My car: In the city it’s not that big of a deal not to have a car, but I kind of miss my freedom. I would be able to see so much more of Peru if I could drive myself and not have to rely on buses and taxis.

Tap water: It’s not that the tap water here is that bad, but since I’m not used to it, I have to be careful so it doesn’t make me sick. I’m looking forward to brushing my teeth without a separate bottle of water, drinking from the sink, drinks with ice (which isn’t really a thing here anyway), and, most importantly, free water in restaurants.

Pepsi: Sorry. Coke just doesn’t cut it.

Shorts: Between the cooler weather and the potential for sexual advances (see my blog on gender), I haven’t worn shorts since last September or October. And I won’t until I get back in June.

Toilet paper: A lot of the public bathrooms in Peru lack this very important tool, meaning either you bring your own, or you’re screwed.

Photo Credit: Katie King

Free refills: I usually finish my first drink before the meal even comes and have to buy another, equally expensive one to go with my food. I never realized what a blessing it was to have unlimited soda (or water or whatever) at your disposal.

Toilets that flush: Another problem I have with some public bathrooms here (although only some) is that they don’t have a flushing mechanism. There is generally a barrel of water and a bucket nearby, and you pour a bucket of water into the toilet bowl, forcing it down the pipe.

However, there are also some things I’m really going to miss from Peru (besides my host family and the incredible landscapes):

Cheap public transportation: Yes, I miss my car, but I think it would be great if the United States had better public transportation. A lot of times it’s cheaper, and it’s more environmentally friendly.

Fresh foods: I love that most of the food that people eat here is not processed. I love the fresh juice I have every morning made straight from the fruit and not poured out of a jug, and I like knowing that it supports the locals (read my food blog).

Spanish: This is the most I’ve ever spoken Spanish, and I can tell that my language skills have improved immensely. I love Spanish, and although it will be comforting to be surrounded by English again, I’ll miss hearing and speaking it.

The post When I Get Home… appeared first on Blue & White Online.

No, not an actual worm, an earworm is a fragment of a catchy song that gets stuck in your head for no apparent reason. Earworms are a nuisance to everyone at some point, and it can sometimes be debilitating when trying to complete a task, like when attempting to ace a test. Luckily, I can provide you with information about the triggers for earworms and with solutions for getting rid of them.

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Researchers from Goldsmiths, University of London published a study in the journal Psychology of Music in 2011 about how earworms start. Through their study of over 600 participants, they discovered that there are four conditions that cause earworms: music exposure, memory triggers, affective states and low attention states. Music exposure is probably the most common origin of an earworm because it involves either recently hearing a song or hearing it repeatedly. Memory triggers are defined as associating a tune with certain people, words, beats or situations. Affective states refer to an individual’s emotional frame of mind where certain feelings may cause songs to get stuck. Lastly, low attention states are circumstances in which the mind is engaged in monotonous activity.

Since it can be almost impossible to consciously prevent these situations from happening, a recent study published in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology by Dr. Ira Hyman from Western Washington University discovered that solving anagrams can be used to eliminate the dreaded earworm from one’s consciousness. An anagram is a word or phrase formed from another by rearranging its letters. For example, the word “safer” can be transformed into the word “fears.”

Dr. Hyman’s research found that focusing on five-letter anagram puzzles is the most effective method of removing an intrusive song because it cognitively engages the brain, limiting the ability of songs to get stuck inside. In this respect, solving Sudoku puzzles, reading novels or playing sports are also useful means of eliminating earworms since they dominate the mind’s focus. However, there is a catch to the success of these methods. The level of difficulty needs to be in the moderate range, for if the activity is too easy or too complex, then the earworm will creep back into your consciousness. This has to do with the degree of engagement of the brain. Both limits of difficulty levels will not successfully engage the mind, leaving plenty of room for a song to play internally.

No song is safe from becoming an earworm. Dr. Hyman concludes that obnoxious songs are not the only ones that can get stuck, songs that people know and love can become annoyingly embedded. The chorus of a song is most likely to continue replaying in a person’s head because of the fact that unfinished thoughts often return to the forefront of one’s mind and because we don’t usually know the lyrics to an entire song.

