Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Analysis Of Edgar Allan Poe s I Became Insane, With...

As stated by Edgar Allen Poe, a prominent gothic author, â€Å"I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity† (Poe). Gothic authors were known for writing about insanity, but also becoming insane themselves. Poe was one of the authors that were known for becoming insane after writing about it for so long. Gothic period authors use terror and horror throughout novels, as well. Gothic literature was written in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. American Gothicism adapted the writing techniques and from European Gothicism. American authors adapted plots from others and made them into their own. The movement began by writing about â€Å"the terrifying Indians of the frontier† (Snodgrass 1). Gothic literature draws on a combination of terror and romanticism as its foundation. Movement authors incorporated more psychological aspects into the novels instead of peaceful aspects. Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne are influential a uthors of the movement. The authors incorporate the unique qualities of gothic literature in their works. In particular, Gothic period author Charles Brockden Brown incorporates the two characteristics of insanity and an atmosphere of mystery in his novels Wieland and Edgar Huntley. Undoubtedly, Gothicism was meant to focus on the darker side of human nature (Gothic Literature). This literary movement began from authors that believed the novels in the transcendentalism movement were too optimistic. The readers becameShow MoreRelatedI Became Insane, With Long Intervals Of Horrible Sanity Essay1986 Words   |  8 PagesI became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity. ― Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe is an American poet well-known for his eerie and gothic based themes. In fact, his tales of mystery and horror were the first to give rise to detective stories. In his short story, â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart† (1843), Poe invites us to experience a sinister and mystifying murder through the mind of the murderer, the narrator himself. This self-narrated tale takes place in a house that the narrator shares with an old

Monday, December 23, 2019

Essay about The Unique relationship between God Mankind...

The relationship between God and his creations humans can be said to be a very complex relationship. Genesis shows us many examples of Gods interaction with humans and humans interaction with each other. From the creation of Adam and Eve and all the events that follow afterwards, I shall show what the relationship tells us about the nature of God and mankind. When you read chapter one of Genesis you have the feeling that God is perfect. God holds all power and control. God turns chaos into order. God said Let there be light. And there was light, And God saw the light, that it was good (Gen 1. 3). Gods word is action, Gods word is law in the universe. When God creates something, he ends it with God seeing thats its good. This†¦show more content†¦With this being said God is both male and female, Father and mother. God is the dual parent and shows each side throughout Genesis. After God creates the humans he blesses them to spread and multiply over the earth, to hold rule over all things on the earth. This first blessing results in the human nature to desire blessings from God. After God makes Adam and Eve he puts them in the Garden Eden where they live in paradise. This shows that God loves his creations so much he wants to make sure they don?t die, that they can live and flourish. This to me is the female side of God. The male side comes forth and tells Adam and Eve to never eat from the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil or the tree of life. Armstrong points out that ?Pagans believed that is was death which made human beings different from the gods?..In the Bible however, knowledge?was the distinguishing hallmark of the divine.? This God is different from the other pagan Gods, he values wisdom and knowledge above all. So much that he fears what humans may do with the power of knowledge. The snake enters the scene and tempts Eve to eat the fruit of the tree of good and evil. He tells her it will not kill her, but she will become like God. Humans where made in the image of God, so it is in this nature to want to aspire to the image of which we were made, t his theme repeats in Genesis. The snake?s argumentShow MoreRelatedThe Bible, The Passage Of Genesis943 Words   |  4 Pagesset apart from all other earthly inhabitants. According to the Hebrew Bible, the passage of Genesis 1:26 – 31 can be excellently interpreted as one that contains the original blueprints of a divinely constructed purpose for the first humans. While the Book of Genesis, commonly attributed to the authorship of Moses, contains heavyset implications regarding pre-exilic and postexilic Israelite controversy, Genesis 1:26 – 31 reduces much of the common nuances in synchronic and diachronic perspectives asRead MoreApol 104 Secular Humanisn and Christianity917 Words   |  4 PagesSecular Humanism and Christianity I. Part One: Secular Humanism 1. The Question of Origin A humanist rejects any existence and or thought of God and is believed that modern science can answer the question of how life began. â€Å"Atheists†¦propose the idea that God is not necessary for life or morals, and the answer to mankind’s existence is found only in nature itself† (Weider Gutierrez. 2011, p56). They believe that the entire universe as well as life is simply by coincidence and thatRead MoreRelationship Between God And Adam993 Words   |  4 Pagespeople in society today. Therefore, the relationship between God and Adam can be said to be a very complex relationship. Genesis shows us many examples of God s interaction with Adam, apparently there is so much more about God’s disappointment and righteous anger in the garden. The world of Christianity fails to see there’s so much more to the story about God and Adam, I think many of us do the same. He was the first man, the father of mankind, however, Genesis does not fill-in the miss ing backgroundRead MoreUnderstanding Of Sin And Grace On The Basis Of Salvation1394 Words   |  6 Pagesglory of God† Everyone has sinned and fallen out of the grace. All mankind is comprehended to be involved, in some manner, in the disobedience of Adam. Everything began at the Garden of Eden when Adam sinned, the way that Adam was made in the image of God implied that he was free from all ordinary shortcomings and weaknesses and death. Adam s sin is regularly spoken of as a predisposition to sin inside human nature. Christ died for our sins and this we believe. There is a connection between the twoRead MoreThe Key Concepts Of A Christian Worldview1348 Words   |  6 Pagesentire history of the human race, mankind has always tried to reconcile the meaning of its existence, as well as its place within a vast universe. Many religions have risen and fallen during this time, but only a few can boast the longevity that Christianity has experienced for the past two millennia. The Christian faith is compelling to so many due to its strong basis in prophetic teachings, historical events, and the reconc iliation of a relationship between man and God. This essay will outline theRead MoreA Worldview Is The Foundation On The World1023 Words   |  5 PagesWhen building a foundation for your worldview, the book of Genesis provides ample facts regarding the natural world, human identity, human relationships, and civilization. The first chapter of Genesis teaches us that the world, everything surrounding it, and everything inhabiting it, is well-made and good in God’s eyes. Genesis 1:1 states that â€Å"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth†. Throughout the rest of the chapter, God continues adding to and forming the entire universe. HeRead MoreAnalysis Of Genesis And The Of God 1080 Words   |  5 Pages It was not meant to be this way. By way of the Book of Genesis, we come to understand that God had something special planned for creation and humanity. Creation, where all things created by God, through the Logos or Second Person of the Trinity, by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, culminating with humanity, was supposed to commune in harmony with God the Father. However, this perfect communion and relationship between God and humanity would be irreparably damaged by the disobedienceRead MoreMeaning And Types Of Old Testament Covenants1618 Words   |  7 PagesCovenant? God created humanity as an expression of His loving, relational character. In His wisdom, and because He is the Creator and sustainer of love, God created man with the free will to choose whether or not to love and worship Him in return. Adam and Eve’s choice to disobey initiated sin into the life of man, disconnecting the spiritual union they had with the Lord. From that very moment, God has been in a process to redeem fallen humanity back to Him. Man began to populate the land and God sawRead MoreThe Gospel Essentials : The Christian Religion Essay1688 Words   |  7 Pagesfinds its foundation on the Word of God and the work of Jesus Christ. Christianity finds its beginnings with Jesus Christ about 2,000 years ago. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came down to earth to teach, heal, and die for the sins of humanity. When God created man, he openly rebelled against God, causing a rift in their relationship. Since humans cannot save themselves, a perfect and completely innocent sacrifice was necessary in order to purify and restore mankind. Christianity is all about Jesus’Read More What a Christian Believes about Anthropology Essays771 Words   |  4 Pagesgeneral refers to any study of the status, habits, customs, relationships and culture of humankind. In a more specific and theological sense, anthropology sets forth the scriptural teachings about humans as God’s creatures. Christian anthropology recognizes that humans are created in God’s image but that sin has in some way negatively affected that image† (Grenz, Guetzki, and Nordling 11). In other words, anthropology is the study of how God created us uniquely in his image, and how sin affected the

