The Animacules

“I have trouble explaining my satisfaction with the animalcules” (pg.260) This quote taken from Mark A. Smith's article "Animacules and Other Little Subjects" is one which I find to be interesting to say the least. This quote conveys his fascination with the Animacule in ways that he cannot describe. He feels a sense of relaxation when he sees them. They are his food for thought by making him wonder that if this biological world is able to exist everyday without any interference in our world then what is out there. He wonders is there is "more" out there which is undiscovered. He compares his findings and feelings to those of an astronaut looking through a telescope. both of these actions are exactly the same conceptually yet are on two different levels. Looking through a microscope we are given a glimpse into a world so much smaller and yet larger, in a sense, at the same time than our own. Through the telescope it is the reverse microscope in a sense. It is the same concept as the Animcaule looking backwards through the microscope because when we look through the telescope we are given a look into what surrounds us on a much larger scale.
One thing that made me just want to close the book the entire way through the article is that its drowned out in useless information. the article just goes on and one about nothing. I cannot stand reading anything that is drowned out. that feeling when you just want to tell the author to shut up and move on. That's what I had the entire time. I think the first page was just about the way his microscope looked. Once again I did not like this article either.

Connect

What are the connections between the play "Twelfth Night" and the movie "Just Add Water"? From the beginning of the both the movie and the play we see that all sense of normalcy is lost. In Twelfth Night Viola is shipwrecked and under the impression that her brother Sebastian is dead. In Just Add Water the town is in the worst state that is has ever seen and it is also being over run by Dirk. No one has power anymore over what happens in the town except for Dirk and his gang. Also, the roles that each character plays and personalities that they all posses are similar in both Twelfth Night and Just Add Water. Malvolio and Dirk are comparable in that they are the ones who have the ego that is too big for their own good. Malvolio likes to believe that he is one of power when in he is just a servant of Olivia. In comparison, Dirk has the same ego, but he is able to use his attitude in order to get what he wants. In the end both of them are taken away because of their attitudes; Dirk being the actual criminal and Malvolio being one who was taken away for acting strange. The similarity here is that their egos are what both have done them in. They fueled their own fires.

Phalen vs. Carlin

Goerge Carlin has similar views to those of Phalen. Phalen thinks that we are not going to be able to evolve enough by the time that it is necessary and that ou fate is in the hands of the earth right now. Natural disasters and disease seem to be what he thinks will be our undoing. Largely these events might be caused by us. George Carlin's views are similar in that he believes that we will someday not be around because the earth will make us extinct. He does not think that we are cuasing it, in contrast to Phalen. Carlin believes that we are just "fleas" on the earth and it will someday get rid of us. The earth has been around for 4.5 billion years and he does not believe that 200 years of the production of plastic bags are going to do us in. If anything will do us in it will be natural disasters. But Carlin does not see these natrual disasters occurring in the same respect that Phelan does. Carlin believes that the earth is almost like a being in that it is self correcting and can fix itself. How are we supposed to fix the earth when we can even take care of ourselves? Carlins puts it. He claims that the earth is fine, but we are screwed up. they both have similar views, they are just taken and founded in different ways.

Run Rabbit Run

Whenever I think of the movie "Just Add Water" my mind jumps to the image of the cover of the poster for the movie "Holes". Both movie are about the struggles in a place where the lack of water has taken over their towns. They were both once beautiful and prosperous places but as we have seen, when disaster strikes it leaves a mark on the town. The ending to these two movies are enarly exactly the same, the towns have not seen rain for god knows how long and once it begins to rain, everyones lives are changed for the better and the criminals are taken away in handcuffs.
Also, not a concrete object but one thing that I cannot help but thinking about is the song "Run Rabbit Run" by Eminem. The song just talks about how much his life sucks yet he must prevail over everything around him that is stopping him. Ray does just the same, he prevails over his terrible life and makes change for himself.

