Saturday, August 31, 2019

Is It Love? Essay

Jazmine M Hawkins Georgia Perimeter College Abstract This paper explores the findings of multiple researchers’ theories of love? It breaks down what we can be classified as passionate love and compassionate love? What does love have to do with your attention span? Some researches define love scientifically saying that love is a production of a mixture of hormones and chemical reactants while others say love is self-defined and can only be Judged by a person. Also what type of people does love effect? This paper will break down the findings of these questions. Also what are the psychological effects on not being love and what elation does the topic have upon me. We spend our lives craving it, searching for it, and talking about it. Its meaning is felt more than it is clearly expressed. It’s called the greatest virtue. It’s what we call love. So what exactly is love? In scientific terms love is a mixture of sexual hormones and chemical reactions. Everyone else may view love as deep intimacy or attachment to someone. Either way love is a phenomenon that continues to get researched today. What should you look for in defining love? My interest arose to this subject when I started to question myself with past relationships. Ill fall head over heels for a guy and the first thought that came to mind was that I’m in love. When that doesn’t work out I would move on to the next guy, things all go well and all of sudden I feel that sense of love again? I begin to question myself? Is this Just a repetition of petty young feelings? Can love be so simple that it can happen over and over again? How do I know if it’s really love, and what is the behavior of falling or being in love. How would we characterize love today, well its simple. Like vs. Loving. As you know the nature of love has been explored by a number of theorists. Social psychologist Zick Rubin was one of the first researchers to develop and instrument designed to specifically to measure love. According to Rubin, romantic love is made up of three elements one of them being attachment. Attachment is the need to be cared for and be with the other person. Physical contact and approval are also important components of attachment. This is a feeling that I always felt when I’m in one of my relationships. I was always finding myself wanting to be with my significant other all the time, nothing or no one could interfere with that. The question that may arouse ere is it that a sign of attachment or obsession, can this be a sign of love. The next element is caring, which is valuing the other person’s happiness and needs as much as your own. This too was also a factor of my past relationships. I wanted to see y other smile as much as me, but isn’t this something that a lot of people want? Is this really a main factor of being in love? The third element is intimacy, Sharing private thoughts, feelings, and desires with the other person. In my relationships this is one thing that I lacked. Although I have no problem with sharing deep thoughts and intimacy I felt that my partner did. Is this why I question the thought of love so much, because I felt I was receiving what I was giving? Other theories have also been put into place Psychologist Elaine Hatfield has described two different types of love, compassionate love and passionate love. Compassionate love involves feelings of mutual respect, trust and affection, while passionate love involves intense feelings and sexual attraction. Hatfield describes passionate love as such â€Å"A state of intense longing for union with another. Passionate love is a complex functional whole including appraisals or appreciations, subjective eelings, expressions, patterned physiological processes, action tendencies, and instrumental behaviors. Reciprocated love (union with the other) is associated with fulfillment and ecstasy. Unrequited love (separation) with emptiness, anxiety, or despair†. In other words passionate love can sometimes blind what’s really there in a relationship. For example when my and my ex would argue over the phone it would get really intense, I would say I hate you , he would say he hates me and things come crashing down. Once, however when we unite again all that goes away. A simple hug, iss or anything can make those entire rash feelings go away completely. Having a passionate love connection may not be as emotional as compassionate love but in fact it still is love. There are a view factors that affect passionate and compassionate