Sunday, December 15, 2019

Security organizations and counterterrorism Free Essays

It is explicitly declared in the manual that Muslim religious goals and quests can not be attained except by force though bombings, assassinations, as well as wanton slaughter of human beings. Anti-terror professionals are thus warned that it is almost futile to try to engage such extremists in any from of dialogue since it has been implanted into their conscious selves that only force and aggression can yield fruits. Counterterrorism efforts should thus not have discussion as one of the ways to manage terrorism since the militias are not responsive to dialogue. We will write a custom essay sample on Security organizations and counterterrorism or any similar topic only for you Order Now The manual declares that Muslims can only resist the alleged condition of unawareness by being united and conforming to Muslim religious ideals. Counterterrorist experts are thus informed to be vigilant and wary of Islamic groupings since such are the ideal places where Islamic militias congregate, strategize, and share ideas. The terrorism guidebook offers three key principles necessary for establishing Islamic military organizations, which include: organization advisory committee and commander; soldiers; and a clearly-defined plan. This informs counterterrorism experts that Islamic terrorists are well-organized groups with a clear hierarchical power struc6ture. It is thus prudent to carry out a systematic dismantling of such organizations for effective handling of terrorism. Such measures would include firsts identifying the actual persons involved in terror activities, from planners to implementers, and then directly dealing with individual persons (Terrorist Training Manual, 2000). Several requirements for the Islamic military organizations are listed including: counterfeit money and fake documents; apartments plus hiding quarters; means of communication; means of transport; ammunition and arms; information; and transport. This implies that such Islamists are well prepared and hence counterterrorism personnel ought to have superior preparedness and planning in order to effectively tackle terrorism. Among the missions of Islamic military organizations is to kidnap enemy documents, personnel, arms, and secrets. Counterterrorism experts are thus required to be vigilant in securing such entities at all times, particularly those belonging to nations which are ideological enemies with Islamic regimes. The assassination of overseas tourists and enemy personnel is another mission of Islamic militias. Counterterrorism should therefore seek to ensure the safety of tourists abroad by either offering guidelines on safe places to visit or issuing travel advisories if there is reason to fear for the safety of tourists while overseas. Another mission of Muslim jihadists is the spreading of rumors as well as issuing statements that incite the masses against he perceived enemy. Counterterrorism should thus aim to try to prevent the publication of such inciting statements, intercept and destroy them before they reach their target audience or destroy the places where they are produced. The jihadists as well have the mission of bombing and obliterating embassies plus attacking important financial centers. This calls for heightened and vigilant surveillance on the overseas facilities such as embassies and business premises owned by regimes which the Muslim jihadists consider as enemies. The jihadists also aim to blow up bridges linking cities with neighboring areas as one of their missions. It is vital for counterterrorism personnel to be on the lookout and secure vital bridges to avert any possible strikes. Recruits into the jihadist movement ought to be Muslims. This implies that counterterrorism personnel ought to concentrate on Muslim characters when managing terrorism. Members as well should be mature, that is of the age of majority. Counterterrorism should thus focus on mature Muslim persons when investigating terror activities. One requirement for membership is the ability and commitment top keep secrets even from the closest persons. Counterterrorism experts ought o be therefore aware that it is hard to extract information from such terrorists and hence devise efficient methods of getting such information (Terrorist Training Manual, 2000). Regarding operational moneys, it is stated that they are to be split into 2 parts, with one segment going into schemes that provide monetary returns, while the other is kept to be spent only in the course of operations. This informs counterterrorism experts that the jihadists operate decoy projects which they use to earn cash for furthering their military objectives. Therefore, any enterprises having Muslim connections ought to be fully investigated to establish their owners, financiers and beneficiaries. The jihadists’ photos on traveling documents ought not to have a beard according to the manual. This should inform counterterrorism experts that the old notion that Muslims and jihadists always wear beards should be discarded so as to be able to effectively investigate the activities of suspect Muslims. Agreements are to be rent4ed preferably on ground floors to permit easy escape as well as digging ditches. Counterterrorism experts should thus be on the lookout particularly for suspects who live on ground floors when investigating terrorism activities. Apartments are to be rented preferably within newly-developed localities because people in such areas generally do not know each other and hence strangers are not as easily identifiable as in older neighborhoods. Counterterrorism experts therefore should particularly carry out surveillance in such neighborhoods for any suspicious characters. Organization members are instructed to offer information that is bound to mislead security agencies when they discover that their telephone conversations are being tapped into. This further complicates the work of counterterrorism agencies since they ought to be wary of volunteer information that is purported to implicate militants. Proper vetting and scrutiny of any informer-derived information is important to make sure that security agencies do not fall into the tricks of the jihadists and hence end up unnecessarily wasting time and possible resources (Terrorist Training Manual, 2000). The guidebook states that training venues for Islamic military organizations ought t to be located far away from areas with may people. Counterterrorism agencies therefore have got to conduct searches for such training sites away from major cities and towns preferably in the countryside where there are few people residing therein. The Islamic organization generally avoids overcrowded place such as, train stations, cafes, and recreation places. Security and counterterrorism agencies ought to specifically target less crowded places when carrying out anti-terrorism activities. Members of the organization carrying out strike operations are instructed not to appear Muslim-like and if possible, to completely disguise themselves. This is a challenge for security and counter-terror agencies since it appears like it is pointless to target and investigate overt Muslims regarding terrorism. Priority should be placed on members of the public who do not have outward Muslim appearances. Fighters in the Muslim military organization are taught beforehand about the answers to provide to security forces in the event that they are intercepted. Security agencies thus ought to be a bit more creative and flexible regarding the questions they field to suspects during interrogations. Routine, standard, and typical questions ought to be avoided. Questions should be asked depending on the environment so as to gather useful facts and surprise the Islamists into disclosing valuable information. The guidebook contains instructions to the effect that surveillance vehicle number plates and make should be similar to those of target vehicles. This should appropriately inform security agencies to be cautious when trailing or attacking suspicious vehicles as innocent persons, with cars matching the terrorists’ vehicle, may be involved. The Islamic organization is seemingly using ciphers according to the guidebook. Security organizations and counterterrorism personnel ought to be well versed with the various systems of cipher text currently employed so as to accurately and speedily interpret information when it is intercepted to facilitate quick and appropriate action (Terrorist Training Manual, 2000). Members of the Islamic organization are instructed not to confess of their involvement with the jihadist movement if they get arrested and are brought to trial. Security agencies should be aware that such characters will not provide any useful information that could lead to the dismantling of the terrorist cells. Other methods of obtaining information, other than interrogation and questioning ought to be developed to ensure effective handling of the terrorists and their activities. Members are as well instructed to be observant, alert, and watchful of the places they are interrogated at, which mostly are security facilities, so as to relay information to the jihadist movement regarding the physical set up of such buildings. This should ring a bell in security circles and appropriate places of interrogation should be created to avoid letting the Islamic militia get to know the set up of government facilities in case they plan future attacks on the same. Reference Terrorist Training Manual (May 2000). Provided courtesy of the Behavioral Analysis Program, Operational Training Unit, Counterintelligence Division, FBI Headquarters. How to cite Security organizations and counterterrorism, Papers

Saturday, December 7, 2019

Dominance Creating Imbalance in Nature-Free-Samples for Students

Question: Discuss about the Dominance Creating Imbalance in Nature. Answer: The discussion will brief about the banning of Burkini's in France. The swimming suit that covered the whole body of the women are Burkinis. secular countries like France has become highly secular and fearful of Islam culture has imposed a ban on such suits. however, defenders have claimed that the suit has no connection with crime and bloodshed but the mayor has claimed that the suit can make the other beachgoers afraid or angry. According the law they claim that excess heavy women wearing such dress can be a serious threat to public health and hygiene (1). The prime minister claims that Burkini emphasizes on women enslavement even though he opposes the women right act in France. The Muslims in France feel stigmatized and the police there feels it to be a vague law conducted by the country. There argue continues as the Prime minister supports the ban as they feel it is impacting the women right at the same time the health and education minister feels it to be irrelevant and unlikely to decide the dress code for women. The argument continued as a section claimed that women should not be kept under a limitation or regulation, on the other side a section of society claims that women should not be instructed on their dressing rights. The incident indicates the imbalance in power affecting the lifestyle of general human life(2). The incident clearly shows how the powerful government of France is imposing their decision and choice on women and forcing them to wear according their choice and preferences. The power of the government is suppressing the power of human right and women right in nature. The incident clearly shows how the power is influencing the entire system and a single voice is dominating the less powerful section of the society. The above situation can be only m et if the power is divided among every section of the society and everyone gets a right to speak for themselves. The incidence clearly shows a requirement for power division and importance for every section of the society so that no innocent is rejected from their rights. Bibliography: Rubin, Alissa J. "Fighting for the Soul of FranceMore towns ban a bathing suit: The burkini."The New York Times17 (2016). Dearden, Lizzie. "Burkini ban: Why is France arresting Muslim women for wearing full-body swimwear and why are people so angry."The Independent(2016).

Friday, November 29, 2019

A Dark Moment In Time Essays - Salem Witch Trials, The Crucible

A Dark Moment in Time The book, The Crucible by Arthur Miller, is a well-written drama of how scapegoating gone to the extreme can bring about tremendous contention and chaos even among the simplest of people. In this case, the victims of scapegoating were the citizens of Salem, Massachusetts. I feel that Miller did an excellent job on the way in which he conveyed the setting, characters, and plot. The story takes place in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. In their society there is only black and white, right and wrong. Given that the era is the 1600's we know that their lives weren't very complex back then. The people back then mainly farmed and worked from sun up till sun down. Therefore we know that they were a simple-minded people. The characters in this book were all necessary for the reader to have the full knowledge of what was going on in the story. The characters in this story are dynamic and have important roles. There are three main characters: Abigail Williams, John Proctor and Deputy Governor Danforth. Abigail is a contemptuous and beguiling woman who will stop at nothing "?until the last hypocrite is dead" (150). Her motivation is to save her own self no matter what the cost may be to anyone else. Proctor's motivation is to try to make sense out of all of the madness going on around him. Danforth is an incredibly stubborn man. His role in the story is that he is the judge of the witchcraft trials but he considers almost all intangible evidence as proof and rejects almost all tangible proof that is submitted to him. The setting and characters were essential to the unfolding of the plot. Some girls were seen in the forest supposedly conjuring up the devil in the woods by Reverend Samuel Parris but before he could identify all who were there, the girls fled. Parris managed to identify two girls; his niece Abigail Williams and his daughter Betty. Abigail claims that various people have practiced witchcraft on her and that she was totally innocent, when in fact, she is the guilty one. Throughout the book people are blaming witchcraft on each other and surprisingly enough people are actually being hung based on here-say rather than true evidence. One of the only people who can see this madness is John Proctor. He once said to Danforth, "There are them that will swear to anything before they'll hang; have you ever thought of that" (69). Proctor later confessed that he had committed adultery in the past with Abigail Williams. His own wife denies the accusation in hopes to avoid any public embarrassment on her husband and herself. This action incriminates Proctor and he is send to jail waiting for a death sentence. Danforth makes a deal with Proctor; that if he confessed that he had practiced witchcraft, he would not be hung, otherwise he would be. The climax of this story is when Proctor signs the false confession and later decides to tear it up to leave himself some pride and dignity. Arthur Miller conveyed the setting, characters, and plot very well. Each of the three was portrayed brilliantly. I am amazed that something this nonsensical has actually happened in Salem, Massachusetts. Personally I am glad that I don't live in a society that practices such nonsense. Work Cited Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. New York: Penguin Books, 1981. Given all of the numerous characters in the book, I would have to say that I am most like John Proctor. Given that he was a hero, which I'm not, I think that I have some of the same characteristics that he had. He was an honest man throughout the story, and when he wasn't he confessed his sins. He even confessed to committing adultery. "Elizabeth, I have confessed it" (113). I try to be honest at all times. However sometimes I fall short of that goal but when I do my conscience makes me feel guilty and almost always, I right the wrong. Work Cited Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. New York: Penguin Books, 1981. I think that a major issue today is parents using the schools as a scapegoat for unruly children. I personally have heard more than one parent

Monday, November 25, 2019

MBA Essay Editing

MBA Essay Editing MBA Essay Editing MBA Essay Editing To get an MBA admission you need to stand out from the crowd as you impress the admissions committee with your wellrounded personality and ability to multi-task. But the last and most important step consists of MBA Essay Editing. While doing some MBA Essay Editing read through your essay to gauge if it exhibits some clear thinking. Clarity of thought will lead to clarity of purpose so put down: Your goals Your attributes through which you can achieve them The things that motivate you in life Once you have written your essay you still have the vital step of MBA Essay Editing to go through before your essay can reach the completed and polished stage. This is when you need to check and recheck the ideas and text for any flaws as well as mistakes. What is MBA Essay Editing? Editing consists of checking what you have written for Grammar and Spelling mistakes. You can do this by using a ruler under each line to assure accuracy. These are the things to watch out for while MBA Essay Editing: Have I spelled all the words correctly? Is my grammar flawless? Have I read and reread my essay till I am completely satisfied with the outcome? Are the subjects and verbs in agreement with each other? Does every sentence have a subject? Have I stuck in the right tense? Is there a logical flow and a proper progression of ideas? Are my ideas and thoughts clearly written and easy to follow? Do I have a strong thesis statement that is validated by the rest of the essay and re-enforced in the conclusion? Does my essay have a beginning, middle and an end: Will my essay hold the attention of my reader? MBA Essay Editing Help Proof reading and MBA Essay Editing can seem like a chore but it can make all the difference to the quality of your essay. You may have written a brilliant paper but clumsy English and faulty spellings can just about ruin it. One thing you have to keep in mind though is NOT to edit when you are fatigued. Always take a break after writing your paper and then start on the editing stage when you are refreshed. Also, remember to use spell-check as a part of your editing process-but remember not to rely on it 100% since even spell-checks can go wrong sometimes and may not show up a spelling error even when there is one. After careful planning and MBA Essay Editing you are bound to get the grades that you are looking for. Read also: Assignments Online Writing English Coursework Sociology Coursework Help Religious Coursework Religion Coursework

