Final Presentations [nachshon_alon]

Well although the class has nearly reached its end, the creative juices still seem to be flowing endlessly. It was very astonishing to see the start of the final presentations in class on monday. Just with the element water there were countless projects cronstructed around craftsmanship, the pursuit of happiness, global health and world solutions. It is very warming to see so many students interested in helping the world with its soon to be water crisis although there isnt a single individual in the class who suffers from the lack of the ability to get fresh clean water. The other day in my introduction to chemical engineering class Walter W. Wang, the President and CEO of JM Eagle, the worlds largest producer and supplier of plastic pipelines, camee to class and gave a lengthy presentation. His presentation was most shocking because he spoke as if he had the solidary control over the health and future of the entire country of africa because of his control over water. He has recently started a project that transfers large amounts of clean water from the coast to the inter African cities. The water crisis is apparently very close to the top of the list of our problems and it is very reasurring to see so many of my fellow students who will soon be politicans, buisnessmen, and people of potential holding the issue in high regards and taking steps towards tackling the problem before it tackles us. 

One of my favorite projects so far was the rain music. It is so cool how the dropping of water molecules can make so many different sounds. It was also innovative of the guy to get out on the rainy day with the a sound recorder. Reason, the program he used, is also very cool. It is amazing how technology these days allow the average student to take his/her ideas to production without professional assitance.

late but sorry jack kutilek

well uh so i realize i forgot to write this blog by sunday midnight. lets begin.
when i think last week i remember that discussion we had where everyone argued back and forth about whether religion was right or not. it all seemed like a waste of time. one person would say “hey i think there is no coincidence because of religion.” then someone else would say “yo that doesn’t make any sense”. reading over other blogs reminds me about whether something is actually true. and i also thought there was not really any reason to argue about it, but maybe thats because when you raised the question i immediately had what seemed like the entire argument inside my head already and came to agree with what victoria said at the end of the class, about how it all depends on your definition of what the truth is. there didn’t seem like much to argue about to me. maybe i was still mad about the religion argument, i don’t know, but it seemed like it turned into another I’m right because of what i believe versus I’m right because of what i believe. let me try to concise my statement. the discussions we had seemed to be driven by beliefs of life that couldn’t be changed. it was an argument that could have just been a statement of different outlooks, like a lecture. like hey some people believe this but other people believe this now go think about it and write about it in your blogs. i am just talking but that is my feelings on the discussion.
anyways lets look into some interesting things. as i browsed the internet for some art related to memory or consciousness, i was reminded of salvador dali’s dream caused by the flight of a bee around a pomegranate. i remember reading about how it addresses a persons interaction with the world while dreaming, which has always been a subject that interested me, and seemed to connect because it seems to be about consciousness. except it is consciousness while dreaming. i looked over the internet but it is difficult to find anything on this more than that dali was agreeing with Freud’s theory. however i did find a link to very long paper about consciousness and freud’ theory and it is too much for me to comprehend. here it is: http://www.manostsakiris.googlepages.com/Freudstheoryofconsciousnessfrompsychoanalysistoneuropsychoanalysis.pdf
heres the painting its pretty good:

Week 8 Religion – Roya Axtle

Religion is a topic that has never had a huge impact on my life. I was not rasied religious and never saw religion as a means tof guiding my life and my decisions. In fact, if anything, my mom emphasized the fact that religion was not needed to make decisions and guides one’s life. The discussion during Monday’s lecture became heated and intense. As a listened to the remarks being made, I found it quite difficult to relate to the students who firmly stood by religion and saw it as a guiding force. I could not understand the meaning of getting up every Sunday morning to attend Church where a man stands in front of an audience and preaches as though he wrote the bible himself and lives a life free of sin. It just made no sense. Even moreso, I coudn’t understand those who never attended church but called themselves religious attending Sunday mass on Easter and maybe Christmas.

As I thought more and more about it, I realized that although I am not religious, my mind guides my daily decisions. I have a god within myself that guides me. I realize that sometimes I find myself praying to god in my head, but by no means have any sort of religious standpoint in doing so. I remember when trying out for the Mock Trial Team here at UCLA, I was praying (not as though I set a time, place, and position) just as I was sitting thinking about how I had performed during my tryouts later that evening. But I wasn’t praying to a god, like the god Christians pray to. I was praying within myself that I had tried hard enough and proved myslef to the coach so that I would make the team.

