Author Archives: Joseph Pearl

Posts by Joseph Pearl

Response #13

Posted on December 3, 2012 by Joseph Pearl

This week’s discussion on the waste that we produce might have been the one that has resonated with me the most.  I feel that in the past few months of trying to leave class more in the know than before, this lesson has given me the most perspective on the environmental issues we encounter today.  While in previous lessons we have heard numbers in the tens of thousands of tons, the numbers related to garbage produced by the city and each borough have struck me as the most relevant to my life specifically.  I feel know that I have a better awareness of what exactly is happening around me, or even a better awareness of how I act.  I have always known that plastic bags from supermarkets accumulate and are harmful to the environment if overused, but only since this past Monday have I been conscious of my intake, and rejecting the store’s plastic bags.  The portion of the lecture devoted to Tullytown opened my eyes to the problems that us elitist New Yorkers have in regards to waste.  I have never considered the effects of the waste we produce, as I never see where the garbage goes, past the garbage trucks.  It is unfortunate that our waste is not our problem, because I feel that if we had the waste sites in our neighborhoods, for example on 91st street, we would be significantly more conscious of our waste.  The sheer vastness of the quantities of waste we produce is not known to the average New Yorker, and I believe that if we were constantly reminded with transfer sites, it is likely that we would be more hesitant to throw away water bottles instead of recycle them, or even stop taking plastic bags from the supermarket.  I do not think that New Yorkers are against the environment, I just believe we need to be reminded that we are apart of the world outside of New York.  As for the citizens of Tullytown, as cynical and harsh as it sounds, it seems that they are actually benefitting from our trash.  In that I mean that there are many people in this country who suffer from being below the poverty line, and I believe that this relationship we have with Tullytown might actually be symbiotic.  Now I do not believe that it is fair to have to live next to a waste site, nor do I think anyone should have to be exposed to such health dangers.  However, there are people in this country who struggle to make ends meet, and while we have the luxury of choosing where we put our waste, others do not have any leftovers to waste.  As awful as it sounds, it seems that there are people in the country who would gladly take the money and bribes from our waste companies just so that they have the resources to keep their homes and feed their families.  Would it not be better to live next to garbage than to not live at all? These are the notions I am wrestling at the moment.

Response #12

Posted on November 26, 2012 by Joseph Pearl

Ben, Dan, Demetra and Simon provided a riveting and contentious debate on the current state of affairs at the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant.  The debate started off with Ben and Dan against nuclear power as a means of energy and Demetra and Simon for nuclear power.  However, as the debate went on the two sides came closer and closer together, rejecting portions of the opposing sides’ arguments, while slowly coming to accept others.  I rather liked seeing the open mindedness in the debate that allowed for the concession of some points and the redevelopment of each group’s initial stances.  Although this was a pleasant difference from other debates I have seen, especially in the past month, I would have liked to see both sides stick to their guns a little bit more and come out of the debate with more concrete stances on what the proper course of action should be currently.  Neither side seemed particularly set in their arguments, and while it can be said they were open minded, it can also be argued that they were weak in standing behind their platforms.  This confusion led to an overall interesting discussion, and I believe that as I said in class, both sides can agree that regardless of whether or not they support nuclear power as a source of energy, something needs to be done about the present state of affairs at the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant.  As Jackie informed us, the power plant funds an annual fireworks show for the residents nearby the power plant.  Right off the bat that raises my suspicions about the power plant, and what is happening at Indian Point.  With all due respect to Demetra and Simon, after hearing the debate if I were to choose a side, I would have to side with the anti-nuclear power group.  What seems to be the only pertinent issue in the debate is the lack of proper care taken in the Indian Point plant, as it has seen a number of problems that have resulted in the shutting down of the plant.  Now, while it might be extreme to compare it to the events in Japan, it is relevant that information because it is important to examine the worst-case scenario in any issue like this.  What I gathered from the debate is that the Indian Point plant is not run as effectively, nor as safely as it should be run.  I am not sure that I am entirely against nuclear power on the whole, as France seems to have it together in this respect, but certainly we do not.  I believe that the plant should be shut down, at least for the time being, as it does not meet the standards that we as Americans should set for such plants.  Seeing as there are alternative and more advanced models of power plants, it seems almost stupid to continue to operate a power plant that is decades outdated, and has even the potential to risk the lives of any Americans, let alone (as Ben and Dan stated) so close to the largest metropolitan are in the United States.  With all these failures in the power plant, it is clear why Jackie gets her fireworks each year, as a form of bribe to hope the people around the plant do not fight the existence of such a volatile plant.

