Thinking Like a Mountain

"We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness. The deer deer strives with it's supple legs, the cowman with trap and poison, the statesman with pen, the most of us with machines, votes, and dollars, but it all comes to the same thing: peace in our time." In the article, Thinking Like a Mountain, the author describes a time when he comes to realize that not everything is revolved around human development. In the text, he tells a story of when he and some other people were out having lunch near a river and saw what looked to be a deer struggling with the current of the river, only when they moved closer did they realize that it was not a deer but a wolf. Now as hunters, if you had the chance to kill an animal that was hunting down your game, you would obviously do it, and that is what they did. But the author saw something within the eyes of the dying wolf, something he had never seen before. He saw that what they had done was the complete opposite of what was good. He saw how the wolf, and all wild animals for that matter, were integrated within the mountain. He saw that everything was in perfect balance with everything else and that human development was disrupting the sustainability of the mountain. To sum everything up, Thinking Like a Mountain by: Aldo Leopold, is a text that tells the story of just one person realizing that the way the mountain and everything that lives in it thinks is the correct way to think when building an empire. Adopting the thought process of the mountain could lead to more environmentally sound developments and can lead to a much healthier global and local ecosystem.

Exoneration

How would you feel if you were wrongful convicted of a crime that you had no part in? How would you feel if years of your life were taken away from you and there was nothing you could do? Sadly, many people have had this happen to them and there was nothing that they could do to help themselves. Recently, our class has been looking into the U.S. justice system and what steps they take to make sure that the right person is serving jail time. During this process we learned about this thing called exoneration. Exoneration is the release of someone in jail because evidence has been provided to the court that they have the wrong person in prison. During class, we listened to the story of three men who had all been convicted and falsely accused of a murder that they did not commit. This story followed the actions they took during the initial trial and what they did behind bars to finally get their case re-opened. Due to the advancement in DNA evidence, these three men were able to prove themselves innocent and were able to get themselves released from jail. While it was all a happy ending, these men were convicted during their teenage years, meaning that they missed a lot of lives big moments. After they were released, the documentarian that made this recording talked to them and noticed that there were pictures of random people all over the place, this was because during their time in jail, the three men never got to fully experience the world around them so they were doing everything in their power to help fix that. Hearing about this story has given me conflicted feeling. On one and I am glad that these people are finally being able to live the life that was stolen from them but on the other, I feel as thought they have all been cheated of something that is rightfully theirs since birth. Hearing that young people who get exonerated are trying their hardest to learn the world around them almost breaks my heart, I mean, what if it was me who was wrongfully convicted and had my life ruthless stolen from me? Coming out of that situation, I would be like a child in a very large and unforgiving candy shop.

Laughter and the Immune System

What if you could rid yourself of disease just by laughing? What if you could forget about the expensive treatments and risky procedures? What if there is a chance that all of that could actually happen? In the literature review, "Laughter and the Immune System", the author talks about the potential benefit to your health of laughter. Although it is not proven by extremely credible sources, it is speculated and proven in some aspects that laughing can help boost you personal health and the strength of your immune system. Although the scientific evidence is not solid, I personally believe that laughter does indeed help you health. Laughing has always had a reputation for making people feel better, even in the darkest of times. So why can't that happen with your personal health too?

Lucy

What makes a species different from other species? In a two part Radiolab pod cast, this idea is pondered and explored as the story of a chimp named, Lucy is told. Lucy was a chimp raised in a normal human household for around the first eleven years of her life. The human 'parents' of Lucy intended to see just how human they could raise Lucy to be. Over time, Lucy began to do some remarkably human things such as, making tea, eating with silverware, and even using sign language to communicate with her parents. Eventually the time came where Lucy was just too big and strong to keep in a house, so the owners decided to let her go. A human friend of Lucy's decided to stay with her. After around a year or so, Lucy's friend left her to live life as a normal chimp in the wild. Lucy's friend would visit her every so often until one time, she came to visit but was only able to find the skeleton of Lucy. It was concluded that she had been killed by poachers as there was no sign of any skin or hair. Lucy was able to teach us that chimpanzees are magnificent creatures. They are very smart and are fast learners. Most of all, Lucy taught us that humans are not the only species that are capable of feelings strong enough to dictate actions and even lying. Being human can mean many things, it can mean being one of the smartest animals on the planet, it could mean being able to do what is necessary for enjoyment or survival, and it could even mean being able to quickly adapt to what is around you. Lucy showed us that there is even more about being human. She showed us that being human doesn't always mean being in a human body. Some would argue that Lucy was more human than she was chimp. After hearing the story of Lucy told, i realized that humans may not be as far ahead as previously thought. Chimps are fascinating, to say the least. The experiment of Lucy was very worthwhile because it was able to bring to light the fact that not everything is as straight forward as most think it to be. This experiment showed that feelings and actions are never determined by what species you are, it's all universal. Hearing how Lucy died was obviously not a happy moment seeing as how she must have been terrified when it happened. Hearing this kind of stuff makes me more angry than sad because Lucy was brilliant! Humans are incredibly smart but often times too stupid to realize what they do to anything around them.

TED Talk Response

Have you ever wondered what makes up out body, how it works and operates? For hundreds and maybe even thousands of years, people have been wondering the same thing, but only recently has a scientist named, Drew Berry has uncovered just a little bit more of how we work, at the molecular scale. In his TED talk, Drew Berry shows a series of animations of DNA moving about and replicating it' self and the construction of chromosomes. He gives his input about the animations and describes them flawlessly. In an animation that shows the replication process of DNA, he tells us that our bodies, at the molecular level, are no more than organic machines on an assembly line. To me, this is all fascinating, i had no idea that there was an assembly process for DNA, I thought that it just appeared out of no where. With the further advancement of this research, we will be able to uncover more and more of our molecular composition. To me, i think that this research is incredibly important because it can lead to advancements in medicines and medical treatment, it could even lead us to discover more diseases that we had no idea even existed! To discover more about our personal bodies, we must keep advancing in this field of biology.

Chris's Bio-Blog