Hard Haunted Mansion 2009

New to the scene but what a wonderful time! It's good to experience new things, it make you feel alive. The music was amazing and lights were amazing. Wanted to stay there forever. Absolutely perfect.

I love my friends!

Just Because You have a PhD, Doesn't Mean You Should Teach!

Why is it that the harder the class gets, the worst the professors are at teaching?! I am frustrated with the fact that we pay so much money for higher education, but some of the professors that teach it to us are awful at teaching. I have a big problem with lazy teachers that don't know how to explain the course material to us and expect us to understand everything. For example, my chemical engineering class, chemical pollution, is by far the worst experience ever. The homework and the exam is about math problems and calculating numbers, but in lecture she goes on and goes about concepts and does not go over how to do the actual work. So we just sit there for 3 hours, every Thursday night to hear her read her powerpoints off to us. Powerpoint with paragraphs followed by paragraphs. NOT AN EFFECTIVE WAY TO TEACH! If you are going to read the powerpoint off to me, I can just read it when I am at home, I don't need to sit in class. To top it all off, she makes us sign a sign-in sheet...at the END of class, she's afraid, and I quote,"everyone will escape is the sign in sheet is passed around too early". What kind of teacher does that?!?! Not to mention that this is a 500/400 level class, and the majority of people in there are graduate students. I hate being treated like a child in college, I am surprised she didn't give up assigned seats! As I sit here at the library to try to teach myself everything she's supposedly taught us in the last 2 months, I am about to rip out all my hair... >_<

Girls have to right to be picky, even science agrees

Female investment exceeds male investment when it comes to sexual reproduction. Females have to bare the off spring and have limited number of eggs they produce throughout their life span while males have no limit. With such a high risk investment, females become very choosy. while on the other hand, the males' focus is to maximize their number of matings in order for them to spread them genes to increase its own individual fitness.

Males from different species of birds have evolved bright, strange colors on their feathers just to impress females. A female's choice in their mate is based on several factor(here are two that I found interesting): the handicap principle states that females are attracted to genetically expensive trait, for example a really long tail on a bird. The bird having a really long tail does not help them fly better or anything, it is just there for the purpose that females like it, an example of a handicap trait in humans would be an expensive car, the car does the same thing as any other car that would cost less, but some girls like it because they can afford it. Another factor is pre-existing bias, saying that females are attracted to males with unusual traits, just as when girls are attracted to foreign guys, because it's different and it's exotic to them. Those are the two out of the six that I find the most interesting.

Males on the other hand, don't really have choosiness in sexual selection. In fact, they expense a lot of their energy to impress females. Males compete against each other to woo females, for example male bower birds dance in their bowers while a female watches to see who she would choose to mate with. There's also sperm competition between males as well. In some species of bees after a male mates with a female, he will plug her opening to prevent other sperm from entering, at some worst scenarios some penises are designed to cause physical damage to the female reproductive system to prevent them from mating after their sperm has been deposited.

See girls, look how hard guys have to fight to get to us...we have the right to be picky

Increase Urbanization = Increase Price in Healthy Foods.

As human population increase and more people move to concentrated areas of the world, the price of healthy and organic foods will directly correlate. In order to fulfill the demand of produce and other sources of food in the world, mass production has become the cheapest way to feed everyone. Generally from what I have noticed is that foods that are priced at a lower value contain unhealthy ingredients such as high fructose corn syrup, food coloring, preservatives and other unnatural products. Part of the reason for this is that these are cheap ingredients and they maintain to quality of the food for a longer period of time, for example, a small amount of high fructose corn syrup is equivalent to a large amount of natural sugar. Preservatives obviously allow the product to stay edible for a long period of time. It preserves if for a long enough time for the products to be packaged, distributed, and sit on shelves of the stores until someone purchases it.

As people move into more compacted areas, there is less space for local farming. Fresh fruits and vegetables are being imported from all different parts of the world. So much of our energy is used from transportation (in the U.S. alone we used the majority of our petroleum for transportation). With the increase demand for healthy and organic foods, increasing human population, and decreasing numbers of local farms, the prices availability of all-natural foods will increase immensely. As for now, prices of these foods are still affordable so enjoy it while you can. As residents of our city, we need to support local farms, even if it means it costs more. We need to keep these farmers profitable because we will all be completely dependent on imported good otherwise. The use of fertilizers, pesticides, and hormones in our produce and livestock will directly affect us humans since we are directly consuming them.

So what should you do? This weekend go to your local farmers market and do your grocery shopping, just make sure the good you are purchasing are from local farms. You’ll be able to taste and smell the difference.

Trash and Cooperative Feeding at the Lagoon

Another beautiful day at the Colorado Lagoon today! There was so much trash today because of the rain last week. I picked up 3 pounds myself, when usually I only get about one. Together we collected 36 pounds of trash, keep in mind that this doesn't even include the trash we couldn't reach that was in the water. Which is why I am going to invest on a pair of rain boots, I am so tired of not being able to get my shoes wet. The water quality was not good either, there was a layer of pollution (I can't tell what it was, just unnatural) on top of the water on the side near the golf course.

