CT Mayhem `07 - `08

Interview With Mayor Canidate James Vumbaco

This is a live blog, I’m listening to three classmates interview James Vumbaco.  We are posting follow up questions to a main computer in the center where one girl is refreshing a page to ask those questions.

 ”Pick a way to go, and go for it.”

He believes the future is in technology and that college is important, but if you want to just go straight off to technical school, that is perfectly okay.

“We learn a lot outside of text books and that content learning is important and it builds structure, but as you go forward you need to pick or choose a way to go and learn the world outside of textbooks.”

Mr. Vumbaco thinks technology definately helps with routine things but it can also take away from learning experiences.  We are a lot more educated then we have been in the past but we aren’t as agressive as we need to be as far as our learning is concerned.  He believes we take too much for granted.

James Vumbaco says that we need to learn how to communicate verbally and stop depending on e-mail.  If you send four people the same e-mail they can all interpret it differently.  They can’t understand expressions and emotion through technology such as e-mail or intstant messaging.

Disney World

 I’ve been to Walt Disney World three times within the past 365 days.  Honestly, it gets old so we bring friends and do more in Florida than just Disney, but I still love it so I decided to e-mail them as my company.  I’m going back two more times in 2008.  Sad, I know.  I e-mailed them from the contact info on their webpage.

In February, my family and a family that’s friends with mine are coming to Disney for a week or so.  Everyone has been so busy getting reservations and such.  Every year my family comes and it’s always so much fun!  We just came in September and got to see the new Nemo ride in Epcot.  I absolutely adore Nemo, he’s my favorite newest Disney Character.  My favorite character of all time is Winnie the Pooh.  I just wanted to let you know how much I love this place and I’m ecstatic to come back!

Thanks So Much!

PS: I’m coming back in July for a softball tournament at The Wide World of Sports!!!!

All About Fastpitch

I came across this blog while googling for the assignment.  It’s called All About Fastpitch.  I googled “blog + softball” and it was the first on the list.  I decided to read this blog because I play fastpitch softball and found the site very informative.  I really didn’t bother looking for any other blogs after I saw this one.  It seemed good enough for me.

I watched two videos from this blog.  One of which, I commented on.  One video had an unbelievable play in which a high school girl hit what was supposed to be a homerun.  I was heading over the fence when the left fielder dove over the fence, knocked it down, and caught the ball.  Unfortunately, once the ball passes the boundry line, it’s a homerun.  The girl didn’t get the out but she was still able to have the satisfaction of making the play of the year.  The hitter still recieved the glory of her homerun but I think the left fielder should have gotten the out.  It was an amazing play.  Here’s what I commented on that play:

“Wow that was an amazing catch. I’ve never seen anything that intense. Something as amazing as that should be counted as an out, but it was also a great hit for the other team as well. I play fastpitch softball as well but I’m young and maybe one day I’ll see something that cool.  –CTMayhem09″

I also left a link to my blog.  Here is a quote from that post:

“These two teams have always played each other tough and Kailua is one of the well known “powerhouse” teams in the state year in and year out.”

The Liger

Something that I know nothing about, would be the Liger.

And yes, it is a real animal.

The Liger is a hybrid cross between a male lion and female tiger.  A Liger represents a lion with diffused stripes and less thick mane.  They are the largest cat breed in the world even thought the Siberian Tiger is the largest pure breed.  Like tigers but unlike lions, the liger is an excellent swimmer.  There is a similar hybrid called the Tigon that is the offspring of a female lion and male tiger.  It’s intresting how scienctists can now breed different species and create a whole new type of animal!

Documentation of the first liger was reported in the early 19th century of Europe.   In 1837, two liger cubs were born and exhibited in a zoo.  In 1935, four ligers were born.  Three of them, a male and two females, were still living in 1953. The male weighed 750 lb. and stood a foot and a half taller than a full grown male lion at the shoulder.  You would think these creatures would be recent, like 21st century–recent.  They’re new enough to be not be around as long as reptiles and such, but they have been around long enough.

