Darlenny, James, Alan, and Jahan

21 December 2018

The Road Creative Project (Humanity)

Synopsis:

In the game, each player is a survivor who ended up stranded in an island. Since there are a limited number of resources for everyone on the island, there is going to be a lot of acts of camaraderie and betrayal. Luckily this is all fated to happen by God himself. Whoever has the most humanity and/or food is destined to win by God’s will.  

Rules/Instructions:

Humanity is a game about choices. Your choices decide on whether you win or lose the game. There are 2-4 players in Humanity. Each player can choose which mode of transportation represents them.

At the beginning of the game, you start off with five humanity points and five food points. When you land on a square with a symbol on it, you must draw a card that contains that symbol. If the card tells you to do something, you must follow what the card says.

Card Types:

Scenario: With this card, you get to options. One option might lower your humanity while getting food. The other option might lower your humanity but lose your food.

Hazard: This card means something has happened in your travels. You might lose food or something worse.

Blessing: You are being blessed. God is watching you and your travels. This card will always have a positive impact on the player.

Sanity: Sanity can affect you in weird ways. Always keep track of them! You never know what's going to happen on one of these cards.

Other Features:

Roadblocks: Each player can setup 1 roadblock per game for the cost of 3 humanity point When another player passes an owned roadblock the owner of that roadblock can then take 3 food from that player for the price of 1 humanity point.

When starting the game, roll a dice to see who goes first. Once that is over, the person who rolled the highest number will start first and will start in a clockwise direction. Each player then picks an item that they want to represent them as they travel in the game.

You start the game with 10 humanity points and 10 cans of food. Make sure to keep track of your points as you play the game.

At the end of the game, you tally up all of your points. There are two ways for the game to end: reaching the end of the board and running out of food before reaching the end of the board. When a person loses all of his or her food points, he or she cannot play the game anymore due to starvation and has to put away all of his or her humanity points back into the pile. The game ends when everyone is no longer able to play the game. Once that happens, the humanity points and food points will be added up to get the player’s overall score. The player with the highest score wins the game.

Points:

Humanity: Humanity points are essentially the player’s consciousness. In the game, players will lose or gain their humanity based on their choices from the cards. When a player does not have any human points whatsoever, he or she will essentially lose his or her consciousness, but the player will still be alive if he or she still has food points. At the end of the game, each humanity point you have left is worth 1.5 points to your score.

Food: Food points are points that are essential to the player’s survival. He or she can gain or lose food points depending on the card he or she chooses. Since there are cards that incentivize players to take away players to take away food points from other players, this can cause people to lose food points. When a player loses all of his or her food points, he or she will die and cannot participate in the game. For every can of food you obtain, you add one point to your score.

Rationale:

We decided to base our game off of Snakes and Ladders because of its origins. Although it is unknown who created the game and when the game was created, it is widely believed that Saint Gyandev created the game (known as Moksha Patam) around the thirteenth century to teach children about morality and karma and kama (destiny and desire). Even though we did not add snakes and ladders to our board, we decided to incorporate roadblocks in order to encourage the player to make decisions similar to how the man and the boy have to make decisions essential to survival.

Although The Road is about a man and a boy following a road, there are bumps and obstacles along the way such as facing the weather conditions, encountering cannibals numerous times, and confronting a looter. As a result of that, we decided to make our board game curvy rather than linear. By making our board curvy, we emphasized the nonlinear path the man and the boy take in the book. Regardless of the circumstances, the man and the boy are able to progress. Because of this progression, we decided not to add snakes to our game since it would contradict this idea by having players regress.

For the pieces players can use in the game, we settled on different modes of transportation. As for the environment in the game’s lore, we decided on making it an island since it would emphasize the peculiarity people would experience in a mysterious world like The Road. To make the island have a feeling of danger to it, we decided to add roadblocks that would prohibit players from passing without making a decision. Although our game is about players who are stranded on an island, we did not choose to represent the different modes of transportation as tools players can use to traverse the map. Instead, we chose to have them represent the items the players would carry similar to how the boy would carry a toy truck with him.  

We decided to have two different types of points for our point system: humanity and food. In the book, these two aspects help define the man and the boy. For instance, when it comes to humanity, every character displays their qualities and flaws. The man shows how selfless he can be towards the boy, but he also shows his colder side through the act of murdering people with the boy around. As for the boy, he shows compassion towards other people, but he also pressures the man to save others despite the man’s struggle to keep them both alive. By having humanity points, the player can gain or lose his or her humanity throughout the game.

