Nature Assignment Reflection

So here's something I typed up for this blog and never posted. I found it in my files today--dunno why I never posted the thing:
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September 8, 2011

            I was very much looking forward to this assignment, because I enjoy taking some time off to go explore whatever trails are around me, but had not really had the time to do so in quite a while. I had to push it off until Wednesday due to a rather nasty head cold, and at first I was upset that the heavy rain had come, but it actually slowed down and even stopped while I was there, so that’s good. I wish I owned a pair of rain boots though.

            Yes, I definitely agree that spending time alone in nature alone can help one experience happiness. I always like to have some alone time, away from everything, but I have not done it to this extreme in almost a year. It was very, very refreshing. The constant sound of water as it dripped from branch to branch (the aftermath of the heavy rain), the musty smell of the muddy grass (there were no actual trails where I went; pathways, yes, but they were only grass paths), and the squishing sound my shoes made as I walked through the woods were all pretty relaxing, particularly the water.

            I didn’t hear many animalistic sounds, which honestly let me down a bit, but I did hear lots of insects. I thought I even heard cicadas, but I don’t know if they come out at this time of the year still. That thick, buzzing sound they make. I passed a few crossroads but decided to take the straightest path, in an effort to make it easier to get back. Eventually the pathways became much thinner, and the grass got taller. Despite the cool air, I felt sweat trickling down my back—I had been walking for a decent amount of time.

            I remember finding a log to sit on, and even though it was wet I took the time to rest. I heard the lake nearby and, coupling the various dripping sounds with drops and splashes from the lake, that was easily the highlight of the experience. These are sounds that you can very easily miss going through here while listening to music, or even when talking to someone else. They are the kind of sounds that are so rare in this time period that hearing them always inspires me. It reminds me that even outside of our cities and roads, life is constantly flowing. There are billions of untold stories in the woods. Any of those sounds could be connected to a story of some kind.

            This is why happiness can be found in solitude in the wilderness: because you get to pick up on the stories. You are alone with just your thoughts, and even if you’re going through a hard time in your life I think hearing the sounds of the woods can help soothe your mind. To put it in terms one might understand better, it makes me think of rebooting a computer. It flushes out the excess thoughts and just leaves you with the bare minimums. It takes away all of the worries, though they may remain in the back of your mind until you start to leave, and then it’s back to the grind. I think I may try to do this more often; after all, a computer should be rebooted at least once a week to keep it from getting clustered. As I made my way back to the car, the worries began coming back to me—homework due, did anyone play me in Words with Friends, oh man is it gonna start raining again? Really? Really?—and I realized that they didn’t bother me as much anymore. I took a break away from everything, and it was much needed.  

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This was originally going to be what I handed in for the assignment, but I came up with a better idea and scrapped this one to use for a blog. I noticed it today, and was like, "Oh hey, add one more to the blog count, sweet." 

I may try to squeeze one more in before class--just for good measure. In the meantime... peace out, readers and classmates. It's been a blast. :)

Next Time: Something not copied and pasted!

Rhetoric in Wall E

So we've been watching Wall E in class, a movie by Pixar that was released several years ago. A lot of people really like it--I am among them, though I feel like Up and Toy Story beat it. In any case, the message of the film is pretty obvious even from the get go: we are literally destroying the earth to the extent that if we don't leave it, we won't be able to survive. It's message also revolves around technology making everyone fat and lazy, and that technology we glue ourselves to often blinds us from the world (like how John is amazed with Wall E's appearance and even the fact that the ship has a pool).

Firstly, even from a simple narrative standpoint, this movie hits the nail on the head. We get our protagonist, who is just as lost and confused (but eager to learn) as we are, Wall E. He goes through some trials, grows, and enters in a conflict. The beauty of this movie is that the conflict seems so simple: Wall E doesn't want to be alone, and thus wants to make EVA his friend. Or his girlfriend, even. I dunno, robots. Anyway, the simple conflict is put front and center for us, but then there's this other, major conflict that overlaps the entire thing: people returning to earth. In a sense, you have two completely different stories going at the same time that are connected only in that Wall E and EVA interact with both of them in some meaningful way. The best part? The conflict that should apply to us more--saving the earth, etc.--is put in the backseat, and yet that seems to make it even more effective.

So how does Wall E drive it's message across? Simple: by showing you what could be. It's very obvious from the film that we are in the future and that this isn't some fantasy world: this IS Earth, and this COULD and WILL happen. While children may miss that point, the adults in the audience--the parents, that is--will catch it. Even so, children leave that movie remembering what it was about: a dystopian future that was saved by a tiny robot and his flying friend. A future that was saved by preserving plant life. Subconsciously, they make that connection. Or at least they should.

