Neoplatonism

The Platonic Academy of Philosophy was the center of humanist study in Florence, Italy. It was found by Cosimo de'Medici in 1462 and supported by his grandson Lorenzo thereafter. The Academy supported Neoplatonism which wanted to achieve the return of Platonic ideas in contemporary culture. Ficino, the head of the academy, after translating Plato and Plotinus into Latin wrote Theologia Platonica. He believed that by studying and learning we could glimpse a higher world of ideas. “Following Plotinus, Ficino conceived of beauty in the things of this world as God's means of making himself manifest to humankind. The contemplation and study of beauty in nature — and in all things — was a form of worship, a manifestation of divine or spiritual love...spiritual love moves beyond the physical to an intellectual plane and, eventually, to such an elevated spiritual level that it results in the soul's union with God.” (Benton and DiYanni 310).
Sandro Botticelli's Birth of Venus, 1528–1530 represents the ideals of the Platonic Academy of Philosophy because the Neoplatonic community believed that it represented the birth of a new human soul, pure and uncorrupted by the world. They also believed that it represented the soul's right to choose their own path. One path being sin and the other being spiritual perfection as shown in the beauty of creation and the love of God.

Works Cited:

Benton, Janetta Rebold, and Robert DiYanni. Arts and Culture: an Introduction to the Humanities. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2008. Print.

h2OH?!

In my opinion, tap water is safer than bottled water. A non profit public health advocacy group based in Washington D.C., the environmental working group tested 10 brands of bottled water and found 38 pollutants in them. These included disinfection byproducts, arsenic, fertilizer residue, plasticizers and pharmaceuticals. Low levels of these may be found in tap water. But the scenarios are completely different because with tap water they have to tell you what in it and with bottled water they do not.("New Study Finds Fault With Some Bottled Waters; Tap Water a Better Bet.")

You should consume filtered tap water instead of bottled water. You are getting the same thing either way, water is water. Except that with tap water you know exactly what you are getting and with a bottle it is questionable.("New Study Finds Fault With Some Bottled Waters; Tap Water a Better Bet.") Bottled water also costs fifteen times more and the bottles are just piling up in land fills. In addition to that, bottled water consumes 17 million barrels of oil every year in order to produce the bottles. If we just eliminated bottled water then we wouldn't be so oil hungry. It takes three gallons of water to produce one gallon of bottled water.("What Is The Real Cost Of Bottled Water?" ) Tap water costs less than one cent per gallon. Gasoline costs two cents an ounce. Bottled water is five cents an ounce.(BaskindMon ) Somehow that just seems so wrong to me.

Works Cited
BaskindMon, By Chris. "5 Reasons Not to Drink Bottled Water | MNN - Mother Nature Network." Environmental News and Information | MNN - Mother Nature Network. Web. 22 Sept. 2010. .

"New Study Finds Fault With Some Bottled Waters; Tap Water a Better Bet." Environmental Nutrition 32.1 (2009): 3. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 22 Sept. 2010.

"What Is The Real Cost Of Bottled Water?" Popular | Environmental Graffiti. Web. 22 Sept. 2010. .

The Amazing Cockroach!

The American Cockroach is about one and a half inches. They are reddish brown. Roach mouths work vertically, not horizontally like ours. They have six hairy legs and eighteen knees. All American roaches, like most Americans, were immigrants. There is no where on the planet that doesn't have local roaches. In colder climates, however, they survive by shaking up with humans. Roaches can go for a month without eating. They identify other friend and family roaches by their distinctive odor.("Roach Facts.")

A cockroach can hold their breath for 40 minutes. They spend 75 percent of their time just resting. It is possible for a female roach to mate once and then spend the remainder of her life pregnant. Their hearts are nothing but a simple tube with valves that pumps blood forwards and backwards. If the heart stops moving it does not harm the creature. A cockroach can live one week without a head. Even then they only die from lack of water because they have no mouth. Not because they have no head. So it stands to reason that if they had an alternative way to drink water, they could go on forever without a head.("Yucky: Roach Facts.") I doubt that human's will affect the survival of the roach. They are real survivors. Some experts believe that they could survive the fallout of a nuclear war. They also reproduce quickly so I don't think a shoe is any threat to them in the long run.

