"End of Suburbia" Reflection

The film, "End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream", basically talks about how America had suburbs after WWII, which leads to a huge amount of use of resources later on. Creating suburbs was a good idea. It provides the soldiers to have quiet place to live, since suburbs are far away from the urban world. However, because of that, people living in suburbs have to drive in order to get nearly anything.

Unlike "Enron: Smartest Guys In The Room" this film doesn't really inspire people. It only does the job of reminding people the problem we are all facing. It is undeniable that transportation plays a huge role in most people's life. We need it to go to from place to place and, even for the ones that have markets right near by their homes, the markets, themselves, need transportation to get all the goods. In order to save time and so we can use spend more time doing something else, vehicles become a very helpful technology. Only problem here is that most them need oil, and oil is finite. To be more realistic, it "is" going to run out pretty soon.

What could help save the situation? A lot of scientists and engineers are now working on trying to find something else to replace oil. It would be good to have an infinite amount of replacement, such as solar power. While we are either still finding the solution or waiting for people to find one, there are things we can do to help at least save a little bit more resources for all of us to use in the future. Although it costs money, I always prefer to take public transportation. I mean, even if we drive ourselves, we will have to put money into the gas station anyway. So why not just use the public transportation that is always there running in the circle? A lot of people have been asking me why haven't I started practicing driving and get a license yet. Yes, I usually say it's because I'm lazy. but other than that, it's because I don't think it's a must. Look at me now, I can still get to go to many different places by walking, biking, or taking the public buses. When I'm in my internship up in Taipei, MRT really saves my life. Even if I need to go to somewhere that is not in Taipei, MRT doesn't go to, and has no bus stop, the worst case would be calling a cab.

We have tons of scooters here in Taiwan and those drinks oil like a beast. I guess most Taiwanese would prefer to buy a scooter is because of its price and it's easier to park a scooter. The problem with scooter is that it can not carry a lot of people. I have seen some Taiwanese can put 3 or even 4 passengers on one scooter but I'm pretty sure not everyone is able to achieve that. It is usually either one or two people on a scooter. Compare with cars, which usually have between two to four people in one vehicle, a scooter only has about half of a car's opacity while it could use more oil than some cars do.

The major problem here in Taiwan is that we don't have a very well designed public transportation yet, except for Taipei. Places like Tokyo doesn't have this kind of problem. Tokyo has an extremely well designed subway that decreases pollution and cleans up the roads. Better public transportation will help save more oil.


image: drew from a friend, Sarwar Z. Khan.

Organic. Organic? Organic!

After watching the film, The Smartest Guys In The Room, about Enron's fake and reading the chapter "Big Organic" from the book, written by Michael Pollan, called "The Omnivore's Dilemma" I start to find it difficult to believe in everything I from from advertisement and labels.

The name "organic" is a like a diamond ring word; it pretty much adds on a lot more value to a product when it's on its package. I am not the type of person that cares too much about eating "healthy food". I eat McDonald's even when I have already learned that it is "unhealthy" to human bodies. However, the name "organic" still stands out to me. As long as a product bares that name, it means that it got the reason to be more expensive than its competitors.

What does it mean when something is organic? There are many ways to address this term. I would put it as "when something is fresh, clean, and without any other chemicals." Now, the chapter of the book pointed out that when something says it is "organic" it probably doesn't really mean "it is organic" What it's saying is that the companies didn't "lie" to us. Instead, they hide the details from the consumers. I remember when Tina and I were working on the "green business presentation" Ms. Gruber once came and warned us that even when a company says it is a green business and it produces organic products doesn't necessary mean it is the type of "green" we are looking for. Come and think about it, if everything on the selves came from local farm without any pesticides, how would they menage to get that many farm? The process of making organic products is definitely industrialized. At least most of them.

This is pretty similar to Enron's case in some ways. Most of the "green business" out there would tell the consumer how green they are, but most of them wouldn't show the in depth details of how they do things. What's similar is that both Enron and the companies that have the title "organic" hide behind a name or numbers to attract more buyers. The difference would be that Enron just made up everything there. they even made up the numbers that they hid behind. As for most of the green business, they just only gave the broad idea of "organic" but specific details of how they menage to do it and get there.

image source: http://www.nextnature.net/?p=2012

Internship Monthly Blog 1

Above is a picture taken when I accidentally slept too much in High Speed Rail and ended up in Taichung when I planned to stop at Hsinchu.

I help do research for an Israel jewelry designer, Victor, for a collection book that he's working on. It's a book that will contain 100 world's top leader fashion brands in this world today. My main job is to help him research at least two brands' that are on the list. I need to find information about the founder(s), the brand's establishment, its philosophy, and its direction for the future.

My main job is to gather information, not to write it. I help him make sure all the dates and names are correct, there's no contradiction between different sources, the spelling of their original names, etc. There's a lot of reading for each brand. However, I could actually learn a lot from doing it every week. Because of this internship, I have no excuse for myself from not reading anymore. I never had a good habit of reading, and this is something that makes sure I will spend time reading every week. Also, I'm starting to began to catch up some tricks about gathering important and necessary information from reading long texts.

