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  65. <header>
  66. <h1>A misunderstood reading assignment</h1>
  67. <p>Day 00781: Wednesday, 2017 April 26</p>
  68. </header>
  69. <section id="general">
  70. <h2>General news</h2>
  71. <p>
  72. My mission for the day was to cash that bond I found in my files a while back.
  73. Or maybe my mother found it in their files?
  74. I don&apos;t exactly recall.
  75. In any case, it was made out to my birth name, so it&apos;d be easier to cash it now than after I&apos;ve fixed my legal name.
  76. The process took a while, but was smoother than I feared it&apos;d be.
  77. I was prepared to have to try a few banks before finding one that&apos;d take it, just to name one thing that could go wrong, but that wasn&apos;t necessary.
  78. The bank that issued my credit card took it without problems.
  79. Due to how long I&apos;d waited to cash it (I hadn&apos;t even <strong>*known*</strong> about it until recently), it was worth almost twice its face value.
  80. Now I need to get the school to reissue that check, and I should be free of things that bind me to my birth name.
  81. By that, I mean things that prevent me from changing it; my identity will never be rid of my past, nor is being rid of my past in any way my goal.
  82. If I wanted to be rid of my past, I probably wouldn&apos;t keep a public, daily journal.
  83. </p>
  84. <p>
  85. My <a href="/a/canary.txt">canary</a> still sings the tune of freedom and transparency.
  86. </p>
  87. </section>
  88. <section id="university">
  89. <h2>University life</h2>
  90. <p>
  91. I finished up my discussion assignment today:
  92. </p>
  93. <blockquote>
  94. <p>
  95. What made Athens the weak link in my eyes was their poor decision-making.
  96. They&apos;d managed to put themselves in a position of high power and influence, but they allowed their emotions to get the better of them.
  97. If a mere rude gesture from an ally is enough to lead you to cause your own downfall, you&apos;re not very good at controlling your emotions or your pride.
  98. Sooner or later, Athens was going to cause its own downfall unless they first learned to deal with reality better.
  99. </p>
  100. </blockquote>
  101. <blockquote>
  102. <p>
  103. You do have a point.
  104. Perhaps the other city-states would&apos;ve lead the league to disaster sooner had htey run the league instead.
  105. I hadn&apos;t thought of it that way.
  106. So while Athens was to blame for the league&apos;s downfall, perhaps they weren&apos;t the weak link after all.
  107. </p>
  108. <p>
  109. While we&apos;ve come far in many ways, in some, we still haven&apos;t.
  110. Like you said, the people of the Poleis were greed, selfish, and power-hungry.
  111. That&apos;s no too far off from how people are today.
  112. Our technology has evolved since then, but our own evolution has been quite slow.
  113. </p>
  114. </blockquote>
  115. <blockquote>
  116. <p>
  117. You make a lot of great points.
  118. Athens and the league did fall to Sparta and their league, but before that happened, the Delian League was successful in a number of ways.
  119. Without the league, it&apos;s possible that Greece would&apos;ve fallen to Persia long before Sparta was the main threat.
  120. </p>
  121. </blockquote>
  122. <blockquote>
  123. <p>
  124. The city-states may have had an equal vote at first, but that was before Athens basically took over the league and made it their empire.
  125. As far as is concerned democracy, I think the Delian league failed.
  126. </p>
  127. <p>
  128. The Delian League did succeed in promoting trade between city-states though, and the common currency was a great example of that.
  129. It was sort of like the modern Euro.
  130. </p>
  131. </blockquote>
  132. <blockquote>
  133. <p>
  134. As long as the Delian League had their common enemy, Persia, they worked together.
  135. They fought against Persia and successfully drove them off.
  136. Once Persia wasn&apos;t a threat though, that&apos;s when things fell apart.
  137. Athens took over the formerly-communal fund and demanded tribute from the other members of the league.
  138. Without their common enemy, Athens seems to have no longer thought they needed to respect the other city-states.
  139. </p>
  140. </blockquote>
  141. <p>
  142. After that, I took the graded quiz.
  143. That didn&apos;t go well.
  144. Most of it was on things I didn&apos;t see in the readings.
  145. Something&apos;d gone wrong.
  146. I went back through the reading assignment instructions, and it turned out that not only had I missed that one of the assigned sections was supposed to be multiple pages, but also that the page linked to in the instructions wasn&apos;t even one of the pages I was supposed to read.
  147. I read not only less than I was supposed to, but also the completely wrong material.
  148. I&apos;ll have to rememebr to bring up the bad link come course review time, but also, I need to more carefully read the assignment directions.
  149. </p>
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