Friday, November 22, 2019

Perception about consumer behaviour with respect to the environmental Research Proposal

Perception about consumer behaviour with respect to the environmental issues, is there influence of the environment courses of - Research Proposal Example (Ayres, 2012) Over the period of time, consumers have become ethical in nature with their buying decisions mostly being affected through their ethics. Global consumers now understand the consequences of their actions more clearly due to availability of more information and globalization effects. Environmental as well as ethical issues which were initially not highlighted are now being highlighted and discussed in public to better inform the consumers. There have been serious discussions regarding consumers in developed countries buying such diamonds and consequently helping finance war in such war torn countries in Africa. Considering the overall improvement in the consumer perceptions and knowledge, this research will attempt to explore and understand as to whether the industry has an impact on the consumer behavior. This research will further explore the efforts undertaken to stop this process and the overall degree of success achieved in this regard besides exploring as to how it can be stopped and whether awareness should be raised about it or not. (Campbell. 2004.)Â   The overall rationale for choosing this topic is based upon the fact that diamond industry generates more revenues by selling less therefore the overall flow of funds through blood diamonds may be higher and can be used extensively to finance the war. Further, this research is also significant in the sense that it presents a real life example of how industry wide phenomenon can actually have an impact on the consumers and their buying decisions. Literature Review There are many countries within Africa which depend upon diamonds as one of the key source of economic progress and revenue. For such countries, the revenue generated by selling diamonds in international market can help them achieve economic development and progress. However, for some countries, the revenues generated through selling these diamonds are diverted towards the purchase of guns and ammunition to support the war in many A frican countries. The diamonds which are sold for the purpose of financing the war are called blood diamonds or conflict diamonds. (Campbell,. 2004) In the wake of development in the product development and technology, today’s consumers are faced with multiple choices to buy a large number of goods and services at relatively affordable prices. The variety as well as the prices therefore allowed consumers to buy large volumes of such products and services and resultantly their supply also depends upon how much demand is being generated in international market. (Fram, and Baron, . 2004) The overall history of blood diamonds originates from Sierra Leone wherein a group with the name of Revolutionary United Front (RUF) attempted to capture the diamond mines to fund their struggle to restore democracy within the country. However, this trend flourished in other countries also wherein warlords used it as a credible source for earning revenues to fund their war efforts. Diamonds are considered as luxury goods and buying them at higher prices often involve an uncompromising consumer behavior from the buyers given the luxury and degree of prestige attached with it. Over the period of time, this issue and ethics related with

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Literary Analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Literary Analysis - Essay Example Through the character played by Tala, Mitch acknowledges the theme that â€Å"In life there are no random acts.† When Eddie –the main character- set fire to the prisoner of war camp, he had it in the back of his mind that he saw a kid in the camp. The event had haunted Eddie throughout his life and even he would have nightmares at times at the thought of killing a child. For this act, Mitch calls for the need of Christians to take ample responsibility for all their actions. Mitch teaches â€Å"lives are sacrificed for the sake of saving others.† Eddie’s captain had promised that he would never leave his soldiers behind during the Second World War. The promissory ends up costing The Captain his life as he was being held captive at the prisoner of war camp. Was it not for The Captain’s sacrifice, three of his soldiers –including Eddie- could have died over a landmine. Finally, of all the themes that â€Å"I Am My Brother’s Keeper† ministry believes in, love binds the believers most: And Mitch procures this message through his character Ruby. At heaven, Ruby could be a lot older. However, the love for his husband; Emile, still stood strong. Through Ruby and Emile’s love, Eddie –and all the believers- learn that life may end but love will endure forever. â€Å"Love is powerful,† and whoever believes in it secures eternal

Monday, November 18, 2019

Letter Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 2

Letter - Essay Example Moreover, this is to inform you that my application for US citizenship is in progress, and I will be living in the United States as a permanent resident, until I receive my citizenship after the immigration procedure. I am expecting an appointment date in the near future for your kind information. Lastly, I have endeavored extensively to attend this course in your reputable educational institution, in order to pursue my career as a dentist and serve my community, as well as, the globe as a whole. I once again express my gratitude for considering my application, and appreciate your cooperation in this regard. My passion for learning and enthusiasm for enrichment of emotional maturity has resulted in application at your reputable educational institution. In specific, I am interested to attend XXX School of Dentistry, as I have carried out extensive research related to your organization, and have been able to attain tremendous respect for your organization. One of the significant characteristics of your institution is that it offers a combination of pedagogical and professional perspective of learning by the provision of teacher-focused education with amalgamation of a broader perception of learning through practices of the learnt knowledge. In this regard, XXX School of Dentistry will provide me an effective platform to attend my long dreamed course, in order to serve my community, the country, and deserved people around the globe. Every individual is different and unique in terms of social and cultural perspective. I will be bringing cultural values, different from the United States, which will enhance cultural diversity in your institution and will contribute in the enrichment of learning experience of my classmates, as well as, the

Saturday, November 16, 2019

Consumer Protection Act Case Study

Consumer Protection Act Case Study This case study concerns the liability of a manufacturer of a product for harm which is suffered by the â€Å"ultimate consumer† of that product. It is important to consider the remedies that would be available in contract and under the doctrine of tortuous liability for defective goods. There is privity of contract in the relationship between Pamela and Cooks Stores and, therefore, in contract a remedy would be available to Pamela only. To invoke such a remedy under contract, Pamela should be able to rely on the terms implied into the contract by the Sale of Goods Act 1979, such as provided under s. 14 (2B) by which goods are not of satisfactory quality if they are unsatisfactory in terms of safety and durability, according to the standards of a reasonable person. The SGA provides recourse to a seller and, therefore, this act should enable Pamela to reclaim the  £175 purchase price of the food processor from Cooks Stores. According to the â€Å"narrow rule† in Donoghue v Stevenson a manufacturer owes a duty to the customer to take reasonable care when he sells goods in the form in which he intends them to reach the ultimate consumer with no reasonable possibility of intermediate examination. This rule is a variety of negligence and creates a regime of fault-based liability on the part of manufacturers, which will include retailers, such as Cooks Stores, alongside Price (UK) Ltd. Both Pamela and Rose are potential claimants since here they are both â€Å"ultimate consumers† and the rule covers those who receive goods as presents and bystanders. To bring an action in tort Rose, as the claimant, would have to show the existence of a duty of care, breach and causation. Rose might have a cause of action against Price (UK) Ltd as manufacturer, if she can show that there has been a failure in the production process, for instance. The doctrine of res ipsa loquitur may be useful here, as developed in Scott v London and St Katherine Docks Co., which, it has been argued, creates a rebuttable presumption of negligence on the part of the defendant. Following Erle CJ Rose would have to show that the accident was of the kind that does not normally occur in the absence of a want of care, that the defendant had exclusive control over the thing which caused harm and that the defendant cannot offer any plausible alternative explanation of what caused the accident. Although these would be evidential questions, they might help Rose to determine whether or not Price (UK) Ltd has breached its duty of care, which is important since experts are unable to identify the precise reason for the incident. It is important to consider the possibility of intermediate examination and whether Rose was using the food processor properly. While it is stated that Rose followed the operating instructions carefully, it should be noted that Pamela has used it previously – if not frequently – without difficulty. This leaves open the possibility that consumer misuse is at the root of the problem. Further, the manufacturer might be exonerated if another person can reasonably be expected to inspect their product. From the facts as presented it is unclear whether the food processor could reasonably be subject to an intermediate investigation, as was argued unsuccessfully by the defendant in Grant v Australian Knitting Mills. If this reasonable expectation arises the tester could be regarded as the cause of the harm, and therefore, Cooks Stores might be found to have contributed to the negligence of Price (UK) Ltd. It is, however, unclear whether a retailer can reasonably be expected to test every appliance that it sells. This defence would be unlikely to allow Price (UK) Ltd. to deflect all the blame on to Cooks Stores. The burden of proving the causal link between any breach of duty by Price (UK) Ltd and/or Cooks Stores and the harm suffered by Rose rests with Rose herself, as confirmed in Foster v Biosil. Should she fail to satisfy the burden of proof in this respect, her action will fail. Should Rose be successful, following Aswan Engineering she would be able to recover â€Å"non-integral† damage caused by the defect in the food processor, such as the vase. She would also have a claim for loss of amenity in respect of the personal injury to her hands and face, with a quantum to be evaluated. The regime introduced by the Part I of the Consumer Protection Act (CPA) 1987 would provide Rose with an alternative, since it purports to create a system of strict liability in respect of defective products that cause physical harm to a person or property. The CPA 1987 makes a producer, i.e. Price (UK) Ltd., responsible for the defectiveness of their product, however, according to CPA 1987 s. 3(1) regard may be had to any warnings which had been provided. The status of any such warning remains unclear. The CPA 1987 s. 3(2) allows a court to consider how a product might reasonably be used. It remains to be seen whether Rose was using the food processor for the correct purpose, even if she was attempting to follow the instructions. It is clear from CPA 1987 s. 6(4) that the defence of contributory negligence will apply to a defective product and any damages awarded to Rose may be reduced dependent on her blameworthiness. The CPA can be invoked against anyone involved within the chain of manufacture and distribution and liability is joint and several, so Rose would be best advised to sue whoever has the greatest financial resources. Cooks Stores, as a supplier, is however only liable to name their supplier and, accordingly, Price (UK) Ltd. will be Rose’s target for any damages. The CPA covers personal injury, but no damage to property under  £275 and, therefore, under the guise of this act, Rose would be unable to claim for the damage to her vase and would be advised to rely on tort.

