minimovie

Attack a Law - Limitation on using potatoes in school meals

The USDA's bill released in 2011 proposing that limiting the use of potatoes on schools' lunch line is hilariously controversial. The proposal urges that potato consumption among schoolchildren should be decrease to two servings a week in order to aid millions of kids across the nation to receive healthier meals. The original intention, nevertheless, is bona fide for its proactive significance in reducing obesity rate overall; however, this restriction potentially betrays its foremost original principal, to benefit schoolchildren's health condition in U.S..

According to the MyPlate nutrition guide published by the USDA in 2011, everyday food circle should include fruits, vegetables, grains, protein, and dairy. It seems to the USDA, botany-wise, potatoes are essentially beneficial vegetables which contain 45 percent of the daily value for vitamin C, 10 percent of the daily value for B6, not to mention that simply one medium potato (5.3 oz) has 620 mg more potassium than banana, spinach, or even broccoli. Low potassium is associated with a high risk of hypertension, digestive disorder and infertility. Generally, a 9-to-13-years-old should maintain a consistent and adequate intake for potassium 4,500 mg per day. Thus, when school meals subsidized by the federal government to reduce the servings amount for potatoes, mostly over 25% percent of potassium intake is subtracted.

Indeed, the deficient take-in part can be compensated by serving more beet greens and yams (these two vegetables contain 909 mg and 816 mg of Potassium each in every 100 g), or other high potassium fruits, e.g., avocados and guavas. Nonetheless, the reason why potatoes are irreplaceable is still impossible to ignore. On the basis of a research carried by UK scientists at the Institute for Food Research, an blood pressure-lowering compound called kukoamines is identified in potatoes; such health-promoting compound was only previously found in Lycium chinense, an almost untraceable exotic herbal. As for those obese kids suffering from high blood-pressure, a complication of obesity hard to control, potatoes baked or steamed without cheese or animal fat can effectively function as an expedient in everyday meals. Besides, a great amount of vitamin B6 abounding in potatoes principally plays a vital role in neurological activity. Vitamin B6 in potatoes is crucial for the creation of a certain kind of necessary neurotransmitter; also, B6 assists to initiate chemical reaction during formation of new cell frequently taking place in children's bodies.

Presumably, overall children's health is ironically not that important to the USDA, but even from economy stability perspective, the law mainly impacted the agriculture economy development in Maine, Colorado, and other potato-growing states in U.S.. The need of market is bruised by the federal government's action of illogically maligning on a innocent vegetable per se. The agent budget for cultivating potatoes is shortened, which can, eventually, deteriorate into severe economic disruption in local farm's operation. Hence, it is possible to conclude that the law carried by the USDA is irrational and ineffective.

What can contribute positively to overall health in school-age children is not to keep off a vegetable potentially of significant value, but to encourage school to serve foods low in calorie, or at least not to fry naturally low-in-calorie food product then add butter or cheddar on it, and to set up mandatory exercise divisional requirement in extra-curriculum in children's community.

A strange song

https://soundcloud.com/northernspyrecs/odeath-roam-from-out-of-hands

Description - The Currituck Beach lighthouse

The Currituck Beach lighthouse was precious. At the first sight, far from about 80 miles away, when I drove along Hatteras Cape's palm tree trace next to Atlantic Ocean, the merely finger-tip-long darkened skyline of the 162 feet high red brick lighthouse pinned onto the remote woodland, shredding under the looming shadow of clusters of thick clouds. As I approached closer, the Fresnel lens located at the peak of the lighthouse was impressively translucent. It was where the navigation signal light originated at night. The front side of the lighthouse was generally crowded with visitors, who heeded the steps and strolled into the somber architecture with awe. The helix, gunpowder-colored narrow stairs had sporadically hollowed-out patterns upon them, which might be the evidence of abrasion formed from history. On the way upright to the top, there were six Gothic radius windows closed and stiff, hardly could sunlight outside penetrate through a great many of chestnut ashes particles adhered to the window glass. During the journey of 220 steps climbing, people's breathing were mostly rapid, some visitor even forgot to exhale when they peered out through the ashes. Their pace were uncertain, and eager. The air was stuffed in the building; every time I inhaled, it incredibly felt as if I breathed the thick ghost of ancient times that still wandering in this gloom lighthouse. Sunlight and invisible ashes mixture hit my heart pumping; then, I took the final step to the platform on the most top, feeling refreshed so suddenly that I was numb to vertigo. At the very peak of the Currituck Beach lighthouse, the primitive landscape, the uninhabited beach, and the azure ocean were exposed under the brightness of daytime. It was not hard to imagine the viewing at nighttime, all dreadfully dark and desperately desolating; the warm, orange ray of this lighthouse was the only light source. Sacred, solitary, and standing.

