To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Image for a moment I was telling you about a dream I had last night. I was flying above the clouds, farther and farther away from my home. This causes me to wonder... What does this dream mean? Does it have any purpose? I decided to find the answers by studying oneirology and using the three main dream theories. The most unusual of these theories is Dream ESP.

Dream ESP is just how it sounds. Using the dream from the introduction, depending on how I was flying, Dream ESP says that one of the following could be in my future. If I dreamed I was flying so high that I could actually touch the moon and stars this portends many different types of global disaster that I may soon hear of. If I flew high with black wings I was warned that I am headed for a letdown of magnitude. Dream ESP says that only the few that are truly open to their spiritual side can remember their dreams, thus deciphering them and knowing what will be.

In example, the book, The Dimensions of Dreams cites a story where a little girl told her mother, "I dreamed I went to school and there was no school there. Something black had come down all over it. I'm not afraid to die because I shall be there with Peter and June." The next day her school was destroyed by a stream of coal slag, the little girl and her friends inside were never found. Is this an example of dream ESP?

Marci Pliskin made a great point in her book Interpreting Your Dreams, "...Prophetic dreams can be attributed to 'fine cuing,' or by the process where the unconscious picks up nonverbal warnings, subtle vibes, or small impressions." Maybe this was how the little girl knew of the tragedy headed her way. What if she had unconsciously picked up on the clues and then dreamed of them while in a more relaxed state of mind?

That such viewpoint is considered sub-conscience hints. Sub-conscience hints are when a person notices something in their waking life, but shove it to the back of their minds. Once again utilizing my dream from the introduction, this theory states that my dream could be trying to tell me about a few things. Maybe I was throughout the day and I needed to feel free, so I dreamed of soaring away from my problems. Or possibly in my waking life I noticed a story about a sky-diver a few moments before I went to bed, so I dreamed of sky-diving myself. While I was sleeping, my mind was free to wander. Trying to keep the brain occupied, my mind caused me to dream. This theory states that my dream was composed of what was going on during my day.

In the book, Interpreting Your Dreams, Dr. Just talks about how Mary Shelley came up with the idea for her story, Frankenstein. "...Before going to bed [Mary Shelley] was encouraged to write down a horror story. That night she had a nightmare that became the basis for her book." By telling horror stories directly before she went to bed, Mary Shelley dictated what she would be dreaming about.

Jayne Gackenbach states in her book, The Emerging Mind, "Dreams speak to us in a language of metaphor. While awake, we may use words that evoke images but we don't directly live the images. In dreams, we live the visual image of the metaphor. So what if none of your dreams seem to be telling you anything of the future, or they won't ever make you a famous detective someday for discovering that hidden clue? Well, then you might believe the third theory.

Nearly all of our dreams make no sense, thus making most of us believe that dreams really have no scientific purpose. This is called the mind chatter theory, which implies that dreaming has no purpose in life other than to occupy the brain while a person is resting. Yet again inserting my dream of flying, this theory states that my mind had to stay occupied while resting, so it played a movie to entertain itself. It may have taken things from my waking life so that I would understand it, but not enough to wake up. But, there was no real meaning for the dream.

Dreaming is much like that brain in the fact that scientists know enough about it to be even more intrigued. The Waking to Our Dreams website states that everyone dreams, even the blind. The average human has 100,000 dreams in their lives. That's roughly 1,300 a year or 3 a night. The Purple Shaman DreamSite says that people have been studying dreams since the Egyptians. So, if everyone dreams and there have been studies for thousands of years, assuming humans have been dreaming for just as long, why can't anyone really tell us why?

The answer may be that dreaming is too much like the brain. Scientists haven't yet found a way to explore either with our current technology. Maybe, in the future, we will find out which theory is correct. Do dreams foretell us of our own futures? Are our minds telling us about the things we took for granted during the day? Or are our psyches just creatively keeping us busy during the night so that they can regenerate? But, if this speech has put any of you to sleep, then you might be able to tell me which theory is right...


Bibliography

Fore, Anthony. An In-depth Look to Why We Dream.

An In-depth Look to Why We Dream. 19 Sept. 2005.

08 Sept. 2005

Gackenbach, Jayne. "Sleep and Consciousness." The Emerging Mind. Ed. Karen Nesbitt Shanor. Los

Angeles: Renaissance Books, 1999. 73-103.

One Step Beyond (Waking to Our Dreams). Ed. Gavin Brown. 25 Aug. 2005. 08 Sept. 2005

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Pliskin, Marci. "Are You Dreaming?" The Complete Idiots Guide to Interpreting Your Dreams. Ed. Jessica

Faust. New York: Aramath, 1999. 5-57.