X-Men

This article for the most part was extremely boring and too drowned out with facts and names of genes for me to really enjoy it. I did however find it very interesting and the entire time I could not stop thinking about the movie "X-Men". I'm still not entirely sure what this article was trying to prove to us. For the most part of the article Phelan writes about how mutations in genetics are able to occur. The mutation that he describes is the lactose intolerant gene. This is what causes adults to not be able to drink milk. Today this gene is common among a good amount of the population yet has become less and less common throughout time. According to his article "How We Evolve" the gene appeared about 8,000 years ago but did not become common in the population until about 3,000 years ago.
As for our "self-inflicted extinction" it seems that he is referring to all of the natural disasters that he mentioned about 2 paragraphs before. The only way that we could "inflict" extinction on ourselves is through global warming and destroying our climate. It will ultimately lead to our extinction because if our climate continues to get worse than it already is then it will threaten our ways of life and ultimately our lives entirely. I think Phelan is correct in this thinking because if we cannot fix our climate problems now then soon it will be too late.

Lets connect.....

After watching the Hanes commercial and the clip from "Just Add Water", there are some similar pieces that we could connect to each other. In the Hanes commercial we witnessed the man in the mustard yellow shirt going on a down escalator and watching around him as all of the little kids gave him dirty looks. Showing that he i effecting their future by not being environmentally friendly. As for the clip from "Just Add Water" Danny Devito is one who is doing almost the same thing in that he is constantly looking around while talking to Ray, where he is going to get his morning coffee from. Not thinking about the future. However, I also feel that his character is of course one which over all looks to the future. He is bringing in a gas station and perhaps some thing to bolster the town into a place where there is little hope left. Is this a sign of change for Trona or just another failed business venture. The other friend in the Hanes commercial is one which is looking to the future, with his straight ahead gaze, not thinking about what is going on around him. This is kind of like Ray because he wants a future for Trona, that is why he picks up the trash on the side of the road everyday. He has his straight forward glance at Danny Devito throughout most of the conversation and stares at Devito before the conversation until Ray gets his attention. Ray is always looking to the future un everything that he does.
What I found to be dominant in the commercial at first was how Danny Devito was looking up in a gaze to his newly built station, almost in awe of it it all, directing the man with the crane as to where to place his crown jewel. Yet once we see the Chevron sign the arrows are pointing down, foreshadowing the terrible future which s about to pursue. Once he opens his gas station, Dirk and his boys ransack the place because they feel pressed upon. Dirk wants to make it known that this is his town and that he will not have anyone trying to change it. Kind of reminds me of the ending of Home Alone 3 when the song plays and goes "This is my town.....". I don't remember the rest of the lyrics but the kid defends his home just as Dirk is defending "his" town.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcUGR955n-E

Why is every article I read always about global warming.....

Shockingly the article by John Broome "The Ethics of Climate Change" is about global warming and climate change. What I did not expect to see in this article was the use of ethics to describe how to tackle this issue. The last thing I wanted to read about was utilitarianism again this semester. Anyway, this article uses the idea of how compensating someone for the terrible things that we are doing to the environment. I do not see how this is even a logical thought, are we supposed to send checks or trees to people in the future. This is our problem right now and is up to us to handle it. I think John Broome would be better off writing about ays to fix the environment instead of using ethics to think up creative ways. This article in my opinion is terrible. It is a waste of time and paper (resources). The article does not tell us anything but philosophical nonsense. The real way to fix this problem is the environmentalist way. STOP BURNING FOSSIL FUELS. Right before I read this article I read one fo rmy economics class about how to reduce the ppm number of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. That article had positive and realistic ideas as to fix this problem.
One other thing which I found to be interesting in here is that the idea of fixing society's well being through production. THat is the problem with our society today, we need to stop producing as much waste and start producing more environmentally efficient means of production. Things that in the long run will help us. Fixing our infrastructure is one, not giving someone an extra bathroom as mentioned in the article. He needs to use examples that mean something and actually have to do with global warming.