Wednesday, November 13, 2019

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay Essay -- Amazing Adventures

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a story of defiance, of successfully breaking and escaping the oppressive mores of society with skill and tenacity, and an embodiment the novelistic tradition of disregard for the monolithic structure on which our world is based. The book is set up around the theme of â€Å"the carnivalesque†, and shows how this rebel attitude can be taken up like a mantel, so a character can make change and find happiness in an oppressive world. These characters come to realize that the carnivalesque is the true way to live, and it is only when they wear the mantle full time that they find satisfaction in their life. In the German occupied Prague, the Jews have been earmarked for hardship and extinction at the hands of the Nazis. Joseph Kavalier, a young man of a bohemian Jewish family, spent his youth under the tutelage of a great escape artist. Fascinated with slight of hand tricks, stealth, and lock picking, Joseph is taught all manner of clandestine skills. It is with these abilities, that he is able to revel in the carnivalesque and escape where others are constrained by their insistence on following the rules. The great protector of the Jews is the golem of Prague from ancient myth, a fantastic example of the Carnivalesque in the form of a Cabalic defiance of power. With the knowledge of how to activate the Golem lost to time, the secret society charged with protecting it must smuggle their massive charge out of Prague before the Nazis discover its location. Young Joseph, already hoodwinked by a bribed Nazi emigration offical, sees in the Golem his opportunity to escape. With the Golem dressed in an enormous suit and posed as a dead... ...tions that determine the structure and order of ordinary . . . life are suspended . . ." (Kohl) Oppressed as he is, Joe fails to embrace the carnivalesque and so fail his family and his love ones. Only by escaping his place in the order and suspending the rules can he manage to make change. As you can see, the Carnivalesque is key to these characters. Though Sam finds that by putting on the cloak of the Carnival, he finds satisfaction, Joe, despite his excellent talents, fails to make the final leap of logic in time to make meaningful change. His family dies and he goes without his loved ones for years because of his failure to take up the mantle of the Carnivalesque. It is not until he returns, soiled as his repuation is, to his old love and son, where their strange new family unit is questioned and mocked by the world, that he finally finds his satisfaction. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay Essay -- Amazing Adventures The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a story of defiance, of successfully breaking and escaping the oppressive mores of society with skill and tenacity, and an embodiment the novelistic tradition of disregard for the monolithic structure on which our world is based. The book is set up around the theme of â€Å"the carnivalesque†, and shows how this rebel attitude can be taken up like a mantel, so a character can make change and find happiness in an oppressive world. These characters come to realize that the carnivalesque is the true way to live, and it is only when they wear the mantle full time that they find satisfaction in their life. In the German occupied Prague, the Jews have been earmarked for hardship and extinction at the hands of the Nazis. Joseph Kavalier, a young man of a bohemian Jewish family, spent his youth under the tutelage of a great escape artist. Fascinated with slight of hand tricks, stealth, and lock picking, Joseph is taught all manner of clandestine skills. It is with these abilities, that he is able to revel in the carnivalesque and escape where others are constrained by their insistence on following the rules. The great protector of the Jews is the golem of Prague from ancient myth, a fantastic example of the Carnivalesque in the form of a Cabalic defiance of power. With the knowledge of how to activate the Golem lost to time, the secret society charged with protecting it must smuggle their massive charge out of Prague before the Nazis discover its location. Young Joseph, already hoodwinked by a bribed Nazi emigration offical, sees in the Golem his opportunity to escape. With the Golem dressed in an enormous suit and posed as a dead... ...tions that determine the structure and order of ordinary . . . life are suspended . . ." (Kohl) Oppressed as he is, Joe fails to embrace the carnivalesque and so fail his family and his love ones. Only by escaping his place in the order and suspending the rules can he manage to make change. As you can see, the Carnivalesque is key to these characters. Though Sam finds that by putting on the cloak of the Carnival, he finds satisfaction, Joe, despite his excellent talents, fails to make the final leap of logic in time to make meaningful change. His family dies and he goes without his loved ones for years because of his failure to take up the mantle of the Carnivalesque. It is not until he returns, soiled as his repuation is, to his old love and son, where their strange new family unit is questioned and mocked by the world, that he finally finds his satisfaction.

Monday, November 11, 2019

Apple Price Cut Essay

To what extent the iPhone pricing strategy is similar to the iPod pricing strategy? How do you explain that the iPod price cut did not lead to such a level of customers’ protest? Answer: Both iPhone and iPod have experienced a large amount of price cut in their product lifecycle. In this document, we can find that iPod was launched in October 2001. Tough relatively high priced for an MP3 player, it was hugely demanded and remains popular till date though there was a price slash in 2005. Similar to the price cut of the iPod, two months after the launch of the iPhone, Apple lowered the price by 200 USD. However, regarding the price strategy, a big difference between two products is the timing of price cut. iPod adjusted its price after experiencing a 4-year success from its launch in 2001, whereas iPhone drop in price in only 2 month, which is the main explanation of why the iPod price cut did not lead to such a serious level of customers’ protest. Although both price adjustments were designed for the aim to further expand in the mass market and improve the sales, we can find that the main reason for price cut of iPod is to sell more products in its declining period of product lifecycle. By contrast, the objective of price cut of iPhone is to rapidly monopoly the smart phone market in its growing period of product lifecycle, which resulted a part of Apple fans’ profits since they bought the product in a high price. 2. â€Å"Market analysts pointed out that Apple had created a strong brand and customer loyalty which it capitalized on by adopting a skimming strategy in pricing. They also felt that customers accept its highly priced products with equanimity. To go a step further, they consciously expect it to be so.What does this tell you about the value of iPhone own-price elasticity, cross-price elasticity and income elasticity? Answer: The practice of ‘price skimming’ involves charging a relatively high price for a short time where a new, innovative, or much-improved product is launched onto a market. Obviously, due to the reason that Apple had created a strong brand image by its innovation of technology and creativity of design, and loyalty of c ustomers, particularly those Apple crazy fans, the price skimming strategy was able to work extremely well when iPhone was launched onto the market. Meanwhile, Apple’s iPhone entered the highly volatile cell phone market combining telephony, MP3, Web surfing and video watching, which completely revolutionized the tech-savvy market and was most awaited by both the technology enthusiasts and mainstream media. Therefore, the success of this strategy was largely dependent on those first adopters’ inelasticity of demand for the product either by the market as a whole. However, in the cell phone industry, where the product lifecycle is relatively short and the market is highly competitive. Before some other competing products or substitutes emerging on the market, iPhone could enjoy its high price and benefit from its â€Å"monopoly profits† in a short term where demand is relatively inelastic. Whereas in the cell phone industry, the demand from mass market is price elastic, which is the main reason that Apple needs to drop its price to increase its sales according to its mass-market strategy. In terms of cross-price elasticity, we can think about this question from two aspects: complements and substitutes. Firstly, due the reason that the demand of iPhone is price elastic in mass market, price of iPhone decrease, quantity demanded of components increases, which leads Apple to get a lower price of components from its supplier and further guarantee its gross margin of iPhone. In addition, the increase of sales also means the increase number of customer buying and renting apps from Apple’s online store. Secondly, considering substitutes, price of iPhone decrease, and quantity of competing products demanded decrease. Since the demand is price elastic, the lower production cost and increase revenue from Apple softer ware are able to recuperate the loss from cost cut. We can make the conclusion that regarding to the income elasticity, a decrease of price of iPhone has a positive impact on its total revenue. 3. Based on the information provided in the case would you say that the market for smartphone is closer to monopoly or to monopolistic competition? Justify. Answer: Yes, base on the information provided in the case, I regard the smartphone industry as a monopolistic competition. Monopolistic competition  is a form of imperfect competition  where many competing producers sell products that are  differentiated  from one another. Smartphone industry has following characteristics:* There are several producers like Apple, Blackberry, Nokia, Motorola etc. , and many consumers in the market, but no company can total control over the market price. * Consumers perceive that there are non-price differences among the competitors’ products. * There are few barriers to entry and exit.Producers have a degree of control over price. 4. Is the price cut decided by Apple two months after iPhone initial launch consistent with the smartphone market structure described above? Answer: Yes, the performance of iPhone is consistent with the smartphone market structure. Firstly, the MC firms sell products that have real or perceived non-price differences. However, the differences are not so great as to eliminate other goods as substitutes. Technically, the cross price elasticity of demand between goods in such a market is positive. In this case, iPhone perform the same basic functions but have differences in qualities such as design, style, reputation and appearance. Secondly, independent decision-making is another characteristic of monopolistic competition. The firm gives no consideration to what effect its decision may have on competitors. In other words each firm feels free to set prices as if it were a monopoly. Lastly, Apple has some degree of market power. Market power means that the firm has control over the terms and conditions of exchange. An MC firm can raise it prices without losing all its customers. The firm can also lower prices without triggering a potentially ruinous price war with competitors, which is the reason why iPhone was able to largely cut its price in two months. 5. Knowing the price cut affected negatively Apple reputation, do you believe Apple adopted an opportunistic pricing strategy initially selling the iPhone at a high price to take advantage of holiday season high spending habits and then dropping the price to stimulate market growth? Is this consistent with Apple pricing strategy in its other product lines like computers and iPod? Answer: I don’t entirely believe that iPhone lunched at a high price was due to it attempted to take the advantage of â€Å"holiday season high spending habits†. From my point of view, there are two main reasons why iPhone priced high at the beginning: Firstly, the core consumer groups of iPhone are enthusiastic fans of high-tech gadgets; and some of them are loyalty customers of Apple. These parts of people are not sensitive for iPhone’s price. What attract them are its quality, design and innovation. The first adopters’ inelasticity of demand is a good opportunity for using the price skimming strategy. Secondly, high price strategy is an effective method to build a high-end brand image. It’s much easier that a high brand image product cuts its price for promotion than a low brand image one raises it. For the tech-savvy market, the product lifecycle is short. We can often find on the market that a product of Apple or other brands cuts its price when it has been launched for a period of time. But iPhone dropped its price only 2 months after it had been introduced onto the market. This strategy is quite different from other products of Apple. For instance, iPod depreciated 2 years after it came into the market. Seeing the price of iPhone must be in line with iPod Touch, this strategy is â€Å"special† for Apple, comparing with other products. 6. â€Å"According to Apple executives the move had been planned long ago and felt that the pricing strategy was conceived in part to keep the iPhone’s pricing in line with its new iPod touch. † Explain to what extent a high-priced iPhone could be an obstacle to the success of the new iPod Touch. Based on what you know about Apple late development do you find that explanation convincing? Answer: In terms of the features of these two types of products, iPod Touch is like a simplified version of iPhone, without the function of a â€Å"phone†. This determines that the prices of these two types of products must be â€Å"in a line†, which means, for a reasonable consideration, the price of iPod Touch must be lower than iPhone but not too far away. If iPhone had not cut its price, iPod Touch must have had been priced at a higher level than the realistic one. We assume that, if iPhone 4 GB continued being sold at 499USD, iPod Touch may be sold at 400 or 450USD. As an mp3 player, it would be much more expensive than its competing brands. On the contrary, if iPhone had kept a high price level but iPod Touch had been set at a low one, the customers would have had been confused for â€Å"why a simplified version of iPhone is so much ‘cheaper’ than iPhone? † That would have had a negative impacts on the sales of both iPhone and iPod Touch, even would have had impaired Apple’s brand image. Combining with what I know about the late development of these two types of products, I found although the price cutting had a temporary harm on customer’s trust, iPhone and iPod Touch both performed well on the market. It proved the importance of keeping the price of iPhone and iPod Touch in a line. 7. â€Å"But the sharp price cut suggested that even Apple, which has long lived in a pricing bubble insulated from other personal computer makers, is not immune from the brutal pressures of the cellular phone business. † Does this statement mean that the personal computers market is different from the cellular phone business in other words, the cellular phone market is more competitive than the personal computer market? Why? Do you share this view? Justify. Answer: From this statement, I can’t make the conclusion that the cell phone market is more competitive than the personal computer market. Apple is one of the earliest personal computer manufacturers in the world. Its personal computer products are behalf of the most advanced PC technology of the world. Especially its graphics processing technology and operating system have high reputation. Thus, Apple’s PC products long lived in a pricing bubble insulated from other personal computer makers. That means Apple has definitely strong market power on PC market. Its high price doesn’t mean there is less competition. Furthermore, the technical innovation, appearance design, and function combination of cell phone products are updating so fast. So the lifecycle of a handset product is shorter than a computer. The price cutting often occurs when a mobile phone has come onto market for a period of time. The objective usually is for making price room for a new generation of product, which isn’t caused by competing activities. In conclusion, I don’t share this view. 8. â€Å"Keeping in mind Apple’s range of high priced products which gives it an â€Å"aura† of exclusivity, was Jobs decision to reduce the price a right one?†¦ With a 50% gross margin, Apple is setting itself up for aggressive price declines going forward†. Do you believe that Apple move is a sign that it is ready to enter a price war? Would this mean that Apple is leaving the niche market position it held for decades to go after mass market? What would be the pros and cons of that strategy? Do you believe it? Answer: The characteristics of Apple’s products are novel design, fashionable appearance and the combination of music, game, music, web surfing and other functions. It determines the positioning of iPhone must be high, and the main target consumer group is high income, music ; digital amateurs. This segment of consumer has low sensitive for price. Pure price war will not yield more market shares for iPhone. So, the price cutting strategy doesn’t mean Apple is ready for the price war. The product’s features determine Apple’s niche market strategy. But a cell phone product innovates relatively faster than other cargos. When a product successfully attracted some first adopters, how to sell them to more followers should be the core problem. Cutting the price and going in to the mass market is a universal method. Apple also adopted this strategy on iPhone. Pros of going to mass market: * iPhone can attract more followers. Some of them are sensitive to the price, their demands are elastic. Before the price cutting and entry of the mass market, some of the non-owners didn’t buy it just because of the high price. * iPhone can expand its market share quicker, and establish the competitive barriers. Its market power will be stronger. * The expanded customers would have had bought more online products, which would have had a big growth of income.By this strategy, iPhone can consolidate their customer-friendly brand image, and increase the loyalty of the customers. * The cooperation with AT;T can get a synergy between these two brands, and can receive a sum of bonus revenue from the carrier. Cons of going to mass market: * It made the brand image be lower than before. * Decreased the gross margin of iPhone. * Hurt some d ie-hards’ loyalty. * Increased the degree of monopoly, made the competition imperfect, and harmed the balance of the benign competition with its rivals. But a cellular phone product such as iPhone goes into the mass market is usually a temporary strategy when the product comes into the mature or declining period in its lifecycle, or when the company wants to make some price room for a new product. Apple cut iPhone’s price was just for keeping the iPhone’s price being in a line with iPod Touch’s. It didn’t mean Apple changed its main branding strategy to go into the mass market. For that time, I assume that it was a reasonable strategy for Apple to cut iPhone’s price.

