Wasted Effort

While we were on the topic of looking at paintings of different American wars, I thought this would be an interesting image to look at.  This is an image of the Civil War, with Union and Confederate forces harshly battling each other.

Notice all the different flags from both sides show up in many places of the artifact, which shows pride, something that has come up a lot in American war images.  In the case of the Civil War though, it bothers me to think that these two opposing forces had pride in killing their own country.  We have gone over many times what sort of instigated the war, slaves and the cotton gin and everything, but I feel like the artist who made this artifact is making a profound statement.  I believe that this can be interpreted in a satirical means, and that the artist is showing the stupidity of the Civil War in this piece.

We talked about the ignorant and arrogant pride present in this image, but not yet about the plain brutality of it.  Look at the gruesome battle at hand, and then ask why it is happening?  Over a crop, a race?  It hardly seems worth many thousands of lives, and that is what the artist is trying to portray here.  That the Civil War, and possibly even war in general is pointless if you juxtapose what is lost and what is gained.  Also, that maybe if the prideful people put all the effort that is being put into war into something more important and productive, then we would be better off in the end.  

Is Global Climate Change Really a Problem?

Recently on TV, in magazines, and on the radio there has been an extensive amount of discussion on global climate change and whether or not it is truly a problem worth adressing or if it is even a problem at all.  I have brought up this topic before, but never gone into much detail and have not presented the proper evidence for my opinion on the global climate change crisis.

Take a look at the graph above and analyze what you see.  Surprisingly to most people, what you will find is that in the year 860 earth's average temperature was actually higher than in the year 2007.  Yes it is 2009, and the average temperature is still lower than that of the Middle Ages, so why is it that all this commotion about greenhouse gas emissions and the human race creating global climate change still lingering?

For anyone to deny that greenhouse gases raise earth's temperature is ignorant, because they do, but to say that we are going to end up causing the ice caps to melt and a global flood or any of those theories is just as bad.  Notice after every up slope on the graph there is a down slope, and the opposite as well, so why is it that we are making a big deal about it.  Earth has fixed itself in the past, and will continue to do so.  It is illogical to say that all of a sudden the earth will stop doing what it has done for millions of years just out of the blue.  Honestly, I believe we should worry more about the next downslope and possible ice age that may follow where we are more than the current upslope.  Anyways, what if the ice caps did melt?  All that would happen is maybe an increase of about 8 inches in the total water level of our oceans.  That would hardly cause any damage, maybe a little, but not enough to constitute our exceedingly high level of concern in the topic.

What we really need to be doing is keeping an eye on the temperature, while focusing on more important problems of the present like the economy more than the environment.  There could possibly be a point when our average temperature does get too high, but that time is not now; all that is to high is our national debt.  

A Solution?

In my economics class we recently discussed fiscal policy and how the federal government uses it to influence the economy.  Although we just moved onto a new unit, I thought it might be interesting to actually try and create a solution or an exit strategy from the current recession.

The first thing that must be known is that any plan of action will take time, and probably more time than predicted.  My idea, was to utilize expansionary fiscal policy to help pump money into the correct places of the economy.  Expansionary fiscal policy is basically allowing for more government spending on programs like social security, Medicare,  Medicaid, and education, which will soon take up most of the federal budget, and create more tax cuts to give people extra money and hopefully pump it back into the economy.

This will work because by giving Universities and Colleges the ability to award bigger scholarships to people in need, allowing banks to have the money and confidence to provide appropriate loans to those who can afford them, and subsidizing businesses to expand to the proper utilization of their resources, more jobs will be created along with people to fill the slots.  On top of that, with tax cuts people will be able to buy more things and increase demand along with the GDP.

The thing to keep in mind is that the economy is a frequently changing system, and although the current situation is melancholy to say at the least, the economy has and always will fix itself.

What About You?

As I was looking back through Huck Finn for the completion of my essay, and I kept somehow seeing the theme of nature vs. nurture come up, and it got me thinking about myself and which one impacted me more.  For me, I believe nature has made and will make and influence my life more than nurture. Why?

