My Stand on GMOs

Genetically Modified Organisms, or GMOs, have recently become a big issue because altering the genetic substance of the food can have many implications to the society and our health. On one side, eating genetically modified food can possess many benefits such as disease resistance and provide extra nutrition to people. On the other side, there lies issues on the potential environment and health risks.

Personally, I’m okay with GMOs existing in the global market, under the condition that it would have very strict regulations during and after the development phase of the product to reduce the risks of having short-term and long-term side effects on us. There are many starving nations out there with no choice but to use GMOs that can produce more food with better nutritional value, and using GMOs is very advantageous here. And if there is an assurance that there will be no other side effects, of course backed by extensive studies, and if this makes my food taste better, then GMOs have a place in the market in my eyes.

KROPEK!

Today our class had an experiment involving cooking kropek. Each group was tasked to bring a pan, cooking oil (can be vegetable oil/ canola oil/even butter), spatula and uncooked kropek. Each group brought different kinds of kropek, so we all got to compare which brand tasted the best. In my opinion, it was our group’s kropek since it did not only taste uniquely good, but it also expanded to a big size which allowed more people to try it at the same time. Cooking kropek, though may seem easy, is actually harder than it seems since it can burn fast, along with the fact that it may be challenging to cause all parts of the kropek to be equally cooked. 

 

Cooking the kropek in different kinds of oil didn’t really taste different from each other, aside from those cooked with butter, from Kenneth Nacion’s group. Many people didn’t like how it tasted, but I personally felt it was a good alternative to the usual kropek they serve in restaurants.

Food Chemistry

Many people, in the first glance, would view these different foods as very weird and even disgusting. However, I believe this can be mainly attributed to the difference in their societies norms and the characteristics they have attributed to these certain animals and insects, such as being dirty and disgusting. Of course, with the right treatment and cleaning, most if not all of these can be eaten if the person is willing to experience something new.

Food, as I see it now, is anything we consume either for nutrition, appealing taste or just for the thrill of trying something new.

Normal food is basically what people consider “edible” based on the social norms they live by, such as eating chicken, beef, pork, etc. However, this is a very relative thing since in other countries, a different species may be prevalent and commonly eaten, thus can be considered “normal food”.

My top 5 foods would be live new-born mice, snakes, grasshoppers, pig brain and live octopus.

CLE Video Conference Reflection

This morning, my group, along with that of Alvaro’s, had a video blog with Australian students from St. Mary’s College. Although I started out a bit sleepy, I still learned a lot from this experience. We talked about a variety of things, such as activities of school, sports, culture, and even touching up on language. In this conference, we were able to break a lot of stereotypes of each other, and we ended up with the realization that our lives, though world’s apart, are not so far from each other as we thought. We share the same interests, and enthusiasm to learn, and I’m actually glad to have had another opportunity to have a video conference with people outside our country.

Simple Poster for Alcohol

CLE Responses on First Sem

3 Most Relevant Lessons/Topics:
1. I was able to discover the different kinds of epistomological world views, and discovering what kind I actually had.
2. Respecting other cultures despite our differences in beliefs and traditions.
3. There is an existing unjust social structure in the society that prevents some people from improving their current lifestyle conditions, one which we must collaboratively work to break.

2 Skills Developed
1. Interacting with different cultures
2. Appreciating and understanding scripture.

My most significant insight:
The world we live in may not be perfect, with all the injustices and problems each member of the society faces, but if we all contribute by participating actively, we can eventually collectively help each other break these unjust “norms”.

Chem 5 Painful Moments

1. When I was young, I stuck my hand into spinning fan w/o a cover and got rushed to the CR.
2. I was trying to have a goal somewhere around grade school, and I hit my head on the goal post.
3. Got punched in the face in grade 1
4. Got spilled on by hot water
5. Almost drowned when I was young because I panicked

CLE Blog on Social Injustice

Social justice, or injustice for that matter, is an undeniable state in the capitalist society we live in today, something I had a glimpse of in my SM immersion where people (that included baggers, cashiers, vendors) worked hard everyday to get salary that won’t even last beyond 6 months; some not even getting the chance to be employed for such a contract. I learned through this experience along with my H4 recollection that many of these people I used to consider lazy and unproductive actually are just victims of this unfortunate state where effort is not the problem, rather the lack of opportunities. What makes it worse is the perception of everyone in the society on how the status quo will never change, and that one person’s actions won’t mean anything since it may seem insignificant. This acts as a detriment to the abolishment of this social injustice. In my honest opinion however, this should not be the case, and everyone should have equal opportunities in life since we all created in God’s image and all have equal rights in both the law and as human beings. As members of the Filipino and Christian community, it must be instilled among us the four key principles of the Catholic Social Teachings which include Human Dignity, Solidarity, Common Good & Subsidiary, all of which include respecting each other as equals and children of God. As awareness increases over time, I believe efforts to change such social injustice will arise too, and so I believe there is hope for the ideal situation where the large divide between rich and poor breaks and that ideal situation where social justice is prevalent will be attained.