Saturday, November 9, 2019

Joe Lieberman Profiles in Courage

Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman According to John F Kennedy, from his book Profiles in Courage a person who â€Å"In whatever arena of life one may meet the challenge of courage, whatever may be the sacrifices he faces if he follows his conscience – the loss of his friends, his fortune, his contentment, even the esteem of his fellow men – each man must decide for himself the course he will follow. (246)† is a profile in courage. Joe Lieberman an independent democrat has made many controversial actions towards the impact of his career (Condon).Lieberman a Connecticut Senator was elected in 1988, has made some controversial decisions in his career (Gunzburger). The ongoing war in Iraq is a commonly debated topic Lieberman, unlike his political party’s views, supported the troops in Iraq wishing they stay (Adyanthaya). In the most recent presidential election Joe Lieberman sided with Republican nominee John McCain much to the dislike of the Democratic Party (Caliborne and Hovell). His most recent action is his beliefs towards the healthcare bill (Condon).Senator Lieberman has gone against his political party risking his popularity and support from his people. The War in Iraq and Afghanistan has been a very controversial topic of how to approach a way out. Joe Lieberman has supported relieving Iraq of Saddam Hussein before George W. Bush was even elected president for his first term (Adyanthaya). Lieberman, in 1998, co-sponsored the Iraq Liberation Act. Unanimously the Act passed the Senate and made a change to the power of the government in Iraq official U. S. policy.Many people in the Democratic Party changed their opinion of the Iraq Liberation. Joe Lieberman went against his party supporting the Act (Adyanthaya). Many of Lieberman’s supporters were against America being involved in Iraq. Lieberman has been a target of political attacks based on decisions and beliefs (Adyanthaya). An article in the New York Times has describe d him as â€Å"an increasingly unwelcome figure within his party. † Lieberman’s beliefs and decisions have led his party to rule him out and may have started to ruin his political career.In 2000 he was the Democratic Party’s nominee for Vice President. In the 2006 senate election Lieberman was faced with a challenger for the upcoming election (Caliborne and Hovell). To make Lieberman’s matters worse The Daily Kos the single most popular liberal website at the time, was looking for donations to help Lieberman’s challenger Ned Lamont. Ned Lamont won the Democratic vote over Lieberman in the 2006 primary Senate Election (Burns). Lieberman came back and won as an Independent. In 2007 Lieberman was a supporter of Vice President Cheney’s plan for the war in Iraq.Lieberman appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation . There Senator Lieberman stated â€Å"I think we’ve got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians t o stop them from killing Americans in Iraq. And to me that would include a strike over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back to Iraq to kill out soldiers (Porter). † Once again Lieberman went against his Democratic Party supporting the Republican opinion on the war in Iraq.In the 2008 presidential election Joe Lieberman made his stand supporting Republican nominee John McCain. In 2007 Lieberman decided to endorse McCain because he considered him to be â€Å"the most capable to be commander in chief†¦, and the most capable of uniting the country so that we can prevail against Islamic extremism† said an aide of Lieberman (King and Bash). Lieberman’s aide also insured that the senator doesn’t see this as a â€Å"commentary on or an endorsement of the Republican Party, only the person (King and Bash). † Many people who know and respect Senator Lieberman are unhapp y with his decisions.Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stated â€Å"I have great respect for Joe, but I simply have to disagree with his decision to endorse Senator McCain (King and Bash). † When founder and CEO of the Democratic Leadership Council Al From, found out about Lieberman’s choice he said that â€Å"I am very saddened by senator Lieberman’s choice, and profoundly disagree with it. We need a Democratic president in 2008. (King and Bash)†, In response Lieberman said that â€Å"I know that it’s unusual for a Democrat to been endorsing a Republican. Lieberman also added that â€Å"Political Parties are important in our country. But they’re not more important than what’s best for our country, they’re not more important than friendship. † McCain said that â€Å"I think it’s courageous when anyone crosses party lines to support a candidate from another party, the easiest thing for Joe to do would have just h ave sat on the sidelines in this campaign (Caliborne and Hovell). † The most current topic Joe has dealt with is the heath care reform bill.Senator Lieberman states that he has been â€Å"opposed to a movement-created, government-run insurance company (Grim)† In August of 2009 Lieberman believed that we have to put of the health care reform until the economy is out of recession (Noah). In October the bill that contained no public option passed the committee with every Republican opposed with the exception of Olympia Snowe (Grim), Lieberman stated that he will not support it â€Å"the way it is now. (Noah)† He also said that he will join a Republican filibuster against healthcare reform if it did contain public option.Lieberman said he’s â€Å"opposed a public option because of the potential burden it could place on taxpayers (Condon). † Democrats however made a public option that would be funded by premiums in place of federal funds (Condon). Health care options have yet to be finalized and Lieberman’s decisions are yet to be determined. â€Å"Being a Republican is important. Being a Democrat is important. But you know what’s more important than that? The interest and well-being of the United States of America (King and Bash),† he has said and has exactly done.In Lieberman’s opinion he has made decisions on the interest and well-being of the country (Caliborne and Hovell). He has stood up for what he believed in, gone against many of his supporters and against his own political party. What else does Lieberman have to do to become a Profile in Courage? Works Cited Adyanthaya, Anil. â€Å"RealClearPolitics – Articles – Profile in Courage? Not John Murtha. † RealClearPolitics – Opinion, News, Analysis, Videos and Polls. N. p. , n. d. Web. 6 Dec. 2009. . Alter, Jonathan. Alter: Lieberman, Health Care, and Hurt Feelings | Newsweek Voices – Jonathan Alter | Newsweek. com . † Newsweek – National News, World News, Health, Technology, Entertainment and more†¦ | Newsweek. com. N. p. , n. d. Web. 6 Dec. 2009. . Burns, Alexander. â€Å"Ned Lamont could ‘opt in' vs. Joe Lieberman – Alexander Burns – POLITICO. com. † Politics, Political News – POLITICO. com. N. p. , n. d. Web. 6 Dec. 2009. . Condon, Stephanie . â€Å"Joe Lieberman Says He'll Block Reid's Health Care Bill – Political Hotsheet – CBS News. Breaking News Headlines: Business, Entertainment & World News – CBS News. N. p. , n. d. Web. 6 Dec. 2009. . Grim, Ryan. â€Å"Lieberman Willing To Sink Health Care Reform†¦ But He Would Really Hate To Do It (AUDIO). † Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post. N. p. , n. d. Web. 6 Dec. 2009. . Gunzburger, Ron. â€Å"Politics1 – Profile of Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT). † Politics1 – American Politics, Elections, Candidates & Campaigns.N. p. , n. d. W eb. 12 Dec. 2009. . Kennedy, John F.. Profiles in Courage. New York: Harper & Bros, 1956. Print. King, John, and Dana Bash. â€Å"Lieberman: McCain can reunite our country – CNN. com. † CNN. com – Breaking News, U. S. , World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News. N. p. , n. d. Web. 6 Dec. 2009. . â€Å"Lieberman Throws Support Behind McCain – Political Radar. † Political Punch. N. p. , n. d. Web. 6 Dec. 2009.

