Faces of the World

Assignment number 22- Faces of the World

Part A- Globalization

Globalization is when a group of people from different parts of the world of all different races, cultures and beliefs unite to have a bigger population and economy in areas such as trade.

Part B- One would go about making these average faces by taking a bunch of different pictures of faces (usually from the same city or region) and overlap them on top of each other (if you've ever used photoshop it's pretty much the same layering technique) to make one blended face. One time (sorry personal story here) I went on this website where you upload a photo of yourself and it gives you a bunch of faces of celebrities that look like you and you can blend your face together with theirs. I got mostly asian models as my result. However, I also got Alfonso Ribeiro (Carlton from Fresh Prince) who I look nothing like so I'm not sure how accurate it really is. There's another really weird website that girls who are obsessed over actors and other celebrities go on where you can combine your face or an a celebrities face with another celebrities face and it makes a baby. The baby is always freakish looking.

Part C-

1. I decided to click on the city Lima (like in Glee!) and I found it interesting how the average male and female faces looked almost identical. I noticed the same thing in most of the other cities I clicked on.

2. One of the cities I clicked on was Amsterdam and I noticed all the random little rainbows in the corner of people photos (the middle one) that the other cities did not have. I read the stuff underneath the pictures and it said that Amsterdam had a reputation for tolerance being a hippie city in the 70's-80's and is accepting of people of all ethnic groups and sexual orientations (were the rainbows suppose to be gay pride flags?) I don't know, my curiosity got the best of me.

3. I went to the poster section of the website and I clicked on Sydney because it's a relatively multicultural city. It showed some of the faces that they used for the average. They had white, black, asian, south asian (brown) and whatever other races in between going into making one face. I suppose that is why most of the faces are generally the same colour.

For the fun of it I will answer two of Miss Pollock's bracket questions:

What does "the face of tomorrow" mean? I'm assuming that the face of tomorrow means that in the future everyone will have those blended, average faces because people of all different races are starting families with people of different races of themselves. I heard that eventually blondes and blue eyed people will become extinct because it is rare that two blondes will have a baby together and if someone with brown eyes and someone with blue eyes have a baby the child will likely have brown eyes rather than blue.

Why do the differences in our faces give us a sense of identity? No two faces are exactly the same so essentially everyone's face is unique. If someone has--for example--a slightly pointed nose, a large bottom lip or one eye slightly larger than the other then they will have a memorable feature that people think of when they think of that person. Our differences in faces, like in everything else, help to identify others.

Part D- Once it finally finished loading this is the picture I received for my result (below). The pictures I combined to receive this were a white female, a white male, a black female, a black male, an asian male and female (probably chinese) and a brown man and women (maybe from India). Those seem to be the four dominant races and the ones you see mostly so in the face of the future they may all be blended into one unique face.

Okay, I lied I didn't just combine those faces I also threw a redhead into the mix. Apparently being born with red hair isn't always genetic it can be randomized. That is why even though blondes will one day be extinct, redheads will most likely not... I think. However, the average human of the future will probably not be a red head because they are only 1% of the world's population.

Speaking of 1%, only one percent of the world's population is intersex but I decided to make my average face a combination of men and women to represent the entire population rather than only half by picking one gender. I think the face looks more like a female. That could have something to do with the fact that women are an XX chromosome and men are XY. If there was YY, men would probably look more masculine. If you look at a guy closely you can usually see a female face underneath but not really the other way around. It's probably just because I put 5 females and 4 males, I should have found another red headed man.

My face of tomorrow

History Fair Reflection (4321)

4- The 4 most interesting things you learned about your topic while researching.

1. I learned that even though most of the things women did for beauty in the Victorian era were disgusting, many things women do today are very similar and just as sad and gross such as, spray tanning, real tanning, plastic surgery, botox and eating disorders.

2. I found out about bloodletting which was a thing barbers used to do since they were also doctors. They would cut your actual head or neck and release blood for some sort of health reason. That is why barber shops have that bar with blue and red stripes which symbolize a vein and an artery and also bloody bandages.

