This past week in class, we had a great discussion about nature and environment. This topic led into a great debate on how these terms can be interpreted and how they, "should be used." At first glance of the terms, they may seem easy to define, but as we learned in class, many different people have many different definitions and uses for the two words. Some said that nature has an organic base to it and is untouched by mankind as opposed to other artificial things we see around us. Others said nature could be altered, but as long as it was once considered nature, like a tree placed inside of a mall, that would still fall under nature. Environment was generally defined as everything around us, both natural and man made. This was definitely one of those debates that led to the typical, "but what if..." You could go on all day about what if this or what if that. The point is how you define the terms. There really isn't a wrong answer. I personally defined the words as nature being untouched by man, while environment includes both aspects of natural and artificial. This week's blog assignment included using an article, image, video, or anything else that represented the nature/environment debate. As seen above I have chosen to use an image. I simply found it using Google images, but I didn't just search a random picture, there is meaning behind it. This past weekend was the Masters. For those of you who do not follow sports, it is arguably the biggest golf tournament of the year and even possibly the most prestigious event and prize in sports. I found a picture of one of the tournament's signature holes, the12th hole. As you can see above, it is a very pretty hole with a lot to look at. I chose to highlight this aspect, however, because golf is a great example of how we fuse nature and man made sports. A lot of the things you see are great examples of nature. Trees, bushes, grass, water, etc. But I can almost assure you that when the earth was created, there weren't little yellow flags sticking out of the ground, or a rock bridge perfectly arching over the water. This shows us that there are many man made features present in this image. This brings about the debate mentioned earlier, can this still be regarded as nature? It looks like nature, but it has been cleverly designed and altered to challenge the golfers who attempt to conquer it. It's hard to say. It really depends on how you define nature and environment. I personally consider things like this as, "nature plus." This basically means that I consider it to be nature, but with a few additives. Also, my definition of environment is an all-inclusive concept that involves everything around us, no matter where it came from. I really enjoyed this assignment because I found it interesting to try and define these concepts. When you first look at them, they do indeed seem easy to convey, but oh the contrary. I thought the above image would really help express my point of view and stance on the topic itself. Hope you enjoyed it bloggers, see you next week.