Wednesday, November 6, 2019

Versions of Libertarianism

Versions of Libertarianism Introduction The doctrine of libertarianism entails that people have inherent or natural rights. These rights should not be taken away (Shaw and Vincent 15). It is an immoral act for anyone or for the governments to deny people their rights.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Versions of Libertarianism specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Examples of these natural rights include the right to own property, the right to personal autonomy and the right to use unused resources. According to this school of thought, the society can cooperate and coexist well when people respect their natural rights. The paper delineates the two versions of libertarianism namely total libertarianism and moderate libertarianism. Total libertarianism According to this version of libertarianism, people are protected by the government. The government has the obligation of ensuring that all the rights of people are protected. The government needs to fo rmulate rules that ensure individuals are well protected. Therefore, the citizens should be protected from activities like breach of contracts, fraud, theft and any subjection of force. Moderate libertarianism This version of libertarianism ensures that the government protects free and fair competition in the markets. People should be allowed to carry on with their businesses and other activities without restriction provided they are not violating the rights of others. For instance, there should be no monopolies, oligopolies and integrations in the market. The market should be free to allow people make progress in their duties without restrictions.Advertising Looking for essay on philosophy? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Strengths of total libertarianism One of the strengths of total libertarianism is that it ensures that people are protected from mistreatment. People have equal rights and nobody should violate the m. Further, it ensures that people coexist well in a society. It fosters transparency and honesty in the society as people respect each other’s rights. For instance, no person should steal someone’s property as this would amount to violation of natural rights. Weaknesses One weakness is that it is difficult for human beings to govern themselves. Therefore, a government should be formed to ensure that these rights are practiced. Further, the government, which is bestowed the responsibility of ensuring the protection, may not have the right mechanism or may be biased in its decisions, hence can have negative impact on the process. Strength of the moderate libertarianism This ensures that people cooperate and coexist with one another without restrictions or limitations. It enhances unity in the society. Moreover, it promotes the spirit of togetherness and discipline in a society as people make decisions at free will. Weaknesses libertarianism This form of government poses a risk of exploitation, especially in situations when it does not participate in decision-making. For instance, it leads to monopolies that may exploit innocent people.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Versions of Libertarianism specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More People may take the law in their hands and cause harm to others due to the absence of a body like the government to monitor their moves. Of these two free market philosophies, total libertarianism makes more sense. It ensures that the rights of an individual are fully protected. No person is supposed to be deprived of such rights. Therefore, this allows people in a society to respect and coexist with one another well. This philosophy best addresses the current unequal distribution of wealth. The society is required to use what they have and assist one another. It is the right of every individual to own property and use available resources to uplift his/her li fe. Therefore, total libertarianism gives an equal opportunity for every member of the society to use resources to amass wealth. There is no restriction, hence it can help to alleviate unequal wealth distribution facing the world today. Shaw, William, and Vincent Barry. Moral Issues in Business. 12th ed. Paperback, 2012. Print.

Monday, November 4, 2019

Cover Letter stating interest and intent Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Cover Letter stating interest and intent - Essay Example In addition, as a study student during Seoul Korea educational trip, I acquired effective public administration policies. The leadership and administration skills remain imperious in effective management of Fort Collins community and initiation of economic activities. Besides the aforementioned skills, I have had comprehensive experience in sustainable and successful research as a beneficiary of Seoul Metropolitan Government. Moreover, economic development experience gained as an intern at City of Clermont would be domineering in assisting me establish viable economic activities for improvement of Fort Collins and its community. Furthermore, I would have the greatest ability to initiate efficient planning and management programs that would uplift economy of Fort Collins’ community Moreover, I have acquired exceptional planning, coordination, and management skills as an intern and student. I anticipate to graduate with a masters degree in urban and regional planning and I believe that the course have equipped me with unbeatable organization techniques that would successful execute the outlined duties and responsibilities. Moreover, intern experience at Osceola and City organizations granted me an immediate experience in public participation, interaction, planning, and development skills that I believe would be authoritative in administration and management of the organization. Furthermore, my flexible and accommodative interpersonal skills, natural preference for change and working with people would be indispensable in establishing a result-oriented workforce at your supportive

Saturday, November 2, 2019

Three Levels of Local Culture Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Three Levels of Local Culture - Essay Example When you study the artifacts level you find that in Bastrop volunteers usually interpret the parish history using local artifacts. The level of architecture of buildings is high. There are several building permits given in a year. In the job industry people use formal language. Newspaper and radio cover the news. Values and beliefs are explained in the sense that when IPC mill was closed the mayor predicted that a lot of people will be affected. This could be termed as his own view. In Bastrop there are various attraction sites which include Cairo museum, Tensas river national wildlife and others. The rate of crime is 75.79% than the national average. The government promises a great work force in order to make small businesses grow (Bastrop, 2015). Bastrop has hardworking people though the poverty line is high. For example multinational organizations operating beyond their own national culture, will still have influence of the deepest culture level. Underlying values reflect the way individuals evaluate the self and world. The decision to build a wood pellet in Bastrop will be observed to see if it will be successful or not hence forgotten. Culture exists as: the front line followed by middle management and lastly is corporate level (Nurdin,

Thursday, October 31, 2019

The Difference between Writer's or Reader's Role Essay

The Difference between Writer's or Reader's Role - Essay Example The printed expression is not anything additional than dark scribbles on a white sheet, and hitherto it is those scribbles that posses the influence to yield functional replies in the humanoid frame. I gained this knowledge, this experience prematurely in life, and I cannot ever, ever disremember it. I reason to myself that I have to be a writer since I relish writing. I am delighted to type and I appreciate knowing the fact that I am not dull but imaginative being.I am inclined to develop my notions by looking at the realm surrounding me, from the dreams inside of me. I make an effort to write in not one continuous time-slot a day but in fact in one unrelenting moment when motivation stirs me. I consider that adverbs and adjectives should not be used frugally but instead should be used robustly, profusely, and without dry spells. They bring the writing to life and invoke the readers to feel like a part and live in the script. To me, personally, a real writer has the impulse to scribble, affection towards linguistics, a class on the use of sentence structure and figures of speech, a varied association with inscription in diverse genera and from dissimilar ancient eras, colossal know-how of the use of jargons, collected with a disposition for selecting words fitting to perspective and spectators, and the talent to inscribe in spite of hindrance and interferences. Impartially placing verses on paper (or onto a computer folder) ensures not that ‘writing’ has occurred.â€Å"Being talented in very simple terms means that you were born to write. You have the gift of the muse, and whatever you might do for a living, you simply have to write something every now and then. To some extent, all of us have that gift, or at least most of us. This is the most probable reason why blogging has become so popular today†(Panter). For a ‘genuine writer’letteringshould not bean activity to do sometime or the other, a flair to be engagednow and then, but in fact a compulsion that boils itself and issensed as instantly as hot and cold.