3. I learned a very interesting fact about what women did for acne in the Victorian era. They put vaginal discharge on their pimples and apparently it would go away overnight. I didn't include this on my poster but I mentioned it to a few curious judges.

4. I learned that the first form of condoms were made of animal bladders and intestines...eww! In the Victorian Era condoms weren't used that much through because people only had monogamous sex and only did so when wanting to conceive. A friend of mine that I met at Dare 2 Stand Out told me that sex being a taboo subject started in the Victorian Era, I wonder if any of the stuff I researched could have anything to do with that.

3- Three things you felt proud of on the day of the fair.

1. I felt very proud of having everything accomplished on time. At the beginning when I was researching for the History Fair I was stressing big time because I didn't think I would finish on time and I didn't like my topic and I thought I could never come close to the quality of last year's project. When Miss Pollock told me that she thought my project this year was even better than last year's it helped to give me the confidence to get everything done and be proud of my work.

2. I feel very proud to have been chosen as a "judging minion" for the French History Fair. I was exhausted by the end of the day (2 period of gofer-ing as a minion, 2 periods of standing and then the beep test!) but I think helping out was really fun, it made me feel good and it was awesome to see the french fair.

3. I felt extremely proud when I was presenting to the judges because I was very confident and clear while I was speaking and I was able to answer all the questions that were asked by the judges and spectators with a large amount of knowledge behind them.

2- Two specific researching or presenting techniques that were helpful to make your project so wonderful.

1. I decided to incorporate some questions in my speech which I found to be very effective. Even if the listener didn't answer my questions it still made them intrigued and feel like they were a part of the project.

2. I think pointing to different parts of my project (such as the advertisements on the poster and the 3D aid) really helped to enhance my speech and make everything flow and fit together beautifully.

1- One suggesting to make the History Fair next year even better.

1. I think next year we should have time after where the participants can go and look at other people's projects. I was suppose to have three judges so I waited at my project throughout the whole English fair for the third judge (who didn't show up). I really enjoyed going to see all the French student's projects and I think it would have been good if we were allowed say, 10 minutes to leave our projects and go looks at other people's.

Sketches Discussion #4.5

Hello everyone! Special welcome to Karran, Andrianna, Arianna, Haneen, Melissa and Sara!

This week Haneen and myself are both the discussion leaders! We decided to split it and both make a question, so also make sure to check out her blog. I'm pretty sure her question is related to section four and mine is a question for everything we've read in Sketches so far. Man was section four good! Sketches is covering a lot of interesting topics and it's probably one of my favourite books. My question is...

If you could pick a theme song for the book what song would it be? If possible, link to the song. Tell us which part of the song or which particular lyrics made you think of and relate to Sketches.

Enjoy!

How to change your privacy settings

Facebook Privacy Video

Readers Response A (Sketches)

I am in the group Reading "Sketches" by: Eric Walters.

This is my first Readers Response, or Readers Response A.

Question 1: Copy down a quote from a character and explain why you think it's meaningful. What does it suggest about this character's personality? Personal qualities? Etc. Explain your thinking.

The quote I chose was, "I'd rather have smokes than food." Brent said it on page 21, paragraph 7. It was the quote that made me think the most and that is why I chose it. I think this quote is meaningful because it shows that if a starving street kid would rather have cigarettes than food then smoking must be very addictive. I think it's so sad that so many homeless people are addicted to smoking because it takes out a large chunk of their money and there are many health concerns around smoking and most street kids (mostly in the states) can't afford healthcare. I think Brent is probably trying to get off all other drugs--which are even more expensive--so he got really addicted to smoking so he could wind off of other drugs. Fortunately Ashley threatened him so he doesn't seem to have a problem with other drugs anymore. I don't think the fact that Brent smokes suggests anything about Brent's personality, other than the fact that more people might know he is "Street" but based on what we know about his appearance it's not hard to guess. I think the fact that he has a drug problem makes him more interesting of a character because it makes him seem more realistic. I wonder if he smoked before he was on the streets or if it was after he was on the streets because he wanted some sort of pleasure and a way to deal with stress and then he got addicted.

Question 2: What were your feelings and first impressions after reading the opening chapters of this book? Explain.