Of course, if the movie was just all "MESSAGE" and no substance, it would still fall flat. This is another reason why the relationship between Wall E and EVA take center stage: it gives us an emotional connection, and thus we want Wall E to "win" as it were. He's just like us, and he's all alone in this huge, desolate world; if you don't want that to happen to someone on earth--or to earth in general--then you better start cleaning up your act now.

Pixar has always been pretty brilliant (except with Cars, which in my opinion is mediocre at best), both with the messages they instill and with the level of entertainment and emotion they can invoke on their audience, all without dialogue. Sure, there's dialogue in the movies, but they never tell you what's really going on. You infer it yourself through cleverly concealed clues.

Next Time: Well, I'm sure I'll think of something.

Cell Phone Experiments

Cell phones are a part of every day life. They are imbedded in American culture, and I doubt they'll be going away any time soon. That's why, for my project, I researched proper cell phone disposal. If you just throw your cell phone away in the garbage, it could end up in a landfill where it could do some damage.

There are a lot of chemicals in your phone, some of them are hazardous, some are not. Before you start to debate how much you use your cell phone, don't worry; none of those hazardous materials will get to you unless you leave the phone sit in the sun for something like 5 entire months straight. It's not designed to leak out, but as the materials covering the phone break away, they will. This can take years, but it does happen, and materials such as cadmium--the main component of your phone's battery--leak into soil and water, which can cause health problems for those living nearby.

The three experiments I ran were simple. I went to various stores and: A. Asked if they recycled cell phones, B. Discovered if they brought it up when buying a new cell phone, and C. Asked random people on the street what they did with their previous phone. The results I got were pretty straight forward. For A, most places do, except for Wal-Mart of all things (even though it is listed as accepting old phones!). For B, the only place that bothered was Radio Shack, and I think that's because the employee just thought to do it--he was not trained to. For C, almost half the people I talked to simply threw old phones in the garbage. Yikes.

I won't get into the boring statistics (they are there, but I'll probably be going over them during the presentation anyway), but for the most part, only 1% of cell phones get recycled. The rest are either kept or thrown away. That is a lot of phones, and a lot of hazardous material.

So, next time you go to buy a cell phone, remember to donate your old one, or hell, even give it to an old friend. It's as simple as walking into the store and giving it back. Will you be compensated for it? Err...well, no. Not unless it's worth something (i.e., a recent smart phone). But you won't be damaging the earth, and plus the materials within the phone can be reused to make new ones instead of being wasted. Pretty good, right?

Next Time: Something about Wall-E. That adorable little scamp.

Trip to Hawk Mountain

So sometime in the middle of November a few buddies and I decided to go hiking up at Hawk Mountain. I figured it would be cool to write a blog about it (even two weeks after the fact jeez I am terrible at keeping up with this thing) since we talked about it a little in class and because it's something involving nature that I've never experienced before. It was a fun disaster that I won't soon forget and would eventually like to do again.

And yes, it was a disaster. I mean, nobody got hurt or anything--one of us fell but no real damage came as a result, thankfully--but .. oh man, where do I even begin? Coupling the fact that the girlfriend and I have never been hiking before with the fact that we brazenly chose to go the "Medium" difficulty route only to end it with one of the maximum difficulty paths, it's honestly a miracle we survived. That was not an exaggeration for humor purposes, mind you; I genuinely thought I was going to die at some point. But regardless, it was a fun experience.

The downhill part, you see, was easy. There were lots of rocks, sure, but they mostly acted as stepping stones to easily get down the hill. Oddly enough, there was very little wildlife, despite how nice it was (it felt more like an early October day), which disappointed me a little. Still, it just felt very real, you know? Surrounded by nothing but trees. Hell, trees as far as I could see, the only thing blocking the view of them was rocks. There were a few cabins and such here and there, but we were utterly alone. It seemed that everyone we encountered--about two other parties--were going the other direction. That didn't bode well, but hey, we were on an adventure.

I should probably clear something up: our party consisted of six people. Three couples, if you want to be a little more specific. The plan, see, was to go down to the old riverbed, eat lunch, then climb back up. I can't get over how quiet it was. It was really peaceful, climbing down. We got to the bottom and ate before the long trek back up. I felt pretty confident that everything was going swimmingly; I felt as though I still had most of my stamina, as did most of the others.

The way up was a nightmare. Not only was the path much rockier, but it was also much steeper than the way down, to the point where we had to physically climb rocks. I felt really nervous, but you know what? We pressed on. We kept going, and even though my legs started to feel like someone laid them out on concrete and played hopscotch on them for thirty-five straight days, I felt perfectly fine. I felt invigorated, even. I couldn't remember the last time I exerted my body in any way (I don't exercise very often), and it felt good to really push my muscles. So, whatever, I said. I laugh in the face of your challenge, world. You think a mountain named after a predatory bird can stop me?

