Wednesday, October 30, 2019

Respect all Personsdescribe respectful behavior and discuss how it is Essay

Respect all Personsdescribe respectful behavior and discuss how it is important in student life and your professional career - Essay Example In the United States, proper care is given high importance by the federal government. This calls all the working medical profession to protect this right by giving proper care to all people â€Å"regardless of their personal attributes or life situations† (ANA 6). In the hospital environment, a nurse handles more than one patient to take care. This can be distressing, but a nurse nourished with respectful behavior should not show this mood explicitly to any of the patients and to the other hospital staff; the key word is self-control. As nurses, they should be able to practice their tasks effectively and professionally such as listening attentively, "exhibit empathy and understanding," and to be "fair, consistent, and empathetic" (Ulrich, et. al. 8-9). These attitudes should be maintained even during a nurse’s personal problem. Another factor in the concept of respect in the nursing profession is the cultural diversity of the patients. With respect to culture, the nurse s should be oriented first with the background of the patients they are about to handle.

Monday, October 28, 2019

The Handmaids Tale Essay Example for Free

The Handmaids Tale Essay The Handmaids Tale is a novel that consists of more than one genre it falls in the categories of being a dystopian science fiction, an autobiography, a love story and even a feminist novel. There are many narrative techniques used here in the Handmaids Tale that make it very complex and original such as the use of flashbacks and the very fragmented narrative structure, all of which I will be discussing in this essay. The significance of the epigraphs at the beginning of the novel I feel set the readers up for the story about to be told, as the first epigraph (Genesis,30:1-3) talks about the use of the Handmaids by trying to justify the use of them by quoting from the bible. The second epigraph (A Modest Proposal) shows the cold-heartedness of people, the controlled sincere tone of this mad scheme he talks about parallels with the earnest fascination of Gilead, giving us a rough clue of the tough regime of the Gileadean society. The third epigraph (Sufi proverb) claims that no one needs to forbid anything that is undeniable even when in a desperate situation, the undesirable could be the solution. The deliberate confusion of the opening chapter where Atwood had chosen to hold back large amounts of information causing the reader to become curious and wanting to read more into the story, the narrator of the story who we are unaware of at this stage is not bothering to introduce to the readers what is happening around her, it seems that the narrator is not just telling the story but merely reminding herself of that specific moment in the past We folded our clothes neatly and laid them on the stool at the ends of the beds this gives us a clue that the narrator has gone through this experience already and is speaking from elsewhere in the future. We can see also that the narrator is fully aware of the changes that have occurred since the time before maybe explaining why she only remembers and doesnt feel the need to explain at first, again a technique used to make the readers wanting more so they can understand what has gone on to cause such a rapid change in their lives. Judging by the atmosphere of the surroundings the readers can see a desperate yearn of the past and the act of physical contact where the girls lean out of their cots just to touch each others hands giving us a sense of oppression and a society with rules and order. There are many characters and themes introduced in this very first confusing chapter but it will have left the readers with a lot of guesswork leaving them gripped on wanting to read more this is why I feel that Atwood has started with a confusing opening chapter. The ordering of the sections just reflect the day to day routine of a handmaid such as shopping, check ups at the doctors etc. it also represents the narrow existence of a handmaid and the feeling of repetition, the ordering does go day, night, day, night and so on except for the napping section, but sleep also occurs here I dont understand why this has a different title? I feel that the night sections contribute massively to the structure of the narrative because this is where we learn most about Offred and of the beginning of the regime of Gilead. This is where Offred can have her time alone and vividly go over her memories of the past The night is mine, my own time, to do as I will. The night time is peaceful for Offred where she can be completely away from the oppression in Gilead. Here we learn of her past about her relationship with Luke, her family, her friends, her daughter and the rapidly changing society of Gilead. It again shows the readers how oppressive Gilead must be as Offred does not feel safe to reminisce in the day time while she is out shopping everyday it shows that the fear of the society is constantly on her mind causing her to be aware of everything that is going on. Through these night sections we learn about Offred herself we see that she is a determined woman, we also see that she is a sensitive because sometimes she cannot go on with her stories as they are too painful, but we also see a rebellious side to Offred because by telling her story she is breaking all the laws of the Gilead regime by going over her past and communicating her thoughts and feelings whereas in the daytime she comes across as agreeing with the regime, but here we hear about each time she breaks the law by having a love affair with Nick or seeing the commander plus remembering her past. The narrative technique of flashbacks is most obvious here, the flashbacks are used to tell us the reasons why things are the way they are, informing us throughout the novel of how the society of Gilead developed. Her flashbacks inform us of how she tried to escape over the border with her child and husband or how she suddenly lost her job at the library if these occurrences had been mentioned at the beginning of the story I feel that it would mean no significance to the reader as they wouldnt have known more about Offred but placing these events in the flashbacks throughout the novel creates mystery for the reader who will want to read on more to find out the endings to these fragmented stories. Also there is an importance to the position of the flashbacks for example when Offred recounts her first meeting with Serana Joy she then talks about her mother A motherly figure,someone who would understand and protect me. Another example is when Offred first kisses Nick in the downstairs living room at night and when she goes back up to bed she then thinks of Luke I believe Luke is lying face down in a thicket. Maybe associating her feelings for Nick with how she felt about Luke in the time before Gilead and even now Show preview only The above preview is unformatted text This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our GCSE Margaret Atwood section.

Saturday, October 26, 2019

Gangs of New York, A Film Analysis :: Film

Bill the Butcher was the ideal "bad guy" for a movie. He was a stubborn individual who would not change his ways of thinking for anyone. If you came off a boat and tried to settle in the United States you were automatically hated by Mr. Cutting. Bill was a tall man, very skinny, and he had long hair with a matching mustache. Bill and his party believed that the only rightful people to have jobs, families, and make money were people who were born in the U.S., not immigrants. Women and children are not even spared by Bill and his rugged party. They hatred for the immigrants was so strong that they would shout profanities at them or hurl rocks at them when they unloaded from the massive ships. At times they would beat an immigrant close to death just because they looked at them the wrong way. Cutting's father installed these beliefs into him, Bill's father was killed in a gang war with the immigrants and he would never live that down. The way the immigrants were treated by some of the townspeople made some of the immigrants become very poor. Shop keepers and other store owners would not hire immigrants mainly because they did not like them and secondly that they did not want to upset Bill and his gang. Immigrants would soon leave New York and look for an easier life but most remained behind and lived in the side streets to fend for food with the rats. This is where thievery came in. Since most of the immigrants were poor they had to learn to steal to survive. "Pick-Pocketing" became the most famous means to steal in the streets of New York. The immigrants who would come off of the boats had no idea what was in store for them as they unloaded their boat. The immigrants were friendly people for the most part, they were not looking for a fight in America just a new start to their life.

Thursday, October 24, 2019

English Language Teaching Essays -- essays research papers

Topic Literature Review: English Language Teaching Strategies for Learning-Disabled Secondary School Students Introduction   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  One of the aims of the Singapore Ministry of Education is to ensure that all school-going children receive a minimum ten years of general education. Streaming is one way to ensure that all students are taught according to their academic ability, and â€Å"learn at a pace which they can cope.† (Coping with Singaporeans’ Concerns, 2001, p. 4). At the primary school level, remediation programmes such as the â€Å"Learning Support Programme (LSP) and the Encouragement Achievement and Better Learning (ENABLE) Programmes† are made available to assist students who have been assessed as weak in English and Mathematics (Coping with Singaporeans’ concerns, 2001, p. 4). At secondary level, the Normal Technical (NT) stream was implemented in 1994 to cater to students who are less academically inclined. The majority of the learning-disabled students will be found in the NT stream. In NT stream, students follow a less rigorous curriculum which focuses on English and Mathematics, and more hands-on learning experiences. The NT curriculum basically prepares students for vocational/technical academic and career paths. Unlike primary schools where there are remediation programmes to support students who are identified as weak in academic performance or â€Å"learning-disabled†, little attention is given to NT stream students, especially students with learning disabilities. This can be attributed to a number of reasons such as exclusion of NT stream students’ performance at National Examinations from the school league table, and inadequately-trained general education teachers to teach students with special educational needs. For any remediation programmes that are available, they are provided at an ad hoc basis by out-of-school â€Å"ethnic self-help groups and voluntary welfare organizations† (Coping with Singaporeans’ concerns, 2001, p. 4). Research has revealed that NT students suffer from â€Å"low self-esteem†, â€Å"achievement motivation†, and â€Å"poor study habits† as they progress up the levels in secondary schools (Chan, 1996). One of the main reasons for the poor academic performance of NT students is that most NT students face problems following lessons in class. All subjects, with the exception of Mother Tongue subject, are ... ...h that is grammatical, fluent, appropriate for purpose, context and culture. 3.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  A Summary of the learning Outcomes by the End of Secondary Two and Four Normal Technical: Pupils will: a.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Respond to a variety of texts and demonstrate a positive attitude towards reading and language. b.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Listen for information from a variety of sources. c.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Speak fluently and expressively on a range of topics. d.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Present and develop ideas effectively in speech/writing for a variety of purposes and audiences. e.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Write legibly, coherently and cohesively for different purpose and audiences. f.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Demonstrate knowledge about language and text types from print/ non-print/ electronic source. g.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Use reading strategies to construct meaning. (Adapted from Ministry of Education. (2001). English Language Syllabus 2001 For Primary and Secondary Schools. Singapore: Curriculum Planning and Development Division, Ministry of Education.)

