Tag Archives: history

Thoughts

A lesson in civics and citizenship

I happened to look up resources on the Internet that help people prepare for the citizenship test. If you’ll remember, I announced last year that the citizenship test would get harder. I was amazed to see how many sites out there charge for access to information that’s already available freely, right on the USCIS website. They’ve got a great section that shouldn’t be missed by anyone studying for the citizenship test, called Civics and Citizenship Study Materials. It’s got a lot of downloadable PDFs stuffed full of valuable information, made available to anyone, for FREE. And here’s another web page with useful citizenship-related links.

I thought I’d offer you some sample civics questions that could get asked on the citizenship test. You may not be studying to be a citizen because you earned that privilege as your birthright, but it wouldn’t hurt anyone to know the answers to these questions. In spite of what the government tells you, there’s one kind of terrorism that runs rampant, right here among us. It’s called ignorance. I’m not implying that you, my reader, are ignorant, but we’ve all seen plenty of those people, right? Some of them don’t even know basic facts like who was our first president…

Let’s all do our part to fight ignorance. It costs nothing, and nobody dies in the process. How’s that for good odds? 🙂

  1. What are the colors of our flag?
    Red, white, and blue
  2. What do the stars on the flag mean?
    One for each state
  3. How many stars are there on our flag?
    50
  4. What color are the stars on our flag?
    White
  5. How many stripes are there on our flag?
    13
  6. What do the stripes on the flag represent?
    The first 13 states
  7. What colors are the stripes on the flag?
    Red and white
  8. How many states are there in the Union (the United States)?
    50
  9. What do we celebrate on the 4th of July?
    Independence Day
  10. Independence Day celebrates independence from whom?
    Great Britain
  11. What country did we fight during the Revolutionary War?
    Great Britain
  12. Who was the first president of the United States?
    George Washington
  13. Who is the President of the United States today?
    Barrack Obama*
  14. Who is the Vice President of the United States today?
    Joe Biden*
  15. Who elects the President of the United States?
    The Electoral College
  16. Who becomes President if the President dies?
    The Vice President
  17. What is the Constitution?
    The supreme law of the land
  18. What do we call changes to the Constitution?
    Amendments
  19. How many changes, or amendments, are there to theConstitution?
    27*
  20. What are the three branches of our government?
    Executive, Judicial, and Legislative
  21. What is the legislative branch of our Government?
    Congress
  22. Who makes the Federal laws in the United States?
    Congress
  23. Who elects Congress?
    The citizens of the United States
  24. How many Senators are there in Congress?
    There are 100 Senators in Congress, two from each state.
  25. For how long do we elect each Senator?
    Six years
  26. What makes up Congress?
    The Senate and the House of Representatives
  27. Name two Senators from your state.
    The answer to this question depends on where you live.
  28. How many voting members are in the House of Representatives?
    435
  29. For how long do we elect each member of the House of Representatives?
    Two years
  30. Who is the head of the Executive Branch of the U.S. Government?
    The President
  31. For how long is the President elected?
    Four years
  32. What is the highest part of the Judiciary Branch of our Government?
    The Supreme Court
  33. What are the duties of the Supreme Court?
    To interpret and explain the laws
  34. What is the supreme law of the United States?
    The Constitution
  35. What is the Bill of Rights?
    The first ten amendments to the Constitution
  36. What is the capital of the state you live in?
    The answer to this question depends on the state where you live.
  37. Who is the current Governor of the state you live in?
    The answer to this question depends on where you live.
  38. Who becomes President if both the President and Vice President die?
    The Speaker of the House
  39. Who is Chief Justice of the Supreme Court?
    John G. Roberts, Jr.*
  40. What were the original 13 states?
    Virginia, Massachusetts, Maryland, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, North Carolina, South Carolina, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Georgia
  41. Who said, “Give me liberty or give me death”?
    Patrick Henry
  42. Name some countries that were our enemies during World War II.
    Germany, Italy, and Japan
  43. What was the 49th state added to our Union (the United States)?
    Alaska
  44. How many full terms can a President serve?
    Two
  45. Who was Martin Luther King, Jr.?
    A civil rights leader
  46. What are some of the requirements to be eligible to become President?
    A candidate for President must:

    • be a native-born, not naturalized, citizen,
    • be at least 35 years old, and
    • have lived in the U.S. for at least 14 years.
  47. Why are there 100 Senators in the United States Senate?
    Each state elects two Senators.
  48. Who nominates judges for the Supreme Court?
    The President
  49. How many Supreme Court Justices are there?
    Nine
  50. Why did the Pilgrims come to America?
    To gain religious freedom
  51. What is the executive of a state government called?
    The Governor
  52. What is the head executive of a city government called?
    The Mayor
  53. What holiday was celebrated for the first time by American colonists?
    Thanksgiving
  54. Who was the main writer of the Declaration of Independence?
    Thomas Jefferson
  55. When was the Declaration of Independence adopted?
    July 4, 1776
  56. What are some of the basic beliefs of the Declaration of Independence?
    That all men are created equal and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
  57. What is the national anthem of the United States?
    The Star-Spangled Banner
  58. Who wrote The Star-Spangled Banner?
    Francis Scott Key
  59. What is the minimum voting age in the United States?
    18
  60. Who signs bills into law?
    The President
  61. What is the highest court in the United States?
    The Supreme Court
  62. Who was President during the Civil War?
    Abraham Lincoln
  63. What did the Emancipation Proclamation do?
    The Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves.
  64. What special group advises the President?
    The Cabinet
  65. Which President is called the “Father of our Country”?
    George Washington
  66. Which President was the first Commander-in-Chief of the U.S.Army and Navy?
    George Washington
  67. What was the 50th state to be added to our Union (the United States)?
    Hawaii
  68. Who helped the Pilgrims in America?
    The American Indians/Native Americans
  69. What is the name of the ship that brought the Pilgrims to America?
    The Mayflower
  70. What were the 13 original states of the United States called before they were states?
    Colonies
  71. What group has the power to declare war?
    Congress
  72. Name the amendments that guarantee or address voting rights.
    15th, 19th, 24th and 26th
  73. In what year was the Constitution written?
    1787
  74. What are the first 10 amendments to the Constitution called?
    The Bill of Rights
  75. Whose rights are guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights?
    All people living in the United States
  76. What is the introduction to the Constitution called?
    The Preamble
  77. Who meets in the U.S. Capitol building?
    Congress
  78. What is the name of the President’s official home?
    The White House
  79. Where is the White House located?
    Washington, DC
  80. Name one right or freedom guaranteed by the first amendment.
    The rights of freedom of religion, of speech, of the press, of assembly, and to petition the Government
  81. Who is Commander-in-Chief of the United States military?
    The President
  82. In what month do we vote for the President?
    November
  83. In what month is the new President inaugurated?
    January
  84. How many times may a Senator or Congressman be re-elected?
    There is no limit.
  85. What are the two major political parties in the United States today?
    The Democratic and Republican parties
  86. What is the executive branch of our government?
    The President, the Cabinet, and departments under the cabinet members
  87. Where does freedom of speech come from?
    The Bill of Rights
  88. What U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services form is used to apply for naturalized citizenship?
    Form N-400 (Application for Naturalization)
  89. What kind of government does the United States have?
    A Republic
  90. Name one of the purposes of the United Nations.
    For countries to discuss and try to resolve world problems or to provide economic aid to many countries
  91. Name one benefit of being a citizen of the United States.
    To obtain Federal government jobs, to travel with a U.S. passport, or to petition for close relatives to come to the United States to live
  92. Can the Constitution be changed?
    Yes
  93. What is the most important right granted to United States citizens?
    The right to vote
  94. What is the White House?
    The President’s official home
  95. What is the United States Capitol?
    The place where Congress meets
  96. How many branches are there in the United States government?
    Three

*Answer will change with time.

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Reviews

Camera review: Canon EOS 5D DSLR

With the release of the new EOS 40D and EOS-1Ds Mark III, it’s easy to forget the camera that changed the entire market: the EOS 5D. It was the first affordable full-frame sensor DSLR ever. I bought it in April of this year, and I still don’t regret the purchase. As a matter of fact, I love my 5D!

