Arturo Garcia Experience of a Natural Setting 2

Last Friday I was at the journal club. We were discussing a paper on obesity when, as usual the topic began to sway as a usual ( at the direction of dr. burke) the causes of obesity then lastly, the last time that we felt at peace or were satisfied, most people who gave an example, gave an example where they were in a nature setting. One person said the last time they were completely satisfied and at peace was when he was fishing, anther said it was when she was driving the mountains. I was left thinking about this novel concept, maybe nature has a therapeutic effect on us. We are not built for modern life, our eyes were designed to see thing in the distance, not inches in front of us. We need sunlight not florescent light to synthesize vitamin d . maybe those people were wrong, wilderness/nature  has sacred powers not because it is a foreign place, but because it id better for our selves than the modern world we have created. 

Arturo Garcia Experience of a Natural Setting

We were expecting good weather winds from the east and fairly consistent, the first four hours went smoothly, we were in the Chesapeake and were near the confluence of the Chesapeake and the Potomac river. We were about five miles away from shore ( the boats maximum speed is about six knots ) when my boss called, she had not been told that I had taken the day off, she told me that we were about to get hit by a storm. About ten minutes after this the storm hit. The clouds seemed to just materialize overhead. By this time we were worried, our boat isn’t big and we didn’t know how she would hold up in a storm. The wind picked up, gusting up to about forty knots. Waves up to 5 feet in height. At first we tried to fight it but it was futile. The storm was too powerful.  Then the lighting came. I am honestly surprised we did not get hit. We almost did, I was coming back up on deck when the bolt of lighting came down , it was terrifying, the web of florescent blue. Apparently it struck the water and was very close. 

Arturo Garcia Outside Reading 3

In the novel On Parole by Akira Yoshimura , the author makes extensive use of imagery, he explains the scenery in great detail, however he almost never mentions color. There is one color that he mentions many times in the novel. While it is easy to understand that the color of red is meant to be a symbol of his anger and violence based on context ,and the fact that in our culture the color red is a symbol of anger, sin, passion, blood, and guilt, it is interesting to note that in many Asian cultures red has a less negative connotation. In Japan the color red has a very different meaning, the color red is used in the Japanese flag to represent the sun, and the sun is  important to their culture(Nippon, the Japanese word for Japan means land of the rising sun), many Torii gates( Shinto shrine archways) are painted red, for the most part the color red has a positive meaning and is used more as a symbol of happiness and honor. The use of the color red as a symbol of murder is meant to be universally understood. 

Arturo Garcia Outside Reading 2

Kurt Vonnegut’s book Galapagos, is essentially the reverse Eden story. In the Eden story they eat the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge, in Galapagos they cast away knowledge, they threw the mandrax into the sea. The mandrax is a computer, that can act as a translator and holds a considerable amount of literature. The Galapagos are also the reverse of the garden of Eden, the island they land on is barren and hostile. The author stated that his book has similarities with the Noah story. The novel ends with the destruction on humanity as we know it the people on the Galapagos evolve in to seal like creatures. From  the remnants of humanity that become stranded on the island 2 people are vital to the continuation of the human race, a kind of Adam and eve. 

Arturo Garcia Outside Reading 1

“ oh, well- he(she) wasn’t going to write Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony anyway.” The narrator says this after the deaths of Kazakh (canine) and James Wait ( human). The narrator then explains this line. This is a comment on how little we will accomplish in our lives.  The accomplishments of Wait are as insignificant as the accomplishments of Kazakh. In a million years the accomplishments of even the most influential people in this modern day in age will be insignificant and in consequential.  From an early age we are fed the blatant lie that we are all snowflakes, unique and special. We are told that we will do great things, that we will go on to have a great influence on the world. this is what we are told, and the worst part is we believe it, we hold the delusion that we are mighty, above average even. The so called Lake Wobegon effect, from Garrison Keillor’s radio show, a place where all the children are above average. We all cant be above average, and In all truth, even those of us who are, are probably destined for mediocrity. Even those who do great things will be forgotten 

Arturo Garcia Choice Topic 4

.  Blink is essentially about gut reactions and first impressions.   Gut reactions are encouraged in this book and are supposed to be remarkably accurate. The book begins with a story that illustrates the accuracy of gut reactions; this story is about a Greek statue that turned out to be a forgery.  At first the statue was believed to be an original, there is sufficient evidence to prove that it was not a fake, but many of the experts that saw the statue knew it was a fake.  They had no evidence to support their accusations; they just had a gut feeling. You don’t need to read to far into the book to know exactly what it is about; in the first chapter the author provides an outline of the book.

I see truth in some of the things that are stated in this book, and have been in situations where I needed to make split second decisions.  There were times that thinking about the situation would take too long, therefore my subconscious mind would take over and the decisions that were made were actually very good ones.   When I am sailing, in a regatta, and I have to round a mark I have to make very quick decision.  I really do not have time to think about it.  This is a situation where my instincts have to come into play.   I have to use my gut reaction.  

Arturo Garcia Choice Topic 3

As I was reading Catch 22 by Joseph Heller, I came across an interesting situation in the book the protagonist yossarian and Ms. Scheisskopf are arguing about the nature of the god that they do not believe in. The god that Ms. Scheisskof does not believe in is loving, jus and omniscient. While the god that yossarian doesn’t believe in is either sadistic or is a bumbling fool, and that a truly good and omniscient god would not have included phlegm and tooth decay in his creation. and he cannot believe in a god that would create things like pain. The loss of faith is a major theme in the novel and in the end even the chaplain begins to question his faith.  

Arturo Garcia Choice topic 2

The protagonist of the novel Catch 22, Yossarian, has one goal to live forever or to die trying. He bases this goal on the assumption that he will fail, he understands that he will eventually die. He is haunted by Death, this manifests it’s self in the for of Snowden and the dead man in his tent. The death of Snowden has a particularly profound effect on Yossarian. With the death of Snowden Yossarian comes to the realization that man is garbage, after this event his only goal is to protect his own life and the lives of those around him. He goes to great lengths to achieve his goals. He attempts to spend as much time as possible in the hospital, by exploiting the fact that he always has a temperature of 101 degrees, and claims that he has a liver problem. During mission he orders his pilots to take very aggressive evasive maneuvers to avoid flack.  He also obsesses over the ways he could be killed an is convinced that many people are trying to kill him. 

Arturo Garcia Choice topic 1

Kurt Vonnegut’s Galapagos. This novel is about our big brains. On the second page, in the second chapter of the novel Vonnegut asks 2 questions: the first, “Can It be that three-kilogram brains were once nearly fatal defects in the evolution of the human race?”, the second question, “What source was there back then, save for our overelaborate nervous circuitry, for the evils that we were seeing or hearing about simply every-where?”. He also answered the question “there was no other source, this was an innocent planet except for those great big brains.” In  the novel Vonnegut was attempting to show how terrible our big brains can be, and he may be correct in this. Our brain can be terrible things that can cause us great pain. 100 billon neurons, 1000 to 10000 synapses per neuron, 10 to 23 watts of power, about 70000 thoughts a day, Don Quixote, Othello,  Penicillin, Beethoven’s ninth symphony, aqueducts, atom bombs, gladiator fights, public burnings, schizophrenia, delusions, all products of a very powerful computer locate in our skulls.