Conduct an experiment on yourself by listening to the following song. See if it gets stuck in your head over the course of the day. If it does, then use one of the above methods to test their effectiveness in removing it.

The post The Implantation and Removal of Earworms appeared first on Blue & White Online.

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And in honor of this performance, here are some reasons why I love listening to this band:

I love listening to Mipso because of their eloquent three part vocals, their chilling harmonies, and their relevant and meaningful lyricism.

I love listening to Mipso because of the respect I have for them as musicians—because of their talented vocals and instrumentals and their songwriting abilities and their performing abilities.

I love listening to Mipso because of the respect I have for them outside of their musical lives, respect in creating a balance between Morehead Cain scholarships and academics and an overall campus involvement, establishing themselves as role models to the rest of us.

I love listening to Mispo because, for me, they have become a staple of Chapel Hill life in my two years here, because I look forward to every chance I get to hear them perform, because everyone else looks forward to their performances just as greatly as I do.

I love listening to Mipso because of the many brief interactions I have had with Wood in the Jazz department here at UNC-Chapel Hill and how the department as a whole made me feel, from the very start, welcomed—how my lesser abilities in music did not matter, and how the experience, the camaraderie, shared between two musicians playing together did matter.

Music is my favorite way to get to know other people; through music, we bond over similar tastes and interests, we connect through the ability to enlighten others on new music, we attend concerts ranging from small intimate bar scenes to packed amphitheaters of booming choruses.  To know that somebody else feels as passionate about a favorite song of yours is to know that a part of their heart understands that same part of yours, and that is a bond that few things can break.  And for this reason, I hope to see some of you at Cat’s Cradle next Saturday—if not to listen to the music, at least come to feel the connection between musician and audience,  from student to student, and to bid a grand farewell to a group of talented, successful, ambitious members of this Chapel Hill family.

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After Carr received her cancer diagnosis, the documentary showed how Carr began her healing journey by going to a bookstore and buying as many books as she could on alternative medicine. Additionally, she visited an alternative medicine fair, a naturopathic doctor, an acupuncturist, a nutritionist specializing in the micronutrient diet, and a pH alkaline specialist. She tried eating a variety of Chinese herbs, rubbed healing mud all over her body, practiced yoga, consulted spiritual teachers, and attempted laughter, dance, and anger therapy. I would try anything as well if I had stage four of an incurable cancer.

While exploring alternative medicine, I could also relate to Carr’s exhaustion of devoting all her time to her health. The best way she describe it was “cancer became my full time job.” She had to quit her job as an actress that she loved and become dependent on her parents again. Time she would spent having a social life became consumed by doctor appointments and trying to figure out what works best for her body.

Last semester, I was in a similar situation. Since my doctors did not know what was wrong with me, I had to quit all my activities that I was involved in exchange for doctor appointments and self-caring. From someone who has always been a very active and involved person, especially at a university like UNC-Chapel Hill, where it seems like every student is involved in something, it was very difficult for me to not participate in some sort of cause. Being involved in activities gave me a sense of purpose and made me feel connected to my different communities. Without these interactions, like Carr, I felt like I lost my identity. I felt like my identity became my health problems. It is always scary to go through health problems, but for me, it was especially difficult to do so in college, because I was already adjusting to so much change, and I was away from the support of my family.

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Carr also had to change her diet. Like me, she made Whole Foods her pharmacy. She had to go on a plant-based diet, so if her foods didn’t come from a plant, she could not eat it. Consequently, this new diet required a lot of time cooking in the kitchen, as the majority of restaurants did not serve the raw meals that she needed. Initially, Carr was excited to be cooking so much because of how amazing she felt after eating, but eventually, she started to feel imprisoned by her kitchen because the amount of time it took her to prepare her food caused her to be isolated from socialization. The amount of time she would have spent meeting a friend for dinner or lunch had to now be invested into cooking.