Absolute Truth?-Tess Wynne-Week 8

     I found Monday’s debate to be very interesting, especially because I chose simply to observe rather than participate. Honestly I find debates like that one to be very draining and infuriating when you get really invested in it because there is no right or wrong answer. Everybody has their own opinion, but I would have to agree that there is no absolute truth. I think that our individual truths are based on the beliefs and attitudes that we were raised to adopt and value. Everyone comes from a different background and perception on life, and to them, that perception is the truth. Who is anybody else to tell them that their personal beliefs are wrong? I believe in God and everything, but there is no part of me that believes there is an absolute truth… one truth that applies to every person regardless of their circumstance. As far as I am concerned, you can believe whatever you want, as long as you are not hurting anyone else in the process. That’s where events like September 11 come to mind for me. Okay, great, that’s fine that the terrorists thought their beliefs were right and ours were wrong, they are entitled to think what they want. It reaches a whole new level when you act on that belief by intentionally killing thousands of people in order to make a statement. So in my opinion, believe what you want, because that is based on your environment, and what life has taught you to believe, but don’t let your personal beliefs effect other people in a negative way.

     I know that my argument may sound somewhat contradictory, but that’s another thing that bothered me about the debate on Monday. I really don’t like when people call others out on being contradictory or “hypocritical” or whatever, because honestly, everyone contradicts themselves, especially in a spontaneous debate, where obviously nobody has had time to sit down and think about what they are going to say and form a solid argument. I don’t like it when people pick at other people’s words in order to put their personal views down, and I felt alot of that vibe going on in Monday’s debate. Mostly, I think that the only thing people need to work out is how to be more understanding of others’ points of view, rather than trying to be right all the time. You’re always going to seem right to yourself, because that’s your personal belief. People need to understand that everyone is right in their own opinions, rather than trying so fervently to convert and put others down. Basically that’s my plan for a happier, more peaceful world, I’m kind of a hippie.

      As for the actual subject of the debate, I obviously don’t think that there is any real connection between the space shuttle crashing and 9/11, except for maybe the fact that they both involved air travel, crashing, and people dying. But i do understand the point of Professor Vesna bringing it up I guess. She wanted to get us thinking, like she said, and hearing a seemingly outrageuos statement like that really gets some people fired up. I mean look at how far that one statement got us, we were debating about religion by and truth by the end of it. What did that have to do with the picture of the Columbia space shuttle on the screen? But it did get us thinking and talking, which I think was the whole point, so mission accomplished. 

I found this link to a book called The Happiness Project, and the author talks all about accepthing other people’s feelings on things. Just thought I’d throw it out there…

http://www.happiness-project.com/happiness_project/2007/02/happiness_and_t.html

Absolute Truth- Cassi Padgett- Week 8

Last week’s debate was very interesting. Everybody obviously had quite different opinions, although I definitely agree with Professor Vesna that there really is no absolute truth. Sure, there is more than likely one absolute truth to the meaning of life, for example, but there is absolutely no possible way than any of us will ever figure out the meaning of life or if their really is a divine creator of some sort. This is a very touchy subject that must be approached in a very open-minded manner. This is why I believe that the few students who approached this debate in class in a narrow-minded, stubborn fashion have absolutely no merit to their argument. Simply because God may be truth to someone as well as the power behind every single “coincidence” that occurs doesn’t mean that is the only truth. To that one person, yes it is. It is rediculous to stubbornly declare that your own beliefs are the only absolute truth unless you have evidence to prove your points. And last time I checked, no one in our class had the secret to life. However, if I’m mistaken please let me know ASAP.

I personally am Christian. I don’t know that I necessarily believe that everything is preordained by God, to me that’s something that humans can’t possibly fathom. We can’t understand the reason behind occurances in our daily lives. That is my belief, though. That is my personal truth. Simply because another person may believe that no God exists doesn’t mean their truth is wrong. I don’t even know if what I believe is the truth. Nobody can possibly know absolute truth. Anything a person can come up with as their personal truth is absolute truth in my eyes.

Here is an interesting blog site with other voices on truth:

http://www.volconvo.com/forums/philosophy-religion/18239-truth-absolute.html

God

wk8.

