For this project I produced music, sung music and I shot a concert. The music content is in the final stages of producing and mastering but the concert is finished. In total I learned how to work with music in a variety of ways, I feel proud that I have gained a number of new skills.

 

www.wix.com/rrobinson4/whowillcollapse




Madagascar is the 4th largest country in the world and is an island off the coast of South East Africa and Mongolia is land locked country located between China, Russia and Kazakhstan. The five point framework was actually pretty straightforward in my opinion. It just encompasses what it said it would the hard part was probably finding the sources. By finding the sources I mean if I had a score in my head I would need convincing evidence that would prove that score or change the score. I would change the effects on the website to show the scale better, for example I had thought of my original scale from something light to volcano and since I had certain highs and lows I was thinking it would be cool to show the eruption when certain things attained the score.

The interesting thing here on this graph is how many other languages there are in the world because even the number of Chinese speakers is very low and that is the highest percentage.



This was one of my more accurate ones besides other and christian. 
It was interesting to me how many people were from Asia in this geography statistic.  I had no clue that 62% of all people live or are from Asia. 

 I was pretty much off in most situations but I was pretty accurate in the religion section. I think this is because I see a lot of diversity in religion in Philadelphia so it sort of represents a world scale. The section that surprised me the most was the Asia for geography, or maybe even geography as a whole surprised me the most. I honestly didn't think that so little live or are from North America and that such a number live or are from Asia. I personally think that I was so off-course because I tried to stay modest in all of my answers usually suppressing my first answer. Despite that I still think that I could not really think in terms of the whole world because I have only seen certain parts of the world which make me think of terms of my world, not the whole world.

Our Product is a anti-drug commercial that basically shows the deterioration of a student named Saadiq as he does drugs and his grades goes down as the disappointment in the teacher increases. The message is that if someone does drugs they will become worse and worse, the classroom is just an example of one of the many ways that drugs will harm someone over time. The intended audience is teenagers who have possibly tried drugs and have not yet shown a decline. Basically to tell them that if they don't see the effects now they will later. I think that this is an effective way to reach the audience because it visually pleasing with a message. The example would be that the video starts out light and steadily gets darker. The people who see and understand will probably be pleased with the way it shows the character. I would do more than one video with the same aspect of the screen getting darker as the situation worsens.

Rafiq Robinson
Kabbour Rizq
Sam Sirochman

The task I selected is obtaining a passport to leave the country. In terms of the bureaucracy behind it the federal government is in charge of a citizen obtaining their passport. To get a passport (first time) they must submit a DS-11 form and deliver it in person. After that you must present a form of evidence of being a citizen, then you present your I.D and photocopy said I.D. Finally you provide a passport photo and it must be taken over a set of circumstances, wait 5-7 days get the passport and leave the country.

Now this is not as bad as I expected but the paperwork is awful. The paperwork is straightforward but the questions sometime just seem unnecessary and I would hate to fill out as someone who is not born in the U.S.

If I had to change something about it I might include the prices but if you want to leave the country you usually need spending money so they should just dip into that fund. This system is more straightforward than I assumed but I can only assume it as a overreaction to terror attacks and terrorists getting into our country as I have seen with the Patriot Act. But besides that I think it might have been because they wanted to cover all bases so badly that they made it impossible to make it past first.

Originally this blogs' focus was directed to all the fat cats on wall street who did dirty deals that ultimately led to the 2008 recession. Although it is still in the back of my mind I feel that I need to refocus and accept that what is done is done. It is in the past and it is time to move forward into a new prosperous re-emerging economy, right? Wrong.

A lot of people are disappointed in congress, our elected officials, not because they failed but because this seemed like our budgets last hope and they failed. Now if they don't have an answer in a year they will cut a minimum of 1.2 trillion dollars evenly from all U.S. programs regardless of size(Welfare and other very important social services exempt). This has essentially turned into a war between the two sides(like it wasn't before) and sadly to say, a war where you can clearly see news sources take sides point and case. These two articles are just blatant examples of how at war the republicans and democrats are I think the first article says how the republican unwillingness to do something with taxes is the reason we failed. Excuse me if I am speaking too frank but I really don't care which side was the catalyst to the failure, the real problem is the failure itself and congress' inability to fix our problem.