Like Carr, last semester, I had to structure my schedule to always be in close proximity to my kitchen. I could not pick up a meal from the dinning hall or a restaurant. Because of all my allergies, I had to prepare everything that went into my mouth, which was a huge undertaking for a college student, living in a dorm room, out of a small mini fridge, and with no personal kitchen. Like Carr’s experience, all the hours I had to spend cooking for myself drastically minimized my time for socialization.

Besides having to change my schedule and my allocation of my time, the hardest part for me was that I felt I could not open up and share what I was going through. I felt like I couldn’t share that I was going to the doctor’s office to get tests done because generally speaking, most college students are fortunate enough to be in good health and do not have to spend their time as frequently as I did in doctor offices. Because I felt like people couldn’t understand my situation, I felt that they would be unable to emphasize.

Eventually I realized that we are all going through something, whether we vocalize it or not. My food allergies might be someone else’s anxiety disorder, battle with depression, or cancer. For the longest time, I thought that my food allergies were a punishment for something that I had done. However, I quickly learned that hardships are an opportunity for us to practice acceptance. My food allergies have blessed me with the chance to practice accepting all the things I can and cannot change about myself. And by practicing accepting who I am and who I am not, I have become better at accepting others and other things that happen in my life.

Whether you have stage four cancer or the inability to digest a variety of foods, practice accepting your crazy, sexy hardships.

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I’ve never gone without food.  It’s nearly impossible for me to try and imagine it.

North Carolina is one of seven states that exhibits statistically significant higher household food insecurity rates than the U.S. national 2009-2011 average, according to hunger-relief charity Feeding America.  Furthermore, it states that more than 1 in every 5 children are regularly hungry.

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Again — I can’t imagine that.  It’s so easy to remove yourself from the problem.

But one organization has done just the opposite, tackling the issue of hunger right in the gut –  pardon the pun.

PORCH is a grassroots hunger-relief organization benefiting hunger-insecure people right here in Chapel Hill and Carrboro.  It’s run entirely by devoted volunteers.

It stands for People Offering Relief for Chapel Hill-Carrboro Homes, but the acronym also works because of the process.  One of PORCH’s three branches is Food for Families.  Once a month, generous neighbors leave canned food on their very own porches — as much or as little as they like.  The monthly donation is picked up, sorted, packed (along with fresh produce, eggs, ground beef and milk purchased from local stores with monetary donations) and delivered straight to the families at convenient drop-off locations, like apartment complexes and schools.

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Last month alone, PORCH distributed 672 bags of non-perishables and 350 bags of perishables.

Social workers in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro public school system determine which students and their families might need a little extra help.  These families are then referred to PORCH.

PORCH also greatly enhances local food pantries’ stocks through another one of its branches, Food for Pantries.  It communicates with the pantries to determine what they’re most in need of, and the request is passed along to neighborhood volunteers, who are in charge coordinating their own neighborhoods.

Food for Thought, the final branch, refers to PORCH’s mission to spread hunger awareness, and how a community can help.  Its website states that 1 in 6 families in Chapel Hill and Carrboro now live at or below the poverty level, which is $22,000 a year for a family of four.  Many of these families, it believes, are comprised of the “working poor” who work long hours for little wages.

I recently went to the home of one of the founders — she has a beautiful home with a screened-in porch of her own — and spoke to her and another co-founder (there are three).  I was struck by their easy-going friendship.  They’re just normal mothers who wanted to help, and who couldn’t bear the thought of their children’s classmates possibly going hungry.

Listening to them discuss their organization, it was easy to see how passionate they were about PORCH, something they never expected to balloon to such an impressive size (they have over 165 neighborhoods donating food, and help feed over 200 families).

When their plans began to fall into place, they were particularly surprised by the relentless generosity of volunteers.  They tell them thank you when they arrive to help sort the food, and the volunteers say, “No — thank you.”

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Poverty is a massive problem that likely isn’t going to be solved anytime soon.  But PORCH is making a notable difference in so many people’s lives, one porch at a time.

The post PORCH: Fighting Hunger in a Convenient Way appeared first on Blue & White Online.

Dustin McManus is a junior from Charlotte, NC. He can be reached at dmcmanus@live.unc.edu.

