My Simple Truths

Hello Wild Knights!  I’m sorry for being away for a few weeks, I’ve needed time to work on things and a break was much appreciated. I have a lot of blog posts planned out for the next couple weeks, but I wanted to do something a bit different today. A lot of craziness has happened in the world recently. People are angry, hurting, and the healing process is being stalled because it seems like everyone is playing the blame game.

Guns, Obama, police officers, ect. What good does it do to blame someone? By calling someone guilty, does it absolve you of the responsibility to fix it? This is not meant to call anyone out, I just want to pose the question to ponder. The rest of the world is not against you. So many people have the potential to be great. From sharing food with someone who needs it, to protecting those who can’t protect themselves.

I want so badly to be able to talk about these things, and how to fix them. To reach out across both sides of a fence and embrace everyone.  I cry sometimes to keep myself from exploding, because I hear about or see people that I wish I could save.  I promise here and now, I will make this world a better place. I’ll use everything I have and everything I am, and someday with my fellow Wild Knights, the world will be changed forever.

I’m going to list a few things that cause more than a few debates. I want to list my thoughts on them, and hopefully explain why I believe what I do. We don’t all agree and that is just fine, but I hope you will give my thoughts a chance.

1. Since it is what’s foremost on my mind at the moment;   Black Lives Matter. White Lives Matter. Blue Lives Matter. Animal Lives Matter.  The list goes on. There is no species on this planet that doesn’t matter, except perhaps mosquitoes.   Some trigger happy cops does not make every law enforcement officer a gun happy lunatic who shoots black people. Bad apples in the bunch, like all groups, but I guarantee that most police officers would protect you if you needed it. Police brutality must be nipped in the bud of course, but attacking police officers at protests only paints you as the villain of this story. You are not alone. Ask for help and we will answer. Resorting to violence is not the answer to a violent problem.

 

2.  Don’t see enemies where there are none.   If a protester hits a cop with a brick, it doesn’t mean suddenly all protester are rioters and treated like they are dangerous.  If a teen breaks into your house,  it doesn’t mean they are all hooligans that steal and tramp over your manicured lawn.   Republican, Democrat, Tomato, Tomahto. If you are basing your views on what your party is “supposed” to believe, then you are doing it wrong.  Don’t be sheep. Always think for yourself and do what you know to be right.  

 

3.   Don’t waste your life on negative emotions. Pay attention to your own thoughts and actions during the day. Do you think mainly positive or negative? Gee works sucks today. This food is terrible. He is annoying. ect.  These thoughts do not serve you well. They paint the walls of your mind black with negative thoughts and make your day negative as well. Are you healthy? Do you have people who love you? Did you have to fight for your food today? Every moment and every breath is a precious thing. Treasure them.

 

4. Inaction. Apathy. Numb.  If there is a serious problem in this world, it MUST be addressed. You may think you don’t have to power to change it, but you are wrong. Take that first step. Call it out. Write to those in charge. March. Protest. Change the world, don’t accept it for what it is, dream of what it could be.   For example;  Too many people are in jail or prison for obscene sentences. 15+ years for a drug possession crime?!?!?!  Stupid teens who hang with the wrong crowd, getting years of their adulthood taken and wasted in a cell???   Waste. These people rotting in jail could be helped and put towards bettering our society. Give educations so they can do things that they never imagined. These ridiculously overblown sentences have become commonplace. People make mistakes. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar. A mistake should not cost you your future.

 

That’s it for my emotional rant of the evening. I hope I was able to convey how I feel in a relatable way.  I love each and every one of you. I will be here for you through thick and thin, and whatever storm blows our way. We will be the warriors, artists, scientists, and teachers, standing on the edge of oblivion and holding our ground. We are Wild Knights and we are going to save the world.

~Emrys

 

 

 

Tech of the Future!

Good evening Wild Knights!!!!! For the past few weeks, nearly all of my free time has been spent teaching myself the Big Three subjects that I’m really interested in; Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Electrical Engineering. It may seem a bizarre change of pace for an actor/musician/lunatic, but I am a beast of many different tastes, and one big part of me is a computer nerd.