Well, it almost did. See, we got to a crossroad. Now, the rest of the path was pretty long, and a few of us were drained to the extent that their lungs and other necessary-if-you-would-like-to-keep-living organs were starting to feel strained, so one of us noticed that one path exists as a sort of shortcut to get back to the main trail and get the hell out of dodge. Cool, we thought. The person either neglected to tell us that this was a maximum difficulty path or didn't know it was labelled as such on the map. So, completely oblivious to the daunting task ahead, we marched on.

Then we got to the first hill. I want to iterate that as much as possible: We were already climbing a mountain and we got to a hill. The path up to the shortcut trail was steep as hell, to the extent that even the rocky stepping stones were a trial in and of themselves to climb. Yeesh. But again, we persevered. After all, we just climbed quite a bit of altitude! We had to be back to the top by then, so the worst was probably over, right?

Now I don't really like to write a story unless it has at least a hint of irony in it, so here comes the best part. This path actually involves climbing over a large set of rocks. As in, it's beyond the main trail. As in, we had to climb back down to get back on the main trail. And I don't even think the trail was a trail anymore. We made a beeline for the main trail and I think ended up off course. We had to climb down a really steep rocky hill. The kind that would probably kill you if you slipped and fell.

Have I mentioned up to this point that I am afraid of heights? I don't mean the level of, "Oh man, we're pretty high up--that's pretty scary, you guys." I mean to the level of absolute, petrified fear when I am any higher than four feet off of stable ground. The next--and final--10 minutes of our journey were not pleasant for me. I had just thrown my walking stick away, too (it damaged during the uphill climb so I discarded it), so I had nothing to support myself with.

But I made it. We made it. And even though we were all irrevocably angry with the member of our group who suggested we take "THE SHORTCUT," we look back on the hike with enjoyable delight. Even the girlfriend, who I thought for sure would keel over from sheer exhaustion, forgave said member and admitted we had a good time and that she would like to go again if we picked a shorter path.

So what made it worth it in the end? The climb back up? Well, sometimes even I am at a loss for words, so instead, I'll put a thousand of them in a single image for you and leave it at that:

Next Time: I'm actually not sure. Maybe something about cats. I hear that's a surefire way to get more hits on your site.

ADDENDUM: 
For the record, this is where we started. See that little ridge in the center? We went around that.

The bold-dotted-line trail (river of rocks) is the main trail we took, all the way around the second rock-set-thing. I'm not sure if it was the "EXPRESS" or "ESCARPMENT" trail we took on the way out. "South Lookout Point" is where we started. Also, I know that it's a term also used for the larger birds of prey, but it makes me giggle every time I see the "Raptor Viewing Sites" caption.

PETA Jumps the Goomba

I don't think I need to tell you who PETA is. They're this group, you might've heard of them? People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals? Ring any bells? PETA is pretty notorious for taking any means necessary to get their point across. Sometimes, their points are heard and people respect them. Other times, they do something silly that makes me wonder if they still take their jobs seriously.

I don't think I need to tell you who Mario is. He's this video game character, you might've heard of him? Dresses like a plumber, saves the princess? Ring any bells?  Recently, Nintendo released the plumber's latest adventure for the Nintendo 3DS in a new game called "Super Mario 3D Land." Among many new things brought to the table, Nintendo dusted off it's old shelves and brought back some old power ups from the NES days. One of these power ups is the Tanooki Suit, a costume Mario wears that looks kind of like a raccoon that grants him the ability to fly. Using the tail. It's... look, if you've never played a Mario game before (all 2 of you), it's pretty hard to explain. Just bear with me.

For what it's worth, he's done sillier things.

The Tanooki Suit has been an iconic power up since it's introduction in Super Mario Brothers 3. I mean, sure, Mario could shoot fireballs before, but now he can fly!? That's amazing! You can soar through levels, or ever better, soar over levels to skip them entirely. Because you are a cheater.

So why do I bring this up? Well, following up on SML3D's release, PETA released a somewhat bizarre statement bashing the game for encouraging children to wear fur. It also came with an interactive game where you played as a skinned tanuki (which, I'll at least admit, I had no idea was even a real animal until this surfaced) and brutally murder Mario to get your fur back. Um... okay. Look, I understand the message they're trying to get across, but can I be frank here? I've played Mario since I was 3-years-old. No lie. The second I could hold a controller, I was on it like a hawk. I really don't understand where PETA is coming from when they tell me that Mario has, apparently, been subliminally telling me it's okay to murder animals and wear their fur. Seriously.

