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Benny was a beast today. 

​Science

3.8 billion years ago, the Earth was mostly ocean. And that ocean was populated by billions of tiny archaea and bacteria. That was life. Life stayed like that for 2 billion years. These prokaryotes existed in an “energy canyon” they did not have the energy to get bigger and more complicated, and the only way they could develop the mechanisms to get bigger and more complicated, they would need energy. It’s a paradox. So for 2 billion years, nothing really changed, and there was no reason life wouldn’t continue like that for billions of more years. But one day, complicated, diverse life began to develop. The theory as to how this miracle happened is as follows. An archaean (a bigger single celled organism) and a bacterium (a smaller organism) are floating along, and they happen to bump into each other. Improbably, impossibly, the two cells merge. The bacterium, now stuck inside a bigger cell, should struggle to survive. It shouldn’t be able to eat, or live, or reproduce. The larger cell should protest, should excrete the imposter bacterium. But that didn’t happen. Very improbably, very impossibly, the bacteria, called a mitochondria, survived. The big cell fed it, allowed it to reproduce, built mechanisms to keep the growing population alive. 

You might be wondering, but where did the energy for this growth come from? What about that energy canyon. The answer is across the cell membrane of the mitochondria. They are a special type of cell that produces a large electric charge across its membrane. It’s an electric charge equivalent to a bolt of lighting. So it grew, and diversified, and made proteins and DNA and organelles, it reproduces and spread, and over the next 1.8 billion years that 2 cell merge evolved into all the complex, eukaryotic life on Earth today. 

Society

Based on this theory, the story in the Book of Genesis of Adam and Eve, of two things coming together and creating life, doesn’t seem that far from evolutionary biology. If Genesis is, as many Christian scientists believe, a romanization of reality, then this theory of evolution might fit into the Bible. 

The other societal implication that arises from this theory is the possibility of alien life. Because of the pure improbability of how complicated life came to be, it’s statistically very unlikely that this could have happened anywhere else, no matter the vastness of the universe. However, it is not that unlikely that we could find bacteria roaming the surface of far away planets. But alas, no E.T.

Self

Inside of myself, there are mitochondria and DNA remnant of that original merge. If you look hard enough, you can see how I am related to the origins of life. 

Sources

Abumrad, J. (Producer). (2016, April 6). Radiolab [Audio podcast]. Retrieved From http://www.radiolab.org/story/cellmates/ 

Rosen, J. (2015, October 19). Scientists may have found the earliest evidence of life on Earth. Science Magazine. doi:10.1126/science.aad4732

Brom, R. H. (2004, August 10). Adam, Eve, and Evolution. Retrieved April 19, 2016, from http://www.catholic.com/tracts/adam-eve-and-evolution  

A true pitcher's duel unfolded in a scorcher on Monday with two undefeated teams battling for sole possession of first place in B-Division. The game only saw seven hits in total between the two teams thanks to dominant pitching from both aces. While Kensington's Matos held the Rocket's bats in check for most of the game it was Leon Finney at his most dominant to date that truly sealed the deal. 

The Science Leadership Academy won Division II of the Hip Hop on Pop Tourney in Oaks, PA on Sunday with four straight wins to take the day! The boys started their day with a 13-5 win over Barrack Hebrew Academy. The first game saw the team start slowly, winning half 7-4 before going on 6-1 run to win the game. SLA started slowly in their second game, going down 2-0 to Cardinal O'Hara before raising their level of play. Sophomore Saamir Baker led the team with some of his most inspired offensive play as a Rocket. SLA took half 7-4 in that game, and won 13-6. SLA played their most complete game in their third game, beating Strath Haven 13-2 to set up a finals match up against the host school - Perkiomen Valley.

My ILP is wonderful. It is a great learning experience for me. I learn about different ways of rehabilitation in post-op animals or injured animals. I learned about the history of acupuncture and the benefits of it. There is also a sense of family at my ILP because I see the patients weekly and everyone is comfortable. 