My Big Three subjects I’ve chosen are all about culminating into the real endgame:

                                                                      Robotics!                                                                         

 

I want to put my imagination to use and create things that I have always dreamed of. Green technology that can hopefully revolutionize the way we do things.

I will definitely keep the blog updated regarding my progress and various side-projects that I take on, but for now I wanted to highlight some of amazing tech that has been created by people like us, who are passionate and truly love what they do!

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First, I want to talk about Reusable Rockets designed by SpaceX! The company was founded by Elon Musk, who you may remember from earlier posts is working on the Hyperloop.  We know space travel is amazing and the possibilities are endless, but humanities way of reaching the stars has never been all that practical.  Despite all our advancements, getting a rocket to space has been the equivalent of light some dynamite under your bum and blasting off, destroying the rocket and throwing you to your location.   Elon Musk wanted to change the way space was accessed, envisioning dozens of rockets launching yearly. While NASA spends years working on rockets that have a single shot at success, Elon Musk has developed rockets that can actually land after they have delivered their cargo!

This opens up so many possibilities for the future of space travel! So much money is wasted on these one-shot launches, that launches into space are done rarely, only once the reward outweighs the cost. With SpaceX leading the charge into the interstellar frontier, we may be seeing a lot more action occurring in our solar system.

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Next up is an amazingly clever invention created by Kristof Retezár, a designer based in Vienna.  He has created a self-filling water bottle that can extract humidity from the air and condense it into drinking water. Sound too good to be true? Well its true ladies and gents! Straight from the Livescience article;

The handy gadget, dubbed Fontus, can be attached to a bike so that cyclists can generate water during long-distance rides through the countryside, where pit stops may be few and far between.

Fontus works using the basic principle of condensation, which can be easily demonstrated by taking something out of a refrigerator (for instance, a can of soda) and leaving it on the kitchen counter for a bit. Eventually, you’ll notice moisture collecting on the sides of the object. [See video of how the Fontus device works]

“This is simply condensation of the humidity that is contained in the air,” Retezár told Live Science. “You always have a certain percentage of humidity in the air, it doesn’t matter where you are — even in the desert. That means you would always potentially be able to extract that humidity from the air.”

This fantastic device can work even in a desert! He is also working on a standalone version that doesn’t require a bicycle to generate the airflow. An estimated 0.5 liters of water an hour can be generated in standard climate conditions. The possibilities for this device are vast, especially considering the effects of building one much bigger for a group of people. Living off the grid would be a lot easier if you could generate your own water!!!!

http://www.livescience.com/53401-fontus-converts-humidity-into-water.html#ooid=l5NXU3MDE65NF7z29smvNQCpI9v2Nbwr

 

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This post ended up much longer than I expected, so I’ll stop for now! Plenty more to come 😀  I hope you felt some inspiration pumping in your veins after seeing what a good idea and a passionate heart can accomplish. As always, we would love to hear from all our Knights, so please comment and let us know what you think or even email us at championsunchained@gmail.com to submit a post of your own to the Wild Knights Online blog!!!!!!  Having guest posts and comments by our Wild Knights would be an amazing treat for the two nerds currently posting 😀

May all your days be full of love and success!  Til next time! ♥

~Emrys

The Pursuit of Knowledge

Hello Wild Knights! Tonight’s post is a bit of an explanation for the blog’s diverse range of blog topics. Blaze and I are fanatics when it comes to learning about the things we love. We are both musicians and actors, and we have a wide variety of interests as well. As you may have noticed, we are intensely  focused on environmental issues and improving our planet in any way possible. So many subjects completely fascinate us, and we want to learn and be involved in all of them! Wild Knights is meant to find people who are passionate about what they do, bring them all together under one flag, and change the world together. That’s why we cover so many different topics and styles.