Tuesday, October 29, 2019

What Is Literature Essay Example for Free

What Is Literature Essay I am grateful for help with this book from many people, especially Julian Wolfreys, Jason Wohlstadter, and Barbara Caldwell, my â€Å"Senior Editor† and invaluable assistant at the University of California, Irvine. I thank Simon Critchley for ? rst suggesting that I might write this book for the series he edits, as well as for his careful reading of the manuscript. I am grateful also to the co-editor of the series, Richard Kearney, for a helpful reading of the manuscript. Muna Khogali and Tony Bruce, of Routledge, have been unfailingly generous and courteous. Tony Bruce read the manuscript with care and made useful suggestions. A preliminary version of some of the ideas in this book, especially those in Chapter 4, was presented as a lecture for the Koehn Endowed Lectureship at the University of California, Irvine, in Febuary 2001. The lecture was called â€Å"On the Authority of Literature. † Subsequently, the talk was given as the ? rst annual Lecture on Modern Literature for the Department of English at Baylor University in April, 2001. The lecture was then printed there as a pamphlet for local circulation. I am grateful to my host and sponsor at Baylor, Professor William Davis, for his many kindnesses. Di?  erent versions of the talk were given at two conferences, in August 2001, in the People’s Republic of China: at a triennial conference of the Chinese Association for Sino-Foreign Literary and xi On Literature Cultural Theory, held in Shenyang, and at an International Symposium on Globalizing Comparative Literature, sponsored by Yale and Tsinghua Universities. I thank Professor Wang Ning for arranging these invitations and for many other courtesies. A German translation will be published as my contribution to a research project on â€Å"representative validity,† sponsored by the Zentrum fur Literaturforschung in Berlin. I especially thank Ingo Berensmeyer, as well as other colleagues in Berlin, for the chance to try out my ideas on them. A Bulgarian translation will be published in a Festschrift for Simeon Hadjikosev, of So? a University. I thank Ognyan Kovachev for inviting me, and for other kindnesses. Altogether, my preliminary ideas for Chapter 4 and for some other germs of this book have had the bene? t of many helpful comments and reactions. Finally, I thank the dedicatee of this book for su? ering once more through my ordeals of composition. She had to endure my faraway look, my dreamy absentmindedness. I was dwelling again in imagination on the other side of Alice’s looking-glass or on the deserted island where the Swiss Family Robinson made such an enchanting home. It has taken me a good many months to ? gure out what to say about that experience. Sedgwick, Maine December 15, 2001 xii Acknowledgements What is Literature? One FAREWELL LITERATURE? The end of literature is at hand. Literature’s time is almost up. It is about time. It is about, that is, the di? erent epochs of di? erent media. Literature, in spite of its approaching end, is nevertheless perennial and universal. It will survive all historical and technological changes. Literature is a feature of any human culture at any time and place. These two contradictory premises must govern all serious re? ection â€Å"on literature† these days. What brings about this paradoxical situation? Literature has a history. I mean â€Å"literature† in the sense we in the West use the word in our various languages: â€Å"literature† (French or English) â€Å"letteratura† (Italian), â€Å"literatura† (Spanish), â€Å"Literatur† (German). As Jacques Derrida observes in Demeure: Fiction and Testimony, the word literature comes from a Latin stem. It cannot be detached from its Roman-ChristianEuropean roots. Literature in our modern sense, however, appeared in the European West and began in the late seventeenth century, at the earliest. Even then the word did not have its modern meaning. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word â€Å"literature† was ? rst used in our current sense only quite recently. Even a de? nition of â€Å"literature† as including memoirs, history, collections of letters, learned treatises, etc. , as well as poems, printed plays, and 1 On Literature  novels, comes after the time of Samuel Johnson’s dictionary (1755). The restricted sense of literature as just poems, plays, and novels is even more recent. The word â€Å"literature† is de? ned by Johnson exclusively in the now obsolescent sense of â€Å"Acqaintance with ‘letters’ or books; polite or humane learning; literary culture. † One example the OED gives is as late as 1880: â€Å"He was a man of very small literature. † Only by the third de? nition in the OED does one get to: Literary production as a whole; the body of writings produced in a particular country or period, or in the world in general. Now also in a more restricted sense, applied to writing which has claim to consideration on the grounds of beauty of form or emotional effect. This de? nition, says the OED, â€Å"is of very recent emergence both in England and France. † Its establishment may be conveniently dated in the mid-eighteenth century and associated, in England at least, with the work of Joseph and Thomas Wharton (1722–1800; 1728–90). They were hailed by Edmund Gosse, in an essay of 1915–16 (â€Å"Two Pioneers of Romanticism: Joseph and Thomas Wharton†), as giving literature its modern de? nition. Literature in that sense is now coming to an end, as new media gradually replace the printed book. WHAT HAS MADE LITERATURE POSSIBLE? 2 On Literature What are the cultural features that are necessary concomitants of literature as we have known it in the West? Western literature belongs to the age of the printed book and of other print forms like newspapers, magazines, and periodicals generally. Literature is associated with the gradual rise of almost universal literacy in the West. No widespread literacy, no literature. Literacy, furthermore, is associated with the gradual appearance from the seventeenth century onward of Western-style democracies. This means regimes with expanded su? rage, government by legislatures, regulated judicial systems, and fundamental human rights or civil liberties. Such democracies slowly developed more or less universal education. They also allowed citizens more or less free access to printed materials and to the means of printing new ones. This freedom, of course, has never been complete. Various forms of censorship, in even the freest democracies today, limit the power of the printing press. Nevertheless, no technology has ever been more e? ective than the printing press in breaking down class hierarchies of power. The printing press made democratic revolutions like the French Revolution or the American Revolution possible. The Internet is performing a similar function today. The printing and circulation of clandestine newspapers, manifestoes, and emancipatory literary works was essential to those earlier revolutions, just as email, the Internet, the cell phone, and the â€Å"hand-held† will be essential to whatever revolutions we may have from now on. Both these communication regimes are also, of course, powerful instruments of repression. The rise of modern democracies has meant the appearance of the modern nation-state, with its encouragement of a sense of ethnic and linguistic uniformity in each state’s citizens. Modern literature is vernacular literature. It began to appear as the use of Latin as a lingua franca gradually disappeared. Along with the nation-state has gone the notion of national literature, that is, literature written in the language and idiom of a particular country. This concept remains strongly codi? ed in school and university study of literature. It is institutionalized 3 What is Literature? in separate departments of French, German, English, Slavic, Italian, and Spanish. Tremendous resistance exists today to the recon? guration of those departments that will be necessary if they are not simply to disappear. The modern Western concept of literature became ? rmly established at the same time as the appearance of the modern research university. The latter is commonly identi? ed with the founding of the University of Berlin around 1810, under the guidance of a plan devised by Wilhelm von Humboldt. The modern research university has a double charge. One is Wissenschaft, ? nding out the truth about everything. The other is Bildung, training citizens (originally almost exclusively male ones) of a given nation-state in the ethos appropriate for that state. It is perhaps an exaggeration to say that the modern concept of literature was created by the research university and by lower-school training in preparation for the university. After all, newspapers, journals, non-university critics and reviewers also contributed, for example Samuel Johnson or Samuel Taylor Coleridge in England. Nevertheless, our sense of literature was strongly shaped by university-trained writers. Examples are the Schlegel brothers in Germany, along with the whole circle of critics and philosophers within German Romanticism. English examples would include William Wordsworth, a Cambridge graduate. His â€Å"Preface to Lyrical Ballads† de? ned poetry and its uses for generations. In the Victorian period Matthew Arnold, trained at Oxford, was a founding force behind English and United States institutionalized study of literature. Arnold’s thinking is still not without force in conservative circles today. Arnold, with some help from the Germans, presided over the transfer from philosophy to literature of the responsibility for Bildung. Literature would shape citizens by giving them 4 On Literature knowledge of what Arnold called â€Å"the best that is known and thought in the world. † This â€Å"best† was, for Arnold, enshrined in canonical Western works from Homer and the Bible to Goethe or Wordsworth. Most people still ? rst hear that there is such a thing as literature from their school teachers. Universities, moreover, have been traditionally charged with the storage, cataloguing, preservation, commentary, and interpretation of literature through the accumulations of books, periodicals, and manuscripts in research libraries and special collections. That was literature’s share in the university’s responsibility for Wissenschaft, as opposed to Bildung. This double responsibility was still very much alive in the literature departments of The Johns Hopkins University when I taught there in the 1950s and 1960s. It has by no means disappeared today. Perhaps the most important feature making literature possible in modern democracies has been freedom of speech. This is the freedom to say, write, or publish more or less anything. Free speech allows everyone to criticize everything, to question everything. It confers the right even to criticize the right to free speech. Literature, in the Western sense, as Jacques Derrida has forcefully argued, depends, moreover, not just on the right to say anything but also on the right not to be held responsible for what one says. How can this be? Since literature belongs to the realm of the imaginary, whatever is said in a literary work can always be claimed to be experimental, hypothetical, cut o? from referential or performative claims. Dostoevsky is not an ax murderer, nor is he advocating ax murder in Crime and Punishment. He is writing a ? ctive work in which he imagines what it might be like to be an ax murderer. A ritual formula is printed at the beginning of many modern detective stories: â€Å"Any 5 What is Literature? resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. †This (often false) claim is not only a safeguard against lawsuits. It also codi? es the freedom from referential responsibility that is an essential feature of literature in the modern sense. A ? nal feature of modern Western literature seemingly contradicts the freedom to say anything. Even though democratic freedom of speech in principle allows anyone to say anything, that freedom has always been severely curtailed, in various ways. Authors during the epoch of printed literature have de facto been held responsible not only for the opinions expressed in literary works but also for such political or social e?ects as those works have had or have been believed to have had. Sir Walter Scott’s novels and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin have in di? erent ways been held responsible for causing the American Civil War, the former by instilling absurdly outmoded ideas of chivalry in Southern gentry, the latter by decisively encouraging support for the abolition of slavery. Nor are these claims nonsensical. Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Chinese translation was one of Mao Tse Tung’s favorite books. Even today, an author would be unlikely to get away before a court of law with a claim that  it is not he or she speaking in a given work but an imaginary character uttering imaginary opinions. Just as important as the development of print culture or the rise of modern democracies in the development of modern Western literature, has been the invention, conventionally associated with Descartes and Locke, of our modern sense of the self. From the Cartesian cogito, followed by the invention of identity, consciousness, and self in Chapter 27, Book II, of Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, to the sovereign. I or Ich of Fichte, to absolute consciousness in Hegel, to the I as 6 On Literature  the agent of the will to power in Nietzsche, to the ego as one element of the self in Freud, to Husserl’s phenomenological ego, to the Dasein of Heidegger, explicitly opposed to the Cartesian ego, but nevertheless a modi? ed form of subjectivity, to the I as the agent of performative utterances such as â€Å"I promise† or â€Å"I bet† in the speech act theory of J. L. Austin and others, to the subject not as something abolished but as a problem to be interrogated within deconstructive or postmodern thinking – the whole period of literature’s heyday has depended on one or another idea of the self as a selfconscious and responsible agent. The modern self can be held liable for what it says, thinks, or does, including what it does in the way of writing works of literature. Literature in our conventional sense has also depended on a new sense of the author and of authorship. This was legalized in modern copyright laws. All the salient forms and techniques of literature have, moreover, exploited the new sense of selfhood. Early ? rst-person novels like Robinson Crusoe adopted the direct presentation of interiority characteristic of seventeenth-century Protestant confessional works. Eighteenth-century novels in letters exploited epistolary presentations of subjectivity. Romantic poetry a? rmed a lyric â€Å"I. † Nineteenth-century novels developed sophisticated forms of third-person narration. These allowed a double simultaneous presentation by way of indirect discourse of two subjectivities, that of the narrator, that of the character. Twentieth-century novels present directly in words the â€Å"stream of consciousness† of ? ctional protagonists. Molly Bloom’s soliloquy at the end of Ulysses is the paradigmatic case of the latter. 7 What is Literature? THE END OF THE PRINT AGE Most of these features making modern literature possible are now undergoing rapid transformation or putting in question. People are now not so certain of the unity and perdurance of the self, nor so certain that the work can be explained by the authority of the author. Foucault’s â€Å"What is an Author? † and Roland Barthes’s â€Å"The Death of the Author† signaled the end of the old tie between the literary work and its author considered as a unitary self, the real person William Shakespeare or Virginia Woolf. Literature itself has contributed to the fragmentation of the self. Forces of economic, political, and technological globalization are in many ways bringing about a weakening of the nation-state’s separateness, unity, and integrity. Most countries are now multilingual and multi-ethnic. Nations today are seen to be divided within as well as existing within more permeable borders. American literature now includes works written in Spanish, Chinese, Native American languages, Yiddish, French, and so on, as well as works written in English from within those groups, for example African-American literature. Over sixty minority languages and cultures are recognized in the People’s Republic of China. South Africa after apartheid has eleven o? cial languages, nine African languages along with English and Afrikaans. This recognition of internal division is ending literary study’s institutionalization according to national literatures, each with its presumedly selfenclosed literary history, each written in a single national language. The terrible events of the mid-twentieth century, World War II and the Holocaust, transformed our civilization and Western literature with it. Maurice Blanchot and others have even argued persuasively that literature in the old sense is impossible after the Holocaust. 