Characterization-Nelson Algren

She was referred to me under the suggestion of Nelly Benson in Chicago, February, 1947. I had never heard about her by then, a French writer, philanthropist, teacher, feminist, philosopher, creature combined with both steady empathy and sharp self-independence. My meager knowledge of existentialism, her exploration mostly, was obtained from a New Yorker article. The day after our mid-afternoon first date in the Polish bars, she was on that train to California, back to France. Before her train leaving, she phoned me. I did not phone her back, since she was coerced to drop her telephone by the French officials. On that train, she read a work from mine and wrote me a letter, in a tone unsure but sincere, in English. She asked, "If it was unpleasant for us to say good bye, yesterday, will not it be worse saying good bye when we shall have spent five or six days together and surely be quite good friends?"

I wrote her back. And I bundled all the recommended books that I had left at her hotel's front desk for her. I should have guessed hardly had she made it to pick them up. I mailed them to France.

"Too bad for us if another separation is going to be difficult." I responded. Then I had a walk in the streets of my Chicago, waiting.

After that our correspondence initiated, officially.

From the beginning, she simply jotted down what she saw and heard along the trip in California, about refreshing landscape, nice people she encountered, enthralling updates about her friend, another stranger to me. Sometimes, she asked me questions about my novels, sent me her wishes. I was working on Never Come Morning, a defiant record of the fallen life of prize-fighter Bruno Lefty Bicek. I showed her every thought during the construction. She sent me letters from her Paris. Vibrant, joyful. I pondered, from time to time, this was her talent for happiness.

In her early letters, my title was "Dear friend". Days zipped by. In Chicago's bleak spring, we spent three days together, renewed up each other's strange faces fading gravely in the mutual memory months ago, other than tentatively exchanging explicit emotions and unrevealed motives under written words and phrases. Our meeting blanks appeared weekly became monthly gap. Eventually, then, years. In May, 1947, I came with her to New York. I gave this French woman a silver ring. After that, I became her "beloved Chicago man", "precious husband", and "Dear Nelson".

But we never married, officially. We were writers, fraternity conflicted in various ways: I free vagabond, she enthralled outsiders. My life expanded in Chicago, her Paris. She introduced me her husband, Satre.

I was her transatlantic affair.

Your sentence distressed me horribly.

Your sentence distressed me horribly.

I was terribly astonished by your statement.

My soul was disturbed under the penalty of your statement.

Alas, your evil words disheartened me into helter-skelter.

Your phrases shocked me in the severe extent.

The phrases of yours upset my heart unbearably.

Your expression forced me suffering,

I was extremely troubled by your words.

My mind was disconcerted awfully by your sentence.

You harassed me appallingly with your phrase.

Invective

The last time I ran into her was on a crowded and crumbling stair. I sped up my pace, eyes shifting from her pale looking onto my baggy boots. They were muddy on the cramped step. Somehow my shoulder was suddenly hit by a random youngster in rush, I scowling, and then, she stopped me. In a hoarse, indifferent voice, on the trembling stair, she started her ramble on the trendiest updates of her current photography project. I did not attract to such a time-wasting propaganda, because I knew she was not a teamwork-type player. Her egocentric character repelled so many people in the last meeting that no one ever wanted to work with her. What she did in the teamwork was only boasting about her skills in photography and selling you a non-existing future. She worked without any practical action.

Her eyes never caught mine. Her hands did. I winced. She leaned. I stepped back. She followed. The last thing I want on this earth, especially when I was bumped and pushed by flood of deafening crowds, was being grabbed into her forceful harangue. This was not that kind of coercion driven by necessary and purposeful fulfillment, but of adhesive, essentially distressing exhibitionism. She presumed I was her submissive spectator; she viewed any person surrounding her in the same way.

"Do you know I am elected as the team leader for the shooting project?"

I shook my head. She gave me a sharp look in disapproval. Someone just clashed on my boots. Again.

"Well, this is an interesting job. Have you considered about joining us after our last conversation?"

"Sorry, I prefer not."

"What a pity. I assure you will gain much helpful experience there than you can imagine." She purred, holding my arm. "What about the information about people useful I asked for? Any update?" Generally, I would be astonished by her arrogance as usual. But not this time. I thought, I had it enough.