love. One being Timing, you have to be ready to fall in love that is essential. It’s been many situations where I had to pass up a relationship simple cause I wasn’t ready to fall in love again. The next is early attachment styles. Secure attachment individuals normally have a deeper love connection while those who are anxious lovers tend to all in and out of love quickly. After finding this I quickly discovered a main problem with my love patterns. I’m anxious! Once I start a relationship I’m always anticipating what would happen in my next relationship or how can I do things differently in another relationship. We will discuss more of this later. The third factor is Similarity. This basically means that we tend to fall deeper in love with someone who is as good looking personable or affectionate as we are. A since of completion is what I like to call it. When falling in love with someone you want it to be a person that completes you. I find myself not feeling completed in my relationships which is why I may tend to move on quickly. While passionate love is intense, researchers have looked at how relationships grow among new couples, newlyweds and those married for a longer time noticed that while passionate love is more intense at the beginning of relationships, it tends to fade way to compassionate love which focuses on intimacy and commitment. Passionate love may be quick to fade, but compassionate love is forever. There are some contradictions that may cloud your Judgments on love. Can passionate Judgments cloud your compassionate Judgments? Those feelings that you think you have may not really be there. You may be so physically attracted to your â€Å"lover† that you may settle for unacceptable behaviors in your relationship. Another contradiction is attention. Attention refers to how we actively process specific information present in our environment. You’re attention span can deeply affect your judgment on love. It also has something to do with anxiousness, it’s a close relation. Lastly is your attachment style which I mentioned before. As you know attachment is a special emotional relationship that involves an exchange of comfort, care, and pleasure. John Bowlby devoted extensive research to the concept of attachment, describing it as a â€Å"lasting psychological connectedness between human beings. † Bowlby shared the psychoanalytic that early experiences in childhood have an important influence on development and behavior later in life. Our early attachment styles are established in childhood through the infant relationship. Characteristics of attachment include proximity maintenance which is the desire to be near people that we are attached to. Safe haven, which is returning to the attachment fgure for comfort and safety in the face of a fear or threat. Secure base which is how the ttachment figure acts as a base of security from which the child can explore the surrounding environment. And lastly separation distress, anxiety that occurs in the absence of the attachment fgure. http://www.kristiross.com/why-love-important-7-simple-love-steps/ https://www.pinterest.com/pin/566468459355233699/ Flesh and Blood God Page not found – St. Michael and All Angels window._wpemojiSettings = {"baseUrl":"https:\/\/s.w.org\/images\/core\/emoji\/11\/72x72\/","ext":".png","svgUrl":"https:\/\/s.w.org\/images\/core\/emoji\/11\/svg\/","svgExt":".svg","source":{"concatemoji":"http:\/\/saintmichaelepiscopal.org\/wp-includes\/js\/wp-emoji-release.min.js?ver=4.9.8"}}; !function(a,b,c){function d(a,b){var c=String.fromCharCode;l.clearRect(0,0,k.width,k.height),l.fillText(c.apply(this,a),0,0);var d=k.toDataURL();l.clearRect(0,0,k.width,k.height),l.fillText(c.apply(this,b),0,0);var e=k.toDataURL();return d===e}function e(a){var b;if(!l||!l.fillText)return!1;switch(l.textBaseline="top",l.font="600 32px Arial",a){case"flag":return!(b=d([55356,56826,55356,56819],[55356,56826,8203,55356,56819]))&&(b=d([55356,57332,56128,56423,56128,56418,56128,56421,56128,56430,56128,56423,56128,56447],[55356,57332,8203,56128,56423,8203,56128,56418,8203,56128,56421,8203,56128,56430,8203,56128,56423,8203,56128,56447]),!b);case"emoji":return b=d([55358,56760,9792,65039],[55358,56760,8203,9792,65039]),!b}return!1}function f(a){var c=b.createElement("script");c.src=a,c.defer=c.type="text/javascript",b.getElementsByTagName("head")[0].appendChild(c)}var g,h,i,j,k=b.createElement("canvas"),l=k.getContext&&k.getContext("2d");for(j=Array("flag","emoji"),c.supports={everything: !0,everythingExceptFlag:!0},i=0;i