❗ Updated 2/1/09: I’ve also written about the new 5D Mark II.

Canon EOS 5D (front)

Yes, the newer models that came out have more resolution and low light sensitivity, in addition to the EOS Integrated Cleaning System, which shakes dust off the sensor. It’s annoying to have to clean my 5D’s sensor with swabs once in a while, and to get out my bulb air blower and make sure there’s nothing inside the sensor chamber, but I don’t mind it that much — except when I have to use the Heal brush to get that dust off my photos. Even then, Adobe Lightroom makes it a breeze with its wonderful Heal/Clone tool.

I went back through Canon’s PR section and dug up the 5D’s original press release. You know how we have a healthy amount of mistrust when we read press releases? Well, read through that one and tell me if anything written there turned out to be untrue.

All these new models make me wonder what Canon will do with the 5D. I don’t think the 5D will go away. It fulfills a very important role in the marketplace and it’s beloved by many photographers. But what will happen come November? Will Canon announce a second-generation 5D? I’d kind of like them to hold off on upgrading the 5D till next spring, and I recognize that I’m entirely biased when I say that.

Whenever they decide to upgrade it, here’s what I think will happen:

  • It will get the EOS Integrated Cleaning system
  • It will get Live View
  • The pixel count will go up, possibly to 16 megapixels, but not much beyond that. If they go up higher, the renowned low light sensitivity of the 5D will suffer. Remember, pixel pitch (the space that each pixel occupies on the sensor) has a lot to do with low light sensitivity. The more pixels you squeeze on that sensor, that harder it is to keep noise in check. The DIGIC III processor should help with this, and putting microlenses over each pixel should also help, but I don’t think the new 5D will get more than 16 megapixels. Keeping all this in mind, I’d really like the new 5D to be able to go up to 3200 ISO natively, and to 6400 ISO with expansion turned on.
  • The battery life will go up slightly
  • The body will get weatherproofing
  • The AF will get upgraded with the new system present on the Mark III cameras
  • Exposure metering will get more zones, possibly as many as the new 1Ds Mark III, or at least as many as the new 40D
  • Shutter durability will be increased to 300,000 cycles from 100,000 cycles
  • The LCD screen will be upgraded to 3 inches
  • The retail price will be around $3,300, just like with the previous model, and the street price will stick pretty close to that for the first few months after the launch

Meanwhile, the existing 5D cameras aren’t outdated by any measurement, and I look forward to using mine for a long time to come. It was a significant investment for me, and I’ll try to get at least 3 years from it before I upgrade.

Buy the Canon EOS 5D

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Lists

Condensed knowledge for 2007-08-21

  • Knight News Challenge: Round 2 Launches. The Knight News Challenge, in which winners get grants ranging from tiny to huge, is in its second year. It awards big money for innovative ideas using digital experiments to transform community news. The contest is run by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Last year’s winners won awards ranging from $15K to $5 million. If you’ve got a worthwhile idea that’s news-related, by all means, submit it!
  • ProBlogger.net has a great post that points out five WP plugins that can help with managing your comments and responding to readers.
  • Brian Auer of the Epic Edits Weblog has a post on the differences between exposing for highlights, shadows or midtones.
  • A couple of Russians put together a wry video where they demonstrate a new product, the Americanizer. Their English accent is a bit thick, so pay close attention.
  • On the same blog, English Russia, you’ll find another post with HDR photos of the Moscow sewers. These are pretty well done, and I do believe I spotted a crocodile in two of them…
  • The top tech blogs are revolting against Wikipedia’s “no follow” link policy by using the same rel=”no follow” tag in their outgoing links to Wikipedia. Alright! Wikipedia’s been getting a lot of link love for years, and I think they’ve been entirely ungrateful by not responding in kind.
  • Sal Marinello, writing for BlogCritics, has a few words to say about the famed “300 Workout”, the physical regime that prepared the actors for their roles in that movie. A lot of people got it wrong. Also very worth checking out is the site of the physical trainers that put together that workout and trained the actors, Gym Jones. Have a look at the Video section. Very different stuff from what you see in gyms today, but you can’t argue with the results.
  • Mental_Floss has a GREAT post on life before air conditioning. Why is it great? Because it points out why today’s construction is so horribly shoddy — our overreliance on air conditioning lets builders get away with using cardboard and plywood for what passes for homes in the DC area. The homes of old were built with thick insulation, out of stone or brick, and they could do just fine without A/C. If we’d be without A/C nowadays, we couldn’t live in our homes. Kind of makes me sad for all these people buying McMansions on River Road and Georgetown Pike and the like. I see the way they’re built, and it’s an insult to millenia of good building practices…
  • The Daily Mail has an article on spotting illness by looking at our faces.
  • On a similar note, Deputy Dog has a post on the 5 scariest medical mistakes. Don’t read it during lunch…
  • Have you ever wondered about the 100 Inuit words for snow? Here they are.
  • Hans Rosling gave a speech at TED this year, and they’ve posted it to their website. It’s really, really good stuff. You will not regret the 19 minutes spent watching it, I guarantee it. It’s about poverty and developing countries, but he’s got a very different take on things.
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Reviews