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Voltaire and Pope

Use of Reason to Support Polarized Viewpoints During the Enlightenment great thinkers began to question all things. Rather than just believe in something because an authority (church, political authority, society) claimed it to be true, these men and women set out to find the truth through reason, to provide explanations for all actions and events. Both Alexander Pope and Voltaire discuss some of the more common questions posed during the Enlightenment: What is the nature of humanity and what is our role in the greater picture of the universe?Pope argues that everything in the universe, whether it is good or evil, is essentially perfect because is a part of God’s grand plan. In essence, Pope believed in pre-determined fate, where no matter our actions, our fate remains the same as it was decided upon before you were born. Voltaire will critique this viewpoint by exploring the negative results of the belief that blind faith will lead to the best possible result and that man doe s exercise free will.While Pope’s â€Å"Essay on Man† and Voltaire’s Candide are derived from polarized viewpoints and speak about a very different set of beliefs, they both use the same fundamental concept of reason to provide the basis of their argument. Alexander Pope set out to write his â€Å"Essay on Man† to use reason to justify his viewpoints of optimism, predetermined fate, and God’s use of both good and evil for balance in the universe.Pope begins the essay by claiming that man can only reason about things in which he has experience with and goes on to illustrate that our limited knowledge is not capable of understanding God’s systems by questioning, â€Å"What can we reason, but from what we know? † (17) He uses the reason that since man can only understand what is within the scope of his knowledge that he cannot expect to comprehend the greater systems that God knows intimately. Pope also believes deeply of in the Great Ch ain of Being and it is the foundation on which his arguments rest.This chain is a concept derived from the classical period and is a notion that all elements of the universe have a proper place in a divinely planned hierarchical order, which was pictured as a vertically extended chain (Renaissance). In its most simplistic form God would be at the top of the chain, man would be directly beneath it, and all other beings that existed would be beneath man. In the 2nd section of the essay, Pope begins by mocking men who do not know their own limits within the universe. He exclaims, â€Å"Presumptuous Man!The reason wouldst though find, / Why formed so weak, so little, and so blind? † (Pope 35-36) He goes on to say that man is not created in a perfect state and that all men have limitations by nature. He continues with the claim â€Å"say not Man’s imperfect, Heaven in fault; / Say rather, Man’s as perfect as he ought: / His knowledge measured to his state and place; / His time a moment, and a point his space† (69-72). Pope is reasoning that the limitations and imperfections in man are necessary for man’s place beneath God in the universe and the Great Chain of Being.Section III begins with Pope stating that God keeps the future fate of all creatures from them in order to protect them; that all beings are blessed to only be dealing with their present state. He reasons this by questioning if the lamb would happily †lick the hand just raised to shed his blood† (Pope 84). This symbolizes the predetermined fate that is made from God regardless of our actions and that only God is capable of knowing what the future has in store for all of the universe.In Section V, Pope reasons that God and nature have greater powers than man by speaking about the terrible effects that natural disasters, such as earthquakes, have with little resistance from man, â€Å"But All subsists by elemental strife; / And Passions are the elements of L ife. / The general Order, since the whole began, / Is kept in Nature, and is kept in Man† (169-172). He is speaking of these horrific and evil events as being a part of God’s almighty cause, that evil is always balanced by good.Pope concludes the first epistle of â€Å"An Essay on Man† with the thought that all that is within in the world is the way it should be as a result of God’s plan: All Nature is but Art, unkown to thee; All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see; All Discord, Harmony not understood; All partial Evil, universal Good: And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason’s spite, One Truth is clear, WHATEVER is, IS RIGHT. (289-294) This belief that all that is is the best there is and that man has no control over his own destiny is a central component to the philosophical view of optimism.With an â€Å"Essay on Man† Pope uses reason to explain man’s role in the Great Chain of Being and that there is predetermined fate establ ished by God. While â€Å"An Essay on Man† is a poetic verse which uses reason to justify the viewpoints of optimism, predetermined fate, and God’s use of both good and evil for balance, Voltaire’s Candide is a satirical critique of the essay, while using reason to argue against the belief system of optimism.In Candide, the main character is raised in a home with a tutor name Pangloss who teaches Candide that â€Å"things cannot be otherwise than they are, for since everything is made to serve an end, everything necessarily serves the best end† (Voltaire 356). Voltaire is using the character of Pangloss and his teachings to symbolize Alexander Pope and is mocking Pope’s beliefs as the novel continues. Through Candide’s story, Voltaire will provide the evidence that disproves the belief that all that is, is right.The first of many terrible experiences that Candide goes through is when he is kicked out of the Baron’s castle for being ca ught kissing the Baron’s daughter Cunegonde. Upon being kicked out, a hungry, homeless, and broke Candide finds himself at a tavern where he is offered money and a drink from two strangers. Candide naively thinks back to Pangloss and that everything is for the best, that this is his fate, but is quickly transported into a cruel and violent military life where he is forced to endure physical hardships.Here Voltaire shows that the military’s giving of money to Candide was irrationally thought to be for the better, while it was really a ploy to capture Candide into being a soldier where he witnesses cruelty, violence, and evil – all reasonable evidence against Pangloss teachings. These horrible events are not fate or God’s balancing act, but this is the beginning of Candide’s witness to man doing evil to another man with no greater good in sight.Pangloss attempts to reason that catching syphilis is a part of the best of worlds by claiming that â€Å" if Columbus had not caught, on an American island, this sickness †¦ we should have neither chocolate nor cochineal† (Voltaire 361). Here Voltaire again critiques the irrational use of reason to support the belief that all that is, is for the best. After witnessing Pangloss’ hanging and being flogged himself, Candide asks himself, â€Å" If this is the best of all possible worlds, what are the others like? †¦ was it necessary for me to watch you being hanged, for no reason hat I can see? † (Voltaire 364) Here Candide is beginning to see these horrific tragedies as evidence that evidence and is using his reason to ponder that perhaps not all that happens in the world is for the best. Voltaire uses the experience of different characters in Candide to reason that evil is derived from mankind and freewill, not predetermined fate from God. One notable tragedy is that of the old woman who was born into a world of privilege and high class, but suffered through violence, rape, and slavery before meeting Candide.When the old woman asks Candide and Cunegonde to â€Å"ask every passenger on this ship to tell you his story, and if you find a single one who has not often cursed the day of his birth, †¦ then you may throw me overboard head first† Voltaire is reminding the reader of the importance of reason through investigation (373). As the story continues, Candide comes across an old and wise scholar named Martin. Voltaire uses this character to symbolize all the negative and pessimistic viewpoints that counter the optimistic ideal that all exists, exists for the best.Martin uses the evidence of his travels and experience to argue that there is nothing but evil in the world, which serves no purpose: â€Å" I have scarcely seen one town which did not wish to destroy its neighboring town, no family which did not wish to exterminate some other family† (Voltaire 389). The terrible history of Martin and his experiences are Voltai re’s evidence that not all that exists in the world is for the common good, which is contrary to Pangloss’ view that â€Å"private misfortunes make for public welfare† (Voltaire 361).While Martin may be a pessimist, he does believe in predetermined fate and by the time Candide and he are together, Candide, through his own experiences of the world, has begun to believe in free will. Through Candide’s travels Voltaire has shown the reader that not all that happens in this world happens for the greater good or is predetermined by God. At the end of many journeys that result in unjustifiably cruel tragedies, Candide, with all of the other characters, makes the choice to live simply in a garden and mind to it. While this view that one can proceed through life and make their own choices and determinations in the world is ontrary to Pope’s idea of predetermined fate according to the Greater Cause, both writers attempt to validate their claims through reas on. Works Cited Pope, Alexander. â€Å"Essay on Man. † The Norton Anthology of World Literature. 3rd Edition. Vol D. Martin Puchner ed. New York: Norton, 2012. 344-351. Print. â€Å"Renaissance. † Academic. brooklyn. cuny. edu. Brooklyn College, 30 Mar. 2009. Web. 20 Oct. 2012. . Voltaire, Francois de Arouet. Candide. The Norton Antology of World Literature. 3rd Edition. Vol D. Martin Puchner ed. New York: Norton, 20

Tuesday, October 22, 2019

1984 Essay Essay Example

1984 Essay Essay Example 1984 Essay Essay 1984 Essay Essay Essay Topic: 1984 1984 Essay In the book 1984 by George Orwell, many different ideas about the government and its power are discussed by the main character Winston. At one point in the book Winston says â€Å"It is impossible to found a civilization on fear and hatred and cruelty. It would never endure. † in reference to the state of the government at that point in time. However, this can be proven false by the actions of the government, the people’s response, and the determination the government uses to ensure their ultimate power and control. The government in 1984 is very powerful and does not shy away from exerting its unrelenting force upon its people. The government craves complete and total control and does whatever it takes to get its people to cooperate and behave. The government goes as far to invent a fictional war to influence people to feel sympathy for the government and make them feel more willing to help. They even go as far as launching missiles at their own people to instill fear into the hearts of the citizens. The government also has an organization called the thought police that do their best to control people’s thoughts and try to keep people from thinking negative things about the government or prevent them from starting some sort of revolution. The actions that they take are built off cruelty and causing fear, which in turn keep the governments people in line. When the government is going to such extreme lengths to fake a war and tell lies to control its people, people will be sure to react. However, not many people know of the true nature of the government because they grew up hearing these lies since the beginning, and if people do start to question the government’s actions then they are killed and or tortured. The people react exactly how the government wants them to, because if they step out of line, then they are sure to be killed. The government has that much control and the people in charge have such a need for power that they keep taking more and more. The government and people inside the government are shown to have a large amount of determination, especially when they begin torturing Winston. Winston proves to be very strong willed and doesn’t break easily. However the government stays diligent and doesn’t give up and they eventually break Winston. The government breaks Winston by enforcing cruel punishment and sparking fear in him, and if they could break Winston this way, then they could break anyone. The government uses fear to build their government, in fact, the only basis that their government is really built on is fear. Fear controls people. The government’s determination, peoples response to their actions, and their actions themselves prove that a civilization could be founded on the basis of â€Å"fear, hatred and cruelty†.

Monday, October 21, 2019

Phrasal Verbs and Phrasal Nouns

Phrasal Verbs and Phrasal Nouns Phrasal Verbs and Phrasal Nouns Phrasal Verbs and Phrasal Nouns By Mark Nichol A phrasal verb is a verb consisting of two or more words- a verb and (usually) a preposition or a particle- that, when combined, describe an action. When formed into a closed or hyphenated compound, however, a phrasal verb is transformed into a phrasal noun, which can, alternatively, be employed as an adjective. This post explains the distinction, with examples. Forming Phrasal Verbs Take just about any basic verb, and it can likely be paired with one or more words to form a phrasal verb. (A phrasal verb is also called a compound verb, or a prepositional verb or a particle verb, depending on the function of the word following the verb, along with other names.) Consider walk, for example. One can walk in a line, out a door, through a tunnel, up a flight of stairs, down a street, on a rug, near a park, by a shop, off a cliff, or away from a fight. In many cases, however, a writer can name the action by combining the verb and the preposition or particle into a compound. Walk-in, for example, describes someone who arrives at a location without an appointment, or it serves as a truncation of â€Å"walk-in refrigerator† or functions as an adjective in â€Å"walk-in closet† or â€Å"walk-in apartment.† A walkout, by contrast, is a labor strike or an action in which a number of people leave a meeting or a location to express disapproval. (Notice the inconsistency of treatment; the former word is hyphenated, while the latter is closed.) A walk-through is an inspection or a rehearsal, and a walk-up is a building with no elevator to the upper floors. (As an adjective, the word might refer to a window where a customer can be served without entering a business location.) â€Å"Walk down† can also refer to an act of walking to help oneself recover from illness or poisoning or to wear someone down to exhaustion (â€Å"wear down† is also a phrasal verb), but- so far, at least- English-language speakers and writers have not felt a need for a corresponding phrasal noun. (That is the case with a couple of other phrasal verbs in this list.) But a walk-on is a small theatrical role (from the fact that such parts often involve an actor simply walking onstage, perhaps to deliver a message to a main character, for example) or a person who attempts to join an athletic team without an invitation or a scholarship offer. Walk-off, meanwhile, describes a final winning play in a baseball game. Note that with any of the phrasal verbs listed, at best, a sentence’s meaning will differ if the preposition or particle is omitted; at worst, it won’t make sense. One can, for example, walk a line, but that means something different than a reference to walking in a line, while â€Å"walk a door† is meaningless. However, some phrasal verbs are redundant, though they are often used colloquially. Such phrases, which often unnecessarily pair a verb with up or down, include â€Å"climb up,† â€Å"meet up,† â€Å"rest up,† â€Å"sit down,† â€Å"stand up,† and â€Å"write down.† (One may climb down, but descend is a better alternative for that phrase.) Note, though, that some of these redundant phrases can be legitimately repurposed as phrasal nouns or adjectives when hyphenated. For example, meet-up is an informal synonym for gathering, and a sit-down is a work stoppage or protest or a meeting convened to resolve a conflict or problem. (As an adjective, the term also pertains to a meal or a restaurant at which one is seated.) Meanwhile, a stand-up comic is one who performs while standing, though the term may also informally denote the quality of integrity (â€Å"He’s a real stand-up guy†) or simply refer to something literally upright. The term alone can also refer to the entertainment form or a television broadcast with a similar setup- there’s another phrasal verb transformed into a compound verb- or to the performer. â€Å"Write down† does not have a corresponding noun. However, the words write and up, though they do not form a phrasal verb (â€Å"write it up† comes close), are used, linked with a hyphen, to describe a report, review, or summary, as in â€Å"Did you see the write-up about the game in today’s paper?† Numerous other examples exist. Note, however, that as in the case of walk-in and walkout, treatment of two words with a common verb may differ: One performs a turnaround but comes up with a work-around. A blow-up is not the same as a blowout, and the compounds are not styled the same. And though hand-down is not (yet) a word- it might someday be coined to describe an edict or pronouncement- a hand-me-down is something passed on (such as an article of clothing given to a child when an older sibling outgrows it). When contemplating using a phrasal noun (or a phrasal adjective), first, use a dictionary to determine 1) whether the term exists and 2) whether the phrasal noun is hyphenated or closed. (And double-check that the adjectival form is the same as the phrasal noun. Exceptions exist, including the noun/adjective pairs castoff/cast-off and takeout/take-out.) For example, when one calls out, it is a callout, but when one logs in, it is (usually) a log-in. (Login is also employed; the correct form is the one that appears in the dictionary or style guide you consult.) Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Grammar category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Grammar Test 1Cannot or Can Not?10 Types of Hyphenation Errors