To give you an idea of what kind of stuff that we do to learn…..My first big move was studying Vocal Performance in college. I love music and I LOVE performing. I had never felt so happy. Then I started to expand. I’m a very outdoorsy fellow, and decided to research Wildlife Biology and took classes to learn as much as I could. How better to be involved environmentally than to learn all we can about our world and act upon it?

I love to learn. It’s funny, in school I got perfect grades, but never enjoyed learning anything. Even learning another language in school felt dull and uninteresting. When I left school I felt like all that time had amounted to nothing. I wasn’t passionate about any of the subjects and had no clue what to do next.

I found my passion in growing. Being able to take the things I’ve learned and applying them in all aspects of my life.

For example, recently my passion has been electronics and greener technology. I’ve been cramming online lessons and studying as much as possible to learn about everything from computer engineering to robotics. I have started the process of building my own PC, my first technological pride and joy, completely customized and built by me. Yeah it’s easy to do, but it means a lot to me. Understand each part and its purpose. Understanding how it works and how to make it more efficient. Then imagining what I can do with that knowledge. I could start building robots. I could design software or my own video games. Anything under the sun.

With so many diverse characters involved in Wild Knights, we all add something unique to the mix. Thousands of unique individuals with such diverse talents and careers, all united in pursuit of the same goal.

What is my goal for Wild Knights? To become a planet-wide organization, consisting of unique people who will inspire others to become the best they can be.

The world could always use more heroes.

~Emrys

 

The Road Less Traveled

Good evening fellow Wild Knights!  It’s been a busy couple weeks, but I have finally moved in to my dorm at Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park  😀   It feels a bit like I fell back into winter once I got here. In Tennessee it was about 75 degrees, and yet here the entire Yellowstone Lake is frozen over. I definitely didn’t mind the sudden onslaught of freezing temperatures, and immediately after my check in I went on an amazing hike through the mountains!

My main reason for coming back to Yellowstone was to treat this place like a kind of training ground. I have different goals that I needed to reach and I needed a place where I could do it without distraction and with 2.2 million acres of nature to inspire me.

First and foremost, I needed to learn how best to take care of myself. Physically and mentally.  For the past couple months my living arrangements have been less than ideal, and my food options even less so. No more!!!!!! I’ve been at Yellowstone for about 3 days now, and every meal has been healthy with tons of nutrients that I’ve been deprived of (thank you Kale ;D). I’ve almost completely removed all sugar from my diet, and started drinking nothing but water. Once the employee gym opens for the season tomorrow, I will have a fantastic work out regime designed to build my body into the shape I want.

I finally have time to work on projects and skills that I have wanted forever. Every day I can practice my Spanish and my drawing, improving steadily and excited for the next breakthrough.  As a spur of the moment decision a few weeks ago, I decided that I would also get my online degree in Wildlife Biology. I felt that to be considered major players in the environmental scene, I needed to formally educate myself on all the things I love.

Alongside my personal goals, I wanted to use this 6 month Yellowstone journey to expand Wild Knights and our network of exceptional individuals.  Millions of people visit the park every year, and I couldn’t think of any better spot to recruit some Knights to help us change the world. Like the best of them, however, we needed to walk the walk.

So with that in mind, to get Wild Knights involved in environmental affairs and add new members, I decided to join the Yellowstone Environmental Stewardship (YES!), which is an environmentalism council that works on sustainability projects throughout the park. My hope is to both help make this place more environmentally friendly and to make connections with people who feel the same about the entire planet. I’ll be posting updates as time goes on about the various green projects going on in the park. Hopefully we can inspire others to make a difference as well 😉

 

To all the Wild Knights out there, I look forward to working with you to change the world.

Tootles for now 😉

~Emrys

Long Live Earth Day!

Gaylord Nelson’s vision and purpose behind Earth Day is one anybody who has a stake in the future of our planet could stand behind.

