field day

Going to libraries is not an uncommon thing for me. Being that I am a book worm and I like to expand my knowledge on literature. Other than being interested in the books at the New York Public Library, I was also enticed with the history of the library and architecture. I learned that both libraries are extremely useful to the public with various media tools such as books, periodicals, magazines, internet, photography, and reference books. I had a lot of fun in the library because instead of just being bored like Dr. Smith claimed us college students do, my group and I had fun with our assignment in the library. During our search for media resources my group and I encountered a mean librarian that yelled at us for asking a question. Instead of getting mad at the librarian, my friends and I made a joke out of it and had a lot of laughs. When my group finished our assignment we decided to play tag at the library and started to run along the book shelves. So in stead of wallowing in boredom we enjoyed ourselves at the library and also learned how and where to find a good place to work and research .I enjoyed the tour of the library and found what our tour guide told us about how the museum works and functions interesting. Especially when he told us about the way they retrieve the books people ask for. When customers ask for books the employees send the name and author of the book down a tube all the way to the basement where the books are held. Then when they find the book they send it back through the tube up to the desk where the customer is waiting for it. Out trip to the New York Public Library was my first time there and I enjoyed it immensely and I plan to go back there in the future to do further research. Honestly I am not really sticking to my regime of trying to save the planet. The only thing I am still doing that is helping the planet is using my fluorescent light bulbs around my house. And I am also reusing my water bottles instead of buying new ones everyday. I would like to start eliminating the use of plastic bags in my house and would like to start carrying around a large eco friendly canvas bag that I can use daily. I plan on doing more things to help save the planet but I am currently to embedded in my school work to plan the way I will save the planet. Unfortunately…

the grass IS greener on the other side

My family and I have never been the type to fully “go green”. The only thing that we have been doing that is eco friendly id recycling and saving our water bottles,using them as water jugs for the house. I figured my parents do it to resist getting a fine for not recycling; and saving money by reusing the water bottles. Slowly we are reforming and making wiser decisions about what we do the environment by researching easy things to reduce the damage we do to our planet.
You will be surprised by how simple some things are to save the environment. Perhaps the simplest chore to do is to turn off a light when ever you leave a room. It is hard to remember, nut it saves a lot of energy. GE energy smart light bulbs uses 70 to 75% less energy than incandescent light bulbs, and it lasts up to ten times longer than the incandescent light bulbs. Users can save up to fifthy- nine dollars on energy costs over the life span of a light bulb. You get more bang for your buck! As I mentioned before, saving your water bottles and filling them up with tap water is a great way to improve our environment by reducing the amount of plastic thrown away; and to save money by not having to buy new water bottles every day. Avoiding fast food is both better for the environment and better for your health as well. Most fast food is over packaged and the fast food companies are responsible for creating mountains of trash including non reusable paper, plastic, cardboard, and other hazardous products. Eating organic produce is another example of improving the status of global warming and your own health. Chemicals from the produce get washed off of the fields and into rivers and streams, where they pollute our water. Also chemicals made from petroleum and non renewable resources which our harmful to your heath.
Some more useful ideas to “go green” is t grow a garden. Growing a garden reduces soil erosion and air pollution. Using few pesticides and chemical fertilizers is better for the soil and it also saves money. Creating a compost pile in a corner in your yard to throw away food wastes such as egg shells, coffee grounds, and spoiled vegetables. Mixing the wastes with the soil turns it into rich, nutritional soil that helps plants grow and is a natural way to improve the environment. Buying products made of recycled paper and not throwing away paper used on only one side saves a whole lot of paper and trees.
The ideas that would be possible for my family and I to do id bringing our own bags to the market with us instead of plastic, using fluorescent light bulbs, reusing our water bottles, and avoiding fast food. Also my family and I are able to but products made from recycled paper, eating organic produce, and of course turning off the lights when leaving a room. The other options I stated previously are not possible mainly because I do not have a backyard to do most of those things. As Dr. Smith says “ its not easy being green”, but its worth trying.