Meet The Soule

Soule is a clothing designer that Sheilah knows. We had a Skype interview with her a while back during social sculpture course. Her main job is to help design theater actors' costumes. On her own time, she makes shirts that send positive messages such as being green.

We got a chance to see how she organizes her research and even some of the work that she had done and what she was still working on. It was interesting to see how she puts her research together. She printed off all the images that inspired her and pasted them all on a board. It looks like a collage. That way she gets to see all of the images at once.

Since that interview happened a while back so I don't have much clear memory of what exactly did she say. However, what I read from Tina's post, I recall she said something about how she first went to an art school for the passion of "beauty" but now she considers the "ideas" within an artwork more. I kind of disagree with that idea. I mean, how do you compare "ideas" and the "beauty"? What does a good idea mean? Does the idea of doing drugs mean a "bad idea"? What about "beauty" What is "beautiful? Most people would say anything that most people agree appeal to look nice would be something that is "beautiful" But doesn't the sense of beauty change from time to time or even from different culture to another? What is the true beauty then? The answer is both the level of the quality of "beauty" and "ideas" should depend on the audience as an individual. A "good idea" could be expressed in many many different ways. The job of an artist is to preform that idea she or he wants to send out, in the form that the artist wants the people to see.

The Smartest Guys in the Room

The movie, "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" is about how the big company, Enron's, falsity to the people in order to cheat for money and caused a lot of jobs loses. Enron chairman and chief executive, Kenneth Lay, died from heart attack. The CEO, Jeff Skilling, is still in prison today.

It's very similar to most of the stories we learned from Global Ethics class. It's all about human's greed. This movie is different, though. All the rest of the stories had left me thinking, "Don't they care about the other people?" but this movie provides a scientific "proof" It explains an old experiment that was testing on humans before. When a person is in charge of electrifying the person in the other room, he will later on become use to it. Eventually, even when he knows the voltage is high enough to kill someone, he has already lost the feeling of sympathy. That experiment can go to some stories we heard, such as Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart provides low cost to the customers by getting low cost labors. Even though Wal-Mart is in the States and most of the low cost labors are in China, I doubt that the heads of Wal-Mart have no idea about it. They definitely know what they paied to their worker is not enough for them to have three meals a day.

I'm not too sure about how ecomomy works, but if Enron had been lying and hiding about the numbers in their account, it should have influenced the whole economy. Enron's employees also had to suffer from losing their jobs just because the heads of their company wanted to earn extra money. To be fair here, Kenneth Lay and Jeff Skilling have got to be "the smartest guys in the room." Not a lot of people can create such a huge deception. However, too bad that they used it in the wrong way.

Blood, Sweat, and T-Shirt + Travels With T-Shirt In A Global Economy

The BBC document, Blood, Sweat, and T-Shirt, seems pretty much like the movie of the book, Travels With T-Shirt In A Global Economy. Both of them are about the process of discovering how T-shirts are made.
The book mainly focus on how shirts are printed where it is made, but never include where else it is involved. The shirts would have been flying back and fourth just to get the materials.
The movie is mostly about how shirts are made, or how the labors work. Most T-shirts don't cost much, but the hard work behind the process actually costs more than what the label says.

McDonough + Hawken

Both McDonough's Ted Talks and Hawken's list of principles for sustainability talk about the crises of using too much resources.

I like McDonough's Ted Talks better, because he actually gave out some possible solution there instead of naming whom we should blame to. His idea of planting on the roof tops is really interesting. Although "green roof" is not a new idea, he brought it one step beyond. Planting vegetables and plants on roof tops can help clean the air, it's a good use of the space, and we can also eat the vegetables.
Just imagine how many empty roof tops we have, around the world. It would be a "waste" if we don't have any good use of them. Some Asians, specially people from China and Taiwanese, hang their clothes on their roof tops, but by doing that doesn't really give anything back to the environment. Of course, they at least aren't "wasting" those roof tops, however, McDonough's idea can give out more to the community.

Hawken has the point that no matter how many little things we're doing at home to save energy, the big companies and corporation can still use all the resources faster than we can save them. We have been talking about how most corporation could harm the environment, but I still believe that we can't just go and blame on them and tell them to stop what they are doing. In a cold way of saying this, they are simply making a living. Mr. Sheu showed us a movie in his class, called "Thank You For Smoking", last week. It's a story about a cigarette company's going against the people that wanted to promote a non-smoking environment. From the movie, it shouws you that even the people working in the company already knew the facts about smoking too much, they still try their best to sell them out. Why? Because that is their job and they believe the costomers should be able to chose for themselves.
I would fight against the ones that purposly add other chemicals into their products to fool their costumers, but I would not blame most of the corporation for hurting the environment. Without them, a lot of us would not be having what we have right now.

Wast Not V.S. Senior Project

The article, Waste Not, from the book, Natural Capitalism, tells us how much waste we actually are producing. You know, those interesting statistics that show you how much it really costs just to make a bottle of water. It also goes one step beyond and talks about how expensive it is, to keep prisoners. It makes us to be more aware of how much we are "wasting" just by purchasing most of the products or maybe even doing wrongdoings to get ourselves into jails. It has a good point, we are producing a lot of wastes.