Some interesting documentaries

Here are seven interesting documentary-type videos found on YouTube:

You’ve probably heard that Geek Squad technicians snoop around on customers’ hard drives and copy photos and other files for their own use. But have you also heard that they overcharge ridiculously for simple little repairs? Have a look below:

The metro bridge over the river Tyne at Newcastle, UK, was recently outfitted with LED lights that are programmed to never shine in the same sequence. The result is a mesmerizing light show that goes on and on:

Bill Crosby did a documentary in 1968 called “A Boy Like Me”, where he pointed out racial inequalities between black and white children. But he did it in such a poignant way that it’s really, really hard to miss the point. Watch this segment in its entirety, it’s only 3:28 minutes long.

The Falkirk Wheel is an advanced bridge for boats. It connects two bodies of water that are separated by a great height in a very interesting way:

Whether you may or may not agree with this first part of the documentary entitled “The Great Global Warming Swindle” (the other parts can be found on YouTube as well), I think you’ll realize it raises some interesting and valid points. I watched the entire documentary, and if you’ve got the time, I would encourage you to do the same.

The next video is pretty geeky in its approach, but it was made to demonstrate how IT security works for non-techies, and it does a great job of it. It’s entertaining, so you won’t get bored, either.

This last video is controversial, and I don’t know what to make of it. It’s actual news footage aired immediately after the crash of United Flight 93. It shows the crash site and surrounding areas, but the strange thing is that the place looks very much unlike a plane crash site. There are no large pieces of fuselage, no bodies, nothing — just a small hole in the ground, and that’s what makes it unusual. It just doesn’t look like a plane crashed there at all.

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Events

Happy (belated) Birthday to ComeAcross!

After getting home this evening, I remembered (and it wasn’t the first time) that I’ve neglected to write about my blog’s first birthday. It is, after all, a momentous occasion, and needless to say, one I won’t encounter for some time again… 🙂

If you haven’t already, have a quick look at the About page. It’ll give you a bit of the background information about my blog, whose roots go back as early as 2000, which is when I started self-publishing articles on the internet, through other sites of mine such as LupusPernix, Amalgamy and Dignoscentia. You may get a chuckle out of this: when I first heard about blogging, I thought it a fad and dismissed it as such. But that “fad” didn’t die out, and what’s more, I started seeing some really nice content created by bloggers.

After some hemming and hawing I decided to jump right in, and wrote my own blog software over at Amalgamy in March of 2004. It worked nicely to get my feet wet. Then I discovered Blogger, and started writing there in February of 2006. That was fun, but I really wanted to host the blog on one of my own domains, and wasn’t enthralled with Blogger’s publish-through-FTP features. That’s when I discovered WordPress (Thank you Tony!), bought the ComeAcross domain, and after a lengthy process where I took old content and ported it over to my new blog, launched the site on May 3, 2006. Incidentally, it would have been nice if I’d written this post on May 3, 2007, but two months late is still okay, I suppose.

