WU and WU WEI

In class we have been constantly discussing the “wu” and “wu wei” ideals but I’m still not sure if I understand them completely. “Practice non-action. Work without doing.” (pg. 65) By saying Practice or work, aren’t you already doing something? Isn’t that already contradicting it? I just really can’t understand how many things are supposed to be occurring when nobody is making them occur. I don’t really agree with many of the teachings Tao Te Ching supports and in general I think I would rather live under Confucius beliefs.

Suffering

In class, while we were reading Job, we currently discussed the reasons for which humans were currently made suffer by God. Even though in the Tao Te Chin God is not the one who makes people suffer, and even though the topic is not directly expressed, I interpreted one of the chapters in a way that could explain why we currently suffer.
“That which shrinks
Must first expand.
That which fails
Must first be strong
That which is cast down
Must first be raised.
Before receiving
There must be giving.”

Suffering could be expressed as “Those who enjoy must first suffer”. I believe that if one wouldn’t suffer, he wouldn’t entirely appreciate the good things in life. When bad things occur they act in a way in which we are be able to compare the good ones to these and appreciate them much more. Many times to be able to understand one extreme, you have to live the opposite one.

Active and Passive Verbs

1. Change this active sentence to the passive:
A client delayed Joanne when she was leaving the office.
Joanne was delayed by a client when she was leaving the office.
2. Change this active sentence to the passive:
The tennis club was holding a meeting at 6.30.
A meeting was being held by the tennis club at 6.30.
3. Change this passive sentence to active:
The doorway was blocked by Sheba, the dog.
Sheba, the dog, blocked the doorway
4. Change this active sentence to passive:
Joanne had to take Sheba to the vet.
Sheba had to be taken to the vet.
5. Change this active sentence to passive:
Her condition worried the vet.
The vet was worried by her condition.
6. Change this passive sentence to active:
The dog was treated by the vet while Joanne went home
The vet treated the dog while Joanne went home.
7. Change this active sentence to passive:
The vet told Joanne to get out of the house.
Joanne was told to get out of the house.
8. Change this active sentence to passive:
The telephone call confused Joanne.
Joanne was confused by the telephone call.
9. Change this active sentence to passive:
The police captured the burglar.
The burglar was captured by the police.
10. Change this active sentence to passive:
The dog had bitten off his fingers.
His fingers had been bitten off by the dog.

Dec. 4 : Our Daily Lives

In these chapters the two “quotes” that mostly caught my attention were both on chapter 29. The first one is:
“The universe is sacred
You cannot improve it.
If you try to change it, you will ruin it.
If you try to hold it, you will loose it.”
The other one is “therefore the sage avoids extremes, excesses, and complacency”

The first one caught my attention so much because it reminds me of the control humans want and believe they have over the earth. We are always trying to change it in ways that are convenient to us but forget the long terms consequences of our acts. We ignore the fact that by destroying many of nature’s aspects, we are actually destroying ourselves because we depend on nature to survive. When we were nomads and we lived as “one more” creature on earth instead as “the” creature. We respected more what we had and we took a better advantage of it. We are currently taking more than what we need and focusing on our own benefit and this will lead to our self destruction because we will destroy everything we need to survive. In other words we could say that humans interacted better with the earth and everything else on it when it wasn’t trying to control it.

The other quote is one I have heard many times throughout my life and it is one with which I completely agree. I believe that to be able to be in a good state, one must learn to find a balance. That is why if you ever go to excesses you unbalance everything and rightness and happiness are messed up. The hard thing is to find the balance point in which everything is right and enjoyable. Still the only way of finding the balance is by living and applying “ guess and check” to life and that way you can take reasoning from your trials and errors and apply what you learn to life. Extremes are bad because they permit you only one thing and never give you other possibilities, instead the balance permits you to play around with it in small amounts and experience new things. Excess is also bad because everything in nature is made to follow a certain balance and if you are the only thing that does not posses that balance, then you don’t interact peacefully and easily but forcefully.

Nov. 3 Tao Te Ching

The Tao Te Ching in a way reminds me of the analects but at the same time differs a lot from it. For example they both give very wise and important ways of viewing life and they teach you ways in which to reflect to lead a good life. Still they have very different writing styles and while Confucius respects learning a lot, the Tao Te Ching focuses on a different way of learning and considers study as one of the lowest of his priorities. I also think that the Tao Te Ching is a lot more complicated to read that what the Analects was and one has to put a lot more thought into it if you are willing to understand. It happened many times that I had to reread the text over and over again while Confucius I would understand right away and if I got confused or mixed up I would reread it once and understand what it was that I that was trying to be said. Even though the passages are very short, they are very rich in content and one has a lot of material on which to reflect. Reading this kind of texts will open my mind to different ways of thinking and I can actually learn a much about them.

Nov. 28: Play "GO"

“Go” is a game in which you develop different sections of your brain, just like chess and other board games. To be able to play these games you learn to consider all the different options before acting because a wrong movement can kill you. In this kind of games one learns to think in different ways and to use different parts of logic and then one can apply it to every day life and start taking in life from a different perspective. This game is a very healthy way of working your mind and opening it up for new things.

Nov 27

While reading this book I would constantly think about my father and even though it gets me really sad to think that he’s dead and that I will never be able to be with him again, I do find comfort in the fact that he didn’t suffer before he died. My dad died doing something he really enjoyed and in a place that he loved. He also experienced a quick death through the one he probably didn’t even understand what was going on. And when he died, he had all of the people who he ever cared for, and ever cared about him to mourn over him and express the grief that his departure caused. During the holocaust instead, Elie Wiesel, was currently in fear of loosing his life and he did suffer a lot before dying. He experienced starvation and his mind was really mocked. He would also wake up every day wondering if he would be killed right away and even though he was with his father, and they showed how much they cared about each other, they were never able to share truly happy moments or have a bonding relationship. When his father died, he did after suffering for a long time and it could be said that the short life we live should be a happy one instead of one with a lot of suffering. And when he died nobody other than his son was able to grieve for him. Anyway, even though my dads is dead I could say that the short life he had was one really worth while and it was filled of happy moments that were shared with people he loved. The holocaust gets me mad because it took away the opportunity of many other people to enjoy their life’s and they instead had to suffer a lot for a stupid reason. So they got punishments they never deserved, but I guess life’s really just not fair.

Nov 26

This book makes me literally sad because of the way people were treated and how they suffered. It made me realize all the stupidities humans get to do even when its about ethnicity, a topic we should have already gotten through, but no. Even today there are gangs such as Ku Klux clan and others that discriminate people because they have different beliefs, or physical properties. It is said that the reason for which we study history is to learn from it since it repeats itself and that way we would be able to control it to only have the positive aspects repeat but humans have constantly proven their flaws, and we have not yet learned from our mistakes.
It is also hard to believe that there are currently places in which people find themselves under very harsh conditions. As in Africa for example, kids die every day from starvation, or kids are forced to work under conditions that are just unhealthy. There are also many problems like guerrilla in which people have to live under conditions that nobody deserves. Around the world there are a lot of “desplazados” and there is too much poverty and I personally sometimes feel bad for what I have because even though I enjoy it, there are many things that I really don’t depend on or need while others do. I just hope that we will start learning from our mistakes and hope for nothing similar to the holocaust to ever occur again and even though this might sound really cheap, I really wish that all the current problems of the world would disappear and we would be able to live in utopia... our perfect world.

Nov 21 blog books 9,16, 10

While reading these blogs I began to wonder how life would be if we all followed Confucius ideas of life, how different people would act and how our perspective our life would be very different. If you think about his priorities one would understand that the mayor goal of a man is to become a gentleman and be able to follow the way. He would focus on his family and everybody would try to be a trustworthy person which is very respectful and takes great interest in learning. I also believe that women would be treated as inferior to man and they would have to deal as their “gentleman” wanted them to. People would also live a much calmer life in which philosophy is a greater aspect of the daily life.
Today, many people are concerned about their reputation and Confucius would support that, and he would support many more of the values we have now days and the daily life we live. He would of course disagree with many other of our actions and never accept many of our ideals but he would teach us many more and we would be able to mix the different ideals to reach an intermediate point. I also think that people would be less materialistic and poverty would be reduced. Even though Confucius does encourage to look for progression and be ambitious, one would become “wealthier” in other aspects such as in ideas, thoughts, the views of life, how often follows what they say, how often one teaches what he believes and other virtues and ideas.