Sunday, October 20, 2019

Obesity and Adolescent Development essays

Obesity and Adolescent Development essays In recent studies of obesity in adolescents and young adults, it seems that researchers had discovered many effects beyond the purely physical that make overweight an unhealthy thing. In fact, the psychosocial effects are quite devastating as well, but they are not caused directly by the state of being heavy; they are caused more often by the individual's perceptions, what he or she believes about the overweight status that causes the harm. There is no firm conclusion yet as to whether a single factor or multiple factors cause the obesity that in turn contributes to the poor self-image. Some researchers believe that the overweight condition itself caused by a self-fulfilling prophecy allied to the overweight condition. There is only one thing that has become accepted as certain, a truism coined by Alfred Adler and quoted by Hoover and Whitehead, 2000: Numerous children grow up in the constant dread of being laughed at. Ridicule of children is well nigh criminal. It retains its effect on the soul of the child, and is transferred into the habits and actions of his adulthood. Alfred Adler on feelings of inferiority, p. 71 (1932) Current research shows that, in fact, obesity is the number one cause of children being ridiculed. Being overweight is one of the five most common reasons that boys and girls identified for being bullied, according to Hoover and Whitehead. (2000) And, says Munson, for obese adolescents who are teased and bullied, obesity is often associated with psychological and behavioral symptoms, although she adds that whether pediatric obesity should thus be labeled a psychiatric disorder is debatable and insufficient work has been done in that area to make a call one way or the other. Between Adler's stringent belief that being laughed at causes distress to the soul of a human being, and Munson's...

Saturday, October 19, 2019

Strategy of international Business Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4500 words - 1

Strategy of international Business - Assignment Example The competition analysis indicates that the firm may not have to face any severe competition in the industry which in turn can prove to be lucrative for the firm. Depending on these analyses, the company will devise its market entry strategy that will allow it to have access to the desired customer base and create the desired brand image. The internationalization of the business activities will also be based on creating a perfect product fit for the market, which in turn will help the company to meet the ongoing needs of the customers. Entering into a new market requires a thorough market research and an effective market entry strategy for the company which is seeking forward to expand in the host market. Internationalization is one of the most effective ways of expanding one’s business as it offers a larger customer base and a different market environment which may prove to be lucrative for the company (Lee and Carter, 2011). The advent of globalization has made it easier for the firms to expand its business to overseas locations. This as a result has attracted several companies to expand its business to foreign countries, in a hope that the company will be able to maintain a sustainable growth. This paper is based on the market entry strategies of All Communication LLC in the Indian market. It will discuss about the right market fit of the products and services offered by the company in the host market. All Communication LLC is a networking company which is an authorized dealer of Dishnetwork, Directv and several other companies like Sony, Onkyo, Sonos and Sanus (All Communications, 2015). The company was established in the year 2010 in Miami. It offers several networking and satellite communication services and equipments and caters to both business customers and end users. All Communications is best known for its quality assurance and dedication. The rapid

Friday, October 18, 2019

Societal Changes in Women Status 30s-70s Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Societal Changes in Women Status 30s-70s - Essay Example These changes as represented by the pendulum have political and economic influences being the major cause affecting these changes. However, individual women have impressively changed the concept of the woman as gender perception as seen by Maya Angelou who during the world second war aspired to be a street car conductor and ended up being the first African American street car conductor thanks to her relentless applications (Collins, 2003). In his intriguing and captivating book, Collins gives examples of heroines like Hannah Dustan who in 1697 escaped from her captors by slitting them and returned to her home to a jubilated welcome. The book gives a wide range of inspiring examples of women thus the other meaning of the pendulum swinging wide. There are quite a number of historical facts that paved way to the behavior of women in the 20th century particularly between the 1930s to the 1970s. For example, in 1637 the law had to be changed after Ann fowler was sentenced to 20 lashes when she verbally abused a county justice by the name of Adam Thorowgood in Virginia (Walsh, 2010). It was then stated that husbands were no longer liable for damages caused by their wives. In Pennsylvania, single impoverished women were forced to wear bras with the letter P which stood for pauper whenever they appeared in public. In world war two, there were over 1000 women pilots, but they could only fly planes that were grounded. This meant that they could not leave the ground, so they only towed the planes for either takeoff or landing for inexperienced male pilots. Despite this, over 80% of the reading public was female at the time. This had a positive impact on American scholarship history, for women were inevitably placed on the same class as the men. The book celebrates women like the Grimke sisters, Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, Jane Addams, and Dolores Huerta who have arguably influenced the behavior of women in the 1920s and beyond. It is reported that the American Government and cultural leaders sent mixed messages to women regarding their social status, work, education and family through domestic policies gender roles and design of their positions in society. The American government having been influenced by philosophical advocates under nongovernmental organizations on gender equality weakened the family by legitimizing divorce. It also had no policy that supports in any way, infertile women giving rise to promiscuity and rise of immorality. More so infertile women had a high probability of dying during pregnancy and feared to give birth leading to a lower birthrate during the 1920s, and the government still did not address this issue (Smith, 2005). The cultural leaders particularly the Catholics in the na me of ‘modernity’ reduced the number of grants for memorial masses for the dead. This in turn no longer inspired the young generation to give birth to a new generation. So population did not grow as intended, and marriage, which is the sole unit for conception was not as recognized as should have been. In his book ‘utopia against the family’ Bryce J. Christensen mentions organizations like the American home economics declaring that families have nothing to do with blood marriage legal ties or adoption, instead states that it is of two or more persons who share similar resources, responsibilities goals and virtues over a period of time. Politicians and the media have picked this mentality and spread it

Unit 3 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Unit 3 - Essay Example written, the illusion of class mobility was in existence since leaders created the assumption that strategies were put in place to minimize class differences. However, the society still had massive class based divisions. Meritocracy refers to the ability of the society to acknowledge the success of a person based on their achievements and rewards rather than their wealth and social status. Class marker is the definition towards a certain class level or perception towards a class. The article aims to change the class marker based on wealth and social superiority. In the article, the role of the media in creating class differentiations is criticized. The article criticizes the media for shielding the truth of the nature of the different class levels. In particular, the article cites that the media tends to favor the rich class as it provides information that praises the class (Mantsios 386). Information provided on the low class has limited information and depth. However, this may not be true. The modern day media provide massive information on the situation at the low class. In addition, there are increases calls to improve life in the low class as well as bridge the gap between classes. This is done by highlighting the plight of people living in the low class. Considering the era the article is created, much has been done to improve media coverage on social classes. The media then only focuses on strategies put in place to develop the high class. In addition, the low class has never been viewed as significant part of the society thus sparki ng a much less interest to the public. The main difference between the poverty and wealthy gap is the size. The income gap is determined by the ability of a society to live a comfortable life with access to social amenities. In regards to economic status, the poverty gap is disadvantages significantly. The class is poorly compensated for their services. The article uses data from the number of women with color who live wealthy

Thursday, October 17, 2019

The Intranet Technology Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

The Intranet Technology - Case Study Example He focused on the four major points of IT responsibilities: Keeping these points in mind, Mr Goody gave me a comprehensive view on the various applications that were being currently used in the bank and the optimization methods required to develop the business functioning and achieve faster deadlines. The main application that Mr Goody explained needed improvement was the Intranet website that had to be made more efficient and user friendly. - Conventional format: The Intranet website of the bank, as I saw it, was just a lot of text information about the bank from the web developers. It looked very conventional with some introduction about the bank along with some highlights on the main page. The other web pages were organized department wise such as IT, Wholesale banking, Consumer Banking, Human Resource, Transaction Banking, CEO , all displaying their latest achievements, current affairs and future plans in their respective pages. - Distributed information: The information on the website was not properly centralized and composed, for e.g. Every department website had their training and elearning documents displayed on their respective pages but instead, these documents should have been organized under one banner "Training" or "E learning" so that it would be easier to access to any kind of training material. - Restricting User right: The web developer was only responsible for any website text addition, modification and deletion which had both its positive and negative aspects. Positively, the website would be safe and secure without allowing any user to add some malicious content that could compromise the intranet thus threatening the network. Negatively, the users cannot publish any of their informative and important documents, so which has to be done only through the web developer. But then a lot of times we need to make changes in our documents and due to the restricted rights, publishing those changes cannot be done time to time. - Unimpressive design: The feedback from the bank employees indicated that a lot of flashy images of the bank logo and improper navigation tools made the website quite unattractive and boring for the users to bother visiting. A company website can convey its Hamid, 3 message strongly if the website has organized information and more navigation bars which can allow the users to visit the website more frequently and participate in the bank online activities. Solution Proposed: Understanding the requirements of the bank's intranet needs, I knew that I had to propose a solution that can not only help in centralizing the information but also allow the employees to interact with each other on a common platform for business needs. Microsoft Share point server 2003 application is a reliable, scalable and easy to deploy platform, designed to organize the distributed data from various sources and provide a common portal for the users to interact and share tasks. Following are the main

