Jan. 21-27

You have the opportunity for one day to take an all expense paid trip to either Stonehenge or The Great Wall of China. Which do you choose and why? Stonehenge would be fascinating because we don't know why it’s there, it’s a mystery of why it was built but the Great Wall of China is also fascinating and we know the reason it was built. I think that I would choose the Great Wall of China. Going someplace that has meaning and history has greater value to me than some place that only has mystery.  The Great Wall of China was built to protect a way of life it has great significant. Not just for its history but what it represents. It represents a great effort to protect freedoms and values from the power and authority of others.  So it represents a great unified effort to do just that. Besides the fact that china is farther away and you would see more going there then to the Stonehenge, so for that reason I would choose China and the Great Wall. Also from a money stand point it would cost more to go to China so maybe in the future I would be able to pay my own way to Stonehenge and then I would of gone to both.

Mood and Color/Concept Essay

Jamie Johnson
Mr. Gowans
LA 12
1/14/13

Mood and Color

Does your mood really have anything to do with the colors that surround you? Scientists have and are doing studies on that question but science does not have a real answer. Even though science does not have an answer the average person believes that it is true. Most of the articles I have read say that color in fact does have an effect on your mood but how and why color affects a person’s mood still remains a mystery. Happy, sad, angry, peaceful, passionate, crazy, energetic, grumpy, anxious, frustrated, or positive, color may be responsible for your mood.

Artists throughout time have used color to portray different moods. Just by looking at a painting you get a feeling for the mood based on the colors the artist used. In todays media movies and television use color in the same way. The work of early artists may be the origin of the belief that color affects our emotions and moods. Though color clearly portrays a mood the question remains, does color cause one's mood? This is a question that is difficult to answer since scientists say that the one does not make the other true and the influence of color may be nothing more than a placebo effect resulting from the common belief that color influences our mood.

People who claim color affects our emotions say blue is calming, red causes you to feel anger or passion, purple brings out your creativity or causes you to feel powerful, green makes you feel hopeful and helps you connect with nature, and jelly bean colors or bright colors, make you energetic or joyful. “There are 16.7 million colors in the universe, with each hue possessing a unique power to stir the spirit and conjure up feelings. "The right colors stimulate or relax our sense, release happy memories and reflect how we think about ourselves," says Leatrice Eiseman” (Barker, Living). We as people cannot see all of the 16.7 million colors, so in general those who believe that colors affect our attitudes and moods usually just refer to the common colors when they identify the effect of color on our moods.

We know that people say that the colors around you can make you feel calm or energetic but how can color affect your mood? “Color triggers emotions and memories, so it immediately affects how we feel, says Leatrice Eiseman” (Barker, Colour) That may be true but it may not. That might be true because the color may remind you about something from our past which will affect your emotions and how you feel. On the other side it may not because we all have different memories, so why does the color blue make us all feel calm when our emotion and past experiences may be different?

For many people it seems to be true but why? Some scientists would suggest that media and publicity have sent us subconscious messages which through our lives condition us to have certain emotions when we see certain colors. To test this they would need to evaluate individuals who have not been exposed to the effects of media and already hold the belief that color influences our mood. To find such a person in today’s world would be difficult. So the theory that someone has through their life watched or experienced different medias that used color in connection with the mood portrayed on the screen which in turn conditioned us to relate those colors with the mood portrayed in media is reasonable. This is why scientists believe that It is basically the power of suggestion that makes it seem that colors affect our mood. For example someone may say you don't look very good today you must be feeling blue, so the person starts to believe that they are sick. They also connect the color blue with the way they feel. When people say that this or that color brings out this emotion in you people start to believe it, so it seems to be true.

The fact that artists understand that color affects your mood and use it in media does not mean that color does affect our mood without the past experiences. Still it makes it easy to conclude that because of the experiences of life color undoubtedly does affect our mood. They use the right color in the right place to make you feel what they want. Using bright colors for a happy painting or dark and gloomy colors for a depressing painting we can feel an emotion. So color does have an effect on our mood.

Mood rings a ring that tells you your mood by the color. The color is used to portray your emotions and moods in mood rings. Mood rings use the same colors to portray feelings and passion as visible colors. If your mood ring is blue you are happy and calm and that’s what the color blue makes you feel. Is that on purpose or not? I do not know but it is interesting. So how do mood rings work? The ring changes color depending on your body’s temperature. So does it really work? Well, it’s all up to your opinion and what you think.