It was a pretty interesting lecture on Monday, because it wasn’t a lecture.  It was a discussion in which there were so many views being expressed and rather than one person talking to many.  Religion has done a lot of good things, but I think Tolerance has done more.  On top of that, I could never get my brain around the idea that any group of people could be said to deserve more than another group simply because they believed something the others did not.  Through the discussions I’ve had with family, friends, people in churches and people in classrooms, there are a lot of things I could say about what I hold to be true, but I’m only going to go into one.

 A funny thing about many religions that teach that things are pre-destined, or that there is a single path that God (or whoever one believes to be up there) wants you to take/pushes you towards, is that it makes it easy for that person to not take responsibility for their actions.  If you do something, or you make a bad choice, or even if someone else makes a bad choice and as a result you respond in a certain way, it becomes possible for you to assign that choice as a part of God’s preset plan.  If you place all of your faith in something bigger and more powerful than yourself, it becomes easy to accept and settle for what in actuality is not your full potential.  An example without God, but represents the problems with believing the problem is higher up than yourself:  Soldiers fighting in Iraq for the United States of America.  Many people don’t want this war to keep going on, but it does.  In one of my other classes, we were having a discussion about this and one guy was angry with the soldiers for signing up and going to war, which met a lot of opposition from the rest of the class who were defending the people who signed up saying things like, some minorities don’t have choices about whether to sign up because they are offered things like college tuition, etc; or that they start recruiting in highschool so early that a lot of kids aren’t given enough information to make an educated decision.  (There are a lot of reasons people fight in wars-but the class subject was based more on minorities and social influences) The point of his argument (which I see truth in because I’m bringing it up here) was that we do not have a draft.  There is a choice that is being made by these kids and young adults.  When we defend the fighters in a war that we don’t believe in because we argue they were forced into it by circumstance bigger than themselves we take responsibility out of the hands of the people who are commiting the action and we internally create a feeling of hopelessness in ourselves to right the situation.  Circumstance, and how these young adults were raised, and their political backgrounds, and how politicians, teachers, recruiters, and friends influenced them to make one decision becomes too much for us as spectators of seeing these people go to war to muster up the guts to make any kind of active change.  When we take it out of the big picture and look at it simply on our own level, it doesn’t become an impossible problem.  It becomes something we can see and understand and take action towards, whether by providing more knowledge about alternatives to funding college or encouraging discussion about these choices when we see them being made.  Basically, when we begin to see things on our own scale rather than huge and complex and omniscient and omnipotent, we can take RESPONSIBILITY FOR OUR OWN ACTIONS.  Problems are no longer outside of ourself, they are within us and are tangible around us, and when we see them in this way we can fix ourself first-and by doing so, then we can work to fix the problems in our environment.  It is increasingly important that we contunually define our own individual moral code, taking in all the information we learn as we age, and to make changes as we gather new information.  The world is changing all the time, and as flexible beings we change with it and interact with it on our own terms.  We can never know for certain if there is or isnt a God, but we can know our own limits and our own definitions of what is right and wrong and we are capable of making our own choices and molding ourselves if we don’t fit our own expectations that we arive at through having a strong individual moral code.  In going to church, when I was little, I remember being taught that God or Jesus (I don’t remember which one) wanted us to question our beliefs and continually think on our physical and spiritual actions so that we could better come into a stronger way of faith.  (Did anyone else who went to a christian church ever learn that? I haven’t heard it since….) My main point is that whether there is an afterlife or not, we do the best that we can so that we can interact with eachother in ways that allow eachother to live happy and healthy because we care about the people around us (and if you’re surrounded by happy and healthy people, they probably won’t want to cause you any harm either… because happy, healthy people just don’t do that sort of thing) and we allow ourselves to live in the now and enjoy life while acknowledging the power that we have as individuals and the power we have when we come together to create change in the ways we think and how we live.

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Dolphins in space?! -Daniel Waltrip

After watching some YouTube videos about the neo-Nazi demonstration that Professor Vesna witnessed, we had the distinct honor of receiving a guest lecture by Richard Clar, a local interdisciplinary artist on Wednesday. Seeing as there was no class Monday, we are restricted to blogging about Richard Clar’s presentation.

