Monday, June 29, 2020
Sunday, June 14, 2020
Monday, June 8, 2020
Friday, June 5, 2020
Thursday, June 4, 2020
Philosophy paper sample (summer 2021)
PHI 2010, #6065, John Doe,
Summer 2021
Final Paper
How to make virtue win over vice
Many interesting topics were discussed during this awkward semester of controls, safe distance, where I only met half of my classmates. I learned how to make tomato sauce and hummus, but most importantly I learned about the different ways philosophical masterminds think.
Philosophers have the objective of finding “the truth”, but being the truth so absolute, they come up with different theories through which they hope we accomplish true living. The one theory that stuck the most with me was Aristotle’s moral virtue.
According to Aristotle, moral virtue is a disposition to behave in the right manner and having the ability to do so by creating habits and a positive mindset that allows you to make the best out of yourself during any sort of situation. A virtuous person is the one that can find the golden mean in all of their actions. The golden mean is the perfect balance between excess and defect. A person of virtue is courageous without being rash, generous without extravagance, and ambitious without being greedy.
I, personally, have always been a person that lacks discipline in most aspects of life. I am always able to convince myself to take the easiest path, the shortest road, and the less tiring way. While I have never been a lazy person in the sense that I am almost hyperactive, I procrastinate a lot by pushing on the things that present difficulties even if I understand that the end result is very rewarding.
I started this semester with the personal goal of quitting cigarettes. After several fights with many loved ones in which I proposed that not only did I have a strong addiction to nicotine I also very much enjoyed smoking cigarettes. I finally convinced myself to not quit but to diminish the number of cigarettes I would smoke in a day. This way I would control my addiction and my addiction wouldn’t control me anymore.
I was able to find a golden mean of nicotine that allowed me to get by with my day without cravings but that also did not cost me too much money nor time. My plan was that once I was able to find Aristotle’s “Golden mean” and control my addiction. It would only take effort to fully quit and exploit the virtue of self-discipline for the first time in my life.
Guess what? I’m doing it!
By quitting cigarettes (even for the time being), I was able to understand myself in a completely different way. I was able to push myself and find the strength of character I have needed in order to grow and improve for the greater being that is my overall health and happiness.
I must confess that my win also relates to other things that I don’t mention for the sake of brevity. I feel that if I’m able to win this battle, that will be a model for other problems that are part of my character.
The idea is that fighting bad habits should be in the same bracket as creating new ones. So far, the purification of my body through the act of not smoking has helped me improve my mind. I’m happier about being a person that was able to draw mental strength to eliminate a vice that impeded me from flourishing.
Before this course I didn’t have these tools. I feel that if I take Aristotle as a model, there is going to be a point in which I will find happiness through being an overall virtuous person. It’s not easy, but it’s worthy!
Tuesday, June 2, 2020
are we running out of sand? an exercise in finding out sfuff
First, I noticed that almost all the articles treating the subject of the sand crisis at the top of the google search exhibit this consensus: We're running out of sand.
Here is one written by Sam Meredith (he's a correspondent in business for CNBC).
Our entire society is built on sand. It is the world’s most consumed raw material after water and an essential ingredient to our everyday lives. Sand is the primary substance used in the construction of roads, bridges, high-speed trains and even land regeneration projects. Sand, gravel and rock crushed together are melted down to make the glass used in every window, computer screen and smart phone.
That opening salvo is pretty confusing. Not that it's untrue. The information is way too simplified, almost digested for you. More interestingly: the article appears in the World politics section of the online paper, which shows where the message is going.
One thing is to talk about science, another to talk about politics.
This is a much better article for Forbes Magazine. I picked the author, Laurie Winkless, amongst the many pseudo journalists because she actually has a degree in physics (and an entry in Wikipedia, you want someone with at least a bit of background in science talking about natural science, right?).
Her article is opens with an interesting detail of how and where sand goes:
The Burj Khalifa is an engineering marvel. Stretching 828 m into the Dubai sky, it is the tallest building the world has ever seen. Its construction used huge quantities of materials; 39,000 tonnes of steel, 103,000 square metres of glass, and 330,000,000 litres of concrete (enough to fill 132 Olympic-sized swimming pools). From the top floor, though, one material dominates the view – sand. So, you might be surprised to learn that the world is running out of this grainy material, mostly thanks to the concrete megastructures that we fill our modern cities with.
So, sand is used in construction and we're in the middle of a construction boom. What is sand?
Concrete has three basic components: cement, water and aggregate, combined in slightly different proportions. Cement is the powdery substance that reacts with water to form a ‘glue’. The third element is "aggregate," which gives concrete its bulk. Aggregate is actually made from a combination of course gravel and fine sediment, also known as sand. And sand is a $70B industry.
Why are we running our of sand?
The answer is rapid urbanization, driven largely by China’s recent construction boom. In his book, Making the Modern World, historian Vaclav Smil shared a truly mind-blowing fact (which Bill Gates went on to feature on his blog). Between 2011 and 2013, China used more concrete than the US did in the entire 20th century.
So, how about the "crisis"? Here is Winkless' conclusion:
There are lots of people out there looking for more sustainable ways to make concrete (including Solidia and Finite), but as yet, none can provide even close to the quantities industry needs. And we can (and do) meet some of the demand by recycling old concrete, but our sand stocks are still in trouble. By every measure, our current level of sand use, particularly for concrete production, is unsustainable.
What do I gather from this balanced article?
The high demand on specific types and grades of sand is increasing faster than production can keep up, and natural sources of those particular types of sand are being depleted.
What happens when they are close to running out? This will be en engineering problem. We may find substitutes, as we generally do. Winkless hints that we may treat other types of sand, or grinding and crushing rocks, or bricks, or old concrete. All this will certainly be more expensive than scooping up and transporting existing sand, so the things that sand is used for (primarily construction) will become more expensive. More expensive concrete will have a lot of downstream effects,
But why does it have to be catastrophic?
Few resources are irreplaceable. We'll replace sand at a higher cost, and go about our business, as we've done with lots of materials.
To find this more optimistic article was quite difficult @ Ecomagazine:
There is hope for the future, with a multitude of different alternatives that can already be explored. In developed countries such as the UK, where new construction often replaces demolished buildings, there is potential to recycle rubble instead of using new concrete. The Shard, a recently built 95-storey skyscraper in London is one example of construction in the UK using recycled aggregate. To help with its green credentials, the Shard was built using 140,000 Lignacite LTD blocks that contain 10 percent recycled sand, 27 percent lightweight recycled aggregate and 15 percent recycled wood. Other substitutes for sand in the production of concrete are also available and are currently being used in Europe, including ash from power station incinerators and dust from stone quarries.
Why was this article buried? The media needs to get your attention. One way to get it is by amplifying an issue to the point of reaching CRISIS PROPORTIONS. What some people call THE FEAR COMPLEX.
What's my advice to you? SUSPEND JUDGMENT!