Literature Circle Response #2

Since our last meet, we've began the book "Notes from the Underground". So far we have gotten to page 36 of this puzzling book. The main character, "the underground man", is a very intelligent, masochistic, self-loathing man. This book is different from any other book that I have read. It's not traditional at all, but instead shows the very interesting and different views of the main character. This book is truly a physcological trip into the mind of a free-thinking and puzzling man. I love the style of the book because it's unlike anything I've ever read. It's more theoretical, and spontaneous, than usual but the biggest difference is how its strictly thoughts of the character, the brain of the character. When I'm reading this book I feel more like I'm looking into the mind of "the underground man", and the character is extremely well developed and complicated; completely believable as a real person (even in our modern society). His attitude is very interesting, he believes strongly in freewill and loves to exercise it, to do the unpredicted. He also likes to feel pain for that reason, I think it's because he truley enjoys to be human and he feels almost trapped by his intellegence. He is an existentialist which means he believes that it is up to him to make his own decisions, regardless of reason. Overall, this is a very interesting book and I look forward to continue reading it.

Literature Circle Resonse #1

Since our book, "Heart of Darkness" was so short, by our second meeting we had completely finished it. Although it was very short it covered a lot of ground. I think the overall theme of it was greed and the potential for madness to overcome us all. The cause of greed in the story, ivory, could be implemented in modern society by money, oil or really any other thing that has value. The scary thing about this concept is that we all have the potential to go made, be overtaken by greed. There is nothing to predict in the story because, like I said, I completed the book. Some other themes that were present were imperialism and mistreatment of natives. The main story of "Heart of Darkness" was about the journey of Charles Marlow to the Congo as a captain of a steam boat. He experiences life in the Congo for several months when his boat breaks down and he has to wait for parts of it so it can be fixed. During his stay he learns of a man named Mr. Kurtz who intrigues him greatly. Mr. Kurtz is a manager and ivory trader at the Inner Station. After his steam boat is fixed, he travels to the inner station and on his way he is attacked by natives. Once he gets there, he learns that Mr. Kurtz has gone mad and taken the position as a native chief. He was overtaken by his greed for ivory. Mr. Kurtz gets sick and dies and mutters his last words "The horror, the horror." There were two parts that I had amazing visualizations for due to the authors amazing use of descriptive language (although it was often a bit overdone). The parts were: Marlow's first encounter with the natives and when Marlow saw the heads on posts. This book was very confusing for me and didn't make sense a lot of the time, but I got the overall idea and theme of it.

Water Turbidity #11

Today, we finished up the last presentation. Overall, this experience has been several things. Extremely boring, is the first that comes to mind. Watching hour after hour of presentation while having to take notes at the speed of light wasn't the funnest thing. But, on the bright side, I learned a lot about different aspects of water and really got an appreciation of it. I also learned a lot of useful things that will help me when doing tests on water and such, and I know how different things effect water. Anyways, I'm glad that I learned all of these things, but also a little disappointed of them method, but maybe, it was necessary.

Water Turbidity #10

Today, we also had presentations. It was pretty brutal watching all the presentations and being enslaved to taking notes. One that I thought was pretty cool was Water Hardness by Emlyn, Alec, and Marissa. I went into the presentation knowing nothing about water hardness (I thought it was like ice, lol) and came out knowing a whole lot. I found that general hardness (GH) is the number of divalent cations (minerals that have lost 2 electrons) dissolved in the water. And the water usually contains calcium or magnesium if it is hard.

Water Turbidity #9

Well i guess this isn't really about water turbidity, but it has to do with the project. Today we watched presentations. These presentations were really interesting, one that I thought was really good was pH, by Danielle, Kerstin and Coco. This presentation taught me a lot about something that I knew absolutely nothing about. I learned that pH literally stands for potential of hydrogen. It basically means the acidity of water. pH varies in levels between 0 and 14. 0-6.9 is acid. 7 is neutral and 7.1-14 is alkaline.

