Western Civilization Blog

      Taking into consideration that all of this information on the blog can be related to many but not to all, here is my response. We are all at home, where we should be comfortable. We have everything we would do after school here such as phones, gaming systems, netflix. I think it is natural for us to slack off or take shortcuts. I, personally, just want to get it done. The time passes much faster with friends to mess around with, and now we are in our comfortable space, there is none of that and it becomes purely work. This does not apply just to students, teachers too. I am sure some teachers are also slacking off, because they too are in their comfortable space. I have always slacked off however, I have not done (with the exception of things that are due first mod or at 12am,) any homework at home this year. That is something I have struggled with since middle school, and it's because I have settled for mediocrity. I can turn something in with little, rushed effort...

Corona and The Athenian plague have some similarities. Corona is killing, and so did the Athenian plague. They both are stopping things from happening and it is causing issues in our society. We can't go places, specifically to Athens they couldn't carry out or win the war they wanted to fight. Any sickness is going to mess up the swing of things, so that is why we have to stick by each other (not literally) but show support for others. There are 500,000 cases confirmed worldwide, and I don't know if its getting better or worse.

Philip II is the father of Alexander. He was an accomplished military commander. He was a hostage in Thebes for 3 years. He realized the weakness of his army lies in past experience. Alexander the Great is Philip's son. He became king after Philip II died. He is "great" because of his military strategy and handling the populaces in places he conquered. As we wrote about yesterday, he had a horse named Bucephalus with a very sweet backstory. Darius III and Alexander were against each other in the League of Corinth. Alexander was winning in battle strategy and Darius wrote him 2 letters of friendship, in the second one offering a ransom for his family and Alexander rejected both.

Alexander the Great had a horse named Bucephalus. The story of taming him is interesting. Bucephalus was a wild and seemingly untamable horse. No one could control him. He was scared of his own shadow. Alexander approached him carefully, made him feel comfortable and got on him and rode off. A very cute beginning to this special friendship. Alexander rode Bucephalus into every battle, but while Alexander was on an excursion he was kidnapped. Alexander cut every tree in order to look for Bucephalus, he was eventually returned with a plea for mercy. Bucephalus may have died of old age or battle wounds, but Alexander named a city after him - Bucephala. Alexander also named another city after his favorite dog. https://www.ancient.eu/Bucephalus/

CYBER WEEK KIND OF SUCKS. I need social interaction. I am not getting that. The only social interaction I get are my parents telling me to do chores. Contradictory to that, I can lay in bed all day. At the same time I kind of want to finish the year like this because I can do work at my own pace it just sucks not being able to hear the lessons or actually retain any information because I'm rushing through stuff to get work done so I can do my own thing. If this goes to the end of the year I might not see any of my senior friends ever again so :(. I also feel bad for them because their senior year will be ruined. My freshman year I couldn't care less about, I don't want to be on the bottom of the food chain anymore. But yeah. I feel like the lessons with all my teachers could be a little better but we are probably all slacking because it's easy to assign work.

Athenian democracy was a mess without Pericles. Pericles' death shows the holes and mistakes in the ruling.   Athenian Army won a skirmish with Sparta and when the leaders returned they were thrown into prison. The failure to rescue the men that fell overboard in the storm was a crime. They wanted to execute them. Socrates was the only one who stood up against him. He questioned the society, it finally had a purpose. He refused to give into higher power. He couldn't convince the assembly and the generals were put to death by drinking Hemlock. This was seen as wrong, he didn't think they needed to be put to death, his conscience and reasoning led him to stand up.

Pericles' plan was shifted. A plague hit that affect the bowels with diarrhea, which probably stunk up the city. Men started not to care about religion or law because of how awful the plague was. It killed over a third of Athens population. Pericles was also struck by the plague. Pericles relied on potions and magic to cure it. After 6 months of illness, he died in 429 BC. He planned to make Athens into the Mediterraneans greatest power, but Pericles underestimated how out of control things are to him even with the greatest amount of knowledge. Pericles held together Athens, people hated him but people realize he was what helped them. They potentially were sliding into mob rule, which crippled their ability to fight a war. The Athenian Army won a skirmish with Sparta and when the leaders returned they were thrown into prison. The failure to rescue the men that fell overboard in the storm was a crime. They wanted to execute them. Socrates was the only one who stood up against him. H...

Questions from cyber day 1: 1. Who was Pericles, and what were his goals for Athens? 2. How is a  direct democracy  run? 3. How did the  Delian League  work?       Pericles was a wise and able man who led Athens during most of its Golden Age (this time called Age of Pericles). He wanted a stronger democracy and introduced Direct Democracy. A direct democracy is run by citizens rule directly instead of through representatives. Male citizens part of the assembly established all important laws of the government affecting the polis. The Delian League was taken over by Athens and they defeated all other city-states in it. Pericles used the money to strengthen the Navy and also to beautify athens. 

Today we watched the rest of the video from Sierra's computer. We had Mr. Canter as a sub and obviously as a language teacher he wasn't about to bust out his western civ knowledge from high school, so I didn't get many notes from this. If Mr. Schick isn't here explaining it then idk what's going on. That's the point where it's easier to use the textbook. I'm excited for lunch.

Today we watched a video to basically recap everything we learned from the notes in the textbook and things Mr. Schick said. I seem to have a better understanding of the rulers of Greece and how they worked since they gave real-life examples of rulers in Greece and what they did to help. I think the one who passed as "traveling with Athena" and then actually doing good for Greece instead of destroying it is quite nice. It shows you that not all rulers, or people, are bad. He did it so his kids would have power, and he boosted Greece's economy, which is always good.

I got a 80 on the pop quiz which I was completely unprepared for nut I guess that's the point. We talked about Aristotle and then had extra time at the end of class to do whatever we wanted or needed to do.

today we took more notes, to be honest with you I don't have my stuff.

Today I took a lot of notes. I copied them from Gabby since I missed them yesterday. There are a lot of gods and goddesses that I am now aware of. I'm pretty excited to get out of school.

Today in Human Geo I don't know what we did so I can't write a blog on it. I had to leave early so I was in class for 5 minutes.