Outliers

Michael Phelps

 

My outlier is Michael Phelps. He is an amazing Olympic swimmer and is also the world record holder for the most Olympic medals (22) and the most gold medals ever won in a single Olympics. Born on June 30, 1985, in Baltimore, Maryland, Michael Phelps competed in his first Olympics at the age of 15, as part of the U.S. men's swim team, but there was much more that affected how he got there.   Phelps began swimming when his two older sisters, Whitney (born in 1978) and Hilary (born in 1980), joined a local swim team. Kind of like I used to be he was still scared to put his head underwater by the time he was seven.  Bob Bowman, his coach, immediately recognized Phelps's talents and fierce sense of competition and began an intense training regime together.  This, like those people in the hockey league put him ahead of everyone else because of little lead he had which developed into a bigger lead.  

In peak training phases, Phelps swims minimum 80,000 meters a week, which is nearly 50 miles. He practices twice a day, sometimes more if he’s training at altitude. Phelps trains for around five to six hours a day at six days a week. This comes out to be much more than 10,000 hours of practice with the number of years he has been practicing.  I could not find this information in any biographies or interviews of Michael Phelps, but I think that based on how much his mother wants him to go to Rio for the next Olympics that she and his sisters supported him a lot in his career.

Another reason why Michael Phelps is so successful is because he is undoubtedly built for swimming.  A good percent of his success is not only the things that Malcolm Gladwell talked about, but also luck.  For example: his size is 6ft 4in, 6ft 7in arm reach, broad shoulders, and large chest make him extremely difficult to beat. He also has relatively short legs for his height, which give him more power in the water. His knees are double-jointed and his feet can rotate 15 degrees more than possible for the average person. This allows him to straighten fully so that his powerful feet act like flippers. He truly is the "human dolphin."

Sources:

http://www.squidoo.com/michael-phelps-workout-diet-how-the-king-of-swimming-does-it

http://www.biography.com/people/michael-phelps-345192?page=1#synopsis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Phelps#Personal_life



Wooooooooohhoooooooo!!!!!!

Its a new year everyone and that means new blogposts!  So all of you crazed fans out there get ready for some more of ME!

A Hummingbirds Heart

The first page and almost the whole writing talks about how hummingbirds and other animals structures and systems work on a factual level.  There is no real deep meaning of the man who wrote this, Brian Doyle, listing off facts about the hummingbirds metabolism and mitochondria or how many chambers the whales heart has.  But then you realize as you get farther into it, he isn't talking about the structures, he is talking about the feelings and emotions of other animals that we are nowhere even close to understanding except for the fact that they are present.  The fact that we are not the only animal on earth that communicates and shows emotions towards other people.  Brian Doyle also talks about every animal has about two billion heart beats in a lifetime and how you can spend them fast like a hummingbird or slow like a tortoise.  What I really think he meant about this part was it is not how long you have to live, but how you spend your life. Even if you only have two years to live you can spend them just as good as if you had 50 years.  I think that this writing is meant to be discouraging, but it gives me a new view on life and others hearts.  

Whats Worth Knowing

Nothing they teach you in school is worth konowing. I sit in various class rooms six hours a day, five days a week learning complex equations or how to conduct scientific experiments.  I learn everything, but what I will need for life after college.  Schools should teach kids how to interact with others and how to solve group problems.  They should teach us how to work together to get things done and how to find and use our inner creativity.  With these skills all of those useless facts are unnecessary.  I think that in school up until college we should learn basic skills like how to read and write and add.  In elementary and middle school they should also teach us how to express ourselves, talk to others about our feelings, and everything else I just listed above.  Then when we get to college and know what we want to major in we can get more advanced in math or science or writing.  Not everyone is going to want to be a mathematician when there older, so they don't need to learn distance formulas or how to find the perimeter of a octagon now.  There is time for that in college.  Anyway this is all getting back to my point that teachers aren't preparing kids with the right skills for there lives.  What we should learn should not be able to be Googled at the touch of a button and the typing of a few words.

Humanity's Goodness

The person I use as proof that humanity is good is Dr. Seuss.  He is an example of many things including determination, inspiration, and happiness. He used all of these aspects in his life and in his writing.

First, he is an example of determination because of what happened throughout his life.  He struggled a lot when writing his books and getting them published.  Theodore Seuss Geisel was a perfectionist so books could take him a year or two to write, but he never gave up on a book and that is why he has 46 children's books today.  The first book he tried to get published (And to Think that I Saw It on Mulberry Street) was rejected 27 times before he signed a contract to publish it with Mike McClintock.  This shows how Seuss would not give up on his book and on his career.

Secondly, Dr. Seuss is an example of great inspiration and creativity.  He was one of the first to show that you are never to old to be a kid and he did this through his writing.  Kids loved his books because it was something they could understand and connect to and believe in.  Through his books Seuss was doing the opposite of killing creativity, he was nurturing it! There is a seed of creativity in every child's head and Dr. Seuss was helping it blossom.  

Finally, Dr. Seuss is an example of happiness or joy.  He had to go through some pretty hard things in his life, but he always remained happy.  He took much joy in helping others with their problems and making kids happy with his stories such as Cat in the Hat and Horton Hears a Who. These stories were not only making kids happy, but they were teaching them a lesson.  In every book Dr. Seuss has written, if you look real close, there is an underlying life lesson.  For example in the Lorax he teaches kids how deforestation is evil and how we should preserve animals natural habitat.

All in all Dr. Seuss is a perfect example of the goodness in humanity.  He is not the only one, but he certainly had a big impact on the world and will be remembered  and cherished through his writing forever.

Waste Land

I think that the most memorable and most surprising part of this movie was the fact that those people actually had families and homes just like normal people.  They are normal people, just like you and me, but they seem so different because of what they have to struggle through everyday of their life.  They have to support family members and kids all on what little money they have and in such horrible conditions.  Sometimes I think that I have to struggle and my life is hard, but when you put it into perspective I have a paradise life.  I learned that the people in this movie, the pickers, are truly very peaceful because peace is not being in a place without any noise, trouble, or hard work. It means to be in the midst of all those things and still be calm in your heart.
 

If I were a picker I would think nothing of all of the trash at first.  That is all it is to me, trash. It is just worthless junk that people don't want so they throw away. However, after Vik Mumiz showed me what he can do with this trash, how he can transform it into art, I would look differently about everything else that I previously thought was useless. So overall I think that the pickers were feeling that they were part of something big and more important than just picking trash.  They knew they were inspiring millions of people.

I think that if I were the subject of this art it would not be as speacial or meaningful because I have a relatively normal life.  These people had to struggle through life everyday while most like me don't have a hard time getting our next meal.  If I were the subject of this kind of art I think I would deffinetly want to include me involved with my youth group.  Mostly because in April I participate in something called the 30 hour famine.  This is a program we do to help rasie money for third world countries through World Vision.  For 30 hours the youth group fasts at my church while learning about third world countries and what the people have to deal with.  The waste land pickers are a lot like the people in these third world countries that we learn about come to think of it. So that is one thing that I am passionate about and would be included in the art work.

Delicate Picture

 

 

For my delicate picture i decided to take a picture of an raw egg because it is very delicate and I love them.  It is delicate because it will break or crack if you drop it.  This is not the defenition of delicate, but it is still an example of it.