Friday, August 30, 2019

Sugar And Children

Hypothesis – The more sugar that a child consumes, the less attentive the child will be. If too much sugar is consumed the child may become very active for a short time then crash. ï‚ ·Independent Variable – In safe dosses increase the amount of sugar the children consume in a given time period before having them take a short test to track their attention. ï‚ ·Dependent Variable – Have each of the children take a short test to determine how their attention was affected with each dosage of sugar. ï‚ ·Confounding Variable – List any and all affects that may not be a result of the sugar consumption.Survey Methodï‚ ·Random Sample – Allow at random a few different children from the population of children to take part in the survey. If you must recruit children for the survey then do it in a manner that will get an average of the complete population of children. Such as selecting a child from every five children alphabetically.ï‚ ·Biasing à ¢â‚¬â€œ Avoid asking questions that forces the children to fit your preconceived notion or interpretation. Do not use questions such as: Do you not feel that too much sugar causes you to lose concentration or your attention when taking a test. Instead reword it like this: How do you feel that the consumption of sugar affects your attention when taking a test. Set up questions to obtain the child’s grade and their preferences of sweets like how many and what product they consume. Compare and ContrastBoth Methods offer valuable insight to our original question. Survey Method will allow you to effectively gain data at a much faster pace. Experimental Method allows for a controlled environment and establishes a cause and effect from your experiment. While the Survey Method is a very fast way to gain insight, it is sometimes hard to refrain from showing bias in your questioning especially if an outcome is already interpreted. It is also hard to guarantee a true average of the tota l population of children when doing the Survey Method. In my opinion the Experimental Method is clearly the better choice for it establishes the extent of which sugar consumption affects the child’s attention and is done in a controlled environment.