Along with humanity points, we chose to incorporate food points into the game to reflect the protagonists’ need for consumption. Throughout the book, there are many moments where the narrator mentions food. Without food, the man and the boy would die from starvation. In a world that has a scarcity of food, the notion of starvation can be reflected by the main characters’ lean appearance. Because of the necessity of food in The Road, we decided to make a rule that emphasizes it through food points. If the player no longer has any food points left, he or she dies and cannot play the game anymore.  

As for the cards, we based them off of the cards from Monopoly. In Monopoly, besides property cards, there are two types of cards players would receive when they step on that tile: community chest and chance cards. Since this game does not involve money, we decided to have four types of cards that would match the situations in The Road like hazard, blessing, scenario, and sanity cards. Although hazard and sanity cards seem to be similar from one another, we decided to separate them into different categories because of the slight differences between them. For example, hazard cards involve situations where the player is facing situations that could be fatal while sanity cards involve situations that would degrade the player’s mentality or actions a player would do because of his or her mentality. From situations like the boy witnessing a cooked human infant and the man receiving a shot from an arrow, we believe hazard and sanity cards would help reflect the nature of the book well.

In contrast to the hazard and sanity cards, there are blessing cards. Even though the world the man and the boy live in can be gray, we decided to add blessing cards because of the good moments in the book such as when the man and the boy encounter a bunker with plenty of supplies. In addition to that, we decided to call these types of cards “blessing cards” because of the man’s faith in God. When a player receives a blessing card, would only gain humanity points and/or food points rather than losing them. From that, the player is able to have more of a chance of winning the game. With blessing cards, we believe these cards can help give some relief to the players when they stumble upon these cards.

Even with sanity, blessing, hazard cards, there are events in the story that are not related to any of them. Because of that, we made scenario cards that would reflect other moments in the book that are not entirely hazardous, traumatic, and blissful. For instance, we included the time when the protagonists encounter Ely by adding a scenario card where it states that the player that he or she gave food to an old man. With the scenario cards, we think it can help show the ambiguity in The Road. However, even with ambiguity, we still want to include other motifs that might contradict it such as faith.

Since faith is reflected heavily in the book, we chose to contribute it to our game’s lore. In our board game, we want to mention God and how he determines who would be the winner and the choices the players make because of the man’s belief in fate. For example, the man believes that he has been chosen by God to protect the boy at all cost. With this mindset, the man is inclined to protect the boy even if he kills others in doing so. Although it can be argued that the man is destined to kill others to protect the boy, this skews the belief that the man is entirely a good person since the act of murder is usually seen as an awful act to commit. In our game, we want to emphasize ambiguity. By having the idea of a winner being determined by God, it creates a feeling of faith similar to the man’s faith in God; however, it comes at a cost of loss.

Because there are some cards that require the player to choose someone to take away humanity and food points from, there are times where players are bound to have conflicts with one another. Even though it might make the game a bit challenging to play with other people, we want to show how people in The Road stumble upon conflicts at times because of contrasting perspectives. For instance, there is a moment where the man and the boy argue over the outcome of the looter; the man believes killing the looter is right while the boy condemns the man’s act. Similarly, when a player chooses another player to take away points from, the person losing points will probably have a different perspective of the situation than the one taking his or her points away. In a world with scarcity like The Road, this creates competition between the players.

Cards:

Our Board:

Darlenny Rodriguez

English 2

The Obesity Epidemic: What's Causing it?

Obesity has become a rapidly increasing issue in America, with more than one third of adults being obese. This is an issue because of the serious health problems it can lead to. They range from gallbladder disease, strokes, diabetes, and many other diseases. Many things can factor into the cause of obesity, such as non sedentary living, but one of the leading causes is processed food.  In a country where the majority of the food is process, obesity has become inevitable.

Processed foods are foods that are commercially prepared foods that aim to ease consumption, usually foods that have already been prepared. Shape.com highlights the different levels of processed foods and its negative impact on the human body. According to their article ¨Why Ultra-Processed Foods = Obesity¨, there are three levels of processed foods, minimal, semi, and ultra processed. They highlight the issues of ultra processing, stating ¨they tend to be calorie packed per bite, readily available, often super-sized, and heavily marketed; which all add up to overeating by throwing off our normal appetite, hunger and satiety mechanisms.¨  Food that doesn’t provide people with the needed nutrition might make them feel full but soon you will be hungry again because their body will be asking for nutrients. This becomes a process, which becomes harder to break after it is made a habit. Processed foods may seem great at first, but slowly they are harming the human body and their consumption should be minimalized.

