Grass

The grass app was pretty cool, it was really realistic. The grass would move which ever way you moved it and would seem to move up, no matter which way i tilted it.The meditation was certainly peaceful even if it was electronic. If I were to sit outside with the ipad, where I could see nature other than virtual mountains and a fake blue sky, it would be even better. Even as it was, seeing the nature on the screen still gave me a sense of peace that only nature can do. It seemed to bring out some ancient instinct (I don't know what else to call it)in me that I am sure all humans have. Which is one of the reasons nature is so important to preserve.
The decorah eagle cam is a really cool opportunity to study the bald eagle in its natural habitat, without disturbing it too much. It is really neat to see how this majestic bird raises its young. From building the nest to feeding the babies to teaching them how to fly and hunt. I believe this camera is also a very good way of providing some extra protection for our national bird. We would know if it got sick and needed medical care, or if some kids decided to be cruel and throw rocks at the nest or something. One question I have about the eagle cam is why did Luther College choose this particular nest to place the camera near? Was this particular eagle having some sort of trouble? Or was it simply because it is the closest to campus? Some day I will ask and find out.

Even the Rain

                The scene I have chosen to write about is when Sebastian and Costa are talking to the mayor.  When the mayor says,

 “If we give an inch, the Indians will drag us back to the stone age.”  I believe this serves as an awakening to Sebastian and Costa, and if it doesn’t then it should.  By putting this line in the movie, Iciar Bollain is sending a message to his viewers.  This message may be taken from the film in other ways, but to me this is the most obvious.  When the mayor says this, the camera is at an angle where you can only see part of his face.  From previous experiences seeing “bad guys” in movies, I find this most director’s way of telling viewers that this particular person is up to no good.   So with the camera off to the side, they mayor says this and at this point, I realized a clever job done by the director.  The movie crew is making a movie about how cruelly Christopher Columbus treated the natives when he arrived, but he includes the water wars to show that the two scenarios are quite alike.  I think this line by the mayor is what tied the two together for me. 

Another thing I thought about when I hear this line was that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to go back to the stone age.  The indigenous seemed much more at peace before Columbus got to the Americas and disturbed their life permanently.  There would be no corrupt government, everyone would hunt and gather water for themselves.  I see this as another message put in this film, whether intended by the director or not.   I believe this is saying that the natives thrived before Columbus came and that to fully understand how they lived and likewise thrive like they did, we need to let them take us back to the stone age.  Back before Europeans, back before Columbus, because as the director cleverly tells us, it hasn’t changed much at all.

Cave of Dreams

Werner Herzog’s reply to Michael Hogan about ecstatic truth and accountant’s truth confused me.  From what I gathered, ecstatic truth means the truth looking beyond the facts.  So basically, Herzog calls BS on the radiation causing harm to the alligators.  I believe he is saying that he doesn’t deny that the albinos were not a cause of the radiation, but he does think that the nuclear reactors are causing harm to the alligators and the only way he knew how to make his viewers believe him was to plant the idea in their heads that it was causing mutant alligators: something the viewers could see for themselves and most likely the majority wouldn’t question enough to look into further.

                I think the postscript is Herzog’s way of saying how the cave paintings have changed him.  Like it was mentioned in class, during “Grizzly Man”, Herzog said nature was chaos and murder.  He believed that some people’s ideas of going back to our previous relationships with nature aren’t realistic.  This makes me think that Herzog didn’t believe that humans had this relationship.  When Herzog saw the painting in the cave, I believe he changed his thoughts and realized that people had great respect for nature and a much stronger relationship than we do now.  When Herzog shows us the nuclear reactors and the alligators, he is showing us that we have abandoned our respect for nature and no longer have the relationship we used to.  It is his way of showing us what used to be, and what is now.

Nature Sonnett

A squirrel worries itself over a nut

The windmill spins with rhythmic timing

The squirrel works hard to crack his dinner but

The shell is more than just cloth lining

The leaves rustle gently in the wind

As the breeze carries voices to my ear

I never want this peaceful moment to end

But I know that soon it will be near

With only a few minutes left

 I catch a glimpse of a rabbit

Much too warm to see its breath

It basked in the sun, so I just let it

This thing called nature is wonderful to all

So I enjoy it more by playing football

The Cove

                I particularly liked how they portrayed the film as sort of an action genre, it made the movie more interesting and helped keep watchers glued to the screen.  Plus it is exactly the kind of thing I would like to do to help this planet.  It almost seems like we humans are going to have to take drastic measures like sneaking into facilities like this and catching footage or cutting nets even if it means getting arrested numerous times a year like the one guy in the film, I can’t remember what his name is.  What I don’t understand, when the group of people did their covert “missions”, is while they didn’t cut the ropes and set the dolphins free while they were at it.  They still would have got plenty of footage because the Japanese fishermen would have just caught more the next day.  Maybe they didn’t have enough time to do that because they almost got caught by guards both times just doing what they were doing.  And maybe cutting the ropes would be a bad idea because it may have made the fishermen more angry and one of the good guys/girl could have ended up getting shot or something.

                All in all, I really liked this film, it very bluntly got its message across all while making it very interesting and informative.  I really hope they solve this crisis soon because it is absolutely horrible what is happening to these dolphins.

Plastic Bag

                The first thing that I recognized about this film was the accent that the plastic bag talked in.  I don’t know if it had any significance but the bag definitely started out in the United States and had an accent that I couldn’t identify but definitely wasn’t an American one.  I also found it quite interesting that the bag had a mind.  It was basically in love with its “maker” (even though that lady wasn’t the real maker of the bag), said it moved with a destination, and felt happiness, loneliness, and even love.

                Even with the plastic bag narrating and seemingly telling the story of its life, the main point of the story is to show how far a single plastic bag can travel over its incredible long lifespan.  This bag in particular starts out in the United States and at one point is in Tokyo or some city in Asia.  Just like most plastic bags in real life, this one ends up in the ocean where it will probably do the most damage.  Fish take nibbles out of it which only do them harm and there are places like “the vortex” where garbage naturally seems to gather; a death trap for animals in the ocean.  So all in all this movie seems to be telling its viewers to stop using plastic bags because of the harm they cause to the planet.

Wall E Response

The movie Wall E focuses on a small robot whose job is to clean up the ridiculous amount of waste the human population has contaminated Earth with.  The movie starts out showing drastic pictures of the earth left barren and no longer green, making sure the point gets across that it's in a bad situation.  Then, we recognize that Wall E is the only trash compacting robot left.  Wall E is left with a huge responsibility all to himself, yet he still works hard to finish his seemingly impossible job.  What the movie is trying to get at is that no matter how big the mess, someone as small as Wall E can make as big a difference as making the human race see what they have done and what they need to do to make it better.  The significance of Eva is I believe just a way for Wall E to get his message to the humans, even though neither of them realize it and they just happen to fall in love while doing it (classic Disney).  Once on the Axiom, Wall E encounters many other robots, most of whom at first just seem to be doing their job, but by the end of the movie some of the robots don't want the humans to go back and clean up the earth.  This suggests that humans have so much technology but are using it in the wrong way and will eventually end up getting taken over by what we created.  Still through all this hardship, Wall E manages to get humans back to Earth and the message is clear to viewers: it only takes someone as small as Wall E to fix that big of a problem.