Michael Thayres Public Feed
Michael Thayres Capstone
My capstone was about the participation levels of CAD in SLA's engineering department. I went on a school year long personal seminar for teaching myself CAD (computer aided drafting) relevant to machinery in the engineering room. My hope is that this might be used to give those who are interested a boost when they start. I quit several times due to how much there was to learn and how unguided the process felt. My goal is to lower the chances of that happening with students in the future by offering the methods and outlooks I used as I learned. I try to do this in a way that is inviting and accessible as possible.
Food I guess
Baked Ham
Ingredients:
Brown Sugar
Ginger Ale
Pineapple
Maraschino Cherries
Cloves
So my family doesn't really keep specific recipes. I guess that's just how we function, recipes have never really been written down and then shared. You just kinda make food or order it. But even though they're not written down, we still make food by some basic guideline. The only thing I can remember at the moment (since cooking is kind of a spur of the moment thing for my family, on both sides, which feels odd) is ham. When we bake a ham we generally have some mix of brown sugar and ginger ale that get's poured over the ham, and then in the pan the ham bakes in. The ham is placed on a rack over it, and every now and then you put more on it from the bottom of the pan. The pineapple and cherries get placed directly on the ham by pinning them with cloves. Maybe this is common, maybe it's not, who knows. Either way, the ham comes out slightly sweet from all of the sweet things around, and the skin/rind/whatever is normally almost glazed. It's pretty good I guess
So most of it is processed. We get the pineapples from a can and the maraschino cherries are pretty much just junk food. The ham itself obviously had to come from a pig, cloves are just a plant, and ginger ale is soda. Brown sugar is also processed. Cloves are just dried, so it's probably the least processed thing, while the cherries are the most. It's not hard to make, it's pretty easy to be honest. A lot of steps was taken to get the ham where it is at the end where it's eaten, and it's probably not efficient, but it tastes pretty good.
MMA and Head Trauma
As a society, we love sports. Sports make billions of dollars every year, so they’re certainly not going anywhere. What’s less discussed about sports than say a game winning homerun, or who’s going to be performing at the superbowl, are the long term health detriments to players. Mixed Martial Arts is not an exception to sports in that it can cause long term head trauma to those who participate. Football players, Ice Hockey players, Boxers, and even Baseball players have all had concussions, and especially in the case of football, this is accepted as mostly normal. More recently people have started to take notice of the long term effects of this head trauma, looking at football players who are now suffering from it and occasionally fighters from different combat sports. Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy is degenerative brain disease that affects the memory, speech, and emotions of those who have it. Symptoms include memory loss, slurred speech, explosive behavior and depression.
This also says something about us as a society that we are aware of this in sports and still a good portion of us love to watch sunday night football and gamble in fantasy leagues. People are literally being paid millions of dollars to give themselves brain damage and sell tickets, merchandise, and advertise. That’s not to say we all think that this is ok, but even if we don’t think it’s ok are we going to stop watching football, or boxing, or UFC events? Most people don’t, and I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.
People that fight in the UFC signed a contract to fight in the UFC and be televised, that was 100% their choice. Almost all fighters don’t regret this either, they were doing what they loved for a living and that made it worth it to them. So should we feel guilty for watching it on live TV? Maybe, but I’m not going to let that get in the way of my love for MMA or Muay Thai, or any other sport for that matter. I’m not forcing people to fight in the UFC, so I’m not going to act responsible for the consequences.
Cusimano, Michael D. Hutchinson, Michael D. Lawrence, David W. Schweizer, Tom A. Mar 21, 2014. Head Trauma in Mixed Martial Arts. Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education, University of Toronto. Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Hutchinson, Michael. Jan 10, 2016 Opinion: The Harsh Reality of knockouts, concussions, and fighter health. Bloody Elbow.
McKee, A C. July, 2009 What is CTE? Department of Neurology, Boston University School of Medicine. Boston Massachusetts.
Podcast Michael Thayres
My main goal with this podcast is to show how someones outlook can change with the experiences they have, and how this impacts identity. My brother who has had his fair share of setbacks at one point had a pretty optimistic view on life, but now it's more realistic. He dreams less, just wants to get to a point where he's independent. The work was actually getting him to say something interesting during the recording, which was more difficult than I thought it would be.