Final comment of the analects

Each chapter has very important information; actually each sentence is very rich in meaning. When it came to comment I could have been able to comment on each individual book and sometimes found it hard to mix three since each is focused on something different and tells so much about it. Even though it is not a religious book it has ethnical perspectives that support many religious beliefs and morals. This is a text that is very rich in context and any person who reads it can learn a great deal from it. This book has changed many of the ways in which I see things and the perspective I have of my life. It helps me look into the ideas of others and it helps me round up my own conclusions of my life and how I live it. I have seen the great importance the enjoyment of learning has and the way one can apply many principle to your life. It teaches me to be open to new ideas and I discover that every idea I consider will help me in a way. It can help me change my previous principles and modify them or it might actually make me feel stronger of what I believe. This is a book that I would have never read on my own but I am very happy I did read it because I learned a lot from it and got to see many things from different perspectives with which I turned out to agree.

Nov 20 read what is missing: 19, 20

These last two books kind of give a conclusion of all that we have read but what I think is the most important is the last one, 20.3 since it kind of resumes the whole in that phrase. I believe that that is a very important quote because it expresses what it is that a person needs in life, which are ritual, fate and words, because all that has been said in the previous books can be taught to a person but unless he has the three previous skills/values then it will be no good because he wont fully understand all that is being taught and it will be a waste of time. This book has a lot of deep information and one can choose to get as much as you want inside and understand and learn from as much as you want. As it has been previously said in the book, the love of knowledge is very important and a great way to learn is by enjoying it.

Nov 19: books 15, 17, 18

Even though many of the quotes and writings found in these book are very deep and easily understood by me, there are a few that I do not understand right away, I have to reads them over and over again until I finally get what it was that they were trying to state. Still, even after rereading them, there are a few of the teachings that I don’t understand no matter how hard I try. Maybe it is the fact that I’m still a kid and I have a lot to learn ahead of me, or maybe it’s just the fact that I’m slow but it really bothers me not to understand the message or get what it was meant for the reader to understand because throughout this books I have learned a lot and I have got to see other ways of seeing life. One of the states Confucius makes is the following “women and servants are particularly hard to manage: if you are too familiar with them they’ll grow insolent, but if you are too distant, they grow resentful.” (17.25) I personally find this comment both offensive but comical at the same time. I find it comical because it is a true statement and many times woman really react in the way said but it is also an insult because it refers to woman in a way that them as well, are servants and that they are it kind of shows like they have little rights and respect towards men like when its said that they grow insolent and because since the beginning they weren’t given equal importance to that of a man.

November 15

In these three chapters, the master first talks about his life and all the characteristics he finds in himself. He talks about what he does, what he would never do, what he likes, what he thinks and how he feels. It is in a way a reflection of his life and how he has lived it and even at one point it talks about what he would do to change and what he would change if he was given more time in life or another life but he also appreciates many of the things he had done. On the next chapter, though, he doesn’t reflect on himself but he instead suggests for the future. He expresses complex ideas through concise sayings that will help a person throughout the whole life. The master talks about his enjoyment of learning and he shares his knowledge with others and gives advice on how to live a good life and one that is really worthwhile. And in the eleventh book he now listens to his disciples. He gives them the opportunity to show him how much they have really learned and express their thoughts to him. Throughout this activity is when he discovers which disciples were really learning his philosophy and which were not. Then he is able to choose one student on which to focus and get their understandings together and comment about life. He also uses other people as examples to get his points through because he doesn’t only show what he believes, he actually proves himself correct with actual events that have occurred.

November 16: books 12, 13 14

These three books combine in a way that specifies how it is that gentlemen should act around other people and at the end it concludes by showing the way the master feels about his ideology and how it is that nobody else gets to understand the way he thinks. About his way of considering a man a gentleman I believe he is way too strict and he expects too much about a man and many times he expect two things that in a way that contradict themselves. Also about his beliefs I consider completely acceptable to have his own thoughts and ways to see life what I don’t get is why, even though he teaches them, does he decide that he alone thinks that way? Shouldn’t he give other people the opportunity to understand his ideas? Also every person has the right to have his own ideas and believes and Confucius doesn’t support this sometimes but then he also sometimes says he does. I don’t know, he gets to confuse me a lot sometimes about his ideas but I really do appreciate and believe a person can learn a lot from these thoughts about life.

November 13

After reading these three books, I decided I would comment on the quote I was mostly inspired by. From 4.17 I took, “When you see someone who is worthy, concentrate upon becoming their equal; when you see someone who is unworthy, use this as an opportunity to look within yourself.” This quote made me realize how we always criticize people without even knowing them and we are always focusing on the negative aspects of a person. I believe that it is important to look at the positive aspects of a person because it is always easier to learn and try to adapt the positive characteristics of a person. It is usually easier to tell which the negative aspects of a person are because they tend to be stronger or one notices the bad things, instead one is used to seeing good things and therefore doesn’t appreciate them as much as one should.

5.12 “What I do not wish others to do unto me, I also wish not to do unto others” This phrase reminds me of a quote I was taught in third grade, and from then always remembered. It is the following” treat others as you want to be treated”, both of these sayings are trying to express the same thing to the reader. It is trying to show that respect is very important in life and even though not everyone thinks alike or feels the same, the closest you’ll ever get to know about what a person feels is feeling it yourself. This is why I believe that t is true that one should treat the others as you would like to be treated because if you were happy when you were treated in a certain way, the other person will probably also feel happy when treated in that way. The same thing happens with the things that shouldn’t be done because if you didn’t liked it when it was done to you then the other person will probably dislike it when done to them.

6.28 “If I have done anything wrong, may heaven punish me.” 5.19 “I do not know about that- what makes you think he deserves to be called good?” These two quotes connect because they make you realize that one has been living their whole life with a certain image of good in their head but who decided what good was? Shouldn’t that be a subjective question instead of an objective one? Still, somehow, someone made some standardized points on what was good and what was bad, and from then on the whole world has followed those points. What decided that those points themselves were “good”? And the same thing occurs with wrong and right… who chose what was correct and what wasn’t and who chose how to punish the wrong doers? Here the master asks heaven to punish him but how can heaven measure a moderate punishment and how can each person know if they deserve it or if they deserve it more or less than another person? Life will continue to be a mystery to all of us and you can decide if you like the current rules which have been brainwashed onto your head or if you want to establish your own rules. But if you choose to make your own rules and follow these, you must accept the consequences.

Lessons

Everything we see, read, do, or experience we can use for personal gain. We decide how much we want to understand about something and how we want to interpret it. In this book I can already tell that there are many things that I will be learning and i will probaly even get some quotes out of itand everything. The topics that these men are discussing really atract my interest and they show opinions about life that i plan to take into consideration because these are very rich in emotional and logical meaning. I hope that when we finish reading this I have better perspective of life and how i should live it and i hope to get t be better person who lives a good life.

Throughout the little section we read, the question that was bothering me the whole time was "who are these people". I mean, it talks about a master, about Zingzong, about Zixia, about Duke Ding, and i just wonder who all these people are. Are they supposed to be people of our society? if they are what do they dedicate their lives to? what are there interests? is this a conversation that they like have when they are bored? or is it made any day because its just common? or do they like make an appointment and unite to talk about this? I dont know i just feel like the topic being expressed in th ebook is very good one but i would like to have a bit more of bckground information because i am currently lost at what it is that is going on.

