Compassion
New York city is slowly becoming my second home because the love of my life resides there. I travel there once every two months and stay for about a week to a month. I feel as though I've gotten to know it personally. From it's subways to it's bright lights in Times Square. The homeless are a people who are very unfortunate in circumstance. I for one wish I could do more to help them, but it is so hard to pick out which one to help. Once I was riding the subway and a homeless man stood before me. I curiously watched him. I'm not used to seeing such poverty openly. His shoes were plastic trash bags and his shirt was smeared with god knows what. He didn't have any teeth and his eyes were blood shot. He reached into his pocket and I reached into mine to possibly give him a dollar. My boyfriend stopped me and told me to pay attention. The man brought out a white substance on his pinky and sniffed it. He looked around and we met eyes. I smiled and he looked like he was about to panic. My boyfriend later explained that was what a coke head looks like.
I'm told by the locals in New York that they are hesitant to help homeless people because of that atmosphere and drug abusers. Most donate to other causes such as Breast Cancer Aweness projects or Big Brothers Big Sisters. They tell me stories about how people who hand out money are often followed and bothered by whom they give the money too.
I did however give my leftovers to who ever looked hungry whenever we went out to eat. I had my big strong man with me, I didn't feel too threatened. I still cared even though I was always discouraged from giving anything away. I can see how many people would hesitate to even talk to some of the homeless. Some talk to themselves, some are drunk, some are openly using drugs and once I saw a naked man passed out in an ally. I don't like being on the streets of New York at night, unless it's Times Square.
We, as comfortable well off Americans have good intentions, but we all seem to have a complex when it comes to “who gets what”. You can't separate the two groups of who deserves what just by looking or asking. These days it seems that even that is becoming a more far off idea. Our economy today is making people more and more tense about handing out money or donating it to what some would think to be a “helpless” cause. The people of New York City live in a fear of being put in the same place as that homeless man or woman. In fact the overall statistics of hate crimes against the homeless have gone up over the past 10 years.
One of the most heart breaking things that I have ever heard of is “Homeless dumping”. This is the practice of hospital employees or emergenct workers releasing homeless patients on the streets instead of placing them into the custody of a relative, other shelter or sometimes it is because they require expensive medical care.
It breaks my heart to see humans treated such way, but homelessness has existed since the beginning of time, and is almost a form of modern “survival of the fittest, or luckiest”. Who would be the one to bear such a burden?
Monday, October 18, 2010
Mind = Blown
The distance between inside of elbow to your wrist is about the same size as your foot.
Pirates wore an eyepatch so their pupil would remain dilated and would be able to see under the deck in complete darkness.
(If you have one you want to add, do tell)
Pirates wore an eyepatch so their pupil would remain dilated and would be able to see under the deck in complete darkness.
(If you have one you want to add, do tell)
Carbon Essay
Carbon
Carbon is the fourth most common element in our universe, and the second most common element found in our bodies. Carbon comes in the form of simple coal, or in the dazzling beauty of a diamond. This element is found in the graphite of your pencil, which is soft enough to make a reliable streak on your paper, while the diamond is one of the hardest materials on earth. Carbon is a non-metal that can bond with its self and many other chemical elements, forming nearly ten million compounds. This element has a seemingly endless amount of uses. In fact humans exhale carbon dioxide; we are constantly exposed to carbon. James Jeans once said that “Life exists in the universe only because the carbon atom possesses certain exceptional properties.” Carbon is abundant in our stars, in our own sun and in every living thing we know today. Some meteorites contain microscopic diamonds that were formed when the solar system was still a protoplanetary disk. Microscopic diamonds may also be formed by the intense pressure and high temperature at the sites of meteorite impacts.
Another fascinating fact about carbon versatility the different forms pure carbon come in. The properties of some chemical elements to exist in two or more different molecular forms are known as allotropes. Allotropes are different structural modifications of an element. For example, carbon has three well known allotropes such as a diamond, where the carbon atoms are bonded together in a tetrahedral lattice arrangement. Another allotrope that we use every day is graphite, where the carbon atoms are bonded together in sheets of a hexagonal lattice, and fullerenes, where the carbon atoms are bonded together in spherical, tubular, or ellipsoidal formations. Amorphous carbon is formed when a material containing carbon is burned without enough oxygen for it to burn completely. This black soot, also known as lampblack, gas black, channel black or carbon black, is used to make inks, paints and rubber products. It can also be pressed into shapes and is used to form the cores of most dry cell batteries, among other things. A fourth allotrope of carbon, known as white carbon, was produced in 1969. It is a transparent material that can split a single beam of light into two beams, a property known as birefringence. Very little is known about this form of carbon.
