The Daughter that Put Us All to Shame

Galileo Galilei's daughter Maria Celeste was probably the only reason he lived as long as he did. Galileo decided that neither one of his daughters were to get married so he sent them to convents. Form the convent, Virginia, who took the name of Maria, took care of her father as best she could. In addition to sending him care packages and doing his laundry, she made the medicine that kept him alive. She was the perfect Italian daughter. Not only did she help Galileo in the domestic areas of life, but she had an intense interest in everything he did and so it isn't surprising to know that she was his editor when he began to write his book. She picked up on all the astronomy that he had discovered and she told him what sounded good and what he should eliminate. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, when Galileo had to go through a trial for his book The Dialogue Mari told him to lie and live. She told him to swallow his pride and not act like he knew everything because she knew that they would kill him if he did. Therefore, because of her Galileo lived longer and was able to make even more discoveries when he went deeper into his studies of physics and motion. Maris Celeste made things possible by just loving and caring for her daddy.

Thomas Aquinas & His...Ways

Thomas Aquinas was a man who thought he had the world all figured out. Everything was based around God. He constructed five ways that put God above all others and that he believed could not be questioned by anyone...until CORE came along and probably others as well, but for the sake of feeling special I'll just leave it at us. The "Way" I found most interesting was the fourth. It goes as follows. "...for any given quality there must be a perfect standard by which all such qualities are measured. These perfections are contained in God." This is similar to the idea of relativity in Taoism. It is the rule of comparison. The problem here is that we really don't have anything perfect to compare to. Although Aquinas would say that God is perfect, how do we know this for sure? For all we know, God is only a figment of our imaginations. We have no concrete proof that God is perfect. We have never seen or heard him. Comparing ourselves to something that we might have just made up is going to a whole new level of blind faith. Moreover, it lowers our self-esteem. I would much rather believe that I'm a good person and live my life the best way i can.

Connection! St. Augustine to Gothic Cathedrals

After reading and re-reading the packet on St. Augustine and thinking about the purpose and inspiration of Gothic cathedrals, I have made several connections. You may quote me. St. Augustine was all about living in the present. He believed that God has a plan for everybody. everything we do is predetermined and therefore, he believed that humans should not be punished for their actions. For God, their is no past or future, only present and he was everywhere. As believed by Abbot Suger, whenever light flowed into a church, the presence of God could be felt. In Gothic cathedrals, more windows were inserted in order to allow more light, which means that God was everpresent; forgetting anyone's past, or what was going to happen to them in the future, a church was a sanctuary for people to focus on their present. Moreover, because St. Augustine preached about living in the now, people didn't have to worry about when Jesus was going to return or what was going to happen when he did. They no longer had to think of the physical world as ugly considering they were'nt going anywhere anytime soon. Consequently, architects began to make the outside of cathedrals more decorated and beautiful because now, it was okay to think of the world as beautiful. After all, God did create it, how bad could it be?

The Man with the Little Mustache

As if we didn't already know that Adolf Hitler was a lunatic we were now presented with the assignment of disecting a piece of his writings...his sufferings. We proved that all of his argumentalion is full of fallacies. The first I found was a false analogy. He states that animals only mate with those of their same species. Although we found quite a few exceptions to that statement in the natural world such as ligers and mules we looked at the bigger picture to find his mistake. He means to say that people should only mate with others of their same race, but by saying species he is actually saying that it's fine to mix racially. There are no sub-species of humans. We are all the same...just different sizes, colors, etc. His analogy failed! Hahaha in your face Hitler you are wrong again & just so you know, none of your ideas were the least bit original.

Intelligent Design vs. Evolution

It's easier for people to belive the theory of evolution because there are so many facts and incredible minds supporting it. There are however, a lot of contradictions as well. It isn't a flawless or even proven theory, which is why it remains a theory and not a fact. At this point, there have only been two sides to this ongoing argument. A third is yet to arise while both of the current suggestions are questionable. It's hard though to believe that an omnipotent being that we have never seen and cannot prove even exists, created the world in a mere seven days. It would require a great amount of blind faith that is hard to acquire in the society that we live in. Personally, I believe that the theory of evolution makes a lot of sense considering the time span we spent studying it in bio. The same way insects grow immune to pesticides, it makes sense that proteins would adapt, survive, and evolve into humans over a long long period of time. I do not however, disregard the idea thet there could possibly be an almighty creator somewhere above us with a plan that we have no control over.

Did the election of Barrack Obama make affirmative action irrelevant??

Our new president is living proof that if you want something enough and if you are willing to work for it, anything can be achieved regardless of the color of your skin. Although I strongly believe in this, I don't think that affirmative action is irrelevant because discrimination still occurs. The current system gives everyone an equal chance that would not be given otherwise. Generally speaking, when a person of color walks into an interview for a job or for a school the employer's first impression is probably that they aren't good enough or they aren't smart enough for the job even if they are. By keep affirmative action, the employer is obligated to hire a certain amount of people of minorities whether they want to or not and along the way they'll see that they are indeed equiped for the job. We may have progressed quite a bit when we chose a black man to lead our country, but the fact of the matter is that not everyone is okay with change and if affirmative action was removed we would probably be seeing more schools as well as companies and stores filled with the majority of one race or no variation at all within the people.

deductive reasoning!

Syllogism: a statement in which the middle term is always repeated.
Ex.
All puppies are cute.
Roxy is a puppy.
Roxy is cute.

Modus Ponens: an "if..., then..." statement in which if the first part is true, the second part occurs.
Ex.
If we keep Roxy, then Mystee will be mad.
We kept Roxy
therefore, Mystee is mad.

Modus Tollens: an "if..., then..." statement in which if the first part doesn't occur neither will the second.
Ex.
If Roxy is pottytrained, then we will keep her.
Roxy was not pottytrained
therefore, we will not keep her.

i completely understand!
...im just not very good at explaining