Jungle Island in Miami is home to a liger named Hercules, the largest non-obese liger weighing in at over 900 pounds, over twice the size of a male lion.  The liger is the largest animal in the cat family  and Hercules was in the Book of World Records as the largest cat. Hercules is completely healthy and will live a long life.  The species this cat was, is said to be a complete accident.   I think it’s so cool how large these cats are.  Can you imagine a regualr house cat enlarged to be taller than your waist?

Ligers have a tiger-like striping pattern on a lion-like sandy background.  These markings may be black, dark brown or sandy. The background color may be tawny, sandy or golden. The actual pattern and color depends on which subspecies the parents were and on the way in which the genes interact in the offspring.

White tigers have been crossed with lions to produce “white” (actually pale golden) ligers. In theory white tigers could be crossed with white lions to produce white, very pale or even stripeless ligers. A black liger would require both a dark tiger and a dark lion as parents. Very few black tigers and lions have ever been recorded.  No reports of black lions have ever been substantiated. A hypothetical procedure to breed black ligers is explained here. The blue or Maltese Tiger is now unlikely to exist, making grey or blue ligers an impossibility. It is not impossible for a liger to be white, but it is very rare.  If there were blue or black tigers/lions, I can see them being beautiful.  They would probably be on the endangered species list very quickly. =[

In the 2004 film Napolean Dynamite, Napolean draws a picture of a liger.  He says the animal is bred for its magical skill.  Of course, that is false.  Even though it’s a good movie, the information isn’t accurate.

For more information on the Liger, please click here.  Explore the idea of a Tigon, too.

Blog Action Day

Assignment: The best way to participate is to post on your blog something that relates to the environment. Your post can be about anything to do with the environment. So you could write a post which is offtopic for your blog OR relate the environment back to your topic in some way.

To write about the environment, I’m going to write about how simple things can affect global warming.  Simple things such as shorter showers, turning the faucet off while brushing your teeth, and unplugging things when you’re not using them.  Small things like that can have such a great impact on global warming.

Most people take 15 minutes showers or longer.  By shortening the time to 8 minutes, you can save hundreds of gallons of water.  The standard fixture in a shower releases 5-10 gallons of water per minute.  A running faucet uses approximately 4 gallons of water per minute.  If you take a 15 minute shower and your shower uses at least 5 gallons of water per minute, you’re using over 75 gallons of water.  If you spend two minutes brushing your teeth and leave the sink running, you use over 8 gallons of water.  That’s a lot considering millions of Americans contribute.

When you leave lamps, alarm clocks, radios, or phones plugged in even when you’re not using them, they still absorb energy.  When you’re not using something, unplug it.  Unplug seldom used items such as mini-fridges and chargers.  Cell phone, PDA, camera and cordless tool chargers are located in almost every household.  Keep them unplugged until you need them.

Turn off the lights.  Flick off the switches when you leave the room.  Its as simple as that.

Little things can save so much.  Think about it.

Global Warming Podcast

I spent a little while searching iTunes for podcasts I might be interested in listening to and I decided I wanted to listen to something that had to do with the environment.  I searched the program for podcasts that would fall under that category and considered listening to the following:

• Today’s Environment Show
• One Environment
• The Green Alternative
• Environment Report
• Environment Yale

I chose to listen to Environment Yale’s “Global Warming and Species Distribution.”  Professor Schmitz talks about how global warming affects the predator-prey relationships between different species.

I learned that animals are flexible creatures and they can adapt to their surroundings but the plant species can’t.  The temperature and amount of soil are affected, making the plants migrate to more appropriate places.  People are worried that these plants won’t be able to adapt quickly enough for the animals that feed on them.  The beneficiaries from these plants may go extinct along with the plants themselves.  Its impossible to tell if an entire species can become extinct but predictions about how species adjust to global warming have been made.

•  Bats will do fine because they can fly and the warmer climate will enable them to live more spread out throughout the United States.
• Mice species will not do great because they cannot migrate as easily.
• Larger mammals, hoofed mammals such as deer and antelope species will be able to migrate.

