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I use charcoal and pastel because that was the tool recommended. Also, in the Figure Drawing I want to make the drawing as big as I can read because I want it to look realistic. I want to make the colors in the back lighter and then darker. I want to make it that way because I want to be able to see the changes as I outline more of the body. In the Clear Object Drawing, I want to make the drawing have the effects of the light as in the model. So, I want to make outline of the model and then, the lighter parts compared to the darker parts. 

I would say that I do a lot of smudging, but I also do keep some of the lines. I want to compare the new lines to the old lines because I want to make sure that I get it as close as I can get it. I am exploring different materials and the different effects they have on the drawing. It is very challenging in the Figure Drawing to get the drawing to look like the model as much as possible. 

My role in the larger food system as of now is the consumer I would like to become an active consumer. And what I mean by active consumer I that to get more involved in knows in about what I’m eating as well as was it came from. I see the biggest problem in the food system to be the food testing companies. Because after watching Food Inc I noticed that if the food testing companies start testing food correctly less people would get sick and harmful food products wont even make it to the shelves of stores.

After watching Food Inc. and reading several items would like to change my diet but it would be extremely hard because I’m’ already used to process unhealthy foods. But if I were to change my diet I’d try eating thing that didn’t have a lot of corn or products in them as well as try to buy the mostly organic food. 

Jazzy Jambalaya

Ingredients

2 Tbsp Vegetable Oil

2 Tbsp Flour

1 Green Pepper (chopped)

1 Medium Onion (chopped)

1 Garlic Clove (miced)

1 ½ Cup of Vegetable Juice

1Pkg 14 oz Smoked Turkey Sausage (Thinly sliced)

1 Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast (one inch chunks)

¼ Tsp Ground Black Pepper

¼ Tsp Salt

1/8 Tsp Ground Red Pepper

Hot Cooked Rice

Directions

Cook and stir oil and flour in large skillet on medium-high heat for 2 minutes until golden brown. Add green pepper, onion, and garlic. Cook and stir for 2 minutes until vegetables start to soften. Stir in juice, turkey sausage, chicken and spices. Bring to boil; cover. Reduce heat; simmer for 10 minutes until chicken is cooker through, stirring occasionally. Serve over rice. (Makes 4 servings)

The ingredients I used in my dish were green peppers, onion, garlic, vegetable juice, turkey sausage, and chicken breast. The percentage of my ingredients was processed was 40% which was the chicken breast and the turkey sausage. The other 60% was whole foods. There was 12 grams total fain the chicken breast and 4 grams of fat in the turkey sausage. As fro the vegetable juice there was 0 grams of fat. There were also o grams of fat for the green pepper, onion as well as the garlic. The vegetables and vegetable juice would probably sit best with the stomach and are the healthiest of the six ingredients.

The meal itself is a great nutrious meal its something that everyone can eat. And doest has a lot of processed ingriendtss. But the cost of the ingriends to prepare the meal would scare some families away because it cost about 25 dollars for the indriens and it only makes 4 servings. As far was the food actually cam from I’m not sure. I pretty sure the vegetables came from a farm close by because I bought them from a produce junction. But as far as the meats are concerned I think they were raised in one of the farms we see in the Food Inc. movie.

·       The beginning of this assignment started off fairly easily. We were tasked with explaining the history behind a bill of our choice. Any bill. But of course, Lauf suggested it would be easier on us to choose one linked to our lobbying topic. Knowing gay rights were a high profile topic and that they wouldn't hide any information I thought it was in my best interest to link my two topics. The first bill I found when I did research on gay rights was the Defense of Marriage Act or DOMA.

The process wasn’t as hard as I seemed to make it in the bginning. Because of the other benchmarks I had been assigned I got a late start on the bill project but when we had to meet our first deadline (initial research) I found out quickly just how easy it was to find information about my bill. It was controversial, so there was no lack of info to be found.

It was an interesting story to tell, from inception to creation, but there was more to it than just the history. Originally I wanted to do a documentary but as I gathered more and more information, I kept imagining things that I wanted my presentation to include that I simply couldn’t show in a documentary. I settled on a prezi because it’s a program I work well with and can make even the simplest statements engaging to the viewer.

In the end I think my project turned out fairly well. Its far from boring and I put into the story than just the history. I would only change the outcome of it if I had more time. Given the right amount of time I would do something like a cross between prezi and documentary which is what I had planned in the beginning. 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/06/29/lgbt-pride-month-white-house

http://www.metroweekly.com/poliglot/2010/07/federal-court-rules-doma-viola.html 

http://www.baywindows.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=glbt&sc2=news&sc3=&id=107807