Now the question is, "what is a 'waste'?"

When you accidentally made an ugly mark on a piece of white paper, does it mean you just wasted that paper? It's either a "yes" or a "no", and it depends on one thing; Are you going to use the other side of that paper?

As I mentioned earlier, I would like to work at T-shirt designs for my senior project. The best way to create a lot of "waste" is by printing many shirts and have them all ended up in a trash can, instead of those green, giant, metal boxes that send clothes to places where people would be happy to wear anything that fits. Since that is the case, I would say one way to prevent from wasting is to print shirts only when I am sure the design is set to go. If I don't have too much confidence, I might as well let people order before I even print them.

To even create lesser "waste", I can even use used shirts. That way I would be taking the other people's "waste" and turning them into things that no longer look like "wastes".
Hopefully.

Senior Project - Inquiry Question

My inquiry question for my senior project, for now, is "do culture affects the designs people wear?"

When it comes to choosing what to wear, we often lead to the topic of "fashion". What is fashion and what exactly creates the "fashion"? Some says it's just the luck of a designer. The designer probably just drew his ideas out and got the majority's attention. Some other people believe fashion is all caused by the media; the majority tend to think that whatever is on TV, is the correct answer. I agree with both of these answers. However, one thing I doubt about is, can the same design be as popular as when it is overseas? I am now begin to try think about whether there's any impact from the culture that influences the "fashion" of that region.

The Skype Interview

This Monday, September 15th, in social sculpture course, we got to use Skype to interview a fashion designer,Soule Goldin , whom Sheilah knows.

She began with what she does and what she had done in the past. Then we got to ask her questions about how she did a certain thing and why she started it. Parts of it was pretty interesting, I must say, because not everyone really has the chance of seeing somebody else's portfolio and process of creating art. It was also cool to get to see her way of putting her resources together as a reference; She pasted all of the picture references together as a collage. It was also nice that we not only learned about her art life, but also her college life.

However, I'm not sure if it's just me, I thought the interview went a bit too long. Maybe it was also because we weren't well prepared for it? I felt that there were parts when both side did not know what to say or do next... But anyway, it was still a pretty cool experience!

"The Silence of Silicon Lambs" Reflection

Hsinchu Science Park has always been the pride of Hsinchu City ever since it was built. When one describes what Taiwan is good at, she or he is most likely be talking about its high tech, which leads to Hsinchu Science Park’s merits. Nobody in Taiwan would know anything about Hsinchu City if there were no Science Park.
For the ones that have visited the place, should be surprised at how clean and tidy it is, comparing with the other parts of Taiwan. However, after reading the article “The Silence of Silicon Lambs”, I found the dark side of it.
One thing particularly shocked me was some parts of its working condition. “ We don’t touch toxic materials directly. Only engineers, who take care of the machines, have to take the risk. In this sense, we are safer. But who knows? Many high-tech employees found difficulties in fertility.” says Ma-li, from the article. From an outsider’s point of view, it really looks like all the employees from Hsinchu Science Park work in a very safe and decent condition. Beside, we never heard anyone complained about it. Science Park has always seem to be the place where people can work safely, peacefully, and earn a lot of money.
Not only the working condition, the article also points out how much toxic wastes the Science Park have produces.
One and only thing I still wonder now is that how come we never heard any of these negative sides of the Science Park? I mean, the Science Park has been around for years, and we still haven’t heard anything until now?

The End of Cat's Cradle

As I was reading toward the end of the book, I was mainly focusing on how the story ties into its title, "Cat's Cradle" According to what I have read from the book I can tell that the book is definitely a very insightful book. In that case, the title is very unlikely to be something not insightful.

One thing I found weird about, was the fact that Bokonon survived after the invasion of Ice-Nine. The book did not leave any explanation for that, however, I hope it wasn't because he was the prophet, therefore, he had some super power.

Anyway, the book ended with the invasion of Ice-Nine and nearly everyone died. It was almost like the scenes from the movie, I Am Legend, by Will Smith. Except that I Am Legend wasn't covered by ice.

Two of the very few survivors were Newt and Jonah. While they were driving in the middle of no life, Jonah spotted Bokonon sitting on a rock. Bokonon then told them that if he were a young man, he would write a book of the history of humans' stupidity, then commit suicide by Ice-Nine while thumbing his nose to the God.

I didn't understand what "thumbing nose" means. For some reason I thought it would be a clue to what the author, Kurt Vonnegut, hid. I'm assuming it is an act of teasing the God, though. The ending left me a bunch of question marks. Just like what a cat's cradle is; a bunch of messy lines. "No damn cat, and no damn cradle."

picture from: http://www.rmichelson.com/Artist_Pages/Kuch/Relationship.htm

One News Article

China not only had a terrible earthquake, but also an up coming disastrous flood. The New York Times has provided a news article about the possible flood in China, Shanghai. The earthquake occurred in May 12th, 2007, Sitchuan. It was shacking so hard that even parts of Taiwan was a little bit effected. It caused about 67,000 death in main land China, and about 20,000 are still missing. Beside, if you look at the bigger picture, that is not it. There is still a possibility of having a horrible flood coming up. Since the earth quake had caused some damaged to the dam, which is in Tangjiashan, and it had been raining during the beginning of May. It raised up the water level while the dam is already in danger. So now the Chinese also need to dig sluiceways to slowly transfer the water out of the dam.