I definitely learned a little bit about what it's like to deal with interviews and try and get interesting material from people. Since my brother was very indifferent about his answers (and I was also interrupted by my cat more than once) it was hard to get a story arc, or even anything interesting at all from him. He seemed like he just didn't have much thought at all put into the topic. So that's kind of the tone of the podcast. He's indifferent, and this is likely due to how his experiences changed his identity, whether he acknowledges that or not.
Advanced Essay #3 - Michael Thayres
Most of us have been in a position at some point in our lives where we’re nervous, and someone tells us, “just be yourself,” as if it is so simple as to just do it. But it’s almost never that clear. It’s more than likely that there is something in the way of that, whether you haven’t had enough time to develop those ideas clearly, or you’re being influenced by something else outside of the current scenario. Bottom line, you are being influenced by something else in your life. From the start, from the moment you’re born.
After all, the only point of reference you have in life is what you perceive. In the words of Emile Durkheim, “Man is only a moral being because he lives in society, since morality consists in solidarity with the group, and varies according to that solidarity. Cause all social life to vanish, and moral life would vanish at the same time, having no object to cling to.” So the conclusions that you make about yourself and your identity are always influenced by something. Thandie Newton talks a lot about, “The self”, or in this context self identity, in her TED talk. I kept waiting for some evidence to back up all the claims she was making, because many of them had serious implications about human nature and were spoken so matter of factly, but I was never given any.
That’s not to say I disagreed with everything either, she talks about the function of self identity in society and communication, but in general, she spoke about the self and “oneness” as if they were concrete. Fact. But the way she describes, it’s hardly concrete. I’ll admit a lot of the claims I will make in this essay are opinions, and are completely debatable. She was being more idealistic than anything. But, I don’t disagree with that.
Even if the things she was saying didn’t have a solid base, they make sense in the way that they can be used to better yourself, and give someone satisfaction over who you have chosen to be and the choices you have made in life. Even if you never will get to a 100% uninfluenced self identity, that doesn’t mean trying to won’t help. Even though having 100% self identity won’t be realized, it makes sense as an ideal. A good example of this is Muhammad Ali, who before he converted to Islam was named Cassius Clay.
He says, “I am America. I am the part you won't recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used to me.” Is he 100% free of society’s influence? No. And I don’t believe anyone or anything ever will be. But he is certainly deciding for himself, and taking at least some control of his self identity. He won’t get there, but that doesn’t mean that chasing after it is a pointless endeavor. He has control in some way, and from his perspective, he bettered himself. He was presumably happier in life than he was with the name Cassius Clay and even know that isn’t uninfluenced, it payed to off to chase it. Just because something isn’t realistic doesn’t mean it’s not worth chasing.
Michael's Advanced Essay #2
Intro: Mainly I wanted to focus on how language at it's core is just communication. There is no reason, in my opinion that someone should be considered illiterate if they can get through daily life, or the life the want to live, with how much of any language they know. If it's enough, and it works, it should be considered literate because you have fulfilled the main purpose of learning a language.
https://vimeo.com/147284663
“But for a language to remain, it must be used.” Literacy often is seen as and accepted as, without much thought on the topic, as the ability to read and write. What people define as literacy affects things like immigration policy, school curriculum, and public opinion of people. But language itself is just communication. It may be convenient to learn english and it may make life and other things easier for you, and open you to new opportunities and possibilities in your life. It is valued to speak english, but not speaking and knowing how to read and write english isn’t necessarily being illiterate.
Because the purpose of learning language to communicate. Any form of communication, as long as it can be understood, is valid as literacy. Maybe some positions require a higher level of understanding of the english language. Take for example, a position at a company that writes manuals or something along those lines, would require a higher level of understanding, but it obviously doesn’t make you illiterate for not having that level of understanding (this isn’t to say people shouldn’t have that chance, just that it is not necessary for everyone).
It was just recently, less than a week ago when I was going home on the train, Trenton line to be exact. It stopped at 30th street station, and the train began to crowd. The seat next to me had been ignored until the last people to board the train, a family of four, came in. It was a father, a mother, a younger son, and a baby. The mother was holding the baby, and sat next to me, the father sat opposite from here, and the small boy sat next to my mom, who asked the boy if he would like to sit by the window, (he said yes).
Once we got past North Philadelphia, the conductor person came down the aisle and asked people for tickets or money. The mother was asked, and searched for something to say, but the father responded to him in slightly broken english, and handed him the money for tickets to Trenton. The baby started to make an odd sound as the conductor walked away, and the mother quickly tried to quiet him down. The father and mother looked stressed. He started kicking my leg and arm as he tried to rustle out of his mother’s grip and the mother looked to me to say sorry. At this point the father had to take a call, which he answered in fluent spanish.