a day at the museum

Our trips to the Amercian Museum of Natural History brought about nostalgic feelings from my childhood. the moment i stepped into the museum i began to remeber all of the exhibits i seen when i was a child and now the new exhibits.at the museum we researched the affects of the greenhouse gases and how they affect the climate. from our research at the museum i discovered facts that i otherwise would not have been aware about our plant, such as ice cores, ocean sediment, and the tree rings that provide data and information about the earth's past climate. ice cores are built up slowly from a years worth of snow layers. the layers of ice show a detailed rapid change. based on fact, 3.1 meters length of ice core penetrated 3,022 meters of Greenland ice. tree rings are intricate indications of annual climate. thick tree rings indicate a rapid growth during warm and wet years. thin tree rings show slow growth and indicate old and dry years. another force that affects the climate are the greenhouse gases. greenhouse gases is when the earth's surface warms and some of the heat is radiated back to the atmosphere where it is trapped by greenhouse gases. water vapor is the most important gas, without it the world's temperture would be below freezing. some of the greenhouse gases including water vapor, carbon dioxide, ozone, methane, and nitrous oxide. my group and i conducted a experiment during the museum visit where we choose the the status of a population, we choose a high population, with the amount of energy used per person is current, and the carbon current of fossil fuels is high. the combonation of the three causes the CO2 content of the atmosphere has more than tripled in only 100 years, which maked it terrible for the enviorment. some of the connections i made between the American Museum of Natural History and Al Gore's film " An Inconveniant Truth" is the affects of greenhouse gases. in Al Gore's film he displayed the causes and the tremendous affects of the greenhouse effect vividly through a near perfect powerpoint presentation.what made Gore's presentation so amazing is the simplicity of the poerpoint and how Gore made all of the scientific terms and conditions easy to understand for his viewer's. between the film and the museum i found the museum to be more believable. at the museum you could read about a topic and have the evidence right in front of you. you could see and feel a piece of the enviorment and the past instead of just viewing it in a movie. the only connections i made between the film, the museum, the reading so far, and the theme of our cluster: truth, lies, and videotape is the amount of people in the world that believe that global warming is a lie and that everthing that is happening to our enviorement is just a coincidence. i relate this claim to our past readings of "the allegory of the cave" and "the matrix" where people are denying themselves from the truth, which people today are doing about global warming. some processes by which humans "denaturalize" nature is by cutting down trees, burning fossil fuels, using too much energy, and the world's obsession with oil. we then try to "renaturalize" it by growing more trees, using less energy, driving hybrid cars, using less oil, and basically going "green".

gnosticism vs. allegory of the cave

either stuck in a cave since birth or trapped in an imperfect evil world, the theories of both " the allegory of the cave" and " gnosticism" intertwine. gnosticism is a theory based on the belief that humans are souls stuck in the material world that was made by an evil abberrition called the demiurge. the demiurge and the supreme god live alongside eachother and according to the belief, to be rid of the imperfect world we inhabit you must have a spiritual experience with god. technically gnosticism is a religion that originated even before christianity. i saw the similarity of gnosticism and plato's allegory of the cave immediatly. they are both theories based on thethought that what if the world we live in isn't real? if it's just a fantasy world created to deprive us from living in reality. gnosticism and plato's allegory really makes us wonder about the world we live in today and what eternally matters to us the most.

allegory of the cave

an allegory by definition is a story in which people, things, and events have a symbolic meaning ; often instructive.the allegory of the cave was created by the greek philospher Plato in his book "The Republic". the allegory of the cave has many other alias'such as "mataphor of the sun", "analogy of the dividing line", "myth of the cave", "metaphor of the cave", and also " the parable of the cave". this story has many names because it is interpreted in many diffrent ways. the allegory of the cave is about people that are prisnors since birth and they are chained doen so the only thing in sight is a wall. behind the prisnors is a blazing fire and in the middle of that fire and prisnors is a walkway. on the walkway is moving plants and animals that make shadows on the wallso the prisnors see the shadows only.a puppet speaks and is echoed on the wall ans the prisnors are persuaded that the words are spoken from the shadows. the prisnors make a game out of naming the shadows and the prisnors that play badly are judged and disliked from the other prisnors. tired of imprisonment a prisnor turns around and is blinded ny the sun escaping into the cave and he finds that the shapes are not real. he notices the sun causes all of the shadow and how it also causes many other things that happen on the land.now a freed prisnor he wishes to not turn back to the cave and the other prisnors do not want to be freed becuase the only thing they ever knew is the cave and they dont want something new and foreign to them. the freed prisnor does not return becuase he would have to adjust to the darkness becuase he is used to the light of the sun and the other prisnors would think that the sun is bad becuase it made him blind. the allegory of the cave is similar to " the matrix" because in the moviethe human world was living in a lie and are compared to the prisnors forced to only see the shadows of the world outside of the cave. and the freed prisnor lives in a free world of sulight where the truth lies and there is no darkness.

paraphrased from www.wikipedia.org

review of the matrix

hey there.. i finally was forced to watch " the matrix". i was never really interested in the movie, it did not really look like a movie that i would personally be interested in. i knew about the movie and some what of what it is about but wasn't interested in finding out any more about it and especially did not want to watch it on my own time. but now that it was a class assignment to watch it what the heck might as well... neo (keanu reeves) is a computer hacker who desperatly wants to find the meaning to 'the matrix'. neo finally gets pulled into the free world through a series of events that involves meeting trinity, a rebel against the matrix, and being chased by the men in black look alikes The Agents .soon neo finally meets morpheus, the leader of the rebels. morpheus believes that neo is "the one' who is going to save mankind from the matrix that they are unaware of.morpheus explains to neo that the matrix is the world that humans live in the year of 2199 where machines control humans and they use humans for their body heat to produce energy to replace the sun that no longer exist because of the polluted dark sky blocking out the sun. this is a world where humans are not aware that they are not in control of their own lives. "the matrix"at first seemed odd and difficult to undertsand but really it was the complete opposite. " the matrix" was a classic case for me of don't judge a book by it's cover. i found this movie to be very original in both direction and screenplay and rises above other acclaimed sci-fi / thriller movies. the matrix is perhaps one of the few sci fi flicks that is suspenseful, intelligent, and sensible since "the terminator". i highly recommend this film just be sure if you want to take the blue pill of the red pill first.