Works Cited
"Roach Facts." Roach Motel. Web. 08 Sept. 2010. http://www.roachcom.net/rofacts/
"Yucky: Roach Facts." The Yuckiest Site on the Internet. Web. 08 Sept. 2010. http://yucky.discovery.com/flash/roaches/pg000097.html

Urban Sprawl

Urban sprawl is when a city continues to spread out beyond what it can support. It is the product of affordable land, cars, somewhat inexpensive gasoline, and absent minded urban planning. The lack of mass transportation forces people to drive everywhere, which causes them to emit even more greenhouse gasses than is necessary. Sprawl destroys cropland, wetlands, and forest. On the flip side of the discussion, it causes the economic deaths of many cities as well when people and businesses move further out. What is scariest of all is that while urban populations only occupy 2% of the earth's land area, they consume 75% of her resources.
Smart growth is an alternative method for dealing with urban sprawl in an environmentally sustainable way. It uses zoning laws and other tools to discourage sprawl, reduce traffic, protect important lands and waterways, and develop neighborhoods. A city that takes it one step further to become even more environmentally sustainable is known as an ecocity or a green city. They emphasize the three principles of sustainability which are solar energy, chemical cycling, and biodiversity.
What a city should do to correct this problem is to use these five environmentally-sustainable methods. The city would promote urban gardens and farmer's markets. It would make use of locally available renewable energy resources. They would redesign the city for people instead of cars. The city would have to prevent pollution and reduce waste. At least 60% of municipal solid waste would have to be recycled, reused, or composted.
Miller, George Tyler., and Scott E. Spoolman. Environmental Science. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning, 2010. Print.

The story of stuff

Everyone needs to watch this!

tree metaphore

I see now that the whole thing was nothing more than a branch that had grown off of the tree that was my immense teen angst. When I started pulling away from all that which was not me that died too like fruit from the poisonous tree.

Human Nature

Why is it that we look forward to seeing movies where in you know that everyone is going to die? Slasher films are the new age Colosseum. I have been pondering lately what it is in us that craves that amount of violence. Anyone who has taken roman history just thinks that is so unimaginable. Those people must have been so messed up and sick, right? Well our movies now are so far beyond what they had then. For one think it is dramatized. The directors and writers have the victim get tortured for as long as possible before letting that character go. Saw would be a good example.

On another thought, why is it that all of our scary “monsters” are cannibalistic? i.e. vampires, werewolves, zombies. That all seems a little played out to me. Why do we write entire films on people getting eaten? That seems so strange. Who are the monsters in this world really?

