The Heads on Fire Community

On July 22, the "Designers for Humanity" went down to Malcolm X Library to get a look at a new project related to the "Library Project". Our new assignment is to design and fabricate a totem pole for the garden area outside of the Malcolm X Library and the Beckwourth Library. There has to be an icon that is reconigizable to people from Cambodia, Sudan, Somalia, and Mexico. Xavier made an example of an icon and did a small model on the lazer cutter, but then did a bigger model on the ShopBot. I was assigned to do Cambodia and with the help of the librarian at Malcolm X, we were able to find a couple of books related to the countries. After doing a bit of research, what I plan to do is to make an elephant because the main religion in Cambodia is Buddhism and Hinduism so the elephant is an important animal to the Cambodians. Also, elephants are a way of transportation around some jungle areas in Cambodia.

After finding this symbol, our new member Katherine took us "Geo-caching" with a GPS. There was a GPS signal coming from 20 yards away from the library and we decided to go and find it. We went through rocks and under bridges until we reached our destination which we soon found out was the U.S Postal Office. The GPS pointed towards bushes so we look under the bushes but couldn't find anything. In the end, we weren't able to find our "Geo-caching" item but the significance of this was to be able to follow the GPS directions and that sometimes in life the end result might not be what you expected.

The elephant has appeared in cultures across the world. They are a symbol of wisdom in Asian cultures and are famed for their memory and intelligence, where they are thought to be on par with cetaceans  and hominids. Aristotle once said the elephant was "the beast which passeth all others in wit and mind".