From Ancient Times to the Modern Era!!

While a "sea" is generally defined as a large lake that contains saltwater, or a specific portion of an ocean, the idiom "Sail the seven seas," is not so easily defined.

"Sail the seven seas" is a phrase that is said to have been used by sailors, but does it actually refer to a specific set of seas? Many would argue yes, while others would disagree. There has been much debate as to whether or not this is in reference to seven actual seas and if so, which ones?

Seven Seas as a Figure of Speech?

Many believe that "the seven seas" is simply an idiom that refers to sailing many or all of the oceans of the world. The term is believed to have been popularized by Rudyard Kipling who published an anthology of poetry titled The Seven Seas in 1896.

The phrase can now be found in popular songs such as, "Sailing on the Seven Seas" by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, "Meet Me Halfway" by Black Eyed Peas, "Seven Seas" by Mob Rules, and "Sail over the Seven Seas" by Gina T.

Significance of the Number Seven

Why "seven" seas? Historically, culturally, and religiously, the number seven is a very significant number. Isaac Newton identified seven colors of the rainbow, there are Seven Wonders of the ancient world, seven days of the week, seven dwarves in the fairy tale "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves," the seven-day story of creation, the seven branches on a Menorah, seven Chakras of meditation, and seven heavens in Islamic traditions -- just to name a few instances.

The number seven appears again and again throughout history and stories, and because of this, there is much mythology surrounding its importance.

The Seven Seas in Ancient and Medieval Europe

This list of the seven seas is believed by many to be the original seven seas as defined by the sailors of ancient and Medieval Europe.

The majority of these seven seas are located around the Mediterranean Sea, very close to home for these sailors.

1) The Mediterranean Sea - This sea is attached to the Atlantic Ocean and many early civilizations developed around it, including Egypt, Greece, and Rome and it has been called "the cradle of civilization" because of this.

2) The Adriatic Sea - This sea separates the Italian peninsula from the Balkan peninsula. It is part of the Mediterranean Sea.

3) The Black Sea - This sea is an inland sea between Europe and Asia. It is also connected to the Mediterranean Sea.

4) The Red Sea - This sea is a narrow strip of water extending south from Northeast Egypt and it connects to the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. It is connected today to the Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal and is one of the most heavily traveled waterways in the world.

5) The Arabian Sea - This sea is the Northwestern part of the Indian Ocean between India and the Arabian Peninsula (Saudi Arabia). Historically, it was a very important trade route between India and the West and remains such today.

6) The Persian Gulf - This sea is a part of the Indian Ocean, located between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula. There has been a dispute as to what its actual name is so it is also sometimes known as the Arabian Gulf, The Gulf, or The Gulf of Iran, but none of those names are recognized internationally.

7) The Caspian Sea - This sea is located on the Western edge of Asia and the Eastern edge of Europe. It is actually the largest lake on the planet. It is called a sea because it contains saltwater.

The Seven Seas Today

Today, the list of "Seven Seas" that is most widely accepted is inclusive of all of the bodies of water on the planet, which are all part of the one global ocean. Each is technically an ocean or section of an ocean by definition, but most geographers accept this list to be the actual "Seven Seas":

1) North Atlantic Ocean

2) South Atlantic Ocean

3) North Pacific Ocean

4) South Pacific Ocean

5) Arctic Ocean

6) Southern Ocean

7) Indian Ocean

The Origin of Wildfires and How They Are Caused!!

It is interesting to note that, of the four billion years of earth's existence, conditions were not conducive for spontaneous wildfire until the last 400 million years. A naturally-occurring atmospheric fire did not have the chemical elements available until major several earth changes occurred.

The earliest life forms emerged without needing oxygen (anaerobic organisms) to live about 3.5 billion years ago and lived in a carbon dioxide based atmosphere. Life forms that needed oxygen in small amounts (aerobic) came much later in the form of photosynthesizing blue-green algae and ultimately changed the earth's atmospheric balance toward oxygen and away from carbon dioxide (co2).

Photosynthesis increasingly dominated earth's biology by initially creating and continuously increasing the earth's percentage of oxygen in the air. Green plant growth then exploded and aerobic respiration became the biologic catalyst for terrestrial life. Around 600 million years ago and during the Paleozoic, conditions for natural combustion started developing with increasing speed.