Happy endings

Since we are born we are influenced from all around us to look for our "happy ending". We read fairy tales and we just hope to have alife as perfect as theirs. But life isnt always that way. We have parts in life in which we suffer a lot but there are others that we enjoy. the "happy ending" in books was just a new beggining and in life you cant just close the book and leave it there in one of your greatest times. you have to continue goin even if you want to or not. In this part of Job, Job is finally given his "happy ending". God and Satan stop fighting and torturing him and he is given his happiness, family and possesions back. Here the story also ends with a happy ending. Even though the bible does show a harder problem through which Job fought, the telling of Job end when he is happy. This proves that just like any other fary tale, the main purpose of the bible is to give hohpe. Even though it is sometimes contradictory and it makes you doubt, it will always indirectly affect you in a way in which stories end when they are happy to leave a positive image in mind. NO matter how bad the life of a man is, you will always remember was left at last to impress you, and this might make you believe he was happy even though it was longer the time through which he was unhappy. It also shows indirectly that if you are able to manage confusion, questions, anger, and pressure then you will be benefited by it and even if it wasnt meant to say that, the church will use it in mass in a way that expresses to the public what benefits the church and just the church.
So we will always look four our "happily ever after" and we like looking for it because its something to look forward to and we might end lucky as Job, we can have our happiness returned, our family and our friends there to support you, and your possesions to live comfortable life.

Same thoughts

From a long time ago people discuss how death is and what it is that will come after death. they also discuss how life should be and how that affects your death. People continue to ask these questions every day and the thing that makes us fear death is exactly that, the unknown. If we knw what was coming we would be able to prepare for it and fear it no more but since we dont know what it is that will happen, we fear it. We wonder how it will feel and where we will go after we die, we wonder if we will go to a new place, we wonder if we will continue to think and have a mind, we wonder if that is just the end of it and nothing comes after, we wonder if we will see other dead people and we can join them, we wonder if we go to a better place and start a new life,. We wonder many things and when we find them out there will be no more time to tell the rest what happens and if they should be scare or if they should look forward. Still our questions and curiosity will always be there since it is human nature to want to know about these things. I also think that our lack of knowledge of what will follow death is a way for god to control us, people use heaven and earth as a way to try ro make peoplpe good. But who decided what was good and what was bad, and how can people promise a heaven and an earth if they dont even know what comes afterward? Anyway, we fear the unknown and believe things that cant be facts because we want to believe and want to think well go to heaven, still why dont we fear tomorrow? we can die any day and we dont know what comes next but still death is what frightens us. And it will keep being like that. People have wondered for thousands of years, people are currently wondering, and people will continue to wonder.

Temptation

Job and Satan put job in a kind of trial in which the question is if Job will remain faithful and loyal to god while keeping his fear and respect. Job is able to stand the different trials 10 times and then he finally gives in which in a way shows how humans will always have a weakness and once its reached its hard to keep going. But at the same time it also shows how humans can make themselves keep going for as long as they want. Here Job is able to keep his loyalty firm with god even though Satan tries to trick him into getting mad at god and insulting him but Job is always stable and has his mind clear. Still at the end, after being “tested” many times Job finally breaks down and expresses his feelings towards god. He tells how he feels mis treated and how unjust god has been with him; he complains but at the same time asks for forgiveness and for him not to be condemned. He says how good he has always been and even though God has always recognized this and has been aware of his unconditional faith, God still had it given for granted and never fully appreciated it. THis is why, as any human being, Job was stopped more by his emotions than what his physical characteristics were actually capable of doing.
Also in a way Job is one of the humans that will at some times keep his loyalty firm to god but will later on explote and express all frustrations and doubts that have aroused withing concerning God and the way he controls the world. We sometimes feel tricked and unjustly tried and therefore we have been ive a harsher punishment for our wrong doings, if it is a ounishment what we recieve. Either way, we wont always agree with the way God does things and maybe we are just supposed to learn to live with it withought questioning it. Or maybe we are meant to explore other posibilities and reclaim GOds unjustnesses.

Tertiary sources

http://www.telegram.com/static/fire/ and http://burningissues.org/table2.htm come from the topic SMOKE in wikipedia.

http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=8&hid=102&sid=a113a16f-e733-4290-9783-457b8d653da9%40sessionmgr108 from Ebscohost

http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=17&hid=102&sid=a113a16f-e733-4290-9783-457b8d653da9%40sessionmgr108 from ebscohost. talks about the measures firefighters take to protect themselves from the smoke in fires

http://airnow.gov/index.cfm?action=smoke_fires.main from google and it calls for prevention from forest fires smoke.

http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/natres/06307.html from google and tells what the vegetation effects after fire are.

Who Deserves to be Forgiven?

“…The Lord also hath put away thy sin; though shall not die” Samuel 12:13
How could have God decided who shall live and who shall die? Why didn’t he instead killed David and saved the child? Why did he forgive David’s sin when he didn’t forgive any others?
God, it could be said, is similar to the judge in a court house. The life and future depends on him and his decision, but he is not always fair. He will take into account how the rest of his live was spend and how faithful he was toward him, and he will also de what he thinks will benefit him most. God has many human characteristics, including greed. He wants what’s best for him and this will always affect his decisions. But it is also a mystery why he chooses who will be saved and who won’t because the past of people can influence and how huge the sin was but the fact that they sinned is always a great risk. He sometimes kills some of his beloved but then, luckily, he sometimes saves them, just as he did with David.
Still his sin was not completely ignored since he had to live with the grief of a dying son. He also fated and didn’t sleep during the seven days of his sons life, and was forced to see his wife once more after his betrayal. This punishment was meant for him to never sin again… but will it work? Or is it human nature to sin?

Ruling Justly

“…He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God.” Samuel 23:3
This quote captured my attention while reading because it makes me think of how someone just has always been looked for but never found, and how God would supposedly subconsciously be really the one ruling. It is said that this person would rule by fearing god, in other word that he would do what he think god would not punish him for but then, even though God is supposed to have expressed what it is he wants through the bible, each person thinks god wants something different. The general idea everyone gets but then the details is what each person adapts to their own. It also happens that every person will get a different interpretation even from the own bible.
Ruling justly is something that will never be able to be agreed by every single person. This happens because every human being on earth has different opinions and are not equally satisfied. So how could god ever expect to be a just ruler, of course there are some that have been more responsible and equal with their power but having everyone happy is something that will never happen. What one person considers just, another might not and this is why these two will never share these ideas. That’s why ruling is so hard, because everyone wants and expects something different.

the ten commandments

It is clear what god wants, referring to the daily life. It says when it is that people should work and go to school but he also sanctifies the seventh day, Sunday, since it was the day that god rested after creating the world. The Ten Commandments also make it clear what it is that people must not due to avoid making sins and therefore God would not have to punish them. If people kept real to these commandments, their lives would be as pure and can be and many of their sins would be ignored.

Even today Christians and Jews must follow these commandments and many values are based on these original commandments. Even the laws of countries are revolving around these "donts".

Moses in Egypt

Through out my reading I have come to see a "darker" side of God when it comes to the way he treats people. He manipulates Moses and the Pharaoh to do what is convenient for him and he doesn’t care about what happens to the Egyptians as long as the Israelites are well and all he wants is to prove that he is the greatest of all and that no one can dare put it to doubt or they will suffer. God also manipulates the Pharaoh when it comes to letting the Jesuits out so it makes you doubt what it is that he really wants, why didn’t he just control the pharaoh into letting the Jesuits leave from the beginning? Wouldn’t it have been much easier? It also came up to mi mind why it he chose the plagues that he put to Egypt why those and not any other? It also confuses me when it comes to understand why it is that god is acting this way. Throughout my life I have been taught that God is a good person that only does good but when I come to think about what we have read so far, God is constantly punishing humans, and even though it might be because humans are sinners and because they deserve a punishment, he is still making it greater than what it should be due to the circumstance. This makes me think why it was that the idea of god came to change after the New Testament. I also wonder why it is that all Egyptians cam eto be punished when it was only the pharaoh that was difying Gods power, even thouigh they might have been mistreating the Jesuits, it was still on orders. And why was Moses chosen if he did one of the worsts sins, he killed a man. I also come to wonder why it is that the movies done and the stories told to little kids exclude Aaron from the story when he, too, is a very important character in the story? any way, reading the bible has brought many new questions to my head and it has made me change some of my ideas about it.