She obviously couldn’t speak much english, as it took her about 5 seconds to find the word sorry, not that I was waiting for her to say sorry, I’m not petty, and when she found it took a little bit for her to pronounce it. So I just smiled and gave a thumbs up. She smiled back and kept trying to quiet the baby down. Later when the boy was asleep, his legs kept slipping down off the mother’s lap and the mother looked directly at his eyes as if to check if he woke up. She put his legs on my lap, and looked to me for a response, which was a smile, and a ‘thumbs-up’. For the rest of the ride the baby was quiet.
My point in explaining this long scene is that in this instance, or scenario, I would consider her literate. She didn’t have the best english, but she was able to effectively communicate and understand ideas well enough that it wasn’t a big deal, or any deal really. They could have been coming from a hospital where they were getting the baby treated. I’, fairly the certain the father had enough english to fill out paperwork. If not, spanish is still the second biggest language in the United States. In this scenario, I wouldn’t consider the mother illiterate, or the father illiterate, because they have enough knowledge of communication that they can live a life. They could fill out paperwork, or what they said could be translated, and even if they don’t speak english, they could always have someone translate or just speak to someone who knows spanish, as it is the second most dominant language in the United States.
As long as you can communicate effectively with the people you need to and understand the things you need to in life, you are literate, because you have fulfilled the purpose of learning language, which is being able to communicate.
Advanced Essay #1: That time I went snorkeling
I don't think I had anything particular in mind with what to accomplish with this paper, but I had a decent story and I could be really blunt about the overall message without it sounding weird (hopefully). I think I did the story pretty well, as well as explaining the overall issue, though the transition between the two was awkward.
To be perfectly honest, most of the time I’m doing anything, I just want to enjoy myself and chill out. There are very few things that make me want to be excited when I’m doing them, but the ultimate goal is always enjoyment or at least to be really chilled out. For me it’s escapism, which is either fine or bad depending on your philosophical or moral bend. To me, you’re coming into this world with nothing and leaving with nothing, so what else matters really but how much enjoyment I can get out of life?
So generally all I really do with my life is escape. I mean I have no moral qualms with it, and it is when I enjoy life the most, so escapism is a pretty go-to thing for me. There are some obvious drawbacks, which are lack of motivation sometimes, snapping out of it can even be difficult, though normally not a problem. So this story is just going to be one of those moments where I didn’t want to snap out of it, and one of the best times in my life that I can remember (a lot of that is due to escapism, so it may seem irrelevant to this but believe me, it isn’t.)
So over last summer my family and I finally got a chance where we were financially stable enough to go on a vacation to a place of our choosing, and since we had some inheritance leftover from my grandmother passing, we had some substantial wiggle room with the destination. This is one of the moments where escapism is rather important, seeing as my dead grandmother was the main reason we were going. To be honest she hated the idea of people grieving over her after she was gone, so do I, so I decided to simply not.
We finally decided to go to the florida keys, as it was as cheap as going to Wildwood, NJ (crazy thought but completely true). My dad was only present for the first half of the trip, but I can’t be honest and also say this was to our displeasure, as he was the main reason we were in the aforementioned financial problem. Again, escapism. I feel like the image that people get when they think of it is either being totally ignorant (ignorance is bliss), or being in a state with no worry. While neither are entirely wrong, they aren’t right either, it can be a much more subtle thing than that. For example, hear yelling, put on headphones and throw on music. It can really be as simple as that. But anyway, I’d say a part of the vacation where I saw this all a little more clearly was when I went snorkeling.
We had about 2 days left and I really didn’t want to go back to Philly. It was so laid back down there, people were either living penny to penny or off of retirement. Always so casual, no drama, people were just plain happy. So we decided to do something that we hadn’t really tried before which was snorkeling. I always imagined myself having that, “NOPE, NOPE, NOPE,” attitude about snorkeling but I decided to actually try it.
The ride over was as beautiful as the rest of the Florida keys, with pretty wildlife and scenic ocean views. We were going to a protected coral reef, so god only knows what I thought I was going to see before getting there. But when I got there I was honestly surprised. The water was more clear than it had been the entire ride over. I stopped looking at anything but the brightly tropical colored fish I could see 30 feet down. Once we got the signal to drop I didn’t even hesitate, despite seeing barracuda and sharks in the water.
