Category: Uncategorized

One major strength of my TED Talk is my use of the slides. I strived to put a lot of effort into the slides and how they connect into the overall story I was trying to convey, the strongest slide as definitely the first which painted the picture of American being a society so blinded by religion that science was in the background. I showed this through the image of Adam and Eve with a picture of the American flag on top and a scientific picture stuck way in the background barely visible. On top of this, I think my hand motions helped to make it easier for the reader to learn the layers and intricacies of the shift that I was explaining, I come from a Jersey Shore Italian family so these come as second nature for me. As a whole I think my speech was strong but there are always some areas a man can improve upon, for me probably slowing down a little bit.

3 Ideas:

Columbus Day: Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer sailing for Spain who was credited for discovering America even though the Vikings had years prior, and he landed in the Carribean, he eventually enslaved tons of people and led to the demise of all native populations, he is viewed as a hero and Italian Icon.

Abolish change: What is the point of pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters besides to play games on the boardwalk, most people when receiving an odd number of change just tell the cashier to keep it or end up throwing it in a cup holder in their car.

Solar Powered Vehicles: electric cars are becoming ever so popular but why have we not looked to make said cars powered by solar? Probably due to the pushback from big oil companies.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the nephew of assassinated president John F. Kennedy and the new Governmental Head of the Health Department appointed by President Trump. One of RFK Jr’s major ideas to bring to the country is to ban ultra-processed foods and other chemicals, this would have a profound impact on the health of our country in the greatest ways imaginable.

It’s no secret the United States is known as the most obese and unhealthy country, ask anyone European, they always say how giant our portions are compared to their country, and they are right. I had the privilege to travel to eight European nations. I was feeling a little homesick in Amsterdam and decided what’s more American than good ole fashioned McDonalds. Due to laws in the Netherlands, chemicals found in Big Mac’s and Fries are banned there, I found this out when I got my order and instead of being a gross comfort food it tasted like it was fresh and made from an actual barbecue. Not only did it taste better, but you feel much better after.

People who live off the grid must be self-sufficient in their food production which leads to the fact that they have no unnecessary chemicals since its all grown, and hunted right off the land, this does make the food spoil faster which is dangerous in some situations but it makes up for the fact that it won’t ruin every aspect of your body and physique.

Music is something that’s good for the soul no secret about that, personally I average an absurd number of minutes on Spotify and am in the top 0.0001% of Mac DeMarco listeners. Everyone knows music has vibes, beach music is like Bob Marley and other island songs, summer as a whole is more of a country or house music vibe and then winter is Deftones or other grungier tracks btu when you think of a person living off the grid in nature what songs do you think of? Maybe you imagine just the noise of birds and the run of the river which is therapeutic in its own right.

The music I think of is the Grateful Dead, there’s a reason for this. There is the saying that goes “the apple does not fall far from the tree” and I truly believe in that statement for the soul reason that I see my parents in myself. My father lived off the grid, driving his VW Bus across the country to North Dakota where he camped out for some time. What music did he listen to during this time? Well, a lot of stuff but mostly a lot of the Grateful Dead. I grew up not only on this music but on this premonition that this vibe of music is tied to living not just off the grid but free. Personally, I do not think that I am living as free as my father did and I hope one day I can strive for the feeling I crave. My father’s influence on me ties the Grateful Dead to the idea of living freely off the grid, but it also showed me that living off the grid is more than just being self-sufficient in nature, it is being free, responsible for only yourself in your world, and I think that is a feeling we all need.

Yes, you’d be right in saying this Blog was a little all over the place and hard to follow, but that’s the beauty in writing, everyone views it differently, the most important part is how can you stay and eat healthy in college? Well, I try to avoid seed oils, so that means it’s going to be a little more than just eating at Fresco in the dining hall, the best way is buying cheaper meat form target and a bottle of olive oil, you can use spices if you want and do not feel self-conscious cooking in the lobby. Feeling free in college is something that I do not know if I can answer, I truly do not feel free, but I know I need to be here to eventually be granted my wish, do not let others dictate your decisions, be you, that’s the only thing you can do in our society today because some things are just out of your control due to the fallacy that is the dollar bill.

 

References:

RFK Jr.

Health

Farming

Grateful Dead

 

The industrial revolution is something we all look upon as extremely favorable and changing the world in the best way possible but did it really. Theordore Kaczynski is someone who questioned the industrial revolution for its effect on the working-class people, putting aside his intensely radical views and actions (he was the Unabomber) there are some solid ideals found in his manifesto.