The message

Even thougn I am a Christian, I have never been a very dedicates one. My parents are not very religious, and therefore influenced me in many of my current beliefs. I believe in god and his capability of making things happen. I also believe the fact that jesus was gods son. What i dont believe in is in some of the ways in which the church takes advantege of peoples faith and use it for their own benefit. Through history the church has been very currupt and how can we know that it is not currently corrupted? I also believe that the most important in any jind of religion is not prayer, I believe that one can communicate with god whenever they want, I even think God constantly knows what is going on in your head. I also think that when you want to confess you dont have to do it through a bishop, you can do it with yourself, as long as you understand what it is that you did wrong and you put your mind into never doing it again, then you can be calm and realize that you confessed, its just you did it in a different way.

Since we begun to read the bible I have been constantly thinking about all these things. About the fact that one really doesnt need to go to church to understand what is going on. I for example have understood most of it and as long as I get the message that is being tried to get through everything is ok. Right now in the chapters we had to read for today I understood about Abraham, about Ishmael, about Lot, etc. What does come to my mind though is tha fact that i perfectly understan the literal meaning of what is being told but i do wonder sometimes what it is that is trying to be exposed espiritualy. I guess that every person can interpret it in a different way even though many of the interpretations may have resemblence. Still I believe that each person is free to get whichever message from the text and not the one the church wants us to see. I also believe, though I might be completly wrong, that the New Testament is the part of the book which gives you the most spiritual background while theOld Testament is more of understanding the past and how God had comunicated with people on Earth before Jesus.

One thing about Im kind of glad is the moment in life in which I am reading the bible. I believe i might respect it more now that i am facing a tough moment in my life rather than I the way I would interpret the reading and show respect towards it if I was in a very happy moment in life.

"I Have a Dream"

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm



The following is the whole speech of "I Have a Dream" made by Martin Luther King Jr. It was made on August 28, 1963.

The green part, though is just the part to which I will identify the fallacies.

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
appeal to tradition but its using in a negative way because it wants to change what has been occuring up to now in american history. It also uses Genetic fallacy when it talks about the Negros. It also uses appeal to emotion because it tells how the negros are currently suffering through different sircumstances and how it is that they are being segregated by the rest of the american population.
In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."
Here the fallacies that I can identify are the ones that appeal to emotion because it kind of makes the negroes feel betrayed and the genetic fallacy since it is referring to white and black men. Possibly bandwagon approach is also occuring because even though the mayority of the whites really were discriminating the blacks, I believe that there were a few that did support them and arent being given the recognition they diserve.
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
Faulty analogy because they are refering to justice as a check.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
This refers to Straw man Argument because it exagerates what is being currently done so that the future changes. It also refers to appeal to emotion since it makes them feel as if they want equallity.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
This refers to genetic fallacy, It also uses Either/or fallacie even though it does not include those words, a threaten is being pplanted if what the negroes want is not done.
But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
Genetic fallacy and "slipery slope" because it is saying how their actions will affect the future because they will influence one thing, then the next, and so on.
We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.
We cannot turn back.
There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. *We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by a sign stating: "For Whites Only."* We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."¹
This time fallacies other than the genetic fallacy are being applied, they use appeal to emotion when they show all that is being forbiddden and how that should not occur, they also refer Hasty generalization and Straw Man argument because they are exxagerating the facts by making a generalization of how the negroes are treated to leave a greater impact.
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."²
This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:
My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,
From every mountainside, let freedom ring!
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.
And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that:
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!³

Noahs Arc

Throughout Genesis 5 through 11 many questions have come up to mind. Some of these were the following:
- How did God choose who were worthy of surviving and who weren’t?
- Why didn’t the animals kill each other, some being predators and others being preys, while they were all in a very small space?
- How did all the animals arrive?
- How was Noah able to leave so many people behind?
- Scientifically, if related people or animals mate, their offspring will have deformities and other problems, how come this didn’t occur?
- The bible says that Noah and his three sons went into the arc while the rest of the humans died, how was it possible to then be more people born if no female was alive?
- Why did god decide he would never repeat the action? Was it really that bad? Now that he accepts evil will always be in humans, will he place other punishments upon us for other reasons?
- Why does the bible keep telling about people living such long lives? Were these ages’ literal or metaphors?
- It tells exactly who was son of whom, but how could this have been controlled?

These are only some of the questions that pop up onto my head as I read and I would really like to find answers to them.

The begining.. from the bible

We have now been able to look at many different myths and beliefs of how it was that the earth was created and how it was that everything begun. It is said in the bible that god created the earth, all around it, and everything in it in seven days. Each day something new would be made and eventually man was done after the seven days had passed. God, realizing men needed company created animals but soon realized that these weren’t enough company for men so he created the woman. He placed them in a garden and allowed them to eat from all trees except the one of the knowledge of good and bad. Then serpent convinced eve to eat from this tree and eve convinced Adam to eat and so they were each given a punishment. Then Eve gave birth to Cain and Abel and Cain killed his brother. Still more kids are born and so the family begins to grow and it is said that they each live an extraordinarily long life.

What this passage mostly reminded me was of human nature. From the beginning humans have the curiosity to try what they’re not supposed to and they have also felt envy and hatred to a point in which they actually killed ones brother. It is shown that from the beginning we were full of faults but of strengths as well. Today humans still feel such things as hatred, jealousy, curiosity, and superiority. Since the beginning humans have evoluted but some traits will always be kept the same.

The rural Deities, Erisichthon, Rhecus, The water Deities, The Camenae, The Winds

Many of the myths we’ve read so far are all referring to a specific story that occurred in time. This time though, Eurischthon was the only one of the myths I read today that is a story, the rest were generalizations. My personal opinion is that I prefer reading a specific event instead of generalizations because even though generalizations explain to you the main ideas about a god or anything else, when you read specific examples you can actually understand better how it is that that person lives and how his mind and feelings work.

The same thing happens with people. No matter how much you’ve heard about them and how many stories she’s lived through get to you, your opinion about a person is always strongest when you’ve met the person. You can, for example, have a very bad impression about a person because all of your friends hate her because she’s done really bad things to them, but then you meet her and she is very kind to you and proves herself to be a really good friend. Here your opinion would have turned around completely and it might have been that your friends originally gave her a reason to be mean. It also occurs when you just hear the bad stories about a person. It is well known that every person has strengths and weaknesses and these are as well included in personality. This is why you might have heard only the bad things a person has done when it turns out she has done many more good ones or vice versa. This is why it is better to know a person than just adapt on the comments of other people because it also happens that each person thinks different and interprets different actions in different ways.

