Guest Speaker: Authur Aiu, Board of Water Supply

Having a guest speaker from the Board of Water Supply was a great idea. I had no idea what they really did in our home besides having the responsibility of how we use water for everyday life. The representative's name is Authur Aiu. He did not explain too much about himself, but he did a lot of explaining about the environment and what they do at the Board of Water Supply. What I thought was really interesting was the fact that they recycle our waste water. At first, it seemed gross because I thought he was telling me that my drinking water is the same water that I used to flush. That would be so gross. But, thank goodness that he told us that they have other use of this water. Also another thing that interested me was the fact that we have more than enough water currently. And if we ever ran out of the water that we get from the rain, then we could always desalinate salt water from the ocean. But the cost of water will rise by three to seven times.


Notes:
Wind blow rain clouds.
We have the perfect mountains that slows the rain cloud.
Most water that evaporates go through plants first.
Our island is like a huge sponge made of lava rocks which filters the rain water.
100 to 155 Million gallons of water are being pumped by the Board of Water Supply everyday. Population rises while the amount of water being pump is still steady.
As long as there's an ocean, we will never run out of water.
In 2020 to 2025, they are ready to desalt water.
De-salting water rates will rise 3-7x
De-salting water will be expensive with energy-wise.
We are recycling waste-water. They are not recycling waste-water for us to drink again. All of the 9 golf courses are using the recycled water.
Purple-pipe contains recycled water.
2-1/2 gallons per minute Facet
10 gallons per minute Hose
3 gallons per flush toliet but now 1.8 gallons per flush

Blue Planet Foundation Presentation

I thought that this was a very interesting presentation. In an effort to change Hawaii forever, Gary Gill, the Program Director came to show his arguments to try and give birth to an idea in the mind of the audience. It certainly caused me to think and reasoned. If green energy is such a good thing for Hawaii, then perhaps the government should consider changing the diesel or nuclear fuel that we use in Hawaii. But it's expensive. They promise that solar panels would eventually pay off itself, but tomorrow is not guaranteed. Paying over $20,000 just for a panel is scary. What if it breaks? What if it just all of the sudden stops working? But I was inspired by how he transport himself. Riding a bike, saving money and gas.

I believe that we should do something in terms of saving energy. Perhaps the average of conserving energy when it's not needed. Also doing something productive. Like, instead of being a couch potato and wasting electricity and also the energy inside of a person, they could be exercising or something.

Observation by Diamond Head

There was many things that I could sense while I was out in the wild. At first, I noticed that one of our student went off afar from the rest of us to smoke. So I smelled the nicotine and started to cough. It disrupted me and my sympathetic division told me to get away from the area. Using my prefrontal cortex, I fought my way through the dense poison that caused me to start coughing violently. I had to readjust myself to focus on what I can learn about nature. As I was away from the dense fog of nicotine, I found myself near a fenced ledge. I decided to study what was being guarded and saw that it was an old sewer pipe. I couldn't smell anything, but as I got near the bottom of the ledge it started to stink of something old and rotting. But there was no trail of sewage running out from the pipe. Perhaps the previous owners stop maintaining it. But the retching smell was still there. It looked as if it was to slide off the hill and onto an open space sewers. The land definitely did not look happy. The grass was a dead green color and the trees looked withered. It was if it did everything to merely survive. Tough. Tough is nature. There was a sense of no sympathy for the land. Even with a dry environment, I'm sure there are certain plants or cactus that would dwell mightily there.

Light in Reverence

This documentary was pretty interesting. It featured the Native Americans and miners. These Native Americans had sacred land, where they have hieroglyphics, worship, and such. But the miners are trying to make money and by that they harvest mineral goods from the sacred land. People actually seemed biased towards the Native Americans. There was one part where the Native Americans protested to the miners that there was some historical hieroglyphics in the area. The miners told them that he would avoid them if he saw and yet his attitude and comments told us that he never looked out for them. He didn't even care about it.

Journal #3

During last class meeting, the class had a little fieldtrip to the backyard of wherever my class was at. It's sort of silly but I have already memorize where my class location is at so the useless information of what the location's name is have been moved to the back of my head. But our assignment was to write what we see, smell, feel, and just becoming more aware of our environment. This is what I wrote down:

I smell the earth, though I see many bird doodoo. I also see a lot of
leafs that reminds me of the taro's leaf. These trees must have been
here for over hundreds of years to grow this big and expand that far.
I just stepped on some kind of brown berry and it must have been here
for awhile. Orange gush came out from it but it doesn't look like
there are seeds in it. I wonder how these trees get so much nutrient
when the base is covered with so much dead brown leaves. I also hear a
bird that I do not recognize. Looking at it, it must be foreign
because I have never seen their kind before until recently this
summer. It has long skinny legs, looks like an athletic dove with
about 1" in length of their beak with dark black beady eyes. There's
more of them now. During the summer, I had seen only two but now it's
six.

