3D

I think I know how to write in 3D


This is amazing, I think the contrast of colors makes 3D or something like that. It only works with the blue. Hmmmm

Racism and Stereotypes 2 (Science)

This week I learned a lot about how others in class experienced discrimination and how race is an illusion. Many people gave their personal reports this week. I enjoyed hearing about everyone's history and how they had different experiences with discrimination. I was surprised with some of the discrimination some people still face today based on their skin color and he they look. One thing that stood out to me was when someone said that they were having trouble getting a credit card because they were black. This was surprising to me because I would have thought that discrimination against black people had been long gone. When I heard this, I thought, "Really! This still happens". Other than the really sad experiences that people shared, I found the personal reports to be fascinating.

After watching the movie "Race, The Power of an Illusion" I felt that race was indeed, an illusion. It is manmade, just like all the machines, computers and cars everyone uses. I learned in my high school biology class that everyone is genetically different. The probability that two people on Earth are 100% genetically the same is about 1 in a trillion. I do not remember if it was more or less than that, but I do remember that it was around or very close to a trillion. If people used biology as an excuse or evidence for race, then everyone would need to be placed in  their own unique race category. Another reason why race is an illusion is because it said that genetically, "Humans are the most similar". Humans think that they are different from each other only because they can distinguish between each other through looks, only what they can see. However, when it comes to things like pinto beans or fruit flies, humans think they all look the same. This is because things like fruit flies are too small for humans to closely observe with the eye. Things like pinto beans have huge amounts of variation in the different spot pattern, size and shape. Humans just do not take time to examine these things.

Humans also like to categorize things. This may be another reason why there is an idea of "race". People love to group things, to put everything into a little category so that things can be organized. This was probably how the idea of "race" developed. One person decided that he/she was bored and started to make up racial categories for people, then "poof" race was developed. People thought that since they were so different from each other, they had to organize different people into different categories, this became race. Once race was established, people started to dislike on another, or judge people based on their race. From that came the stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination. I think that the people who came up with "race" just wanted to hate on people.

It was very interesting to see that the Mitochondrial DNA from a white person could be exactly the same as Mitochondrial DNA from a person in Africa. Even though everyone is genetically different, the different could only be a single letter in the sequence of DNA. DNA is made up of a double helix of sugar and phosphate with the bases Guanine, Adenine, Cytosine, and Thymine. This is the G, A, C, and T of DNA. A sequence of DNA for skin color in one person could be GATTCGATGGCCCGTAT, while it could be GATTCGGTGGCCCGTAT in another person. The only thing different in the second sequence was that the seventh letter of the first sequence was replaced with a G. A simple change like that could have a significant impact of the look of a person. The first person's skin might be white, but a simple change in the sequence might turn the second person's skin brown. This is why some people from different parts of the world have very similar DNA sequences. This explains why everyone is different genetically, but also very closely related.

One thing about humans that is funny to me is how a lot of people make fun of people because of their skin color. If a white person was living near the Sahara Desert, he/she would die of skin cancer. Your skin would need to be very dark to block out the UV rays. Again, if a black person was living in Iceland he/she would either freeze to death, or die from the lack of vitamin D. People make up stereotypes and discriminate against people because they have adapted to the place they live. If they did not adapt they would be dead. People are trying to survive, what is so funny about that. This was probably how the stereotypes, black people do not like the cold and white people get sunburned easily came to be. They are probably true. 

Racism and Stereotypes 1

I haven't blogged for a long time. I wrote this for my Psychology of Minority Groups class. I thought , why not put it up on my blog.