Component Fallacies

A Swiftly Melting Planet
By THOMAS HOMER-DIXON
Published: October 4, 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/opinion/04homer-dixon.html

THE Arctic ice cap melted this summer at a shocking pace, disappearing at a far higher rate than predicted by even the most pessimistic experts in global warming. But we shouldn’t be shocked, because scientists have long known that major features of earth’s interlinked climate system of air and water can change abruptly.
Irrelevant conclusion is the kind of fallacy currently being used in the previous paragraph because it is contradicting itself, therefore not making clear which side it is that it is defending. Begging the question is another fallacy used since it has, from the beginning, talked about how global warming is bad.
A big reason such change happens is feedback — not the feedback that you’d like to give your boss, but the feedback that creates a vicious circle. This type of feedback in our global climate could determine humankind’s future prosperity and even survival.
Slippery slope is included here because it says that once the cycle has begun there is no way of actually stopping it but there might be ways except that they are very difficult to make and the author wants a more drastic feeling on the readers.
The vast expanse of ice floating on the surface of the Arctic Ocean always recedes in the summer, reaching its lowest point sometime in September. Every winter it expands again, as the long Arctic night descends and temperatures plummet. Each summer over the past six years, global warming has trimmed this ice’s total area a little more, and each winter the ice’s recovery has been a little less robust. These trends alarmed climate scientists, but most thought that sea ice wouldn’t disappear completely in the Arctic summer before 2040 at the earliest.
It is a mixture of Hasty Generalization because its saying that these things are occurring every year when it is not necessarily like that and a slippery slope fallacy because it describes that the icecaps are each time melting more and freezing less in a cycle. Also Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc because it is saying how one thing occurred due to the fact that the other occurred before.
But this past summer sent scientists scrambling to redo their estimates. Week by week, the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., reported the trend: from 2.23 million square miles of ice remaining on Aug. 8 to 1.6 million square miles on Sept. 16, an astonishing drop from the previous low of 2.05 million square miles, reached in 2005.
Misleading statistic because that maybe what occurs every year but the public doesn’t know it and the author just chose one of the points in which every year there is a drastic drop.
The loss of Arctic sea ice won’t be the last abrupt change in earth’s climate, because of feedbacks. One of the climate’s most important destabilizing feedbacks involves Arctic ice. It works like this: our release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases around the planet causes some initial warming that melts some ice. Melting ice leaves behind open ocean water that has a much lower reflectivity (or albedo) than that of ice. Open ocean water absorbs about 80 percent more solar radiation than sea ice does. And so as the sun warms the ocean, even more ice melts, in a vicious circle. This ice-albedo feedback is one of the main reasons warming is happening far faster in the high north, where there are vast stretches of sea ice, than anywhere else on Earth.
The slippery slope fallacy because of the cycle that the ice-albedo warming shows. Also Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc because it is saying that the ice is melting due to the water being warmer due to the… all in a way that shows how one thing happened because another happened before.
There are other destabilizing feedbacks in the carbon cycle that involve the oceans. Each year, the oceans absorb about half the carbon dioxide that humans emit into the atmosphere. But as oceans warm, they will absorb less carbon dioxide, partly because the gas dissolves less readily in warmer water, and partly because warming will reduce the mixing between deep and surface waters that provides nutrients to plankton that absorb carbon dioxide. And when oceans take up less carbon dioxide, warming worsens.
Also Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc and slippery slope because it is showing how one thing happened before the other and that there is now no ways to stop it from keep on influencing.
Scientists have done a good job incorporating some feedbacks into their climate models, especially those, like the ice-albedo feedback, that operate directly on the temperature of air or water. But they haven’t incorporated as well feedbacks that operate on the atmosphere’s concentrations of greenhouse gases or that affect the cycle of carbon among air, land, oceans and organisms. Yet these may be the most important feedbacks of all.
Hasty Generalization because many scientists have talked about these thing but the author is saying that all scientists have done the other kind of feedback.
Global warming is melting large areas of permafrost in Alaska, Canada and Siberia. As it melts, the organic matter in the permafrost starts to rot, releasing carbon dioxide and methane (molecule for molecule, methane traps far more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide).
Non Sequitur: doesn’t explain well what it is that is going on.
Warming is also affecting wetlands and forests around the world, helping to desiccate immense peat bogs in Indonesia, contributing to more frequent drought in the Amazon basin, and propelling a widening beetle infestation that’s killing enormous tracts of pine forest in Alaska and British Columbia. (This infestation is on the brink of crossing the Canadian Rockies into the boreal forest that extends east to Newfoundland.) Dried peat and dead and dying forests are vulnerable to wildfires that would emit huge quantities of carbon into the atmosphere.
Red herring because it’s talking about something different to support the statement.
This summer’s loss of Arctic sea ice indicates that at least one major destabilizing feedback is gaining force quickly. Scientists have also recently learned that the Southern Ocean, which encircles Antarctica, appears to be absorbing less carbon, while Greenland’s ice sheet is melting at an accelerating rate.
Straw man argument because it gives simple, exaggerated examples to make his point get to the reader deeper and faster.
When warming becomes its own cause, we might not be able to stop extremely harmful climate change no matter how much we cut our greenhouse gas emissions. We need a far more aggressive global response to climate change. In the 1960s, mothers learned that the milk they were feeding their children was laced with radioactive material from atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons and that this contamination could increase the risk of childhood leukemia. Soon women organized themselves in the tens of thousands to demand that nuclear powers ban atmospheric testing. Their campaign largely succeeded.
In response to the new dangers of climate change, we need a similar mobilization — of mothers, of students and of everyone with a stake in the future — now.
Slippery slope and Faulty analogy are the two kinds of component fallacies being used because it says that global warming might be unstoppable and it uses an example of women and their babies protection by strike to compare to global warming and how people should act to make it stop but the circumstances are very different.
Thomas Homer-Dixon, a professor of peace and conflict studies at the University of Toronto, is the author of “The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization.”

The Graeae and Gorgons, Perseus and Medusa, Atlas, and Andromeda

These four myths show how Perseus killed medusa and what became of his life after he did. Thru out this period of his life, Perseus shows himself as a very highly self esteemed person who considers himself the greatest person of all. Still it is not him who is such a great person but that fact that he has such a great weapon that leads him to many of his victorious battles. He is aswell aware of his heritage and considers himself greatly due to the fact that Jupiter is his father. Still he is denied hostility by atlas due to this very fact, “Begone! or neither your false claims of glory or parenthage shall protect you.” (Perseus and Atlas, 95) Perseus, outraged for his poor treatment, turns Atlas into stone by making him look at Medusas head. Yet he once more uses his powerful weapon at his wedding when Cepheus attacks and being close to being defeated, Perseus shows his opponent medusas face and so he turns into stone. The problem with this action was that not only his enemies watched the face and turned into stone but his friends as well, feeling terrible about his friend’s deaths, he looks at medusas head from free will and is turned into stone.

Monsters

These myths are mostly a description of each of the monsters that were believed to exist during the Greeks time. Some of the ones included are the giants, the sphinx, Pegasus and Chimaeras, the centaurs, the pygmies and the griffins. All of these monsters had a special characteristic that would scare the humans and even sometimes the gods. For example the giants got the gods to move all the way up to a different mountain and they dragged them once to India. It also happens that most of these monsters are a mixture of another two or more species. All of these monsters have a very special characteristic that makes them be feared, a characteristic that humans lack and therefore these creatures are found extraordinary.
This constantly happens, the fact that whatever humans lack is cool. It is looked at it like that because humans consider themselves the best of best when they actually lack many abilities. Watching other creatures has the characteristics that they don’t have, humans decide that they want them and find a way to obtain these characteristics even if they are unnatural. For example humans have learned how to fly, by using airplanes, how to have a better vision at night by using flashlights, to swim fastly and through long distances with boats, to travel without getting tired, by car and many other special abilities that are natural in some animals humans have adapted artificially to their own benefit and use.

Nisus and Scylla, Echo and Narcissus, Hero and Leander, and Clyte.

Love does not always bring the expected results. Love is supposed to make a person happy and enjoy life but it will sometimes become a way of suffering. In Nisus and Scylla, Scylla falls in love with her father’s enemy and betrays his father just to be able to be with his lover. Still what she felt was unreturned love and so Minos, her lover, does not accept her due to her dishonest action of betrayal. It is then so that she is left suffering for her lover while he sails away, it also occurs that her father then finds about her doings and follows her for revenge. This leaves Scylla without any love, not her father’s love, and not her lovers love, she is left behind on her own, grieving and suffering. In Echo and Narcissus Juno punishes Echo for helping the nymphs hide their affair with Juno´s husband. While being punished with only being able to have the last word, Echo falls in love with Narcissus, but he feels no love in return and so rejects her. Clyte, too, is a victim of unreturned love, she falls in love with Apollo but he pays her no attention. Following with her gaze Apollo every day, coming out as the sun, Clyte is soon turned into a sunflower, the flower that is always facing Apollo in it form of sun. In hero and Leander though, the lovers love is from both parties and even though they have to fight the sea every night to see each other, their love is so strong, that they don’t care how many obstacles they have to get through as long as they are together in the end. This is why when Leander dies, Hero gives her body to the sea and drowns to be with him.