New tests of carbon nanotubes, which are tiny cylinders expected to revolutionize medicine, electronics, and warfare. More tests reveal that, ounce for ounce, they are 117 times stronger than steel and 30 times stronger than Kevlar used in bulletproof vests. The nanotubes, roughly 50,000 of which add up to the width of an average strand of human hair, are already known for their strength based on earlier tests on Kevlar-coated multiwalled carbon nanotubes.
Another example of the carbon nanotubes that are very prevalent in today’s world of medical research and is being highly researched in the fields of efficient drug delivery and biosensing methods for disease treatment and health monitoring. Recent discoveries in carbon nanotube technology have shown the potential to alter drug delivery and bio-sensing methods for the better, thus, carbon nanotubes have
recently garnered interest in the field of medicine.
So why does carbon seem to have such a bad rap today in our culture? There aren’t any toxic effects that appear to be associated with carbon in its elemental form to humans. On the other hand, many of the more common carbon compounds exhibit strong toxicological effects, such as inhaling coal dust for extended periods of time. Unless you are a coal miner it should not feel like such a threat. Yet our media cannot quit saying this word. Whenever you check the latest news on the element carbon on Google, many of the articles and blogs that you will find are articles about the high amounts of carbon in our atmosphere, how big a country’s “carbon footprint” is or how to minimize your own carbon footprint. There are two parts to a carbon footprint. There is the “primary footprint” and the “secondary footprint”. The primary footprint is our direct use of fossil fuels, such as when you use your car or ride in an airplane. The secondary footprint is a measure of the indirect CO2 emissions from the whole life cycle of products we use. However, in the news and other media outlets, this phenomena is always referred to as a “carbon footprint” despite where the pollution maybe coming from. Why has this suddenly become a reoccurring trend word in Google search and in our daily news? Wanting to save the earth is trendy.
Global Warming is the name of the theory of the phenomena that is the world heating up due to the greenhouse effect and excess amounts of greenhouse gas produced by humans. Information of the global temperature rising over the past twenty years is abundant and shows evidence of global warming's possibility. Global surface temperatures have increased about .74 degrees since the late 19th century, and in the past.
50 years the temperature has risen .13 degrees. Seven of the eight warmest years on record have occurred since 2001 and the 10 warmest years in history -have occurred since 1995. Pre-industrial levels of carbon dioxide (prior to the start of the Industrial Revolution) were about 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv), and current levels are greater than 380 ppmv and increasing at a rate of 1.9 parts per million per year since 2000. The global concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere today far exceeds the natural range over the last 650,000 years of 180 to 300 ppmv.
It's one of the earth’s most natural processes, but it is being possibly enhanced by human emission of greenhouse gasses through fossil fuel combustion and deforestation. The combustion of burning coal, oil and gas produce carbon dioxide which floats into our atmosphere and is creating an atmospheric blanket around the world. This seemly harmless warming up of the world’s temperature could be absolutely devastating to human existence. The Arctic is feeling the effects of global warming the most. Average temperatures in Alaska, western Canada, and eastern Russia have risen at twice the global average, according to the multinational Arctic Climate Impact Assessment report compiled between 2000 and 2004. Glaciers and mountain snows are rapidly melting, for example, Montana's Glacier National Park now has only 27 glaciers, versus 150 in 1910. Coral reefs, which are highly sensitive to small changes in water temperature, suffered the worst bleaching ever recorded in 1998, with some areas seeing bleach rates of 70 percent. Experts expect these sorts of events to increase in frequency and intensity in the next 50 years as sea temperatures rise. However as Carl Sagan once said, “The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.” Carbon has an endless array of uses, whether it is saving the world, or being used to destroy it.
Tell me if you use my essay, it would make my day.