Shakespeare, William. "Act Three, Scene One." 1596-1616.

Hamlet. Ed. Alan Durband. Hauppauge: Barron's Educational Series, Inc., 1986. 142-145.

Tennant, Rich. "The 5th Wave." Comic Strip. Dreams for Dummies. Foster City: IDG Books Worldwide,

Inc., 2001. 217.

Vedfelt, Ole. "Dreams and Parapsychology." Trans. Kenneth Tindall. The Dimensions of Dreams.

Denmark: Gyldendal, 1999. 222-241.

Wong, Janet S. "Falling." Night Garden Poems from the World of Dreams. Ed. Margaret K. McElderry.

New York: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing, 2000. 17.

The Milky Way Galaxy: All a Non-Astronomy Student Could Ever Want to Know

As a side note, before I began this class, I was one of the many people who just wished on stars. I loved the night sky, so I was interested, but never enough to take a class on the subject. So, when I decided to broaden my horizons, I thought that an astronomy class would be the perfect thing to absolve my curiosity. I had no idea how much work I was in for, or how over my head I would be. But, as the class progressed on, me slowly but surely staying on course, I became intrigued. I will still never be an astronomy whiz by any degree, but this class has given me a newfound respect for those who are.

Now, let’s get to my “findings” of the Milky Way Galaxy. First, a definition of a galaxy: a collection of stars and interstellar material held together by gravity. Scientists discovered the name Milky Way from the band of light that is seen overhead on very dark nights. Older civilizations names it the Celestial River. Essentially the Milky Way is considered a large galaxy with 200 to 400 billion stars. Scientists, understandably, can’t agree on a more exact number. The Milky Way is interestingly shaped like a disk, although this is common among galaxies. This disk has a diameter of 100,000 light years with an average thickness of 10,000 light years, which increases to 30,000 light years at the center, or nucleus, or the spiral. Just so everyone is up-to-date, a light year is the distance light travels in a year, considerably a little bit more than a standard “earth year.”

The Milky Way has extensions which are called spiral arms. There are currently thought to be six main arms, which make the Milky Way a spiral galaxy. Bur the universe is of course, always changing. This is shown be evidence that now says our galaxy could include a bar-like area of “new” stars. This bar would make the Milky Way now a barred spiral. More evidence of our galaxy’s evolution was found in 1951 when William Morgan and his scientific team discovered that both the Orion and Preseus arms of the galaxy had their own spiral arms, too.

The Milky Way is compiled of many things, including interstellar gas, dust and stars. The biggest star is well known to be the sun. This star that we all hope for on rainy days and enjoy on the beach is on the Orion Arm of the spiral. This arm connects to both the next inner and outer arms. It is two-thirds away from the center of the Milky Way, a trip of about 28,000 light years. From pictures you would see that there is little to see beyond the sun’s orbital distance from the center of the galaxy. The curve of the galaxy makes one think there is a great deal of mass, but there is no light there. This is called the dark matter problem, and states that the halo of our galaxy is filled with a mysterious dark matter of unknown composition and type.

Our galaxy also has a circle of star clusters, called a Stellar Halo. This halo extends 130,000 light years away and surrounds the whole galaxy. The unique formation has puzzled astronomers for quite a while. A few believe that the halo was the first development. The gravity then pulled at this halo to shape the Milky Way’s center disk. While this pull was still collapsing, stars continued to evolve; causing their materials to explode and force the debris through the “winds” and soon the said explosions and debris for the last part of the disk. This theory is called the “Outside-In” theory, in layman’s terms, because the galaxy was from the outside halo and then drew itself in. The other common theory is quite the opposite. The disk formed from a cloud of unknown material, from unknown regions. The halo then formed as other clouds, also unknown, were drawn into our galaxy by its gravitational tidal. No one as of yet knows which theory is closer to the truth, or if either has hit upon it.

But, the Milky Way is not just a bunch of stars grouped into secular formations. It also contains some distant clusters, two other close galaxies named the Magellanic Clouds and four smaller galaxies. All of these “sub-galaxies” and clusters make up the mass of our galaxy, and have helped it to evolve into what we now know and love it as. Other factors defining this evolution are broken into two populations. Population one includes the arms and center plain containing interstellar gas, cosmic dust, and bright, young stars. Population two is made of the Stellar Halo, the spaces between the arms and the central core, which has the older, duller stars. What is left of the galaxy has either suddenly collapsed or is collapsing in stages into population one, which is still forming. The current ago of our galaxy is estimated to be around 13.6 billion years old, nearly as old as the universe itself.