Another reason why processed foods should be considered the leading cause of obesity in America is because of how accessible and marketed they are. Big companies are mass producing unhealthy items, ignoring the negative effects it has on people's health. Myfoodandhappiness.com speaks about this in an article explaining the correlation between obesity and processed foods. They state ¨They [processed food] are created to allure you, excite you and addict you to become a consumer of their product. The food companies’ goal, just like any other company, is to make more money. The way they do it is by designing products with a perfected taste with the help of people that have been hired to serve the role of guinea pigs.¨ Unlike many healthier foods, processed foods prioritize making money over keeping americans healthy. In addition to this, they are extremely easy to obtain. Restaurants, supermarkets, etc. are all around and many companies make them extremely affordable. These foods are marketed in a way to appeal to the general public, because of how easy it is to get them, making processed foods the main cause in obesity .

Obesity has became a bug issue in America due to the severe health problems it can cause. Many factors play into this, such as people not getting enough exercise, or genetics, but processes foods and its tactics that make you want them are reasons why the obesity epidemic should be blamed on processed foods.

1. editors, shape.com. “Why Ultra-Processed Foods = Obesity.” Shape Magazine, Shape Magazine, 25 July 2013, www.shape.com/blogs/weight-loss-coach/why-ultra-processed-foods-obesity.

2. Kriner, Matthew C., and Monika. “Processed Food and Why Is It the Main Cause of Obesity.” My Food & Happiness, 16 May 2017, www.myfoodandhappiness.com/processed-food-and-why-is-it-the-main-cause-of-obesity/.

This marking period in art, we worked on many different assignments. These included: Blind Contouring, Adding Color to Blind Contour, Make a Painting, Recreate a Piece of Art, Illustrate a Piece of Writing and Edit a Photo.

The first two assignments went hand in hand. We had to close our eyes and draw something without lifting the pencil from off of the table. We then ad to color those same drawings. This was my favorite piece from this quarter, it was fun and relaxing in a way. A few of the things I drew were a stuffed animal, a basketball player and a telescope.

The next assignment was Make a Painting. We had to create anything we wanted to, we just had to paint it. I decided to paint the Dominican Republic flag, since that is where I am from. I used the colors red white and blue because those are the colors of the flag, and also used green for the leaves on the flag. I painted the letters in gold.

Next, was Recreate a piece of Art. I recreated a painting based off of ¨El Dia De Los Muertos¨, ¨Day of the Dead¨. Painting the background of this piece was fun. I mixed colors like green, yellow and brown all together. The Painting was two skeletons(a couple) which goes with the entire theme of the day of the dead in Mexico.

After that assignment came the Illustrating a piece of writing. The piece of writing I chose was an album by my favorite spanish artist Ozuna, his album was named ¨Odisea¨. The The used paint to raw the album color which included a brown stuffed bear in a hoodie, with his name in the hoodie and his album logo in black on the top.

The last Assignment of the year was photo editing. I took two pictures and used an app to edit it. I added filters and played around with things such as enhancements.

Overall, this marking period in art I drew a lot of inspiration from my life and my identity. For instance, My flag represents where I am from and the illustrate a piece of writing represents my taste in music.

In 1986, Lehigh University freshman Jeanne Clery was raped and murdered in her dorm room. Her parents, realizing the lack of standards for campus crime reporting during that time period, funded the Jeanne Clery act. This act  requires any public or private college or university to report any crime that occurs on campus. Unfortunately, this act has has the opposite of the intended effect. Since the Clery act was passed, schools have been failing to report any incidents of sexual assault on campus, because they only care about protecting their own reputations more than the safety of their students. As a result, they are suppressing students into being scared to share their experiences with the authorities.

The entire system of handling rape cases is corrupt at several  universities and colleges. A documentary by CNN, The Hunting Ground, follows many of these critical issues students are faced with when deciding to speak out about an incident that happened to them. The expose mainly follows two students, Andrea Pino and Annie Clark, who were both victims of sexual assault on campus. In the film, the two students speak about how the school officials neglected to take their pleas for help into consideration and instead advised them to not say anything at all, specifically not to report the incident to the authorities. In the film, Ms. Clark recounts the moments of her sexual assault and how she went weeks before finally deciding to speak up, after hearing another one of her classmates were assaulted as well. She says “ I told this administrator I was violently raped and were sitting down at this point and she looks at me and shoe goes ‘rape is like a football game Annie, and if you look back on the game, what would you do differently in that situation.”  Annie then goes on to speak about how she was expecting resources and support and instead the faculty gave her a metaphor referencing football. Ms Clark, like many other victims all across the Unites states, were discouraged from speaking up.  If victims of sexual assault on campus cannot rely on the school to aid them, they will not be able to trust that if they speak up and that their situation will be handled properly, hence they become discouraged. In fact, The Hunting Ground’s research also claims that the 88 percent of women raped on campus do not report it.   Students are feeling ashamed and hopeless instead of feeling empowered to speak up and share their story, and this is all rooted from the universities sweeping issues under the rug and trying to convince students to do the same.