How does this relate to Descartes' philosophy and Plato? I'll need to
think about this.

Descartes and Plato had similar philosophy. Plato came into scene during the 4th century. I'm not sure if I really understand what was going on in Descartes' mind but the chart that Professor Sharon Rowe drew out for Plato helped me a lot. It reminded me of a Christian Philosopher and professor at Hawaii Pacific University where he explained this world as a dark cave and there was a small light that came in from a small hole, probably at the roof of the cave. And that there was a person standing right in the diameter of the hole where his shadow was being projected into the cave, and those in the cave saw his shadow and perceived it to be something. Basically outside of the cave was the invisible world of idea, knowledge and understanding, while inside of the cave was the visible world of senses.

How does this relate to whatever I saw? Plato says that I'm in the visible world right now and Descartes basically said whatever I saw, the birds, trees, everything is just a robot. I believe my Pastor once said that animals have no souls and so that pretty much makes them robots. But we are different, we have souls and we find that because we have our own will. Our own will to do whatever he like. So I'm approaching it from a biblical stand point of view. Jesus did not die for us to be moral. The Bible (which was originally written in Greek) said that Jesus died to save us and by doing that His blood covers our sin. In Proverbs, King Solomon wrote that love covers a multitude of sins. Jesus said that there's no greater love than a he who lays down his life for a friend. Blood to the Jews was a symbol of life. Jesus laid down his life, in love, and paid that price when it covered our sins. Plato wrote about how there was one true, good, beautiful, something. I believe that Jesus came to restore that time when Adam and Eve first broke their relationship with God. We see that when they sinned, instead of repenting and coming back to God they tried to destory each other by blaming one another which started like this decay. Throughout Genesis, we see that men's live started getting shorter. From 900 to 800 to 600 to 300 to whatever. I guess Plato realized something along the lines and Descartes believe that "I think, therefore I am." Right?

Journal #2

Actually last week we had started reading the animal book. We learned a little bit about the Kolea bird and the reason why we see it only around Summer/Fall season is because of it's migration. These species came from the North, where Alaska is. Can you just imagine how many miles they had to fly from Alaska to reach Hawaii? Talk about having more fuel than an airplane. From Hawaii to California is over 5,000 miles and it even travels probably around or over 600 mph! I can't imagine how long and breath-taking the journey it took for these courageous and strong birds it took to migrate here.

But we also talked about Descartes. There's one saying that he is highly famous for, "I think, therefore I am." We read a little pamphlet to find out who he is and he used to be a normal brainwash low class guy. I learned from History 152 that pheasants were not educated in any way and could have been just like many of us, whom are influenced greatly by the media (propaganda). Many of those who weren't just another zero would stand up for what they believe in. I know there was a zealous man in Europe whom stood up for what he believed in and that was the freedom of rights. He would always get in trouble though and beaten up.

And lastly we watched the story of stuff. There was a lot of stuff going on there. Consumerism. I think her name might have been Annie Leonard but what she was saying is that there was this cycle and it wasn't working because we are lacking the resources, but we are getting more of the resources to produce things such as ipods, phone, cars, television, computers, and etc. Especially in America where we buy so many things and by one month we just toss them aside. Many of the things we buy have been paid for because it cost money to make and ship it. But that wasn't the point. The point is that we need to start recycling or else the earth will run out of resources!

Journal #1

This is my first time taking a philosophy class and it seems to be very different than how I first perceived it by it's name. I imagined this class to be full on of memorization of quotes from Aristotle and a bunch of other ancient guys who were the father of many things we have today like even math. But the way this course has been headed on my first week gave me a different kind of impression. All of these philosophers didn't sit around and got revelations from God. They most likely got involved in their community. I remember that there was this one teacher who taught in a way where it was considered to be rebellious against the Roman Empire and it was because this empowered his students to have authority, perhaps such as self-rights. And this man couldn't have come to realize that if he himself never had authority to do stand up for anything. And so seeing that this course has a mandatory service learning assignment, I believe I will begin a path in which it will change me. When someone from an isolated and foreign place sees what the world is truly like then it will change him. Just like when humans first went out into space, and as the team of astronauts looked back they realized just how small and insignificant the earth is compared to the vast space of the universe.