another lesson that turned out to be really important. To make up for missing class, I tried to come in for tutoring during lunch, but my teacher wasn't there. Finally I got caught up the next day after school.

Better to fall in love or learn to love?

2009-02-21T10:36:00.000-08:00

In my opinion it's better to fall in love than to be forced to love someone. It's always better to have a choice, and you might not be right for the person you're arranged to marry. It would really suck if you had to live with someone everyday that you don't like, and it would probably suck for them too. When two people fall in love, then you know that they genuinely like each other, and will probably be able to live with each other for a while. Actually, before I was born, my parents and made a deal with their friends as kind of a joke. The "deal" was that if one of them had a boy, and the other had a girl, then the children would marry when they were old enough. Well, my parents had a boy (me!) and their friends had a girl, so........

These last two weeks have been moderately eventful. I finally saw Coraline in 3D, and it was AWESOME!! It was a good story, but mainly it was an amazing visual experience.(especially in 3D.) I also had a banjo rehearsal, which went pretty well. Some other things happened, but they're not worth writing about.

Global Warming

2009-02-08T08:50:00.000-08:00

I used to not believe in Global Warming. I thought that Al Gore made it all up, just to get more votes, but now-a-days, I'm not so sure. Humans are a really annoying species, all we do is mess up nature for everything else. We're Jerks. We spill pollutants like oil in the water, we pollute the sky with fumes from our factories, and we're not really doing much to change it. I don't really keep up with all the political nonsense, but I think that Barack Obama will be making some major environmental changes to stop Global Warming. (CHANGE!!!! YEEEAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!)
I think that everyone should do things like recycle, not litter, and just be more environmentally efficient. I'm not saying that you should go hippie, and live off your own urine, just be more aware of the impact of your actions.

These last two weeks, I really haven't done much, I went on a camp out last weekend, and it was pretty cold, we camped next to a shallow lake, and the next morning, the top was frozen! I skipped a rock, and got about 10 skips. I wanted to see Coraline yesterday, but I wasn't able to, so hopefully, I'll be able to see it today, it looks really cool. I think I'm going to get two buttons, and somehow attach them to glasses, and wear them to the theater. I don't know if I'll be able to see.........

Technology

2009-01-23T11:03:00.000-08:00

I have an iPod at home that I use to listen to music while I work. My family also has a computer that we share that I use to do work, (like this blog) play games, and lots of other things. We also have a TV, and we use it to watch shows and movies. Technology also helps with food, things like refrigerators, microwaves, ovens, and toasters. I would put computers in the same category as fire or electricity, because they've become basically a necessity for modern life. People use computers for communication, work, entertainment, and information. Also, these days things are becoming a lot more based around computers,such as music(itunes).

Diversity in America

2008-12-06T16:57:00.001-08:00

America has an amazingly diverse community. People come to America from all over the world, and everyone is welcomed. (Usually) America not only accepts diversity, it promotes it. No matter what race, religion or sex is, you'll probably be treated equally in America, the land of the free.

favorite place

2008-11-16T18:16:00.000-08:00

My favorite place in the U.S. is woods hole Massachusetts. Woods Hole is a small town near Boston that my family and I go to every summer. Woods Hole is mainly known for 2 things: It's a really big Marine Biology resource center, because it's right next to the ocean. It's also known because in the ocean near it, there's a huge place where tons of currents from every direction converge and make a giant-killer-whirlpool of death-type thing that's very dangerous to ships. It's called the Hole, and that's where it gets the name Woods HOLE. Woods Hole is awesome because it's so small and you can walk everywhere, and I meet some friends there that I don't see during the school year. Also, basically all my t-shirts are Woods Hole related, because I do my shirt shopping there.
I also like Austin, because I grew up here, and because Austin is Awesome.

Terrorism

2008-11-03T20:40:00.000-08:00

The United States has had terrorist attacks in the past, including September 11 2001- also known as 9/11. On 9/11, 2 planes that were hijacked by Al Qaeda (An Islamic terrorist group) crashed into the world trade center towers. This attack killed and injured many innocent people. Al Qaeda attacks the U.S, because they want America to get out of Muslim countries. The U.S is trying to prevent this terrorism by launching a "war on terrorism" which includes increasing security at airports, and political reasoning with muslim countries.