Even when victims do report crimes against them, there have been hundred of sexual assault on campus cases that have been mishandled by school professionals. For instance, that of Kamilah Willingham case. She was a harvard law student who was sexually assaulted on campus in her dorm room, after a night out with her two friends, one of those friends being Brandon Winston, her alleged offender. After bringing her case to her school officials, a mock trial was held at the university, to see if Mr. Winston was to be held accountable. In an interview Kamilah Willingham did with democracynow.org recounting those moments in the makeshift courtroom at Harvard Law school, she states “and then 19 of my Harvard law professors publicly defended him and did much of what we see happening in this case, bringing the attention to the perpetrator as the, quote-unquote, “real victim” in this case.” When students see cases like Ms. Willingham's, they will feel nothing but discouragement. Seeing how Harvard reacted to Kamilah's case can make students believe that if they were to share their story the same thing would happen to them. They start to believe that teachers aren't going to help, but are going to look out for the best interest of the school.

In the end, Jeanne Clery’s offender was sentenced to death. She may have gotten justice, but there many girls like her who were not as fortunate as her.  School officials are discouraging taking action against sexual assault to keep their crime numbers artificially low, protecting their image and encouraging students to continue to apply to their school. Students in high school need to know this information to know how to protect themselves from situations that can put them in harm's way, and if they are ever faced with predicaments as such, they must know how to handle it properly themselves, because students cannot always rely of people in higher authorities for help.  

Work CIted “The Hunting Ground .” The Hunting Ground Film , www.thehuntinggroundfilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/The-Hunting-Ground-Action-Toolkit_8.31.15.pdf. “As 13M People Read Stanford Victim’s Letter, Advocates See “Watershed” Moment in Fight Against Rape.” Democracy Now!, www.democracynow.org/2016/6/9/as_13m_people_read_stanford_victims.

Macbeth Rationale

The two people in our group are Darlenny Rodriguez and Lilly Roman.The project we decided on was to “disneyfy” Macbeth. We wanted to take Disney songs and remixed them to form a new twist on Macbeth.  One of our songs included “Can You Feel The Betrayal Tonight” or better known as “Can You Feel The Love Tonight”.  We decided to this because we wanted to make a project that not only the audience will love, but what we would love making. Disney is a classic point that everyone can relate and understand. Not only can it help you understand Macbeth better, but it also brings this Scottish Tragedy in a creative and funny way. After all that, it makes blood and murder something fun to listen to, in a weird and twisted way, that is. After deciding to “disney-fy” our dear Macbeth, we sketched out our calendar, who was responsible for what (90% of which was collaboration anyways), and how/where we would do our work. Had we done this project again, I think we would’ve kept things the same for the most part. We worked together very well and got the things that needed to be accomplished, done in a relatively organized manner. Although, a couple things we could improve on would have to be out audio for the songs. The recordings are clear, but they are a bit hard to understand only because at times we were either singing too low or too high and the app did not allow us to fix that problem. At times we found our self re-recording songs over and over again to get it just right. Our songs can be found here!!!!

As far as the album cover goes, that was an idea that, sadly, we cannot take credit for. So that being said, I believe we would like to thank Mrs. Giknis for suggesting to do so. Though we wanted to create our songs, we were not quite sure what we would be handing in exactly. She suggested that we could create a vinyl-ish cover and put the lyrics on the back. We instantly took a liking to the idea and decided to go with that. However, later down the road, we decided to record the songs online instead and we would post those digitally on canvas, but still, we took the album idea to heart and decided not to part with it. Instead we would put the names of the songs on the album and turn the rest in digitally. What we used to record is called Ujam, a website Darlenny had found. After making an account, we were able to edit and save the songs to the website. We agreed that we would then share the link to the songs on canvas. Ujam was very easy to use and even though we aren’t exactly the “best” singers in the whole world (especially because one of us isn't a singer at all) we are very proud of our work and out tons of effort went into making this and not making people's ears explode.

One thing that was really tough getting through were the lyrics. At times we were able to finish a song on the spot, but at times the lyrics were off with the music and it because a mouth full to say at a time and we needed to find the perfect ones, that also matched Macbeth. Lilly was a huge help when it came to the lyrics, she was boosting with excitement when it came to songs we were going to use and ended picking amazing songs. The lyrics can be found here. Overall, this project was a complete success!

Our Process

The following are pictures of our process such as the app we used to record and Lilly design of the album cover