No show on television today is as bananas as ABC’s “Scandal.”  From “Grey’s Anatomy” mastermind Shonda Rhimes, “Scandal” has risen from a quiet mid-season replacement show last year to one of the loudest, buzziest shows with a no holds barred approach to rapid-fire storytelling and jaw-dropping twists.  Starring the feisty and magnetic Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope, “Scandal” follows Pope as high-profile D.C. fixer and her rag-tag team helping defuse media storms and, well, scandals, for politicians, celebrities and other prominent figures.  The initial main draw and not so subtle irony of the show is that Olivia herself is caught up in her own super-secret scandal: an affair with the President of the United States.

Whip-smart, sexy, stylish and slightly insane, “Scandal” is a full-on pleasure without any guilt.  So far, 24 episodes of the show have aired over two seasons, and more has happened within that brief amount of time than happens on the entire run of most shows.  And “Scandal” keeps steamrolling forward.  I would highly encourage everyone to check out “Scandal.”  Not only is it amazingly addictive TV, but there’s an awesome drinking game (patented by myself and my roommate) that you can play while watching.  Unfortunately, “Scandal” is on a three week hiatus much to my fiery chagrin.  But for all you “Scandal” neophytes, you can use this time to get caught up in a matter of days and be ready to finish out the rest of the season when it returns April 25.  And don’t forget to pour it up while watching.

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The “Scandal” Drinking Game Rules:

• Drink whenever Olivia or her team refer to themselves or are referred to as “gladiators.”
• Drink whenever someone says the phrase “white hat.”
• Drink when Olivia and the president have a secret night-time phone conversation.
• Drink when Huck says something that makes everyone else uncomfortable.
• Drink when Huck is socially awkward.
• Drink when Quinn screws something up.
• Drink when the musical montage begins after the team has accepted a case.
• Drink when Olivia refers to the president as “Fitz.”
• Drink when Mellie intentionally sabotages the president for her own benefit.
• Drink when Mellie gets her crazy eyes.
• Drink when Olivia’s lips quiver before she goes off on somebody.
• Drink when Cyrus orders Charlie to put out a hit/spy on somebody.
• Drink when Olivia has a glass of wine and/or eats popcorn for dinner.
• Drink when Olivia wears something other than white.
• Drink whenever Harrison defends Olivia.
• Drink whenever someone mentions “Defiance.”
• Finish your drink when Olivia actually smiles.
• Finish your drink when the president and Mellie actually show genuine affection to each other.
• Finish your drink when someone gets the jump on Huck.
• Finish your drink when you didn’t see that coming (no cheating).

 There you have it, folks.  Kick back, grab a beverage and bask in the wonder that is TV’s juiciest drama.  “Scandal” airs Thursdays at 10 p.m on ABC.

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With all of the hype generated from the rerelease of “Jurassic Park,” Gary Rydstrom, the film’s sound designer, revealed the secrets behind the numerous dinosaur sounds featured throughout the film to Vulture. Since no recordings of dinosaurs’ roars existed for Rydstrom to use, he had to create all of the sounds emitted from the various dinosaur species from scratch. As a result, Rydstrom employed unconventional sounds in order to achieve the fearsome snarl of the Tyrannosaurus Rex that still sends chills down movie goers’ spines.

The following information could potentially ruin your perception of “Jurassic Park” and your movie viewing experience when you watch it in the future, so only continue reading if you are okay with learning where the sounds in “Jurassic Park” originated from.

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Rydstrom spent months visiting different zoos, ranches, farms, and even his own backyard to record a variety of animal noises that he could work with in order to achieve the desired dinosaur sounds. Perhaps the most menacing sounds featured in the movie come from the T. Rex as it attacks Lex and Tim Murphy through the sunroof of the tour vehicle, yet the origins of these sounds aren’t intimidating at all. In fact, inspired by the T. Rex’s doglike movements, Rydstrom used his little Jack Russell terrier, Buster, to create some of the huge dinosaur’s noises by slowing down the sound of Buster playing with a rope toy. This technique of deepening sounds was also used to produce the heart-stopping T. Rex roar, but this time with the trumpet roar of a baby elephant.

