Learning, Annoying, and Cold WEX

Learning
A white board full of numbers. It all looked like Greek to me. The soft, block lines of the marker made row after row of numbers and symbols on the bumpy chalkboard. The teacher finally looked down from the whiteboard and spoke in a mentor-like tone, "Do any of you guys know what this is?" He already knew the answer to the question before asking it. The puzzled look on all six of our faces told him we didn't have the slightest clue. "This is the quadratic equation." We still had the puzzled look on our faces, if not more so after that answer. "Here, let me explain..."Our math teacher went on to explain how the quadratic equation was used to solve certain problems. We all sat there; still, quiet, and intent on learning about this new equation. After a thorough explanation of the equation, the puzzled look on our faces evaporated. We took turns going up to the bumpy whiteboard and solving this newfangled math concept. We all watched from the rough, black carpet as our math teacher corrected all of our mistakes. Nobody said anything of the sort, but we all knew each and every one of us was proud that we had mastered this alien formula. I had never really liked math, yet I was intrigued by this concept, I wanted to know more. I wanted to learn. Math was actually....fun.

Annoying
Even through all the clanging of blades, I still heard his high pitched, pre-pubescent voice.
"Gabe, come hook up!"
Calvin was a good sabreist. I liked to practice with him, yet he was one of the most annoying kids I had ever met in my life. I wanted to like him because of his sabre skill, but I couldn't for he was just too annoying. He always came up to me when I was suiting up or doing something in the back. He would stare at me for a few quick seconds and then start babbling away. To his luck, there were people all around the fencing studio, or I would have punched him in the face a long time ago. Not only was he annoying, but he thought that he was the best sabreist that ever lived. He once brought a a fencing book to practice once and started critiquing the way I fenced, even though I always beat him. To his consolation though, he is only 11 years old. But I look back and cannot remember being that annoying 3 years back. I usually yell at him and tell him to go away, but on some occasions I explode at him and told to be less annoying. That is my annoyance, Calvin the sabreist.

Cold
Silence. The spark had gone. Nothing was left between us. But then, there might have been nothing between us at the start. We sat there, not daring to look at each other. We both knew our friendship was over. I personally did not want to let go. Didn't want to let go of her blonde hair, blue eyes, and soft voice. I tried to speak, but then, she was gone. I was...alone. A feeling of emptiness struck me. I was a wolf in a dark, snow covered forest. The usual celerity of the world did not interest me anymore. I sad and thought. How did I mess up one of my best friendships? It was a curious question. One that I did not quite know how the answer to. Suddenly...a whimper. My mind had finally taken in what had just happened. The legs that I stood upon gave out from under me. There was no more chair. Just me, sitting on the floor, crying. A plethora of memories came flooding in. Memories of laughter, of the fine had had together. Then they all went away. And it was only me again. No not me...only a shell of (dare I say it) what was once a person. The world moved at its own pace, leaving me to my own sorrow.
It was at this time when life seems really strange. The way relationships twist and warp with time. The way that a bird flies thousands of miles to escape an inevitable death.

Best. Picture. Evar.

Win.

Taylor, Gabe, and Livy's Cooking Show!

Why are we growing these herbs, you ask? Well, there are multiple reasons as to why. The first one is that growing these herbs at school urges us to grow our own food at home, kind of like the Dervaes family. Growing food at home makes it so that we are more sustainable in the fact that we do not have to add pesticides to the air or hormones to our food, which pollute the environment. Many people are not aware of this, and if they knew that the food they were buying from Vons, Albertsons, etc. were polluting the environment, they would make an effort to stop buying from places like them like we have. Another reason we grew our plants is because if we broadcast our effort to live more sustainably, like we are doing so with these blogs, then maybe other people that read our blogs would be motivated to live sustainably themselves. These two reasons combined should answer the two essential questions "Why aren't people living sustainably? And how can we convince them to do so?”

How did I creatively incorporate my herbs into a tasty meal? Well, Taylor Cook, Livy Solis, and I had the idea to make a cooking show that demonstrated us using our herbs, in addition to other ingredients, to make meals that we personally ate. Since our herbs were not ready to be harvested off our plant, the cayenne peppers were still green, we decided to buy our herbs. I got grounded cayenne pepper and used that in place of a real cayenne pepper in my salsa.

Taylor's ingredients for guacamole:

Livy's Ingredients for carne asada street tacos:

My ingredients for salsa:

And now for the Taylor, Gabe, and Livy's Cooking Show!!!

Once Sony Vegas stops being mean and renders our movie correctly, I will link the whole cooking show together.

