Prompt: How did saloons keep beers cold in the Old West?
The Old West was hot. Extremely hot. But, everyone loved drinking. The only problem was that no one liked to drink warm beer, but no one knew how to keep beers cold. "Man, I am so tired of these warm beers," said Billy Joe. "Well, I can't do nothing about that, can I?" replied the Sally, the saloon owner. "You mean to tell me that you got no idea how to keep these here beers warm?" "Ain't that what I just said? I'll tell you what, you find me a way to keep my beers cold and I'll give you free beer for a year, got that?" "Oh I'll find a way." And so Billy Joe rode home with one goal -- find a way to keep beers cold. When he got home there was a problem, he had no idea where to start. So he started experimenting. Billy decided to cloister himself until he found a solution to his problem. The first thing he tried was wrapping some beers in a blanket overnight to see if the blankets would keep the heat out. Before you say anything, no one told you that Billy Joe was the smartest guy ever, I mean he just tried to use blankets to keep something cold. Anyways, that obviously didn't work, so he moved onto the next thing, keeping the beers in a bucket full of water overnight. This worked a little better, but the beers still weren't at a satisfactory temperature for him. Billy tried everything, keeping them in the darkest place, keeping them outside on the porch, keeping them inside on top of dresser, putting them in an empty bucket under his bed, but nothing seemed to work. Until one day Billy realized something while he was digging while fixing a tump in his yard. The lower he went, the colder the dirt seemed to be. So, Billy dug and dug, until he made a hole deep enough for him to put a bucket of beers in. He covered the hole back up and then left the beers overnight. When dawn came, Billy ran out of his house and dug up the beers, and when he took them out of the bucket and felt them, he jumped with joy. Billy hopped on his horse with a bucket of beers and a shovel. He banged on the saloon door and Sally opened it. "Sally I done it! I done it old woman!" cheered Billy. "Boy, I ain't no old woman, we coeval. And what is it that got you running around all agog.¨
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Prompt: Why are barns red?
Iowa is the home to the most powerful cows. These cows decide all the rules that the rest of the cows will follow. It was a cold night and the cows were having meeting, Big Mac, the ruler cow called on this meeting to discuss a crucial topic : what color should the barns be? "Attention, we are gathered here today to make a monumental decision for the future of cows everywhere," Big Mac declared, getting the attention of his fellow cows, "Our first topic of discussion will be on what color barns should be, anyone who wants to speak on this topic please come to the stage." One by one, the cows came up to the stage and pitched the ideas of their states. Only the most populous cow states were invited to these meetings, the rest of the states were nugacities in the decision making process. There were representatives from Texas, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma to name a few. "Now that all of the states have pitched their ideas, we will vote for the top three colors. Purple, all in favor say moo, all opposed say boo," there was an overwhelming amount of boos. The top three ended up being top two because only two colors got a majority vote, and they were almost equal in votes. "Ok, now we have to decide between two colors, red or green," said Big Mac, "Now is there any state who feverently believes that their choice is better. " "Yes, we do," stated Angus from California. The cows in the room rolled their eyes, Californians were known as vulgarians to most. "Red is the superior color in this situation, if you don´t agree with that statement, you are wrong. Why would we want green barns? We don´t want our barns to camouflage into the nature around us, don´t we want to stand out? " "Ok... anyone else?" Big Mac prompted, "Seeing as no one else wants to say anything we will move onto the voting stage." Prompt: Why did pirates bother making prisoners or enemies "walk the plank" instead of just chucking them overboard?
Well, I can tell you the story of why that is. It was in 1567 and there was a ship in the middle of the Atlantic called the "Black Jewel". There were three types of people on this ship, the prisoners, the laborers and the captain. Well, on this night, the captain wasn't feeling very agog to be on the ship.You see, the prisoners were causes quite the ruckus with all their yelling, and the laborers weren't doing their jobs because of pure exhaustion. Getting more and more rankled by the minute, he decided to go down and force the prisoners to be quiet. The moment the prisoners heard the steps of the captain coming down the stairs, they fell silent. The captain walked down stairs into the crammed room with about four cells, each holding three to four prisoners. As he strolled through the silent room, only the crashing of the waves audible, he checked the cell to see what was going on. When he got to the third cell, he saw one of the prisoners trying to hide something behind his back. The captain demanded the prisoner to give him the paper he was hiding. The prisoner dubiously handed over the paper. As the captain opened it and started reading it, the prisoners got tense. The paper was full of polemics written towards the captain. The general flow of this conversation was really good, I think there was a natural flow and there wasn't really any awkward pauses. Some of the topics we covered during the discussion were why the Natives didn't want Europeans in America, why the colonizers didn't want to be in America anymore and why the promoters thought that they weren't responsible for what was happening in the conversation.