My heart rate shot up the moment I got into the water. I floated back up almost afraid to see anything that might have been around my legs. I just floated there for a moment, half pumped with adrenaline, half trying to get calm myself down. After about 30 seconds I decided to swim out with the rest of the people on the boat. I put on my goggles and snorkel and peered through the water below. And what do I find but a bull shark at the bottom. My first real instinct was to start freaking out, because there was a shark that could actually kill me right below me, only 15 feet or so away. But this is when I realized how subtle escapism can be. Google defines it as the, “the tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities,” which is exactly what I did to calm myself down in that moment. I closed my eyes for a good 4 seconds and just pushed that thought to the far back of my brain, ignored the reality of what it could do, because I had no power over that shark. I simply kept swimming along, looking for splotches of color that stood out, hoping it would be a fish to look at, or something similar. The vacation as a whole was one of the most chilled out points in my life.
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Por que SLA es Divertido
Me llamo Miguel, tengo quince años. Soy estudiante de Science Leadership Academy. La escuela es muy divertida y difícil. Quinientos estudiantes, muchos profesores, y cuatro poros. Tenemos computadoras y profesores inteligentes. Tenemos béisbol, balencesto, fútbol, y robóticas. Participo en la robóticas porque es interesada y divertida. El Señor VK enseña robóticas. El Señor VK es muy bueno en la enseña. En robóticas construiremos robots y trabajaremos duro.
Tenemos que geometría, technologia, inglés, bíoquimica, y historia. Inglés es mi favorita. La clase es muy divertida. Necesitamos trabajar duro. El profesor de inglés es el Señor Kay. El Señor Kay es muy comico. En la clase de inglés leemos libros, actuamos. No me gusta nada la clase de historia porque es aburrido. Trabajar en la historia es aburrido. Aprendemos es aburrido. Necesitamos el libros y lápices.
El Señor Kay enseña inglés. El Señor Kay es muy comico y inteligentes. El Señor Kay es Africana Americana. La clase de inglés es muy divertida. La señorita Hull enseña informatica. La clase de informatica es ineresante. La Srta. Manuel ensaña español. La clase de español es divertida. La Srta. Garvey enseña geometría. La clase de geometría es muy dificil. L Srta. Dunda y El Señor Haas enseña bíoquimica. Bíoquimica es muy interesante.
La que más me gusta es los estudiantes. Los estudiantes somos muy simpaticos y inteligentes. Lo que más gusta computadoras. Computadoras es muy importante y útil. SLA es divertido, difícil y interesante.
Media Fluency
While I could not find another high resolution picture that I liked I did make some small changes to the slide but nothing major. I changed the color of my text and made it slightly larger and I pushed it farther into the corner. I think Ms. Hull set us up for failure by throwing us into the project without prior research, knowledge, and preparation.
Media Fluency
My religion (Christian) has always been a key factor in my life. Ever since I let the Lord into my life it's gotten better. So when I saw this image I really wanted to make my billboard out of it. I also noticed that the star in the top-left corner of the picture could be used for the rule of thirds and make a decent contrast for the text, making it easier to read and still keeping a visual theme of blue in the image. It also took up a large portion of the pic so I can also make the text bigger.
I could not find a higher resolution picture but I did make the text larger and change the color of the text. I learned how to make a slide/billboard appealing to look at. I also know how to present something to a better extent. I did the slide differently because I used a whole image. She maid image resolution not a big deal till presenting. I learned to get criticism is very important, as I haven't in the past.
My Home Network
https://drive.google.com/a/scienceleadership.org/#folders/0B6CJ4cLsy658VlVEQ1lXSC1FLWc
The link in this blog will take to an image of my lucid chart. On it is a representation of my home network is configured. By putting it on this lucid chart it is now much easier to access. You don't have to go in your book bag to try organize all of your documents when you make it on lucid chart and upload it to drive. We made it to make the process of drawing out your home network easier. You can just go on google drive and find the file or folder that holds the document and look at the lucid chart you made or make one.
The link in this blog will take to an image of my lucid chart. On it is a representation of my home network is configured. By putting it on this lucid chart it is now much easier to access. You don't have to go in your book bag to try organize all of your documents when you make it on lucid chart and upload it to drive. We made it to make the process of drawing out your home network easier. You can just go on google drive and find the file or folder that holds the document and look at the lucid chart you made or make one.
