So, turns out my dream of a Dodgers World Championship will not come true this season after losing the NLCS 4-1 to the Phillies. And right now, with the Yankees leading the ALCS 3-2, it’s looking like an East-Coast World Series.

So using the assumption that the Yankees do make the World Series, this is my prediction. If not, this whole article is unfortunately void. x,x.

With the Phillies finally getting things together just in time for their second-straight World Series appearance, many are predicting a Phillies repeat; however, alot of these predictions are coming from biased Yankees haters (I won’t deny it- I myself despise the Yankees as well and would love to see the Phillies win).

The following are bullets are all facts:

• The Yankees are known for choking in the post season.
• The Phillies have momentum from last season’s World Championship, and are hungry for another one.
• The Yankees have home field advantage in this season.
• A-Rod is known for choking in the post season.

However, these are also facts:

• The Yankees have more momentum in THIS post season, having basically steamrollered all their opponents.
• A-Rod, though known for choking come October, is red hot this post season.
• The Phillies pitching staff, while still good, is not as dominant as it was last year.

Here’s the Phillies pitching rotation for the 2009 World Series.

Joe Blanton

Cole Hamels

Cliff Lee

Pedro Martinez

J.A. Happ

Now, this is a solid rotation, however not all of the Phillies starters are preforming to their full potential. This could prove a problem. However, the Phillies were 2-1 in their last set against the Yanks. On May 22, they lit up A.J. Burnett in a 7-3 win with Brett Myers on the mound. In the other win, they won 4-3 in extras with Cole Hamels on the mound. They faced C.C. Sabathia.

So the Phillies proved they could hit both Burnett and Sabathia, both starters in the Yankee rotation. If they can repeat the process they’ll be in good standing for a repeat.

However, on the other end of things, Yankees pitchers have been phenomenal lately. Sabathia is posting an insane 1.13 ERA in the LCS while Yankees closers are basically untouchable (*cough* Rivera). Throw in A-Rod’s .411 average and 5 homers this postseason, and Jeter’s .340 average with 3 homers, backed by a few other .300 hitters and you got yourself an offense to be reckoned with.

But, there’s always the threat of Ryan Howard, who’s a threat to hit a home run every time he’s at bat. Then there’s Shane Victorino, who is a hitting machine, and Carlos Ruiz, who comes up clutch when he needs to.

I could get into a game by game breakdown, but really i’m tired and it would take me hours to do. My prediction is Phillies in 6 if their pitching comes alive. If not, Yanks in 6.

.

So I forgot to write an article for Saturday, and I chose today as my make-up date. That makes it a full twenty days since you’ve heard from your favourite fortnightly gazette in the practice of AWESOME.
Consequently, I think you deserve another of my wacky PHP programs that I made which got the girl/made peace in the Middle East/increased the efficiency rates of pig farming in the Serengeti by 50%/other (delete as applicable).

Unfortunately, as programming goes, I haven’t had a lot in the way of work. Interesting work, anyway. If you’re that devoted to following my endeavours, I did write a PHP/MySQL questionnaire for my college which recorded students’ opinions of their lessons. Like I said: not very interesting stuff. So, deserve it as you may, I’m not giving you an article about programming.

So what am I writing about? Well, the title might have given it away if you’re a UK citizen or you’re at all interested in UK politics: the British National Party, or BNP. Before I begin with my little rant here, I understand that I have very extreme views that are not representative of those of LightWithin Productions or any of the rest of its staff team (though I’d hope they do agree).

I know, I know; this doesn’t sound like it’s going to be a particularly interesting article. As soon as I get into the meat of the issue, however, I am sure that your jaw will drop in horror and you might not even believe me that this happens.

The BNP is an extremely far-right political party which operates in the United Kingdom. Having gone through several iterations in the last few decades, it is only in the last five years that it has transformed from an underground movement with dubious links to fascist terrorism plots to a so-called “legitimate” party. The way in which it has done this is by concealing its more radical viewpoints (such as its hatred of all non-whites).

Some other highlights of BNP policy: Islam is a disgusting, vile, violent religion and all Muslims should be “deported”; to rape a woman is to grant her innermost desires, comparable to feeding her chocolate cake; to hit a woman is to keep her in shape; and the Holocaust never happened.

But surely simply holding apparently rational viewpoints isn’t enough to get a party mainstream support… right? Right. To be honest, Nick Griffin (who has lead the BNP throughout this “rise to power”) has done his job pretty well – despite being very, very creepy, he’s actually brainwashed hundreds of braindead citizens who can’t think for themselves to vote for the BNP.