I am not an art person. Seriously the last time I did anything similar to any of this, I was probably 11. So, personally, all of this is really difficult for me. Art isn't expressed mathematically, it cannot be calculated, and there is no clear answer as to what is right and what is wrong. It is also extremely difficult to personally be able to tell if what I create is worth anything or not. I guess the best thing for me was watercolors, because I made Star Trek space art, which was really exciting. 

My ilp is going very well so far. I have helped a lot of kids learn to row. I am enjoying it a lot.

This quarter has been pretty fun! Its started off rough because this time we had two art history's. But I understand why she did it like that. My favorite piece of art would be the mosaic piece. At first I thought that we would be using pieces of glass. But when we asked Mrs. Hull, she said we were using construction paper. For my mosaic piece, I did a purple octopus, because purple is my favorite color. This project brought back memories of when I used to do mosaic pieces in elementary school. My second favorite was the water color!. I absolutely love love love to water color. But what I didn't know was that there was different ways you could water color. I only thought who ever you get the paint on there is how it's done. To know that there are names for different techniques was pretty cool. For my water color pieces I did a combination of 4 pieces split into two. I got one whole piece of paper and split it in half. Next I taped the two half pieces in another half to create four different sections. I split it up like that because I did not want to do four big pieces.

For Quarter 3, I decided to do art that reflected me. All my pieces mean something special to me, from my drawings to my colorings also. From doing the difference assignments, I learned that art can be very fun and is not as hard as people thought. Taking a basic shape and turning it into something we can all recognize is cool. 

Quarter three of art this year was definitely a journey. There were ups and downs in and out of art, for me at least. Third quarter being the longest and most stressful made sitting down and taking the time to draw very difficult for us. But at the end of the day, everyone pulled through. This quarter, like the past two began with some art history. We answered a couple questions based on a text that we read and then we moved on to a lesson about abstract art. I created the head of a pharaoh made out of diamonds and triangles. I thought this would be a different and more urban take on abstract art. Next we moved on to advanced coloring. I drew a main character from one of the best selling fighting game franchises to date: Tekken. Once I got the sketch of him down, I decided to not use many colors. I brung out his gloves and his left eye because those are the features that stand out about him the most. The next drawing of the quarter was another self portrait. While I went for a more realistic drawing this time, I tried to focus more on the clothes that was on me. I scratched out features of my face because I wanted people to focus on the picture as a whole. After this we learned about value and the black and white gradient. We were asked to create a drawing of something with round ends so that we can give it a 3D look using value. I chose to draw a ball and I made the light come from the top right corner. The next assignment was about basic shapes. This was the hardest for me because I usually just hop right into a drawing. I decided to TRY and draw a teddy bear by drawing the shaped that made it before hand and then doing the same but adding detail. The final was animal shapes and I decided to draw my first dog, Kayto. He was named after the Green Hornet's sidekick, Kato. He was a beagle puppy. Unfortunately we had to give him away when we moved later that year. 

In my 3rd quarter  blog post i have an assortment of my best works over the few months. My self portrait is of me as a baby while my other works are more modern and resent. The first thing i completed was the advances coloring, i have three different characters the first being Lavi the second soul eater and finally my own version of posiden. The next thing we did was basic shapes. With a perfict transition we then did animal shapes and value. Thank you for looking at my blog post bye. 

This  Quarter I wanted to concentrate on just my drawing skills and a little of shading. This was a  little out of my comfort zone, which is good. I got to draw animals and a self portrait, which were the hardest things for me to draw. Hope you enjoy!

This portfolio is a collection of my artwork for this quarter and it represents my skill and hard work and effort through out this quarter as well as how I have grown as an artist over these past few quarters and most of this year. This quarters portfolio consists of several drawings that include coloring, finessing skills in shading and using basic shapes to draw complex figures, and as well as a self portrait. We also continued learning more about art history and different techniques that very famous, very important, and iconic artists used in their work. 

This quarter was one of the tougher quarters for art this year. In it were about nine different assignments. Many required close attention and others research, and a few both. This quarter I believed I completed decent artwork, however I was not very sharp on getting everything in on time.