When I first starting reading the book it wasn't an insane page turner but I still wanted to keep reading. I found the beginning a little bit predictable, but it does still have mystery. I like the fact that Eric Walters decided to not tell us right away how and when Brent ended up on the streets (although I'm dying to find out) and what exactly Dana's step-father did to make her leave home. Even though the characters don't have many personality traits so far I still felt emotion towards them all. I felt like I could relate a lot to Dana, I felt a strong dislike towards Ashley (she is growing on me now though) and I felt like Brent would make a good friend and like I mentioned before, he seems very real. I found this to be a spectacular book for discussing. I could go on and on with this book and after reading 46 comments (between both discussions) so far I think most people would agree with me. I am looking forward to seeing what will happen next for Ashley, Brent and Dana.

Assignment #19- If I had $100

Hello, hello! I'm very sorry that I haven't been posting on my blog much lately. I finally finished my 41 page portfolio for Canterbury (I had to stay up till 3 ante meridiem)! Anyways, we have this cool assignment where we have to research 4 charities (Oxfam, World Vision, Plan and Salvation Army) and pretend that we have $100 to spend on ethical gifts for these orginizations. We also have to option of picking charitable orginizations different from the 4 above. I did some research on these orginizations. Although Salvation Army probably had some of the best prices (Only $40 for a goat!) I found them to not have as many gift options and I don't completely agree with their missions and values--this has nothing to do with religion or Christianity I just don't want to be supporting an orginization that I do fully agree with--so I chose to not use any of my money toward Salvation Army. World vision had some great gifts and a large variety but most of their gift had much higher prices than the others. For example, it was $100 for a goat compared to $58 at Oxfam. One thing I found better at World Vision though is it's $50 for a whole community of children to have birth certificates whereas at Plan it's $25 for just one child! All in all I found Oxfam to have the overall best selection of gifts prices and mission statement (or the thing in the About section). I noticed that all four of the orinizations had animals that you could buy for human use so I decided to look for other charities that do the opposite and protect the animals rights. I decided to research the Humane Society and WWF and see if they had ways that you could sponsor an animal. The Humane Society had a lot of stuff to do with actually adopting an animal such as a cat or dog rather than an exotic animal that you sponsor. WWF (World Wildlife Fund) had a really cool thing where you pay money to sponsor an animal and they send you a picture of the animal you are sponsoring as well as a stuffed toy version of your animal. I chose to purchase a polar bear because they are a Canadian animal and are highly endangered at the moment. Sponsoring this animal will ensure that the polar bear is cared for, fed, healthy, etc. With my remaining money I decided to look at Oxfam for some gifts because like I said above; I prefer them over the other three. I ended up choosing to plant 50 trees that will provide fruit, shade and oxygen to a community as well as a radio to provide information on health, education and local news to different parts of the world. For my remaining 25 dollars I went to Plan Canada. It was a big toss up between Art and Play therapy in Haiti and Birth Certificate. In the end I chose Art and Play therapy because after such a horrible earthquake children really deserve the right to play and have creativity in their lives and it is also a way to heal from the tragedies they may have faced.

So here are all my purchases:

Sponsoring a polar bear ($25)

Planting 50 trees ($35)

Radio ($15)

Art and Play therapy in Haiti ($25)

25+35+15+25= $100!!!!

There was one thing that I was trying to look into that they started a bit ago in the UK and New York. It's through Street Pianos and is called "Play me, I'm yours". What they do is put pianos is Parks so that anybody can play them. It gives people who cannot afford instrument a chance to play and it adds a creative vibe/atmosphere to the parks which I assume makes people happier. I couldn't find a way to pay for a piano (even if I could it would be more than $100) or a cheaper way that I would pay for someone to maintain the piano or a cover for the piano. Perhaps I will look into that on a later date if it still interests me.

I wasn't as excited about this assignment as I was others but I have to say this is probably one of if not my favourite assignment so far. I just wish we actually had $100 to use for this assignment!

For more information, click on the links:

Street Pianos

WWF sponsor an animal

Oxfam: radio

Oxfam: Plant 50 trees

Plan: Art and Play therapy in Haiti