Organisation Change Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Organisation Change - Research Paper Example This paper identifies organizations that have implemented different organizational strategies, the one that is most successful, and the reason behind its success. Organizations That Have Adopted Different Change Strategies Tuning (Anticipatory and Incremental) Tuning is implemented when management anticipates a change and an incremental change is initiated. An example of this is the tuning of marketing activities by Du Pont. Du Pont adopted a marketing strategy called Adopt-a-Customer program, wherein a blue-collared worker would personally visit a customer to understand his needs and pass them on to the company (Kreitner, 2008). This innovative idea replaced the traditional way of waiting for the customer to report a problem and then fix it. This was an effective strategy that translated into organizational success. Adaptation (Reactive and Incremental) Adaptation is also an incremental change, but here the change is not proactive but reactive to external stimuli. Ford with its aero dynamic styling had made a successful change that positively affected the performance of the company. In order to compete with Ford, Chrysler and General Motors were forced to adopt a change in their design (Oden, 1999). Reorientation (Anticipatory and Discontinuous) Reorientation is an anticipatory change wherein significant redirection of the organization occurs. An example of this is the change made at At&T by CEO Bob Allen. The company went through many radical changes in the 1980s such as restructuring of the business units, new management teams, change in overall strategy, new acquisitions, etc (Palmer, Dunford & Akin, 2008). These changes were in response to anticipatory changes in the industry expected due to deregulation and pressure from international competition. Re-Creation (Reactive and Discontinuous) Re-creation also involves major modifications in the organization, it is similar to reorientation but the change here is reactive. An example of this is the complete restr ucturing of Apple Inc., in the mid 90s. Apple was under the threat of being shut down; it had not been able to adapt to the changing times and competition. It was then completely restructured which included a new product line and even new board members. Most Successful Changes and the Reasons behind Them The success of an organizational change is dependent on various factors and, hence, each change must be evaluated individually. In the above-identified changes, the most successful is the re-creation change in Apple. The simple reason for this is that the changes made in the company during the 90s have today resulted in Apple being one of the most valuable companies on the planet. There are numerous reasons behind this. The change brought focus to the product line. The number of products was reduced and more focus was given on developing a generation of the same product rather than a number of products. The restructuring of the board brought in new ideas and expertise to the company . In addition, the change in the leadership style (Steve Jobs’ charismatic leadership) made a huge difference to the company’s fortunes. One Category More Successful Than Another Even though the recreation change is identified as the most successf

Wednesday, October 16, 2019

The Intranet Technology Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

The Intranet Technology - Case Study Example He focused on the four major points of IT responsibilities: Keeping these points in mind, Mr Goody gave me a comprehensive view on the various applications that were being currently used in the bank and the optimization methods required to develop the business functioning and achieve faster deadlines. The main application that Mr Goody explained needed improvement was the Intranet website that had to be made more efficient and user friendly. - Conventional format: The Intranet website of the bank, as I saw it, was just a lot of text information about the bank from the web developers. It looked very conventional with some introduction about the bank along with some highlights on the main page. The other web pages were organized department wise such as IT, Wholesale banking, Consumer Banking, Human Resource, Transaction Banking, CEO , all displaying their latest achievements, current affairs and future plans in their respective pages. - Distributed information: The information on the website was not properly centralized and composed, for e.g. Every department website had their training and elearning documents displayed on their respective pages but instead, these documents should have been organized under one banner "Training" or "E learning" so that it would be easier to access to any kind of training material. - Restricting User right: The web developer was only responsible for any website text addition, modification and deletion which had both its positive and negative aspects. Positively, the website would be safe and secure without allowing any user to add some malicious content that could compromise the intranet thus threatening the network. Negatively, the users cannot publish any of their informative and important documents, so which has to be done only through the web developer. But then a lot of times we need to make changes in our documents and due to the restricted rights, publishing those changes cannot be done time to time. - Unimpressive design: The feedback from the bank employees indicated that a lot of flashy images of the bank logo and improper navigation tools made the website quite unattractive and boring for the users to bother visiting. A company website can convey its Hamid, 3 message strongly if the website has organized information and more navigation bars which can allow the users to visit the website more frequently and participate in the bank online activities. Solution Proposed: Understanding the requirements of the bank's intranet needs, I knew that I had to propose a solution that can not only help in centralizing the information but also allow the employees to interact with each other on a common platform for business needs. Microsoft Share point server 2003 application is a reliable, scalable and easy to deploy platform, designed to organize the distributed data from various sources and provide a common portal for the users to interact and share tasks. Following are the main

Tuesday, October 15, 2019

The Dulhasti Power Plant Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

The Dulhasti Power Plant - Case Study Example In addition, the selected region was very poor in terms of infrastructure development. More precisely, the region did not have an adequately developed logistic network including roads and rail lines. As a result, almost all construction supplies such as raw materials and labor had to be brought to air transportation. Another issue is that the construction site was far away from larger cities and urban areas. Therefore, the construction firms had to spend more on food and accommodation for its workers. In addition, the non-proximity to larger cities significantly increased the transportation costs of the French consortium. Since the company had to wait for a relatively long period to obtain the supply of raw materials, this situation led to delay in the completion of the project. Evidently, time delay involved in the project completion would end up in cost escalations. Probably, the adverse climatic conditions in this mountainous terrain might have also contributed to the project cost escalation. Management professionals point out that even highly experienced construction firms cannot accurately perform cost estimation when working under harsh geographical condition due to unforeseen contingencies. There are some regions that are extremely prone to natural contingencies like earthquakes, floods, drone, and wildfire. While working in such bad geographical regions, construction firms are most likely to experience cost overruns. Such threats not only impede the project development but also cause damages to construction firm’s resources including tools, pieces of equipment, and labors. Sometimes, issues like a landslide or icy roads may disrupt transportation, and hence the construction firms may be compelled to stop their work temporarily. Undoubtedly, such incidents would cause construction firms to incur unanticipated fund needs. In order to manage contingency costs, construction firms are forced to increase the level of contingency funding.

Current Events in Business Research Essay Example for Free

Current Events in Business Research Essay INTRODUCTION There are six basic stages to the research process. Stage 1 is clarifying the research question. This would be the process in identifying the problem that is prompting the research. Stage 2 is proposing research, which would be the act of identifying the resources necessary to do the research. The third stage is designing the research project, or deciding which method to use to gather the information. Stage 4 involves data collection and preparation, which is gathering the data and making it ready to be evaluated. Stage 5 would be the data analysis and interpretation stage. Stage 5 is defining what the data is saying about the problem. The final stage, stage 6 is reporting the results. This is breaking down the interpretation into a presentation that shows the meaning of the data collected. (Cooper Schindler, 2014) This is the process used by Paramount Pictures recently when it was in contract negotiations with the DVD rental company, Redbox. THE DILEMMA As the major Hollywood studios took sides for and against Redbox, Paramount Pictures was staying neutral. The studio had signed a first-of-its-kind trial deal guaranteeing that its titles will be available from the fast-growing $1-a-night DVD rental company through the end of the year. During that time, Paramount would study the effect of Redbox rentals on its total home-entertainment revenue, examining whether there is any decrease in the sales of its DVDs at stores that house Redbox kiosks. Under the terms of the agreement, Paramount would have the option at the end of the year to trigger a five-year deal with Redbox similar to ones recently struck with  competitors Sony Pictures and Lionsgate. The estimated value of the agreement was $575 million. Redbox President Mitch Lowe agreed because Paramount movies performed better at the box office that year. A Paramount agreement would give the studio a share of rental revenue, meaning it could earn more than $575 million if its movies prove popular. Sony and Lionsgate are selling their discs wholesale to Redbox. Though it doesnt have a formal deal with the company, Walt Disney Studios allows its wholesalers to sell discs to Redbox as well. (Fritz, 2009) There has been a lot of debate in the industry about the impact Redbox is having and will have, and we felt the best way to make a decision is by getting the information, said Paramount Vice Chairman Rob Moore. Then we can make an informed decision based on what we will have learned over the next four months. Guaranteed access to Paramount’s movies was important for Redbox. The studio released two of that summers biggest movies, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Star Trek.(Fritz, 2009) A movie that plays well in the theaters tends to do well when it is available to rent. Rental revenue could also provide a much-needed boost to the bottom line of Paramount. Lowe said he was confident that providing detailed data to Paramount would help resolve the heated disputes in Hollywood about his companys effect on the entertainment business. Lowe has previously said his companys research found that DVD sales dropped less than 1% in stores that installed a Redbox kiosk. Many studios do their own analysis that we know is not as reliable and is aimed at coming to the answer they want to hear, he said. We find that when we can form a relationship with a studio and share real data, it results in a positive step forward. Moore said he hadnt reached any definitive conclusions as to what steps he would take if the data showed that Redbox rentals do in fact reduce overall revenue. So, the dilemma that Paramount has is whether or not partnering with Redbox will reduce its sales income more than it will increase its rental revenue. THE PROCESS Paramount and Redbox did the research to determine whether or not rentals available the same day to buy decreased the sales revenue any more or less than those studios who decided to wait 28 days to make them available. Despite some content executives recently having touted the benefits of a  28-day window for DVD titles, Coinstar Inc.’s CEO Paul Davis said the companys own research showed Redbox Automated Retail LLC kiosks have a minimal impact on DVD sales. We did a major study, a little over a year ago, with a major studio and a major retailer and we found that the impact on new product sales as a result of our $1-a-night being out there, day and date, was less than 1%, Redbox worked closely with Paramount, and they did a lot of testing as well, and the fact that they decided to go with day and date (of release) I think speaks volumes.(James, 2010) CONCLUSION After reviewing the data collected by themselves and Redbox in 2009, Paramount Pictures made their decision. In June, 2010, Paramount exercised its option to extend its revenue-sharing license agreement with Redbox, which gives Redbox access to Paramount’s newly released DVDs and Blu-ray titles on the same day they are released in the sell-through market. Paramount’s extended agreement with Redbox runs until the end of 2014, though the studio will had the option to terminate the agreement early at the end of 2011. (James, 2010) As a result of the research, Davis thought that studios that have the 28-day window might opt to tweak their Redbox agreements to get certain DVD titles out for rental sooner. Especially as more and more data gets out there and as the studios that have opted for the 28-day window, as they have a year or so to look at the data, see how its impacted their new product sales it could move that we get some titles earlier, he said.(James, 2010) The process that Paramount and Redbox used, and the data they collected, could prove to be useful data to the other studios as to whether or not they should wait the 28 days. Reference Cooper, D. R., Schindler, P. S. (2014). Business Research Methods (12th ed.). New York, NY: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.. Fritz, B. (2009, Aug 26). COMPANY TOWN; paramount to give redbox a spin. Los Angeles Times Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/422289074?accountid=458 James, S. B. (2010). Impact of day-and-date redbox rentals on DVD sales less than 1%. SNL Kagan Media Communications Report, Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/869743836?accountid=458

