An Introduction to Geysers and How They Work

The Matrix, Descartes First Meditation, And Plato s The...

What is real and what do we really know? These are common questions that everyone asks sometime in their lives. These questions date back since man was made. Nobody knows 100% what happens to us when we die, or what our purpose is in life. Humans have a natural instinct to raise questions to material that we are uncertain of. The movie The Matrix, Descartes First Meditation, and Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave all raise different aspects to questions such as do I exist, what is reality, and how do I know? In The Allegory of the Cave, Socrates and Glaucon are conversing. Socrates asks Glaucon to image a cave, where prisoners are kept and have been kept since their childhood. They are each tied up so they cannot move, not even their necks to look behind them. They are forced to look at the wall in front of them. Behind them are a fire and a walk way behind the fire where people can walk on. The people on the walk way are making shadows of human and animal forms, including others objects as well. The prisoners have no idea that what is behind them is only an illusion. One of the prisoners is released from the chains and the fire blinds his eyes when he turns around. Once they adjust, he notices that the shadows are not real. He is then brought outside and the sun burns his eyes worse than the fire did. The prisoner’s eyes adjust and what he sees is unbelievable to him. He sees outside, the sun, the clouds, the grass, his reflection and so much more. When he returns to tellShow Mor eRelatedThe Matrix Is Highly Action Packed1220 Words   |  5 PagesWhen the film The Matrix debuted in 1999, it was an instant box office success that captivated many viewers. However throughout the featured famed actors, costumes, special effects and fight scenes, many viewers failed to notice the philosophical issues. Plato and Descartes, just like the characters in the movie are faced and driven to extreme measures to understand the world around them. They are compelled to seek knowledge in understanding what is real, evaluating the mind-body problem, and are

History of Essay Example For Students

History of Essay I thought for this entry Id wax nostalgic with some of my most memorable drug experiences including first times, best times, and worst times. The interesting thing about weed is that the first time you smoke it, you dont get stoned. At least, thats the common impression. In reality, I think you just dont realize youre stoned the first time. My first time smoking pot, I smoked a little dirty looking bundle of dried leaves out of a pipe my friend fashioned from an aluminum soda can (crushed carefully to create a bowl area, then holes punched with a tack to create a sort of screen). My friend had smoked a couple times before, and he brought the stuff to my house after school. My mom wasnt going to be home for an hour or so, and we smoked in my back yard. I didnt feel anything, although my friend acted like an idiot. At the time, I was sure it wasnt really pot, and that my friend was playing a trick on me. My dad used to let me drink out of his beer, as far back as 10 years old. I nev er drank enough to feel it, and the first time I actually got drunk wasnt until I was 14. I was a Boy Scout (yes, really), and I was on a backpack trip with my scout troop. My buddy in the troop had brought some Vodka he stole out of his parents liquor cabinet, and that night in our tent we drank until we couldnt even see straight it was probably only about 3 shots each. One of the scout leaders caught us falling down drunk I was scared shitless. He gave us a choice between him telling our parents what happened or accepting his punishment. We chose not telling our parents, and in the middle of the night we had to hike up and down a hill next to camp until we were sober again. The next morning we were sick as dogs, and the leader that caught us gave us each large stones, practically boulders, to pack back out. They weighed over 5 pounds, which was a significant addition to the weight of our packs hiking home. One summer day in 1985 I was riding in my friends back seat, with at lea st 4 other people in the car, on our way to the beach. We were all stoned, and this girl had these little squares of paper she called Blaze. We all chewed and swallowed them, then I promptly forgot all about it. A half hour later, still riding in the car (I lived in the San Fernando Valley, at least an hour from the beach), I was feeling very funny. This girl that had handed out the blotter paper squares was running her finger across the roof of the car, as if she were finger painting. As I watched her hand moving in the air, I realized I could sort of see the trail her finger was leaving behind it on the roof she was spelling out L-S-D. LSD. I was stoned (and significantly more than stoned), and slow to catch on, so I asked her why she was writing LSD on the roof of the car. Because Im on it, Eloi. So are you. LSD. Acid. Blaze. I hadnt known thats what Blaze was, and at first I was kind of pissed off. It took