Truth of Mining Toxins :: essays research papers

The Truth of the Mining Toxins In this novel Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver is based on two sisters figuring out where they belong in life. They grow up in a small Native Latino American city named Grace, Arizona. In this small town there is a river that runs through the town. Codi, the older sister, is a teacher at the local school. She decided to take her students to the river to look at the water under a microscope and discovered that the water is contaminated. She ended up discussing this problem with a small group called the Stich Bitch Club. This group is only women and they discuss things about the town and many problems that occur in their everyday life. While the men of the town couldn’t get involved, the women solved things from the environment to help the town by being powerful feminists.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  After Cody was brought into the group she known she would have to tell this information to the woman about the Black Mountain mining. The mining has been running sulfuric acid in the water through the town of Grace that is causing trees to die, including microscopic animals in the river. This sulfuric acid can also be used to kill rats and pond algae and many other small things in the river, but not the fish.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Mining toxins are something that is released into the environment by the businesses throughout the United States. In my research I discovered that the mining industry toxins that were most released was in the year 1998. Some things were, â€Å"metal mining:3.5 billion pounds, Gold mining:1.23 billion pounds, Air: 2 million pounds, coal mining: 13.3 million pounds.† (Drillbits, 1) For example, â€Å"Toxin gas released from a Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal that killed 2,500 people in India, in 1984.† (Drillbits, 1) All these different toxins are causing damage in the water, but most of all it is killing innocent people.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In the book it shows that Codi did discuss this problem with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and they also discovered the sulfuric acid in the river. According to the Stich and Bitch Club they know they had to stop the company from building a dam and polluting the river. A certain woman from the Stich and Bitch Club suggested that, â€Å"My husband used to be a crane operator when the mine was running; he would know how to fix up the bulldozers from hell to breakfast.

Do Rules Contribute to a persons happiness

Do Rules Contribute to a Persons Happiness? Rules and regulations. The two words which every child and even many adults hate to hear. When thinking of ‘rules' we think of something which stands in the way of our doing something we may want to. We immediately curse the rule, not thinking in what way it may be helping us. We fervently wish that it never existed, without really being able to comprehend what the world would be like without that rule.What we, as humans, fail to understand, is that rules are made primarily to help us. We may find them annoying, aggravating, and even completely pointless, but they generally help us feel safe and so, happy. Think of everything in our day to day life which we take for granted. Driving in a car, we expect people to stop for us at some point when at an intersection, that's because someone made traffic lights. Speed limits are another important rule which many people find extremely annoying.Think about this, f there were no road regulation s, would you feel comfortable driving? To all the people who see driving as the ultimate freedom, would you feel the same way if you were in constant fear of being killed? Of course not! The same goes for rules against murder, thievery, drugs, sexual abuse, the list never ends. It is because of all these rules that we are free to feel comfortable and happy in our lives. All the rules so far have been rules on an international scale, but even If we look at rules in our own souses they serve the same purpose.Personally, I would always get annoyed when my parents didn't let me have as much ‘Junk food' as I wanted. I would through tantrums and say that ‘now is the best time for me to eat Junk, while I'm still young! ‘ Now, when I think about It, I am extremely glad that my parents controlled me. If I had eaten too much, I could have had severe health Issues, which would have stopped me from doing so many things which I love doing today, Like playing sports, eating out and Just generally enjoying life.Today I am thankful for the rules set down by my parents, because they are a major reason for my happiness. Overall, I truly believe that rules and regulations are extremely Important to a persons happiness. They may not all help you out (though more often than not you may not see how they are helping you), but without them your life would not be nearly as enjoyable as It Is. As Sheldon Cooper (from The Big Bang Theory) says, Without rules, our entire world would descend Into Anarchy, and who wants that!