Monday, October 14, 2019

Methods for Water Treatment

Methods for Water Treatment 1.12.2 Effect of chlorination of water Chlorine is toxic not only for microorganisms, but for human being also. For humans, chlorine is an irritation to the nasal passages eye, and respiratory system. Chlorine gas must be cautiously handled because it may cause severe health problem. Although, chlorine gas is also the low rate form of chlorine for water treatment, It makes use choice in spite of the health problem. In drinking water, the concentration of chlorine is usually very low and is thus not a concern in acute exposure. More of a concern is the long term risk of cancer due to chronic exposing to chlorinated water. This is mainly due to the halo alkanes and other products and chlorinated products. These are carcinogenic and have been the substance of concern in chlorinated drinking water. Chlorinated water has been related with increased risk of bladder, colon and rectal cancer. In the case of bladder cancer, the risk may be doubled. Chlorination is a very popular method of water disinfection that has been used from several years. It has proved to be efficient for destroying bacteria and viruses, but not for some carcinogenic disinfection by-product, many communities have become hesitant in the continuation of this process. Although chlorination does have some disadvantages, it continues to be the most conventional, useful, and consistent method of water disinfection. 1.13 Oxidation by potassium permanganate Most treatment plants, uses potassium permanganate for the oxidation and subsequent removal of iron, follow the chemical addition with manganese greensand filtration. Manganese treated greensand can exchange electrons and therefore oxidizes iron and manganese to their insoluble, filterable states [[1][2]]. When the filter is completely regenerated the excess KMnO4 will break through the filter bed leaving a pink color in the water. The greensand filter bed is usually capped with anthracite to first remove insoluble compounds, which helps prevent the filter from becoming clogged. Most filters are equipped with an air wash system to enhance the greens and backwashing process. Major disadvantages to the use of the potassium permanganate – greens and filtration process for iron removal include high chemical costs and filter bed deterioration when the pH falls below 7.0. In some treatment plants, KMnO4 is used to oxidize iron and manganese without greensand filtration[[3]]and analytical chemistry [[4]] and also as a disinfectant. Among the six oxidation states of manganese from +2 to +7, permanganate, Mn(VII) is the most pervasive oxidation state in acid, with reduction potentials of [[5]]Oxidation by permanganate finds extensive application in organic synthesis [[6]].The manganese c hemistry involved in these multistep redox reactions is an important source of information as the manganese intermediates are relatively easy to identify when they have sufficiently long lifetimes, and oxidation states of the intermediates permit useful conclusions as to the possible reaction mechanisms, including the nature of intermediates. In acidic medium it exists in the different forms: HMnO4, H2MnO+4, HMnO3 and Mn2O7. The thesis comprises seven chapters including the general introduction about chemical kinetics as follows. 1.  General Introduction This chapter introduces about the kinetics, mechanisms, disinfection and catalysis of reactions in general. PART I Uncatalyzed reactions 2. Transformation of Levofloxacin during Water treatment with chlorine: Kinetics, Mechanism and Pathways Kinetics and mechanism of removal of fluoroquinolone antibacterial levofloxacin (LFC) by free available chlorine (FAC) during water chlorination processes was investigated for the first time between the pH values 4.2 and 8.5. The pH dependent second order rate constants were found to decrease with increase in pH. (e.g. Apparent second order rate constant; k†app = 20 dm3 mol-1 s-1 at pH 4.2 and k†app = 1 dm3 mol-1 s-1 at pH 8.5 and at 25 oC). The products of the reaction were determined by Liquid chromatography and high resolution mass spectrometry. There are two plausible pathways for the LFC chlorination. The major channel is electrophilic halodecarboxylation of quinolone moiety in which, HOCl reacts at tertiary N(4) amine to form a reactive chlorammonium intermediate (R3N(4)Cl+) that can catalytically halogenate LFC and the minor channel is chlorination at piperazinyl moiety in which the HOCl reacts at tertiary N(4) amine to form a reactive chlorammonium intermediate (R 3N(4)Cl+) followed by intermediate degradation both at piperazinyl and quinolone moiety with successive chlorination. The effect of temperature on the rate of the reaction was studied at four different temperatures and rate constants were found to increase with increase in temperature and the thermodynamic activation parameters Ea, ΔH#, ΔS# and ΔG# were evaluated for the reaction and discussed. 3. Transformation of linezolid during water treatment with chlorine: A kinetic study The experimental studies on transformation of emerging contaminant linezolid during water chlorination process have been carried out using UV-Visible spectrometer. The pseudo-first order rate constants of linezolid reaction with free available chlorine (FAC) at 5.0 to 8.8 pH have been determined. The second order rate constants are found to decrease with increase in pH (e.g. apparent second rate constant; k†app=2.88 dm3 mol-1s-1 at pH 5.0 and k†app = 0.076 dm3 mol-1 s-1 at pH 8.8 at 298K). Monochlorinated reaction product has been identified by LC/ESI/MS spectra under the experimental conditions. A mechanism involving electrophilic halogenation is proposed based on the kinetic data and LC/ESI/MS spectra. The effect of temperature on the rate of the reaction has been studied at four different temperatures. It is observed that rate constants increase with the increase in temperature and the thermodynamic activation parameters Ea, ΔH#, ΔS# and ΔG# are evaluated for the reaction and discussed. The product of the reaction between linezolid and FAC retains the antibacterial activity. The geometry optimization of the reactants and the products has been done using dispersion corrected density functional (DFT-D) method. All the DFT calculations are accomplished using the TurboMole-5.10 package. 4. Transformation of antibacterial agent lomefloxacin by alkaline permanganate: Kinetics and Mechanism The kinetic and mechanistic investigation of oxidation of emerging contaminant Lomefloxacin (LMF) by alkaline permanganate was carried out spectrophtometrically. The oxidation product 7-amino-1-ethyl-6,8-difluoro-4-oxo-quinoline-3-carboxylic acid was identified by Agilent 6130 Series Quadrupole LC/MS. The stoichiometry was found to be 1:2, that is, 1 mol of lomefloxacin reacted with 2 mol manganese (VII). Orders with respect to [LMF] and [OH] were found to be fractional and less that one. The oxidation reaction proceeds via an alkali-permanganate species, that forms a complex with lomefloxacin and the complex then decomposes to give the product. The rate of reaction was found to decrease with decrease in the dielectric constant. The effects of initially added products and ionic strength have also been investigated. The kinetics of the reaction was also studied at four different temperatures and the thermodynamic activation parameters for the reaction were evaluated and discussed. The geometry optimization of reactants and activated complex were carried out using density functional theory (DFT). The DFT calculations were accomplished with the TURBOMOLE program package (Version-6.4). The activation energy was found to be ~21 kJ/mol at RI-BP86.def 2-TZVPP level of theory. PART II CATALYSED REACTIONS 5. Silver (I) catalyzed and uncatalyzed oxidation of levofloxacin with aqueous chlorine: A comparative kinetic and mechanistic approach The kinetics and mechanism of the Ag (I) ion catalyzed reaction of levofloxacin (LFC) by free available chlorine (FAC) during water chlorination processes was investigated for the first time between the pH values 4.2 and 8.2. The pH dependent second order rate constants were found to decrease with increase in pH. (e.g. Apparent second order rate constant for Ag (I) catalyzed reaction, k†app = 114.40 dm-3 mol-1 sec-1 at pH 4.2 and k† app. = 8.72 dm-3mol-1 sec-1 at pH 8.2 and at 25 ±0.2 à ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã†â€™). The reaction rates revealed that Ag (I) catalyzed reaction was about six-fold faster than the uncatalyzed reaction. The products of the reaction were determined by Liquid chromatography and high resolution mass spectrometry. The reaction proceeds via formation of intermediate complex between Ag (I) ion and levofloxacin, then HOCl reacts with the complex to form chlorinated product. The effect of catalyst, effect of initially added product, effect dielectric constant and effect ionic strength on the rate of reaction was also studied. The effect of temperature on the rate of the reaction was studied at four different temperatures and rate constants were found to increase with increase in temperature and the thermodynamic activation parameters Ea, ΔH#, ΔS# and ΔG# were evaluated for the reaction and discussed. 6. Ag (I) catalyzed chlorination of linezolid during water treatment: Kinetics, mechanism The kinetics and mechanism of the Ag (I) ion catalyzed reaction of linezolid (LNZ) by free available chlorine (FAC) during water chlorination processes was investigated for the first time between the pH values 4.0 and 9.0. The pseudo-first order rate constants of linezolid reaction with free available chlorine (FAC) at 4.0 to 9.0 pH have been determined. The pH dependent second order rate constants were found to decrease with increase in pH. Apparent second order rate constant for uncatalyzed reaction, e.g. k†app = 8.15 dm-3 mol-1 sec-1 at pH 4.0 and k† app. = 0.076 dm-3mol-1 sec-1 at pH 9.0 and at 25 ±0.2 à ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã†â€™ and for Ag (I) catalyzed reaction total apparent second order rate constant, e.g. k†app = 51.50 dm-3 mol-1 sec-1 at pH 4.0 and k† app. = 1.03 dm-3mol-1 sec-1 at pH 9.0 and at 25 ±0.2 à ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã†â€™. The reaction rates revealed that Ag (I) catalyzed reaction was about five to ten-fold faster than the uncatalyzed reaction. Monochlorinate d reaction product has been identified by LC/ESI/MS spectra under the experimental conditions. A mechanism involving electrophilic halogenation is proposed based on the kinetic data and LC/ESI/MS spectra. The reaction rates revealed that Ag (I) catalyzed reaction was about ten-fold faster than the uncatalyzed reaction.The reaction proceeds via formation of intermediate complex between Ag (I) ion and linezolid, then HOCl reacts with the complex to form chlorinated product. The effect of temperature on the rate of the reaction has been studied at four different temperatures. It is observed that rate constants increase with the increase in temperature and the thermodynamic activation parameters Ea, ΔH#, ΔS# and ΔG# are evaluated for the reaction and discussed. The effect of catalyst, effect of initially added product, effect dielectric constant and effect ionic strength on the rate of reaction. The product of the reaction between linezolid and FAC retains the antibacterial activity. 7. Transformation of linezolid during water treatment with permanganate: Kinetics, mechanism and Pd (II) catalysis The uncatalyzed and Pd (II) catalyzed transformation of Linezolid (LNZ) with permanganate in acidic medium was carried out between the pH values 3.0 and 6.0. The pH dependent second order rate constants were found to decrease with increase in pH. Apparent second order rate constant for uncatalyzed reaction, e.g. k†app = 6.32 dm-3 mol-1 sec-1 at pH 3.0 and k† app. = 2.64 dm-3mol-1 sec-1 at pH 6.0 and at 25 ±0.2 à ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã†â€™ and for Pd (II) catalyzed reaction total apparent second order rate constant, e.g. k†app = 75.5 dm-3 mol-1 sec-1 at pH 3.0 and k† app. = 45.66 dm-3mol-1 sec-1 at pH 6.0 and at 25 ±0.2 à ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã†â€™. The reaction rates revealed that Pd (II) catalyzed reaction was about ten-fold faster than the uncatalyzed reaction. The products of the reaction were determined by Liquid chromatography and high resolution mass spectrometry. The reaction proceeds via formation of complex between Pd (II) and linezolid, then complex reacts with acidic p ermanganate to form intermediate compound, which then form oxidized products. The effect of catalyst, effect of initially added product, effect dielectric constant and effect ionic strength on the rate of reaction were also studied. The effect of temperature on the rate of the reaction was studied at four different temperatures and rate constants were found to increase with increase in temperature and the thermodynamic activation parameters Ea, ΔH#, ΔS# and ΔG# were evaluated for the reaction and discussed. References [1]. w. Stumm, and J.J. Morgan, Aquatic Chemistry. Wiley Interscience, New York, 1967. [2]. J. Hoigne, H. Bader, W.R. Haag and J. Staehelin, Rate Constants of Reactions of Ozone with Organic and Inorganic Compounds in water III, Water Res., Vol. 19(8), 1985, pp.993. [3]. L.D. Benefield, J.F. Judkins and B.L. Weand , Iron and Manganese Removal, from Process Chemistry for water and wastewater Treatment, ed. J.M. Chege, Prentice Hall, Inc., Englewood CliffS, N.J.,1982. [4]. G.A. Hiremath, P.L.Timmanagoudar and S. T. Nandibewoor, Kinetics of oxidation of thallium (I) by permanganate in aqueous hydrochloric acid medium using stopped flow technique. Transit. Met. Chem. Vol.21, 1996, pp. 560–568. [5]. M.C. Day and J.Selbin, Theoretical Inorganic Chemistry, Reinhold, New York, 1964,  pp. 226–233. [6]. P. Caron, R.W. Dugger, J.A.Ruggeri and D.H.Brown Ripin, Large scale oxidations in the pharmaceutical industry. Chem. Rev. Vol.106, 2006, pp. 2943–2989.

