Do you know of any noteworthy accomplishments of '71 grads?  Maybe yourself? Send us the story or send the url, and we'll put it on this website. Go ahead! Be a narcissist!  Post your story here!

Montgomery has hovered around 1800 students for the past ten years or so, but the District has projected a drop to 1750 next year. Our International Baccalaureate program continues to grow and draw students from outside districts so we are hoping to hold our enrollment for next year. The recent drop in enrollment at Slater Middle School will surely have an effect, however.

The Viking sports programs are as strong or stronger than ever in Montgomery’s storied history. This year may be the greatest overall in the school’s 46 years for girls and boys athletics. These teams have also proven that good athletes can be good students, as eight teams from the fall and winter sports have received Scholar Athlete banners from the North Coast Section. Several teams will receive scholar awards from CIF at the state level. That is a strong athletic program.

In 1971, Lennon released "Imagine," a powerful plea for idealism so gentle, most people forget how explosively radical it is. Among other concepts, John sang "Imagine no possessions" and "Imagine no religion." These are sentiments that, made manifest, would instantly rid the world of most of its problems.

Clint Eastwood looked a
little younger in 1971, too.

1971
Harry (Dirty Harry) Callahan uttered the immortal words, “Ah Ah, I know what you're thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five?   Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I've kinda lost track myself.   But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question:  'Do I feel lucky?'  Well, do ya punk? “

May, 2010

Facebook Privacy Warning

• Facebook's Eroding Privacy Policy: A Timeline

  Since its incorporation just over five years ago, Facebook has undergone a remarkable transformation. When it started, it was a private space for communication with a group of your choice. Soon, it transformed into a platform where much of your information is public by default. Today, it has become a platform where you have no choice but to make certain information public, and this public information may be shared by Facebook with its partner websites and used to target ads.

• Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook
   
• Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative
   
• Permanently Delete Your Facebook Account [How-To]
   
• Delete My Facebook Account
   
• Zuckerberg's Privacy Stance: Facebook CEO 'Doesn't Believe In Privacy'
   
• ACLU: What Facebook Quizzes Know About You

  According to this group, the millions of Facebook users taking quizzes are revealing far more personal information to application developers than they are aware of. This is mostly due to the fact that Facebook's default privacy settings allow access to all your profile information whether or not your profile is set to "private." Even worse, the ACLU reports that even if you shun quizzes yourself, your profile info is revealed when one of your friends takes a quiz.

• Choose Privacy: video from the American Library Association

  The American Library Association's "Choose Privacy" week kicks off with a ~20 minute video featuring writers and thinkers talking about the value of privacy in simple, accessible, thought-provoking terms.

• Facebook Privacy: 8 Ways to Protect Yourself
   

The Possibility of an Island by Michel Houellebecq

"Youth was the time for happiness, its only season; young people, leading a lazy, carefree life, partially occupied by scarcely absorbing studies, were able to devote themselves unlimitedly to the liberated exultation of their bodies. They could play, dance, love, and multiply their pleasures. They could leave a party, in the early hours of the morning, in the company of sexual partners they had chosen, and contemplate the dreary line of employees going to work. They were the salt of the earth, and everything was given to them, everything was permitted for them, everything was possible. Later on, having started a family, having entered the adult world, they would be introduced to worry, work, responsibility, and the difficulties of existence; they would have to pay taxes, submit themselves to administrative formalities while ceaselessly bearing witness--powerless and shame-filled--to the irreversible degradation of their own bodies, which would be slow at first, then increasingly rapid; above all, they would have to look after children, mortal enemies, in their own homes, they would have to pamper them, feed them, worry about their illnesses, provide the means for their education and their pleasure, and unlike in the world of animals, this would last not just for a season, they would remain slaves of their offspring always, the time of joy was well and truly over for them, they would have to continue to suffer until the end, in pain and with increasing health problems, until they were no longer good for anything and were definitively thrown into the rubbish heap, cumbersome and useless. In return, their children would not be at all grateful, on the contrary their efforts, however strenuous, would never be considered enough, they would, until the bitter end, be considered guilty because of the simple fact of being parents. From this sad life, marked by shame, all joy would be pitilessly banished. When they wanted to draw near to young people's bodies, they would be chased away, rejected, ridiculed, insulted, and, more and more often nowadays, imprisoned. The physical bodies of young people, the only desirable possession the world has ever produced, were reserved for the exclusive use of the young, and the fate of the old was to work and to suffer. This was the true meaning of solidarity between generations; it was a pure and simple holocaust of each generation in favor of the one that replaced it, a cruel, prolonged holocaust that brought with it no consolation, no comfort, nor any material or emotional compensation."

One of the world’s great adventurers—and a Resistance spy—Jacques Cousteau warned me 25 years ago that humans were reaching the point of no return on environmental destruction.