"Just Add Water"

Recalls to our readings, from the movie "Just Add Water":
The idea of greed from our reading of "Faustian Economics" is one which may not seem to be the most obvious in this movie but certainly is. We see this through Dirk and how he basically runs the entire town. He makes people pay tolls just to get onto their own streets. This is the epitome of greed because Dirk only does this because he can; he has the power to do it in that town. Also, the fact that him and his friends rob the new Chevron station and delivery trucks just shows how greedy he is. The rest of the town is suffering and barely getting by while he has control over everything in Trona, California.
The idea of “Do we create what we observe through the act of our observations?” (230) from "The Reality Tests" is evident in this movie through everyone's actions. In a sense the general meaning of this quote is strongly conveyed to us. Through the lines when Danny Devito character asks Ray if he ever had any dreams and if he was ever going to follow them. Ray is able to begin to create some change in this town when he realizes exactly how bad things are getting. The last scene that we saw was when he was breaking into Dirk's house looking at the boxes that he had just received. Also, going in the opposite direction of this, the people in Trona create their own crappy world by not having any hope or even thinking about a better future. They merely sit by and allow Dirk to run the entire town. Dirk is able to see his "dreams" through this because he takes over a weak town and does whatever he wants there.
The idea of "an era of creative destruction” (292) is one from the article "Big Foot" yet this idea is also shown in the movie "Just Add Water". We see how dirk is taking over the town, however it is not through force or violence for the most part. He is doing all of this through business, most of it is illegitimate however. Ray tells Danny Devito's character that Dirk bought up everything in the town a while back when the government declared the place a toxic waste site and most people had moved out. That was a business venture for him. Now he has his own Meth Lab and has his friends keep as toll booth attendants in a way for whoever wants to get onto their streets. This is where the destructiveness of his creativity comes into play, yes he is creating new business ventures for himself in the town but he is also ruining the lives of almost everyone that lives in the town. Most of the adults are drunks or are on drugs. He is destroying the town for his own benefit and is doing it in a number of ways.

Where do I begin.....

Questions for "Just Add Water":

1. Why is it that everyone in the town is so disconnected from reality and family ties?

2. Is it normal in that town for a father to get his son a prostitute?

3. Why is Charlene afraid to go outside of the house?

4. Why in the world would Danny Devito open up a gas station in that town of all places? He doesnt seem like he needs the money.

5. Is it because Dent is just so burnt out from his high school years that he cannot move on and that is why he holds the football and and tries to reminisce with Ray every now and then?

6. How is Dirk able to turn off everyone's electricity? Isn't he only like 15?

Who's a writer?

A writer is anyone that is able to physically write or type and convey their ideas to someone else using written language. I am a writer, everyone in this class is a writer. What have we been doing in this class for the entire semester? Writing. What else could that possibly make us? It doesn't matter why we write, what we write about or who we write for, the fact is that we are writing.

Where's your food from?

"Food miles" I think is probably the most interesting idea in this article. The scary thing about it is that it is completely right. Every time that we buy something from far away we exert so many of our resources for something that can be grown a couple of towns over on a farm. Even inside of the U.S. it is very possible for us to get all of our foods from farms out east on Long Island, but most of us choose to buy them from companies which grow their products on farms in the Midwest. All this does is add more fuel costs to the actual product. Last year in my environmental science class we watched a video which spoke about this sort of thing. One of the examples used was the $200 hamburg from McDonalds. What the scientist in the video had proposed was that in order to truly balance out our ecological footprint, we should have to pay for all of the costs associated with making that one product. What he realized was that if we did McDonald's hamburger would roughly cost around $200 each. When John Elkington says that “We are in an era of creative destruction” (292) he is telling that everyone now had new ideas all of a sudden. Since people have gotten on the idea of "going green" every corporation, just as Tesco in the article, is now advertising itself as being more green than the next one. It's just a creative way to advertise themselves. What I first thought of when I read this and the three steps about fixing your home to be more green, was the clip from the Simpsons' movie where they are trapped inside of the giant dome and all of a sudden "Dome Depot" comes on tv with new products to use to clean the dome. People will try and make money off of everything and this is the prefect example. Now that we are facing the issue of global warming, everyone is trying to capitalize off our our destruction and be creative with it. We are now trapped in the dome.
Do I feel personally responsible for Global Warming? Yes, I can honestly say that I do. Every time that I go to a gas station to fill up my car I just watch the numbers go up on that little LED sign that tells me how fast I and everyone else is slowly killing the planet.....oops I meant to say filling up our gas tanks, but I guess it's just the same. Watching as I fill up my car I realize that we are trapped. There is no way out of the CO2 fix that we are in. Were all like druggies in a sense because we just keep wanting more, creating more of a problem for ourselves, knowing that we NEED to stop yet somehow cannot. We're all hooked on CO2. Everyone is responsible for global warming in some form or another. We all consumer more than we need o which leads to an exhaustion of our resources in production and an increase in the burning of fossil fuels which releases CO2 into the atmosphere, and the biggest problem which we all do everyday, is drive. Almost everyone drives everyday of their lives. I drive everyday back and forth to school, sometimes to work and then also sometimes just to get food off campus during the day or just any other simple errand that I do. It's impossible for me to get everywhere I need to without a car and of course he only way to power a car is with fossil fuels. Granted companies are coming up with ways to give us new electric cars, but in today's economy most people are not going to go out and just replace all of their present fossil fuel burning, global warming causing cars with new electric ones. Just because companies have ways to reduce our emissions, doesn't necessarily mean that they are going to fix everything.