Though science does not have evidence that color affects your mood, hospitals have had experience and have found that color does help. “ Hospitals have long been aware that quiet colors like light blues and mint greens are beneficial in reducing patient stress and can promote physical and mental relaxation” (Stein). If it work it works, color is helping patients be more relaxed, so who cares if science can’t prove it? Its working for someone because hospitals proved it. “Color affects everything from our moods to our heart rates. While blue is generally calming and red stimulating, in a recent article published in Color, Research and Application, participants in two different studies had such high cortical arousal in red rooms that it paradoxically lowered their heart rates. In a third study, multicolored rooms lowered participants' heart rates more than gray ones. Introverts were the most strongly affected.” (Arango). This leads us to conclude that there is much to be learn on how color affects us physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Hospitals aren’t the only ones that have found out that some colors may affect a person’s feeling. “High-energy reds and oranges are typically used in fast food franchises for a specific reason...it can make the viewer impatient and restless, thus encouraging patrons to "eat and run."”(Stein) Businesses are using color to affect our mood to help them move forward. Fast foods are using it to get people to come order, eat and leave quickly leaving room for more customers to come helping them to serve more customers and make more money. Whether or not it truly works most fast food companies are giving it a try. There are more than fast food places giving color a try. To see if it would help in offices they, “set up test offices in different hues and found that color affects the quality of people's work” (Barker, colour). According to many companies color is not only affecting the mood of their employees but it is also helping business in and out of the office and patients in a hospital.

In conclusion, the colors around you surely affect how you feel. It may make you feel different about something you see or bring back memories that will affect your mood. It may just be all in your mind and you just believe what others tell you and things you hear. Still colors do have some effect on us whether it is in our heads or not. It’s really not a question of whether colors affect us it’s a question of why and how we are affected by the colors that surround us. Once we know the how and why we will be able to use color to truly make the world a more beautiful place.

Work Cited

Arango, Jorge S. "The Color Of Introversion." Psychology Today 43.4 (2010): 40-41. Academic Search Premier. Web. 21 Jan. 2013.
Barker, Elizabeth. "Colour Your World." Natural Health 37.5 (2007): 16-19. Academic Search Premier. Web. 10 Jan. 2013.
Barker, Elizabeth. "Living In Color." Natural Health 34.2 (2004): 66-73. Academic Search Premier. Web. 10 Jan. 2013.
Stein, Shifra. "COMMUNICATING With Color." Women in Business 58.3 (2006): 14-15. Academic Search Premier. Web. 11 Jan. 2013.

Jan. 14-20

Why do you think we, as a society, care more about Hollywood than the Curiosity Rover exploring Mars? Society has always been obsessed with the rich and famous. People become famous in today's world by their publicity and media such as in movies and Hollywood is central to that. With TV shows and magazines that follow the stars we all know what is happening in Hollywood.  Who cares what is happening on planets? Planets are small in comparison to stars. All though planets are important to the scientific world, people in general are very shallow and don't care about knowledge for the sake of knowledge. What they really want is entertainment and unless science can become entertaining it will never compete with Hollywood.  Put Jack Sparrow on Mars or have Lindsay Lohan get a DUI on Mars then maybe someone would care. So why do you think we, as a society, care more about Hollywood than the Curiosity Rover exploring Mars?  I don’t know why society cares so much about Hollywood but Hollywood makes money and until what happens on Mars can make money, society in general won’t hear about it and won’t care.  Money talks and Hollywood listens, maybe if Mars rover had a Hollywood agent someone would listen.  

New Years Resolution

Since the beginning of the New Year I have been thinking about making a New Year’s resolution my problem is I can’t think of something I know I will do for a whole year.  After a lot of effort I have come to the conclusion that New Year’s resolutions are over rated. Have you ever heard of someone that kept their resolution all year long? If you have they deserve a prize! New Year’s resolution is great but a year is a long time and most of the time we forget or we have obstacles get in our way or we plain get lazy or tired. To keep us refreshed and interested we should have new mouth resolution or for those that are even weaker like me we could have one week or one day resolutions. Then for the New Year you can say I did three hundred sixty five instead of I did one of my goals for this year or you can be like me and not even have a new year’s resolution.  So this year I’m not going to do a new year’s resolution I’m going to do a new day resolution but only on the days I feel like it’s going to be a good day which may be never.  That way when the day ends I can say I kept my resolution.  No more failing at resolutions for me.