Response #10

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Joseph Pearl

While sitting in class for this lesson, I could not help but think about the goal of each lesson: to leave class more knowledgeable than before I had entered.  The reason for this is the first time that I had heard about fracking was in my senior year at high school, as one of my classmates had been working for an anti-fracking agency in New York City.  I remember seeing him pass out materials, and always don a button advertising his stance against fracking, but I never asked him about the subject, nor did I take his fliers.  All the knowledge I had attached to fracking was that it was bad, because, if my friend is a smart guy, he must be on the right side.  I understand it is foolish to gain a bias without any information on the subject, but since hearing the word “fracking”, I began to hear it more and more often.  What interested me about the subject was the one-sidedness to the argument, as I heard arguments only against fracking.  The media began to blow up at this time with news of fracking, yet somehow, I managed to accidentally evade any facts on the subject.  Even all the celebrities were against fracking!  How could I not be?

This lesson provided me with the information I believe necessary to gain my own stance on fracking.  Now, originally having no information on the subject I was inclined to say fracking is a bad thing, however at this point I am not 100% certain of this.  Although the lesson certainly gave me enough facts to jump on Mark Ruffalo’s bandwagon, it seems that the issue goes deeper than that (no pun intended).  Obviously, it cannot be disputed that the videos we saw are more than just “parlor tricks,” lighting running water on fire.  It would be a mindblowing coincidence if the only places that running water can be ignited were around fracking sites.  The major issue in fracking seems to be the methods in which the gas is extracted, as it is an extremely aggressive process.  It seems foolish to be attempting to release gasses so close to sources of water or the underground water ways.  Despite all this, I have not lost all hope for fracking.  There is no doubt my mind could be persuaded otherwise with further information, I am not implying I know all there is to know, but it seems like there have been serious flaws in the ways in which people are implementing the technique, especially in the safety precautions.  I feel that if more money were invested rather than attempted to be profited from, fracking could possibly be a useful means of extracting these gases, but only if the proper safety precautions are made.  I can say I agree with Mr. Ruffalo in that fracking should be put to a stop now, at least while people are being affected by the mistakes of big corporations, but the book on fracking should not be closed quite yet.

Koyaanisqatsi

Posted on November 4, 2012 by Joseph Pearl

As an English major, I often find myself writing essays and examining literature.  Since middle school at Hunter campus schools I have heard the words of my eighth grade teacher Ms. Fink every time I write a paper or read a book: “show, don’t tell.”  In terms of writing, what Ms. Fink meant, is that it is more interesting for a reader to be led to a conclusion rather than for the author to directly and clearly express the message.  For instance, in Ms. Fink’s English literature class, we read Hamlet.  Shakespeare’s work, as old as it is, is still relevant in the classroom in part because instead of writing explicitly that Hamlet has or has not gone mad, Shakespeare leaves it up for further interpretation and debate for the future readers.  This is the type of stylistic decision I was looking for in Koyaanisqatsi.  While watching the film, I heard Ms. Fink’s voice in my head yet again, this time in reference to Godfrey Reggio’s stylistic decisions.  After watching it for the first time, I did not care for it.  The film seems to be, on first review, an environmentalist piece preaching the director’s ideals.  Without any writing or narrative, the movie is eccentric and goes outside the cultural norm for films.   The reason I had trouble digesting the movie is due to the barriers it breaks; it is almost avant-garde, and because of this I felt that it was forcibly pushing a message out, because it forced me to think.  I did not like the movie, because Reggio seemed to go against everything Ms. Fink had taught me.  I understand that is an idea that is hard to wrap one’s head around: a film without words, telling rather than showing makes no sense.  Alas, that is how I felt.

The beginning of Reggio’s film highlights the beauty of nature.  Each shot another landscape, untouched by human tampering.  A major theme throughout the movie is vastness, seen in the shots Reggio highlights.  Reggio selects parts of the country that lend themselves to large sweeping shots.  Without obstructions, Reggio is capable of setting the tone without language by capturing so much space into each shot; sometimes miles at a time.  Another tool that Reggio uses to highlight the beauty of the natural world is his use of time-lapse video editing.  By speeding up shots of slow moving nature, like clouds, Reggio is showing his audience an everyday sight in a new way.  This brings a newfound attention, or awareness to the audience’s surroundings in the natural world.  Reggio spends so much of the film with shots dedicated to the beauty of nature, that the initial tone of the film is environmentalist.  Reggio’s choice to start the film with those shots leads the audience to believe the intention of the film is to educate, or inform.  The reason this upset me, was because it goes against what Ms. Fink had taught me years ago.  Reggio gains no power in expressly telling the audience what it is he wants them to get out of his film.  As opposed to so obviously tipping off the viewers of the overall message, or telling them the message, a wiser decision is to show the audience by driving them to think deeply about subtle hints that draw out the greater moral.