Alternative Energy Sources

Renewable energy utilizes natural cycles and systems such as sunlight, wind, tides, and geothermal heat to harness natural energy. The need to mass produce a means of utilizing alternative energy sources is greater today than it has ever been in the history of mankind. We are right on the brink of destroying our planet and decisions must be made. If it was more affordable more people might jump on the bandwagon. All the elements to collect energy personally need to be mass produced in factories. Assembly lines changed the automobile industry. It could do the same for renewable energy. If windmills and solar panels were sold at Wal-Mart and were typical, the idea wouldn’t seem nearly as radical. There are several different simple energy options available to us. Solar Energy is captured directly from the sun through the use of photovoltaic panels. There are no emissions produced from or through this process. Wind power is captured on windy days through the use of windmills and they can be private or public. Hydroelectricity is captured through movement of water. If the dams are built with nature in mind, there is relatively no danger to the native creatures reproductive habits. Renewable energy has such potential for solving the future energy crisis.
The price of solar cells is expensive at the moment and would not be cost effective. But the price is coming down. Several companies are working on developing sheet thin solar cells. They would sell them for around 50 cents a watt. If I can quote Dan Shugar, president of PowerLight Corporation, "Automobiles were disruptive to the horse and buggy business. PCs were disruptive to the typewriter industry. We believe solar electric systems will be disruptive to the energy industry." Since solar energy is absorbed directly from the suns rays into the solar panel, it is emission free.(Parfit) The new 2010 Prius has a solar panel in it’s roof that controls the air conditioning inside the car. It prevents the car from heating up while parked, which significantly reduces the use of the air once the car is on. Both wind and solar can make power on a small scale near the user, called disrupted energy. If someone had their own private windmill in their front yard, or a solar panel, they could harness their own energy.(Parfit) Imagine how much money a person could save if they didn’t have to draw energy from a company.
Wind power works on cloudy days and is another way to collect solar energy. Wind is nothing but sun warmed air. With every turn of the blades there is more energy being captured by the windmill. Windmills are also emission free and pose no threat to nature. The coasts of Denmark are already lined with huge windmills. Sometimes they have such an energy surplus that they can power Germany as well as themselves. In the U.S. a windmill owner can put their unused energy back into the grid. The utility companies are required to pay for that. The private windmill owner could lower their monthly energy costs down to zero.(Parfit) Windmills can cause fluctuations in the power grid because of their unpredictability. If there is too much wind and it creates too much power for one area, you would need a strong interconnection with the grid closest to you to unload the power. On the opposite end, if there is a lull it may take several hours to get the thermal generators going again.(Kennedy) In theory if there was a grid in every major city and they were all interconnected the whole world could share energy. They could be separated by continent, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia. Anyone in North America would be attached to the North American power grid. If it was windy in Florida and not in Maryland, Florida could share it’s energy with Maryland.
Since the roman empire water has been used to create energy. It covers seventy percent of the planet’s surface so it only makes sense to make use of it. In hydroelectricity, kinetic energy is converted into electrical energy.(Bakis) In order to create hydroelectricity, the first thing needed is water in motion and a way to control the motion. A dam on a river can act as a control point. Water is released through a passageway when electricity is needed. There the energy is converted. New dams are being built with stair-step channels to allow spawning fish to make their way around the dam and continue upstream to new spawning grounds. Dams that had been built previously without the stair cases, are being rebuilt in order to be more environmentally friendly.(Childress)
All of these methods could be taken one step further. Imagine hundreds of square rafts out deep in the ocean all connected by ball joints. Each of these rafts have solar panels covering the foundation and wind mills standing on them as well. The movement of the ocean would move all these rafts, all the time. Within the ball joint are little motors that would be moved and capture energy. Energy would also be captured from the sun and the wind. You would need a means of getting the energy to land and a place to store it. But this could be a combination of all of these different ways to capture energy from natural sources.
The problem is that the economy would fail if these proposed changes all happened at once. Our economy depends so much on it’s main staples. If there was more wiggle room it would be easier to allow for change. But since there isn’t it makes changing things all the more difficult. Everyone would have to ease into it slowly. Mankind needs to wake up and realize that there might not be enough time left to allow for that. People have just gotten far too comfortable. Every living thing is connected. All of the decisions we make for our planet affect every inch of it. Maybe it’s time to show a little responsibility. Our world leaders need to get on the same page and make it happen in a realistic amount of time. If only the whole world agreed on the seriousness of this situation and then got on the same page. Imagine what could be accomplished if everyone worked together. The world could be saved.
The need to mass produce a means of utilizing alternative energy sources is greater today than it has ever been in the history of mankind. Solar, wind power, and hydroelectricity are just the three main forms of renewable energy. There are a ton more than those three that could be made use of. If there was a more efficient way to store the energy produced, these methods of collecting energy would be perfect. It is important to hit this problem head on. If consumers do not change their way of thinking soon we will have no natural resources left.

Works Cited:
Bakis, R. "The Current Status and Future Opportunities of Hydroelectricity." Energy Sources Part B: Economics, Planning & Policy 2.3 (2007): 259-266. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 6 Feb. 2010.


Childress, Vincent W. "Energy Perspective: Is Hydroelectricity Green? (Cover story)." Technology Teacher 68.4 (2008): 4-9. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 31 Jan. 2010.

Kennedy, Jason, Brendan Fox, and John Morrow. "Working with wind - wind power." Engineering & Technology (17509637) 3.3 (2008): 52-55. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 6 Feb. 2010.

Parfit, Michael. "FUTURE POWER. (Cover story)." National Geographic 208.2 (2005): 2-31. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 13 Jan. 2010.