Roger Ebert

For the past couple days, we've talked about an incredible man by the name of Roger Ebert. Roger Ebert was a film critic, journalist, and screen writer. His film critique and work was exceptional, but the work he did after his life altering illness was beyond that. For me, death has always been a very abstract concept.   I've never known anyone close to me who's died, or experienced anything near it either. I wondered about it, along with many other things small and big. When I was younger I'd question everything and anything and although it would annoy people, it was exciting for me. Roger Ebert not being able to eat or drink or talk, began a blog where he discussed everything from the universe to loneliness. He questioned things and discussed things, something that I'v stopped doing gradually over the years.

Life has turned into a routine for me. I stopped questioning things, and started accepting. I stopped discussing, and focused on numbers for grades and awards for college. I lost my desire to know more about the world than what people would tell me. Roger Ebert's story and work made me realize that. Roger Ebert valued things that I completely forgot had value.  "What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter." Why, when faced with a personal tragedy, do some people swim while others sink? I honestly think it's how people value what they have around them. The people who sink, forget the immense value that love, laughter, intelligence and just life have. They get strung up in what they lost, and forget how much is still left, and that what is left, doesn't last forever. The people who swim, people like Roger Ebert have realized the value in life. The things that can make someone truly happy and satisfied. Not a voice nor appetite but emotions. The ability to still wonder and feel, is something to enjoy. This is something that I will try to remember down the road. I'm going to remember the value and joy in life and wonder. 

Cultural Appropriation and Colorism

This marking period, my GT class focused on racism. But before I could discuss racism, and talk about races discriminating against each other, I really wanted to talk about the discrimination occurring within the same race. Something called colorism exists and is just as impactful and real as racism. In a way, its even more tragic than racism is. It's the prejudice or discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group. Colorism is definitely something I have experienced. When I was younger, I craved a fairer skin tone and lighter eyes. Why? I was surrounded by a family and neighborhood and culture where fairer skin was simply prettier. I grew up in a culture where it was completely normal for movies to have the heroine be a fair gorgeous girl while the comedian and villain was drastically darker. It was so normal for me that, I didn't realize the strangeness of fairness commercials until I showed my 10th grade class. I grew up with comments like "She's pretty for a darker girl" and "Eat more of this, it'll make you fairer". These comments seem odd to an American class, but how odd is it really? These comments can compare directly with America's obsession with tanness. Why is being pale an insult but being tan is compliment? My class discussed this, and we came to a few conclusions based on some history. For India's fairness obsession, we concluded that in the past, being fair was associated with being wealthy because of the British that had power. In America, we concluded that during the Industrial Revolution, the rich could go out and get the infamous tan while the poor had to work in factories resulting in paler skin since there was little exposure to sun. Although this seems to clear everything up, it still bothers me that skin color ideals still exist, and are a big part of society all over the world.

Cultural Appropriation is another major topic we discussed. It is the adoption of elements of one culture by members of a different cultural group. At first, I had trouble understanding why this could offend people. Seeing indian items and Hindu symbols in American stores and being purchased by people who have no knowledge of the true meaning of the things never bothered me. But it bothered other people. I didn't understand why people couldn't let people use cultural things without knowledge of what it was. I asked myself, "Why do they care, what they do with it? It doesn't affect them. They themselves know the meaning, why did they have to force others to know it too? Is cultural symbols something that can be stolen?" And that's when I realized why I didn't understand. I don't even know the meanings behind Hindu and indian symbols. Maybe that's why I'm okay with others using it. I use indian symbols and things as decorations and etc. without having a clue of it's meaning but it's completely okay. But if someone who was not indian, and did the same it's considered cultural approbriation.This is a topic, I'm still struggling to really understand. I am a little afraid to question it, because I know many people see why it is so wrong. I wish I could easily see the fault in it too, and I'll continue to learn about it until I do but until then, I'll be trying to answer these questions. 

Passion Project Update #2

In the past two weeks me and Neeha made lots of progress. Since we have the creative freedom to take this zine where ever we want it, we had many things to create. We've made three mini zines, one painting, and a drawing. Also a very exciting thing that I managed to do recently is contact another zine maker in Georgia. She is going to send me her zine, and very soon I will send her Onism, the zine Abhishek, Trinity and I made last year.

Passion Project Update

This semester, Neeha, Trinity, and I are working on a zine. We are planning to make this zine more cheerful and spontaneous than the last. So far I'v made 3 paintings and one collage with Neeha. Trinity is writing an article and we have decided the title of the zine.  I'm proud of how much work has been completed and excited to work on much more.

Jeremy Rifkin's Empathetic Civilization

In our GT class we discussed Jeremy Rifkin's thoughts on empathy. He argues that human empathy is beginning to extend to all of life in the biosphere. But I think that empathy is limited between different people.  Not everyone is capable to imagine the extremes of putting themselves in someone else's shoes. Depending on that someone, we can only feel a limited amount of empathy. For example, it will be easier for a student to feel the empathy of failing a test than it is for them to feel what a cancer patient may be feeling. Some feelings are easily reflected upon while others are not. It tends to be easier to empathize with people who are experiencing something we have may have already experienced. The possibility of global emphatic consciousness is idealistic. Although convincing, there was no proof that increased empathy could save global problems. The world's most pressing issues such as global warming, poverty, and disease have many more factors that are unaffected by human empathy.   I don't think we can extend our empathy to the entire human race well enough to make an impact.  Empathy allows us to feel what others feel to some limit. But is that enough to make a change? "The problem comes when we try to turn feeling into action. Empathy makes you more aware of other people’s suffering, but it’s not clear it actually motivates you to take moral action or prevents you from taking immoral action." (David Brooks)


Brooks, David. "The Limits of Empathy." The New York Times. The New York Times, 29 Sept. 2011. Web. 28 Sept. 2014.

"The Empathic Civilization | Jeremy Rifkin." About. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Sept. 2014.

Passion Project Update

So far I think our passion project is going well. We have a folder with a decent amount of work in it, including paintings, collages, and articles. We also have the cover made with a set title. The only obstacle I really faced in the first 2 weeks is, I didn't know much about zines. This made it difficult to think of exactly what to include in it or make for it. But after talking to Doug Wainwright about his zine and how he created his I felt a lot better. He told us that it didn't really matter what we put in the zine and to just write/create whatever came to mind. Since then I have discovered many different topics to write about and tons of things to include in the zine. A list of things that we still need to do includes distributing the zines to other zine makers (I'm just going to call them that) and actually assembling and printing the zine. We also have to create a few more pages for it. Some future obstacles include getting it printed and distributed.

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!