At least Super Tofu Boy was a little more obviously tongue-in-cheek (as a fun sidenote, the developers of Super Meat Boy actually added Tofu Boy as a playable character in their game in response--but they made him useless by making his jump and speed ridiculously low), and it attacked a character from a game that surrounds itself with funny, over-the-top violence. This Tanooki game just... baffles me. If they're trying to be tongue-in-cheek again, I think they missed their target. Missed it and probably shot in the wrong direction. I know a lot of gamers who are not only baffled but even outraged to see an iconic figure of their childhood covered in blood and hunted down by an animal he apparently skinned alive. If they were going to attack Mario, they could've at least talked about the fact that he stomps on turtles shells. And then throws them at things. And sometimes rides them, while the turtle is still in the damn shell.

I will give credit where credit is due, though: I now know what the hell a tanuki is. Again, I just don't think this was the proper way to... raise awareness for such a thing. It's like telling a kid that Barney worships Satan and eats the souls of children, you know what I mean?

Next time: Hawk Mountain stuff, including pictures! Was going to write it today but this came up.

New Population Milestone Reached: 7 Billion People

First of all, wow--7 billion people. I knew we were approaching that number but I had no idea we had reached it already. To make a somewhat off-the-wall reference, if this planet suddenly exploded and all of its inhabitants died, the Jedi would really feel that one. Seriously, 7 billion people is pretty crazy. But enough nerdy rambling.

It amazes me to think that it's even possible for us to sustain that many people on our planet. But, we are beings of survival and determination--if there's any way to do it, I'm sure we'll figure it out. Hell, Jason Clay has already presented a pretty reasonable first step in his video on how big brands could save biodiversity. Instead of trying to tell everyone on the planet how to consume, or every producer how to produce, why not simply concentrate on the middle man?

Companies are the ones who push the products to us, the consumers. They are the one thing that links the two entities together. By having the companies themselves change, it could really make a big impact on how we consume the world's resources. Of course, as I believe is even said in the video, this is not enough. It's a huge first step, but it's not going to make everything peachy and clean--at least some input on our end is still needed.

Thankfully, as showcased in the Tribal Natural Resources video, some people are already doing their part. There are people who are actively working to help the environment and teach kids a few things on nature that I believe all of us should discover in some way. I'm a huge technology geek, as some of you may have noticed, but I still like to take at least a little time off to enjoy the little things. The digital world is a magnificent place, but even with all of the advances in technology, it doesn't hold a candle to the real world.

Which is why I think we should work to protect it. In the above video, it shows how technology can be used for more than just checking your Facebook on the go or playing Scrabble with someone from across the planet. Indians are using technology to help determine safe soils and effective growing treatments very quickly. This may even help save a species of plant from dying off entirely.


I urge anyone reading this to give those videos a watch. At the very least, you should be able to make it through Clay's video--it's more of an entertaining speech than an educational video--and you could learn a lot. After all, we are beings of information as much as we are beings of survival. We strive to learn and discover. It's in our nature. So put that nature to work and learn a little bit about saving the environment, yeah? Then you can tell your friends how cool you are because you saw something they didn't, urging them to watch it, too.

If nothing else, do it for the Jedi. They have more than enough to worry about without dealing with an entire planet running out of resources.

Next time: less Star Wars jokes, I promise.

Introduction and First Thoughts

Firstly, I'll apologize for getting this started so late. I initially wrote this a little bit after the first two classes. Here ya go:

I first signed up for this class completely on a whim. I decided I want to push all of my classes to Tuesday and Thursday (I had only one class on MWF, you see) and thought this class sounded like the most interesting replacement to Post-Apocalyptic Fiction. I heard I dodged a bullet by not enrolling in that class anyway, so there's that, for sure.

I'm really enjoying this class thus far. It looks like it'll focus mostly on discussion, which always helps me better understand the material. I like that everyone in the class seems to share my thoughts on being anti-littering--which I'm supposed to be discussing here, so I guess I'll just share my initial thoughts on that.

The problem I have with littering isn't so much that it's ugly, but the fact that it's just flat out lazy. Plain and simple: if you have ever thrown a used drink cup, or anything outside of your car window while driving, then congratulations! You are lazy. So lazy that you couldn't even be bothered to wait until you got to your destination to throw your trash where it belongs. I really don't understand the mindset people like this can have without just shrugging my shoulders and saying, "Meh, it's laziness."

I'll get into this topic more when I gather some more information on it. For now, I guess I'll just shamelessly plug my other blog on here: WTF Subconscious, a blog about the weird, messed up dreams I, and others, have. I didn't use it as my blog for the class because I feel like it'd be hard to compare dreams to environmental problems. WTF Subconscious has barely gotten off it's feet (in retrospect, starting it right before the semester was probably definitely a terrible idea) but if you're into that kinda thing go ahead and check it out. Maybe even leave a comment or two. Or even a comment here! All the cool kids are doing it. Just ask them.

Peace out.