at least 4 hours for it to wear off, and the whole time I was worried th at it never would wear off. That was a very interesting day at the beach I spent most of the time building sandcastles. Sand was absolutely fascinating. My senior year of high school was dedicated pretty much to Methamphetamine. When I could afford it, which to be honest wasnt very often, I would take speed all day and late into the night, then take qualudes or valium so I could sleep. How I kept a 3.5+ average I have no idea. Another high school favorite was whip-its. Buy a can of whipped cream at the grocery store, being careful not to shake it too much and hold it upright for a good long time before you use it. When youre ready, put your lips around the little white tube at the top and tilt it, releasing the compressed nitrous oxide used to froth the whipped cream into your lungs without the cream of course. A full can of whipped cream gives about two lungfulls, enough to leave you drooling and blue-lipped for about 5 minutes. I didnt try cocaine until I was 18 and away at c ollege. I knew a guy that could get the most awesome Humboldt County weed, and one day he said he had some coke and could sell me a gram for 70 dollars. So I tried it. I didnt like it at all, not that first time. A year later I was hanging out with my sister and some of her friends, and we were all smoking pot. One of her friends was a coke dealer. He poured what must have been half a gram of cocaine on top of our pipe bowl full of pot, and I went ahead and smoked it. Half a gram of coke, and it was mostly gone after my hit that mixed with the pot was probably the best high I have every experienced. I tried it again after that day, but I was never willing to pour that much coke on at a time (half a gram costed about $50 at the time, a very expensive hit), so it was never as good. Just as well. I ended up snorting coke quite a lot for several months later, along with my sister. We even sold it to our friends a little. Then one day I just realized I was spending a lot of money on a d rug that in all honesty I didnt really like. I quit it, completely, after doing it almost every day for a couple months. My sister had a harder time of it, but she left it behind too. Ive never done coke again since that time. Shrooms (psilocybic mushrooms) and I have never quite connected right. I tried them several times, chewed or smoked, and never really seemed to feel very much. Apparently shrooms affect people inconsistently sometimes. I did have one experience with shrooms that I will always remember: My friends seemed to all love shrooms, and I was getting progressively more frustrated with my own unsatisfying experiences with the drug. I was convinced that the problem was I wasnt taking enough, but I didnt want to ask for a larger share because I wasnt the one that bought them. One day, when we were hanging out in the parking lot scene before a Grateful Dead concert, my friend bought some shrooms from a guy that was just riding around the lot on a bicycle. When I realized he got some, and made him point out the guy that sold it to him, I approached the bike riding shroom dealer and bought an eighth of an ounce of shrooms. I didnt share, I just kept them for a little personal expirement later. All alone, with a whole uninterrupted day before me, I chewed that entire baggie of dried disgusting mushrooms in my bedroom. Its like trying to eat balsa wood. At first it didnt seem to be working at all, and I thought I was just going to be disappointed again. But then as I lay on my bed, the house around me empty and quiet, I started to imagine music in my head. Not a little melody Id heard before, not some popular rock and roll song from the radio, but a unique and marvelous symphony with full orchestra. Not only could I hear it in my head, but I could control it. I was the conductor of my own imaginary orchestra, and as I concentrated on it I could hear every note, every nuance of the instruments that I imagined. It has to be one of the most amazing drug ex periences of my life, mostly because it was limited to the music I didnt feel any other effects from the shrooms at all. I never tried them again. Ive turned down Ecstasy (otherwise known as X or MDMA) a couple times, although I think I might try it next time I get the chance I hear having sex on X is beyond all human experience, or something like that. I turned down PCP (otherwise known as Angel Dust) once. Ive even been offered and turned down Heroin, one time in Mexico. I tried Crystal Meth once, and found it too much like Cocaine all you want to do when youre on it is more of it. One time I smoked pot with this girl named Sharon. After we had smoked a lot of really good Indica together she admitted that she had never smoked pot before. The first thing I said was, well if this is your first time youre not going to feel anything. She immediately agreed and said she didnt feel a thing. We were driving around the streets of Burbank, and she became mesmerized with the feel of th e cars motion. Staring out the front windshield, she said, I feel like Im flying. That was when I realized that you actually