Water Turbidity #8

After being very sick this week, I decided to go to school even though I was still a bit sick. I did this because I didnt want to get too behind is school (or as Anne put it so brilliantly, my momma made me booted me out of the house). Oh lol. LOL! Anyways, we had to present today. I had a cornucopia of material to cover with only bullet points to refference. LUCKILY, I had learned enough in my research to ensure that my preparation and overall success. I think my group did pretty good and I'm proud of us (well mainly them, because I was sick, but me too for doing a good job when it counted most) and my main regret is that I was sick and could not of contributed more to my group. However, I feel that this should be taken into consideration before giving me a bad grade for lack of participation.

Love,
Andrew

Water Turbidity #7

Date:10/8/07
URL:http://www.scc.rutgers.edu/coastweb/NYCDEPHarbor_survey/docs/water_clarity/secch.htm
Title: Secchi Depth
Today I thought I would revisit the "Secchi Depth" device. I found that secchi depth recording of 5 ft means that it was last visible at five feet below the surface. A higher recording means that the water is clearer and a lower recording means that the water is more turbid. Clearer water allows sunlight to go deep and turbid water does not. This can "[reduce] biological reaeration at lower depths."

Water Turbidity #6

Date:10/7/07
URL:http://waterontheweb.org/under/waterquality/turbidity.html
Title: Water on the Web
Alright, for like the fifth time I am going to be talking about this website. I am doing it in so many posts because it covers so much and I feel like one post would be unworthy. But, on my next post I am going to branch out and cover a different source. So anyways, I found that turbidity can have negative effects on water. "Particulates also provide attachment sites for heavy metals such as cadmium, mercury and lead, and many toxic organic contaminants such as PCBs, PAHs and many pesticides." I thought that was pretty interestnig because my Beyond the Border topic is pesticides effect on the environment and this shows that water turbidity and pesticides in water are sometimes related.

Water Turbidity #5

Date:10/6/07
URL:http://waterontheweb.org/under/waterquality/turbidity.html
Title: Water on the Web
Today I am going to continue to chip away at the site I found. There was a really helpful table that showed the effects of turbidity on fresh water fish. This graph really helped me understand how turbidity can effect fish in relation to time and the level of turbidity.

Water Turbidity #4

Date:10/5/07
URL:http://waterontheweb.org/under/waterquality/turbidity.html
Title: Water on the Web
Today I found an amazing source on water turbidity. There is so much information on this site that it wouldn't be beneficial to try to cover it all on one post and I'm sure that I will be able to post more on it in the future. So for today's post I will be covering the section entitled "Why Is it Important?". This section explained what exactly water turbidity is, some of its causes, and some of its effects. I found that water turbidity is measured by the murkiness caused by the amount of total suspended solids (or TSS) in the water. I also found that "The major source of turbidity in the open water zone of most lakes is typically phytoplankton, but closer to shore, particulates may also be clays and silts from shoreline erosion."

Water Turbidity #3

Today we went to Balboa Park. It was a lot of fun and also very interesting. We learned about Copper and the Mayas. You're probably asking "how does this relate to water turbidity???" Well we conducted a brief study on water and we used a small circle divided into 2 black and 2 white quarters. The easier you could see it, the lower the turbidity. Now upon further research I found that this circle is called a "Secchi Depth".

Water Turbidity #1

Well, my group wanted to do our project on what would happen if there was no water, BUT, since my group stalled on turning in our slip, we didnt get our first two choices. Instead, we got "water turbidity". Now my initial reaction was something like "IN WHAT THE HECK IS WATER TURBIDITY?!?!". SOOO it seemed pretty reasonable for me to check it out and post about what it is. Well, in case you didnt know, water turbidity is made up of two words. WATER and TURBIDITY. Now, I have a pretty good idea of what water is (and I hope you do two, you drink about eight glasses of it a day). So let's talk about turbidity. It is defined as "not clear or transparent because of stirred-up sediment or the like; clouded; opaque; obscured: the turbid waters near the waterfall." (dictionary.com). Basically, that means that turbidity is how dirty or unclear water is. The more turbidity the water has, the cloudier it is.

Beyond the Border #17

Today was a very intersting day. Our class was given a presentation by Officer Moffit who worked as a Border Patrol Officer. I found this extremely engaging. We've been spending all this time talking about Mexico and the border, so it was really captivating to finally see someone who actually worked on the border and basically did the dirty work that keeps the border controlled. I thought that his job seemed really interesting and it must be pretty crazy working there.