Carbon is the fourth most common element in our universe, and the second most common element found in our bodies. Carbon comes in the form of simple coal, or in the dazzling beauty of a diamond. This element is found in the graphite of your pencil, which is soft enough to make a reliable streak on your paper, while the diamond is one of the hardest materials on earth. Carbon is a non-metal that can bond with its self and many other chemical elements, forming nearly ten million compounds. This element has a seemingly endless amount of uses. In fact humans exhale carbon dioxide; we are constantly exposed to carbon. James Jeans once said that “Life exists in the universe only because the carbon atom possesses certain exceptional properties.” Carbon is abundant in our stars, in our own sun and in every living thing we know today. Some meteorites contain microscopic diamonds that were formed when the solar system was still a protoplanetary disk. Microscopic diamonds may also be formed by the intense pressure and high temperature at the sites of meteorite impacts.
Another fascinating fact about carbon versatility the different forms pure carbon come in. The properties of some chemical elements to exist in two or more different molecular forms are known as allotropes. Allotropes are different structural modifications of an element. For example, carbon has three well known allotropes such as a diamond, where the carbon atoms are bonded together in a tetrahedral lattice arrangement. Another allotrope that we use every day is graphite, where the carbon atoms are bonded together in sheets of a hexagonal lattice, and fullerenes, where the carbon atoms are bonded together in spherical, tubular, or ellipsoidal formations. Amorphous carbon is formed when a material containing carbon is burned without enough oxygen for it to burn completely. This black soot, also known as lampblack, gas black, channel black or carbon black, is used to make inks, paints and rubber products. It can also be pressed into shapes and is used to form the cores of most dry cell batteries, among other things. A fourth allotrope of carbon, known as white carbon, was produced in 1969. It is a transparent material that can split a single beam of light into two beams, a property known as birefringence. Very little is known about this form of carbon.
New tests of carbon nanotubes, which are tiny cylinders expected to revolutionize medicine, electronics, and warfare. More tests reveal that, ounce for ounce, they are 117 times stronger than steel and 30 times stronger than Kevlar used in bulletproof vests. The nanotubes, roughly 50,000 of which add up to the width of an average strand of human hair, are already known for their strength based on earlier tests on Kevlar-coated multiwalled carbon nanotubes.
Another example of the carbon nanotubes that are very prevalent in today’s world of medical research and is being highly researched in the fields of efficient drug delivery and biosensing methods for disease treatment and health monitoring. Recent discoveries in carbon nanotube technology have shown the potential to alter drug delivery and bio-sensing methods for the better, thus, carbon nanotubes have
recently garnered interest in the field of medicine.
So why does carbon seem to have such a bad rap today in our culture? There aren’t any toxic effects that appear to be associated with carbon in its elemental form to humans. On the other hand, many of the more common carbon compounds exhibit strong toxicological effects, such as inhaling coal dust for extended periods of time. Unless you are a coal miner it should not feel like such a threat. Yet our media cannot quit saying this word. Whenever you check the latest news on the element carbon on Google, many of the articles and blogs that you will find are articles about the high amounts of carbon in our atmosphere, how big a country’s “carbon footprint” is or how to minimize your own carbon footprint. There are two parts to a carbon footprint. There is the “primary footprint” and the “secondary footprint”. The primary footprint is our direct use of fossil fuels, such as when you use your car or ride in an airplane. The secondary footprint is a measure of the indirect CO2 emissions from the whole life cycle of products we use. However, in the news and other media outlets, this phenomena is always referred to as a “carbon footprint” despite where the pollution maybe coming from. Why has this suddenly become a reoccurring trend word in Google search and in our daily news? Wanting to save the earth is trendy.
Global Warming is the name of the theory of the phenomena that is the world heating up due to the greenhouse effect and excess amounts of greenhouse gas produced by humans. Information of the global temperature rising over the past twenty years is abundant and shows evidence of global warming's possibility. Global surface temperatures have increased about .74 degrees since the late 19th century, and in the past.
50 years the temperature has risen .13 degrees. Seven of the eight warmest years on record have occurred since 2001 and the 10 warmest years in history -have occurred since 1995. Pre-industrial levels of carbon dioxide (prior to the start of the Industrial Revolution) were about 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv), and current levels are greater than 380 ppmv and increasing at a rate of 1.9 parts per million per year since 2000. The global concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere today far exceeds the natural range over the last 650,000 years of 180 to 300 ppmv.