An 8th Grader's Perspective (THE STORY)

I'm still reading my flashcards, I made last night, in the school bus. I wish Justin and Eugene could shut up because it's really hard for me to concentrate. Better yet, I hope the bus would break down again like last week, so I could possibly skip today's all-school gathering. The best thing about going to school by bus is that no one can blame you when you get to school late. Anyway...shoot, I think we are almost there. Why does Mr. Perkins like to have us presenting during all-school gathering so badly? He probably enjoys seeing us embarrass ourselves. I never really know what I was talking about, when I was up there. It might be a whole different story if I could use Chinese to present... No, wait, actually, I don't know. You might think, "heh, it's only about fifty-sixty people starring at you," but, no, it's not that easy. I'd rather present to a thousand people that I don't know. I hate it when all the ones I know looked at me while I am speaking. Especially that most of them would come and talk to me about my presentation. Sometimes even when they say things like, "you got a nice presentation there," it somehow still sound so sarcastic. Alright, we just arrived, and, no, we are not late at all. In fact, I think I still have about three minutes. I don't know. The clock on the top of the school building is never correct.

When I got upstairs, I don't see any of the other eighth graders were still looking through their flashcards or whatever that they needed for their presentation. I wonder if it were that they all gave up. Daniel got up first. He always had that kind of luck. I couldn't hear him well due to both his breathing into the microphone and my anxiety. After Daniel, just when I was saying to myself, "not me, not me..." I hear Mr. Perkins asked, "you want to go up next? Okay you go up next." There I go, standing in front of sixty or so people, all the ones that I know... And the next thing I remember was the moment I woke up in Ms. Chen's office.

Bann Cell Phones??

I always thought that it is unnecessary to use cell phones at school. There is no need for any student to make any phone call while at school, whatsoever. Even if a student needs to make a phone call, she or he can always borrow a phone from the school. However, the news report from Tech Learning shows how cell phones can be a necessary tool for education. The way the schools use cell phones is pretty similar to how we use computers in learning. Though, I still don't think it's necessary. Why is it OK to use computers but not cell phones? Because cell phones are not easy to type things out. I sometimes use my cell phone to text message my friends, and it always takes about ten minutes just to have a few sentence down. Beside, I mainly use informal language, or the MSN language, in those messages, so I can't imagine how long it will take when it comes to serious school work. Another thing that cell phones would not work as good as computers do is that you can not use cell phones to do research. Unless your cell phone is really high tech.
Comparing the use of cell phones and computers for education, the only things cell phones would be better are simply that cell phones are cheaper and easier to carry. But they are way harder to "communicate" I would rather hand write my 10 pages of research paper than typing a paragraph of a reflection with my tiny cell phone. In the conclusion, the idea of using cell phones in education is cleaver, but it's not so practical. Even if all the students follow the rules and not chatting by their phones in class, it is still hard for them to do school work. So, no, I still believe cell phones should not be used during school time.


Picture from http://tw.info.search.yahoo.com/search/images/view?back=http%3A%2F%2Ftw.info.search.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%2Fimages%3Fp%3Dno%2Bcell%2Bphones%26ei%3DUTF-8%26fr%3Dyfp%26x%3Dwrt&w=150&h=200&imgurl=www.sonofthesouth.net%2Funcle-sam%2Fimages%2Fno-cell-phone-sign_small.jpg&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lipsticking.com%2F2007%2F01%2Flena_unplugged.html&size=10.6kB&name=no-cell-phone-sign_small.jpg&p=no+cell+phones&type=jpeg&no=4&tt=13,130&oid=984221998186c01c&ei=UTF-8

An 8th Grader's Perspective

We were to write a very short story of an eighth grader's experience of going to have a presentation during all-school gathering. I thought it was pretty hard to do, at first, because it's always uneasy to try writing with someone else's perspective. However, during the process, I figured out an easy way of doing it. Since one of the eighth graders, Connie Chiu, takes the same bus as I do, so I could write a story base on what she might be thinking in the bus.

There's probably not much for me to add. I am done with it as in a very short story form. There are some details I could add on, but I don't think those are necessary when it comes to a "very short story".

Short Stories Reflection

The first story I read was called "It's Just The Sun Rising." I like the author's writing style, mainly because I found it pretty similar to my own. The story talks about how his family and that he draws a portrait of his father every year. There might be some symbolism going on, however, I don't see any but that may be that I didn't find it myself. He tells the story in a well constructed manner, though. Although I didn't actually "learn" anything from him, but I could pretty much have a good sense of how his family, life, and feelings. Although he did not show much dialog or with his family, his description on how they are really allows you to know them.