Why am I writing this article now? The BNP has made two worrying developments recently. In June, the European Parliamentary elections were held. Now, not one, but two members of European Parliament are fascists: Nick Griffin, the aforementioned BNP leader; and Andrew Brons, most notable for supporting the “RIGHTS FOR WHITES” movement, depicted in the little “highlights” box. That means that the BNP has power – admittedly very little power, but any fascist power is misused power.

The other thing the BNP has done recently, as I’m sure all Twitter users are aware, is appear on the BBC’s Question Time, on which programme the viewing public are invited to ask questions to a panel of senior politicans, usually comprising of politicians from the three leading parties (Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat). After much dispute as to whether it would simply grant the BNP extra publicity, Nick Griffin was permitted to make a massive fool of himself on national television.

To be honest, I personally am unsure of whether the BNP can be considered a “real” threat. To me, the party consists of some of the most evil, wretched people alive today who try to enforce ancient viewpoints on the easily manipulated portion of the British government. However, some believe that their recent rise in popularity owes simply to public dissatisfaction with all other political parties, and voting for the BNP is simply a demonstration, from the public, of what could happen if the Labour government doesn’t step its act up.

Whilst I ponder on this, I’m sure we can all agree that the following video is hilarious.

Cassetteboy vs Nick Griffin vs Question Time

.

Heya people! It’s me again, and hopefully WordPress doesn’t eat this article too…

So, it’s the end of October. And that means it’s getting colder (bleh), we’re finally used to being back in school, and life is pretty normal. But not for those novelists out there. We’re busy planning our NaNoWriMo novels (or if you’re like me, just ignoring that you should be planning and waiting for November to start already!)! And as you could have guessed, I’m going to blab about NaNo here.

NaNoWriMo is a challenge of sorts. The challenge is to write 50,000 words in the month of November. That’s about 1,667 words a day. For some people, that’s a lot. For other people, not so much. But everyone agrees on one thing: writing a 50,000 novel in 1,667 days is no small task. It’s not for the faint of heart. But thousands of us every year take up our Novembers, mess up our relationships with friends and sleep, and churn out a novel. This is my second year, and DM’s fifth? Something crazy like that. Will your novel be the next it Harry Potter? No. Will it be perfect? No. Will it be decent? Maybe, but no guarantees. But you’ll have written more words in a month than you probably did in the three months before it. You also probably will learn many word count tricks that are great to use on essays. You might have met a few writing buddies. You might have figured out that you don’t like writing that much at all. You probably will have broken your keyboard at some point. You WILL have become a better writer. You WILL have proved to yourself that you are indeed insane. You WILL have a novel, or at least most of one.

And that is the end of my probably not very motivational motivational speech.

So yeah. You should do NaNo. Several members of the team are doing it (I know DM and myself are for sure, I have a suspicion that there are other people and I’m forgetting them). And it’s fun, and crazy, and a great way to get a bunch of writing done. And you can finally prove to yourself that you can write a novel. And you can make a whole bunch of progress towards getting carpal tunnel.

So, come and do NaNoWriMo. Even if you don’t win, it’s still amazing fun and an amazing experience.

.

So as a filler post covering every blogger, what will this be like? Well, if this submission representing DM and her awesomeness is any clue, then it will be like this:

To represent Stu, here is a movie review:

I recently went to the Toy Story double feature 3D event. Two words: FRAKKING AWESOME! I am not much of a fan of this 3D fad that is sweeping movies, but I do love the Toy Story movies. Fact: These are the only Disney Animated squeals to be released in theaters and still kick ass. This remastering was great. The intermission with Toy Story trivia and shorts were a great addition. I honestly felt like a kid again. If you missed you’re chance to catch this event, well, sucks to be you.

Continuing our parade through LW staffers, we reach this pic which convinced Helena to never want to visit America:

Filling in for Daniel, I will talk some sports:

So we have the Winer Olympics coming up somewhere in the middle of nowhere soon. The Winter Olympics don’t get the respect that the summer games do for obvious reasons: no Dream Team, no Michael Phelps, no heart warming story about the first male-male pair figure skating team, no plucky, but resourceful US hockey team that proves miracles can happen. None of that. So our sports for this week is a tribute to the winter games summed in one word: curl.