Wildfire Chemistry

Fire needs fuel, oxygen, and heat to ignite and spread. Wherever forests grow, the fuel for forest fires is provided mainly by continued biomass production along with the resulting fuel load of that vegetative growth. Oxygen is created in abundance by the photosynthesizing process of living green organisms so it is all around us in the air. All that is needed then is a source of heat to provide the exact chemistry combinations for a flame.

When these natural combustibles (in the form of wood, leaves, brush) reach 572º, gas in the steam given off reacts with oxygen to reach its flashpoint with a burst of flame. This flame then preheats surrounding fuels. In turn, other fuels heat up and the fire grows and spreads. If this spreading process is not controlled, you have a wildfire or uncontrolled forest fire.

Depending on the geographic condition of the site and the vegetative fuels present, you might call these brush fires, forest fires, sage field fires, grass fires, woods fires, peat fires, bushfires, wildland fires, or veld fires.

How Do Forest Fires Start?

Naturally caused forest fires are usually started by dry lightning where little to no rain accompanies a stormy weather disturbance. Lightning randomly strikes the earth an average of 100 times each second or 3 billion times every year and has caused some of the most notable wildland fire disasters in the western United States.

Most lightning strikes occur in the North American southeast and southwest. Because they often occur in isolated locations with limited access, lightning fires burn more acres than human-caused starts. The average 10-year total of U.S. wildfire acres burned and caused by humans is 1.9 million acres where 2.1 million acres burned are lightning-caused.

Still, human fire activity is the primary cause of wildfires, with nearly ten times the start rate of natural starts. Most of these human-caused fires are accidental, usually caused by carelessness or inattention by campers, hikers, or others traveling through wildland or by debris and garbage burners. Some are intentionally set by arsonists.

Some human-caused fires are started to reduce heavy fuel buildup and used as a forest management tool. This is called a controlled or prescribed burn and used for wildfire fire fuel reduction, wildlife habitat enhancement, and debris clearing. They are not included in the above statistics and ultimately reduce wildfire numbers by reducing conditions that contribute to wildfire and forest fires.

How Does Wildland Fire Spread?

The three primary classes of wildland fires are surface, crown, and ground fires. Each classification intensity depends on the quantity and types of fuels involved and their moisture content. These conditions have an effect on fire intensity and will determine how fast the fire will spread.

• Surface fires typically burn readily but at a low intensity and partially consume the entire fuel layer while presenting little danger to mature trees and root systems. Fuel buildup over many years will increase intensity and especially when associated with drought, can become a rapidly spreading ground fire. Regular controlled fire or prescribed burning effectively reduces the fuel buildup leading to a damaging ground fire.
• Crown fires generally result from intense rising ground fire heat and occur in the higher sections of draping trees. The resulting "ladder effect" causes hot surface or ground fires to climb the fuels into the canopy. This can increase the chance for embers to blow and branches to fall into unburned areas and increase the spread the fire.
• Ground fires are the most infrequent type of fire but make for very intense blazes that can potentially destroy all vegetation and organic manner, leaving only bare earth. These largest fires actually create their own winds and weather, increasing the flow of oxygen and "feeding" the fire.

How Long Is a Day on Other Planets?

The definition of a day is the amount of time it takes an astronomical object to complete one full spin on its axis. On Earth, a day is 23 hours and 56 minutes, but other planets and bodies rotate at different rates. The Moon, for example, spins on its axis once every 29.5 days. That means future lunar inhabitants will have to get used to a sunlight "day" that lasts for about 14 Earth days and a "night" that lasts about the same time.

Scientists typically measure days on other planets and astronomical objects in reference to Earth's day. This standard is applied across the solar system to avoid confusion when discussing events that occur on those worlds. However, each celestial body's day is a different length, whether it's a planet, moon, or asteroid. If it turns on its axis, it has a "day and night" cycle.

The following table depicts the day lengths of the planets in the Solar System.

Planet	Length of Day
Mercury	58.6 Earth days
Venus	243 Earth days
Earth	23 hours, 56 minutes
Mars	24 hours, 37 minutes
Jupiter	9 hours, 55 minutes
Saturn	10 hours, 33 minutes
Uranus	17 hours, 14 minutes
Neptune	15 hours, 57 minutes
Pluto	6.4 Earth days

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The Science of Gray Hair:

Have you ever wondered why hair turns gray as you get older and whether there is something you can do to prevent graying or at least slow it down? Here's a look at what causes hair to turn gray and some of the factors that affect graying.

