Blog 16

My favorite meal of the day has always been breakfast. The smell of coffee in the morning gets my day going, but as usual I am always running in the morning and never get a chance to have breakfast. So I decide to bake muffin first they only take about 35 minutes to prep and bake, second they are easy grab and go food and lastly my girlfriend Sara was willing to help me in my project.
I bought my items at a 24hr supermarket in Queens blvd right before the train station turn in to Roosevelt.It didn't have a wide selection of organic food selection but it had enough for what I was looking for. The total cost for my items was $45 a little bit on the expensive side but now I have muffins for a whole month.

Serving for 12
Ingredients








1 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup milk
1/4 vegetable oil
1 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups blueberries

Before starting to mix your ingredients preheat the oven to 400 degrees F and grease a 6 -cup muffin pan. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and cinnamon. Then in a large bowl, stir together the milk, oil, egg, sugar, and vanilla extract until well blended. Stir in the flour mixture until combined. Do not over mix. Genttly fold in the blueberries. Finally divide the batter evenly among the prepared muffin cups, filling them about two-thirds full. Bake for 17 to 20 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean. Cool on a rack for 5 minutes. Remove to the rack to cool completely.

Blog. 15

According to the passage “Play Time is Over” by David Elkind, many schools have eliminated recces in favor of more time for classes. He also states that schools are hiring recess coaches to guide the students free time. The consequences of these changes are that children don’t have enough free time to play and because of this the “culture of childhood” is disappearing. The passage states that the culture of childhood is the process where children learn how to interact with each other, learn what is good and bad in their own world.

Also the adaptation to these new childhood life is going to be hard for us as adults, we don’t know what is going on out there in the minds of the new young generation. I think a leader, meaning a coach will be good influence for the children. Is always good to know that there’s somebody teaching and showing the children good ways to survive and to be a better person.

I remember when I as a kid I had a free time similar to recces but in my country we used to call it “Recreational Time” sometimes we had a coach and I think when you have somebody guiding you, you become more efficient, because you are focus and you always want to win any game or any competition given by the coach, it becomes challenging. You always want the best of you and you will get it if you have someone to push you in the right direction.

When we didn’t have a coach the situation was totally different, when you are a kid and you have a lot of same age students around you many things can happen. For example, I remember one occasion when we were plying ide and sick without any supervision, the place was huge and one of my friends got lost, we were looking for hours until we decided to call his parents. They called the cops and they found him 2 miles away from us in a stranger neighborhood, it was really scary and one of the worst days only because we didn’t have an adult guiding us.

The article also states that studies have found that children who are most physically fit, tend to do good on school and I totally agreed with it , I think is very important to exercise your body and your mind in order to have a healthy and successful life

Blog. 14

Putting a price on water makes people value it more, and thus conserve it.

Everything in this life is about  money and surviving , everyday people wants to get more and more that is the reason why factories like Coca Cola, PepsiCo and many more are using us a guinea pig selling us bottles of water. A bottle of water? how come? , water is almost free in this country how can we be so ignorant and pay for it, sometimes I think we pay for it because we are lazy or we just want to skip steps like filling the bottle of water and put it on the refrigerator until gets really cold, is more easy to open up a bottle , drink it and throw it in the garbage without thinking in how bad is that for the environment 

A plastic water bottle can take up to 1000 years to degrade in landfill and if is burn in incinerators, it releases dioxins  which are highly toxic and can cause reproductive and developmental problems, damage the immune system, interfere with hormones and also cause cancer.

In my family we all used to drink bottles of water until we decided to look for different ways to save money and we released that drinking tap water  “New York Water”  we can save 1000 a year and probably more because everywhere you go you order a bottle of water just to be cool.

blog 13

The passage “Mom, Dad, Buy the Broccoli “by The New York Times ,states that the commercials selling products with high level of calories like candy and soft drinks have gotten out of control that even the food industry noticed.

Because of this, 10 companies agreed to reduce advertisement for junk foods. Their plan is to promote healthy food and a better lifestyle. To help make their achieve goal of promoting healthy food happen they formed a group called “The Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative “they are going to help these companies come up with their own rules. However, there are two fears: how clear their rules will be, and how these rules will be put in effect on its own members.