If animals lose they’re cultural role, agriculture may be negatively effected.  For example, spiders and grasshoppers develop at the same rate and around the same time so spiders can keep up with the grasshoppers as they’re prey but with climate change happening, the development rate might go out of sync.  If plants died in a highly populated moose area, all of the moose would die and so would the wolves preying on the moose.  You can come up with cost-effective ways to manage a forest that are not harmful to the economy.

I e-mailed Professor Schmitz, commenting on how much I loved his podcast.

“As a class assignment, we were all to choose a podcast that would teach us something and write a blog post about what we heard.  I decided to listen to your “Global Warming and Species Distribution” podcast from Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.  I have always been interested in the environment and that’s what drew me in to listen to it.

I thoroughly enjoyed your podcast.  It was very informative and I had never realized the impact global warming had on so many species.  It was good to hear that some people actually do care.  After listening to your podcast, I learned so many new things that I can now share with my classmates.”

  My iTunes didn’t want to play it for me so I had to go to Yale’s website to listen to the podcast.

Click on the picture to go to the Podcast Page.  If the picture link does not work, click here.

Scariest Night Ever

Okay, well Saturday night was possibly one of the scariest nights ever for me.  Most of you will think its hilarious, but I never will, trust me.

It was my grandma’s birthday and so we threw her a party at my house.  When it got dark, my best friend and I went out back to start a fire for everyone to sit around.  We must have spent a good two hours trying to get a decent fire started and at this point we were playing around burning cardboard.  I was laying on my stomach on the grass while my friend lit up some more cardboard.  I decided it was time to call in for some back-up and find someone that could tell us what to do.  I started to flip through my address book on my phone when I noticed a massive, black, hairy spider slowly crawling up my arm.  That second, I screamed bloody murder, tore of my jacket and started freaking out (i.e. jumping up and down while screaming and waving my arms).  My friend couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me so she started screaming, too.  By the time we ran up onto the deck I was in tears and once we were in the kitchen I was hyperventilating.  My mom spent a good fifteen minutes trying to calm me down so I could explain to her what happened.  She thought it was hilariou but made my dad go and retrieve my jacket and phone which I had left outside.  I made him look over the coat a million times and put it through the wash before I would touch it again.  Yes, I have a gigantic fear of spiders or any creepy-crawlies.  But no lie, this spider was obnoxiously huge.

Blogging Style: Life Blogging

Lost and Found

 I was looking through some of the New Zealand students’ blogs and I found I post that really got me thinking.

Which Is More Lasting: Lost or Found?

I thought about this for a long while, and commented the kid back.  So I decided I would expand on my original thoughts.

I’m still unsure which is more lasting: lost or found.  I’m still “riding the fence.” Once you lose something, it can be found just as easily as it is to lose again.  But time heals everything whether someone close to you passes away or an item is lost.  Even a memory or thought will soon fade.  If you lose someone, sure it will last forever because that person is never coming back but eventually the pain with subside.  If you find something, you will have it forever and have it close to your heart and memory.  It’s a hard decision to make, but someday you might have to.

Blog Style: Response Blogging

My Greatest Dream

What are the greatest obstacles to the fulfillment of my dreams and goals?

My greatest dream right now at this very moment is to get into a Prepatory High School such as Choate or Deerfield Academy.  I want to go because I believe that I should test my own limits and challenge myself.  Thus, I do anything it takes to succeed at attending a school that will get me into a great college.  There are a few problems with getting what I want.

The first is my intelligence.  I think that I am smart enough to score high on the SSAT (test to get into a private school) and be accepted into a school of my choice, but of course my perspectives can be something entirely different than that of the Dean of Admissions.  I would also have to prove myself as a good enough ‘character’ at an interview with an Admissions Interviewer.

The biggest obstacle would be financial.  My family isn’t exactly filthy rich so I wouldn’t be able to buy my way into a school, not that I would want to.  I would want to earn everything but even if I did and I didn’t get a scholarship, I wouldn’t be able to go because college tuition is more important than high school tuition to my family.