"I have no idea about that. I need to go if you excuse me." I sighed. Her slim finger lingered on my skin, provoking another shuddering tide of disgust in my stomach.

I peered into her grey eyes behind the goggles. I glanced at her snobbish face, then at my dirty boots. I walked away.

"Bye, pal."

Commonplace - Arrogance

Arrogance

Seemingly, arrogance is an almost innocuous sign, which may not cause wretched outcomes; it might merely provoke dissatisfaction in social interaction due to its egocentric nature to ignore other opinions. However, essentially, arrogance can undermine the development of civilization. The most fundamental feature of what we regard as civilization, distinctly, is productivity, the efficiency of production expressed as the ratio of output to input. Without efficiency, the important contributors helping the society stabilize its supply chains, such as education and industry, will trend towards an evident end in producing supplement process, which ultimately can beget a sheer regress in civilization, e.g., a sixth mass extinction based on human culture in general. In terms of negative influence on productivity, arrogance significantly harms the efficiency of making progress and of processing feedback: in some teamwork, some people with hubris can superimpose their will on other teammates' opinions, simply because these who hold superfluous and naive confidence in themselves believe that they are the only ones trying to get thing right, the only ones leading the team towards so-called final goals but in fact a quagmire emerged for the lack of bona fide improvements, which are mostly the positive result of effective and sincere communication on strategies within the team. There goes an educative saying: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Arrogant people's self-righteous attitude worsens the situation that the team usually faces up. In the team, every partner has own diverse way of thinking and can pop up many more possible options or strategies so that the efficiency of team working brings into play; this crucial free-thinking course is blocked out by arrogance. Sometimes, such arrogance even deteriorate the situation already worsened for passive-aggressively denying errors and refusing concessions. Finally, the productivity stagnates because of arrogance.

Maxim-Que sera sera.

"Que sera sera." --Italian Proverb

"Whatever will be, will be"--which at first sight might be misunderstood as a diminutive self-indulgence smart sheltering people briefly from present problems for its seemingly passive notation, essentially can be of great wise given due human's nature, that is, people are much more delicate than they supposed to be without composure. This kind of composure generally works as an expedient to help people disentangle from daily accumulating trivia confusions. Especially when people cannot help but ponder their ultimate cause, identity anxiety, and empathy doubts, etc., lacking of composure can cause mind states unqualified for solving out the logic-oriented problems, even exacerbate them. The way people function, Freud believed, follows parallel rules liken to a pressure venting system. By venting pressure promptly, people gain impetus from their incentive final goal, obtaining relief, thus renewing their response mechanism based on the experience. However, without the sedating wisdom of "Que sera sera", people's venting rhythms can be obscured beneath chronic nervousness, which is rooted in human's cognition as fundamental phobia for problems. For instance, if one guy is fear of a certain dog always in his way to workplace, in order to deal with it, he would either negatively suppress his fear, avoiding conflicts with the dog by making a detour, or positively digest such an unwise fear, letting it smoothly flow by persuading himself the dog may not be that harmful, or even it might be, it cannot cause stern damages. In both ways, this guy must make his decision to overcome the cognitive dissonance as quickly as possible; otherwise he could be late for work. And to bring such compromise into playing its necessary role, the guy needs to maintain his efficiency, to understand it is not like that he must control everything to achieve his goal, but that he should be aware of that even so, there is nothing guaranteed as absolute safety for him. "Of all the wonder that I yet have heard, it seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come. " In William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Caesar's motto significantly corresponds to the que-sera-sera attitude. Once realizing and admitting such reality, only with candid courage to allow oneself borne with not-omnipotent self positioning, one can deal with discouraging situations more calmly and live more effectively.

Narration-Orpheus and Eurydice

“If you lead her coming out towards the light, she as shadow will revive.” The Pluto brought out Eurydice, Orpheus’ beloved wife whose life was taken by a serpent, then vanishing into the negative space, leaving a fleeting gleam to the living and the walking dead.

She was stiff already; the inconsistent way she toddled, the uncertain breath collapsing behind, her contour shadowy, all fragments welling up a barely visible velvet haze withered his eyes, making him wait, hesitate and walk. Patiently she a hollowed muppet pulled strings by the man, who played lyre for the mercy of Hades, waited, followed, and ghosted. Blood and darkness mixture covered their steps. Only Orpheus could see through. 

“Her rusty shadow will unconsciously follow you until you look back.” The voices echoed, crumbling into his topsy-turvy mind. The roads so far so a stretching metaphor, to him, was liken to the hell flame licked his sanity. His heart was violent and mute.