In class this week I learned that there were many stereotypes that could be applied to people of different color. There were many more stereotypes that the class did not even think of. When we were making a list of stereotypes for people of different color, I realized that many of the stereotypes under one column could also be applied to another column. For example, under the column for black, it said “Have lots of flow and can dance very well”. I thought about it and realized that this could also be applied to the brown, yellow, and even the red column. There were many stereotypes like this, which made me question why this stereotype was only applied to the black column. I think most of these stereotypes were developed when one ethnic group saw that another ethnic group was doing something different or looked different. This may be because of ethnocentrism. Many people might have thought their ethnic group was at the center of all others. If many ethnic groups from different parts of the world thought their ethnic group was the best, it would result in prejudices, conflict, and ultimately, stereotypes.
          I also noticed that some of the stereotypes the class came up with were very specific and only applied to one column. I noticed that it said, "Own Casinos" under the red column. Some of the stereotypes that were very specific were probably true. Not all red people have Casinos, but a small group of them do. I don't know a lot about other countries and if they have casinos or not, but I know that in the U.S. Native Americans are the only people allowed to have casinos. Another reason why some stereotypes were specific might be because they applied to a large percentage of the population. For example, "White people can't dance" was under the white column. There are many white people that can dance very well, but a large percentage of white people probably cannot dance. This might have caused people to make assumptions and judge people based on their color. After a period of time, this stereotype developed and people started to use it directly toward white people. This stereotype did not appear in any other of the columns not because all black, brown, yellow, and red people can dance, but because a large percentage of those people could dance, and a low percentage of them could not. I am Chinese, and I cannot dance, but there are not any stereotypes targeted against me because there are many more yellow people that can dance. This shows that many stereotypes are specific to one ethnic group because they are, in part, true.
            Some of the stereotypes the class came up with didn't make much sense to me. One of them was, “Black people like Kool-Aid and watermelon.” This one stood out to me because it seemed like it applied mostly to black people in America. There are a lot more black people in Africa, than there are in America. The people in Africa probably don't even know what Kool-Aid is. Africa is the second most populous nation in the world with almost a billion people living there. Many of those people have never tasted watermelon. I think this stereotype of black people liking Kool-Aid and watermelon is not very accurate. This is similar to a scientist looking at how tall ten people are to get an average. This would be a very small sample size to look at. This is what people are doing when they start making up stereotypes. They only look at what is in front of them, they do not dig deeper and find out more about something that is foreign to them. Another stereotype that did not make much sense to me was, “Asian people can’t drive”. This did not make much sense to me because, Asia is the biggest continent on Earth and to say that Asian people can’t drive seems a bit strange. In addition, most of the cars in the U.S. were developed in Asian countries like Japan and Korea. So basically, millions of people in the U.S. are driving cars made by people who cannot drive. It sounds like a contradiction to me and does not make sense. Although there were many stereotypes that might have had some truth in them, there were also many that did not many any sense at all.

So far, I think this class is great. I love the different conversations we have, and how it can be funny and

interesting and still relate to the subject of the class. This class is by far, the best college class (out of three) that I’ve taken so far.

Reflective Final

Throughout this year of blogging I have learned a lot about myself as a writer and the ways I write. There were many ways that my blogging skills have improved this year. I have learned how to use CD's and CM's in my blog posts. I learned how to use block quotes, and I learned many new ways to write. When I first started blogging, I wrote about many random non significant topics. After some time of doing that, I began writing about emotions, after that, some scattered academic assignments. I think that my writing has gone from, boring and short, to more detailed complex posts. This is exemplified when I wrote

“Q’s defining characteristic is that he constantly wants other people to try new things, but he wont try new things himself. He also goes back and forth between prideful arrogance and shameful embarrassment.

   “We had made various attempts to get him up on land with us”

Q is always trying trying to make his uncle come up on land with him, but when his

uncle tries to convince q to go back to the water, he doesn’t want to.

This was one of the first academic blog assignments where I wrote about Qfwfg. In this post I didn’t introduce quote, and I didn’t have an introduction. This was near the beginning of the year when I just started blogging. The quote in this post was less than four lines, but since we were learning how to block quote, I tried to block quote it. Another mistake I made was not citing the quote. This entire academic post was only about 500 words. In a recent academic blog post, I wrote a book review about My Side of the Mountain. In this post all these errors I made were fixed, this is shown when I wrote,

“Bando is a very friendly person who thinks his life is boring when he meets  Sam. Sam has been  living in the woods for quite a long time and has made himself a house, and many other necessities he needs to survive. Bando was from the city, and when he saw the way Sam was living, he thought he had a boring life. This is exemplified when Bando says, "Thoreau, I have led a varied life- dishwasher, sax player, teacher. To me it has been and interesting life. Just now it seems very dull." (George, p81).”

In this post there was an introduction that included TAGS, a properly formatted quote, and an introduced and cited quote. In this post I improved on all my past errors and corrected them.  This blog post was 1050 words. Compared to the one I wrote about Qfwfg in the beginning of the year, it was 550 words more. All of this is evidence that my blog posts went from short and boring to more detailed and complex posts.

In the beginning of the year it took me a long time just to get over the word limit. An example of this would a post I wrote about Facebook. In this post I had lots of trouble getting to the 350 word limit so I totally strayed off the topic. I ended my blog post with,” This is not even 350 words. I'm so close and I'm almost there. Ohh yea Mr.Sousa lost his keys today. It sucks cause we might not be able to use the field on Monday. Yay 362 words.” There were many other posts like this. As the year went by my blog post started to get better. I didn’t stray off topic and got over the 350 word limit. Some of those posts include “Internet and Wireless in the World”, and “Response to Tram”. In these posts I made very few mistakes and never strayed off topic. Awhile after that, my writing started to improve drastically, I started to blog without even worrying about the word limit. I started writing in more detail and my posts were about 400-600 words. Some of those posts include, “Windows of Truth”, and “The Risks of DNA Manipulation”. I also ended these posts without straying off topic. This is exemplified when I wrote, “Altering genes should not be legal. People should just let Darwin's theory of natural selection take place. People wouldn't be the only species population the earth, religious people wouldn't be mad, and there would still be natural resources left.” This was a post about the risks of DNA manipulation. I didn’t stray off topic at all throughout the post and the total number of words was 411 words. This is a big improvement from barely getting over 350 words and straying of topic in the end. This happened through looking at my old posts and analyzing the weak points. After receiving some peer review comments in class about how my writings could be improved, I looked over some posts I wrote in the past and saw that I made some of the same/similar mistakes. After I recognized these mistakes I immediately knew why I made that mistake and how I could fix it. I rarely made the same mistake after. Analyzing my old posts for similar mistakes has really helped me improve my writing/blogging skills.