 

As a direct result of having to write a paper on the film, I chose to do further research instead of write off the movie as a well executed, but preachy couple of hours.  While discussing the movie with James, we came to a fundamental disagreement.  While I was arguing that the movie tried too hard to portray a “green” message, James provided a useful alternative perspective.  I will leave James’s thoughts on the movie to his assignment, but the conversation sparked some research that left me reconsidering my first impression of the film.  Found on the film’s website (http://koyaanisqatsi.org/films/koyaanisqatsi.php), Reggio spoke about the intentions in making the film:

KOYAANISQATSI is not so much about something, nor does it have a specific meaning or value…It stimulates the viewer to insert their own meaning, their own value. So while I might have this or that intention in creating this film, I realize fully that any meaning or value KOYAANISQATSI might have comes exclusively from the beholder

This idea that Reggio expressed, that he may have had his own intentions behind making the movie, but its power is that it is whatever the audience chooses to make of it.  I had trouble buying into what Reggio said, because after all, the movie had not changed since hearing Reggio’s intentions.  I re-watched portions of the film again to gain a better sense of what Reggio had written on the website.  The beginning portion of the film remained unchanged in my eyes, but as I continued to skip through the film I noted the turbines of oil in a desert, contrasted with the barren desert beforehand.  Reggio uses the same technique of sweeping the view of the camera from far away to give a better understanding of the scale of the landscape.  When watching the oil turbines for the second time I was impressed by the magnitude of the scenario and realized that even though mankind’s hands had touched the previously barren desert, it was not necessarily a bad thing.  This had me thinking that I may have judged the film too early on, before taking the shots in at face value.  I sought so intently for some sort of message with the lack of dialogue, that I neglected to watch the film in the only way Reggio had intended – at face value, to be absorbed before overthinking.

After accepting that I may have read too much into the intentions behind the film, I bought into Reggio’s website.  While reassessing the film, I noticed that the first shot and the final shot were bookending the experience, were of rockets.  In the first shot, we see the rocket propel into the atmosphere, while in the final one the rocket fails.  By changing my scope of my viewing it seemed that the repetition was not a coincidence.  The film depicts growth.  The film begins in media res, Earth at the peak of its growth.  Shots of the desert open the film, but later we see deserts occupied by mankind.  At first I saw this as an invasion of the natural world for selfish, instrumental means.  After reconsidering, I saw the beauty not only in nature untouched, but also in the accomplishments of mankind.  The turbines, which at first seemed to be an eyesore, plaguing the otherwise beautiful desert, now looked impressive.  The time-lapse was used at first to slow down the passing clouds, and later to speed up the headlights of cars on a highway.  The movie gains a new meaning with a different perspective, showing mankind flourishing and expanding through nature to take control of the Earth, but not necessarily in a negative way.  The final shot is of the rocket failing to make the same trip the first one accomplished, which sparked a question for me.  The film shows the power of nature, followed by mankind overpowering nature, finally showing man’s weakness, failing to fly the rocket.  The film seems almost to end on a cliffhanger, implying that mankind has plateaued, requiring further evolution to overcome the stopping point and make way for further growth.  In forgetting Reggio’s influence on the film, and taking a meaning that was purely my own, I was able to take a greater point from the film.  Perhaps we are now due yet again for a paradigm shift, yet this time to find a happy medium between the beauties in the first and second half of the film.

 

“This is the highest value of any work of art, not predetermined meaning, but meaning gleaned from the experience of the encounter. The encounter is my interest, not the meaning. If meaning is the point, then propaganda and advertising is the form. So in the sense of art, the meaning of KOYAANISQATSI is whatever you wish to make of it. This is its power.” – Godfrey Reggio

 

“For when a work is finished it has, as it were, an independent life of its own, and may deliver a message far other than that which was put in its lips to say” – Oscar Wilde

