Passion Project Update

I have changed my passion project slightly from my original plan. My original plan was to create the 3d human anatomy all on a software and be able to put it on a website. I knew how hard it would be to accomplish this, but what I didn't expect was my interest in the software part to fade. The good news is that over the past 2 months, Usha and I collected a lot of information on the anatomy and never put too much time into the software. This means we never wasted anytime on that so we can change that portion of it. Im thinking of pulling in my strong interest for art into it. Instead of making a 3d virtual human body, I will now create a clay model of specific human organs, an outline of a skeleton, and with the help of the school's 3d printer and the engineering teacher, I may even be able to print a 3d human face. I have all the research done so the remaining weeks will all be spent for creating the organs. It will be difficult to create these parts, but what I learned in the past 8 weeks is that I need to have interest too keep going with the project. So what I have now that differed from the original plan is the strong interest in the sculpting and creating the organs. I lacked interest in the technology, that was part of my original plan so I have confidence that this project can be done!

Randy Pausch: The Strange Outlier

I actually had no idea who Randy Pausch was until the day we were assigned this. I found him on a website that had the top 10 most inspirational people of all time. Even then, the brief summary that told me how he "brought childhood dreams to life" and "inspired thousand" didn't really convince me he was an outlier. That is until I read his book, The Last Lecture. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and had about 10 tumors on his pancreas. He had merely 4-6 months of good health left. He has 3 children with his wife Jai Pausch.  He's a strange outlier. What makes him strange is that he realizes his opportunities and his luck and he creatively crafts into a lecture .He talks about how he won the "parent lottery".  In the book Outliers this is what we learn as concerted cultivation.  He talks about how he had parents that opened him to knowledge and information, and that's majorly why became what he is today. In one specific quote he captures a perfect example of concerted cultivation "The instinct in our house was never to sit around like slobs and wonder. We knew a better way: open the encyclopedia, open the dictionary, open your mind. " Although this can be arguable it shows the way his parents influenced his learning.Randy Pausch mentions that his parents always bought the world books every year. He would spend hours reading them, intrigued by the endless articles and countless stories. I believe this is where he first was supplemented and later improved his analytical intelligence. His creativity was also provoked by his parents at a young age. Halfway through high school, he asked his parents if he could paint his walls. He wanted to splash his imagination onto them and painted an elevator with 30 floors and the quadratic formula and a rocket ship. Any other parent would be worried about the resale value of the house but not his. He later said this is what him led him to take part in a Disney Virtual Reality Project. He became a disney imagineer and got to help make it.  He was open minded just like his parents. He did something in his childhood that most of us are too stubborn to do. He accepted and pulled from others ideas. If you really think about it, most of us will firstly barely listen to one of our peers ideas and going to the point we actually pull and create from that idea is almost non-existent. We are a lot more opinionated then we realize. We maybe open to a higher authority ideas but do we really listen to our peers, our equals? One of the quotes from The Last Lecture ingeniously tells us how Randy Pausch could trick his peers into being open to his ideas and thoughts. "If you dispense your own wisdom, others dismiss it: if you offer wisdom from a 3rd party, it seems less arrogant and more acceptable". This quality and talent is one of the factors in why he is an outlier. I also can classify this quality of his, as practical intelligence.
Of course all these things contributed to him being an outlier but the major things that sets him apart from the rest is obviously his actual last lecture. As I watched his lecture, the liveliness and tone of him could have not been better. Knowing you only had months to live, how would you react? He explains how he had achieved his childhood dreams. The tiny ones that we forgot about. The dream of when I would be tall enough to ride a roller coaster (although I barely am at the minimum height allowed now) or the dream of when I would lose all my baby teeth. He talks about all the things we had already subconsciously achieved and then goes on to his adulthood in where he was able to take his dreams further. Its that recognition he showed to all his work that really impressed me. We tend to forget all the work we do before reaching even the smaller goals. In the modern day, we are so busy and  we don't take the time to step back and realize how far we have come.And all the appreciation he showed to his past. That's what made him an outlier.

Joyas Voladuras - Alone

We are utterly open with no one in the end—not mother and father, not wife or husband, not lover, not

child, not friend. We open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart.

