Christendom, What happened to you?

Over the course of 1500 years, from the death of Jesus to the era of exploration and Martin Luther, the basic values of Christendom changed tremendously. I believe that Jesus was just a man who preached "be good people", which was absolutely a righteous cause. But I believe that human's are also selfish, and when Christianity rose as the major religious power in Europe, those selfish humans saw the ability to bend it to their will to accomplish personal goals. For instance, European monarchs would use the "because god said I was king" excuse to uphold their power. And because there was no way to prove or disprove this, the peasants believed it. This allowed monarchs to raise money to build armies to conquer. This is where Luther had the same problem as me, and so he attempted to bring Christianity back to the more traditional message of "be good people". Of course, this problem is still existant today by politicians and heads of churches, using the bible and Jesus to prevent the development of society as a whole for their own selfish purposes.

The Griots, not bigots

Pros-

• Transmitted from a primary source
• Easily spread, and spread faster than a textbook
• A form of entertainment in the spread of the stories

Cons-

• More room for variability in the transmission of the history
• More of a possibility of losing the history forever if it's not appealing to the public audience

I think that although more entertaining than textbook  history, the Griots are a worse form of the transmission of history. The only definitive way of having the history as it actually happened is for it to be written down. The transfer of history through word of mouth only defiles the story as it gets passed along, because everybody adds their own little thing to it. However, if history is written down originally, that exact same story can be copied word for word, and there's way less of possibility that the history will be defiled.

In conclusion: Textbooks.

Mongol Blogol

The trial may have been my favorite thing we've done so far in AP World. Everybody got so into it, and it was exciting debating this because as the saying goes "The victor writes history". The mongols were never tried for their crimes before because nobody was powerful enough to put them on trial, but now that they were, it's interesting to see what modern day crimes they would be committed of! Plus it was relatively easy to prep for, which makes a fun assignment even more fun!
As for myself, I thought I did a good job portraying Guillaume Boucher. I thought my feelings of being kidnapped from Europe and brought back to Karakorum were realistic and helped my team to win the case in kidnapping.
I thought that Genghis Khan himself was admirable. He had a goal and he set out to achieve it, which he did. And the fact that he had standards of "No harming women or children" showed that he had compassion in that mean persona somewhere. The mongols as a whole on the other hand I do not appreciate in the slightest. It seems that even though they were good fighters, they were ruthless and didn't follow humanitarian orders in the slightest. Only to kill and ravage whoever they defeated.
For the counts of guilty or not guilty, I say

• Kidnapping: Totally and utterly 100% guilty
• Terrorism: Guilty
• Genocide: Not guilty, because they did not target a specific group of people, but persons of many different ethnicities and beliefs, which defies the definition of "genocide".

How Muslims viewed the Crusades: Update The Final part 2

Almost forgot the bibliography!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/142Pv9qF89wfitMxea1Bs-ys1w6WwAZbaUPoS7GEbTTE/edit?hl=en_US

How Muslims viewed the Crusades: Update The Final

So! Futaba, Giovanna and I stayed after until 5 today (along with Melanie Canales) to film the view points of Muslims during the first, second and third crusades. Futaba was wonderful enough to post the videos to her youtube page here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/FutabaShioda


I have to still help another person out by sharing with them this amazing link I found to help with the 3rd crusade.

I think what I'll take from this project is I'll be more inclined to search Bing now. Google's great but I liked the research websites I found on Bing.

I believe that the video was the best choice for a project because it was a ton of fun. I haven't had so much fun doing a school project since middle school. I wish we could have had an outtakes real to show the class.

How Muslims viewed the Crusades: Update 2

So, 2 days before the project is due and everything is planned out. Giovanna, Futaba and I are staying after musical rehearsal tomorrow and filming a summary (/mainly view point of Muslims) of the first 3 crusades. We'll be using props, shirts, accents, going full out! Probably the most fun I'll ever have with a high school project.

For research I used mainly Bing and also Jon Dirusso for the websites I found, posted here:

http://www.shadowedrealm.com/articles/exclusive/richard_saladin_warriors_third_crusade

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/144695/Crusades/25611/The-Third-Crusade

Tomorrow should be enjoyable!

How Muslims viewed the Crusades: Update 1

Soooo, ya. Today I did what I consider to be the most important part of my project: picked the crusades. I have decided to do the 1st, 2nd and 3rd (easy enough to remember, plus they're the ones that would arouse the most anger in the Muslim world at the time I figure). I'm planning on doing a majority of my project using yahoo, and am partnering up with Jon Dirusso right now for help with 1 and 3. Still need to find a person doing 2. Absolutely no idea how I'm going to present my understanding: not enough time after school to try and make a movie, want to be more creative than a power point, though it is not beneath me. Fun. Week. Ahead.