Greek Eros and Philia Love Magic

Classical scholar Christopher Faraone writes about love among the ancient Greeks. He looks at evidence from erotic charms, spells. and potions to form a mixed picture of what relations between the sexes were really like. In this article, we use Farones information to explain the common uses of love magic between ancient Greek men and women. But first, a small digression to introduce terms used for love: Brotherly Love; Gods Love; Romantic love; Parents Love The following online discussion argues that the reason English speakers are confused about love is that we dont have enough words for it. Writer A:I recently read: Sanskrit has ninety-six words for love; ancient Persian has eighty; Greek three; and English only one.The author thought it was symbolic of the devaluation of the feeling function in the West. Writer B:Interesting, but I think English speakers do know the 96 forms of love - they just jam it into one word! The Greek words were eros, agape, and philia, right? See, we all use those definitions, but in the same word. Eros is a romantic, sexual hormone-raging love. Agape is a deep, connecting, brotherly love. Philia is a...hmm...I think necrophilia and pedophilia explain it.That is why we are all confused over what love is, since we have dozens of definitions for it! Agape and Philia vs. Eros We native speakers of English distinguish between lust and love but tend to get confused when we look at the Greek distinction between: eros andagape orphilia Affection as Love While it is easy to understand agape as the love one feels towards friends, family, and animals, we think of the mutual affection we feel towards our mates as different. Affection and Passion The agape (or philia) of the Greeks included affection, and also the sexual passion felt towards our mates, according to the University of Chicagos Christopher A. Faraone. Eros, however, was new, disorienting passion, conceived of as an attack of unwelcome lust, aptly represented as inflicted by the arrow-wielding god of love. Black and White Love Magic When we talk about black magic, we mean spells or voodoo practices designed to hurt someone else; by white, we mean spells or charms whose aim is to heal or help, often connected with medicinal herbs and other holistic or non-traditional healing practices. From our perspective, the ancient Greeks used black and white magic to arm themselves in the arena of love. Black magic: There were magical effigies much like those used today by practitioners of voodoo. The practitioner of this aggressive magic would cast an incantation and poke or burn the effigy in an effort to affect the person represented. The intention was to make the woman represented suffer the pangs of lust to the point that she would leave her family. The practitioner might invoke Eros, Pan, Hekate, or Aphrodite.White magic: Practitioners applied herbs to make an errant lover return or to restore harmony to a dysfunctional relationship. She might invoke Selene, Helios, or Aphrodite. Both types of love magic usually involved spells or incantations, but the type were referring to as black is more closely related to curse tablets than the other, more benign, love magic. The difference between these two types of magic is based on the difference between the two types of love, eros and philia. Gender-Based Love Magics Faraone distinguishes these two types of love, eros and philia, and their related magics as overwhelmingly gender-based. Men used the eros-based agoge spells [agolead] designed to lead women to them; women, the philia spells. Men used the spells to make women burn with passion. Women used the spells as aphrodisiacs. Men tied up their effigies and tortured them. They used incantations, tortured animals, burning, and apples. Women spread ointments on the clothing of their mates or sprinkled herbs in food. They also used incantations, knotted cords, and love potions. Theocritus Iunx The gender division isnt absolute. The iunx is said to have been a small, sexually rapacious bird which Greek men would tie on a wheel and then torture, in the hopes of filling the objects of their lust with burning, irresistible passion. In Theocritus second Idyll, its not a man, but a woman who uses an iunx as a magical object for an agoge spell. She repeatedly chants: Iunx, bring my man home. Mythology and Modern Love Magic in Pill Form While the agoge spells, the ones men usually used on women, resemble voodoo and seem like what we call black magic, the philia spells could also be deadly. As is the nature of many herbs, you only need a little. When the mythological Deianeira used the centaurs ointment on Hercules garment, it was as a philia spell, to keep Heracles from abandoning her for his new love, Iole (cf Women of Trachis). Although we do not know, perhaps a drop would not have killed him; however, the amount Deianeira used proved fatal. The ancient Greeks did not distinguish magic from medicine, as we claim to do. The need for erotic (whether agoge or philia) magic has long extended into domestic life where the wife of an impotent man (or the man himself) might invoke a bit of philia magic. Viagras popularity attests to the fact that we still practice magic miracle cures. Source Faraone, Christopher A., Ancient Greek Love Magic. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999.