The most interesting concept that I picked up from his presentation was the idea of using art as a medium to potentially communicate with extraterrestrials. The Space Flight Dolphin project seeks to release a dolphin into space as a satellite that orbits the earth. It will transmit a signal that is a modulated by the sounds of dolphins. This dolphin signal is available for reception and detection by any possible alien or extraterrestrial sources. Additionally, the dolphin voices will monitored by various museums around the world. The idea behind this project is to approach communication with life in outer space in a new way. Richard uses a more artistic, unique perspective, rather than the methodical scientific view point in his goal to answer the question, “Are we alone?”

This can be appreciated, I suppose, but I fail to see how one can honestly say this is a valuable scientific pursuit. There is merit in pursuing one’s creative desires, expressing themselves, and following their dreams. However, a dolphin soaring through space in orbit around the earth as it transmits dolphin sounds in hopes of detection by an alien source? I think that the idea of contacting extraterrestrials is fascinating (while perhaps somewhat farfetched), but this is more of fancy, modern art project with a science label slapped on. The scientists who are putting forth a focused effort to search the sky for signs of extraterrestrial life deserve to be recognized, however this isn’t quite on the same level. Though as an ambitious art project that creatively employs technology, it is quite interesting and honorable.

This may sound somewhat negative, and I am probably reflecting on my natural bias, but as I posted earlier in the quarter, the way that art, science, and technology connect is through art being assisted and expanded by the discoveries and evolutions of science and technology. Art doesn’t further the goals of science or create new technology. It serves a very valid function in life, as a mode of human expression that can’t be met any other way, and I don’t mean to demean it at all. It seems to me that the space dolphin project is another example of this concept.

 http://www.arttechnologies.com/site-2005/projects/space-dolphin2.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SETI 

 

Roya Axtle – Plastination/Michael Jackson

I found the study of plastination fascinating. The highlight of that lecture for me was seeing the different anatomy structures in the museum exhibit. The work was so intricate and precise. I heard that that exhibit was actually local and I wish I had had the opportunity to go. It thought it was so cool seeing the inner body in full movement. These weren’t just upright structures fit into a small case. Instead they were immersed with the people at the exhibits. They were in different positions and some posed with basketballs and baseballs while others represented people moving about in their everyday lives. I think this exhibit is something that everyone must see! This isn’t just the structure of an animal or some piece of science. This is our body! This is what gets us from point A to point B. This is what you use when we eat, sleep, breathe…you name it and our body plays a role in allowing us to do it.

On a slightly different note, I found the lecture about plastic surgery interesting. What happened to Michael Jackson is truly heartbreaking. Although, there is nothing wrong with wanting to looking good, cutting up your face and body takes it much too far. Seeing the pictures of Michael Jackson as a child was also heartbreaking. Not only was he such a cute child, he had a talent that was unmatched. He was a legend and it’s so sad to see what he has done to himself. I hope that this is a lesson for people to see what can happen to someone’s body when it is destroyed like that. Michael Jackson will never be the same and instead of his exceptional talent, will be remembered for the ridicule he faces in the public eye.

plastination [alon_nachshon]

A few years ago I went to the human body plastination exhibition and I found it quite astonishing. Understanding the full schema of the human body is a difficult task, so having almost a complete layout of the muscular system on display is a huge step towards a complete understanding. What is so counter-intuitive about the human body is that it can be so superficially explained in its general processes, but the details are infinite. This is what makes the human body a form of art; simple and childish to over lookers but profound and intricate to those who are interested. To me biology is the greatest piece of art in this world. I am fascinated by the controversy between Darwinism and Creationalism because I find comfort in scientific reason, but then there will be a loss of art if all is completely explained and there is no higher being responsible for some of the piece-work.

Another interesting work that was discussed this week in class was the project John Carpenter worked on at Caltech. What is cool about this project is that it is basically a virtual encyclopedia of the anatomy of an animal. Lastly, regarding MRI’s, I’ve had a few heart MRI scans in my life because of an open heart surgery operation that I had here at UCLA when I was 4½ months old. The MRI machine is both a very dangerous and very useful machine. Because of its insane magnetic strength it is always scary going inside one, but I do it anyways because it can tell my doctor almost anything he wants to know.

On the topic of muscle art ….