do get stoned the first time, but for some reason most people dont realize it. Just a few years ago I got my friend Adam stoned for the first time. There were a bunch of us smoking together, and we were all having fun with Adam because it was his first time. We smoked a bunch then ordered pizzas. A room full of stoners with the munchies can decimate a stack of pizzas faster than a wounded animal turns into a skeleton in a river full of piranha. All through the night Adam assured all of us that he didnt feel a thing, and then after all the pizzas were gone he absolutely cracked us up He pulled out his wallet and starting counting out the bills he had and he said, I want to order another pizza just for me, a small one, just for me, just a small pizza, I have 8 dollars, is that enough? Hes heard that one repeated back to him a few times, I can assure you. It w as probably 14 years ago that my friend Traci decided she wanted to try Acid for the first time. She was still living with her parents, but they were gone for the weekend so we had the house to ourselves. I brought the Acid, and Saturday night we chewed, swallowed, and then waited for the rabbit hole to open up. Waiting for Acid to kick in is a very interesting experience. There are a lot of different ways that LSD can affect you the hallucinations are mostly non-visual. It takes 15 minutes to half and hour for them to start, and during that whole time you sit there wondering how straight you are. Its actually a relief when it finally kicks in completely and youre at least confident that youre no longer straight. If you smoke a little weed it actually makes that wait time worse because youre not sure what drug to blame what experience on. If you bought the LSD from someone you dont trust completely, you may even sit there thinking youve been ripped off for awhile. And LSD is often cut with speed, so you get that tingly feeling in your hands and fingers first and you sit there thinking, is that it? Isnt there supposed to be more to this? Traci had gotten a whole bunch of snacks for the evening, and proceeded to show me while we waited for the drugs to kick in. I had to laugh, Sorry Traci, but when this stuff starts working theres a couple things you wont be able to do even if you want to: Eat and sleep. I told her if she wanted to eat anything to do it now before the Acid makes it impossible. Something about food and Acid its worse than coke. When youre on cocaine, you just arent hungry and food looks unappealing. When youre on Acid (blazing) the food isnt just unappealing its completely disgusting. Trying to eat potato chips is like trying to chew and swallow greasy cardboard. And sleeping is completely out of the question Acid will take anywhere from 3 to 8 hours to let go of you, and during that time you are completely unable to sleep even if you are ver y very tired. That night was one of my best experiences with Acid. I could see infinitesimal and intricate patterns on every surface, and together Traci and I wrote some of the most bizarre and remarkable poetry Ive ever written. Of course after we were straight again it was just garbage, but while we were blazing we were completely awed by our own talents. At one point in the middle of the night we walked around her block, experiencing the night breezes and the dark empty streets. I could see colors all over the place, like someone had those colored spotlights they use at concerts and was shining them down from a helicopter above us. I was completely entranced. In the end Traci didnt like it very much. The Acid I got was particularly good, and it lasted a long time. After 5 hours of it Traci was worn and wanted out. Eventually everyone that does Acid will get tired of blazing and want it to be over with. Theres really nothing you can do though youre at the drugs mercy. If it takes 6 or 8 hours, or even longer, it just takes that long and youre along for the ride. It tweaks the way your brain works, and you become very aware of that fact after the first couple hours. Its easy to get tired of it and want reality back, even for just a little while. People can get pretty worked up about just wanting reality back, and I suspect quite a few bad trips have happened that way. Traci didnt get bad, but she was exasperated with not being able to sleep or study or do anything productive. At one point she laid down and tried to sleep for a long time at least it seemed like a long time to me, it may have just been 15 minutes. I tried to humor her and lay down beside her quietly. When she gave up and got back out of bed she was angry, pissed at the drug for not letting her sleep, pissed at me for giving her the drug, pissed at herself for taking it. We were up until the sunrise, and she made her peace with the LSD before it was over. Even so, she doesnt want to do it agai n. Wells thats all the drugs I can remember taking. Theres probably more. Dont try this at home kids. Scratch that, try a few of them. Id suggest avoiding meth and coke, but I highly recommend LSD. You will learn more about your own brain taking LSD once than during an entire sober lifetime. Female Self Esteem Essay