After we were done cooking, we had to try our food, no matter how doubtful we were of how good it would taste. The guacamole came out a bit sour because we had an unripe lemon, but everything else turned out better than we thought it would. The street tacos tasted amazing, and the salsa (which none of us had faith in since it looked HORRIBLE while we were cooking it) was just phenomenal. I took home a bit of it because it turned out so good. Behind the scenes of the cooking show, we blended the salsa and added a LOT more cayenne pepper, and that seemed to make it that much better. Overall, the food came out really good, better than we had anticipated. And on a side note, we cleaned all this up with a Sham-Wow, and they do NOT work as well as they do in the commercial, lol.

Credit to the Carne Asada Street Taco recipe goes to Rubios, the guacamole was Taylor's mom's own recipe, and the salsa that I made was found at http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/001776simple_salsa.php


After posting this, I have seen that Blogger refuses to make all the fonts the same/same size. Please ignore this, since Blogger HTML code is mean ^_^

This I Believe

There is No God

Written by Penn Jillette,from Penn and Teller, There is No God is an article about Atheism. I related to this because generally, people bug me about my belief that there is no God. Listening to this essay really struck me because I was basically hearing everything that I tell people when they try to put God into my life. It was just really really soothing hearing another person, especially one that is generally well known amongst the public, agree with my beliefs(well, lack of beliefs). Many people try and persuade me that there is a God, not believing in God is bad, science can't explain for everything, etc. But reading this persuaded me again that my beliefs are mine, and no one can change that. Another reason I chose this essay,though, was because I thought the article itself had a very interesting writing style to it. It didn't seem like an essay to me, I kind of could imagine everything in the essay as I was reading it. The elephant in the trunk popped into my head, as did the Hallmark Cards. Overall, I thought this essay was a really good read, and I think I want to model my personal essay from this.

Inspiring Food Blogs

The first link that I found was http://www.sustainablefoodblog.com/. This blog inspired me because it is full of recipes that are made sustainably. One of the first links I looked at was how to make 12 meals using apples.

The second link I found was http://www.almostvegan.com/. Even though I am not a vegan myself, I thought it was pretty cool that it was a blog all about vegan only food. On the front page the types of food I saw ranged from vegan ice cream to vegan "Bacon Salt™."

Salsa with Cayenne Pepper!!!

For the sake of making this post not fill up your whole entire screen, I am just posting the links to the recipes instead. All of these recipes use our Cayenne Pepper herb, even if they are not listed in the recipe, they can be added to help spice up the salsa. The image above is a picture of the first recipe.

http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/001776simple_salsa.php

http://allrecipes.com/Recipes/Appetizers-and-Snacks/Dips-and-Spreads/Salsa/Top.aspx

http://www.thespicehouse.com/recipes/surprising-salsa

Farmers Market Interview

1. What is your name and your role here at the (farmers market, CSA, community garden)?

Micheal, Apprentice.

2. Why do you choose to shop here/garden here/support this CSA?

For the survival of civilization.

3. When did you first start coming here?

Today, I’m usually in the field farming the crops.

4. Do you garden at home? Why or why not?

Yes, I live on the farm where these plants are grown.

5. How did you find out about this place?

Friends.

6. What would be your advice to get others to do what you do?

Just start planting.

7. How did you get involved in this (farmers market, CSA, community garden)?

Friend.

8. Why did you get involved in this (farmers market, CSA, community garden)?

A continuation of my education(chef)

9. If you had the power to get more people involved, would you and why or why not?

I do and I am, civilization depends on it.

On an off note, the farmer gave me the website to his farm,and he told me that he encourages the public to come out and visit the farm. The website is http://lamilpaorganica.com/

1. What struck you about the location you visited? Was it what you expected, or very different?
   It struck me how many people are actually getting involved in farming locally. I knew that there was a community, but I did not know that the community was that large. There was a good eight or nine farmers at the farmers market in Hillcrest, which just makes me think how many there are at other locations like Ocean Beach.
   

2. Do you think you will start going to a farmers market more often? Or using a community garden? Or supporting a CSA?
   I already do go to farmers markets, mostly on weekdays after school. They have extremely good food at the farmers market in OB, which is one of the main reason I go there, lol. But I also go there because the food is extremely fresh as well, fresher than the food we can get at Vons or another big box grocery store.
   
3. How do these locations fit into our essential questions of "Why Don't People Live More Sustainably?" and "How Can I Convince them to do So?"
   These locations fit directly into those two questions because this is one, major reason that people live sustainably(cheaper and fresher foods that help stimulate the LLE). This also is a good way to help convince people to live sustainably because by showing people that growing the food locally, it helps the local economy and it is much fresher. This might convince people to start growing their own food locally instead of buying it from a big box grocery store.
   