This quote makes me realize how alone we really are. It makes me think of no matter what we can never be fully with someone. Just like nobody can read your thoughts, you are chillingly alone when you die, and if there is any where you go, you go alone. This niether makes me look at life with optimism nor pestimism, but with reality. This shows not how we maybe alone physically but how we are alone internally. Another quote that expresses this thought is the one below.

"A man is born alone and dies alone; and he experiences the good and bad consequences of his karma alone; and he goes alone to hell or the Supreme abode."

This quote also shows the reality of our being and how were alone. This thought has occurred to me before. I remember being 6 years old and staring at the corner of the room, letting my mind wander about our being. It was weird. Both quotes sum up all my long thought about being alone.

Sunscreen

Don’t waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes
you’re behind…the race is long, and in the end, it’s only with
yourself.

This quote is easy to relate in teen years. In teen years I feel that everyone wants to be someone else or be better then what they already are. And at the end of all the jealousy your only destructing yourself.  Also sometimes you're the better one and sometimes you're the worse, but it doesn't matter because at the end you're by yourself.  In my personal experience I'v always been competitive, but I'm not too obvious about it. I even say negative things about myself just to not make myself not seem like a show-off, if that makes sense. Anyway, I compete for all kinds of things, to be smarter, faster, prettier, etc. It doesn't stop there I try to be weirder, crazier, even meaner.   

Wasteland

This documentary was  definitely the most touching thing I have watched in a while. Not only the daily  lives of the pickers surprise me but their joy and pride in their work surprised me as well. For me the most memorable scene was when the painting was sold for 50 grand and the happiness was overwhelming for the pickers. The documentary brings us through the lives of these people and let almost experience their own feelings and their world. Of course I will probably never truly experience a day in a pickers life but this documentary has showed me to appreciate their work. Something that stuck out to me was when one of the pickers talked about how she a corpse of a baby once in the landfill. This showed me the depth of how much these people really go through and I cant help but wonder, are these jobs inhumane? Is it okay to let humans like you and me have to go through all the disturbing objects that can be found in garbage for recyclable goods? They're proud of their work so it must be worth it. At the end of the day a lot of the pickers are okay with what they do. This was an amazing documentary that not only was entertaining but also touching.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisdeve/7757736424/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/45912900@N06/5668695163/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewevans/5193519161/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/59125128@N00/1468523271/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/29609591@N08/4564780513/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/benheine/3528648990/

Portrait of Presidency

This picture shows the president not as a president but a father. It shows a part of him that is  not in his presidential image. It shows that he is a normal and regular human being as we all are but with a power. It makes me wonder how his life was before he was president or even before he was a senator but just a regular man with a regular job.I see this picture applies to many people whether its a supermodel or a political leader. We all have that moment in time where we all just but human. This picture resembles a suburban backyard with a dad and daughter discussing whatever teenager problems she may have whether it peer pressure or bad grades.
  http://timethemoment.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/39_p050410ps-0456.jpg?w=735

Photo Challenge 5:Delicate

The tip of a pencil is very delicate. Most people know that but I decided not many people actually realize how delicate it is.  Its delicate enough to break at touch and is hard enough to mended into different shapes and objects but i would like to point out how easy is it to destroy such small amount of led or charcoal or any type of pencil. I apologize about the poor quality.

Randomselectionrandompicture: Tweedledee Issues

It was Patricia's first day at work! The most exciting job she could imagine. She was working at Disney World as a character from Alice in Wonderland. She excitedly ran to the dressing room to try on her costume. When she walked in the glorious costume stared a her. The fat chubby cheeks stained with dirt. The way too much junk in the trunk. The plastic hat that was ripping apart. For the next 8 hours her name was Tweedledee. She hurriedly slipped her self into the bulky costume while rehearsing her Tweedledee voice. She pulled on the mask. "This is weird, I cant see anything". She tried pulling the mask off but it seemed to be stuck. She panicked. Running out, while crashing into anonymous objects. She  was now in Disney World. She heard little children laugh and cry. "LOOK MOMMY! IT'S TWEEDLEDEE!" a child exclaimed  The mother politely asked Patricia for a  picture with her children. Patricia managed to nod a yes. Without knowing where she was walking she stepped on a child's foot. She let out a curse. At least it was in Tweedledee's voice. She heard the mothers gasp and stomp away followed by the light tapping of toddlers. Patricia sighed. She was desperate so she grabbed whatever was in her reach. Luckily what she was holding onto was another Disney character, fortunately another Alice in Wonderland character. This is the story of Patricia's first day of her first job, and her last.