I saw a california pelican, a snowy egret, and some birds that I still have yet to remember their names. It was breakfast time for all of them and I got to see some cooperative feeding. All three different species with different niches working together to feed themselves and each other... mutualism! The pelican glides over the water to watch the surface of the water as the group of ducks (I don't know the name of) all swim in one direction to "corner" the fishes, and the egret stands on shore to catch fishes that swim nearby. Hopefully all of them got to eat as much as they can.

I am a bit concerned about the water quality of the lagoon after the rain. The Colorado Lagoon is a watershed for Long Beach, and we all know how much trash and pollution there is on the ground in Long Beach. There was a layer of pollution over the water by the golf course, it looked so funky I had no idea what it could be, probably just a combination of chemicals. No more littering! I picked up syrofoam plates today that had peak marks on them, birds are eating them and it will harm them.

Cars, Cars, More Cars

My slight obsession with my car got me thinking today as I was filling up my tank, I noticed how much time and money I am spending on my car. $30 in gas and about $5 more per week to wash it, amounting to $140 a month, just to use it...not even including maintenance. The reason we have to spend so much money on our cars is that we have become completely dependent on them.

The lack of convenient public transportation combined with the structure of our city has created a large revenue for car manufacturers. Practically everyone that I know in this country has a car. I know that without my car I would not be able to get to work and school on time, the bus would take way too long or there's no transportation that goes there. The public transportation system needs improvement. If we had an efficient system, I believe we would significantly decrease the amount of petroleum we consume as a nation. With a good public transportation system, people will lose dependency to their cars.

On the other side of the planet, Hong Kong I only know two people that have cars. Out of my entire family, including everyone on both my parents sides of family, only my dad and my cousin have cars. You don't need a car over there. When I was living there, I would just take the bus, train, subway, to anywhere I needed to go to. I would take the bus to school alone when I was 8. The transportation system is easy and convient.

In order to conserve petroleum and resources, we need to begin developing a efficient public transport system. Another reason would be the amount of water we would save when people don't have cars to wash. Fresh water resources are so readily available to us, but it is a very scarece resource as well...I'll leave the water resource section for another day, let's keep thinking of ways we can reduce energy consumption. :)

Restoring the Colorado Lagoon

We are starting to plant native plants at the Lagoon this month. It should be fun, everyone please come, it's for a good cause. I will be at every trash pick up every Monday morning.^_^

Thursday October 15th – CSULB Education Class
4-6.30pm: We’re talking with a CSULB EDD class about place-based environmental education. Come on down to learn about the FOCL education program.

Monday October 19th – Trash Cleanup
9-11am: Trash cleanup at the Lagoon. Every week, every Monday, a bunch of trash.

Wednesday October 21st – TIDE Excursion to support the MPA’s
4-9pm: The Ocean needs your help. Last chance to get your voice heard for protecting the SoCal coastal waters. Contact Whitney Graves at whitneygraves@gmail.com for info.

Wednesday October 21st - Farmers Market???
3-7pm: No idea.

Thursday October 22nd – 350.org Preparty at the Pike Prep (wow)
Daytime: We are prepartying and we need help setting up the space. Contact Jen for how to help: jenbrownstar@yahoo.com

Thursday October 22nd – 350.org PreParty at the Pike
5-9pm: Come on down and rally with us before we plant a whole buncha plants!! There will be art, music, snackers, maybe some poetry and examples of the plants that will be planted.

Friday October 23rd – 350.org Planting Set-up
11am-1pm: We will be setting up the habitat for the big event!!!

Saturday October 24th – 350.org Event!!!!!!!!!!!
9am-5pm: The big day is here and we need help!

Saturday October 24th – Afterparty at the Pike
7pm-?? : Let’s get a drink together

Monday October 26th – Trash Cleanup
9-11am: Trash cleanup at the Lagoon. Every week, every Monday, a bunch of trash.

Junk (recyclable) mail

I can not believe the amount of junk mail that accumulated on my coffee table over the last 3 days. Not only do I not read it, I have to bring it to the recycling center. All the trees used to produce the paper, the gas to transport it, the ink to print it, and even the energy from recycling we waste for something so pointless?!?! Is there a way I can request to not receive these ads? Think of how much money, resources, and energy we would save if we no longer received ads in the mail. The worst part about it, is that we still need to take into consideration the people who do not recycle these papers, they end up in the landfill as if there is an endless amount of space on our planet for garbage.

Just think, something as simple as junk mail that you get can have such a large impact on our environment and our economy. As a society, we need to be much more aware of impacts on the environment Petroleum, coal, and natural gas are not endless resources. In fact, they are modeled to be completely depleted by the year 2030 (Toossi, 2009). That is only 21 years from now. Let's focus on conserving, and finding renewable sources.

Capitalism A Love Story

I can not wait to go see this movie, however, I do not know what to expect. I am afraid they will over exaggerate like they did on The Inconvenient Truth. I wonder if they exaggerate because they don't think people will believe the message they are trying to get across. Sometimes it just feels like when these movies are over-dramatic it makes the message not credible. In order to keep credibility, you need to present the message in an non-bias way by providing data and evidence. Still stoked to see the movie though!! ^_^