The Golden Fleece, Medea and Aeson, Hercules, and Hebe and Ganymede.

These four myths are each very unique in their own way. The Golden Fleece is the story in which Jason has to go over different obstacles to be able to obtain the Golden Fleece which was ordered to him by Pelias. Medea and Aeson Is the story in which Medea gives Aeson the gift of making his father live longer and then when the same destiny was asked for Jason’s uncle, Medea tricked her daughters and killed their father. Still afterwards Aeson found a wife and Medea got jealous and set the city on fire and then escaped to Athens. Hebe and Ganymede is just the story of hebe resigning to her spot as Hercules’s wife and Ganymede was a Trojan war with no important destiny. Still from these four myths the one that got most of my attention was Hercules. Hercules did not only draw my attention but it as well made me realize that the version I knew about, the Disney version, is very different from the original. In the Disney version Hercules is shown in only one of his twelve labors. He is also involved in a love story which doesn’t really occur and at the and his happy ending is the possibility of becoming a god while in the myth I just read he actually kills himself and his greatest honoring from the gods is the fact that they make a constellation in his honor.

Vocabulary

Labyrinth: an intricate combination of paths or passages in which it is difficult to find one's way or to reach the exit. “Treated for Illness, Then Lost in Labyrinth of Bills” http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/13/health/13paper.html
Palladium: anything believed to provide protection or safety; safeguard.
Museum: a building or place where works of art, scientific specimens, or other objects of permanent value are kept and displayed.
Narcissism: inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive self-love; vanity.
Odyssey: an epic poem attributed to Homer, describing Odysseus's adventures in his ten-year attempt to return home to Ithaca after the Trojan War.
Meander: to proceed by or take a winding or indirect course
Protean: readily assuming different forms or characters; extremely variable
Stoical: impassive; characterized by a calm, austere fortitude befitting the Stoics
Herculean: requiring the great strength of a Hercules; very hard to perform
Laconic: Using or marked by the use of few words; terse or concise.
Zephyr: a gentle, mild breeze.
Nemesis: something that a person cannot conquer, achieve, etc.
Flora: the plants of a particular region or period listed by species and considered as a whole.
Ambrosia: Classical Mythology. The food of the gods
Hermetic: not affected by outward influence or power; isolated.
Promethean: of or suggestive of Prometheus; creative; boldly original.
Nectar: 1Classical Mythology. the life-giving drink of the gods. 2 The saccharine secretion of a plant, which attracts the insects or birds that pollinate the flower.
Hydra: Classical Mythology. a water or marsh serpent with nine heads, each of which, if cut off, grew back as two; Hercules killed this serpent by cauterizing the necks as he cut off the heads.
Lycanthrope: werewolf or alien spirit in the physical form of a bloodthirsty wolf.
Martial: inclined or disposed to war; warlike
Sophistry: a subtle, tricky, superficially plausible, but generally fallacious method of reasoning
Fauna: the animals of a given region or period considered as a whole.
Stentorian: very loud or powerful in sound
Pyrrhic: consisting of two short or unaccented syllables
Victory: success or triumph over an enemy in battle or war.
Gordian knot: An exceedingly complicated problem or deadlock
Pandora’s Box: Something obtained from curiosity.
Cassandra: a person who prophesies doom or disaster.
Achilles talon: referring to the special weakness of a person
Oedipus: A son of Laius and Jocasta, who was abandoned at birth and unwittingly killed his father and then married his mother. Midas: a person of great wealth or great moneymaking ability.
Hades: 1Classical Mythology. The underworld inhabited by departed souls. 2 Hell
Spartan: suggestive of the ancient Spartans; sternly disciplined and rigorously simple, frugal, or austere.
Sibylline: mysterious; cryptic.
Tantalize: to torment with, or as if with, the sight of something desired but out of reach; tease by arousing expectations that are repeatedly disappointed.
Delphic: of or pertaining to Delphi.
Helicon: a coiled tuba carried over the shoulder and used esp. in military bands
Platonic: of, pertaining to, or characteristic of Plato or his doctrines
Draconian: of, pertaining to, or characteristic of Draco or his code of laws.
Calypso: a sea nymph who detained Odysseus on the island of Ogygia for seven years.
Amazons: Greek Mythology A member of a nation of women warriors reputed to have lived in Scythia.
Siren: a seductively beautiful or charming woman, esp. one who beguiles men
Mercurial: changeable; volatile; fickle; flighty; erratic
Procrustean: tending to produce conformity by violent or arbitrary means.
Aurora: the ancient Roman goddess of the dawn.
Iridescent: displaying a play of lustrous colors like those of the rainbow.
Panacea: remedy for all disease or ills; cure-all
Lethargy: the quality or state of being drowsy and dull, listless and unenergetic, or indifferent and lazy; apathetic or sluggish inactivity.
Gorgons: Greek Mythology Any of the three sisters Stheno, Euryale, and the mortal Medusa who had snakes for hair and eyes that if looked into turned the beholder into stone
Harpies: 1-Classical Mythology. a ravenous, filthy monster having a woman's head and a bird's body. 2-a greedy, predatory person
Titanic: Also, titan. of enormous size, strength, power, etc.; gigantic
Marathon: any long-distance race
The sword of Damocles: referring to that meant to a special person.




Definitions gotten from http://dictionary.reference.com/

Fallacies

http://www.businessweek.com/investing/greenbiz/archives/2007/09/new_nukes_are_f.html

New Nukes are Finally Coming
Posted by: John Carey on September 24
Since 2001, we and just about every other business publication have written stories on the coming nuclear renaissance. (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_17/b3729077.htm?chan=search ) It’s a development that was seen as almost inevitable. The country needs more electricity. And with coal plants being blocked or cancelled because of concerns over global warming, nukes were looking more and more attractive. Sure, there are still lingering worries over waste disposal and nuclear proliferation, but the new generation of plants are safer and, the industry expected, cheaper to build. The question was, who would take the first leap?
Now we have an answer. It’s a Princeton, NJ-based utility named NRG.
Here the author of this piece of writing is definetly using rhetoric, more specifically, pathos since it talks about worries and concerns and what he believes to be safer. But he is also using fallaciess, he uses Argumentum and Populum, since it is since it is trying to refer to popularity and refers to the feelings of people towards the decision they are to make. And it also has Appeal to Emotion since thats the way it is expressing its opinion.
http://www.nrgenergy.com/
On Sept. 24, the company and South Texas Project Nuclear Operating Company filed an application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build two new nuclear units at the site of two existing nukes in Texas. "We think the nuclear renaissance is finally upon us," says NRG CEO David Crane.
Going first is risky. The application will test the NRC's new application process, which will grant both an construction and operating license. (In the past, companies had to first get a construction license, and then, once the plant was built, an operating license). The new approach is supposed to trim the time needed to get a plant up and running by a number of years. But no one knows yet what snafus will appear. If the process takes longer than expected, the utility that goes first could lose money.
That's why the half-joke in the industry has been that everyone was racing to be second. Let someone else test the process, but stay ahead of all the others.
Crane, however, argues that not being first is also risky. One little known fact is that there's only one supplier of the huge forgings that make up the pressure vessel--a Japanese steel company. If you don't snare their upcoming production soon, you won't even be able to build a plant. NRG has already contracted to buy the forgings it needs. "We had to order now for a plant that won't be online until 2014," says Crane. "It is very Machiavellian, trying to secure your forging." NRC was able to get the ones it needs by ordering through Toshiba.
Here the fallacy used is one of Appeal to Biased Authority since they are talking to a person who has lived thrrough it and is telling his experience to support the point of the author.
Another potential hurdle for those who follow is finding people who know how to build a complex nuclear plant. "We think filing later is risky because of a shortage of skilled labor," explains Crane.
It uses Appeal to Emotion to say what poeple are feeling of what they are supposed to try and live with.
So it's reasonable to expect that one or two other companies will jump in soon, in the wake of NRG. But those who wait too long will end far behind.
What about opposition? Nuclear power is an uncomfortable issue for the environmental community. Some groups, such as the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, have grudgingly accepted that, in the battle against global warming, nukes are a necessary evil. Others remain adamantly opposed. “Building nuclear reactors to solve our energy problems is like going fishing with grenades: it’s expensive, stupid, and dangerous, and there’s a ton of better options,” says Luke Metzger, director of Environment Texas. With the new plants being built on the site of existing ones, however, the opposition is not expected to be strong enough to derail the plans.
Here I would say many kinds of fallacies are being used. The fist one being the Snob approach since they believe that the few groups mentioned are correct and what they say is logical. It is also using Appeal to biased Authority since they are giving uniue organizations to support the ideas, and they are using them as areliable source that supports his ideas. And there might be a bit of Appeal to emotion since the person who gave his oppinion is stating what Luke Metzger feels about the nuclear reactors.