A Turning Point for Your Hair

The age at which you'll get your first gray hair (assuming your hair doesn't simply fall out) is largely determined by genetics. You'll probably get that first strand of gray around the same age your parents and grandparents started to go gray.

However, the rate at which the graying progress is somewhat under your own control. Smoking is known to increase the rate of graying. Anemia, generally poor nutrition, insufficient B vitamins, and untreated thyroid conditions can also speed the rate of graying. What causes your hair's color to change? That has to do with the process of controlling the production of the pigment called melanin, the same pigment that tans your skin in response to sunlight.

The Science Behind the Gray

Every hair follicle contains pigment cells called melanocytes. The melanocytes produce eumelanin, which is black or dark brown, and pheomelanin, which is reddish-yellow, and pass the melanin to the cells which produce keratin, the chief protein in hair. When the keratin-producing cells (keratinocytes) die, they retain the coloring from the melanin. When you first start to go gray, the melanocytes are still present, but they become less active.

Less pigment is deposited into the hair so it appears lighter. As graying progress, the melanocytes die off until there aren't any cells left to produce the color.

While this is a normal and unavoidable part of the aging process and is not of itself associated with disease, some autoimmune diseases can cause premature graying.

However, some people start going gray in their 20s and are perfectly healthy. Extreme shock or stress can also cause your hair to go gray very quickly, though not overnight.

Would You Kill One Person to Save Five?

Philosophers love to conduct thought experiments. Often these involve rather bizarre situations, and critics wonder how relevant these thought experiments are to the real world. But the point of the experiments is to help us clarify our thinking by pushing it to the limits. The “trolley dilemma” is one of the most famous of these philosophical imaginings.

The Basic Trolley Problem

A version of this moral dilemma was first put forward in 1967 by the British moral philosopher Phillipa Foot, well-known as one of those responsible for reviving virtue ethics.

Here’s the basic dilemma: A tram is running down a track and is out control. If it continues on its course unchecked and undiverted, it will run over five people who have been tied to the tracks. You have the chance to divert it onto another track simply by pulling a lever. If you do this, though, the tram will kill a man who happens to be standing on this other track. What should you do?

The Utilitarian Response

For many utilitarians, the problem is a no-brainer. Our duty is to promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Five lives saved is better than one life saved. Therefore, the right thing to do is to pull the lever.

Utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism. It judges actions by their consequences. But there are many who think that we have to consider other aspects of action as well. In the case of the trolley dilemma, many are troubled by the fact that if they pull the lever they will be actively engaged in causing the death of an innocent person.

According to our normal moral intuitions, this is wrong, and we should pay some heed to our normal moral intuitions.

So-called “rule utilitarians” may well agree with this point of view. They hold that we should not judge every action by its consequences. Instead, we should establish a set of moral rules to follow according to which rules will promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number in the long term.

And then we should follow those rules, even if in specific cases doing so may not produce the best consequences.

But so-called “act utilitarians” judge each act by its consequences; so they will simply do the math and pull the lever. Moreover, they will argue that there is no significant difference between causing a death by pulling the lever and not preventing a death by refusing to pull the lever. One is equally responsible for the consequences in either case.

Those who think that it would be right to divert the tram often appeal to what philosophers call the doctrine of double effect. Simply put, this doctrine states that it is morally acceptable to do something that causes a serious harm in the course of promoting some greater good if the harm in question is not an intended consequence of the action but is, rather, an unintended side-effect. The fact that the harm caused is predictable doesn’t matter. What matters is whether or not the agent intends it.

The doctrine of double effect plays an important role in just war theory. It has often been used to justify certain military actions which cause “collateral damage.” An example of such an action would be the bombing of an ammunition dump that not only destroys the military target but also causes a number of civilian deaths.

Studies show that the majority of people today, at least in modern Western societies, say that they would pull the lever. However, they respond differently when the situation is tweaked.

