Presesnt

Project/Graduation. I found that this project was nice in that there was a clear definition on the project parrameters. The only flaw I can think of is that for the teacher to grade the assignment you have to show her in class which takes time from the current assignment that you are working on. As for graduation I find it donting to think that in just three months I will esenshally be on my own, making my own disitions not having anyone to help motivate me to do homework or to get up in the morning. It is because of this that even though I only have two days left that graduation still seems so far away.

Fiction / Dystopia

In my class we watched a film called "The Road". This film takes place in a post-apocalyptic world some years after a major unexplained cataclysm has destroyed civilization and most life on Earth. The land is filled with ash and devoid of living animals and vegetation. The connection with food is since there is a sever lack of things to eat many people have resorted to cannibalism in order to stay alive. It is a test to how far someone is willing to go to severe. We also watch an episode from the history channel about the Salem witch trials. In this episode they describe a theory that the muscle spasms and illusions that the women of that time saw were due to tainted food. One thought is that ergot, a fungus that thrives in moist warm conditions, was the cause of the outbreak. Ergot causes muscle spasms, delusions, seizures, and contortions all the symptoms of the original victims (for of course there are some who lie about it because they are jealous). Once the rain that had plugged them with this fungus stopped and the crops were dried the accusations took a major drop and so the trials stopped.

Food

In the video Food Revolution Jamie Oliver goes to L.A. in the hopes he can get a look at what their schools are feeding their kids. By seeing what the schools put into their lunches he hopes to inspire a better menu. He faces many obstacles while trying to obtain entrance into the public schools or even access to their central office kitchens. In order to get around this he opens his kitchen to parents to show the lack of nutritional value in the public school food, he has sugar poured into a bus to illustrate the amount of sugar ingested by students through chocolate milk, and he hands out cold lunches to students who would otherwise select cafeteria food. Through small suggestions and changes, Oliver hopes to make a big impact in the way public schools feed children. Since I myself am a student, I find it disturbing how unhealthy some of the stuff is. We learn what eat by example and if we are feed unhealthy foods then we learn to eat unhealthy foods.

Non- fiction

For this post I am relating the subject of food to hearing using the facts found in the book Natural History of the Senses by: Diane Ackerman. The whole of the book describes how much our different senses affect our lives and perceptions of the out side world. In the chapter I read there was a lot of interesting things in it about how being able to hear the sounds around us affects us in a very profound way. An example is that the first sound we ever hear is that of our mother's heart beat and because of this when we hear a steady strong yet gentle beat it calms us down. This relates to food because we have associated a lot of our foods by the way they sound an example is when I hear meat sizzling on a frying pan I immediately think of bacon and my mouth starts to water even without smelling it or tasting it. From just that sound I can taste the grease goodness of the bacon. There are several other foods we most strongly associate with their sound, like Rice Krispies I mean who hasn't head the “Snap, Crackle, Pop!” of Rice Krispies. Then there is the satisfying crack of a Kit-Kat Bar. There are so many sounds that are in our food that make them more appealing. Do you think that a cracker would be the same if if wasn't crunchy Because I don't think it would be. The is something esthetic to the sound of food.

Self Reflection

I picked the topic of books because I am an avid read and I hate it when I see people with very little appreciation in reading for pleasure, of the places that books can take you that nothing else can. T.V. and video games are fine, but they don’t have that same personal feel that takes reading far and beyond that of other stimuli. When I read I can almost access the same intensity of the world that is being created as you might have in a very good dream. Have you ever had a time where you didn’t want to wake up, not because you were tiered, but because you we having a particularly good dream. That is how I feel when I am in a good part of a book. I love it when I get so into a book that I feel like I know characters. I especially like the characters with a quick wit that are always cracking jokes in deadly situations and what makes it even better is if it is placed in our world and the quips and witty lines are about things I know, like when they tell the big bad guy in the dark cloak that he looks like Empire Palatine from Star Wars, it gives me a sense of familiarity that just makes me happy. So what I hope to learn is how I can convey these emotions and experiences to others so that they can get just as much enjoyment out of reading as I do.

Quarter two Wrap-up: Critical Aproaches

In my class we wachted The Help based off the book writen by Kathryn Stockett. The reason for watching this film is that it provided an opportunity for us to use a the variety of approaches we've learned to interpet it. This film focused on the separtaion between the "haves and have-nots", the main focuse being the inability of those without power to voice their complaints without violent reprecussions. Due to this unwillingness to speak out the ones without power tended to be ruled by those who do have power. This movie is uses the feminist appraoch by having you look through the eyes of a young and indipendent women named Skeeter. Skeeter does not obey the gender norm and is mocked by the other women in her community who were once her friends and even her mother would ridicule her for her professional aspirations and for being single. Then they show you the life style of the black maids who have to suffer the indignitys pressed apon them by their white bosses at the thret of not having enough money to feed their children and even in going to jail. Then it shows as these two worlds colide when Skeeter disides to write about their experinces, how deploribal there lives are. When she asks some of the maids, she knows, if they would tell her their stories. Even though they were afraid the two main maids who she asked tolled Skeeter their stories. When Skeeter called her editor, her editor said she needed more maids and so they were pressed to try and get the other maids to tell their stories. finaly near the end the maids finally pulled together and tell their stories. To make sure some people wouldn't sue them they put a story into the book that would make shur that they never admitted it was true.

Perdictably Irrational

I read Perdictably Irrational by Dan Ariely and I learned how the people in the United States have an almost inconceivably out of control spend now save later attitude. One of the theories on why we do this is that we are taught throughout childhood and though our school careers to always do as the people with authoritative voice. So once we are out on our own we have this ingrained reaction to authoritative voices such as those in commercials telling us to buy, right now, all this junk we don’t need .

I also read about procrastination on how in an experiment kids in three different classes were all given the same three assignments the difference is they had different due dates. One class was given the choice to set their own due dates as long as it was in by the last day of the semester but they could only set it once and if they were late then they would be docked points. Another class was given the same option but that there would be no penalties as long as they were in by the last day. The last class were given three set dates to turn in their papers. Now you may think that the kids in the second class would get the best scores on their papers but you’d be wrong the kids in the third class got the best average scores. The reason for this is thought to be that since we have always had the due dates given to us and since they had all that time the kids in the other two classes procrastinated till they were rushing to finish and so did not do as good of a job on their papers.

I have a problem with procrastinating too much. If I have a big project to do I will start out doing it right away but then I will realize that I have other homework to do that is do the next day and I will gradually start working less and less on the project till the due date is upon me and I only have ¾ of it done. There is plenty of procrastination in the books I’ve read even the “heroes” have problems with it. In the book The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks the main character Azoth is an orphan boy from the Warrens (slums, a part of the city for the extremely poor) who is given a chance to become the apprentice to the best wetboy in the city Durzo Blint, but Durzo has one condition Azoth must kill Rat a boy who is in charge of Azoth's guild (they are called guild rats bands of poor kids that stay together for safety). Azoth accepts Durzo's offer he starts to gather support from other boys in the guild so he would have enough power to over throw Rat. But Azoth procrastinated and because of that procrastination his closest friend Doll Girl had her face cut up. While Azoth wept over Doll Girl's body Durzo came and said if he went right then and killed Rat he would save her. If Azoth had just killed Rat right away then Doll Girl would never have gotten hurt.