8 On Literature In addition, technological changes and the concomitant development of new media are bringing about the gradual death of literature in the modern sense of the word. We all know what those new media are: radio, cinema, television, video, and the Internet, soon universal wireless video. A recent workshop I attended in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) brought together American literary scholars and representatives of the Chinese Writers Association. At that meeting it became evident that the most respected and in? uential Chinese writers today are those whose novels or stories are turned into one or another television series. The major monthly journal printing poetry in the PRC has in the last decade declined in circulation from an amazing 700,000 to a â€Å"mere† 30,000, though the proliferation of a dozen or more new in? uential poetry journals mitigates that decline somewhat and is a healthy sign of diversi? cation. Nevertheless, the shift to the new media is decisive. Printed literature used to be a primary way in which citizens of a given nation state were inculcated with the ideals, ideologies, ways of behavior and judgment that made them good citizens. Now that role is being increasingly played, all over the world, for better or for worse, by radio, cinema, television, VCRs, DVDs, and the Internet. This is one explanation for the di? culties literature departments have these days in getting funding. Society no longer needs the university as the primary place where the national ethos is inculcated in citizens. That work used to be done by the humanities departments in colleges and universities, primarily through literary study. Now it is increasingly done by television, radio talk shows, and by cinema. People cannot be reading Charles Dickens or Henry James or Toni Morrison and at the same time watching television or a ? lm on VCR, though some 9 What is Literature? people may claim they can do that. The evidence suggests that people spend more and more time watching television or sur? ng the Internet. More people, by far, probably, have seen the recent ? lms of novels by Austen, Dickens, Trollope, or James than have actually read those works. In some cases (though I wonder how often), people read the book because they have seen the television adaptation. The printed book will retain cultural force for a good while yet, but its reign is clearly ending. The new media are more or less rapidly replacing it. This is not the end of the world, only the dawn of a new one dominated by new media. One of the strongest symptoms of the imminent death of literature is the way younger faculty members, in departments of literature all over the world, are turning in droves from literary study to theory, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, media studies (? lm, television, etc. ), popular culture studies, Women’s studies, African-American studies, and so on. They often write and teach in ways that are closer to the social sciences than to the humanities as traditionally conceived. Their writing and teaching often marginalizes or ignores literature. This is so even though many of them were trained in old-fashioned literary history and the close reading of canonical texts. These young people are not stupid, nor are they ignorant barbarians. They are not bent on destroying literature nor on destroying literary study. They know better than their elders often do, however, which way the wind is blowing. They have a deep and laudable interest in ? lm or popular culture, partly because it has done so much to form them as what they are. They also have a proleptic sense that traditional literary study is on the way to being declared obsolete by society and by university authorities. This will probably happen not in so 10 On Literature many words. University administrators do not work that way. It will happen by the more e? ective device of withdrawing funding in the name of â€Å"necessary economies† or â€Å"downsizing. † Departments of classics and modern languages other than English, in United States universities, will go ?rst. Indeed, they are in many universities already going, initially through amalgamation. Any United States English department, however, will soon join the rest, if it is foolish enough to go on teaching primarily canonical British literature under the illusion that it is exempt from cuts because it teaches texts in the dominant language of the country. Even the traditional function of the university as the place where libraries store literature from all ages and in all languages, along with secondary material, is now being rapidly usurped by digitized databases. Many of the latter are available to anyone with a computer, a modem, and access to the Internet through a server. More and more literary works are freely available online, through various websites. An example is â€Å"The Voice of the Shuttle,† maintained by Alan Liu and his colleagues at the University of California at Santa Barbara (http://vos. ucsb. edu/). The Johns Hopkins â€Å"Project Muse† makes a large number of journals available (http:// muse. jhu. edu/journals/index_text. html). A spectacular example of this making obsolete the research library is the William Blake Archive website (http:// www.blakearchive. org/). This is being developed by Morris Eaves, Robert Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. Anyone anywhere who has a computer with an Internet connection (I for example on the remote island o? the coast of Maine where I live most of the year and am writing this) may access, download, and print out spectacularly accurate reproductions of major versions of Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and some 11 What is Literature? of his other prophetic books. The original versions of these â€Å"illuminated books† are dispersed in many di? erent research libraries in England and the United States. Formerly they were available only to specialists in Blake, to scholars with a lot of money for research travel. Research libraries will still need to take good care of the originals of all those books and manuscripts. They will less and less function, however, as the primary means of access to those materials. Literature on the computer screen is subtly changed by the new medium. It becomes something other to itself. Literature is changed by the ease of new forms of searching and manipulation, and by each work’s juxtaposition with the innumerable swarm of other images on the Web. These are all on the same plane of immediacy and distance. They are instantaneously brought close and yet made alien, strange, seemingly far away. All sites on the Web, including literary works, dwell together as inhabitants of that non-spatial space we call cyberspace. Manipulating a computer is a radically di? erent bodily activity from holding a book in one’s hands and turning the pages one by one. I have earnestly tried to read literary works on the screen, for example Henry James’s The Sacred Fount. I happened at one moment not to have at hand a printed version of that work, but found one on the Web. I found it di? cult to read it in that form. This no doubt identi? es me as someone whose bodily habits have been permanently wired by the age of the printed book. WHAT THEN IS LITERATURE? 12 On Literature If, on the one hand, literature’s time (as I began by saying) is nearly up, if the handwriting is on the wall, or rather if the pixels are on the computer screen, on the other hand, literature or â€Å"the literary† is (as I also began by saying) universal and perennial. It is a certain use of words or other signs that exists in some form or other in any human culture at any time. Literature in the ? rst sense, as a Western cultural institution, is a special, historically conditioned form of literature in the second sense. In the second sense, literature is a universal aptitude for words or other signs to be taken as literature. About the political and social utility, import, e? ectiveness of literature I shall write later, in Chapter 4, â€Å"Why Read Literature? † At this point my goal is to identify what sort of thing literature is. What then is literature? What is that â€Å"certain use of words or other signs† we call literary? What does it mean to take a text â€Å"as literature†? These questions have often been asked. They almost seem like non-questions. Everyone knows what literature is. It is all those novels, poems, and plays that are designated as literature by libraries, by the media, by commercial and university presses, and by teachers and scholars in schools and universities. To say that does not help much, however. It suggests that literature is whatever is designated as literature. There is some truth to that. Literature is whatever bookstores put in the shelves marked â€Å"Literature† or some subset of that: â€Å"Classics,† â€Å"Poetry,† â€Å"Fiction,† â€Å"Mysteries,† and so on. It is nevertheless also the case that certain formal features allow anyone dwelling within Western culture to say with conviction, â€Å"This is a novel,† or â€Å"This is a poem,† or â€Å"This is a play. † Title pages, aspects of print format, for example the printing of poetry in lines with capitals at the beginning of each line, are as important in segregating literature from other print forms as internal features of language that tell the adept reader he or she has a literary work in hand. The co-presence of all these features allows certain collocations of  13 What is Literature? printed words to be taken as literature. Such writings can be used as literature, by those who are adept at doing that. What does it mean to â€Å"use a text as literature†? Readers of Proust will remember the account at the beginning of A la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past) of the magic lantern his hero, Marcel, had as a child. It projected on Marcel’s walls and even on his doorknob images of the villainous Golo and the unfortunate Genevieve de Brabant, brought into his bedroom from the Merovingian past. My version of that was a box of stereopticon photographs, probably by Matthew Brady, of American Civil War scenes. As a child, I was allowed to look at these at my maternal grandparents’ farm in Virginia. My great-grandfather was a soldier in the Confederate Army. I did not know that then, though I was told that a great-uncle had been killed in the Second Battle of Bull Run. I remember in those awful pictures as much the dead horses as the bodies of dead soldiers. Far more important for me as magic lanterns, however, were the books my mother read to me and that I then  learned to read for myself. When I was a child I did not want to know that The Swiss Family Robinson had an author. To me it seemed a collection of words fallen from the sky and into my hands. Those words allowed me magical access to a pre-existing world of people and their adventures. The words transported me there. The book wielded what Simon During, in Modern Enchantments, calls in his subtitle, â€Å"the cultural power of secular magic. † I am not sure, however, that secular and sacred magics can be all that easily distinguished. This other world I reached through reading The Swiss Family Robinson, it seemed to me, did not depend for its existence on the words of the book, even though those words were my only window on that virtual reality. The 14 On Literature LITERATURE AS A CERTAIN USE OF WORDS Literature exploits a certain potentiality in human beings as sign-using animals. A sign, for example a word, functions in the absence of the thing named to designate that thing, to â€Å"refer to it,† as linguists say. Reference is an inalienable aspect of words. When we say that a word functions in the absence of the thing to name the thing, the natural assumption is that the thing named exists. It is really there, somewhere or other, perhaps not all that far away. We need words or other signs to substitute for things while those things are temporarily absent. If I am out walking, for example, and see a sign with the 15 What is Literature? window, I would now say, no doubt shaped that reality through various rhetorical devices. The window was not entirely colorless and transparent. I was, however, blissfully unaware of that. I saw through the words to what  seemed to me beyond them and not dependent on them, even though I could get there in no other way than by reading those words. I resented being told that the name on the title page was that of the â€Å"author† who had made it all up. Whether many other people have had the same experience, I do not know, but I confess to being curious to ? nd out. It is not too much to say that this whole book has been written to account for this experience. Was it no more than childish naivete, or was I responding, in however childish a way, to something essential about literature? Now I am older and wiser. I know that The Swiss Family Robinson was written in German by a Swiss author, Johann David Wyss (1743 –1818), and that I was reading an English translation. Nevertheless, I believe my childhood experience had validity. It can serve as a clue to answering the question, â€Å"What is literature? † word â€Å"Gate,† I assume that somewhere nearby is an actual gate that I can see with my eyes and grasp with my hands to open or shut it, once I get in sight of it and get my hands on it. This is especially the case if the word â€Å"Gate† on the sign is accompanied by a pointing arrow and the words â€Å"? mile,† or something of the sort. The real, tangible, usable gate is a quarter of a mile away, out of sight in the woods. The sign, however, promises that if I follow the arrow I shall soon be face to face with the gate. The word â€Å"gate† is charged with signifying power by its reference to real gates. Of course, the word’s meaning is also generated by that word’s place in a complex di? erential system of words in a given language. That system distinguishes â€Å"gate† from all other words. The word â€Å"gate,† however, once it is charged with signi? cance by its reference to real gates, retains its signi? cance or signifying function even if the gate is not there at all. The sign has meaning even if it is a lie put up by someone to lead me astray on my walk. The word â€Å"Gate† on the sign then refers to a phantom gate that is not there anywhere in the phenomenal world. Literature exploits this extraordinary power of words to go on signifying in the total absence of any phenomenal referent. In Jean-Paul Sartre’s quaint terminology, literature makes use of a â€Å"non-transcendent† orientation of words. Sartre meant by this that the words of a literary work do not transcend themselves toward the phenomenal things to which they refer. The whole power of literature is there in the simplest word or sentence used in this ? ctitious way. Franz Kafka testi? ed to this power. He said that the entire potentiality of literature to create a world out of words is there in a sentence like, â€Å"He opened the window. † Kafka’s ? rst great masterpiece, â€Å"The Judgment,† uses that power at 16 On Literature the end of its ? rst paragraph. There the protagonist, Georg Bendemann, is shown sitting â€Å"with one elbow propped on his desk . . . looking out the window at the river, the bridge, and the hills on the farther bank with their tender green. † Stephane Mallarme gave witness to the same amazing magic of words, in this case a single word. In a famous formulation, he pronounced: â€Å"I say: a ? ower! and, outside the forgetting to which my voice relegates any contour, in the form of something other than known callices, musically there rises, the suave idea itself, the absence of all bouquets. † Words used as signi? ers without referents generate with amazing ease people with subjectivities, things, places, actions, all the paraphernalia of poems, plays, and novels with which adept readers are familiar.