Why comeacross.info, when there are so many splogs on the .info TLD? Well, I thought the title (come across) and TLD nomenclature (.info) meshed nicely with the scope of my blog, which is to present interesting information to people. It may sound corny, but to me, comeacross.info = come across information. I like to think of my blog as a nice surprise among the many crappy splogs you’ll find among the .info domains. I may at some point move it to a .com TLD, but for now, it works nicely right where it is.

Last October, I wrote a post entitled Who We Are, which was meant to give you, the readers, a nice, transparent look behind the scenes at ComeAcross. It accomplished its purpose, and I kind of like that post’s transparency. In that same spirit, I wanted to offer some updated stats on ComeAcross, via screenshots from my WordPress, FeedBurner and Google Analytics dashboards.

The first is right from my blog’s dashboard. As you can see, I’ve got 890 posts and 661 comments. Those 61 categories are weighing heavily on my mind. I really need to cut them down somehow, but it’s so hard for me to pigeonhole my content. The other cool stat comes from Akismet, my comment spam plugin. It has protected ComeAcross from 152,982 spam comments. None of them made it to the blog! That’s beautiful!

ComeAcross -- WordPress Dashboard

Next up are my feed subscriber stats, courtesy of FeedBurner. The feed subscribers are the folks who have clicked on the orange feed icon in the top right portion of my site, and added ComeAcross to their daily list of sites they read through their favorite feed reader.

💡 If you haven’t already, you’re welcome to do the same. It’s easy and it’s free. I recommend Google Reader. It’s also free and very easy to use. If you don’t like feeds and prefer to get my content via email, enter your email address in the field under “Get ComeAcross by Email” title in the right column, and click on Subscribe. Look for a confirmation email, click on the link, and you’ll be done. You can unsubscribe at any time, and this is also free.

What’s cool about my feed subscribers is that the number has been steadily growing since I started my blog. It’s really nice to see, and it’s very encouraging for me to see so many people enjoy reading my posts.

ComeAcross -- Feed Stats Dashboard

Now for some fun traffic stats, courtesy of Google Analytics. Apparently, over 42,000 people visited ComeAcross since I’ve launched it. That’s a huge number of people, and it’s humbling to see that my writing has reached such a large audience.

ComeAcross -- Site Visitor Stats

The pages on the site were viewed over 73,000 times, and if you’ll look below, you’ll see that my most-read pages to date are the index (as expected), the one about Zooomr’s Mark III release, the review of the HP laptops, my caveat emptor post about Davison Inventegration, and my post about our Betta fish. I’m truly amazed that I still get traffic to the Betta fish post. It was originally an article at Amalgamy, and I ported it over in 2006. I wrote it back in 2005, and we don’t even have Betta fish any more. 😕

ComeAcross -- Site Content Stats

Finally, I have to thank Google big time, because they send the most traffic to ComeAcross. I truly benefit from the long tail of web searches. Over 53% of my traffic comes from search engines, and more than 46% of my total traffic comes from Google. As you can see, I got some Digg and StumbleUpon traffic as well, along with some other Yahoo traffic.

If I had to choose between Digg and StumbleUpon traffic, I’d choose StumbleUpon any day. Digg traffic occurs in bursts that risk crashing my web server, it doesn’t monetize well, because the visitors only care about skimming the content, and it also doesn’t convert well (from casual visitor to subscriber). StumbleUpon traffic, on the other hand, grows slowly, is more constant, monetizes very well (people actually click on the ads once in a while) and some of the casual readers even turn into regular readers. So, StumbleUpon, thank you!

💡 Incidentally, if you, the reader, would like to do me a great service, submit either sections of the site or particular posts that are of interest to StumbleUpon. You can use either the StumbleUpon toolbar, or the “StumbleIt!” link below each post of mine. You have my thanks in advance for that!

ComeAcross -- Site Traffic Stats

With this, I close my post, and wish my blog a Happy, if belated, Birthday! 😀 It’s been a very interesting first year, and I look forward to more of them ahead! In the interest of increased transparency, I spent approximately one and a half hours researching and writing this blog post. It probably took you 5 minutes or less to read it.

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