What really exists?

“Do we create what we observe through the act of our observations?” This question asked by Joshua Roebke is probably one of the most complicated questions known to man. It is also highly philosophical. The idea that things do not exist without us has the possibly to shake the foundations o every piece of standing knowledge that we have. Quantum Mechanics is the subject which has the possibility to answer this question however. An Irish Clergyman by the name of George Berekely has his own take on it. From what I read about Quantum Mechanics in this article it would seem evident that he does agree with this subject. He was an idealist and believed heavily in the idea that things only existed if and when they passed through our senses, meaning if we were able to perceive them or not. Quantum Mechanics attempts to prove this idea correct because in order for it to exist we must prove that objects do not previously exist unless we perceive them. The ideas of Quantum Mechanics are derived from Berkeley's work and for the most part confuses me because it takes what George Berkeley had theorized and develops into far greater detail.
One strength that I find in Roebke's theory is the idea that every electron when affected will have an effect on another electron no matter how far away. This idea can be taken as a ripple effect. Think of throwing a rock into a pond and when it splashes it makes ripples in the water. These ripples do not stop, they just continue to get smaller and smaller until we can no longer see them. My guess is that eventually all of the water in the pond will be effected because atoms and electrons are constantly in motion and by affecting one we could inadvertently affect them all.

The Writing Center

My entire experience at the writing center lasted for about 10 minutes. I walked in sat down, turned on my computer (that probably took up most of the time I spent there) and then I showed the helper what I had already written down. I had a few notes about the sonnet that I was thinking of writing about already scribbled down on my computer. He read my notes, agreed with what I had to say, told me I was good with what I had and if I needed anymore help once I started writing it then I could come back. Then I left. There is not much for me to say about our conversation because whatever we said was really short and he didnt have much advice for me at all.
I did not change anything from the time that I went to the writing center to when I sat down to write my essay because they honestly did not give me any advice at all. Since I also went to the writing center with no essay completed or even started I could not have changed anything in my actual writing based on my writing center experience.

It's the American way

The article assigned to us was "Faustian Economics" by Wendell Berry and it was one in which he criticized just about every aspect of American life. The point of this article though was to convey to us how little we are actually doing to help our ever growing climate problem, and the useless steps that we take to "fix" it. Overall I felt that the author just doesnt like America or our way of life at all for the most part. He claims that we view our way of life as "indestructible", the idea that we are able to consume anything and everything that we want at the expense of the world.
Berry's ultimate solution for this is that we must abolish this standard that we as Americans have if we want to actually fic the climate problem. All of the "biofuels" (Berry 2) which he feels only benefits the manufacturer, is not a legitimate way to solve global warming. We must get rid of our greed and wastefulness because through all of this we continue to burn more and more fossil fuels everyday. If we were to all cut back then this would have a real impact. Driving around hybrid cars is not the ultimate solution for all of this.
Along with these thoughts, Berry also touches upon a philosophical aspect into what we do. According to him it seems that everything we do in our ways to fix our problems, mainly climate, is rooted in our way to consume constantly and also in our high standard of living. The biofuel example is one such because it shows that we still look to produce ways to fix our problems but they will com at a cot and in the end someone or another will profit from it all. Is the American way too greedy? He writes about the ideas that we only look for high costing solutions which involve advanced technology and machinery, while his views are that we must stop consuming and wasting on such a grand scale. This would have a greater impact on the fight against global warming. One other example which believes me to take this as a philosophical account is that he touches upon how we classify ourselves, "animals" the idea that we are limitless in everything that we do proves us not to be animals but "limitless animals" as Berry puts it. He uses the eample of how the God of Exodus does not choose to classify or define himself because by giving a definition this implies that we have limits. He merely says that "I am that I am" meaning that he simply is and is limitless. (Berry 2)