The response from my peers also helped me improve my writing. Peer editing comments really helped put more detail in my work and also helped me realize some of the errors I made. For example, when I wrote a paragraph about My Side of the Mountain, Bianca noticed that, “

In your third paragraph, you mentioned the book's pictures and diagrams. You

could probably expand the paragraph more if you described more about these

diagrams so that the person who is reading your post will know what diagrams

and pictures you are actually referring to. I would like to hear more about the

author's "adventure" when she ran away. (I know you already explained it and

used the book to provide proof, so to elaborate more on the author, you could

do some research.)Also, you could include who in particular(for example a   

certain age group) the book was intended and directed to.

This really helped me improve that paragraph so that when it was time to write the final, I knew which places of my paragraph were weakest. Peer review comments are really helpful because I can get a little insight on how other people would write my posts. This helped me elaborate on certain places in this post and also helped me understand the mistakes I made. When I understand the mistakes I make, I try to find out how I made those mistakes to that in the future, I won’t make the same mistakes again. This has really helped me improve my blog posts and also my overall writing in general.
    There are many benefits of blogging. Throughout this year, I feel that I have really improved my writing, going from boring blog posts to complex, detailed posts. I also improved by getting over the word minimum of 350 words without straying off topic. This improvement was in part, due to the helpful comments students in class gave me on my blog. Blogging has really helped me improve as a writer, and I will continue to do so to improve as a writer, and a student.


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Peer Review Comments

I left comments on Bianca's post, Bassam's post, and Melissa's post.


Bianca-Hola, Bianca, I think your RD was very strong, but I also think that you should try to give some facts about smallpox. When you "The whole book is based off of smallpox, so when the author used real facts, it made it more genuine and realistic, which is a great thing to have included in a book." What were some of the real facts that the author included? Another thing you can do is describe the background of the author in the introduction. This make it clear that the author knows her facts. <---It will make it more believable. Overall great job!

Bassam- Bassam, I think you need to elaborate a lot more on your points. For Example, when you say "book is breath tacking", elaborate on HOW it is breathtaking, do it provide very detailed imagery? Or do the words make you feel awesome. You also need to provide TAGS in the introduction, tell the reader some background about the book. You also need to make the post longer, at least 800 words I think.

Melissa-Hola Melissa, Tony thinks Melissa should include TAGS in her introduction, so that readers can get a basic understanding of what the book was about. Tony also thinks that you could relate some of what Ronnie does in the book to what some teenagers do everyday. Other than that, this was a pretty good book review.

Book Review: My Side of the Mountain

1. What was the author's purpose(s) in writing this book, and how can you tell? How well was this purpose achieved?
2. Pick a character that interested you and write about them in depth. You can also analyze a relationship between two different characters.                              