I feel this way because in life, it is you who must make decisions for yourself, not for others or based off of others.  So although I take what my parents say and try and teach me to do in good consideration, I will not follow their every belief blindly, which therefor puts me on the side of nature.  It seems almost illogical to follow nurture really.  Who is the one making decisions for each and every one of us?  Ourselves, we make our own decisions, so shouldn't that entitle us to the right to make them for our own reasons, and not for someone else's?  So for that reason I would say nature takes a toll on me more than nurture.  What about you? 

Jason and Huck

I just saw the new Friday the 13th movie with a few of my friends.  It is about a boy named Jason who drowned at camp.  The counselors did not save him, so his mom came and killed everyone and so on like every other slasher movie.  Then there was one girl left who ended up killing Jason's mom, and before she died she told Jason to kill everyone who ever came back there.  Of course he does and that is the movie, but what stood out to me was the whole idea of nurture vs. nature.  This movie was clearly a case of nurture taking over and having a greater impact than nature on the character.  In juxtaposition to Huck Finn, we see that nature has more of an impact on Huck than nurture.

With the movie Jason's mother was loving and cared for him, so when she died he followed her dying words and her guidelines blindly, but in Huck Finn his dad was abusive and far from loving, so Huck eventually pulled through the nurtured habits of his father and found his own.  This sort of brings up the idea that in terms of whether nature or nurture will impact a person more, the one doing the teaching and nurturing and their personality and actions effectively skews the answer to that question.

Global Climate Change: What's the Big Deal?

Of course, everyone knows about the whole global climate change crisis, and almost everyone would call it just that; a crisis.  I have done much research on this subject for a project last year, and I must admit, the earth's climate is rising in many places, as well as the ice caps beginning to melt.  So with all this in mind, it seems like common sense to stop and think for a second about how bad and catastrophic this could be, but it seems to me that people are simply uneducated about the subject and do not plan on becoming educated, so they believe whatever "seems" right.

The truth is that the infamous global climate change crisis is nothing but a romanticized ordeal.  People hear about the polar bears and the possible "global flooding" and jump to conclusions that this will be the end of the world and human race as we know it.  Here are a few facts for those people: one, even if the ice caps did melt, there are very few land masses that would even be affected the slightest, let alone a global flood.  Two, earth's average temperature has been higher than it is now multiple times in the past, for example, during the middle ages; I do not think knights were driving around in hummers and polluting the planet back then.  Three, the idea that the world is going to overheat, or just end in general due to our greenhouse gas emissions is completely illogical and an extremely radical connotation.

Now, I am not trying to persuade anybody or tell anybody what to think, but it is important to know that this is a romanticized issue in society.  There is absolutely no need for anyone to be pulling their hair out over this.  Honestly, I adore polar bears and think it is a good idea to cut down greenhouse gas emissions because it is an issue, just not as big of an issue as it is made to be.

We Can Change

Last night I had a mini birthday party with a bunch of my friends and we all saw the Imax movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still."  It was basically about how aliens come down to our planet and tell us we are killing it.  They said earth was the last planet capable of supporting complex life and they could not risk letting us destroy it.  Obviously, knock on wood, aliens are not going to come down and kill all of us for polluting our planet to death, but I think the idea of is not far from the truth.  Personally, I find the whole global climate crisis to be no more than the fluctuation of earth's temperature patterns, but that is not my point.  My point is that once something like global climate crisis gets worse and we actually start noticing the terrible things we predict might happen, maybe then we will all be re-awakened and finally, since possible death is looking us in the face, be able to change.

I know this does not have too much to do with what we are talking about, but at the same time this whole idea of what humans call progress has really got me thinking about more than just that.  It has got me thinking about bigger things as well, and in some ways has actually opened my eyes to faults our society has and has the ability to change.  So as I have said recently in all of my blogs, it might be a good idea for us all to think about what we are doing and may be think about how we can change as a whole as well.