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/03/04/boehner-launches-effort-defend-gay-marriage-ban/ 

http://whitehouse.blogs.cnn.com/2011/02/23/attorney-general-declares-doma-unconstitutional/

http://web.archive.org/web/20050208184130/http://www.advocate.com/html/stories/824/824_clinton_710.asp 

http://www.aegis.com/News/WB/2004/WB040631.html

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/1996/roll316.xml 

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/02/gay-marriage.html

http://www.ncsl.org/default.aspx?tabid=16430 

http://www.lectlaw.com/files/leg23.htm

http://www.domawatch.org/about/federaldoma.html 

http://blogcritics.org/politics/article/how-doma-was-born-a-history/

http://www.glad.org/uploads/docs/publications/doma-short-history.pdf 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_XqMIY-dy0

• Explain your decision making for choosing the bill.
  While choosing a bill for the project, I thought about doing something that actually affected me or my family in a way. Since my parents are immigrants, I chose to do this project on immigration. Not only it affects my family but it affects a good amount of U.S population. 
• Why did you choose the particular presentation format?
  In my opinion I think choosing Keynote as a format is a reliable way to teach anyone about something you want to teach them. 
• What challenges did you overcome in completing the project?
  At first I chose the Chinese Exclusion Act, since it's a old law I couldn't find the legislation process. Therefore I chose a recent law and did my project on both of them. 
• How would you do the project differently if you had to do it over again?
  I would pick a different law that affects teenagers and also make a movie type of presentation. 
• What did the research and investigation tell you about the creation process... from idea to bill to law?
  One thing I learned is that ideas can become law in a heart beat but at the same time some ideas can take a long time just to go through that process and not all makes it. 
• Was the process easier or harder than you imagined based on your particular bill/law research?
  I think it's a hard process because it involves a lot of debate and movement at different places. 

• Explain your decision making for choosing the bill.
  -I chose the DOMA bill because I knew that there was always a lot of controversy involving this law. A mass population is effected by what they can and can't do to show love for their partner. I also wanted to see what major names put the bill into law and their perspectives on it then and now.   
  
  
• Why did you choose the particular presentation format?
  -I picked a video format because Keynote Slide Shows and certain forms of presentation were already made. So I wanted to try a sort of News/ Documentary video. Instead of keeping it boring with 5 minutes of me talking in one video, I tried to change the frames for each sentence to keep the viewers attention while I move around the screen and keeping a verbal flow. 
  
   
• What challenges did you overcome in completing the project?
  -Other than other people doing the same bill as me the only challenge was to make something different than the others. 
  
  
• How would you do the project differently if you had to do it over again?
  -I would have a different set up for my scenes, different location, better camera/ audio, and to become more fluent with my speech. 
  
  
• What did the research and investigation tell you about the creation process... from idea to bill to law?
  -As I researched I couldn't find legit websites for DOMA but I slightly referenced Wikipedia and their resources for finding my information. There was not much clarification about this act but I managed to complete the essential details for the history of the bill.  
  
  
• Was the process easier or harder than you imagined based on your particular bill/law research?
  -It was a little challenging at first but I came up with the idea of how I was gonna present this. Then it flowed together into my final production of The History of DOMA.  

I chose my bill because I wanted to go into a non-concrete bill. The bill was based around Reagan's "War on Drugs" so I thought it'd be interesting. Also, drugs in the U.S. is a huge problem and I wanted to investigate the U.S.'s first step in stopping the drug problem. I chose the presentation format of a timeline because I wanted the audience to be able to see the time perspective and how long each step took to become completed. The only challenge I had was finding good information on my topic because of how long ago it occurred. But, I had a good website that told me a lot of information, which was the point at which I overcame my challenge. If I had to do the project over again I wouldn't do anything differently because I am completely satisfied with the final project. The research and investigation aspects showed me a lot about the creation process. I used a site that literally told me every step behind the bill and how the name of the act even changed once it was signed by the President. But, it is very interesting to see how many amendments go into the bill when its still going through the House and Senate. The process was not harder than I imagined, the only difficulty came in finding the information and doing the research, but I used a great site that showed me everything I needed in order to put together a solid project. 

As a railfan, I wanted to focus on a bill that affected Amtrak or rail transportation. As such, I decided to research the failed Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2007/2008. Since the information would revolve around the bill's movement, I decided to make a Prezi such that it would be easy to visualize how a bill goes through the process of becoming a law. The most challenging portion of this project was researching the factors that influenced the bills movement throughout congress. However, once it was completed, it was easy to present and design the Prezi.

If I were to re-create the project, I would probably want to incorporate multiple bills such that it would be easy to understand how bills can take different paths throughout congress. This would better allow me to present the information regarding the bill creation process. The process itself, while very intricate and with multiple steps, is rather simple in that one idea gets presented, researched, debated, drafted, budgeted, sent to the other portion of congress, at which point the system repeats itself. This long process makes it easy for congresspeople and the president to prevent a bill from becoming a law. However, the measures in place to override nay votes and vetoes allows for the government to go forth and pass legislation when a large majority of the persons agree.

• Explain your decision making for choosing the bill.

• Why did you choose the particular presentation format?

• What challenges did you overcome in completing the project?

• How would you do the project differently if you had to do it over again

• What did the research and investigation tell you about the creation process... from idea to bill to law?

• Was the process easier or harder than you imagined based on your particular bill/law research?