Response #8

Posted on October 29, 2012 by Joseph Pearl

Tom, Tom, Haley and Seong’s presentation left me impressed, amused and thinking.  First of all, I enjoyed their individual performances, I found the video to be entertaining throughout.  I especially liked the ways in which they had adapted the original Shakespeare text to fit their project, definitely an interesting and unique means of getting their points across in the time allotted.  The ways in which they switched roles with limited actors, found extras, and maneuvered around the constraints was well done.  The only problem I had with the presentation was the length of the video, which I think could have been shortened, if not for the required length of the presentation.  I would have liked to have heard more from the presenters in person, with a more active discussion with the class.  Alas, you cannot always get what you want.  The greater point of the movie, to me, was the corruption of the government and business leaders who can play a large role in the welfare of the environment.  I liked that the group had selected to focus in on a lumber company, as that industry is probably the most commonly known and depicted violator of environmentalism in media.  Historically, many movies and television shows, as well as a large amount of attention from news media have focused on lumber companies tearing down trees for personal gain or profit.  A trope that comes to mind is a group of protesters (most often hippies, or “tree-huggers”) chaining themselves to trees in a forest as the large corporation’s bulldozers come in to rip out the trees from their roots.  This video highlighted the man behind the bulldozers, and gave a unique perspective on the corruption of businesses from the eyes of the man in charge himself.  There have been protests and organizations attempting to bring awareness to the status of our ecosystem and the forest areas for decades, so I enjoyed seeing a theatrical adaption of Macbeth to gain a new outlook on the issue.  The portions of the film that were dedicated to faux-real interviews of people affected by the lumber industry was reminiscent of media we have seen in class, and definitely added to the power of the presentation in hearing how companies are affecting American citizens for the sake of a dollar.  This had me wondering, is another dollar really worth the suffering of the animals in their ecosystems, or the way it can affect humans who live in those areas?  I do not believe so, as there are many alternatives to what we saw Tom D. do in the video.  For instance, Haley’s main character showed an initiative that has been seen from the aforementioned “tree-huggers,” but even as I type it out I can sense the negative connotation that is attached with that phrase.  Perhaps it is time that we change our perspective and not consider tree-huggers to be bad, but maybe we should all be tree-huggers.  For the sake of our ecosystems.

Response #7

Posted on October 22, 2012 by Joseph Pearl

For the past few lessons, the lectures have turned opened up to a brand new, exciting portion of our semester’s arc.  Recently we have focused on the ways in which we can change the negative influence us humans have on Earth, as well as fixing already existing problems.  I enjoyed the organization of last week’s lesson, starting with the definition of a word we already thought we knew.  A directly expressed distinction between our passive and active knowledge of vocabulary is important in clarifying definitions that compound with other words we are not familiar with.  Engineering is applying science to design or develop structure, machine, apparatus or manufacturing processes.  It was interesting to see that the class, one composed of majority native English speaking HONORS students, failed to easily come up with an accurate definition.  I am disappointed in myself and the class. Tisk tisk.  Green engineering is directed toward improving local and global environmental quality.  And now back on track, cradle to cradle we learned is assessing the life cycle and impact of  a chemical in a process, but more importantly we learned that natural systems operate on the sun’s limitless energy which drives the Earth’s biogeochemistry to sustain productive, regenerative biological systems.  Technical systems designed to operate by the same rules approach the effectiveness of the closed-loop cycling of living systems in which almost no waste is unused.  Which comes to the idea that we should potentially be investing in solar income, as well as the potential to use more sources of alternative energy.  The ideal I came out of the class with had to be changing our perspectives.  A paradigm shift is necessary for the population of the Earth, if we are going to waste less, and keep the intrinsic value of the Earth alive.  What we consider waste in this country is completely different from what the citizens in places of Guyana consider waste.  Especially here in New York, for example, I find that many people who I encounter that are on a “diet,” do not change the ways they eat, but rather just buy a full meal, and throw out half of it.  This is an extremely effective means of controlling portions, because one is just reducing the portion in half.  The problem here is that if someone in a rural Kyrgyzstani village saw a picture of my friend throwing out half of a Chipotle burrito, they would probably cry from frustration.  One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.  In this scenario I have created, to us New Yorkers, a cheeseburger with ONE bite taken out is trash, but to a huge population of the world, that cheeseburger is a luxury.

