The planet that shook

The recent earthquake and tsunami which have attacked and destroyed a lot of Japan -mostly the Sendai area and Tokyo- have left hundreds injured, hundreds dead, and thousands homeless and the numbers are still rising. Later that night it was determined that the whole Pacific coastal area along with South America, Australia, and part of California and Hawaii would be attacked with earthquakes and tsunamis.
It is rumored that the earthquake was the largest that ever hit the world at 8.9 on the richter scale. Live footage of the actual moment in Japan as seen in this video from CNN http://cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2011/03/11/natpkg.japan.day.of.quake.cnn shows the destruction and the reason for the world shaking so uncontrollably. Many
Many must have screamed in fear as the world split and water engulfed everything in its path. Just as Sinclair had commented on the pigs who squealed and it was heard around the universe as they were slaughtered. There was no requital of their suffering, which is the same for the Japanese citizens who yelled as they were swooped up in the water and were dragged away or were pulled into the open cracks of the earth.
Hopefully, this scary event is not what the people fear as the famed "2012, ending of the world" and it reminds us that mother nature is a force to be reckoned with.

Highway built through Alaska Wilderness

Wilderness is known to mankind, it is important in many aspects, but I guess not to the people in Alaska. In eight months and a half they built this huge highway that connected from one end to another allowing the Alaskan to get from one point to another. The reason why this highway was built was because of World War II. It connected a line of air strips, which helped move airplanes to Americans during the war. They hacked through uncharted wilderness, hard rock and mosquito ridden muskeg. The heavy equipment that was brought in to destroy this land; which had many muddy bogs, which many people could not get out of and was left there. It took about 11,500 service men that were mainly African American slaves that worked 12 to 16 hrs. in the sun trying to build this highway. They went through about 150 miles of forest killing a lot of animal's homes just to build a highway, probably many of them weren't able to make it out and some animals became extinct.

http://www.suite101.com/content/construction-of-the-alcan-highway-world-war-ii-a89969

One of the readings that we did about wilderness, Leopold makes a great example, "neither the wolf nor the mountain agree with the death," this shows no matter what people might think that it is okay and that they are not affecting the environment but really they are. When a person is looking outside and see a squirrel running up a tree or a bird making a home for the its babies, they don't see it as wild or nature. Human has it in their head like a paradox that nature is only wild that it is in an inhabited area that are wilderness areas that are not touched. They don't see it as a home for many animals, In Alaska they thought by building the highway it would make it easier to transport materials and supplies that are need for survival when they didn't look at the bigger picture. Leopold explains the ecosystem and how it has an effect on the environment but also us, humans. He shows our ecosystem as a pyramid for example if you kill a pack of wolf what tends to happen. One you over populate the area with deer, next they eat up all the vegetation, deer dies because of starvation, erosion tend to happen because no more plants, then everything else dies because they are not able to off one another. It's a circle of life and in the Alaska article that is what they did they went through 150 miles of land and destroyed the ecosystem in it. Sometimes we think that our actions won’t put another in danger but really we do.

"Invisible Force"

One thing I have learned so far from this class is that nature is an invisible force that is for the most part unpredictable. Some people even refer to nature as the “invisible man” or “invisible force.” Even though we as humans are prone to destroying nature, it is amazing enough to regenerate and become stronger than before. This video link I have provided below shows destruction of nature in our society today and why if we don’t stop ruining the environment then eventually we will run out of resources forever. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7gpAy4ivZ0&playnext=1&list=PLE2AF8FED321F9EB7
Nature has and will always be destructive and unpredictable. However, if we learn how to conservatively use our resources and make more ways of predicting this invisible force, then we may be able to get most out of nature and our environment.