Back to what I said before about congress inability to fix their own problems it is a solution to their incompetence and it is that we lobby for new elected officials. We as a people can say "my elected official is not doing their job, get him out of congress." As I partly expected after learning that Pat Toomey is on congress he is related to congress' inability to fix their financial problems. The super committee is a culmination of six democrats and six republicans who were sent in to balance our budget as a special task force. Now as cool as special task force sounds they failed just like our regular task force and pat toomey was on this so called super committee. Now with the things that I said about him previously and this recent failure I truly think that Pennsylvania would benefit from a change in our elected official. The only people who I can influence are concerned citizens and people who feel that repeated failure is not tolerable.

To end off this I rarely agree with Obama statements but when he said he will veto anything to try to get congress out of this mess the easy way is all I was looking for someone to say. I believe that he agrees with a reelection.

Recipe and Analysis

​Boneless Garlic and Lemon Pepper Halal Chicken Sandwich

4-6 - Boneless Chicken Breast
1/4 cup oil (sunflower oil)
1 Tbsp -Garlic Powder
2 Tbsp - Butter or Margarine  
4 - 6 Hamburger or Hoagie Rolls

Get a few thin slices of chicken breasts.
On both sides of the chicken sprinkle good amount of garlic and let sit for 40 seconds.
Place the specified amount oil and butter in skillet.
Cook the oil and butter in skilled on medium heat until Hot.
Cook breast on both sides for a few minutes or alternatively until all the pink is gone from the meat leaving it entirely white inside.(To do this I cut little slits in the the chicken so I can see the inside of the meat.)

Place on buttered and toasted hamburger or hoagie rolls. Add any condiments you feel necessary.


Most of the meal is whole food because it is solely meat, spices and bread. The only processed part of the meal is butter and oils and you can just bake the chicken or not use butter for the bread. My body is just eating natural foods, it digests chicken, bread and butter just like any food. The worse thing here is butter but animal fat is much worse for arteries. Also 100% of the calories from the butter come from fat so add another problem but the butter I used has 0mg of cholesterol so take the good with the bad. Although butter is not as bad for your arteries it is still just bad and it will lead to many problems. The fried food is also bad for your health but it is still meat.

Most of my food is from America but the chicken is from Pennsylvania. The butter I would have to assume is the farthest because it doesn't have any designated place in America it just says from the U.S.A. The chicken is Halal, bread and butter is all commercially produced and grown.

As a meal it cost 4.50 per pound of halal chicken, 2.00 per bag of bread, 2.69 for the butter. Per sandwich it cost .78 cents. The food is regulated by FDA like most foods are in the U.S. The individual companies themselves made money off of my food and since most of the food is independent except for the butter which is from a bigger company, smaller companies made all the money off of the food I brought.

I don't see any ramifications for my food socially because halal meat is slaughtered traditionally and without all the social problems that lobbyists have with big companies. No one is angry about bread or butter as far as I am informed. For my meat it starts with the farm, slaughtered at the farm, packaged, to my home and on the plate.


Personal Reflection

My role in the larger food system is the same as it always was, the consumer. I am and will always be the consumer unless I take up a job as a farmer or regulator but my role as a consumer is the most important because the role is an ever changing one. The role can change radically because if me and 1000 friends come up and want something different and convince others that they want the same thing, something will change. One of the biggest problems is that everyone accepts this as it is and it is an insufficient amount people who legitimately want change and will continue to fight for it. In other words the biggest problem is the people who say "Yeah this is a travesty!" and do nothing about it. Yes I choose to say I support a corrupt and deteriorating system but at least I am honest and I don't say things like I will change it. In a market business the consumer is god and unless god TRULY wants change to an extreme extent nothing will happen.The only change I can see is not supporting this disgusting system of animal abuse and capitalism. This would be a giant change, a change so big that it would change the U.S economy and maybe even the U.S itself. This change would show the people who want nothing but money that the consumers want change and to eat healthy. If these people are motivated enough they can influence others to show our government that we want cleaner everything and that we will not respond until we get what we want. No I am not willing to make these changes because I am not motivated or moved enough to do anything. Even if I was motivated enough it would take a lot more to change things than one person it take about a million.