The obesity in America has become a health emergency especially for the young people, the rates of diabetes and other adult diseases are increasing like never before.  I think is time to cut break this disease and do something about it. First eliminating or replacing the vending machines in the schools will help the children with obesity problems to cut back consuming empty calories products.For example, I have a nephew that was addicted to honey buns from the vending machines. She was gaining so much weight that her parents intervene about this issue

blog 12

I think is time to improve or create a better system to control the environmental impact of animal waste because is destroying our planet   

Blog 10

Working with a tutor was a great experience, knowing that there is somebody guiding you in the right track, gives you the necessary security and the desire to continue working on your project, also helps you find the mistakes and to better understand the most important ideas .

blog.9

Many movies these days are trying to change the way we view our life style, trying to make us believe that this is not the reality, that there is something more that we don't  know making us search for answers to those many questions that we have. In the article "red pill or blue pill: ignorance is a bliss" Chistine Cornell and Patrick Malcolmsom explain how the films Matrix and Alice in Wonderland both live in a world of illusions. For example, how Neo from the Matrix has to decide what pill to take, if he takes the red one the story ends, he will wake up on his bed and he will continue his life the way it was before and if he takes the blue one he will stay in the real world. And in Alice case she was given a magic drink and cake that will make her shrink or grow to gigantic proportions to be able to step in a different realms.

I think we have  to live the life the way it is, even with the complications and obstacles of it,  instead of looking for the truth we have to survive in this world , our world the one that we were chosen to live. I don't think is fear that everything we know and everything we did it was just part of an illusion. For example a lot of people were born rich and after a crisis they lose all their money, after that they had to adapt to the new life style another kind of life that they never knew before. My father had a friend who lost all his money and had to go to the hospital for mental help, the adaptation to the new life destroyed him.

Another example will be that first kiss, the love of you life, the person that you got married and lived for those many years, how can you survive when you lost that part of you or when you find out that was just an illusion , it will be devastating for a human being, many people lose their partners after an accident or any circumstances of life and after that surviving that moment must be painful.
Last example that moment when you have kids, when you teach them how to walk, how to talk or when you take them to the school that fist day, it will be so sad if you find out that was just you imagination, that wasn't real just another illusion, like those parents that lose their kids and never find them , how can you survive to that pain? the feelings and love will be just an illusion?.

In conclusion we have to keep evolving , evolution is an slow process but day after day  we are getting the necessary tool to keep doing the best of us.

blog.7

Is education completely unnecessary to fulfill the American dream?
According to the passage "the dangers of reality TV" by Timothy Sexton, the reality television is sending a several and confusing messages to the young people by stating that reality television gives the idea that  image is more valuable than ability,  that competition is important and education is useless. 

I think the education is the key to succeed in life, because we have the ability to learn whatever we want and with a little effort we can be whoever we want.
With education you don't need to have the best body or be a super star to get a job, unless you get a job humiliating your self on national television like the reality shows this days. Everything you need you have it in you brain. Also with education you can go everywhere and you will have something interesting to say because you have learn about life and how to interact with people. For example i went to a job interview, twenty of us were waiting , i saw three beautiful girls waiting, none of us got the job except for one person with a high level of education, this remind me of the show " the bachelor " where is a men trying to find his future wife in a house full of beautiful girls, he doesn't know anything about their education level  just that they have nice body and they are pretty, i don't think beauty buys knowledge.

 Second with education you can cross obstacles , meet and help people, understand the reality of life, learn the difference between  good and bad. People without education end up on the streets probably selling or doing drugs , stealing and killing each others.

Last there is nothing more satisfactory  that know that you tried your best to become a better person and with all those sacrifices you can live your life full of knowledge. For example, my uncle die when he was thirty, he went to school to be a doctor, but he never had the opportunity to become one, at least he die happy knowing that he tried his best.

In conclusion, not everything is about the money, money doesn't buy happiness or knowledge, you need education in order to have a good future and a better quality of life.