My School

2008-10-19T19:24:00.000-07:00

I go to Anderson High School, or L.C. Anderson High School. I always wondered what the L.C. stood for, I used to think it stood for something like Lieutenant Colonel, but apparently that's not it. Anyways, Anderson is a pretty cool place, it goes from 9th grade to 12th grade. If you go to it for the first time, everything looks the same, and it's really hard to get around. After you've been there for a week or two, things start getting easier to find. Anderson has lots of great clubs, sports,teams, classes and other events. I'm not any any clubs yet, but I probably will join one soon. So if you happen to be looking for a school in the Austin Independent School District,Austin,Travis County,Texas, United States, North America, Western Hemisphere, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way Galaxy, Universe area, then go to L.C. Anderson High School!

Immigration

2008-10-04T21:08:00.000-07:00

I live in the United States, Texas, Austin. Yes, there are many illegal immigrants in the U.S. and they come from all over, but mainly Mexico (At least in Texas.) I think immigrants come to the U.S. for different personal reasons, but usually mainly to find better opportunities. The U.S. is known for it's freedom, and the immigrants probably want their share of it. Our country deals with illegal immigrants in different ways. In Texas, there's the natural border (the Rio Grande), which is enforced by man made borders such as the fence. There is also the border patrol, to better control the borders. But it's not all dealt with by force. There is a system so that legal immigrants don't get mistaken for illegal ones. There are papers, documents, and other legal verification.

But papers can be forged and fences breached....................

(Okay, I admit that last sentence was kind of creepy, but hey, I got into it.)

My summer!

2008-09-19T19:32:00.000-07:00

Every summer, my family and I go to a small town in Massachusetts called Woods Hole, which is near Boston. This summer was no different. I love going to Woods Hole- it's a really small town, so I know most of the people living there. I have lots of friends that I look forward to seeing again every summer, and most of them actually live in California for the winter. One of my friends is from Scotland and his name is Jan (pronounced "Yan"). One of the reasons we go to Woods Hole is because my parents teach at the MBL, (the Marine Biological Laboratories) which is a lab for marine biology, and Woods Hole is right next to the ocean. There's also a "science school" for kids, where you can take cool classes like Marine Biology, (you get to go scuba diving, and you learn about Marine Life) and, the class I took, Nature and Film (we made movies about nature and other topics.). I also took a sailing class at the Woods Hole "Yacht Club". The "Yacht Club" is misnamed- it should be called the Woods Hole Mediocre Boats Club. The "Yacht Club" is just a shack in front of a dock. But anyways, I took lessons there, and know I can sail small boats! Besides all these activities, I basically just hung out with my friends, went to the beach, and did other fun summer activities.

Introduction

2008-09-10T15:37:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone, my name is Alex Zakon. Some people call me just Alex, or at my school(Anderson High School) most people call me Zakon. Another nickname I have is Kiwi, but that's a long story for another time.

Anyways, enough about my name- onto the good stuff. let's seeeee...... hobbies! Okay, I like music (who doesn't?) and I play the banjo and the cello. My favorite bands are Coldplay, the Beatles and some small independent song writers like Jack Conte and Greg Laswell. My sport is fencing, I've been fencing for about 3 years now at the AFC( Austin Fencers Club).

I live in Austin, Texas and I'm a fifth generation Texan! My mom was born in Texas, her dad was born in Texas, his dad was born in Texas, and HIS dad was born in Texas!

I enjoy making things (especially out of duct tape!) and figuring out how things work. I also really like to read, my favorite book is Dog Days by John Levitt. I'm Jewish and had my Bar Mitzvah last year. I like animals, and I wish I had a dog, but my mom is allergic to basically everything with hair (except humans.). I used to have a fish, but it was really boring, and it died a couple years ago. My sister had a guinea pig a couple years ago, but it got a tapeworm and died.

I'm not much of an artist, but I like drawing random objects like spoons, mechanical wings and interesting patterns. My favorite artist is M.C. Escher ( so awesome!). I also like making movies, especially stop motion. ( I might post some of my movies later.)

My dad is a Neurobiology professor at the University of Texas. He also knows a lot about history, especially world war 2. My mom is also a scientist at the University of Texas. She likes cooking and interior design shows. I also have a sister named Daniella. She's going to college soon.(she's 18.)

Okay, that's pretty much it. There's probably something I forgot, but I'll write about those when the time comes. bye!

I made a blog!!!!!

2008-09-01T18:44:00.001-07:00

YYYYYYAAAAAAAYYYYY!!!!!!