I liked the fishbowl discussion, it was fun and a little less serious than other discussions we have had, but I do think that next time we do it there should be different rounds and you switch the people in the fishbowl so that everyone in the class speaks. I think that the Natives presented their ideas the best because they used the most textual evidence. Some interesting points that were made were that colonizers realized that America isn't what they thought it would be and that promoters misled/forced the colonizers. I don't think anything was very confusing, I think we all presented our ideas well and came to a conclusion together. As the little boy was was outside, full of agog to play with his friends, he heard his mother yell for him. She called him in to eat his lunch, but he didn't want to, he wanted to play outside. He made his way back inside the house to "eat". He had a plan, he decided he would tell his mom a taradiddle, he would simply hide his lunch in the back of the fridge and then go back outside. He went back and continued playing with his friends, they were pretending to be fighters. They were rolling around, making shooting noises and pretending to do salvos. The boy's eyes got wider and he hid when he heard his mother yelling his name again. This time she wasn't so nice. He tried to palisade him self between some bushes in order to keep his mother away from him. It didn't work, she grabbed him by the arm and dragged back to the house. She sat down on a chair and put him on her lap, the food he tried to hide was on the table in front of him. She tried feeding him, but he wouldn't eat, she didn't understand why this was such a cyclopean task for her son.
One connection that I noticed during the scavenger hunt in Balboa Park was that a lot of the artifacts had to do with the history that we are learning in class. It was still US history, but San Diego focused. You were able to see how Columbus' actions influenced the other side of America. I learned that the Arawak Indians and the Kumeyaay Indians in San Diego faced similar treatment from different Europeans.
The most interesting artifact to me was the painting from Chicano Park. This was interesting to me because I have been there so to see that it is in a history museum. All of the murals from Chicano park were cool to see because it shows that we are living in a place with such rich history that is still currently being written. The mural was of a Native Mexican standing proud, it made me think that the message was, "I am here, we are still here." I think we talk about Native Americans and other indigenous people in the past tense and forget that they are still here and still facing struggles. The scavenger hunt confirmed my claim that we were doing a project on the history of America with a focus on Latin America and Native Americans. Also that we were going to work with children. It confirmed this because most of our scavenger items were Latin American or Native American history, also we went to a puppet show for children. This helped us learn more about how to convey information to children in a way that with be fun and informative. The history that we learned was mostly the history of the relationships between America and other countries, as well as Natives and Europeans. The category in history that interests me the most is ethnic and cultural history. There is so much depth in that category that I haven't learned about, but I really want to learn about it. I feel like learning about the different cultures in US History would be really interesting because each one of the cultures in the US has contributed to what it has become.
Another category I am interested in is the history of religion. I want to learn more about this because I feel like there is so much to learn about why people like or dislike the idea of religion. Also there is so many interesting cases of cults or extreme religious groups, especially in the history of America. I would love to learn more about the human part of religion, like why people are so devoted to religion or how a lot of children are raised in an extremely religious household and essentially don't have any other point of view other than their religion. Everything that the person interpreted from my drawings was correct. They wrote that I probably liked dogs and traveling, which is true and is what I meant by putting those drawings on the card. They interpreted that the letter "S" was my first initial and that the number 13 was my favorite number.
Nothing was misinterpreted, but they didn't comment on one of the drawings which was a brown heart. I put that heart there because my favorite color is brown and I am also brown. I put the dog there because I love dogs, but I used to be terrified of them. I put the plane going around the world because I love to travel and I have been to over 15 countries. The "S" represents my first initial and the 13 is for my birthday and favorite number. Since the last post some things still aren't clear, such as the specific time period. All we know is that it takes place in England in the future. The book is really focused on Alex and his droogs, and the violence they take part in. Eventually Alex gets arrested after Dim set him up after they robbed an old lady's house, she ended up dying after the robbery. He initially is supposed to go to prison for 14 years. One day he kills his cellmate and is then signed up for these experiments where they give him a shot that makes him feel sick and then watch extremely violent movies. This brainwashes him into thinking the violence is what makes him feel so sick. He is then released after only two years. After he gets out, he runs into the man who happened to be the husband of the woman they robbed. He tortures Alex, hoping to kill him, but Alex doesn't end up dying. He shortly goes back to his life of violence until he runs into Pete and learns about his normal, happy life, which Alex then realizes is what he wants. One book/movie/TV show I would relate this to is the TV show Gotham. This is because in that show a lot of crime in the city goes noticed, but ignored, like the book. I would connect this to the world today because a lot of crime goes ignored, the government sometimes takes advantage of people in the prison, people can get unfair sentencing (either too short or too long), and in a lot of places there is extreme violence, but the government ignores it.
I will comment on Matthew and Anil's blogposts. The book I am reading is A Clockwork Orange.
So far I know that the book is placed in England, in a different time period, probably in the future. There are four main characters who are all boys. All I know about them so far is that they beat people up, steal and loot for fun. But, with the money they stole, they bought food for other people. It is confusing because there are a lot of words in the book that I am not familiar with, so I have to translate a lot while reading. Some basic simillarities between the book and our world are that, it takes place on Earth and some people don't like the police/military. I have read Hunger Games, Uglies and Cinder before which are all dystopian novels and I enjoyed those books, so I think I will enjoy this one too. I will comment on Matthew and Anil's blogposts. |
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