The major downfall of the industrial revolution is that it eventually led to the total destruction of personal freedoms, enveloping everyone in what we know of today as the rat race. The more society became dependent on technology, the more it lost the ability to live independently. While pre-industrial societies required people to engage directly with nature (farming, hunting, and labor), the Industrial Revolution created a system that severed these direct connections. People, instead of being masters of their own lives, were forced into roles as mere consumers and workers within complex systems of control and surveillance with people above them barking down orders.

As people flocked to cities in search of work, they became further removed from nature. This urban shift is far from a sign of progress but as a signal of humanity’s descent into an artificial, mechanized existence. Urban centers, create a sterile and suffocating environment where human beings lived in overcrowded, unhealthy conditions, cut off from the rhythms of the natural beautified world.

The relentless pursuit of industrial growth led to the exploitation of natural resources without regard for long-term sustainability. As someone who majors in ERM (Environmental Resource Management) it is abundantly clear to me and others within the field that the raping of our planet needs to halt at once. There is a finite amount of some of the most important things in this world, and we have abused them for too long.

One of critic’s central ideas is the concept of technological determinism, the idea that technology was not just a neutral tool but a force that shaped and directed society. The more technology advanced, the more it shaped the course of human civilization in ways that individuals or even entire societies could not control, moreover, technology has such a deep grasp on us that without it we are completely lost.

Technological progress has become a runaway train, an irreversible process that could not be slowed or reversed by political reforms or social movements. As machines and computers become more advanced, they lead to the automation of more and more aspects of life, leaving fewer and fewer opportunities for people to make meaningful decisions about how they lived. Since the ball ahs started rolling on advancement, any human who says lets stop getting better at this is viewed as crazy because we as a society are so hungry for more knowledge and such.

As college students, how can we implement Kaczynski’s more sound ideals into our lives, for starters, we can develop habitats in which we do not rely on technology. Realize that sometimes it is better to do things on your own, learn to cut wood and start a fire, or learn to make yourself a meal without the use of an online recipe. It may seem simply but seeking human connection and using your instinct to learn something helps defy the reliance on technology that we have formed.

 

Scopes Trial

Theory of Evolution

Charles Darwin

Derivation of the Theory

American Religion

Today, Evolution in American schools

The sourced listed above helped me grasp a broader sense on the shift of the public perception on evolution and the theories regarding it in American society. From prior knowledge (APUSH) I had known a little about the trial of John Scopes, known as the Scopes or Monkey Trial, and how it had a profound impact on aiding to remove religion form school practices. Though, I was unfamiliar with the fact that it also had a profound impact on bringing Darwin’s theories of evolution and natural selection to light in the United States. The sources helped aid my arguments as they bestowed upon me great information about how Darwin’s theories caught on much faster and easier in Europe, and through the long, fight and trial in The United States, the theories were eventually able to assimilate with religion and become commonplace in schools today.

TED Talk – Google Slides

TED Talk

Green urbanization is the development of urban areas like cities with a greater emphasis on sustainability and environmental conservation. This approach also known as urban re-wilding has a profound impact on the life of citizens within the cities as they can experience a greater quality of life due to a majority of factors.

Air quality is something that effects all of our lives, this past summer, fires in Canada lead to extremely hazardous conditions where I am from, leading to even schools closing. Green urbanization offers the inclusion of plants and trees to the concrete jungles we are so “fond” of, leading to an immense increase of air quality leading to greater health of the inhabitants.

Biodiversity is a growing area of study in the world today and refers to the variety of species and fauna found in an area. Prior to the urbanization of these areas, they were normal forests, heck, New York City and Manhattan Island were a swamp and wetland before the Dutch arrived. As the human virus spread across these virgin lands the animals retreated farther into the frontier leaving behind their homelands. Re-wilding of these areas can lead to species and fauna returning helping to increase population numbers and curve extinction efforts.

The heat, something we love and dread at the same time, the world is getting hotter, that’s no question. Cities like New York have been experiencing the hottest temperatures in years and the large black tarmacs and giant buildings attracting ultraviolet radiation are no help. The addition of trees and other plants into these urban settings can act as a barrier attracting and taking in sunlight to help mitigate the heat induction of the buildings and ground.

Green spaces are a phenomenon appearing in cities around the world in cities that are sections full of plants and animals acting as a little oasis within the complexity of the skyscrapers. It is not secret nature has an immense calming effect; these areas allow people to unwind and escape society within the bounds of their life. A great example of a green space is Central Park in New York City, a giant protected stretch that allows for people to feel as though they are in their own little forest.

Nowadays all people care about is property values, no one wants to buy a house that they know will depreciate in value as the neighborhood around it crumples. Green amenities make a place more desirable for families to move into as well as making neighborhoods seem a lot safer as a whole.