Weekly Post

This week I have been helping my mom make a quote book of all our favorite quotes. There is one by Gordon B. Hinckley, it is not my favorite but I like it because it is so true, well for me anyways. “Generally speaking, the most miserable people I know are those who are obsessed with themselves; the happiest people I know are those who lose themselves in the service of others...By and large, I have come to see that if we complain about life, it is because we are thinking only of ourselves.” It always seems like my bad days where everything is going wrong and I complain about everything is the same day I only care about myself and my problems. Then the days that are good days are the ones where I help others and don't complain as much. If we look around us we can always find people that have it better than us and if we look at them we will probably feel like we have it bad. We can also look at people that have it worse than us and when we look at them we realize how blessed we are. Then if we take it the extra step and help those out we not only recognize how good we got it but we also have a reason to feel good about our self. 

The Giver/ Anthem essay

A world with no worries, no pain, no choices, little emotion, no color, and no war, sounds pretty good don’t you think? A world that is perfect. Where everything and everyone is equal and everyone has a assignment in the community and does it. That is the world Jonas lived in from the book The Giver by Lois Lowry. The community Jonas lives in strives for equality and perfection. Another book called Anthem by Ayn Rand is also about people striving for perfection and equality. Individuals are anonymous, they have no identity, no name, no independence, and no values. The book takes place in the future that went back to the ways of the dark ages. They also are assigned jobs in the community and everything they do is for mankind never for himself. Humans strive for equality and perfection even though nature shows we are not meant to be the same or perfect.

In the Giver they grow up being taught that they are all equal and they all have the same privileges but if someone is even a little different they can't point it out. “Always better less rude, to talk about things that are the same.” (Lowry 38). They can’t even talk about their differences because it’s a bad thing to be different in their community. If you break the rules more than two times they release you which is to say they kill you in a nice way and in a way that nobody else understands. So if they are too different they will also be released. The Anthem is a little different they are taught that everything is for mankind. “What is not done collectively cannot be good,” (Rand 73). They don't even know the words “I” or “mine”. They would get in trouble for asking too many questions and you couldn’t be smarter than anyone else. “What is not thought of all men cannot be true.” (Rand 73) Everyone has to believe in the same thing or they can’t move forward in their world. It took them over fifty years to accept the candle because not all men would agree. Those staying in the dark ages are helping the committee stay in charge of them.

In both books they have a committee or a council which is basically the leaders of the community but the community cannot be equal if there are people that are above everybody else. The leaders have power over everyone. They are the ones that assign the jobs and keep the people in order. You get your job, you go to the training, then you do your job or you face the punishments. They say that their worlds are perfect and they teach that they are equal but maybe they just say that to make them think that so they can stay in charge.

We as people aren’t meant to be the same that is why we have our freedoms and rights. We have the opportunity to learn to grow to change to improve to be the best we can. If we have a job we don’t like we can get a new one. If we live in a place we don’t like we can move. If we want more education we can go back to school. When we are satisfied with things as they are we can allow things to remain the same. In these books they took that away from the people. Once Jonas finds out what everyone is missing out on he escapes and puts his life on the line to give them what they never had. Equality is not so perfect if it prevents anyone from being any better than the worst of us. Knowing this Jonas runs away from the life of equality. It is the same in the other book, once he creates better technology and they won't accept it he runs away and finds out more. Once he finds out all that he is missing he wants to go back to help those that are still held back and in the dark.

In writing these books the authors did an excellent job showing that we are not meant to be treated equal. By writing books where everyone is made to be equal and treated equal a reader can see what a bad idea it would be to take equality to that extreme. We are not the same so we should not be treated the same. We aren’t the same physically, mentally, emotionally, or socially. So we should not be treated as a group but be treated as an individual. Clearly the books show how bad it is to treat different people the same or try to make them the same. Though the books did not go to this extreme it would clearly be wrong to not treat someone who had a disease because that would be giving them special treatment or because you had to treat them for the disease you have to treat everyone for the disease even though not everyone has the disease. When you think about it and look at it you can see why the authors wrote these books. I doubt anyone can read either of these books and come to the conclusion that equality means making everyone the same. By writing these books the authors have guided us to think about equality and what it really means.

In conclusion, we strive for equality and perfection even though nature shows we are not meant to be and never will be the same or perfect. Even if we are taught to be the same or treated the same we will never be the same. We are individuals our own person not a group so we should be treated as an individual. We are equal in some ways we have equal freedoms and rights but we are not the same person and we are definitely not perfect. We can make our own decisions and learn from our mistakes and that is what makes us who we are.

Works Cited

Lowry, Lois. The Giver. New York: Dell Laurel-Leaf, 1993. Print.

Rand, Ayn. Anthem.Student Edition. New York: Penguin Group, 1961. Print.