The Velociraptors’ communication noises seem like the most eccentric of all. Rydstrom embarrassingly admitted that the sounds used in the kitchen scene where the Velociraptors are suposedly speaking to one another came from sounds emitted by mating tortoises!

The previous clip also incorporates the breathing noises of a horse when the Velociraptor appears in the kitchen’s door window. Horses were one of the primary animals used in the film’s sound design. The most obvious example comes from the Gallimimus flock, which incorporated stampeding horses and the squeals of a female horse as the sound that the Gallimimuses make as they pass by Lex, Tim, and Dr. Allan Grant. The horse’s cousin, the donkey, can be heard extremely slowed down as the howling of the Brachiosaurus in many scenes throughout the movie.

http://youtu.be/nM-RPO10aPY

One of the most interesting combinations of noises can be found in the scene in which Dennis Nedry encounters a Dilophosaurus as he is trying to make his getaway from Jurassic Park. The Dilophosaurus lets out an innocent sounding yelp that was adapted from a swan’s hooting sound. However, when the Dilophosaurus decides to take Nedry as its prey, it produces a harsh cry made from a mixture of a hawk’s and a rattlesnake’s sounds.

http://youtu.be/d921M-ACMM4

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On a basic level this makes sense- so many components factor into calorie counting and caloric requirements that it seems like it would be easier for the general public to process nutrition in terms of constant measurements, such as mileage. But is this logic enough to propose that restaurants nationwide replace their standard nutritional information with exercise-based statistics?

According to health legislature signed by president Obama in 2010, all big restaurant chains in the nation are now required to post calorie information on their menus and drive-through signs. This legislation is the reason why a board with the nutritional information of every item on the menu is displayed prominently in the bottom of our Union, right beside the new Wendy’s.

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 Overall, the law states that any restaurant chain with more than 20 outlets must disclose the calorie counts of their food items. Back in 2010, this example of government regulated health standards was met with a lot of controversy so logistically, the idea of reworking this legislation to use exercise equivalencies instead seems almost impossible. Besides, this raises other questions in my mind such as would such conversions be accurate?

Although calorie counting is far from a perfect science, there is no evidence that replacing these figures with exercise equivalences would be any more precise. On a basic level, calories have many different forms which makes it impossible to generalize the calories burned per specific exercise. Or in simpler terms, the caloric equivalent of the same meal might work out to walking two miles for you, but be more like three or four miles for me. In order for this method to be feasible, restaurants would also have to take into account percentages within overall calorie count (i.e. how many calories are from fat, protein, etc.). Something tells me that this isn’t something that major chain restaurants would be willing to take the time to do.

On a more psychological level, charts containing exercise equivalences for menu items could also have the potential to trigger exercise compulsions and disordered thinking. A new subset of eating disorders, labeled exercise bulimia, is classified by an obsession with exercise as a calorie burning method. I worry that it would become a lot harder to indulge in fast food every now and then when confronted with how many miles it would take to burn it off, regardless of whether that information was accurate or not.

My final contention with this proposition is that everyone exercises in different ways and it is unlikely that chain restaurants would be able to take all exercise options into account. This means that the non-runner, for example, might not have access to statistics that are relevant to them.

Ultimately, I don’t think that revamping nutritional charts in order to include exercise equivalences is the way to go, regardless of the fact that it may make us more aware of our food choices. I’m not sure how long it will be before a more exact science of food emerges in our fast food restaurants but until then, traditional calorie counts will have to do.

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With such a vast expanse of resources, it’s only natural that money-hungry humans would want to exploit them. Exploitation of oil, wood, silver and gold, and hydroelectric power are just a few of the things that threaten Peru’s ecosystems and its people.

However, it’s not just greedy corporations and governments that harm the environment. From my experience in Peru, it seems like nobody really cares about it. People throw their trash on the streets and in the parks, and sometimes I can barely breathe for the amount of car fumes that fill the air. On top of that, the only places that recycle are the airports. Coming from UNC-Chapel Hill where practically everyone cares about the environment, and Asheville, which is similar, it was a bit of a shock.