On April the 22nd 46 years ago, an estimated 20 million Americans rallied for the cause of planetary health and really WON. The Earth Day movement has created positive change and evolution many times over, having been the force that caused the creation of such things as the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species Acts, the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, and has been a constant force working to raise awareness on topics like recycling, climate change, and clean energy to name only a few. Nelson founded a movement unlike any other: it is celebrated by more than a billion people every year worldwide. WOW.

Earth Day’s foundation was built when the sludge and ruin of industrialism threatened a world already in profound chaos, but it may be able to help set a tone for what Earth Day may be in the future. One day, I hope all of us Knights and the rest of the world together can take time to appreciate our beautiful blue planet as part of the celebration. We have made great strides, and we shall all continue till the hurt is mended.

A glimpse of our last weekend camping and playing it cool out by the AT

 

Love from Wild Knights to you and to our beloved Earth, on which we all stand together.

I’m Gonna Try Urban Gardening!

So, like most artists from a small town, I’m about to move on to a place with more action. Unlike most artists, I don’t want to live in a city, which sounds counter intuitive, but I’ll explain.

I took a trip with my college choir to NYC and we all had a blast. We also were not used to the polluted air, so half of us were hacking moments before performing in the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine. Nothing divine about that . I loved the city outside of that, it was what I was craving: diversity, enough stimulation for a zealous extrovert, a thriving art scene, etc etc. But, with all honesty, I’d never live there unless it was changed. So now I’m looking for cities with a more outdoorsy feel, but I still want to go all the way with my move.

I’m looking to change my lifestyle completely, escape sleeping in past the point of no energy,  STOP eating anything that comes in plastic (I admit my short comings, I haven’t gotten rid of it yet), developing a consistently healthier mindset, doing work that fits my vision and moral standards… I could go on, but I won’t because I instead want to mention what everyone has at their disposal: Imagination. With that priceless tool, we can overcome any obstacle. Let’s take one of my current moving obstacles: I want to eat healthy for myself and the planet. Locally sourced, organic, beautiful food is a great way to get the mind headed in the right direction, but let’s take that a step further. What about growing our own?

“Urban gardening” is a great way of bringing fresh a lot faster and a lot fresher. Who wouldn’t want fresh cilantro for their guacamole? It’s perfect! That and the emissions from our lousy auto beasts will be eaten up by our food while giving you more nutrients at a fraction of the cost it would take to drive that beast on a 45 minute round trip to a grocery store for sub par greenery.

I’m going to leave some inspiration here from TedX speaker and guerrilla gardener Ron Finley, who selflessly created a street side garden in his neighborhood and kept on until he created The Ron Finley Project

Tell me about your gardens! And if you have a great place in mind for an artist who wants to connect with more people in a green environment, let me know, and I’ll totally give you a hug if we meet.

 

-Blaze

A Quest to Save the World: Oceans

Hello Wild Knights!!!!   Apologies for the delay, Blaze and I have busy out the wazoo this past week. We have been putting together some project ideas to spread the word and recruit more Wild Knights to change the world. Hopefully I’ll have one of the projects posted within a few weeks 😀   For this post I wanted to highlight a major environmentalism problem that planet Earth faces, and what we are doing to combat it. Nearly all environmental issues are caused by humankind, and it is our duty to protect the world that gave us so much. Since these environmental issues are so expansive, I’m going to focus on one at a time.

  Oceans

(By Official Navy Page from United States of America MCSN Eric A. Pastor/U.S. Navy – Sailors clean a beach in Diego Garcia., Public Domain, picture source)

 

The first battleground I want to address is an ugly one: The Pacific Trash Vortex.          

 The Problem:  

      A massive section of the Pacific Ocean, this is characterized by huge amounts of plastics, chemical sludge, and debris that has been trapped by the currents in the area. This disaster is not easy to see because much of the plastic has been broken into tiny pieces and are suspended below the surface of the water. To give you an idea of how serious this is according to a study posted in February 2015 in the journal Science, an estimate of 4.8 MILLION tons of plastic enters the ocean by land each year. And that is the conservative estimate. Plastic from more than 31 miles inland is not included because it’s so difficult to gauge.

