When brainstorming ideas for this project, I started to think about how climate change affects me and I came to the conclusion that the reason I check the weather each morning is to decide what to wear that day. I moved from San Francisco to Eugene and my biggest fear was not being able to adjust my wardrobe to the weather. Whenever I go on vacation, I spend roughly three weeks researching past weather patterns of the location I’m going to so that I can pack accordingly. I wish that was an exaggeration, but yes, I’m that neurotic.

So, I tried to think of a way to connect my vision of the future after climate change to my interests and I decided to write a fashion/lifestyle blog set in 2094. I created Samantha Balcorn: age 26, Portland resident and a magazine editor. Because of the melting icecaps from the north, I’ve set Portland to now be a beach town. In the posts, I depict a scenarios such as how humans eat, be entertained, communicate, etc.

My goal of this project was to give a hopeful outlook on what can happen after climate change. As I’ve expressed in previous posts and during class time, I truly believe that everything will be OK. The world has experienced catastrophes of all calibers – natural disasters, social injustice, financial failures – and we’re still living our lives well. The human race has been able to evolve and adapt over the course of its existence, and will continue to do so. Sure, there will be struggle in the midst of this change, but I don’t think that it will be the end.

Contine reading →

My only other encounter with climate change in school was sixth grade in my science lecture. We were shown Al Gore’s documentary titled An Inconvenient Truth. I don’t remember too much about the documentary, except that I was left with the question: Why is he spending so much money and gas by traveling? He’s using private jets and limos to get everywhere, yet preaching about saving energy and gas in order to reduce our carbon footprint.

Well, I went home and explained my day to my mom, including that we were shown this documentary. She is a lawyer, and therefore she loves a good argument. She’s also a conservative, so she doesn’t have the nicest things to say about Al Gore. At the time, 2006, she believed that climate change was not manmade at all. So, she emailed my school and told them that they needed to show the other side of this controversial topic. It being my first year in middle school, I was so incredibly embarrassed that she did this and I think I didn’t talk to her for a day or two.

Looking back on that instance, I realize that, firstly, I was a brat. And secondly, I realized that I respect what she did, despite being embarrassed (which, I had no right to be because I doubt that my friends would have found out). Regardless of the “right” or “wrong” stance on climate change, children need to be informed on both sides of a topic before forming an accurate opinion about what they believe in.

Contine reading →

I have to admit that if I weren’t getting extra credit for going to see Amy Goodman speak, I wouldn’t have gone. And when I realized that she wasn’t even attending the event herself, her speech was pre-recorded from New York, I felt like this was a huge waste of my time. Why should I be here if the keynote speaker isn’t even here, herself?

Well, my frustration was quickly shot down and I felt guilty about those thoughts real quickly. Amy said that, first of all, she was busy being a successful climate change activist (understandable), and secondly, she didn’t use any fossil fuel to get here. She touched on how amazing it is that she can connect so personally with the people in this small town of Eugene from New York City, almost 3,000 miles away.

Anyway, she began to speak about the extreme weather conditions in the North East and how much media coverage it’s receiving. Which is great for promoting climate change, except for the fact that no one is mentioning climate change. The mass amounts of snow in New York, Massachusetts, etc. is the topic of countless conversations around the nation, and even the globe, but they aren’t leading to any solutions or call for reform. All it takes is for someone in the media to show the science of how humans are affecting these weather conditions and it will facilitate numerous necessary climate change conversations. Contine reading →

I’ve been doing the PR for a project called Booklandia, and would love the help from some of you, my classmates.

A group of students from the SOJC have spent the term producing short interviews of people of all ages talking about books. One of my personal favorite videos is an elderly woman in her 80s who has a list of almost every single book that she’s ever read. She spoke about these books with such passion; it was extremely inspiring to see the impact of literature on someone – and for such a long period of time in their life.

We’re looking for a group of people to discuss the same book for a segment called “Book Club,” and the video producers were so excited to hear about what we’ve been doing in ENG 104. If anyone is interested in being interviewed for this project, please, please let me know! The interview shouldn’t take more than 15-20 minutes, and you would be on camera with 3-4 others.

The launch date for Booklandia is April 6, 2015, but in the meantime, you can check out the trailer and a behind the scenes video here.

Thank you all!

I recently watched the Oscar-winning film The Imitation Game and found myself comparing it to Odds Against Tomorrow, particularly the two main characters, Mitchell Zukor and Alan Turing.

For those of you not familiar with the movie, it depicts the story of Alan Turing’s time working for the British government during WWII. He was an amazing mathematician and was given the task to break “Enigma,” the German translator that accounted for all the communication on that side of the war zone. Alan’s intelligence comes with common characteristics of not completely understanding social skills, living in one’s own world, etc. While watching the film, I felt like I was seeing Mitchell Zukor on the screen.

The two characters are both obsessed with problems; they both live for finding and fantasizing about all sorts of problems and isolate themselves from others because of this character trait. The correlation between their intelligence and social skills is interesting to think about. What does an IQ number really tell about a person? Can one be either smart or social, not both? What effect does this obsession with problems and disaster have on a person’s social skills?

I think that both stories addresses the last question with the development of the main characters. Mitchell has this obsession with disaster including the odds that an event will occur, the impact of the event, etc. Alan is obsessed with problems – almost any type. His Commander mentions the Enigma and that it “isn’t difficult, it’s impossible.” Alan responds with, “Good. Let me try and we’ll know for sure, won’t we?” Alan eventually does solve the Enigma.

Both the characters seem to be hiding something behind their odd obsessions. In Mitchell’s case, he has an underlying fear of death, which really leads to a fear of living. An example of this is his first apartment. His parents were the driving force in his search for a new apartment, which lets the readers believe that he wouldn’t have moved without that push. Another example, which shows his unwillingness to experience new things, is the Korean food phase. While it is impulsive and unlike him to try a new food, he only ever tries that new food for weeks. He switches restaurants, but still eats the same exact dish, prepared the same exact way. This very specific routine shows that he is scared of change.

In Alan’s case, he uses problems to avoid dealing with his internal issues and he uses his intelligence as an excuse to be rude and arrogant to people. Also, once he solves the problem that he’s working on, he searches for or creates a new one. For example, when he and his team decoded the Enigma, he couldn’t celebrate because he seemed to find something missing from the equation. He came to the conclusion that the Germans would know that the Enigma is solved and that Alan’s hard work would have gone to waste, so he wouldn’t allow his team to tell anyone where the next attacks would be, despite one of his teammates having a family member on the ship that the Germans were planning to attack. It seems as though Alan uses problems to avoid living, just like Mitchell does.

I was able to make new observations about both characters because of my reading and watching the stories at the same time. The correlations between the characters despite the major differences between both plots – the fact that one is set in the future, one is set in the past – shows that this type of character can exist in any environment.