Equality

In today’s world it can be seen that women have made considerable progress over the years being treated as equals to men. When comparing the women of today with the women from fifteen thousand years ago, mentioned in Andree Collard’s “Rape of the Wild”, significant differences can be seen. According to Collard, pg. 16, para. 2, under patriarchy, “nature and women are reduced from a position of importance to a position of insignificance”. For a lot of the world this position has been reversed and women now represent as much of an equal force as men do. The Middle East is one section of the world still showing a lot of oppression towards women. In the article “Return of Islamic Leader Worries Some Tunisian Women” (see link below)

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/115291829.html

Cecily Hilleary speaks of how in the Arab country, Tunisia, women have had more than half a century of freedom, including political, legal and personal freedoms which could lead an example for the rest of the area. A code was passed in 1956 which allowed women these freedoms. Since then a vast majority of women in Tunisia have been seen as equals to men, however, now there is a possibility that these freedoms may be taken away with the return of Sheikh Rachid Ghannouchi. Ghannouchi supports Sharia, which allows men significantly more rights and liberties than women. Hopefully this country’s government and people will be able to avoid such a hierarchical system, hopefully women will be able to keep their rightful place as equals.

Earth Day 2010

This video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYpVdnKzQqg, presents the issue of Earth Day 2010. The author, Lotsoglaughs369, presents this video about helping replenish our world. He posted it on February 9, 2010, around the time of Earth Day 2010, in an effort to show the world what we are doing to our nature. The video discusses the facts of how we are doing this.
The metaphorical concepts TIME IS MONEY, TIME IS A RESOURCE, and TIME IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY form a single system based on sub categorization, since in our society money is a limited resource and limited resources are valuable commodities (Lackoff & Johnson, “Metaphors” page 9). The previous quote fits in well with this environmental issue. Time IS money AND a resource. It’s going to take time for us to build up what we have destroyed and the time we take to do this is going to be our biggest resource. As the video presented, we have destroyed a lot of what shouldn’t have been; rainforests are dying, fish are becoming extinct, ice is melting because of rising temperatures that we have caused, there’s more trash that we know what to do with, as well as tons of other unnecessary aspects of our society that bring us closer and closer to becoming extinct ourselves. The video presents a system of things that brings each aspect of what we destroy all into one to educate is on how we can do our part on Earth Day. The video grabs the attention of our sub consciousness and brings about the feeling of what are actions have done to our world. The remembrance of our actions produces the feeling of failure in us. We have failed to make our world a better place and failed to put these environmental issues at the top of our to do list. However, I do believe there is hope for us, as long as we always keep in mind how WE can make our world a better place to live. I found an image of Earth Day 2010, http://jennyescano.blogspot.com/2010_04_01_archive.html, that was made by a different author but I think it ties in with the you tube video well. I also found another site that has some good brief readings on the same issues the video presented, http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/global-environmental-issues-1006.

Shark Attacks revised

Recently I was watching the movie Jaws. It reminded me of the Article By Plumwood called "Surviving a Crocodile Attack"who was attacked by an crocodile and lived to tell her story. In the movie a shark goes on a rampage killing people who are swimming in the ocean. The main character, Chief Martin Brody, comes into action by trying to find and kill the shark because it is killing "innocent people". Later he hunts the shark and kills it for safety of others and in a way revenge. In Plumwood's article the ranger who saved her wanted to go back and kill the crocodile. But she refused to let them kill the "innocent" crocodile. She was intruding on the crocodiles territory and therefore the crocodile should not be held accountable for attacking. How ever in Jaws the "Innocent" people were intruding in the sharks territory and were attacked. Afterward they sought revenge for lost lives. In the movie, there is an Anthropocentrism aspect which is humans regard themselves as the top species. Meaning they are not prey to other animals and our lives are more valuable than any other species. But in reality humans are vulnerable to nature because we can be killed by other animals but don't want to accept that fact. Also there is master narrative in this movies is shown that sharks are evil being that will kill humans but in reality many people in real life aren't attacked or killed by sharks that often. The attacking of the shark portrays some of the paradigms within the story. First there is the shark portrayed as a beast,man,emotional. the people attacked are more portrayed as human,woman,and rational. The shark is the bad guy while man is more worthy to save. But by whose standards? 
Plumwood article
Jaws movie synopsis
(picture from http://www.moviemobsters.com/2009/12/23/throwback-tuesday-jaws-1975/,January 27, 2011)