Now, as college students at Penn State, we are pretty blessed when it comes to green infrastructure, walking around campus there are trees and plants everywhere, it would be a challenge to go so far without seeing a squirrel. Other students are not so lucky, for an example, my girlfriend is a student at Ohio State (the worst school ever), she has to deal with higher temperatures, worse air quality, worse looking streets, and more dangerous people all due to the fact that Columbus is an extremely environmentally challenged city. To mask this, she can try and find the few parks that exist in the city, but it truly is a challenge.

As a whole, green urbanization and re-wilding is a growing field that will definitely become more apparent in the near future.

Sources:

Re-wilding

Green

Urbanization

“Should we eat bugs?” Is a TED Talk from Emma Bryce that highlights the public perception of entomophagy or consumption of bugs and how it shifted from normal to foreign over time.

Bryce constructs her speech through the use of a timeline highlighting times on history when consumption on insects was seen as normal such as when humans were nomadic all the way up to the ancient Greeks and Romans who consumes larvae as a delicacy. Bryce compares this time to current times where more urban parts of the world have shifted their view of insects being pests, she attributed this view to a key event of when farming gains popularity insects would ravage the crops which is when they began to be views as pests.

Bryce again makes a modern-day connection when she talks about shrimp and lobster which are similar in genetic makeup to insects and seen as the bugs of the sea. Though this similarity is prevalent lobster and shrimp are seen as a delicacy in our society today.

The speaker uses to PowerPoint to show images of insects that would be consumed by humans in the past and ties those imaged into pictures we today would view as disgusting pests. This TED Talk shows the shift in public perception which is what I would want to show in my TED Talk about the shift in peoples view on political candidates due to conspiracy theories with the major event being Hillary Clinton’s “body count.” After the conspiracy about Clinton, people started to allow these theories to dictate their vote, for instance, there are the Hunter Biden laptops and even the claims from Trump of a stolen election. Or, I can also take the angle on how conspiracy theories shifted the publics trust in the government, starting with JFK’s assassination then going to RFK’s death from the CIA then to the fake moon landing (which truly was fake).

This TED Talk allowed me to see an exceptional use of time and visuals to really get the paradigm shift across while also staying appealing to a greater group of individuals within the audience in the setting.

TED TALK

Sustainability has become of utter importance in our world today. The average carbon footprint for an individual within the world is four tons but, an average American has a much greater carbon footprint than that. It is no secret that the United States has one of the highest emission and carbon release rates in the world. As environmental awareness becomes prevalent within our society the sensible person wants to think of ways, they can lower their emissions and carbon footprint. Moving off the grid is the greatest way to reduce the effects of global warming but also the most extreme, people off the grid can harness renewable sources of electricity, adopt more sustainable practices, and thus, in hand, decrease their reliance on fossil fuels. Adopting this lifestyle can help not only the country but the world reaches its new sustainability goal.

One major way that off-grid living helps to reduce an individual’s carbon footprint is through renewable energy sources. Other than relying on energy derived from fossil fuels like coal, almost all of the off the grid households utilize alternative energy methods such as solar, wind, or waterpower. Solar panels, first used by people living out of bounds of normal electricity grids, have now started to become commonplace in suburban and urban areas of the country, thus, decreasing carbon emissions as a whole.

In 2020 alone, electricity creation created about 25% of the total United States greenhouse gas emissions, with the majority coming from combustion due to fossil fuels. Off-grid homes that use renewable energy avoid contributing to this sector’s emissions. Not only does this reduce their individual carbon footprint, but when adopted on a larger scale, it can significantly help in lowering the country’s overall carbon emissions.

Waste has become a growing problem within not only out country hut the world. No one likes to see a giant landfill popping up in their backyard but that is the reality for more and more Americans each year. on top of this, it’s becoming commonplace now for people to learn about the country sized island of plastic floating in the Pacific Ocean, it has become one of if not the saddest sight to see on this very planet. Now, what does living far from society in your own retreat have to do with waste? Like I said, no one wants to see landfill on their lawn, when you are off the grid on your own your waste is on you, which makes people more inclines to utilize practices such as composting, recycling, or even just simply reusing containers and such.

Now, as a college student, how can I lower my carbon footprint, its simple, do the little things. Living in dorms we do not pay our electricity bill or water bill but that’s no excuse to leave the lights or gadgets on when you are away from the room. On top of this, avoiding plastic containers and adopting glass or reusable metal containers can help put the cherry on top of your lower emissions. As a whole, as college students, we have a debt to pay not only to our institutions but to our world as it is our future to inherent, these practices will not be a burden on your life but just take maybe an extra three minutes to clean that bottle once a week, all in all, be sustainable as best as you can, because you’ll be the one to reap the reward or eat the issue.

Carbon Footprint

Sustainability

Waste