Food Rule

This rule is simple in nature with a an even simpler message. Do Not Over Eat. It is harmful and it leads to many harmful things later on in life such a high blood pressure and diabetes and with those numbers rising dramatically there is no need to add to that statistic.

For my Benchmark Joesph Parisi and I made a newspaper that includes a wide array of opinions on Fidel Castro and Cuba.

All pictures of newspaper at http://castrovstheworld.blogspot.com/

Joe will upload rest of pictures

http://prezi.com/gzojfqkiwvbx

Reflection


I chose this bill because it seems interesting enough and like something that can easily be misrepresented as something complete where it just not. What I mean by the latter half of the last sentence is that I have a habit of forming a "strong" opinion on things that I do not  know enough about and it is really not a good thing at all, to me it breeds ignorance and I do not want to be misinformed about things. So with that said it made me want to investigate more on this because the way that President Obama was screaming "Pass this bill now!" you would think it is a solution to all of Americas' economic woes, but it is a few reasons why republicans would not pass this bill.

I honestly chose this presentation format because my storybook idea didn't work out that well. It is this program that does adult storybook format settings but it cost money and I gave myself until a certain day before I would just use prezi and I am a procrastinator so it ended up being my absolute only choice to use. All and all I should viewed my resources to see if there was a better way to present but it was just wishful thinking that I would be able to get the program and also prezi can be used a pretty good resource for story telling if you use it right.

The challenges I had were making it creative prezi is good in itself but zooming and spinning gets old after time so finding new ways to do things is very challenging but I tried to balance it. I would've probably spent more time actually designing the project instead of deluding myself into thinking that  I could get this program in time.

The creation process as a whole tells me that it didn't take much time to get the idea, it probably took a lot of time to write up due to the fact that it is 2000 pages long if I remember correctly and it

The process ended up being harder than I imagined. Since my objective was to tell a story it kinda got lost so trying to stick to that was hard. I don't even think I entirely succeeded in telling a story but I think it came out okay.

The topic I am lobbying for is Financial Reform. All I want is for people to crack down on the people who cheated the system similar to some of the people who are in New York participating in Occupy Wall Street. So imagine how enthused I was to find a man named Pat Toomey. Pat Toomey being the great man that he is, of course serves on the Financial Institution and Consumer Protection Committee which is a committee that would seem perfect for a man like me who just wants nothing but Financial Regulation so that we don't have another financial meltdown like we did. Pat Toomey is the man. Or so I thought.

After reading this very enlightening piece that I stumbled upon, called "66 Reasons you should not vote for Pat Toomey" my perspective on him changed dramatically. A key example of how media can distort a man, or even how baseless certain claims can be if you don't know all the facts, but that is a blog post for a different day. You, my fair reader, cannot imagine how discouraged I was when I read this article. Heck, how discouraged I was when I got through the first twelve reasons. So discouraged that I didn't know where to look for a reliable state representative for my cause.

So I began thinking smaller and it hit me "What if the people in my district are like minded individuals? Would that not mean that that person on the city council for my district is a fairly good person?" Still discouraged I got my hopes up and I found Anna C. Verna who is a just a breath of fresh air. Actually she is the City Council President and that just puts a smile on my face. But the fact that she is a breath of fresh air is not because she is different or because she signed something as big as the Dodd-Frank Bill but she is doing what I want the Federal Government to do on a larger scale, Crack Down on Malpractice and Restore Stability.(Sorry about that source very hard woman to find info on)

So in so many words what I've read about State Reps. and Senators are disappointing, it doesn't mean that they are all bad it is just hard to find the better things that they have done. But from what I've read about Ms. Verna, I am definitely a supporter and if she could ever become a senator, or State Rep. she would definitely have the vote of a certain blogger.