Worse, is the effects of this plastic on marine wildlife.  Small pellets of plastic look like fish eggs and are eaten by many animals. Plastic bags suffocate animals when ingested. Decomposed bodies of marine animals have shown stomachs filled with assortments of plastics and trash.  We as humans tend to forget that plastic sticks around a long time, and can have a massive impact on the Earth.

The Solutions:

 1. The first and most basic solution is prevention. Humans need to slow and eventually stop the usage of disposable plastics. Use reusable straws, coffee containers, grocery bags, cutlery, and other easily replaceable items. Ask yourself how much trash you accumulate over a week and then think about how much you make in a year. Then think of how many humans just like you there are.  By reducing our waste, we greatly reduce the impact we have on the world around us.

2. Invest in a water filter:  20 million water bottles are thrown away each year. If you are like me and greatly dislike the idea of tap water, a good water filter is an amazing device that pays for itself. This is a small change for ourselves, but when added up it makes a great difference.

3. RECYCLE!  An obvious and often stated solution to our waste problem. Only 14% of all plastic garbage is recycled. A major problem where I live is a lack of recycling facilities. If this is the case for you, get in contact with people of the local government, or go even higher to stress the need for recycling services. The directory at Earth911 will help you find a recycling service in your area.

4. The Ocean Cleanup. 19-year old Boyan Slat has developed an amazing ocean cleanup device that could remove 7 millions tons of plastic from the ocean. From the site:

Boyan Slat (1994) is a Dutch entrepreneur and inventor who creates technologies to tackle global issues of sustainability. He is the founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup, where he is responsible for overall strategy and cleanup technology development.

Instead of going after the plastic, Boyan devised a system though which, driven by the ocean currents, the plastic would concentrate itself, reducing the theoretical cleanup time from millennia to mere years. In February 2013 he dropped out of his Aerospace Engineering study to start The Ocean Cleanup.

In June 2014, having lead an international team of 100 scientists and engineers for a year, the concept turned out to be ‘likely a technically feasible and financially viable’ method to clean up half the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in 10 years’ time. A subsequent crowd funding campaign then raised close to $2.2m, enabling the organization to start the pilot phase. The first prototype system is projected to be deployed in 2016.

Boyan Slat has been recognized as one of the 20 Most Promising Young Entrepreneurs Worldwide (Intel EYE50), and was crowned 2014 Champion of the Earth, the United Nations’ highest environmental accolade. In 2015, HM King Harald of Norway awarded Boyan the maritime industry’s Young Entrepreneur Award, and Foreign Policy magazine included Boyan in their 2015 list of Global Thinkers.

The Ocean Cleanup has been recognized as one of the Designs of the Year by the London Design Museum, is recipient of the 2015 INDEX Design Award, won Fast Company’s 2015 Innovation by Design award, and has been chosen by TIME magazine as one of the 25 best inventions of 2015.

This shows how a teenager’s idea can completely change the world when the world stands behind him. Any of us, Wild Knights, teachers, students, etc. All have the potential to be the catalyst for change.  Here is a TEDx talk with the creator of the Ocean Cleanup project.

 

While the issue of pollution in our oceans is a serious one, we have started the first steps to fixing the problem. No one can do it alone though, and we will need everyone to try and make a difference. Even if you only reduce the amount of plastics you use, it will contribute to the global effort to reduce waste. Wild Knights is committed to help save our oceans and the animals who dwell there.

Every journey begins with the first step.

Til next time Wild Knights!!!!

~Emrys

Start Your Own Adventure: Travel!!!!

My entire life I dreamed of seeing and changing the entire planet, but at the age of 21 I realized that I had done nothing to achieve it. I had worked on my music degree and I had cultivated different talents, but I didn’t have the resources to go on a grand adventure like I had always wanted. Or so I thought.  Money had always been an annoying speed bump for me. I was always forced to live paycheck to paycheck at a mediocre job, and wasn’t sure how to break the loop.