Sunday, October 13, 2019

Overview of Women’s History in Korea Essays -- Culture Asia Essays

Overview of Women’s History in Korea In modern day Korea, women are actively involved in many career fields, such as education, law, literature, sports, medicine, and engineering. However, it wasn’t too long ago that women were confined only to the home and family. The introduction of Christianity to Korea helped elevate women’s roles through schools ran by missionaries. Some were even specifically for educating women. (Korean Overseas Information Service, 2001) Many of the educated women began getting involved in religious work, teaching, the arts, and of course, the enlightening of other women. But it wasn’t until the establishment of the Republic of Korea in 1948, when women began gaining constitutional rights for equal opportunities in the work force, education, and public life. The economic growth that Korea has experienced at this time, and even today has contributed to the large amount of women going into the work force. The high amount of women in the work force, in professional jobs influenced the government to pass the â€Å"Equal Employment Act† of 1987 to prevent discrimination against females regarding hiring practices and promotion opportunities. However, with this added freedom, many Korean women feel highly pressured because they are burdened with both earning a living and their traditional roles as housewives. Modern Korean women are facing both physical and mental exhaustion due to the demands of society and their families. Add to that, childcare is a major problem in Korea. Although laws have been passed to promote the employment of women, and facilities for childcare should be provided, the reality is that childcare is sadly lacking. Recently, the government further suppo... ... capitalistic industrialization established of the 1960’s on the other.† (Chung, 1997) In other words, due to Confucius beliefs, women have not experienced total freedom in their private or public lives. Yet overtime, things will improve for Korean women due to the recent legislation set up to help further strengthen their roles in the workforce, education, and hopefully, in their private lives as well. Resources: 1. Women’s Contemporary Roles in Korea. Retrieved from the Internet on September 15, 2003. (http://www.askasia.org/Korea/r15) 2. Nugent, Sookja Chung. Korean Women’s History- An Overview. Korean Quarterly. (Fall, 1998). 3. (http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/heroine7.html) 4. Chung, Connie. Korean Society and Women: Focusing on the Family (1997). (http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~yisei/backissues/spring_95/yisei_95_30.html)

Saturday, October 12, 2019

When the Scientist turns Philosopher :: Science Philosophy Papers

When the Scientist turns Philosopher This paper examines how such fundamental notions as causality and determinism have undergone changes as a direct result of empirical discoveries. Although such notions are often regarded as metaphysical or a priori concepts, experimental discoveries at the beginning of this century—radioactive decay, blackbody radiation and spontaneous emission—led to a direct questioning of the notions of causality and determinism. Experimental evidence suggests that these two notions must be separated. Causality and indeterminism are compatible with the behavior of quantum-mechanical systems. The argument also sheds some light on the Duhem-Quine thesis, since experimental results at the periphery of the conceptual scheme directly affect conceptions at the very core. I. Ever since Thomas S. Kuhn pointed out the importance of the history of science for the philosophy of science, it has become customary for philosophers of science to support their philosophical considerations by appeal to real-life science. From the often historical material the philosopher seeks evidence for some general principles about the nature of science. If there is a common territory between science and philosophy, as many writers have affirmed, (1) it must also be possible to go from science to philosophy. This is indeed what some of the greatest scientific minds throughout the centuries have attempted to do. Their reflections fall into the oldest branches of philosophical thinking: ontology or the question of what the basic constituents of nature are; epistemology or the question by which tools the human mind can acquire knowledge about the external world; ethics or the question of what moral responsibility scientists have with respect to their discoveries. In such contributions, scientists, prompted by the most recent discoveries in their respective fields, provide interpretations of science and the natural world and thereby contribute to their understanding. The heartbeat of science is at its most philosophical rhythm when major conceptual revisions or revolutions are afoot and scientists feel the need to go beyond the mathematical expressions of natural processes to reach a level of understanding which assigns some physical meaning to the mathematical comprehension of the natural world or offers a re-interpretation of the nature of the scientific enterprise. What is interesting in this process from a philosophical point of view is that empirical facts filter through to the conceptual level and bring about changes in the way the world is conceptualised. 'Old notions are discarded by new experiences', as Max Born once said. The common territory between science and philosophy lies in this interaction between facts and concepts.

Friday, October 11, 2019

People of the Philippines vs Andre Marti

People vs. Marti 193 SCRA 57 Facts : Andre Marti and his wife went to Manila Packing and Export Forwarders, carrying with them four gift wrapped packages to be delivered to his friend in Zurich, Switzerland. Anita Reyes (wife of the proprietor) asked if she could inspect the packages, however, Marti refused assuring that it only contained books, cigars and gloves as gift to his friend. Before delivery to Bureau of Customs/Posts, the proprietor Job Reyes, following standard operating procedure, opened the boxes for final inspection.When he opened Marti's boxes, a particular odor emitted therefrom and he soon found out that the boxes contained dried marijuana leaves. He reported the incident to the NBI who acknowledged custody of the incident. Marti was convicted for violation of R. A. 6425, otherwise known as the Dangerous Drugs Act. Constitutional Issues : 1. Marti contends that the evidence had been obtained in violation of his constitutional rights against unreasonable seach and si ezure and privacy of communication.Ruling : 1. Evidence sought to be excluded was primarily discovered and obtained by a private person, acting in a private capacity and without the intervention and participation of State authorities. In the absence of governmental interference, the libertied guaranteed by the Constitution cannot be invoked against the State. 2. Mere presence of NBI agents does not convert it to warrantless search and siezure. Merely to look at that which is plain sight is not search.Having observed that which is open, where no trespass has been committed is not search. Commissioner Bernas : The protection of fundamental liberties in the essence of constitutional democracy†¦ is a protection against the State. The Bill of Rights governs the relationship between the individual and the State. Its concern is not the relation between individuals, between a private individual and other individuals. What the Bill of Rights does is to declare some forbidden zones in th e private sphere inaccessible to any power holder.