While all of this does contribute to the mass of the Milky Way, the main attribute of our galaxy is a group of old stars in the middle. As said earlier, in the dead center of the Milky Way is a nucleus, this “brain” of the galaxy is thought to contain a million solar mass black hole. This pulls gravity and the “tidal waves” towards it and causes our galaxy to continue to amass other clusters and galaxies.

The Milky Way, as we have now found out, has never stopped evolving. It continues to grow by “eating”, so to speak, smaller satellite galaxies. As you are sitting there reading this, the galaxy is joining with moth of the Magellanic Clouds, and will be for the next 100 million years. An earlier example of this was found in 2003. A galaxy previously unknown was found colliding with the Milky Way. The galaxy and its red stars are still currently being pulled into the Milky Way. This galaxy, now known as Canis Major, will soon lose its structure, and is still 25,000 light years away from the center of our galaxy.

This is not the only one currently on a collision course for the Milky Way. The biggest and most destructive will be the Andromeda Galaxy. In a short two billion years the gravitational tide waves will tear the arms apart and shred the pinwheel from the outside in. The Milky Way will then become and elliptical. This is nothing to fear though; scientists believe that our solar system will not be torn completely apart from the sun. Although, this is all theory.

As I said at the beginning of this paper, I have discovered a lot of things that most will never know, and most that I won’t be able to correctly define a year from now, I’m sure. But what I do know is that as I sit here writing this, I have, in fact, not quenched my curiosity. I’ve only made it all that much worse. And somehow, I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I do, however, still believe I am in way over my head!

Formation of the Milky Way, The E.J. Alfari and A.J. Delgado (1995)
Milky Way, The G.L. Vogt (2002)
17 August 2004 – Press Release European Southern Observatory
University of Oregon Astronomy 122
University of Maryland – West Baltimore

Television Ratings – Are They Necessary and Valuable?

On January 1, 1997 a new set of television standards was introduced to the public, TV Parental Guidelines. (1) While these ratings do not completely prevent a child from watching something outside their maturity level, it does help parents to know and understand what their children are watching. The “TV Parental Guidelines” were set up so that every series could be rated by the content it showed its audience. The ratings available can be seen on several websites and in many books, but the most common is www.tvguidelines.org. (2)

While most television shows still display the same content that they would have without their ratings, people can now understand what type of show they are watching based on its rating. For example, TV-MA (V, S, L) would mean that the show is for mature audiences over seventeen and contains violence, sexual activity and crude language. (3) This does not mean that parents can spend less time watching their children’s television habits, but it does give them a spotlight on what shows could be inappropriate for them to view.

Yet another issue with the Parental Guidelines is whether or not they work. According to the Parents Television Council, they do not. The president of PTC, L. Brent Bozell, says “Our findings show the blatant hypocrisy of TV executives who claim that parents should rely on TV ratings… Most television programs showing foul language, violence, and inappropriate sexual dialogue or situations do not use the appropriate content descriptors that would warn parents about the presence of offensive content.” (4) Many other organizations and parents agree. While having a rating system at all is a big step towards corporation responsibility, there is still so much more that needs to be done.

An alternative to the ratings system is for the parents to view the shows that their children watch, or are likely to watch, before they do. By viewing a few episodes, one can get a general idea of what their child will be seeing in subsequent episodes. This may not seem like a difficult job, but too few parents take the time to do this. Yes, most parents are very busy, with approximately 28% of children living in single parent homes, but I don’t believe that anyone should be allowed to complain about what others are putting on television if they don’t take the time to evaluate the shows themselves. If a parent is too busy to pay attention to what their children are even watching in the first place, then it doesn’t matter what the ratings are, their children will find a way to watch them regardless.

This brings me to public responsibility. Many will ask what the ratings do for the common person, what if you don’t have kids, or you don’t really care about the ratings on the shows? How does this affect you then? Well, if parents keep harassing the media to “watch what they say”, so to speak, then pretty soon everything will be censored. I am not saying that parents don’t have the right to have their children protected from the violence, sexuality and language that TV does seem to glorify, but they don’t have the right to stop what everyone else is viewing. If the public doesn’t find a happy medium well, one side will win. Censorship or complete chaos, what do you want?