By: Megan Kolbe and Nandhini

The Big Picture

I find this picture fascinating. It shows the overly exposed model with way too much lighting showing the illusion of a supermodel. Many people adore supermodels wondering how they're so perfect. This pictures answers that. The picture shows us the normally dark audience in an appropriate amount of light, and how much light is actually being focused on the model. J.Mendal Fashion Show. Something that may be missed at first glance is the amount of light on the audience and how dim it is. I wonder about all the benefits the model gets from this much light.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/art/

This picture is absolutely stunning. I find this picture to be a contrast between man made machine to the beauty of nature. The many trees covered pure white snow surround the air, while the train passes by filing the air with smoke. I can only imagine what the environment looked like to the passengers of the train!

A train of the Brocken Railway steams through a winter landscape with snow covered pine trees as it approaches its destination on the Brocken mountain in the Harz mountainous region of Germany on Dec 8

Outside

I love this picture because of it's structure and the reflections of people looking up. The refletion is portrayed in two of the faces of sunroof. I love the 3-D affect it gives. It almost looks like to a glass box to me! This is the best picture I could take since it is in a school environment but I still find it fascinating!

Photo Challenge 4:Looking In

This is a picture of my eye obviously. Today I had to put of picture of looking in and whats more to look in.Out of my eye I see everything out but this picture is looking in, what I look out of everyday.

Photo Challenge 1 and 2: Under and Texture

Day 1 and 2 photo challenge!

My family spend from 200-250 on groceries. Since we eat a lot of indian food we have many of spices that we regularly have to keep replacing every week. Our staple foods are orange juice, strawberries, milk, and beans. My family loves orange juice and strawberries and my mom makes sure me and my dad eat some sort of vegetables everyday. My favorite foods are strawberries, raspberries, and orange juice. The junk food I love are hot cheetoes, Starbucks Mocha, and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

20% Project

For my 20% project I am testing memory on different levels.The physiology of a human brain is fascinating so I decided to pinpoint on a certain aspect of it; memory. I wanted to explore the capacity of human memory. I also wanted to see if there was any particular differences between male memory and female memory. I also wanted to see the differences between long term and short term memory.Usha, Vaishnavi, and myself will conduct several catagory of tests from visual to sight. Using books and website I anticipate on finding out the specifics of memory. My mom works in a Physiatrics  Hospital so I'll ask her to get more information for me. I think some of the problems that will occur is that our calculation may come in a range of answers and it may be hard to draw a conclusion. I won't know until I try so Im crossing my fingers for the best!

Teen Ink

My article on Teenink.com

http://teenink.com/opinion/social_issues_civics/article/519160/The-Great-Fat-Debate/

New Years Revoloution

New Years Resolution? I dont really believe in them. I feel that dates, years, months are all just numbers and names. Sure seasons change and the months guide us. Dates are just a way to keep track of life and mankind. I think that is there's a resolution  you want to make you shouldn't wait until the New Year to work on it. If you need change yourself you do it when you are ready.

Anyways, perhaps a resolution does take place. This is what I would want it to be. But first lets talk about what happend in 2012. Some may say it was a great year, or a terriable year but I think it was dissapointing year on mankind. We experienced many things that has disappointed the world. From the overexposed presidential election to the Connecticut shooting to the Delhi rape case, one things clear. We need a change. I feel our society is a bit stubborn now. We want everything to be a specific way, from clothes to laws. I say in 2013 we change that. As a world lets think outside the box. Lets consider more varieties and listin to more ideas. If I want anything this year this is may be it. Let 2013 start a brand new perspective on society.Only us the people can change this!

As for life, gosh I dont know where to start. In previous years Iv never been exposed to whats going on in the world as I am now. As a 13 year old I wonder how much can one achieve in a life time. In the media all we hear about are heroes who got the best out of their lives or people who got the worst. Never do we here about the ordinary people living way too ordinary lives. In 2013 I want to change that. I want people to not take the quote "live to the fullest" so lightly. Sure gadgets and new technology are fun and make daily activities more entertaining and easy. But.in 2012 we let these thing occupy our time rather then simply enhance them. We need to get off that Facebook and really experience life.  This is what I would also love to see in the new year.