One day by accident I came across a site that listed job opening for national parks. I saw openings for jobs ranging from Housekeeping at Yellowstone National Park, to giving sled dog tours in Denali, Alaska!  I thought, “Eh what the hell, can’t hurt”.  A week later, I was an employee at Yellowstone National Park.

        The Greyhound was terrible. The destination: Worth it.

        When I got there, I saw more and did more than I had in my entire life. I hiked from dawn to dusk, up mountains and across plains, and completely transformed my body along the way. I met people from all over the world who became close friends. A ridiculous Romanian who only ever referred to me as “Joker”. A Russian gal who was stern at work, but hilarious after 6-12 beers. A fellow from Virginia who was one of the best hiking partners I could ask for.

“A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

 

Today I wanted to tell you a bit of my story, and list some of the ways that you could start your own travel adventure. Rather than working at an hourly job and waiting for the agonizing shift to end, go out and see the world. Here are a few of the ways that can help you take that first step:

1. The website that I stumbled upon that started my adventure: http://www.coolworks.com/. You can find a job in a field that you are interested in, or you can try something new, like giving tours on sled dogs or becoming a hiking guide.Hell, a friend of mine get’s paid good money to Ski. O.o 
2. Get involved with organizations that interest you, but may not be close by. Internships or volunteer opportunities are available in many places, and it can put your foot in the door whatever field or passion that you want to be involved in.
3. http://www.adventurework.co.uk/ is a great place to look for jobs for people who are active and want to be a paid instructor in activity that they love. From rafting, hiking, mountain climbing, ect. The list is goes on. Shake up the monotonous routine by doing something that makes you smile.

 

Those three options can help you begin your journey, but if these didn’t seem right for you, there are plenty more opportunities out there. Blaze and Me are happy to help all our Wild Knights find a path to the greatest adventures of all!  Let us know if you have any questions, comments, or anything! If you need, I’d be happy to even be a work reference!

Farewell for now, Wild Knights. We are in this together! ♥

~Emrys

 

 

 

A Call to Arms

 

Good evening all! After a couple days of expanding the blog, changing platforms from Tumblr to WordPress, getting us a Twitter, and recruitment of new Knights, I wanted to do a quick post more related to our overall mission. As it says in Our Purpose page;

     “Wild Knights is a blog/movement created by two lunatics who wanted to bring the world’s most talented and optimistic people together. We wanted an organization that celebrated all passions, from music and writing to environmentalism and politics.  Together with such a diverse and magnificent group of people, we can come together to shape the future of our planet.

    So regardless of what you love or what your background is, if you want to get involved and change the world please let us know. We would love to work with you! This blog may seem to include a wide variety of topics, but they all serve a purpose: to invite others to broaden their minds to something that they didn’t know before, or to show how far we have come in different ways.”

     In my travels across the U.S. and making many international friends while working at Yellowstone National Park, I found people who were all so very different in personality and hobbies, but all wanted to make a difference in the world. Like a lot of people who want to change the world, we didn’t know where to start. Should we donate money to an organization like Greenpeace? Should we volunteer somewhere to bring awareness to environmentalism?

Our answer was Wild Knights. At first just a blog to share our interests and bring awareness to various important happenings across the world, we have expanded to become more involved in these affairs. As shown by the Bernie Sanders campaign, when a lot of passionate people come together, there is nothing that can stop us.   We have a long way to go before we can enter the global stage, but we WILL make our mark!

Tell us what you think and let us know how you want to get involved in making our planet a better place. We appreciate any ideas for expanding our base and involvement!

 

“To really change the world, we have to help people change the way they see things. Global betterment is a mental process, not one that requires huge sums of money or a high level of authority. Change has to be psychological. So if you want to see real change, stay persistent in educating humanity on how similar we all are than different. Don’t only strive to be the change you want to see in the world, but also help all those around you see the world through commonalities of the heart so that they would want to change with you. This is how humanity will evolve to become better. This is how you can change the world. The language of the heart is mankind’s main common language.”

― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

Tons of love!

Emrys and Blaze