(1) The Wikipedia Encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_rating_system
(2) TV Parental Guidelines www.tvguidelines.org
(3) The V-Chip Education Project www.ncta.com/images/VChip%202000%20Brochure.pdf
(4) Parents Television Council Publications www.parentstv.org/PTC/publications/NewsRelease
(5) Health E-Notes health.enotes.com/childrens-health-encyclopedia/single-parent-families

Soundtrack of Your Life: The Life and Times of Kayla Fine

Yesterday I was given one of the hardest assignments of my life. Music is my life. I live, breathe, and dream of it. I use melodies and catchy lyrics to face whatever I am dealing with; much the way a painter uses color to expose their emotions. When I was asked to make a soundtrack to my life, I thought I was on easy street. That is, until I started putting my playlist together. As I thought about times in my life, I tried to decide which memories I wanted to let the world in on, my almost graduation, my parents constant fighting, my first apartment, my best friend's death, or should I even say anything at all? After careful thought and consideration, I have composed a list of influential moments in my life.

We'll start with my life as it stands now. I moved to Maryland six months ago, leaving behind a fiancé', lifelong friend, little sister, and a newborn goddaughter. While this has been very difficult for me, I believe that I am doing what is best for me by removing myself from my dark past. Thus I chose "I Just Wanna Live" by Good Charlotte as my first song. Although I felt that I was doing something to improve my life, I was repeatedly told that I was living in a fantasy world, much the way this song goes... "Stop your messin' around, better think of your future, better make some good plans... Lookout, better play it safe, you never know what hard times will come your way. We say, where we're coming from we've already seen all the bad times..."

I understand though, why everyone was worried about my decision. I was sixteen when I moved out of my mother's home. I lived with friends until I got my first apartment. I felt on top of the world, until the rest of my family stopped talking to me. I was told that I was pushing people away, and that I started fights with my step-father. These memories helped me make my next selection, "Ever Mine" by Gabrielle. After hearing this song, I knew that I wasn't alone. If others had done it, so could I. "...So I hold my head high, and I keep my wits about me. I keep my wits about me and I take each day in stride. And I wonder a bit aimlessly, do you think I'm free?" After listening to that song for about two weeks, I finally decided to prove to myself that I was not worthless by getting my GED.

By now, you may be wondering why I ever quit school in the first place. I wonder that myself some days. My relationship with my now ex-finance' led me to make some dumb decisions. I met him when I w seventeen and was instantly smitten. He soon convinced me, quite easily I will admit, that I should drop out of school and move out of my home. While I will always regret not standing up to him and letting him control me, I will never regret what I learned from him. I am a stronger woman because of those two years, both mentally and physically. And so, this is for every woman who has ever been in that position, courtesy of Green Day's "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)." "Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road, time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go. So make the best of this test and don't ask why, it's not a question but a lesson learned in time..."

So far, what you've read has made it seem like I had a horrible childhood, which is not true. While my parents did divorce when I was young, so did over half of my friend's parents. My step-father and I may not have always gotten along, but I never went cold or hungry. My mom worked all the time, and my dad made sure that she had money to take care of me and my younger brother. But sometimes I think that maybe that was what their problem was, they never really lived. My biggest fear as a little girl was that my mom would somehow not be able to pay the light bill, or the rent, or the gas bill... As I was sitting there wondering why I worried about things like that, I realized that I always heard my mom arguing with my dad about it. As a kid, I was never shown how little we had, but I knew from their attitudes. So Smile Empty Soul's "Silhouettes" is a message that I think my parents should have heard. "I don't wanna live like my mother; I don't wanna let fear rule my life. And I don't want to live like my father; I don't want to give up before I die. When I have kids, I won't put any chains on their wrists, I won't. I'll tell them this, there's nothing in this world that you can't be if you want it enough."

After reading all of this, you probably think "poor Kayla.” Well, stop. If there’s anyone you should be feeling sorry for, it’s all the single parents out there. When I was old enough to accept what divorced parents meant, I took it hard. I remember the fights with my mom and dad both. I did as most kids at my age did. I played them against each other, which caused even more fights. I also remember all the broken promises. That’s the main reason why I chose Everclear’s “Wonderful.” One of the strongest memories I have is blaring that song from my radio hoping that one of my parents would get the hint. Whether they did or not, I’ll never know. “Promises mean everything when you’re little and the world’s so big. I just don’t understand how you can smile with all those tears in your eyes and tell me everything in wonderful now.”

Looking back on this soundtrack, I feel like I’m reaching out in hopes of gaining pity. That is not my intention. I simply want to show that it doesn’t matter what or where you come from, you can be better. You really can learn from your mistakes, and from others, if you so choose. I did that. I chose to be more than anyone ever gave me credit for, to be more than what was expected of me. And hopefully, in ten years this soundtrack will be completely different.