Response #6

Posted on October 15, 2012 by Joseph Pearl

This lesson proved to be my least absorbed of the first half of the semester.  Not to say that I did not learn from the lesson, nor to say that I did not pay attention or take notes, rather, there was so much to absorb I failed to get it all!  This can be proved by my midterm, as the majority of my points were taken off from this lesson.  The triple bottom line, in my notes, reads “A framework by which policy decisions can be made by individuals, corporations and government.”  Past that, the triple bottom line “sustainability includes jobs, poverty, opportunity, safety, social justice, and family sustainability.”  I did not get this question right on the midterm and was wondering if what my notes reads is also incorrect.  Another question I answered incorrectly asked for the four variants of fixing a problem in places like factories.  End of pipe treatment, pollution prevention, design for environment and sustainable development.  I enjoyed this and the three level model, because I like the clear ways in which we impact the world, as well as gaining a better understanding of the conflict of creating a sustainable existence under a budget.  I felt that this lesson helped me better understand why it is nothing is being done about municipal incinerators for example, or any other issue that faces our environment.  End of pipe treatment, while not ideal, may be an effective means of dealing with our problems in the short term.  Since finding billions of dollars is not an easy task, I am glad to hear that at least some temporary changes are being done.  I feel that my opinion on the matter differs from the rest of the class, who at the time seemed to be aggravated by the situation.  Beyond aggravated, my classmates seemed to see no benefit in such means of dealing with our issues.  I do agree that simply adding filters does not fully remove an issue from the scope of a factory, but is it not better to add filters now until we have the funds to replace out of date methods?  I feel that the class sentiment was widely aggressive towards the end of pipe method, but perhaps it can be viewed as a method that has some merit to it? Needless to say it is unanimously agreed that companies must do something about the issue beyond end of pipe treatments, it is my hope that someone out there is working on it while the metaphorical filters are in place.

One of the latter anecdotes in the lesson struck me the hardest.  The issue in places like Guyana of people harming themselves by using mercury to mine gold resonated with me after class.  I find it distressing that there are people who do not have the luxury of free higher education, but rather people my age have no choice but to slowly poison themselves with mercury to make a living, so they do not quickly die of starvation.

Response #5

Posted on October 10, 2012 by Joseph Pearl

Last week in class, we tackled the subject of global warming and the greenhouse effect.  So far, this lesson covers the most well known subject regarding the current environmental issues.  At this part of the overall arc of the class, the greenhouse effect is the most often publicized and most commonly discussed issue of the last five years, at least in my experience.  As a result of the widespread public knowledge and constant awareness messages in the media I had entered class with the impression that I knew almost all there was to know about the important issues regarding CO2 emissions and the climate changes.  Luckily, this was not the case.  While I cannot say that I feel as enlightened as usual writing this response, I do feel that I have gained a sense of wider clarity on the topic.  Firstly, I had never heard quite a clearly informative and concise chemical explanation of the chain reaction caused in the atmosphere that melts the ice caps.  Ben’s “Ben/Eric/Dan” experiment broke down the reaction well enough to change my incorrect previous assumption.  Without having formally studied or researched the effects of CO2 in our atmosphere, I had thought that the reason for the melting ice was less direct than Ben would have me believe.  In understanding the problem at an atomic level, I was able to visualize a much more clear and comprehensive picture of the reaction.  While listening to his response, I visualized the air as an exaggerated, cartoonish, almost grid of atoms.  The best way I can describe it is that it looks like a honeycomb, with each hexagon as an atom, with the carbon atom essentially playing dominos with the honeycomb down the ice from the atmosphere.

As for the emissions, I found it interesting that the emissions in the USA surpass Europe’s by a billion tons a year, and that China’s emissions were not nearly proportional relative to population.  With the idea that America produces a shameful amount of CO2 for three hundred million people, it had me wondering if there is a correlation between the time since development of a country and the awareness of emissions and the cuts and policies instituted by governments.  By this I mean that, is it possible that Europe’s relatively low emissions are due to the arc of the countries’ advancements?  After a country has gone from undeveloped, to developed, does it shift its focus from constant advancement and expansion to maintaining the population that it has plateaued with?  In the case of Europe, no other Western areas have been developed previously, and now whole cities in places like Germany are becoming “green” cities.  This would make sense with the USA because it seems that we are at the top of the arc, waiting for changes to be made to sustain our living.  Even with China, as it is currently going through a developmental revolution, it would make sense in this scenario that it would have the highest emissions by far.  Finally, I felt the most new information was the absorption of CO2 in the ocean, and the effects on the food chain, as well as humans, it has.