What's waste look like?

Faustian economics is an article that over describes waste, the author parallels countless examples most of which made no sense to me. For me waste, as Berry wants us to see it as, is like buying two of a specific item just for the sake of throwing one away. Like when you were young and sitting at the dinner table with your parents telling you not to leave until all of your food was gone and then feeding it to the dog under the table when no one was looking. Like taking you whole plate and dumping it in the garbage. It's when our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, we order so much food and then eat less than half of it all. Going to the supermarket when you're hungry and buying every possible thing imaginable and then a few weeks later you find that snack you bought and it goes right into the garbage,unopened and all because you know no ones ever going to eat it. This is how I think Berry describes waste in his article. We just want and want, but how much do we really need?

Making Language

The two poems "The Problem of Describing Trees" by Robert Haas and "Hubris at Zunzal" by Rodney Jones both metaphorically describe the complexity behind language and how it is created. "Hubris at Zunza"l is one which describes a man floaring out in the ocean at about sunset. This man then goes and dumpes his drink into the ocean, yet when it comes back over him there is a feeling of sweet relief in a sense. All of this is a metaphor for language because by him dumping his drink into the ocean shows to us how langauge (his drink) can be lost so easiliy in the vast ocean. His one drink was just a small thought for language where as the ocean represented the collectiveness of everyone else. His thought was mixed in and unable to be retrieved because language is so slippery and delicate. Just as trying to retrieve that drink is impossible, his thought is now gone and mixed in with everything else unable to be retrieved. But when the wave came over him, his thoughts were back to him, they were retrieved for a short time and them mixed back into the ocean. His thought had resurfaced only to be taken back by the ocean which he once gave it away to.
The second poem "The Problem of Describing Trees" is one which describes the complexity of language and how it can grow and develp just as a tree can. The poem uses verbs such as "flutter", "dance", "threw up" and "capitalized" in order to show how a tree can grow. It shows the tree from its earliest stages as a "wobbly stem", to an art form all the way to its fullest and most dominant, final form. The tree capitalizes over all other plants and often people to make itself strong. All of these stages are ones which language goes through as well, it starts off shaky, makes itself beautiful and metaphoric and then its final form delivers the punch that language needs in order to stick with people and make its point. This is how language capitalizes.

The Power of Writing

In the video of an interview with Jacques Derrida he talks about his true feelings regarding his writing. Derrida begins the interview by saying that he has never renounced anything that he has written. He feels that everything he has written is something that was needed to be conveyed to everyone and that he could not hold back no matter how controversial his arguments may have been. At times he has even argued with himself about whether or not he should go ahead with what he is writing. Often he has considered what he was writing at the time to be too controversial but he still kept his position and his thoughts did not stop him from writing. This has often come up when he was attacking politicians or groups of people where his thoughts might be considered controversial. Derrida tells us of how he compares himself to the classic childlike dream that Freud spoke about, where a child is scared because everyone sees them in their underwear. This could comparable in a sense for Derrida because he is making himself "naked" to the world in such a way that everyone is watching him when he makes outlandish and controversial statements. He is then the center of attention just as a child in their underwear.
One thing that I found to be interesting is when Derrida mentions how when he writes he "says" what must be "said". Incorrect english because when we are writing no one is talking. The paper is telling us in written language, not spoken. It is almost as though Derrida is hiding behind his pen and paper and maybe that is what gives him the power he feels to write whatever he wants no matter how controversial it may be. Because when he is writing it, who is there to argue with him? No one. If he was to speak it, this is where he would run into more problems.