TOK Blogs on WOK, SM Immersion

Day 1: Sense Perception

The first day of my SM immersion was probably the most difficult since this was when I needed the most adjustments. My primary role on this day, a Wednesday, was a bagger, and I had difficulty (admittedly even until now) being able to quickly tie the plastics the standard way of tying in the one-knot way. Many of the customers quickly noticed how my friends and I were not the usual baggers, since they could see that we would tie things up a lot slower than the usual baggers, and hear what we say and our remarks on how fast these customers pile up. By using their primary senses, even though no one told them about our backgrounds, they were able to learn something new.

Day 2: Emotion

My second day was just like my first day, in the sense that I still served as a bagger the entire day instead of fixing assets or stacking products. However, I still learned a lot about people, in this day in particular, how different attitudes of people can be. Sometimes, they are really kind and understanding, but some people just seem to find pleasure in ripping other people up. One of my friends was stereotyped and rudely asked why he wasn’t just working under his dad in Ongpin for the rest of his life. When I heard that, I felt pissed off since that was really random and uncalled for. From this emotion, I knew that some people just didn’t really care about the possible results of their actions, and that you must be mentally prepared for everything since you don’t know when the next racial jab or insult will come.

Day 3: Language

On this day I did a variety of jobs: bagging, serving raw meat, cutting up fruits and vegetables and fixing assets. In this day, I was able to encounter a good example of another way of knowing, which was language, in another incident with a customer. While I was bagging, the customer at that time (who was an old lady) told me something in Filipino in the most unclear manner possible, eating her words. When I replied with “I’m sorry, what Ma’am?”, she started asking why I couldn’t speak Filipino. I just told her it was not the fact that she was speaking Filipino why I couldn’t understand, it was how she delivered the message, as she mumbled it out in an open space with noise coming from everywhere. She just laughed and said it clearly, and that’s when I understood that she was asking me to split up her products into more plastics (probably for future use). This showed how important language, which is not limited to the native tongue rather to actual communication in any form, or the actual delivery of the message, plays a critical role in letting other people know something, and vice versa.

Day 4: Reason

Today, I talked to one of the SM employees and asked if she was satisfied with her job, even for the moment. She told me she wasn’t, and explained the system in which the cashier would have to pay for even the slightest mistakes with handling or leaving products in the counter even though it was the baggers fault if ever. She told me many of the people here thought that it was a very tight system especially for the cashiers, considering their wage to be average at best, according to her. After a while though, even though I feel it might be a bit too strict on the cashiers, I was able to deduce the reason why the SM management team would implement such a policy just by thinking about it. It was probably done to raise accountability for the cashiers and to strongly encourage efficient production from the employees, even though it was cause them to feel bad about it. This would then lead to less mistakes, hence less customer complaints, leading to a more effective workforce. Since many of the employees here are working on a 5 month contractual basis, maybe it can be said that this work could be, aside from a temporary source of money, a good opportunity for them to gain experience, and this has been supported by some of the cashiers my friends and I have talked to. In this sense, by raising accountability they also improve the work habits of the employees thus it can help them perform better in jobs in the future. These are just possibilities, but nonetheless can be attained just by thinking about the situation.

Kinetics Concepts

1. The two things that would determine whether a reaction would occur or not would be the orientation of the collision, or whether the reactive parts of each of the two particles come into contact with each other, and whether the reactants particles collide with sufficient kinetic energy to bring about the reaction.

2. There are different factors that can affect the rate of a chemical reaction:

a. Increasing the concentration of the reactants or the pressure of a gaseous reaction.
– As the amount of particles in a certain volume increases, the number of collisions will increase. The ratio of successful collisions to unsuccessful collisions will still be the same. However, since there are more collisions, the number of successful collisions will also increase, and therefore the rate of reactions in the bigger picture increases.

b. Increasing the temperature of the reaction
– As temperature increases, one adds more kinetic energy to all the particles of the substance, therefore increasing the number of reactant particles with the necessary activation energy. By doing so, the ratio of successful collisions to unsuccessful collisions will increase, so more collisions will be successful, thus increasing the rate of reaction.

c. Decreasing the particle size of solid reactants
– Considering a solid has a lot less kinetic energy than the other phase, it would have a more rigid shape and would not be as free-flowing to react quickly with the other reactant due to the fact that only the outside part of the solid (surface area) comes into contact with the other reactant. By breaking the solid into smaller pieces, the surface area would greatly increase, thus more solid particles are available to react. That is why if the solid is in powder form the surface area is considerable increased, and thus the rate of the reaction will be much faster.

d. Adding a suitable catalyst
– A catalyst is a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without itself being changed in the process of the reaction. They work by bringing the reactant particles into close contact with one another, meaning they provide an alternative pathway with a lower activation energy. ore the reactant particles will possess this lower activation energy, and so the rate increases.

3. The Ea or the activation energy is the minimum amount of energy required to bring about a reaction. When comparing reactions with slow rates and that with faster rates, the faster rates would obviously have lower Ea since it takes a lot less energy for the faster reaction to take place, meaning the collisions of particles happen successfully a lot more, and since one criteria for a reaction to occur would be to have sufficient kinetic energy from the particles, this would allow us to infer that it takes less energy between the particles of the faster reaction to successfully collide, thus the fast reaction rate, thus requires a lower Ea than a slower reaction.

4.