The other one is called "The Alien Encounter" written by an eleven year-old. I knew he was eleven year-old because the description says so. However, you could still guess that he is not young, according to the story. I don't know how I can explain this. If you go and read it, you can tell the story line is naive. I don't mean whether it is good or bad. It's just naive. The tone of the story doesn't sound naive, though. His voice actually sounds a lot more mature than what most people would expect to hear from an eleven year-old. I like "It's Just The Sun Rising"s voice better, though, because it sounds more like someone is telling the story, unlike "The Alien Encounter" which sounds too much like a story and personally, I think it loses the "feeling" of the story. It's like what the OWL site mentions, "do more telling than showing." He spends more time on describing things rather than showing them to the readers and let them have their own opinions.

Reflection On Students Two Point Oh

The blogs I read were "Should an 18 Year Old Really Know What They're Going to Do For the Rest of Their Life?" and "The Well of Inspiration." The reason why I chose to read them was that those are the kind of topics that are pretty close to we, the 11th graders.

The first blog talks about whether you should know what you want to major in or even do for the rest of your life. The author did not know what she wanted to do in her future. She then made a hypothesis that there is too many options for the students nowadays, which causes them to have hard time choosing what to do. However, I disagree with that point. I think the variety of choices we have today can allow us to be able to try out more different things before we enter college. That might be different for different people, though. So her point may still be correct in some ways.

The other one is about this girl that likes to write. She started writing in high school and she thought she had a unique talent because not a lot of people started writing novels when they were in high school. As she grew older, she met some other high school students that also write novels. It made her realized how big the world actually is, and how many other talented people are out there. When she decided that she wanted to continue writing in the future, she could see from some people that they don't believe she could do it. Eventually, she wanted to write more just to prove them wrong. I like her attitude. One should never listen when the others are trying to tell her or him, "You can't do it." The only reasons why people would tell one another that they can't achieve something is simply that they couldn't do it themselves, or no one had done it before.

4th Floor Mural

I am now working on painting the walls on 4th floor. Here are some of the ideas I have. Please feel free to give any comment because I have no idea what you guys think. Any suggestions, concerns, questions, or even complaints are welcome.
Since the 4th floor is all about science, so, I thought it would be appropriate to have things that are scientific related. The first idea is "evolution".

For some reason that picture did not show up well... Anyway, the idea is to have simple circles, squares, and rectangular shapes in the beginning, then they all slowly change into different creatures. The "hard" part is the end, because, believe it or not, evolution hasn't ended. So, Mr.Loken and I came up with two different "solutions" One is to have all(or the most. Of course, it's not possible for me to have "all", literally.) the species we have, today, to race at the final point. The other idea is to have the present time before reaching to the end of the wall, and have it transfers into a bunch of question marks to represent that "we don't know what is going to happen next." See example below.
The other idea is something very creative. It slightly relates to the theme, science, but not exactly ties into it like the evolution idea does. I call this idea "movie posters" What I am going to do is to create science related movies' posters. Getting confused? Well, have you ever seen those movie posters made AFTER the Oscar award? They not only have the pictures of the movies but also include what kind of award and comments they had got.
Trust me, this one is way cooler than evolution.

Thanks a lot for reading through all these.
Once again, feel free to say anything. I can see your name anyway.

Joking.

Warmed Up Clothing.

Another voice exercise. This is for the book, Cat's Cradle.

“Oh by the way, have I spoken about Father’s trip to the beach? I know this has nothing to do with the book you are working on but it’s pretty interesting. You might like to include this. Anyway, it wasn’t a family trip or anything like that. I was at the beach with my friends one afternoon and then I happened to found my dad there as well. He was lying under the Sun with a raincoat with the hood on. His feet were the only things that were exposed, however, I could tell it was him because that raincoat is mine; it has my name on. So I excused myself from my friends to see what he was doing. We were practicing beach volleyball there for the coming up sports day. Only a few of us had the experience of playing beach volleyball. As I went closed to him, I found a sheet of paper lied next to him, which said “Can you warm up someone’s body temperature by warming up that person’s clothing?”

Beginning of "Cat's Cradle"

Although the book, "Cat's Cradle", does not use any vocabulary that people don't often say in real life, or the words that high school students would refer as the "SAT words", it is still a difficult book. I have to admit that it is a great book in the sense that the author has a very special style in writing, however, that is what makes the book difficult to read.

The beginning of the book basically talked about Jonah's, or John, the narrator,
writing a book about the atomic bomb dropped in Hiroshima back in the 1945. He then sent some letters to the son, Newt, of the scientist, Felix, who made the atomic bomb, to gather information. Both John and Newt are very good at going off track. That is the main reason why it is a difficult book.

The most fascinating thing I found in the book is that the author always had something funny at the end of each chapter. Though, most of the jokes are not so easily to be understood. You might have to stop and think about it for a few seconds, then laugh. Another thing I like about the book is the character, Felix. Felix probably has one of the best personalities in all the stories I know so far. He is a very cool person, literally. All he thinks about is himself. He is not a selfish person, however, it's just that he doesn't seem to take too much account of what the others are doing. Without Felix, "Cat's Cradle" would likely be a boring book. I am guessing that he will come back more often as the story goes, because he seems like he is the cat's cradle man!

one Act of Random Kindness. (How to change the world??)