It's one of the earth’s most natural processes, but it is being possibly enhanced by human emission of greenhouse gasses through fossil fuel combustion and deforestation. The combustion of burning coal, oil and gas produce carbon dioxide which floats into our atmosphere and is creating an atmospheric blanket around the world. This seemly harmless warming up of the world’s temperature could be absolutely devastating to human existence. The Arctic is feeling the effects of global warming the most. Average temperatures in Alaska, western Canada, and eastern Russia have risen at twice the global average, according to the multinational Arctic Climate Impact Assessment report compiled between 2000 and 2004. Glaciers and mountain snows are rapidly melting, for example, Montana's Glacier National Park now has only 27 glaciers, versus 150 in 1910. Coral reefs, which are highly sensitive to small changes in water temperature, suffered the worst bleaching ever recorded in 1998, with some areas seeing bleach rates of 70 percent. Experts expect these sorts of events to increase in frequency and intensity in the next 50 years as sea temperatures rise. However as Carl Sagan once said, “The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.” Carbon has an endless array of uses, whether it is saving the world, or being used to destroy it.
Tell me if you use my essay, it would make my day.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Sleep
I thought this would cool to share with you guys. I found this on "Lucid Dream Guru", the web link is at the bottom if you want to check him out.
DILD is an abbreviation for Dream Induced Lucid Dream.
This is the most common type of lucid dream induction technique. In fact, many first timers achieve their first lucid dream through this technique.
When a DILD (Dream Induced Lucid Dream) occurs, you become lucid within the dream. This can often happen when the dream is so outrageous or ridiculous that no other rational explanation can be used to explain it other than it being a dream. The dreamer thinks to themselves "This is crazy! This must be a dream!" and wha-lah! the dreamer becomes lucid.
Now you may be thinking that this technique seems more like a chance of luck over whether you have a dream about something that is too outrageous to wake you into a state of lucidity.
However, this technique can be mastered through the use of reality checks rather than outrageous or odd situations in your dreams.
Step 1:
Early in the morning, find an ink pen. Doesn't matter what color, just any pen will do.
Step 2:
Take the pen and draw single tiny dots somewhere on your hands. For me, I like to ink a small dot on the palm of each hand or on the knuckle of each thumb.
Step 3:
Now that you have the tiny dots on your hand, as you go throughout your day, you will occasionally see them. When you see them, use it as a reminder to ask yourself if you are dreaming. Stop whatever it is you are doing and perform a reality check.
Step 4:
Look around your surrounding environment, sincerely ask yourself "Is this a dream?". Then find an object, sign, book, etc that has text or numbers on it. Look at the numbers or text and remember what it says.
Step 5:
Now look away for 5 seconds.
Step 6:
Return your gaze back to the text or numbers and see if they have changed. If they have not changed, then you are awake and just continue on with your day to day activities.
http://www.luciddreamguru.com/wbtb.php
DILD is an abbreviation for Dream Induced Lucid Dream.
This is the most common type of lucid dream induction technique. In fact, many first timers achieve their first lucid dream through this technique.
When a DILD (Dream Induced Lucid Dream) occurs, you become lucid within the dream. This can often happen when the dream is so outrageous or ridiculous that no other rational explanation can be used to explain it other than it being a dream. The dreamer thinks to themselves "This is crazy! This must be a dream!" and wha-lah! the dreamer becomes lucid.
Now you may be thinking that this technique seems more like a chance of luck over whether you have a dream about something that is too outrageous to wake you into a state of lucidity.
However, this technique can be mastered through the use of reality checks rather than outrageous or odd situations in your dreams.
Step 1:
Early in the morning, find an ink pen. Doesn't matter what color, just any pen will do.
Step 2:
Take the pen and draw single tiny dots somewhere on your hands. For me, I like to ink a small dot on the palm of each hand or on the knuckle of each thumb.
Step 3:
Now that you have the tiny dots on your hand, as you go throughout your day, you will occasionally see them. When you see them, use it as a reminder to ask yourself if you are dreaming. Stop whatever it is you are doing and perform a reality check.
Step 4:
Look around your surrounding environment, sincerely ask yourself "Is this a dream?". Then find an object, sign, book, etc that has text or numbers on it. Look at the numbers or text and remember what it says.
Step 5:
Now look away for 5 seconds.
Step 6:
Return your gaze back to the text or numbers and see if they have changed. If they have not changed, then you are awake and just continue on with your day to day activities.
http://www.luciddreamguru.com/wbtb.php
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