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.