I have always thought of changing the world since I was very little. However, I have never thought of changing the world right now, when I am still in high school. It is not that I think I am still too young or anything like it specially after my experience of finding sponsors for the student lounge design plan. Before we started it, my thinking was just as naive as everyone else today at school except for Angus, Jack, and me. Whenever Angus, Jack, or I mention how hard it could be, the other people would absolutely tell us, "come on, it's not that hard. You just have to find the right person." I agree, but it's had to find the "right person" when you are a nobody. No one can truly understand both the fun and the pain of the precess. Base on that experience, I sometimes thought that is it all about who we know? So does it mean the older I get the easier it would be? I guess the answer would be "no", because no matter how old I am, as long as I haven't had a successful student lounge built out and show it to the world, I am still a nobody. I learned that it is not only about who you know, what kind of knowledge and skills you have, or even the money you own, you also have to be willing to do the things you wanted to achieve.

From the movie, "Evan Almighty", Evan once asked the God how is he supposed to change the world. The God answered him, "it starts with one act of random kindness." There is no short cut. I believe the most important thing for changing the world is to have faith in yourself and be willing to do anything. Sometimes people think too much before they even started a thing. Eventually they will have doubt in themselves after thinking too much ahead. There should be a lot of planning but no thinking. It all starts from something as small as one act of random kindness.

Who's talking??

After learning about the "voice" in writing, we had done a little exercise we had in class. It's a simple instruction of lifting the lid of a lap-top computer, turning its power on, and opening Safari. Yet, we need to try using somebody else's voice to describe the process.

Guess who's voice am I using here:

We use computers as a learning tool at school, particularly Mac Book. The main reason of this is computers are lighter than books. You can have a whole lot of documents in your lap top and they don’t add any weight to it. Right now I am just going to focus on the way to open Mac Book’s browser, Safari. First, you need to lift its lid up. I personally think it’s very logical. Then, once again, this is pretty much logical; you turn on the power. In order to turn it on, all you have to do is to press that round button on the right hand side top corner. As you push it, you would begin to realize that it is an incredibly fast machine. When you have it on, you will see two things. The desk top and the dashboard located on the bottom of the screen. In the dashboard, I believe Safari is the forth one counting from your left, except if you have already moved things around on your dashboard. Safari has an icon of a compass, it shouldn’t be hard to find. If you can’t find it, the other way is to clock onto the magnifying glass icon on the right hand top corner of your screen. It should give you a little blue area says “spotlight”, once you clicked on it, with a bar that you can type in. You can find and open Safari just by typing Safari there.

Answer:   nekol. rM

BBC V.S. Blogs

I have just read a few articles about the incidents of Tibet from both BBC and people's blogs. Since I am not too into its history and I didn't know much about Tibet, so I won't be judging which one is right. What I would say is this: The BBC News focuses on the incidents that had happened, and the blogs are people's opinions base on their knowledge. For example, one of the blogs has comments of an argument between the oner of the blog and another viewer. The viewer stated that she/he believes the West should go ahead and use military power to stop China and teach China to be civilized. The owner of the blog argues back and says if it were okay for the West to use military to control China, then it should also be okay for China to use military to control Tibet. I love that argument. It's sweet and concise. But anyway, in my opinion, we shouldn't only focus on how the Tibetan feel because they are obviously unhappy for being restricted. We should also try to see what China says. 

Grizzly Man Reflection.

Timothy Treadwell, the film maker of the movie, Grizzly Man, showed all of his attitude toward the nature world from his film. His goal was to send people the message that we should all have respect to the natural. Unfortunately, he died in the middle of his filming.

Before I talk about how I feel about Timothy's action, I am first going to say what I think of the video. It is indeed something I have never seen before. I have never seen a film of a man that goes and lives in the wild life without any weapons or any protective tools. He showed a lot of love to the nature throughout out the film and it's unlike most of the other documentaries, his film does not seem like a propaganda.

It not only has some thoughtful insight that is spread by a well done manner, but also shows you a lot of Timothy's background information so the audience could be more familiarize with him. However, one thing I didn't like about the film is that it didn't show the final shot he had; the one that showed his death. It's not that I was hoping to see some killing scenes. I thought it would be more touching if it even shows you Tim's reaction when he was being beaten up by his most beloved bears.

What about my thoughts of the film? Like I mentioned above, it is a very well done documentary, and the message was pretty clear. And of course, Timothy was a great man. Not a lot of people have the guts to try doing something that the other people haven't done, and only a very few people are willing to give up everything for what they truly love. Having said that, I still think he was a bit too naive. Japanese Bushido has a saying, "Power without justice is violence; Justice without power is buncombe." Timothy has a lot of love to the nature and the bears and he wanted the rest of us to do the same thing, which is great, but he should not have gone into the wild and died so soon. I agree with his point that most people will remember him only if he dies, however, if he wanted to die, he should have planned out something bigger. Otherwise it seemed like he was just a guy who loved nature but ended up eaten by a bear. 

Voice of a story.

The story, Hero, from "Fiction On Web.com"is done by a narrative form. I like how the voice was, because it makes me feel like I am actually listening to him speaking to me about his story.