Ecological Intelligence

Ecological Intelligence is the ability to understand what kind of impact you are leaving when you buy a product, kind of like how we are able to calculate what will happen if we eat rotten food. We would be able to instantaneously be able to calculate what would happen if we bought a so called "green" product. This fits into our essential questions (Why don't people live more sustainably?, How can I convince them to do so?) because if people know exactly what they are doing to the planet when they buy a product, they may be tempted to do something about the impact that they are producing. I personally think that my ecological intelligence is pretty low. Most of my green ideas are from propaganda and the such from things like the movie "An Inconvenient Truth" and other pro-green movements. Probably the only real ecological intelligence is knowing to turn off the light and recycle plastic bottles. Personally, I think a lot of the other "ecological intelligence" that I have is just propaganda talking to me in my head.

Article:http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1884779_1884782_1884776,00.html

Data Collection, Interpretation and Analysis

One thing that really struck me after compiling all the data in charts and graphs is that people, on average, leave a lot of their home electronics on at home knowing that they are on. Many responses as why they don't turn them off or unplug them is that they are "too busy" or "I just don't want to go through the trouble of unplugging then plugging back in when I want to use them again." To me, this basically meant that people weren't even trying to conserve energy, not because they didn't want to, but because they are just lazy. I was sort of surprised by this result, but not really. I have heard this result time and time again by other people conducting green surveys, but it really struck me when I say the results of the survey with my own two eyes. It was kind of dispromising to see that people are not trying to go green just because they are lazy and don't want to put in a little extra effort. To be completely honest, I really did not have any expectations. Everyone has their own separate opinion, and that was what I was expecting to see when I started compiling the data. So kind of, yes my expectations were met when my group finally finished the survey. Based on the data that we found, my group decided that we are going to launch an ad campaign that is aimed at educating people and taking the "did you know" stand. I think taking that angle will help educate and then encourage people to do things like turning off their computer when they leave the house, or switching off a light.

The Dervaes Family

I enjoyed watching this family through the movie. I really thought that their ability to sustain themselves was absolutely amazing. It really made me think about how personally, I am wasting resources everyday. It also made me think about how I can reduce my waste, like their family did. It also struck me when at the beginning of the movie the father said "Growing your own food is the most dangerous profession, because it can make you free." That line struck me because I went back to what Ishmael was saying about keeping food on lock and key. If the food is not under lock and key, then the citizens of that culture are "free."

I think that the Dervaes' family Wants vs. Needs sheet looks a lot like a sheet of a person that is not doing so well on money. I say this because a person not doing so well on money puts the more important things on the Needs column, while not so important things on the Wants column. I also think that the Dervaes family does not put food under Needs because they do not need to pay for food, they get all of it for free. I think that they do, however, put their garden and plants under Needs because that is how they survive, and without them, they would be, well screwed.

The Dervaes family fits into what we are learning about in My Ishmael because Ishmael keeps talking about civilizations that keep their food under lock and key. But the Dervaes family does not live by this principle. They are more like the Leavers when they first left, they spend all their time growing food and then eat the foods that they want whenever they want. But they are not exactly the Leavers because they do not keep their food under lock and key for themselves. No one forces them to grow their own food, they do so on their own accord.

My thoughts on this family is that they are probably one of the best examples of how to live sustainably in a modern city. I think that if everyone shifted to the way that the Dervaes lived, the orginal "Leaver" way, than I think that we would not be in this cultural and climate predicament that we are in.

Erratic Retaliation

1. Anthropomorphism: an interpretation of what is not human or personal in terms of human or personal characteristics.

When Ishmael talks about this in the chapter, I think he is talking about how humans always interpret what animals do in the human sense not only because we are used to seeing the kind of behavior, but subconsciously we are assuming what they are doing is something a human would do because the human way is the “right” way. Just like in the consecutive lines after the mention of this word, Ishmael talks about animals and territories. Animals have no want for territory, nor do they need it. We just think that animals are claiming land for themselves because that is what humans do. Really though, the animals are just trying to survive, and taking land that has the resources to sustain the animals.

2.
a. I think erratic retaliation is a fancy way of saying “do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” In the case of the Cawks, this means that if one tribe starts to irk another tribe, the tribe being irked will try and bother the other tribe, so that they can be even.

b. Erratic Retaliation is a peacekeeping method because it forces the peaceful Cawk tribes to defend themselves, instead of just being annihilated by other more aggressive Cawk tribes. Basically, it forces Cawk tribes to defend themselves when others attack them, keeping any tribes from just being wiped out because they chose to lay down and die.

c. Cawks don’t annihilate one another because that would be useless. Going back to the example of the white-footed mouse, if the white-footed mice tried to kill themselves, that would not contribute to the gene pool. But if the white-footed mice kill other pups, than that makes it more likely for one white-footed mouse family to contribute their genes to a gene pool. To refine what I am saying, the Cawks don’t kill themselves because that would not help them advance.