        My Side of the Mountain was a fictional book written by Jean Craighead George. It is about a boy named Sam who goes to live in the forests of the Catskill Mountains because its is too crowded at home. In the woods he, looks for his grandpa's old farm. Sam survives by making his own house, foraging berries, and hunting animals. Along the way he makes many animal friends and human friends. Sam experiences many problems when during his first few days trying to survive. He can't make a fire, and has trouble finding a place to live. Over time he makes a home from a giant old tree and learns how to easily makes a fire. 
       There are many reasons why Jean Craighead George wrote My Side of The Mountain. Two of those reasons include telling about her own life, and educating her audience about wildlife and nature. George talks a lot about her own life when she was young and tried to run away. She also gives instruction on how to make survival tools like a hook and traps.
      In the preface George talked about her life when she was younger and the things she did. I think George wrote this book because she planned to run away only to be back at her house some time later. This is exemplified when she writes, " As I envisioned it, I would live by a waterfall in the woods and catch fish on hooks made from forks of tree limbs" (George, ix). George had already planned to run away, but later it said, "Forty minutes later I was home" (George, ix). I think the adventures of Sam were all the events George imagined when she was planning on running away. George ran away at a very young age, and since she was so young, couldn't handle being alone and caring for herself. After she ran away she probably wrote down everything she was going to do and put them all together to create this book. Over time George probably went did go on some of the adventures Sam went on, thus expanding on what it was really like and giving a sense of realism to the readers.
      Another reason why she might have wrote this book was to educate people of all ages about wildlife and the nature. The things that Sam do in this book are explained in depth with lots of detail. It even incorporates detailed pictures/diagrams. Some of them were about how to make a fishing hook out of tree branches, and how to make dead fall traps to catch animals. It seems that George either went out and did these things herself when she was older, did research, or learned from an expert.. The diagrams in this book are explained in so much detail, that it could be used as an alternative survival guide. George talked about making hooks from tree limbs in the preface, and later Sam explained how to make it. This could be very useful to someone who is lost camping needing a tool to get food. George probably wanted people to know more about survival and how people interact with nature. Overall George's purpose in writing this book was achieved very well.
      One of the most interesting characters in My Side of The Mountain, was Bando. Bando was a stranger found sleeping next to Sam's tree and his store house. He was an English Teacher that happened to get lost in the woods of the Catskills and found Sam's camp. He calls Sam Thoreau.
      Bando is a very friendly person who thinks his life is boring when he meets Sam. Sam has been  living in the woods for quite a long time and has made himself a house, and many other necessities he needs to survive. Bando was from the city, and when he saw the way Sam was living, he thought he had a boring life. This is exemplified when Bando says, "Thoreau, I have led a varied life- dishwasher, sax player, teacher. To me it has been and interesting life. Just now it seems very dull." (George, p81) Bando seems to really love the woods. He makes friends with a stranger and even lives with him whenever he has free time. Bando probably thought that since Sam's way was living was very adventurous with many unpredictable factors, it made his life very dull and boring. Since Bando was an English teacher, his time there was limited and could only visit when he has break. I think that Bando didn't live with his family. He was living with Sam whenever he had free time. Wouldn't he spend at least some time with his family? He was with Sam even during Christmas. It mentioned somewhere in the book that Bando was rather old, so I assume that his family no longer lives with him, and that his wife had died some time earlier.
      Bando was also a very knowledgeable and trustworthy man. All the times he's visited, not once did he tell the news or another person. Bando was like a second dad to Sam. He helped him make jam, played instruments with him, and even brought some newspaper clipping to share and laugh about. An example of this would be when Bando read the newpaper clippings, it read, " Wild boy Suspected Living off Deer and Nuts in Wilderness of Catskills and Old Woman Reports Meeting Wild Boy While Picking Strawberries." (George, p121-122). I think Bando brought the newspapers to show Sam that he needs to be careful of who he talks to. Another reason might be to have a laugh at the people Sam has met. Bando was great company to Sam, and I think part of the reason Sam stayed so long in the woods was because of the thought that Bando was going to come.
      Bando's unique dedication to Sam's life and personality make him one of the most interesting characters in My Side of The Mountain. Bando adds spice to the story, making it more realistic. His talents and personality remind me certain people in my own life, making the character of Bando the best and most interesting character in My Side of The Mountain.

Character Analysis

      One of the most interesting characters in My Side of The Mountain, was Bando. Bando was a stranger found sleeping next to Sam's tree and his store house. He was an English Teacher that happened to get lost in the woods of the Catskills and found Sam's camp. He calls Sam Thoreau.
      Bando is a very friendly person who thinks his life is boring when he meets Sam. Sam has been  living in the woods for quite a long time and has made himself a house, and many other necessities he needs to survive. Bando was from the city, and when he saw the way Sam was living, he thought he had a boring life. This is exemplified when Bando says, "Thoreau, I have led a varied life- dishwasher, sax player, teacher. To me it has been and interesting life. Just now it seems very dull." (George, p81) Bando seems to really love the woods. He makes friends with a stranger and even lives with him for awhile. Bando probably thought that since Sam's way was living was very adventurous with many unpredictable factors, it made his life very dull and boring. Since Bando was an English teacher, his time there was limited and could only visit when he has break. I think that Bando didn't have a family
      Bando was also a very knowledgeable and trustworthy guy. All the times he's visited, no once did he tell the news or another person. Bando was like a second dad to Sam. He helped him make jam, played instruments with him, and even brought some newspaper clipping to share and laugh about. An example of this would be when Bando read the newpaper clippings, it read, " Wild boy Suspected Living off Deer and Nuts in Wilderness of Catskills and Old Woman Reports Meeting Wild Boy While Picking Strawberries." (George, p121-122). I think Bando brought the newspapers to show Sam that he needs to be careful of who he talks to. Another reason might be to have a laugh at the people Sam has met. Bando was great company to Sam, and I think part of the reason Sam stayed so long in the woods was because Bando was there.
      Bando's unique dedication to Sam's life and personality make him one of the most interesting characters in My Side of The Mountain. Bando adds a spice to the story, making it more realistic. His talents and personality remind me certain people in my own life, making the character of Bando one of the best.