Shifts in Cultural Icons: Johnny Depp

Many Hollywood stars have made a career out of changing with the times and constantly “updating” themselves, (i.e. Madonna), but there are a few select who have done quite the opposite. These stars have used their careers to change the environment around them. Some of those people include rocker Tommy Lee, musician Mariah Carey, and comedian Jim Carrey. One other such person is Johnny Depp. Depp quit high school when he was fifteen, not to become an actor but actually to be a musician. It wasn’t long before his close friend Nicolas Cage suggested that he read for a small part in Nightmare on Elm Street in 1984, and he has been redefining our world from that day on. (1)

Depp has since starred in 40 plus films and TV shows besides the Nightmare on Elm Street series. A full filmography includes; Private Resort (1985), Slow Burn (86), Platoon (86), 21 Jump Street (TV 87-89), Cry Baby (1990), Edward Scissorhands (90), Arizona Dream (93), Benny & Joon (93), What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (93), Ed Wood (94), Don Juan DeMarco (95), Dead Man (95), Nick of Time (95), Donnie Brasco (97), The Brave (97), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (98), The Ninth Gate (99), The Astronaut’s Wife (99), The Man Who Cried (2000), Before Night Falls (00), Chocolat (00), Blow (01), From Hell (01), Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (03), Once Upon a Time in Mexico (03), Secret Window (04), And They Lived Happily Ever After (04), Finding Neverland (04), The Libertine (04), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (05), Corpse Bride (05), Kingdom Hearts II (05), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (06), The Rum Diary (06), The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (06), Pirates of the Caribbean Three (07), and Shantaram (07). (2) And that’s only the ones he actually acted in, not to mention the films he has directed or produced. In each of these films the audience is being given a little tour through Depp’s life at the time of the filming.

For example, in 2001 while filming Blow, a movie about the life and times of the cocaine importer George Jung, Depp did an interview in which he said, “It’s a cautionary story and you learn from other people’s mistakes.” He also stated that he never quite fully recovered from when friend, River Phoenix, died in 1993 due to an overdose near his nightclub, The Viper Room. (3) The Tiscali website states Depp admits the same fate nearly consumed him. (4) Yet another example of how Depp’s movies have imitated his life are his latest roles.

Up until the birth of his children, Depp took on many interesting characters, a confused Satanistic antique book dealer in The Ninth Gate, a drug dealer in Blow, a crazed astronaut in The Astronaut’s Wife, and several small parts in the “Freddy Kruger” movies. But when his children started getting old enough to see their father in action, his audiences saw a sharp turn in his typical role, to an outstanding children’s author in Finding Neverland, Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and a bumbling husband in The Corpse Bride.

While many believe that Depp has gone soft, I believe that his taste in roles has just been expanded to fit his current lifestyle. Depp continues to take on many daring roles, such as one of his most audacious characters yes in The Libertine. He has also transformed old movies into modern-day box office smashes with his personas. Take Captain Jack Sparrow; had it been any other actor, he would have been thrown off the set, but Depp made millions love his womanizing pirate portrayal. Willy Wonka is another example. He not only credited the one and only original Wonka, Gene Wilder, but he also recreated the role to fit his ambitions and to bring a new crowd in on a classic. This shows that he is still making an impact on Hollywood with his own brand of stardom, though he doesn’t quite fit the “norm” for movie superstars. He would rather be in Europe drinking a cup of coffee and having the rest of the world ignoring him, save his family, than be at a movie premiere. And while he doesn’t quite fit the mold of the cookie-cutter idol, he does fir the high-low hierarchy. Depp is definitely on a “high” hierarchy, he is renowned throughout the world as an amazing actor, he is a dedicated family man, and he still makes a career out of quality acting.

So while many are here for a decade at most before they wash out, Depp has been on the scene for 22 years, and is not expected to be leaving anytime soon. He has shocked us, on occasion disgusted us, amazed us, and enlightened us all. Anywhere you turn a Depp movie is abuzz, he is literally known worldwide, and yet he is still most comfortable at home with his loved ones. I would consider that adapting to the times quite well.

(1) The Online Wikipedia Encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/Johnny_Depp
(2) IMDb Film Database http://www.idmb.com/name/nm0000136/
(3) The New York Times Online http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography/html?p_ud=18682&mod=bio
(4) Tiscali Film & TV http://www.tiscali.co.uk/entertainment/film/interviews/johnny_depp_blow.html