Endymon, Orion, Aurora and Tithonus, Acis and Galatea

These myths were definitely far from being the ones I’ve liked the most up to now. I really couldn’t understand the message being expressed to the people reading them and I didn’t see what it was that they were meant to explain. Okay, maybe it is obvious; Orion explained the constellation, and Aurora and Tithonus explains why every morning there is Dawn since Aurora is weeping for him. Still, I did not get the message expressed to me in all the other myths in which I feel there was like a hidden message expressed to the reader. It might have happened that this time I was not a as concentrated when reading this myth as I have been while reading the others, I don’t know. All I know was that I really didn’t like much these myths.

The Trojan War, The Illiad, The fall of Troy, and The return of the greeks

These writings I wouldn’t consider them myths, I would instead call them something like a narrative since their intentions are to tell what occurred during the Trojan War but they obviously still contain mythology since many gods are involved and they control many of the conclusions of what would happen during the war, who would die, who would win, who would kill… I do believe though that even though very few of the facts stated are actually really facts, this is really unable to be proven true, even though, I would really personally like to believe it true. I really enjoy reading Greek Mythology and The Trojan War was one interest I have had since I was young and I have really enjoyed reading about it.
My opinion about the war is that I sometimes believe that the Trojans should have won but then I think about the consequences this would have left on the rest of the world and then feel glad that it was the Greek that one. What bothers me most of the fact that the Greeks have won is not necessarily the fact that they are Greeks but how they won. Using a horse to enter the city, and attacking it when it isn’t ready to defend itself might have been witty but it lacks all kinds of values and courage. It makes me see the Greeks as cowards because they got tired after fighting for ten years, and I stopped honoring its rival by stooping to fight under equal conditions and both having the possibility to defend themselves.

Meleanger and Atalanta, Cupid and Psyche, and Vertumnus and Pomona

These three myths are all love stories, and these have made me realize once more how many of the Greek myths are actually based on relationships and how people interact in one relationship. Through these relationships and love pursuiting myths we are able to see many of the human flaws and see how gods punish or help the humans. These myths though, also remind me to many stories you sometimes gat to hear and they also resemble to the movies made currently, it’s as if humans have always been obsessed with love and they are always seeking it.
In Meleanger and Atalanta, for example, Meleanger falls in love with Atalanta and his love is so pure and strong that he even kills his relatives just to honor his beloved, still, his actions being disapproved by his mom, lead to his death, since she takes revenge. The same story but with less drastic actions occur every day. Many couples are not approved by their family or someone does something to dishonor them and then a revenge chain is begun between the people involved, and even though death is not commonly included, other drastic measures are taken between people that originally loved each other. Cupid and Psyche is another example of how family gets involved in every relationship. Cupid and Psyche had to overcome Cupids mom, Venus, and Psyches sisters, as obstacles to reach their long wanted love. It also occurred that both loving each other, were able to go over and defeat many obstacles just to be with one another once more. And in Vertumnus and Pomona, they both have to deal with different feelings to permit their relationship to prosper. Still at the end one always ends convincing the other to follow their feelings; in this case Vertumnus is able to convince Pomona to love him by taking the form of an old lady and telling him a story of a girl who was turned to stone due to her stony heart. And every day many people confess their love to someone and get them to fall in love with them.

Proserpine, Glaucus and Scylla, and Ceyx and Halcycyone

These three myths, as many others, have the love feeling inside them. Even though in the three of them there is a partner’s love, such as in a relationship, in Proserpine, there is also the kind of love a mother feels towards her daughter, one of care and affection. In Proserpine the two kinds of love, confront each other too see who keeps Proserpine, and both being very strong and demanding, end up in a tie. That is why Proserpine is able to be with her mom during half of the year, and she spends the other half with her husband. Glaucus and Scylla is another love story but one of romance. When Glaucus is turned into a merman, he falls in love with one of the water nymphs, Scylla. Still the love felt in this relationship was one-sided, since Scylla didn’t want to be with Glaucus and ran from him. Glaucus, being desperately in love went and asked Circe, an enchantress, to make Scylla fall for him. Instead Circe was the one who fell for him but Glaucus rejected her and specified that his heart belonged to Scylla, and only Scylla. Circe was unhappy with the response she had gotten and therefore cursed him: shy turned Scylla very ugly and drowned her; Glaucus would have to spend a thousand years collecting the bodies of drowned ones. When the time had passed, Glaucus received help from Endymion and became young again and Scylla was restored to life. Then Ceyx and Halcyone is also a love story in which Ceyx dies at sea and Halcyone prays for his wellbeing. When she discovers he is dead she weeps and moans but then as she sees his body returning to her after being many days at sea, she goes to receive him and turns into a bird. The gods, deciding they should belong as a couple, turn Halcyone into a bird as well and they are able to rejoin once more and spend their time together.