Moving to Katherine, we reach a speed bump. Stu is our movie/music/entertainment reviewer. I have gaming and general geekdom covered. Kieran seems to have our computing fields covered. (Click here for the tribute to Kieran) DM is our undisputed queen of NaNo. So we have all of her, unfounded and unproven, claims to geakdom covered. But we don’t have one thing she seems to do more than anything else covered: social networking. So here is a link to a conversation I predict may one day be in her future: (Honestly, I hope this doesn’t happen to anyone.)

Time for another video! This time, it is a submission representing Light:

This next section is for the ever productive Medli:

[404 Error]

So that is it for the entire blogging staff. I hope you enjoyed i…. What? One more? I thought I covered everyone. Whoever is last mustn’t be that popular or handsome or that undeniably awesome that I just had to forget him. Well, here is something I would throw together instead:

So, as an awesome geek among geeks, I naturally love D&D. I need a more uniform set of dice, but I do have enough dice to play. I’ve only played 4th Edition, since that was the edition that our party was playing. D&D is very fun. To those that are more gamers, like Dyl, think of it like a Final Fantasy game, only you have more of a personal connection to the characters because you are the main character! To those of you who have boners for Haruhi, like DM, think of it as you are Haruhi because your actions shape the world. To those of you with eggs in your soul, the egg of your heart, if you will, think of it as the ultimate Chara change because you get to be who you want to be! (Judging by my pet characters, I either want to be a big purple person like Dr Manhattan, except with pants, or I want to be a drunken, female assassin.) D&D is whatever you put into it. I encourage everyone to play at least once in their life. On that note, I am wanting to put on a game for LW. If you are interested in joining, send me a PM on our forums and I’ll get back to you. If not but you are interested in learning more, click here and enjoy!

As I would do, if I were the last blogger mentioned, I would end with a video so why not?

This work by Elliot James Hayter is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at Legal.

.

This post does not affilate itself with the right wing at all. It uses intelligence to back it’s ideas up, something the Right seems to be lacking.

Recently (Sept.28th 2009 — sorry, we don’t get opinions out sooner ), President Obama expressed a desire to make the school day longer; by at least three hours. This plan would see the average American child attending school till at least 5 o’clock.  The President said that this due to the fact, that other kids in other countries spend more time in school and therefore, will be able to compete in a global economy better than the average American child.

“Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas,” the president said earlier this year. “Not with Malia and Sasha, not in my family, and probably not in yours. But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom.”

I can understand where President Obama is coming from, facing a damaged school system which suffers from unecessary state exams (No Every Child Left behind) inadqueate teaching strategies and a failing infastrucutre; he can only resort to the measures that are seen by many to be a last, radical option.  This, however, is no way to fix a school system on the brink of disaster.

If there is a change in the duration of the school day but no change to what is being taught, and how it is being taught; students will just end up feeling more disintrested in school and will not look forward to going to school even more than they do now; which means students will be more inclined to skip classes and go down a dangerous road of dropping out of high school. For others, that 3 hours will just be a time to doze off  in class.  President Obama, said it himself that if you want to change the attitudes towards math and science, you have to make kids more geuinely interested and that means better teachers and teaching strategies, which means a large investment in America’s schoolchildren.

With this proposed change, students will have to get up earlier and arrive home later; thus creating a possiblity for increased fatigue and stress.  Currently, I am in a hectic semester with 3 science courses and an English course. With this, comes a large amount of homework each night.  I enjoy a 2 hour relax grace period before I begin my work; under President Obama’s plan, no child will have the right to strech their legs after school, it would be straight to homework.  As we all know, not every child does their homework; so this may in fact decrease the amount of students that do their homework, thus bringing upon a decline in academic sucess across America’s schools.

Parents who work, may be at a slight advantage under this plan, for they may not have to deal with babysitters.  However, it can make life for a lot of parents (even for those who work) a lot more hectic, with students coming home at dinnertime as opposed to late in the afternoon.

These are just a few points against having a LONGER school day, one part of a plan proposed by President Obama in a speech a few weeks ago. Another option would be to make the school day, year round, instead of having a long summer break.  This idea makes more sense than the former, and might be worth looking into. 

To those who think Obama is trying to turn Obama into a socialist country; he is merely showing genuine concern for the schoolchildren of America. Something tea partiers do not understand, by supporting a party that sometimes hampers efforts in investing in America’s schoolchildren.  To President Obama; you have good intentions and you are on the right path, you’re just straying a bit towards the curb. But one thing is for sure, as we were all reminded by the shooting death of Derrion Albert on September 24th, the American school system needs reform now.

.