Thursday, October 10, 2019

Deconstructing redemption in The Road

â€Å"There Is no God and we are his prophets†: Deconstructing Redemption In Corm McCarthy The Road. (paper under review: not for quotation) Stefan Skirmisher The University of Manchester Stefan. [email  protected] AC. UK 09/09/09 Abstract Despite its overwhelmingly positive reception, the apparently redemptive conclusion to Corm McCarthy The Road attracted criticism from some reviewers. They read in it an inconsistency with the nihilism that otherwise pervades the novel, as well as McCarthy other works.But what are they referring to when they Interpret redemption', the ‘messianic' and ‘God' In McCarthy novel? Some Introductory thoughts from apocalypse theory and deconstruction reveal a more nuanced approach that not only ‘saves' McCarthy from the charge of such critics. It also opens up more interesting avenues for exploring the theme of redemption and the messianic in contemporary disaster fiction. Introduction Justifiably effusive praise was heaped, by t he literary community, upon McCarthy multiple award-winner The Road (2006).But perhaps the most interesting reaction came in the form of critique of the allegedly â€Å"redemptive† and â€Å"messianic† tone of Its conclusion. Michael Cabochon's celebrated review of the book argued that McCarthy appeared to insert such a tone â€Å"almost†¦ In spite of himself',l that is, out of character with his usual nihilism. Another reviewer went as far as to suggest the novel â€Å"failed† the â€Å"modernist challenge: to write about a holocaust, about the end of everything†¦ What happens Is a redemption, of sorts, arguably absurd In the face of such overwhelming nihilism. 2 One wonders how McCarthy himself would respond. Perhaps we should begin by recalling the cautionary and prophetic injunction that Nietzsche appended to one of his last works, Ace Homo: â€Å"l have a terrible fear I shall nee day be pronounced holy: one will guess why I bring out this book beforehand; it is Intended to prevent people from making mischief of me†¦ My truth Is dreadful: for hitherto the Ill has been called truth. â€Å"3 Nietzsche feared the untimely nature of the truth he came to announce to a modernity whose ‘end' had only just begun.He predicted the unpreserved of us â€Å"murderers of God† to stand up in the ruins of the transcendent â€Å"old God† of metaphysics, and an unwillingness to create our own tragic pursuit of life. God, he would later write, would simply refuse die; the task of modern man was therefore to kill him again and again. He difficult and paradoxical redemption offered in The Road is very far from resurrecting the old God of metaphysics. Indeed, I would like to argue in the following that it interweaves themes both of resistance (the refusal to die) and mourning (the passing of irreversible loss).In doing so, the novel powerfully engages the reader with the very porous nature of redemption in the context of its post-apocalyptic environment. Engaging McCarthy text in this way invites a Adrienne, deconstructive reading of the narrative of redemption in contemporary disaster fiction in general. This is cause the conversations and thought-experiments employed by McCarthy attempt in many different ways to destabilize and provoke questions of the binary oppositions involved in that very discussion of redemptive ends (indeed, of the possibility of conceiving ‘ends' at all).There are oppositions such as the saved and the damned, the lost and the retrievable; the redeemed and irredeemable futures. McCarthy provokes the question, in particular, of what meaning we might possibly attach to human redemption and the â€Å"messianic† in an ostensibly irredeemable earth. What can be hoped for, sustained, and believed in? On the one hand, therefore, McCarthy pursuit of life and lives in the scorched wasteland bears all the hallmarks of Nietzsche tragedy – the â€Å"taming of ho rror through art†4 -as opposed to a comic rendering of the apocalypse (in which the righteous are spared the calamities of the end).On the other hand, the ambiguous sense of the messianic in The Road hints at more than lyrical or existentialist responses to tragedy. By tracing McCarthy exploration of redemption alongside developments in the continental philosophy of religion, first in the form of ‘death of God theology, and second, that of indestructibility of the messianic, I hope to open up some exploratory questions about the ambiguity of redemption in this highly influential piece of contemporary fiction.Ends of The Road Michael Cabochon states that for authors attempting a move into the futuristic post- apocalypse genre, â€Å"it is an established fact that a preponderance of religious imagery or an avowed religious intent can go a long way toward mitigating the science- fictional taint. â€Å"5 And so Cabochon believes that, in McCarthy novel, the father â€Å"f eeds his son a story'. By constructing the creed or injunction to â€Å"carry the fire†, the story is infused with a â€Å"religious sense of mission† that, incarnate in the hope given to the life of the boy, â€Å"verges on the explicitly messianic†. We would do well to pause in front of the implications of this word â€Å"messianic†. Who is saved: the boy? The promise of human community? And who or what comes to save? The boys saviors at the end present a hesitant, and uncertain departure: the guarantee only that others like him are alive. The messianic here would appear to take the form as much as a threat as a promise. And yet, taken from the Hebrew term for ‘anointed one', the concept of messiah in Jewish and early Christian literature is indeed bound up closely with the apocalyptic social upheaval. Certain expressions of the messianic thus anticipate both destruction (of the old world) and rebirth (of the new). In Jewish rabbinic thought what is crucial for messianic belief is its relationship with history and historic experience. It is visionary hope in the present for the way things could be, whether these are simply restorative or utopian. 8 The tradition that emerges is subsequently one of the announcement of such a promise of the future through the voice of the prophets.Anticipating Jacques Deride, the concept of the messianic announcement is the voice of the fringe, the outside of sanctioned, homogeneous discourse: â€Å"a call, a promise of an independent future for what is to come, and which comes like every messiah in the shape of peace and Justice, a promise independent of religion, that is to say universal. â€Å"9 Whilst The Road carries its own utopian and dyspepsia prophets, however, redemption is nowhere conceived or expressed as the restoration of peace. Nor is it infused with any hope in the renewal of the earth, or even of the narrative of new beginnings for the scorched landscape.McCarthy relentlessl y refuses reassurance that any return to a golden age is possible. The novel is an exploration of the irreversible, of â€Å"things which could not be put back†. 10 In what, then, consist its alleged religiosity, its messianic expectation, or â€Å"greater The clues lie in the relationship formed between a salvation to come (framed in the metaphor of the road itself: Mimi need to keep going. You don't know what might be down the road†12) and the ambiguous sense of endings running throughout the book. The father's own life represents a refusal of the simplicity of endings.His son must not lay down and die. Or, more precisely, he may not die of his own choosing, before the Father has calculated death's permeability on his behalf. The terror of the novel is thus generated within the narrative context of this slipping away of the control over the appropriate end. The son knows neither how to die alone, nor, symbolically, the function of the pistol in his hands: (â€Å"l d on't know what to do, Papa. I don't know what to do. Where will you be? â€Å")13 In relation to a search for the messianic, we must seek the sense of redemption only within this disestablishing sense of time.The messianic takes on a perverse sort of tension between the desire for end as closure, and the refusal to end, as the resistance of death, and finality. The boys terror at the task asked of him (to kill himself) is not complicated. But this struggle between ends and beginnings in The Road also expresses the paradoxical nature of the post-apocalyptic genre in general. If we accept James Burger's account of post-apocalyptic narrative as concerned essentially with â€Å"aftermaths and remainders†, then we must also follow his conclusion that it is always oxymoron: â€Å"the End is never the end†. The modernist assumption, in Frank Sermon's celebrated study, has been that the â€Å"sense of an ending† is what gives our living â€Å"in the middies†1 5 narrative meaning. But post-apocalypse means the very unsettling of those temporal frames. It â€Å"impossibly straddles the boundary between before and after some event that has obliterated what went before yet defines what will come after. â€Å"16 Indeed, we can see the influence of this scatological tension – a concern to much modernist and postmodernist literary exploration of the nature and meaning of narrative closure.Paul Fiddles' wide ranging study of such explorations suggests that if there is a malaise in the writing of closure into contemporary fiction, it simply reflects the more general environment of â€Å"constant crisis†, replacing the sense of completion and fulfillment of history, in which we live. 17 Such a paradox also partly reflects The Road as a study of the refusal of endings, and e ipso a refusal of the redemption normally associated with the narrative end. For our fascination is drawn not to those who are destroyed, but to those who refuse to die.If McCarthy style emulates, as some critics suggest, the biblical language of Revelation, they can't have missed SST. John's vision, borrowed probably from Job, that during the scatological calamities, â€Å"people will long for death and not find it anywhere; they will want to die and death will evade them. â€Å"18 A comedic articulation of this craving crops up in the Backbitten character of Ely, echoing precisely the post-apocalyptic dilemma: Things will be better when everyone's gone. They will? Sure they will. Better for who? Everybody. Sure. We'll all be better off. We'll all breathe easier.That's good to know. Yes it is. When we're all gone at last then there'll be nobody here but death and his days are numbered too. He'll be out in the road there with nothing to do and nobody to do it. He'll say: Where did everybody go? And that's how it will be. What's wrong with that? 19 McCarthy is arguably concerned, like Becket, to explore the experience of the death of God as instant paradox. That is, as a source of the death of hope for some, but also of an absurd affirmation of life by others, condemning them to a life of scatological suspension – of waiting, but for what?Our encounter with the ‘post' of post-apocalypse is, then, immediately one with the challenge of making narrative and ethical sense of the life that remains, rather than he purely nihilist gratuitousness of a death that won't come. It is more akin to Albert Campus' Rebel, 20 charged with the task of making an ethics of action in the absurd condition, without resorting to a leap of faith that removed the lucid reality of the absurd itself. It is the life of Sisyphus, who has made his rock his entire â€Å"universe† of meaning. 1 All talk of redemption and the messianic must take seriously this simultaneous presence of both the ‘end' and the refusal, or undesirability, of endings. The question that emanates from The Road is perhaps this one: what does nee do, given the knowledge of a certainty of the collapse of life, which might make walking possible along the remainder of the Road? How can this search operate within the traumatic experiment of post-apocalypse, of the never-ending? Dermis's interest in the concept of ‘apocalyptic time'.For Deride can be argued to echo the refusal of the security of endings that I have suggested lies at the heart of The Road. Deride refuses the scatological language of triumphal historicist (particularly in reference to Fuchsia's ‘end of history thesis), invoking Hamlet's fearful dictum, â€Å"the time is out of Joint†22 To express this refusal. Similarly, McCarthy frames the experience of this time of the ‘remainder' not as the aftermath of the singular catastrophic event. Rather, it is the perpetuity of catastrophe itself: the uncertainty of relationships, ecology, and the possibility for human community.The thought experiment becomes one of a tortuously open future, the absenc e of referents for forging new values, new rules, and new duties. The novel thus plays on the post-apocalypse genre by creating a dissonance of temporal perspectives. Time has already run out and is yet, for the boy, opening out inexorably: nothing has really knishes. For the father, the character of the time that remains is defined by the anxiety not only of the limited time allotted to him (who is really dying) but of the dubious gift of extending the time allotted the son into the future – and who's death he will not be able to oversee.Through the tender and contradictory relationship of the father and son, then, the genre of post-apocalypse is turned on its head. We grapple not so much with the post-modern fragmentation of endless traumatic symptoms,23 but the juxtaposition of these two impossible positions in the dialogue of father and child. On the one hand there is a protection of and desire for the end: the father's desire to secure the least tortuous conclusion to hi s son's life.And on the other there is the need for a beginning: the son's overwhelming concern for who and what must lie beyond: who exists? What are they like? Who looks after them? Who will guarantee their safety in the future? Apocalyptic Time Death, or limit, is thus explored in The Road as a painful loss of control over time. This resistance to the consolation of narrative ends represents the most unique and creative aspect of McCarthy apocalyptic style. But what can we say about ‘apocalyptic' literature in general that may shed light on the ambiguity of McCarthy redemptive turn?Literary apocalypses, in Jewish and Christian interdepartmental literature, intentionally sought to trace the limits of communicable discourse. It did this, crucially, against the political traumas of history, in which an old world was thought to be dying and a new one arising, which would completely overturn reality. Through visionary events bestowed upon favored emissaries or recipients, heaven ly truth revealed, through apocalypses, the â€Å"place beyond the limits of language†25 to unanimity. What is the function of this type of limit-discourse?Implicit to all apocalypses there is an ethically loaded injunction that the truth of the world is not all that is visible or conceivable by human means. 