The story told by an obese narrator. He is like the loser in the town and people just hates him. One day, another obese guy, who is a lot bigger than the narrator, moved into the town. Ironically the other people liked him. While reading the story you would see that the narrator really is a loser. He is just a poor guy, who is fat, ugly, and has no friends.

The author has done a great job by addressing how the narrator thinks and feels. I could almost feel exactly how the narrator felt when I was reading his story. His casual way of speaking allows me to understand what kind of person he is, the jealousy he had, and the anger he felt.

Voices of stories are very important. It not only makes the story unique and interesting but also makes you to be able to familiarize with the characters and the story setting. I don't like to read things that are written as if it were a documentary or a text book. The story is dead if there is no voice.

Arctic Tale

The movie, Arctic Tale, shows the polar bears' life. It shows you all the way from the mother bear started to train her kids all the way up to her death and eventually her children's grown up life. Does it show that animals have feelings and emotions? I would say it does show that in our point of view. For us, we can say that the mother bear loves her children and she showed that by protecting them, feeding them, and teaching them about life. However, she might have done all that just because she didn't want her children to die so soon or else they wouldn't be able to pass out her gene. I would like to persuade myself that animals do have feelings and emotions, though. That way both makes me believe it is more important to protect and care about them and make me have more of the sense that we, the human beings, are not any higher than the other creature.

Reviews?

I read reviews about nearly everything just for fun. The main reason that I like reading reviews is that I like to see what the other people's complains and concerns are, or maybe even how they support the things that I thought were bad. I often try to be as specific as possible when someone asks me for an opinion. What I have always done is simply first give a brief idea of what it is. I would start it off with the product's positive points, then go into the things I didn't like about and explain why. If possible, I always thought it's better to give out my own opinion of the ways to improve it, that way I don't make myself to be unreasonable.

Not in favor of being a formal person, I never tried to learn the "professional" way of writing reviews. I like it when I can keep things in my own style, however, the site about the tips of writing book reviews gave me a broader sense of how many other elements I could have in reviews. For example, one of the tips was to "try using a few short quotes from the book to illustrate your points." I don't think I have ever done something like that and I think it's a good idea. It not only supports your point, but also let the readers know what kind of things and style they would be reading if they were to read the book.

I have seen a lot of game reviews from the Internet. The reviewer didn't just tell you what he thinks the flaws are; he demonstrates it so you can see it with your own eyes and judge it yourself. Unfortunately, the language he uses is inappropriate at schools, otherwise it would be a good example to show everybody of how a good review can be like.

Reflection on Student 2.0

The blog I read was by a student called Nicole Kim. She talked about how schools .shouldn't be a place that is all about teachers preaching to the students. She believes that schools should be more of a place where students can have a variety in learning other than just reading the books and listening to the teachers.I thought that her idea of what a school should be is actually pretty similar to our school. Our school doesn't really use any text book, and each teacher has a different way of teaching. Some shows videos, some has activities with the students, and some gives questions and allow the students to present in the way they would like to. I agree that schools shouldn't be all about reading and listening, because that is not what the reality is about. We need to be able to present what we know, and make connections between different ideas that we learned.

Fast-Food Nation

I thought this movie is really well done in the way that it doesn’t show up like a propaganda. It first shows how many people rely on fast-food restaurants, today, then it moves to the perspective from the workers in the slaughter house. At the end, it actually leaves the choice for you to decide whether you would still like to eat those kind of foods. Just that the consequences, which the movie showed, could gross you out.
The reason that people nowadays rely on fast-food restaurants, is pretty similar to my first semester’s global ethics’ final assessment’s topic; “Time and Money.” You don’t really have to wait when you are eating in a fast-food restaurant. In fact, most people buy their foods by something called the Drive’thru, which allow you to order your meals when you’re in your car so you continue driving and have your meal on your way to business or anything. Fast-food restaurants are often a lot cheaper than the other restaurants are. Therefore, more people rely on them because they save both time and money. Eventually, in one hand, the people become the sponsors by relying on them.

2nd Expedition Reflection

1) Do we gave an ethical responsibility toward animals? We should give an ethical responsibility toward animals. Especially the ones we “owned” When we “buy” an animal as a pet, it doesn’t exactly mean we “own” it. It simply means that we are responsible for its future once we bought it. Also, it’s a living creature. I don’t think any one of us has the right to decide what we want to do about them, which are not only the ones in the pet shop but also the wild ones. We don’t have the rights to take anything from the animals. Though, most of us did not give an ethical responsibility toward them. A lot of people treat animals as if they either own it or they are more superior than the animals, so they could do whatever they wanted to do.

2) Do animals have emotions? Give examples if possible. I believe animals have emotions and feelings, but I don’t have any proof for it. It doesn’t mean they actually have emotions and feelings if I say that a dog would dodge, scream and be afraid of you if you kick it. It might be its instinct for living. If animals wouldn’t dodge from danger actions, they would extinct. However, I always believe that animals have feelings. In fact, I even believe the things we made have feelings. I don’t have any example for this believe. I would say it’s more of a moral thing than a scientific proof thing.

The Gods Must Be Crazy.