Was she millions of spiderwebs torn asunder? Trillions of stardust misted? Zillions of floating pure venom coming into force only if he turn around?

He captured a ghost of tomorrow near the end of Underworld. His faithful epitaph dying through the longest shuffling, his discrete love hymn for Eurydice worn out; he sensed her as if he smelled an unwanted death. The light of living-being sneaked into his blurry view. Eventually, he ceased the rule.

Orpheus turned around. His finger tips edged her uncertain edge.

She was the beloved one.

“Who?” Eurydice’s numbing murmurs zipped back into the black ether.

She was stiff already.

Negativities - Exercise in Style

Negativities

The weather was neither chilly, nor scorching, but muggy. It was neither sunny, nor rainy, but overcast.  It was neither my father, nor my chair, but my grumpy lazy cat, Nini, that neither rubbed onto my slack laps nor bit but clawed my skin without showing mercy. It was neither an urge to run for my life nor a sense of thirsty driving me unsettled, but an importunate instinct to pee.

Make A Stone Stony

This is a piece of dark purification with barely visible, oval-looking white slim stripes resembling in a spiral pattern, almost like a gorilla baby’s thumbprint.

Passive - 5 sentences story

It was overcast in midsummer. My slack laps were being pressed by my grumpy, lazy cat, Nini. The seemingly no-bounds sleepiness of her was from time to time interrupted by my unstable leg movements, trying to stand still, which generally was the inevitable result of a vague urge to having the restroom being gone to. No mercy was shown then. It was Nini that my fragile kneecaps were scratched by.

The Stardust and The Singularity

In the center of galaxy, the wandering stardust cast a consistent glooming shadow upon its surroundings. 

“So much for a dazzling star; now I am just a ghost from the past,” the stardust sighed, feeling pity for itself. 

Suddenly it heard a far call from mysterious unknown. “I am capable of qualifying you for what you shall wish.” 

The stardust searched out for where the voice came from. A newborn singularity winked inside fuzziness, voicing hoarse and tempting. “I can reverse your pathetic fate. Refuel you. Regenerate a glowing star.” 

The stardust shook its head, wincing. “Stop hassling me. No light can escape from your massive gravity field.” 

“Not if I had devoured mass huge enough, my tidal force would contain me from grabbing you. Within my gravity field, all your particles will accelerate raptly and you shall shine. Again. ” The singularity induced the stardust which gazed blankly. 

More or less, it moved towards the abyss in a desperate manner. “What do I need to do?” 

“Bring your friends to me,” the singularity persuaded it calmly. 

“Sounds not fair.” 

“How? Are you unwilling to sacrifice your friend?” 

The stardust acted not exactly as the singularity expected. It came close, uncertainly murmured.“Actually, not at all. I just don’t have any friend to sacrifice. Would you be my friend?” 

Silence. 

“Well, no and no sorry for you.” The singularity eventually answered and gulped the stardust promptly in a fleeting moment. 

The moral: every one needs friends. Besides that, be nice.

About me

Allison Li. Student. Freelancer.

1997. Born at a hospital near southern sea in China.

1998. My families moved from Beihai, which is a coastal town in geographically lower part of Guangxi Province, to Guiyang, which is a Chinese version Winston-Salem with swarms of idlers shuffling on the cramped street and more traffic gridlocks in general.

2000. The millennium. I thought it was the doom day but it turned out I can live much longer. Somewhat then I decided that eating a whole pineapple was a ripping idea. I made it. And I spent my very only millennium night squirming on my grandparents' leather sofa, in the end, unwillingly hauled to local hospital by them.

2005. In daycare, our instructor assigned all kids to draw an chick on the paper and do some coloring. In terms of  "get it color", the authority essentially indicated that it supposed to be yellow. Of course it is common sense; it just happened to me that I did not have one because I've never seen any commercial advertisement like "Start complying with all-new common sense! Only $9.99" on any magazine or TV channel. Anyway, by mixing all particles of crayons with splattering water pigments, perhaps a bit of saliva counted in, helter-skelter, I completed my first drawing: a motley, itsy-bitsy cutie alien-chick, unsurprisingly with three legs. It should be categorically addressed as Gross Anti-Grandiosity(GAG), but "intriguingly ugly" is more preferable. I got an F in a daycare center. Since then there is one question never ceasing to harass me: what is the benchmark of creative forms?

2005-Today. Keep experimenting on various drawing styles and try to find answers. Why plurality? 

I simply enjoy exploring all these differences.