Blog. 6

Self - Determination
Sometimes we don't know if the world that we live in is real, we don't know if the people who live in is real , who make the rules and why we have rules should be the question. If people created the rules that means they made mistakes and probably that was the best solution to have perfection in our society.
Three years ago i meet Carlo Dominguez a good friend  who came to the United States to try to get a better quality of life and also support for his family, he came with an student visa, that was the only way for him to emigrate from his homeland Costa Rica, he was going to the school but he needed money to survive, he found a job and decided to stay in the country as an illegal disobeying the law.
Laws are rules created by the people, he disobeyed the rules because the situation in his country was difficult and he thought that staying here was a hard but the right choice. He was expecting many good things to happen to his life for example  the opportunity to have the legal documentation to stay and work in the country and the opportunity to bring his family were always his goals, he knew he was doing something wrong but it was worth it.
One day when he was driving to his house a young driver passed a red light and crashed his car, it was a terrible situation because he didn't have a driver's license, he was arrested and deported back to his country, he basically lost what he earned, but he return to his family, he found a job  and his living a great life now. Did the consequences to his disobedience confirm that he made the right choice? Who knows, he didn't have the chance to obtain his goals, instead his life changed and toke a different route, life is weird and complicated.

blog 5

According to his passage " I Know the Truth, so don't bother me with facts " by Jeffrey Kluger, he states that humans have been fools for long time and we are so easy to believe in rumors.
R.Kelly Garret and Erik Nisbet, researchers in Ohio created a study to analyze 750 people, they ask them about the planned mosque in downtown Manhattan and most of them believed in these project. They came with the conclusion that is easy to change peoples mind with insinuating pictures and even with evidence they were given indicating the facts, they want to believe that they know the truth
People do take  time to learn the facts but even with them is  not enough. First we need to obtain as much information as we can to try to understand the reality of the actions made by the other. For example, my best friend got  fired for no reason and he refused to get an explanation from his boss of his acts. Second we can not believe in rumors, people like to over talk creating a world of controversy giving us wrong information. Lastly, we can not live in a world of fantasy, the world these days is not an easy place to live, to many people have different minds, some of them good and some others bad,
In conclusion, we need to obtain a better information in order to have a better idea of tomorrow.

blog 5

Claim: I think that no matter what studies reveal it is up to us to find facts and make our decisions based on that information.
Reason1: We need to obtain as much information as we can to try to understand the reality of the actions made by the others.
Reason2: We can not believe in rumors.
Reason3; We can not leave in a world of fantasy.

I think that no matter what studies reveal it is up to us to find facts and make our decisions based on that information because we need to obtain as much information as we can to try to understand the reality of the actions made by the others, we can not believe in rumors, we can not leave in a world of fantasy.

Blog.2

We live in a world full of products and full of ideas to make these products be part of our daily life style. In the article "Hype" the author Kalle Lasn explains  how the advertising in America is increasing more and more every day that we can even have a moment of peace without a commercial coming from any kind of source ,every where you go, every where you look, you will find a piece of an ad reminding you that everything you need you will find it. every day 12 billion display ads, 3 million radio commercials, and more than 200,000 TV commercials are dumped into North America's society.
The marketing industry created the most powerful ideas to make us be part of a society addicted to ads, putting ideas in our minds, taking us where the product is ,sales and more sales are  making us robots guided by lights, signs and billboards.
In our  society we face daily circumstances of our lives for example driving to work can be sometimes stress full, trying to focus on the road is not an easy job with the thousands and thousands of billboards on both sides of the road, going on line without an ad is impossible because it is hard to ignore them.
We need to escape to a quite place and relax in order to clear our minds and have a moment of peace.

blog 4

 1. The philosopher Plato, author of " The Allegory of the Cave " was about Socrates and Glaucon having a conversation of human behavior. This passage show us in a philosophical world idea by Socrates 500 b.c.e   the reality of our lives, people living underground with the legs and necks chained so that they can not move , they  can only see all kind of shadows coming from the fire on the other side of the wall and listen to the echo of the voices coming from the same direction. That is all they do all day and night. The question is, what if one day one of the prisoners is released ? He will be able to see the reality of the outside , the real wold, the real life and then he will realize that he was living in a cave a world of false notions.
2.This is my first time in college, a big challenge in my life i was probably chained before, until i decided to learn more , i realized that there is a world outside  full of ideas and full of tools to have a better life

Blog. 3

According to his passage " I Know the truth, so don't bother me with facts " by Jeffrey Kluger, he states that humans have been fools for long time and we are so easy to believe in rumors, researches in Ohio created an study to analyze 750 people, they ask them about the planned mosque in downtown Manhattan and most of them believed in these project, they came with the conclusion that is easy to change peoples minds with insinuating pictures and even with evidence they were given indicating the facts, they want to believe what they know the truth . People do take  time to learn the facts but even with them is  not enough, we just don't like to hear that we are wrong.