The movie shows the society of both the “Takers” and the “Leavers.” It shows that the Leavers don’t own anything in their society. They treat the trees as something that belongs to the Earth. They don’t own the trees even though they live with them. When they hunt, they would apologize and explain to the animals why they killed them. After they got the animal’s meat, they wouldn’t just throw the rest of the body away. They would use us the entire animal so nothing is wasted. For example, they not only ate the snakes but also used their skins to make tools or products. On the other side, it shows us the Takers’ society, which is how we live. The movie clearly shows the difference by having a leaver who enters the takers’ world. He did not understand the rules we have created. Because he didn’t understand the rules, the actions he made us, the audience who are also the takers, realize how much more difficult we are making our lives to be. All the tools from us were made due to the human’s needs. We need them and so we create them. We create them because we think they cam make our live a lot easier. In order to make the tools function, we started to set some rules. However, we never truly understand that in order to master those tools and follow the rules we need to study. Eventually, most of us would be “wasting” our lives by just following those rules.
In the movie, it shows us the different value from the Takers and the Leavers. It was similar to what Ishmael has pointed out, which is that Takers take more than what they needed just in case one day the gods decide it’s their turn to be gone so they will have foods to survive. What the Takers do is that they take the things from the Earth, store them, keep them as if they were “their” goods, and use them whenever they need to. From the movie, the main character had once gone into the Takers’ world. He saw a group of sheep, which were belong to a herder, eating grass. The bush-man's first reaction was to hunt one to satisfy his hunger. However, the herder then called the police and got his sheep back. The bush-man was confused because he thought he hunted it himself from the “natural world.” That is the difference between the Takers and the Leavers. Takers own things and the Leavers don’t. The bush-man even wanted to share the sheep he got to the police and the herder, because from hie belief, he believes that the sheep does not belong to anyone. The sheep’s meat can be eaten by anyone who was hungry and needed it.

Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price.

Although I have never been shopping in Wal-Mart, I have had of its name and known about its low prices, before. Wal-Mart can get a lot of costumers, is mainly for the reason that it has very low prices. People always go for the cheaper place for shopping. However, do they know the reason why Wal-Mart can be so cheap? I never knew the answer until we saw the movie, “Wal-Mart:The High Cost of Low Price”, in class. It shows us the employers’ opinion about their jobs and earnings. Most of them did not get enough payment to afford insurance, which protects them when they accidentally hurt themselves at job. Mal-Mart also pays the Chinese to help produce their produces, because Chinese labors are way cheaper than American labors are. The problem is that Wal-Mart pays extremely low salary to the Chinese labors while they actually sell the products, which are made by the Chinese, in the price that seem pretty low to the American costumers, but is a lot higher than what the Chinese labors had earned. The problem here is that the Chinese labors are living in bad conditions and they can not really help it because their salaries are only enough for them to get foods and stay alive. At the same time, the costumers of Wal-Mart did not know anything about this fact. They did not know that low price they are buying, today, is built by the people who are hardly earning anything. This is pretty similar to the idea of the movie, “Blood Diamond”, which is about the people with higher power were controlling the other Africans they have caught, to help them dig diamonds. The Africans that were actually doing the hard work did not get paid, while the ones that were above them, could sit there, wait for the labors to get the diamonds, and then they can sell those diamonds. Of course, it’s the people that are above the labors, are gaining something from those diamonds. Not the ones who found the diamonds.

Reflection From Jane Goodall's Talk

"We have found after all there isn't a sharp line dividing us from the animal kingdom. It's a wazzy line. It's getting wazzier all the time as we find the animals doing things.", says Jane Goodall. She points put the fact that humans are not superior than the other animals. Most people used to believe that we, the human beings, are on the upper level above the rest of the animals, which causes some problems. For example, because they believe we are superior, so it would be a lot easier for them to kill the other animals. It would become that we think we can do anything to them, because we are higher than they are.

The other amusing thing she has pointed out, is that there are about 50 different chemicals in all of our bodies that we did not have in 50 years ago. "...we are abusing the great power we have and we are destroying the world. In the developed world, in a way it's worse..." she says, "...and the diseases increase in places with filthy toxic, wastes, and dump. We're harming ourselves, as well as to th other animals, as well as to the mother nature." It's similar to what we have read in Ishmael. Ismael also brought up the point that this isn't "our" Earth. Most of us treat this Earth as if it were "our" property, and so we could do anything we desire. Our ignorance is what drags everything down. We do things when we are not sure what will happen next. We do them just because we are blinded by the benefits, but we don't usually realize what comes after that.

The last, and my favorite one from her is her telling that everyone has th role in play. It's not only some of us who caused the problems but also what all of us have done that caused a whole lot of trouble we are facing today. E.O.Weilson has said something pretty similar. He said that the extinction of just one kind of insect can destroy the whole world. Although insects are small, they can be big and influential. We can not put all the blame on the hunters, the people who dump all the wastes, the ones who cut down the trees, etc. The little things we do everyday, can make a difference if you put them all together. It's like the extinction of one kind of insect. They are small if you only see them as "an insect", but they are huge, if you can look at the bigger picture.

GE = Global Ethics

Global Ethics is pretty much like the study of humanities but focus more on the ethical problems. For example, we learned about being aware of what the humans have done that effect the other living creatures' life.