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!

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.