Beyond the Border #16

Over the weekend, I spent friday at the LAN, saturday sleeping and recovering from the LAN. But, I did manage to spend some time researching pesticides on Sunday. I also checked out RG's blog. One post that interested me had the source of a website on pesticides. RG titled the post "Websites on Agricultural Chemicals". The website that I decided to check out was http://msucares.com/pubs/publications/p1962.htm. This was really a great website that not only included information on pesticides, but also included benefits and risks.

Beyond the Border #15

I decided to check out one of Matt Hoffman's posts because I heard that his topic was similar to mine so I figured that it might be helpful. The post that I will be discussing is titled "Pesticides". The URL is http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/envirom/pesthwwrk.htm. This source was actually very helpful and described pesticides in a very thorough and simple way. Most of the information was really important, but sadly, I had already come across much of it, so it wasnt really that beneficial. But it did actually help me to better understand a lot of it, so I guess that in a way it was helpful. Matt's comments were clear and seemed relevant to the website. What a cutie.

Beyond the Border #14

In this post, I am going to talk about this project. So far, I think my group has been working pretty effectively, we all have our strengths and weaknesses, but combined, we are very solid. So far, we have finished our script, flash and storyboard, and although that doesnt sound like much, it has been extremely challenging. We definitley need to get our interview scheduled as soon as possible, but it's been really hard having to talk to people, and our expert source is very busy. One thing that I would like to improve on in the future is my professionalism when talking to people.

Beyond the Border #13

Today was a pretty relaxed day, but looking back on it, I should have spent more time on working on this project (especially because the clock is winding down). But we did spend a lot of time watching other peoples flashes. This was helpful because it allowed me to really see some of the positive and negetive charactaristics of a flash, so I can critique ours with more experience. I noticed a lot of unsmoothness and errors, but this was mainly due to the fact that 95% of our class has very little or no experience with flash. I also noticed a lot of unprofesionalism. Luckily, RJ (and I) have experience with flash.

Beyond the Border #12

Today was an important day for the beyond the border project. I realised how we really need to get things rolling. Luckily, RJ finished the flash, but I didnt get to check it out until a couple minutes ago. I was pretty impressed but I want to make some suggestions about it. But I spent most of the day editing and condensing the script, which was extremely challenging, because there was so much valuable information in our script, that cutting part of it out would make it incomplete in my eyes. Also, I remembered that we still don't have our expert source down 100%, some of this is do to people being flaky and not responding to us appropriately, but there are still things that we should be doing to push it, and maybe get a different source. Anyways, that is something that we need confirmed ASAP!

Beyond the Border #11

Author: Coco Conover
Title: Monday
Notes: I decided to post on Coco's post on http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/health/human.htm. I chose this because I saw that it was from the EPA and they have been an extremely reliable and professional source and that it was on pesticides effects on humans, which, although I have found information about, I would like to learn more. After reading this, I learned some new things about pesticides. I learned that some pesticides can effect the nervous system, while others can effect the hormonal development. I also learned a little about the process that the EPA does to determine whether a pesticide is acceptable or not.

Beyond the Border #10

Author: Kerstin Fuller
Title: Natural Pesticides
Notes: I chose to do this post on Kerstin's post because it was something that I was curious about. I wanted to know more about natural pesticides and what pesticides qauilified under that classification. Something that I really like about kerstins blog as that she chooses to blog on a topic rather than a website. So for any one topic, she has a ton of diffect sources, making it as unbias as possible. I found that natural pesticides are actually pesticides produced by plants. I thought that it was really interesting interesting how the concept of pesticides was originally created by nature. I found out tons of information and was really pleased with my choice to post on Kerstins blog, and if I ever need a good source of information, I will know where to look.

Beyond the Border #9

Well, its saturday night, and I just got back from playing Soma. It went pretty well. ANYWAYS I'm tired. So since we have to have like posts on like 5 peoples blogs, I thought I would get one out of the way.

