The ACT: Root of all Evil?

This past weekend, a few of my friends took the dreaded 'ACT', and their reactions were generally quite similar, the theme, " I didn't have enough time", and "It was really hard" were heard frequently. This got me thinking, is having a standardized test to judge a student's college worth really all that good? I say this because every high school in the U.S is different, and they all provide a different approach to education. Is it fair to insitute a test with things that possibly some students haven't covered, or haven't covered adaquetly enough. Another issue could be having to prepare for the ACT or SAT along with regular classes, (I haven't touched my ACT prep book since I bought it in September) Regular school work is hard enough, and having to worry about something like the ACT is quite a daunting thought. I understand that it is a good way to judge all students on the same playing field, but does it have to be so hard, and weighted so heavily? Should colleges focus more on things like class rank, regular grades, and extracuriculars?

The Wikipedia: One of the 7 Deadly Sins

All through my educational carrer, I have been told my countless teachers, conselors, and librarians to "STAY AWAY FROM WIKIPEDIA BECAUSE IT ISNT A CREDIBLE SOURCE!!" The way that teachers talk about it makes me think it to be the root of all evil. But, I don't think some people should be so quick to condemn "the wikipedia", because after all, most people use this tool to garner background information on a subject, not to do in depth research. I think that you should be able to cite wikipedia as a source, as long as you are just using to get an idea on a subject or something and you are using it for simple, or numerical facts, such as how many people died in WWII? I spend a lot of my time diggind around google for 'Credible' sources, and my time might be better spent better focusing my research instead of hunting around the web for a site that can be used in the MLA format. What do you think? What are your thoughts on wikis?

Abu Ghraib and Seymour Hersh: Do we have a right to know?

In class yesterday, we touched on a man named Seymour Hersh who helped uncover the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam war, and who recently uncovered the photos of interrogations from  the U.S prison in Iraq, Abu Ghraib. This got me thinking, do we need to know that things like this are going on? Do we have a right to know these things? Should we even know about things like this, or is the Government protecting us four our own good? I looked through a few of these photos, and they are... disturbing at the least. I'm not sure I wanted to know that U.S troops are doing things like this to prisoners, or if anything worse than this is happening. There are pictures of people chained up in tiny cells, people who are mutilated, and men with hoods over their heads who are made to stand on tiny boxes or face electrocution- this is a method of interogation. Part of me has feels like the public has a right to know what is going on in Iraq, and that freedom of press should not be abridged, as it is one of our country's core values. But part of me thinks that the public doesn't need to know about Abu Ghraib and the ilk until after the war. I'm really torn on this, what do you think?

Blackwater

In class the other day, we quickly touched on a subject that interested me, the private military trainer and contracter "Blackwater" had recently changed their name to "Xe". I wanted to investigate why they did this. The name blackwater, according to an article I found, is named for the swamps near the North Carolina location of the training facility and headquarters, and the near 100 black bears around that area. A company spokeswoman claims the name has no meaning, except the Xe is the abreviation for the element Xenon... I'm not sure what this means, but to me the name 'Blackwater' sounds malicous in some way. And Xe LLC somehow sounds more professional, even if it is for a company that deals in war. The companie's president claims that this name change indicates a "shift away from providing private security". But will more change than the name? What is your take on all this?