The Fat Man on the Bridge Variation

The situation is the same as before: a runaway tram threatens to kill five people. A very heavy man is sitting on a wall on a bridge spanning the track. You can stop the train by pushing him off the bridge onto the track in front of the train. He will die, but the five will be saved. (You can’t opt to jump in front of the tram yourself since you aren’t big enough to stop it.)

From a simple utilitarian point of view, the dilemma is the same — do you sacrifice one life to save five? — and the answer is the same: yes. Interestingly, however, many people who would pull the lever in the first scenario would not push the man in this second scenario.

This raises two questions:

The Moral Question: If Pulling the Lever Is Right, Why Would Pushing the Man Be Wrong?

One argument for treating the cases differently is to say that the doctrine of double effect no longer applies if one pushes the man off the bridge. His death is no longer an unfortunate side-effect of your decision to divert the tram; his death is the very means by which the tram is stopped. So you can hardly say in this case that when you pushed him off the bridge you weren’t intending to cause his death.

A closely related argument is based on a moral principle made famous by the great German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). According to Kant, we should always treat people as ends in themselves, never merely as a means to our own ends. This is commonly known, reasonably enough, as the “ends principle.” It is fairly obvious that if you push the man off the bridge to stop the tram, you are using him purely as a means. To treat him as the end would be to respect the fact that he is a free, rational being, to explain the situation to him, and suggest that he sacrifice himself to save the lives of those tied to the track. Of course, there is no guarantee that he would be persuaded. And before the discussion had got very far the tram would have probably already passed under the bridge!

The Psychological Question: Why Will People Pull the Lever but Not Push the Man?

Psychologists are concerned not with establishing what is right or wrong but with understanding why people are so much more reluctant to push a man to his death than to cause his death by pulling a lever.

The Yale psychologist Paul Bloom suggests that the reason lies in the fact that our causing the man’s death by actually touching him arouses in us a much stronger emotional response. In every culture, there is some sort of taboo against murder. An unwillingness to kill an innocent person with our own hands is deeply ingrained in most people. This conclusion seems to be supported by people’s response to another variation on the basic dilemma.

The Fat Man Standing on the Trapdoor Variation 

Here the situation is the same as before, but instead of sitting on a wall the fat man is standing on a trapdoor built into the bridge. Once again you can now stop the train and save five lives by simply pulling a lever. But in this case, pulling the lever will not divert the train. Instead, it will open the trapdoor, causing the man to fall through it and onto the track in front of the train.

Generally speaking, people are not as ready to pull this lever as they are to pull the lever that diverts the train. But significantly more people are willing to stop the train in this way than are prepared to push the man off the bridge. 

The Fat Villain on the Bridge Variation

Suppose now that the man on the bridge is the very same man who has tied the five innocent people to the track. Would you be willing to push this person to his death to save the five? A majority say they would, and this course of action seems fairly easy to justify. Given that he is willfully trying to cause innocent people to die, his own death strikes many people as thoroughly deserved.

The situation is more complicated, though, if the man is simply someone who has done other bad actions. Suppose in the past he has committed murder or rape and that he hasn’t paid any penalty for these crimes. Does that justify violating Kant’s ends principle and using him as a mere means? 

The Close Relative on the Track Variation

Here is one last variation to consider. Go back to the original scenario–you can pull a lever to divert the train so that five lives are saved and one person is killed–but this time the one person who will be killed is your mother or your brother. What would you do in this case? And what would be the right thing to do?

A strict utilitarian may have to bite the bullet here and be willing to cause the death of their nearest and dearest. After all, one of the basic principles of utilitarianism is that everyone’s happiness counts equally. As Jeremy Bentham, one of the founders of modern utilitarianism put it: Everyone counts for one; no-one for more than one. So sorry mom! 

But this is most definitely not what most people would do. The majority may lament the deaths of the five innocents, but they cannot bring themselves to bring about the death of a loved one in order to save the lives of strangers. That is most understandable from a psychological point of view. Humans are primed both in the course of evolution and through their upbringing to care most for those around them.  But is it morally legitimate to show a preference for one’s own family?

This is where many people feel that strict utilitarianism is unreasonable and unrealistic. Not only will we tend to naturally favor our own family over strangers, but many think that we ought to. For loyalty is a virtue, and loyalty to one’s family is about as basic a form of loyalty as there is. So in many people’s eyes, to sacrifice family for strangers goes against both our natural instincts and our most fundamental moral intuitions.