Thursday, March 19, 2020

What Savs Cal in East of Eden

What Savs Cal in East of Eden Faith 1Faith M. DennyMr. FineranAP Lit24 September 2014The movie East of Eden has many allusions throughout it. A main one is how Cal and Aron show similarities with Cain and Abel (two brothers in The Bible). In the biblical version, Cain murders his brother, then is cast away from his family. When cast away, he is doomed to live east of Eden. Although there had been many similarities up to then, when Cal (basically) murders Aaron, he is not cast out. Instead, Cal is saved.Throughout Cal's entire life, he feels that he is 'bad'. He constantly uses this term to describe his life and how he is feeling. At one point, Cal says, "Every person only has a certain amount of good in them and a certain amount of bad." He feels that evil mostly influences him and that causes him to act the way he does.15th century depiction of Cain and Abel, Speculum ...His thoughts are reaffirmed when he discovers that his mother is a heavy drug dealer and basically the runner of a local trap house. His realiz ation of where he comes from leads to more destructive habits.As his destructive habits build, he tries to repress them and earn his father's love, but he goes about it in the wrong way. Cal borrows money from his mother, invests it, and earns enough to give his father what he lost in the ice business. His father does not see this act as thoughtful as Cal intended it to be. Instead of being excited, his father is disgusted and instructs him to return the money. This causes Cal to drift even further away from his father.While Cal is drifting away from his father, he becomes closer to Abru. A main reason that Cal chooses to stay and is not...

Tuesday, March 3, 2020

Gigantopithecus - Facts and Figures

Gigantopithecus - Facts and Figures Name: Gigantopithecus (Greek for giant ape); prounced jie-GAN-toe-pith-ECK-us Habitat: Woodlands of Asia Historical Epoch: Miocene-Pleistocene (six million to 200,000 years ago) Size and Weight: Up to nine feet tall and 1,000 pounds Diet: Probably omnivorous Distinguishing Characteristics: Large size; large, flat molars; four-footed posture About Gigantopithecus The literal 1,000-pound gorilla sitting in the corner of a natural history museum, the appropriately named Gigantopithecus was the largest ape that ever lived, not quite King Kong-sized but, at up to half a ton or so, much bigger than your average lowland gorilla. Or, at least, thats the way this prehistoric primate has been reconstructed; frustratingly, practically everything we know about Gigantopithecus is based on its scattered, fossilized teeth and jaws, which first came to the worlds attention when they were sold in Chinese apothecary shops in the first half of the 20th century. Paleontologists arent even sure how this colossus moved; the consensus is that it must have been a ponderous knuckle-walker, like modern gorillas, but a minority opinion holds that Gigantopithecus may have been capable of walking on its two hind feet. Another mysterious thing about Gigantopithecus is when, exactly, it lived. Most experts date this ape from Miocene to mid-Pleistocene eastern and southeastern Asia, about six million to one million years B.C., and it may have survived in small populations until as late as 200,000 or 300,000 years ago. Predictably, a small community of cryptozoologists insists that Gigantopithecus never went extinct, and persists in the present day, high up in the Himalayan Mountains, as the mythical Yeti, better known in the west as the Abominable Snowman! (Rest assured that no reputable scientists subscribe to this theory, which is supported by absolutely no compelling material or eyewitness evidence.) As fearsome as it must have looked, Gigantopithecus seems to have been mostly herbivorouswe can infer from its teeth and jaws that this primate subsisted on fruits, nuts, shoots and, just possibly, the occasional small, quivering mammal or lizard. (The presence of an unusual number of cavities in Gigantopithecus teeth also points to a possible diet of bamboo, much like that of a modern Panda Bear.) Given its size when fully grown, an adult Gigantopithecus would not have been an active target of predation, though the same cant be said for sick, juvenile or aged individuals, which figured on the lunch menu of various tigers, crocodiles and hyenas. Gigantopithecus comprises three separate species. The first and largest, G. blacki, lived in southeastern Asia starting in the middle Pleistocene epoch and shared its territory, toward the end of its existence, with various populations of Homo erectus, the immediate precursor of Homo sapiens. The second, G. bilaspurensis, dates to six million years ago, during the Miocene epoch, about the same early time frame as the oddly named G. giganteus, which was only about half the size of its G. blacki cousin.