This post is on Danielle's post from 9/5/07 on the website http://www.bt.ucsd.edu/synthetic_pesticide.html. I chose to do this post on hers because her website looked like a very reliable source, and it was on the effects of DDT, which I wanted to know more about. Her response to the article was pretty breif, and she pretty much summarized it. The first part of the article is about the history of pesticides (which reminds me, I forgot to blog about a resource I read about that) and the second part was about DDT's effect on the environment. The rest of the article was about how DDT and other pesticides can effect the environment and humans. Some of the effects include death, eggshell thinning, odd behaviour, reproductive problems, nervous failure, endocrine, and weakend immune system.

Beyond the Border #8

Author: Coco Conover

Title: Andrew's Blog

Notes:

When I asked if we could blog about people blogging about our blogs, I was kidding, but after reading Coco's blog, I was just compelled to do it. Initially, I started this as a comment, but it was too long and decided "hey, why not blog about it, big guy." So, thats what I'm doing.



First of all, Coco says that I am saying the information, this is not true. I only restated the information from the source and summarized it. I agree with her when she says that pesticides are an important part of their agriculture production. But they're not necisarily the only way, but definitley the cheapest and most accesable. Also, when I said that much of their agricultural exports didn't meet our standards, (like I said before) I was simple saying what the author of the article said. At one point, it states,"Latin American produce historically has found a warm welcome in the U.S.; however, these products often carry on them dangerous pesticide residues."

Beyond the Border Resource #7

Resource #: 7 (on RJs blog)
Title: Baja California Home
URL: http://www.questconnect.org/baja_california.htm
Author: Quest Connect
Notes: I saw this on RJs blog and it stood out to me because it was about Mexico as a country, and most of my research has been on pesticides. So I decided to check it out and blog about it because not only is it important I figured it would be a good change from PESTICIDES! This page mostely talks about the industries of Baja, as well some of the problems like weak currency. One thing that I found interesting was that Baja's economy, is tied to the United States Economy. Overall, this was a helpful source to sort of get an idea about Baja's (and Mexico's) economy.

Beyond the Border #2

Today was a pretty productive day. We stayed after school for a couple hours to begin our script and get our expert source figured out. The script was going well, but the expert source seemed to be having some complications. What we thought was going to be our expert source was too busy to do it. So he referred us to several people. Two people in San Fransisco who might be able to refer us to a local expert, and someone locally who we could contact. The two people in San Fransisco didn't answer our calls, and the lady in San Diego referred us to someone locally. BUT he didn't answer our calls because he was working on a paper, and had a meeting, and had a bunch of other stuff. He was a busy guy. So I don't really know whats going to go down for the interview. I will spend some time tomorrow trying to sort it out.

Beyond the Border

My goal for this week was to get our expert source confirmed. After a week of searching the internet, emailing and calling people, and basically, not getting anywhere, I was about ready to give up. Until, on Friday, i remembered that i had not called the last person on a list of EPA officials. I decided I would give him a call even though he lives in Washington DC. So, I called him, and for the first time, someone answered. He said that he had actually just gotten my email and was considering some people for me to contact about interveiwing. He gave me the number of the EPA's San Diego/Tijuana border director. I have not yet found the time to call him, but i will deffinitly give him a call in the near future.

Beyond the Border Resource #6

Resource #: 6
Title: Pesticide's Victims Will Finally Come Before a US Court
URL: http://www.coha.org/2007/08/13/pesticide%E2%80%99s-victims-will-finally-come-before-a-us-court/
Author: Councill on Hemispheric Affairs
Notes: This page gives a lot of stories directed towards the negative effects of pesticides on humans and the environment (but mostly humans). It talks about how many countries in Latin America, like Mexico (who supplies us with 15% of our agricultural imports) are not up to the United States standards when it comes to pesticide use. These pesticides can leave residue on the imports and can be harmful to our society. The most interesting thing that i found was "Most recently, on July 18, President Bush set an urgent timetable of 60 days for the newly formed Cabinet-level committee to announce safety limits on produce, especially on food products being imported into the U.S." This really brought it to my attention that this is a current issue.