Response #4

Posted on October 1, 2012 by Joseph Pearl

Harmful emissions and waste plague our world especially here in New York City.  Each year a huge amount of waste is produced by every person in the world, and with a population of over 20 million, those in New York City have faced an issue of overflowing waste since the Dutch came in the 17th century.  With so many people producing so much waste each year, the question begs, what to do with all of it?  At first, landfills seemed to be a hugely effective means of recycling waste, Battery Park being accredited to large amounts of landfilling throughout the 17th and 18th centuries.  As discussed in class, as waste levels increased, incinerators became the common means of destroying waste.  In theory I agree with this plan, without the need for more landfills, burning huge piles of garbage seems like the best way to reduce space taken up by filth.  As eleven municipal refuse incinerators were built by the end of the 60’s, and 700 cities using those municipal incinerators by the late 1930’s, it seems as if the general belief was similar to mine own back then.  Matter cannot be destroyed, but rather only altered, so the incinerators only change the form of garbage, in essence making garbage easier to breathe, in everyday life.  This is the flaw in the practice with these eleven municipal incinerators up until they were all removed in the 90’s.  My parent’s apartment building shows its age with the incinerator still present, yet inactive.  Unlike the general consensus I felt last class, I do not believe that incinerators should not be used.  It is very possible I am just ignorant to all of the facts, but my goal is to change this so please correct me if I am wrong.  All the harmful emissions out of incinerators were unknown to the populations of the day when the incinerators were being constructed.  Today we have a much larger wealth of information on the subject, and as I am to understand, filters placed in the stacks would eliminate the particulate matter that gets blown to Ohio when we burn our garbage here in New York.  I understand that the garbage itself can never be destroyed, but is rather converted into smoke and trapped in the filters, so the filters still remain with all of the harmful PMs, so there is still a physical remainder of the garbage.  Is that garbage not made significantly more manageable?  My question is why there is an uproar over incinerators if they have the potential to largely shrink the amount of physical garbage in the city?  With tens of thousands of waste produced by Americans each year, would it not make sense to reduce the 26, 800, 000 tons of food for instance, into a stack of filters much smaller in size and mass?  While investigating this idea, the numbers shock me, and what worries me most is the plastics portion of the graph displayed in class.  Plastics are one of the few numbers that showed a sharp increase, with potential to continue at the same rate.  In addition to the more recent prevalence of plastics, plastics themselves are extremely complicated chemically, and I wonder how one would break down five million tons for instance of glass and plastic bottles each year.  The danger with burning plastic is also worrisome, but should there not be a filter for that?  The past week in class has already changed my outlook on the way I live, and I can already sense a change in the ways I recycle and what I use that must be disposed of.  This week I feel a little less ignorant than I did the week before.

Response #3

Posted on September 24, 2012 by Joseph Pearl

This past lesson felt to me to be mostly fact based, with limited extrapolation of practical uses of this information, up until the end portion of the lesson.  A lot of the information I took down in my notebook was definitions or lists.  For example, my first definition is of air pollutants, substances not found naturally in air or not naturally in concentrations found.  Before coming to class I knew what air pollutants were, yet I was never taught the formal definition, nor the pollutants themselves in great detail.  It was beneficial to have the primary pollutants broken down in a simplified and unified way.  I found this method of teaching to best reach me as a student.  Subdividing pollutants into oxides, toxic gases, and particular matter helped my understanding of the material as well as the organization of my notes.  I appreciated the exposition on this information outlining the differences between fuel and incomplete fuel combustion.  Beyond learning what air pollutants are, what the main ones are, I also benefited from delving deeper and learning the sources for these primary pollutants.  Having the sources of primary pollutants listed out for me, I was able to take this information and apply it to a practical aspect of my thinking.  In that I mean understanding that SO2 is a source of pollution does not help me in terms of my every day living as much as knowing that things such as car exhausts, or spray painting are sources of pollutants, as I can reduce my own use of such items.  I also found it useful to know the way particles of pollution are measured.  Last class was the first time I had ever heard of particulate matter (PMs).

The most interesting point made in class for me had to be the inclusion of dry cleaners on the list of sources of pollutants.  As I have always walked near dry cleaners and felt the rush of warm air, I am happy to now know the air emitted is filtered as per a government law to decrease emissions of pollutants.  A similar point made in class in terms of relativity to my life, the removal of lead from “leaded” gasoline was news to me.  As much as I hate to admit my weaknesses, I had never thought of the reasoning behind the name “leaded” or “unleaded” and I was not surprised, but I was happy to have had that connection made between the name and the implementation of lead in gasoline.  The tubes put in the Central Park pond show a practical application of the chemical knowledge it takes to become an environmentalist.  Finally, the most interesting and most surprising thing I learned in class last lesson is that the most important date in history is November 22, 1968.

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