Photo Credit: Katie King

When we visited the Pacaya Samiria reserve in the Amazon a few weeks ago, I thought things might be different. We were going to a river community specifically made for ecotourism, so I thought there, they must be conscious about taking care of the environment. Although a lot of them were, a lot of them weren’t.

One thing that I saw that struck me particularly was a boy chucking empty plastic bottles into the Marañón River next to which the community was situated. This kind of thing is pretty common in Peru. Even in that “eco-friendly” community, trash littered the ground.
Despite this apathetic attitude toward the environment (and not all people have it), Peru has a relatively low emissions ranking of 67, as opposed to the United States, which ranks second only to China.

Photo Credit: Katie King

 Why such the difference in attitude and actions? I have a theory – saving money. Although people may not maintain a certain lifestyle to help the environment, they will do it to save money. For example, my host family always turns off the WiFi when no one is using it. While this inadvertently helps the environment by using less electricity, the primary goal, from what I have inferred, is to save money.

There’s nothing wrong with this philosophy. Why wouldn’t you want to save money and help the environment at the same time? Which leads me to question Americans’ lifestyles. Americans generally like to save money. Many of them also like to be environmentally conscious. Yet our lifestyles revolve around consumption. Even though we all know it would be better to cut back on certain things, that means sacrificing some of the luxuries we now enjoy, and for many Americans, that’s just too much to ask.

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Emily Wiggins is a sophomore from Fayetteville, NC. She can be reached at ekwiggin@live.unc.edu.

Any vacation I take I view as a new food adventure.

Last week, I returned from a short vacation to Jamaica with my father. At our resort, we enjoyed a wide array of tropical fruits: mangoes, coconuts, papaya and guava. I was pretty familiar with these fruits, but throughout our stay I got a chance to sample a few foods I’d never tried before. I quickly learned that Jamaica is a country with eclectic, fresh cuisine.

The first unfamiliar dish I tried was curried goat. I’ve only seen goat on a menu once before and I was not feeling brave enough at the time to try it. As a huge fan of curry, I couldn’t turn it down. Upon tasting it though, I decided it definitely wasn’t my cup of tea: the meat was tough and kind of greasy. I would try it again somewhere else, but for now I think I’ll stick to curried chicken.

On a nature tour we took during our stay, a tour guide introduced us to other edible plants native to the area. One such plant was the ackee, the national fruit of Jamaica. It’s a peculiar looking fruit, with bumpy pink skin and large black seeds surrounded by white flesh. The fruit is typically eaten boiled alongside salted fish for breakfast.

I have always wondered what various spices look like in their natural form, as it’s such a common practice to buy them preprocessed in a jar. Allspice, as it turns out, is found in both nut and leaf form. We were given an allspice leaf to crunch up, and we savored its aromatic scent. Although allspice is used in the United States for many desserts, in Jamaica it is used as an important spice in savory dishes such as jerk chicken.

Photo Credit: Emily Wiggins

Another satisfying practice for me is plucking fruit right from the plant it’s growing from. For example, at home, I’m a huge fan of going to pick strawberries and blueberries. In Jamaica, oranges and tangerines grow abundantly. Since citrus isn’t something I’m used to seeing fresh in North Carolina, I jumped at the opportunity to pluck a fresh orange from its leaves. After cutting it in half and biting into it, I was blown away by how sweet and flavorful the orange was—one of the many benefits of eating local is the realization I could never get anything this fresh from a grocery store.

There was also lots of pumpkin in Jamaica. As someone who usually eats pumpkin between the months of September and November, it was interesting to see so much in the warm month of April. I ate a different type of cooked pumpkin nightly during our stay, including mashed, roasted and in the form of soup.

It was fantastic to be around so many fresh fruits and native Jamaican plants. My trip to Jamaica has showed me the number of ways tropical foods can be combined to make delicious dishes. These native dishes have given me ideas to try out in my own kitchen—I’m interested in making my own jerk chicken or jerk tofu, and would love to eat pumpkin after October has passed. Overall, learning about new foods is one of the many beautiful things about traveling to an unfamiliar place.

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