26 At its root, then, apocalypse claims that a deeper destiny and purpose lies underneath, and is here, through text and vision, disclosed. Revealed. It is this aspect of the coding of Revelation that so attracts Dermis's attention in his celebrated essay, On a Newly Arisen Tone in Philosophy. Dermis's fascination is with the figure of John and the complex symbolism of the fragmented, yard messages of the future contained in his vision.There is, believes Deride, something primal to Western thought in John's act as the messenger, this role of being the favored dispatcher of revelation and denouncing the false' ones, the â€Å"impostor apostles†. 27 Is there an echo of this cryptic prophecy in McCarthy – for instance, the language of God who is both announced and yet uncontainable, even within the friendly woman's talk of the â€Å"breath of God† that â€Å"passes from man to man through all of If so, the crucial lesson for an apocalyptic reading of McCarthy would be that apocalypse guarantees no certainties about future realities.On the contrary, it would be to resist the â€Å"temptation† of one apocalyptic tone, and to hear instead apocalypse as an â€Å"unmistakable polytonally'. 29 There is, in a deconstructive reading, only a deeper fragmentation and disestablishing of meaning and truth. And this is precisely the concern of Dermis's critique of an ontological and ‘contemporaneous' reading of history. As Fiddles puts it, narrative can be deconstructionist in the sense that, like the book of Revelation, â€Å"[the] ending deconstructs itself, and so disperses meaning rather than [completes] it. 30 This same ins tability and impermanence of discourse is prevalent within the illegal between father and son in The Road. The meaning of words and the possibility of language itself becomes shorn of its social or ethical grounds. McCarthy even poses the problem as one of the absurdity of text in the post-apocalyptic future. From the referent-less discussion of metaphor â€Å"as the crow flies†31 (to the boy, who has never known the existence of birds) to the man's memory of pausing in the â€Å"charred ruins of some library' and experiencing absolute dislocation between the value of words and the burnt remains of â€Å"the world to come†. 2 An attempt to speak in a world where words and meanings are disappearing mirrors ruefully the attempt to invoke faith in a world in which God is increasingly absent. The God of The Road is the impossible presence, the one whose name is invoked (by the father, and by the woman at the end) but whose very existence would pose only problems, not solu tions. To Ely, the possibility of the persistence of god or gods is a fearful prospect and impedance to the task at hand (of surviving?Or dying? ): â€Å"Where men can't live gods fare no better. You'll see. It's better to be alone. â€Å"33 But the existential struggle facing both the father and Ely is precisely the realization that, in he very act of their survival, something unshakeable of the trace of God (in the book it moves from â€Å"word†, to â€Å"breath†, to â€Å"dream† in that order) is incarnate. This appears, admittedly, as a curse to Ely, whose survival the father finds incredible.The fate bestowed on any unlucky enough to carry on down the road is to carry the remainder, the aftermath of this ineffability and this absence: â€Å"There is no God and we are his prophets. â€Å"34 It is, finally, in reference to the knowledge and memory of dying that any talk of the possible meaning of redemption must orient itself: hence hat must the remaining humans carry on being humans? The man questions Ely on this point: â€Å"how would you know if you were the last man on earth? † to which Ely replies â€Å"It wouldn't make any difference. When you die it's the same as if everybody else did too. 35 The framing of post-apocalypse narrative in this context reiterates the centrality of the question of remainders, of those who might remain to remember and to hold the consciousness of humanity and the possibility of discourse (and therefore of God? ) in their very surviving. God is Dead (again) The reference to God, and God's potential for solving the conundrum of the meander (perhaps, wonders the man, â€Å"God would know' that you were the last on earth) is typically McCarthy. He is concerned mostly to problematic belief rather than to reject it or affirm it entirely through his characters.The fragmented quasi- theological discussions echo the brilliant, extended account of the preacher who does theological battle with a dyin g faith in The Crossing. 37 But, once again, a deeper examination of what sort of theistic faith such references might imply goes some way to answering those readers unhappy with McCarthy redemptive conclusions. Ells sat remark bears similarities to attempts made in the sass to articulate a faithful religious response to the existentialist current, through a â€Å"Death of God Theology'. Alongside Thomas J. J.Altimeter, The protestant theologian Paul Italics famously argued for the language of modern theology to acknowledge not only the ontological inadequacy of speaking of God's existence (since the essence of God is a Being â€Å"beyond Being†). Theology must also acknowledge the failure of human experience to allow this access in the first place. For many of these thinkers the ‘God of the theologians' had died on the battlefields of Europe during World War l. To thus define God in negative terms was not only a semantic step. It was to couch Thee-logos as the discour se of absence par excellence.And certainly through the eyes of the other religious existentialists (Aggregated, Bereave, Dostoevsky, Auber) the search for God was the reaffirmation of the absurd, its crucifixion in the mystery of human suffering, not its resolution. Another exemplar, the Catholic convert Simons Well, had expressed it through the figure of Mary Magdalene on Easter Saturday: one moves towards the tomb motivated by death, an expectation of the corpse, not an optimistic pop in life. It is human suffering that motivates our movement â€Å"towards reality', and the mystery in which God (through his absence) is to be found.Likewise, influenced heavily by Nietzsche, Italics described the true act of faith of the believer as one who does not attempt to square the existentialist crisis of despair but who has â€Å"the courage to look into the abyss of nonbinding in the complete loneliness of him who accepts the message that â€Å"God is dead†. 38 A difficult God to f ind, to be sure, since for Well, Italics and others, the problem of nihilism was not to be squared by the gift of faith. It was to be lived in the paradox of human suffering – in the seeking, not the finding, of an answer to suffering.Perhaps The Road shares some features of these attempts to grapple with the death of God. But it is only really with Dermis's exploration of the messianic and time that deconstruction, to repeat, attempts to go beyond philosophy and society's obsessions with talking of the ‘end' of thinking, metaphysics, God, politics, Marxism, etc. Deconstruction tries to counterbalance this fascination with definitive ends by announcing the end of a â€Å"electronic† crisis rhetoric itself. Deride thus highlights the err possibility of crisis discourse as the last form of meaning that one clings to, and whose loss signals a truly existential death.The true crisis is that there may no longer be a â€Å"philosophy of crisis† : â€Å"there is perhaps not even a ‘crisis of the present world'. In its turn in crisis, the concept of crisis would be the signature of a last symptom, the convulsive effort to save a World' that we no longer in habit: no more kiosks, economy, ecology, livable site in which we are ‘at home†. 39 One recalls, in the light of this, the discussion in The Road of the possibility of both knowing, and not owing, preparing, and not preparing, for the â€Å"event†, the brief glimpse of which holds an elusive taint of horror over the narrative.Ely confides in the man: I knew this was coming. You knew it was coming? Yeah. This or something like it. I always believed in it. Did you try to get ready for it? No. What would you do? I don't know. People were always getting ready for tomorrow. I didn't believe in that. Tomorrow wasn't getting ready for them. It didn't even know they were there. 40 This intervention into crisis thinking problematical the very status of event – its u ndesirability, its uncertain definitiveness. It mirrors Dermis's critique of an Aristotelian, favored presence of the â€Å"event† itself.Ultimately, such a critique leads to Dermis's ability to pose a distinctively Jewish opposition to this privileging of the event: namely, the reassertion of a certain messianic, a therefore mystical, mysterious return to a revelatory messianic. It is, however, a messianic â€Å"without messianic†; â€Å"stripped of everything†,41 or in other words unbounded by the specificity of this or that dogmatism, religion, and metaphysics of salvation. In deconstruction, then, we can no longer speak of the privilege of the ‘contemporary. 2 What does that concept imply in the context of McCarthy narrative?It opens out the analysis to the concept of redemption without the guarantee of the ‘event' that would guarantee salvation in the manner of the promises of institutional religion. Such a sentiment recalls the â€Å"iconoclas tic† reformulation of hope that was prevalent in post-war Jewish critical theory (particularly in Ernst Bloch). This meant a redemption without reference to the face of God; only the notion of promise itself. 43 Deride expresses a notion of the future as being not a future-present' but as something perpetually out of reach.It produces, like death, the effect of interminable non-occurrence, perhaps in the manner by which the â€Å"event† of The Road is announced: â€Å"The clocks stopped at 1 Time itself, like discourse, and like belief, is suspended; shorn of its referent. The messianic impulse that survives even a book binding to the commitment of expectation: more akin, once again, to the suffering of the waiting Vladimir and Estrogen. The apocalyptic element of The Road, then, might not be the announcement of some catastrophic event in time either in the past (since this is never dwelled upon) or the future.It is rather the revelation of traces, of remainders and re minders, of the God who might also be dying since he â€Å"fares no better† than men when men can't live. 45 The apocalyptic always appears with a hidden face, in the impossible or inconceivable encounter with the end of all things, of death itself. The consolation offered to the boy by his father is that he has always been â€Å"lucky'. 46 Beyond irony, the word â€Å"luck† seems shorn of its associations with providence, destiny, and blessedness, and more like an unhappy covenant: an unspoken agreement that the boy is bound to continue, to keep going.The continuation of life is a brute fact for the boy as much as for Ely (neither apparently aware what keeps them going). And yet the boy is very unlike Ely, not because of his innocence, but because of his temporal language. What will happen, he asks of his father, to the other boy? To the man they abandoned? To the people imprisoned in the house? The conundrum for Ely is otherwise, and framed in the time that was. Wha t has happened; did we see it coming? What were we thinking? Even if we did, how could we have been expected to choose?If there is redemption in The Road, perhaps all we can say of it is the ability o ask questions of the future, as opposed to only those of the past, of mourning that which cannot be put right. Redemption without redemption The ‘event' is indeed problematic for post-apocalypse. But it is problematic not simply because finality is put off indefinitely (as Berger claims). It is problematic for its revealing, or disclosing, our lack of control over its arrival. Apocalypse is temporal catastrophe: a disruption of our chronic desires, time we possess, can control.The future is certainly terrible, but it is agonizing particularly for our thorniness into its uncertainty. Redemption, then, if it is relevant at all, must be seen as the ability to imagine that what one sees now is not all that there is. In the book of Revelation calamities are predicted that meticulously symbolism the passing of apportioned periods of time according to divine order, not those of powers and principalities. 47 In The Road, however, the father is possessed by his responsibility to Judge the ‘right time' of his son's end, and so spare unbearable life.The crisis recalls Abraham's struggle with God's command to act out the unthinkable, here repeated in the Father's own self-doubt: â€Å"Can you do it? When the time comes? When the time comes there will be no time. Now is the time. Curse God and die. â€Å"48 One passes over it easily, but by the end of the novel, the father's command to his son to leave him occurs by way of an admission of weakness; an apology for entrusting life with him: â€Å"l can't hold my dead son in my arms. I thought I could but I can't†49.Is this the conclusion thought to give some sort of redemptive lift to the narrative – a â€Å"fog leaf† to the unacceptable narrative of total disaster? 50 1 would argue cynical pe rspective, rather than the consolingly messianic one. In this view the ether's committal of the son to the future is not performed out of faith in the persistence of goodness. His commitment is, more simply, in the inability to cease suffering, to cease walking along the road. The father's sense of an open future is not hard to grasp in itself: it is the only thing left to offer his son.Yet what is the most significant imaginative turn in what follows? I would argue that it is not that the boy subsequently finds fellow travelers we are to believe are also the good guys who are â€Å"carrying the fire†. Nor even is it that they, like the woman, are also those that cosines the persistence of the divine in the world. Rather, it is an admission by all characters of a disestablishing uncertainty about that road that lies ahead. It is there in the implied pause of the man's response to the boy at the end of the novel: â€Å"He looked at the sky. As if there were anything to be see n.Yeah, he said. I'm one of the good guys. † 51 There is no evidence in what precedes this moment that any place the new community will reach can support life. Nor, I think, are we meant to intuit such a turn towards the future. One cannot ignore, in any case, the terrifying allusions that lie underneath McCarthy choice of the word â€Å"fire†. Cabochon is quick to point this out: the new hope for human community are people â€Å"carrying fire in a world destroyed by fire†. 52 But we can go further than this, since the irony recalls the central theme of another classic of the post-apocalypse genre.In William Miller's A Canticle for Leibniz, the scattered survivors of global nuclear war attempt to construct the new civilization by destroying all forms of scientific knowledge. They do this on the premise that such knowledge will lead inexorably to the same situation of nuclear terror. A secluded community of monks become the last guardians of ancient knowledge, pre serving it for such a time that knowledge will once again be responsibly applied. But the fear is vindicated by the recapitulation of humanity to a second wave of nuclear apocalypse at the novel's horrifying conclusion.