Inca Research #3

http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/latinamerica/south/cultures/inca.html

When did the Culture reach it peak? The Incas lived from about 1200 to 1535, and they reached their peak before the Spanish invaded there land and destroy their civilization.
How did their Civilization grow and strengthen? The Incas had a powerful army of 40,000 fierce warriors and conquered tribes near by. Its complex government system also allowed the culture to develop.
What factors contributed to the conquest of this Civilization over other indigenous tribes? Which tribes were conquered and absorbed by it?

Inca Research #2

Resource #: 2
Title: Inca Music
URL: http://agutie.homestead.com/files/Inca_Music.htm
Author: N/A
Notes:
What does the music of this culture sound like?
"Inca music often accompanied ritualized religious dancing. Musicians used repetitive rhythms and dissonant tones to induce an almost hypnotic state in the dancers."
What instruments are used?
"Inca instruments were made of wood, reeds, pottery, bone, shell, and metal. The Incas played two basic kinds of instruments: wind and percussion."
What social function does it serve?
Religious ceremony.

Inca Research #1

Resource #: 1
Title: Inca Religion
URL: http://philtar.ucsm.ac.uk/encyclopedia/latam/inca.html
Author: OWR
Notes: This website gave a lot of information about specific Inca beliefs. It talked about there two most important gods: inti, the god of the sun, and Pachama, the mother of the earth. They also believed that time was sacred and that the past, present and future all represented different spiritual demension. They had different religious ceremonies each month. One thing that i found really interesting is that the Incas did actually do human sacrifices. They would sometimes sacrifice two hundred children. The hierarchy of their society goes (king), (priests and royal family), (architects and regional army commanders), and (artisans, army captains, farmers and herders).

Beyond the Border Resource #5

Resource #: 5
Title: Agro Chemicals
URL: http://www.ecochem.com/t_organic_fert.html
Author: Ecochem
Notes: This is an interesting article about the development of agricultural pesticides and how over the years, we have been tricked and deceived into using these harmful chemicals. Pesticide use often damages soil qaulity and has a negative long term effect on the plantlife. The most important statement made in the article was: "All pesticides have one thing in common in common - they are poisons designed to kill things and they have the potential to be harmful to humans if ingested in sufficient amounts."

Beyond the Border Resource #4

Resource #: 4
Title: Pesticide Facts
URL: http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/environment/RATE/pestfact.html
Author: Real Alternatives to Toxins in the Environment
Notes: This website gives information on what pesticides are, how cause harm, how safe they are and their effect on people, animals and the environment. This article gave the dirrect effects that occured which was helpful because it's the first website that ive found to do so. It also talks about some of the chemicals that are found in pesticides. It even gives some alternatives to using pesticides.

Beyond the Border Resource #3

Resource #: 3
Title: Pesticide effect on Preschool Children in Mexico
URL: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0ISW/is_244/ai_111271864
Author: Jule Klotter
Notes: This article presents a study that was conducted in Mexico in 1998 about the effect of pesticides on the growth of young children. It studied two groups of people with similar genetics and cultures; one living on the Yaqui Hills and one living in Yaqui Valley. All the farming (and heavy pesticide use) took place in the valley. They also used household insecticides in the valley. There were traces of pesticides in breastmilk in the valley. The researchers found no physical differences in growth but did find many startling differences.

Beyond the Border Resource #2

Resource #: 2
Title: Environmental Effects of Pesticides
URL: http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/ecosystem/ecorisk.htm
Author: United States Environmental Protection Agency
Notes: This article mostly talks about risk assessments that the EPA does on pesticides before they're used in the United States. It is useful because the information here gave me an idea of what are bad qualities in pesticides and how these scientific tests are conducted. It is from the same source as my last article, but it is a little more in depth. It talks about the risks in a scientific way but doesn't really talk about exactly what they are capable of doing to the environment.

Beyond the Border Resource #1

Resource #: 1
Title: What is a Pesticide?
URL: http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/about/index.htm
Author: United States Environmental Protection Agency
Notes: This article contains easily-understandable, useful information on pesticides. All the information is presented in a simple way. It explains what a pesticide is, what it's used for, the positives and negaties, and more. Some things that i found interesting were: pesticides include insecticides, herbicides, fungicides and other substances, and that many household products are pesticides.