Taxing the Hand that Feeds Us

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/opinion/20ponnuru.html

Op-Ed Contributor

By RAMESH PONNURU
Published: September 20, 2007
Washington
Grady White

REPUBLICAN presidential candidates can’t get elected without owning the tax issue. So far, the current crop is giving it away.
A huge reason for Ronald Reagan’s popularity was his cutting of all income-tax rates and ending of “bracket creep,” in which inflation pushed earners into higher tax groups. Congressional Republicans promised a tax credit for children while sweeping the 1994 elections. In 2000, George W. Bush promised to expand that tax credit and to reduce income taxes.
Yes, the top Republican contenders for 2008 are promising to keep all of Mr. Bush’s tax cuts. But the Democrats are not threatening the child tax credit or Mr. Bush’s reductions in the lower-level income-tax rates. Those issues are off the table.
What Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani — who have made the most detailed remarks on taxes of the top-tier candidates — are really saying is that they will make sure that taxes on capital gains, dividends, estates and high earners will stay low. Not many middle-class taxpayers will benefit directly from any of those policies.
Mr. Romney adds that he will try to cut the corporate tax rate, which his adviser Glenn Hubbard calls “a drain on competitiveness.” Many of our trading partners have cut their corporate taxes, and more and more conservatives want the United States to follow suit. Apparently they haven’t been listening to their own speeches on free trade. Companies compete. Countries, however, are not engaged in a zero-sum contest where one nation’s gain is another’s loss. Cutting corporate tax rates may or may not be a good idea, but we don’t need to make it a priority to preserve our competitiveness.
Both Mr. Romney and Mr. Giuliani speak vaguely about making sure the alternative minimum tax doesn’t affect any more middle-class families. That is a step in the right direction. But it isn’t a tax cut.
Mr. Romney has also proposed an initiative to make the return on middle-class savings tax-free. It may also be a step in the right direction, but it’s small change. The primary focus of the Romney and Giuliani tax plans remains high earners.
What would be a serious middle-class tax cut? One answer is to expand the tax credit for children. But none of the candidates is proposing to do so, or any other big tax relief for regular folks. You might think that Mr. Giuliani would want to do everything he can to appeal to social conservatives short of actually becoming one himself. But why should he offer a pro-family tax cut when even the hard-core social conservatives in the race aren’t interested? Mike Huckabee wants a national sales tax and Sam Brownback wants a flat tax. Either proposal would increase taxes on a lot of middle-class families.
The Republicans in Congress are no better. For much of the right, the great passion of the moment is to make sure that the carried interest at hedge funds is taxed at what look an awful lot like preferential rates. For years, liberals have said that Republicans talk about “family values” but won’t do anything to meet the economic needs of families. Right now, on taxes, that charge hits home.
Two ideological misconceptions underlie the party’s lack of imagination. First, Republicans worry that taking people off the income-tax rolls, as an expanded child credit would do, would make voters think big government is free and turn to the Democrats. But there’s no real evidence for this. Besides, parents are likely to be future-oriented voters, and they will realize that they will be paying higher taxes again once their children have grown up.
Second, Republicans believe, in general, that the tax code should generate its revenue in a way that does the least damage possible to the economy. So they seek tax reforms that cut taxes on investment returns and thereby increase economic growth. What they ignore is that we overtax investments in children, too. Parents make financial sacrifices to produce the next generation of taxpayers, who will pay for everyone’s retirements. Yet the tax code does too little to recognize parents’ investments.
True, an expanded tax credit for children wouldn’t increase economic growth. Growth is good, and more growth is better. But present tax rates are perfectly compatible with healthy long-term growth. There is no pressing need to bring them down to improve growth.
A few conservative strategists have designed tax reform plans that modestly cut corporate tax rates and simplify the tax code while also helping families. (One idea is to make up the lost revenue by bumping affluent childless people into higher tax brackets.) So far, the candidates have not been interested.
As the Republican Party has gotten more socially conservative, its voter base has become lower in income. Many of the working-class social conservatives on whom the party relies are parents trying to make ends meet, or young people who want to start families but have financial worries. They have no particular attachment, or hostility, to free-market principles. A Republican Party that found a conservative way to meet their economic needs would both hold and expand its base.
Ramesh Ponnuru is a senior editor at National Review.


In this article the three kinds of rhetoric writing are found. For example the first paragraph is completely values, it is written in the present and it discuss how now days republicans have to own the tax issue to be able to be elected. This is all values because it is a reason for which people don’t consider voting for such a representative or for people to actually vote in their favor because is what they consider morally correct.
Still the author then changes to a different rhetoric characteristic. He uses the past to blame all the fake promises congressional republicans have made in the past. It also uses this for people to consider the future and make the correct choice of whom to vote for having in mind all that has happened in the past. And this once more connects to the present in which the ideas of the different candidates are presented and their morals and values will be compared with the beliefs of the voters, and by comparing and contrasting, the voters, in the future will once more make a choice of whom to vote for. The author then gives his own opinion of what should be done and suggested and states his values for them to get in the thoughts of the people in the present but for these values to influence the decision made in the future so that the wring things that have occurred in the past do not repeat themselves.
Referring to the other divisions of rhetoric, Ethos, Pathos, and Logos, we could say this article, even though it contains from all three of these points of views, is mostly Pathos. This is mostly Pathos because the author is making the readers feel bad about how the republicans have before lied to the public and how they have used their power wrongly. It also makes the reader feel bad about the people in middle classes about the taxes because the author focuses in stating the problems these taxes would cause these families. And he blames the republicans for having turned their job into an economical business and benefiting themselves instead of paying attention to the ideas he suggested, which, according to him, wont make the middle class families suffer as much as the current republican ideas.

Phaeton, Midas, Baucis and Philemon

In all of the three stories we are able to witness mistakes made by the power of choosing and being stubborn. In the first story, Phaeton gets his father to grant him any one wish he asks for to prove him that he is his father. His wish, even though it was definitely not recommended by his father, was final. He would ride the suns chariot and would die in the way. But he didn’t just die, he as well got the earth in flames and destroyed many beautiful characteristics of the earth. In the second story a very mistaken decision is also made, Midas, after being hospitable for ten days and nights with Bacchus is then rewarded by anything he chooses. Being a power-hungry man who wanted wealth, Midas asks for the wish of anything he touches, turning into gold. This though was not as great as he wanted and this makes him incapable of many things.He isnt able to enjoy food and drinks, he can no longer feel any other texture that the golds, and he cant enjoy his life anymore. He then receives a pair of donkey ears since the gods decide on it and the gods do this because of the fact that he supported Pan, during Pans combat against Apollo.
Baucious and Philemon and they two are a swell rewarded for having been a family very well organized and they get a price for their hospitality. Since the rest of the village didn’t will to help the hidden goddesses, the gods punish them all except Baucis and Philemon. But this time they get a positive reward since they are able to die together and at the same time, just like they wanted.

Apollo and Daphne- Pyramus and Thisbe- Cephalus and Procris

Under my point of view I consider all of these three myths to be tragedies. It annoys me that to people that love each other are not allowed being together for one reason or another. In Apollo and Daphne, Cupid made sure love was only felt from Apollo while Daphne did not wished to be loved. Pyramus and Thisbe, though living in the same village and loving each other, are not permitted by their parents to unite. And even though Cephalus declines Aurora to keep his wife, at the end, they too are separated from one another. The fact that they were separated by death and by their own fault causes even more frustration upon me. Daphne is taken away from Apollo by becoming a tree and this is because, she, herself, asked for it while trying to escape Apollo. Then Pyramus kills himself because he believes Thisbe is dead and then Thisbe realizes what happened and kills herself as well. And then Procris spies her husband because she believes he is cheating on her after he actually renounced a goddess for her, and not being able to see her, but hearing her, Cephalus kills her with his javelin, thinking she is an animal. The fact that two people that love each other are not able to be with one another makes me feel pity as well since I do not hope for that kind of feeling of wanting but not having.

Cadmus, the Myrmidons and Apollo and Hyacinthus

These three myths are very different. They each have what I consider a different message to transmit. Apollo and Hyacinthus is about the preferences the god Apollo had towards Hyacinthus and how he accidentally killed him one day. In his honor Apollo created a flower silver and purple, more beautiful than any other, and this one revives every spring making sure Hyacinthhs’s memory is not forgotten. So this Myth explains how this flower was created and what it purpose was but it also shows that Apollo’s favoritism towards Hyacinthus lead him to his death since he, being a god, should not show favoritism toward anybody.
Cadmus however is a very different style of myth. This one shows how a grate serpent of great importance to the gods was killed by Cadmus after the serpent had killed most, or all, of Cadmus’s soldiers. After Cadmus sleights the serpent, he forms a family and founds a city, but the gods never stop haunting him for having killed the serpent so he offers to become a serpent himself. The gods accept his offer, and his wife not wanting to stay alone, chooses the same fate. My interpretation of the message of this myth is that it reminds you that your past can’t be forgiven and that it will affect your future.
And the myth of the myrmidons is of their creation. It explains how after a terrible disease kills the whole city of Aegina, this was a course sent by Juno but no offering or preach is capable of make her stop. Everyone dies except the king and his family and so Aeacus, the king, asks Juno to either take him as well, as she did with his entire city, or give him people to begin a new city once more. Juno decides to give him some soldiers that kill each other until five are left and these help Aeacus build a new city and calls them myrmidons, inspired by the ant colony from which Aeacus had gotten his idea to ask for people. The inner message of this story I would say is hope because Aeacus always waited for his city to recover and when it didn’t, he still looked for a new solution. He always hoped for Juno’s forgiveness and he eventually did receive what he waited so long for.