The case I am talking about today is Judulang v. Holder. In this case the United Stats wants to remove a lawful permanent resident who has lived here since 1974, because he was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in 1989. The main thing they reference is the former section 212© of the Immigration and Nationality Act 8, which allows a noncitizen to come into the country even with a criminal conviction. But ever since a case called Francis v. INS made section 212© able to be used for lawful permanent residents and non citizens trying to get into the country. But when congress felt that they needed change, in 1996 they repealed section 212© but made it so that anyone who would've been able to get it at the time can still use section 212© to their advantage. Since Judulang was convicted in 1989 and he met the requirement for section 212©.  For some reason the immigration denied the wavier and told Judulang he had to leave the country. The board of Immigration and the ninth circuit(which also handles immigration) agreed with the board of immigration. This could mean anybody in Judulangs' situation would not be eligible from removal when convicted.

The constitutional question that comes into play here is one that it seems like a lot of people in the court and outside of the court are confused about and that is the tenth amendment. The tenth amendment is the amendment that so closely deals with immigration but when I researched more the constitution never discusses immigration it brings in the concept of immigration. Also to clarify the tenth says that this would be a state problem to deal with so I don't entirely know why this case is being challenged on the grounds of the constitution.

The main argument that Judulang had was that before the ruling by the BIA in 2005 in Matter of Blake and Matter of Brieva-Perez, he or any lawful permanent resident could apply for relief for any conviction even one such as voluntary manslaughter. He tried to get the law rationally reviewed under the Equal Protection clause but could not. He also says that when they ruled and change their practices it was contradictory and represents a retroactive change in the law.

The only real arguments that the U.S. made in this case were that section 212© relief is only available when there is a similarity between the reason they are being deported and the reason they are being removed. They also tried to invalidate his case against the board showing a change in law and that it should be reviewed.

I am almost sure that this case will go in favor Judulang because the U.S. has minimal success in convincing the supreme court justices of anything and also the supreme justices seem to ask questions that seem look in favor of Judulang.

I am lobbying for tighter government regulations in the wake of our economic meltdown. From what I know of the economic meltdown, at the very least in the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, it would not have happened if the government had regulated it more tightly. What I am not saying is that a world where the government runs the economy and is in every aspect of the market is a good one. What I mean is that Government involvement in the economy is justified in order to prevent force and fraud. They need to be involved in the economy enough to prevent fraud and dishonesty but not enough to prevent small businesses to grow.

My motivation for lobbying this is the wrong that was done to people who invested and lost everything due to dishonesty and corruption. My motivation was first sparked by watching a documentary called" Inside Job" and it basically exposed Government corruption, and what? Oh yeah, nothing happened! It even went as far to talk about the CEO's of these giant companies and they took about 400 million each and resigned without even a damn slap on the wrist. It is legitimately one of the biggest travesties that I think anybody that was born in the 1990's has ever witnessed. But regardless of that Occupy Wall Street and even further Occupy Everything have been trying to get the point across. Although misguided it is a step in the right direction for my lobbying topic.

Sadly enough even with this problem that had happened there are no new bills regarding government regulation and honestly I expected a lot of bills to come flying in after the revelation that "Inside Job" brought to the public but, I guess some people look at things like this as a part of life. Although "The Volcker Rule is pretty effective, I need a lot more regulation to truly feel safe and it still does not completely end the dangerous . I find it really difficult to create a bill that will satisfy both those who are outraged at big business and those small businesses who are angry at the cost of government regulations. Not a bill at all but I guess it could be done but it would take a brain trust with the creativity and ingenuity of F.D.R's to create this bill, but a start would be that is required of both financial advisors and a political advisors to agree on something before giving a 535 million dollar loan to a company. Or Something like that, I guess?




http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/10/12/our-government-doesnt-create-jobs-it-kills-them/
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=aOOSejLq_BSM
http://m.spokesman.com/stories/2011/sep/29/solyndra-had-gop-backing/
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/business/27gret.html

    http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1084756/History_Of_VIdeogames.zip

Rafiq Robinson, William Marsh, Henry Yam, Anthony Torrance, J M-C

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1084756/Vietnam%20.zip

The Video is Here

Here's a link to our prezi

http://prezi.com/lijf4jeyxlkd/iran-mini-project/

http://prezi.com/2lwdmcmmiqpw/