Thursday, August 29, 2019

Global Warming Problem/Solution Essay

For the past two centuries, at an accelerating rate, the basic composition of the Earth’s atmosphere has been materially altered by the fossil-fuel effluvia of machine culture. Human-induced warming of the Earth’s climate is emerging as one of the major scientific, social, and economic issues of the twenty-first century, as the effects of climate change become evident in everyday life in locations as varied as small island nations of the Pacific Ocean and the shores of the Arctic Ocean. The â€Å"greenhouse effect† is not an idea which is new to science. It has merely become more easily detectable in our time as temperatures have risen and scientists have devised more sophisticated ways to measure and forecast atmospheric processes. The atmospheric balance of â€Å"trace† gases actually started to change beyond natural bounds at the dawn of the industrial age, with the first large-scale burning of fossil fuels. It became noticeable in the 1880s, and an important force in global climate change by about 1980. After an intensifying debate, the idea that human activity is warming the earth in potentially damaging ways became generally accepted in scientific circles by 1995. Addressing the consequences of global warming will demand, on a worldwide scale, the kind of social and economic mobilization experienced in the United States only during its birthing revolution and World War II, and therein lies a problem. The buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is a nearly invisible, incremental crisis. Carbon dioxide is not going to bomb Pearl Harbor to kick start the mobilization. Author Jonathan Weiner observes, â€Å"We do not respond to emergencies that unfold in slow motion. We do not respond adequately to the invisible† (Weiner, 1990, 241). It has been said (not for attribution) that the best thing which could happen to raise worldwide concern about global warming would be a quick collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which would raise worldwide sea level a notable number of feet over a very short time. When stock brokers’ feet get wet on the ground floor of New York City’s World Trade Center, all the world’s competing economic interests might mobilize together and provide the sociopolitical responses necessary to address the atmosphere’s overload of greenhouse gases before it is too late. The same water that could lap at the ground floor of the Trade Center also would ruin most farmers in Egypt and Bangladesh and slosh in the lobbies of glass towers of Hong Kong and Tokyo. Perhaps, only then, might all of humankind heed the implications of Chief Seah’tl’s farewell speech a century and a half ago. We may be brothers (and sisters) after all. So far, humankind’s collective nervous system—national and international leadership, public opinion, and so forth—hasn’t done much about global warming. As of this writing, the flora and fauna of the planet Earth are still in the position of a laboratory frog submerged in steadily warming water. This is not a secret crisis, just a politically unpalatable one. Al Gore, in Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit, raised a sociopolitical call for mobilization against human-induced warming of the Earth: â€Å"This point is crucial. A choice to ‘do nothing’ in response to the mounting evidence is actually a choice to continue and even accelerate the reckless environmental destruction that is creating the catastrophe at hand† (Gore, 1992, 37). In his book, Gore, then a U. S. senator, called for a â€Å"global Marshall Plan,† to include stabilization of world population, the rapid creation and development of environmentally appropriate technologies, and â€Å"a comprehensive and ubiquitous change in the economic ‘rules of the road’ by which we measure the impact of our decisions on the environment† (Gore, 1992, 306). Eight years after Gore issued his manifesto, fossil-fuel emissions had risen in the United States. Gore had captured the Democratic Party’s nomination for president of the United States, and global warming had slipped from campaign radar. From this vantage point, one imagines the world lurching through the twenty-first century as global public opinion slowly galvanizes around year after year of high temperature records, and as public policy only slowly begins to catch up with the temperature curve. The temperature (and especially the dewpoint) may wake the global frog before he becomes poached meat. Whatever the outcome of the public policy debate, the odds are extremely high that the weather of the year 2100 will be notably warmer than today, as greenhouse â€Å"forcing† exerts an ever-stronger role in the grand dance of the atmosphere which produces climate. Ross Gelbspan observes, â€Å"Global warming need not require a reduction of living standards, but it does demand a rapid shift in patterns of fuel consumption—reduced use of oil, coal, and the lighter-carboned natural gas to an economy more reliant on solar energy, fuel cells, hydrogen gas, wind, biomass, and other renewable energy sources. It is doubtful that capitalistic market forces will bring about this shift on their own, because market prices of fossil fuels do not incorporate their environmental costs. † (Gelbspan, 2004) George Woodwell has been quoted as saying, â€Å"[For] all practical purposes, the era of fossil fuels has passed, and it’s time to move on to the new era of renewable sources of energy. † The other alternative, says Woodwell, is to accept the fact that â€Å"[t]he Earth is not simply moving toward a new equilibrium in temperature†¦. It is entering a period of continuous, progressive, open-ended warming† (Gordon and Suzuki, 2001, 219). In Jeremy Leggett’s opinion, â€Å"The uniquely frustrating thing about global warming—to the many people who see its dangers—is that the solutions are obvious. There is no denying, however, that creating the necessary changes will require paradigm shifts in human behavior—particularly in the field of cooperation between nation-states—which have literally no precedent in human history†¦. There is no single issue in human affairs that is of greater importance. † (Leggett, 2000, 457) According to a Greenpeace Report edited by Leggett, â€Å"The main routes to surviving the greenhouse threat are energy efficiency, renewable forms of energy production†¦less greenhouse-gas-intensive agriculture, stopping deforestation, and reforestation† (Leggett, 2000, 462). Greenpeace also recommends redirecting spending away from armaments and toward development of a sustainable energy for the future of humankind (Leggett, 2000, 470). Of the broader picture, Michael MacCracken writes, â€Å"The underlying challenge is for industrialized society to achieve a balanced and sustainable coexistence with the environment, one that permits use of the environment as a resource, but in a way that preserves its vitality and richness for future generations†¦. The challenge [is] to transform our ways before the world is irrevocably changed†¦ toward displacing militarization and the ever-increasing push for greater national consumption as the primary driving forces behind industrial activity. † (MacCracken, 2001, 35) According to Donald Goldberg and Stephen Porter of the Center for International Global Law: â€Å"The Clinton administration has bungled repeated chances to initiate domestic measures. For example, recent legislation proposed by the White House to restructure the electric utility industry could have been crafted to require utilities to reduce their carbon-dioxide emissions. In fact, the Environmental Protection Agency lobbied hard for the authority to impose a cap-and-trade program on utilities’ CO2 emissions, similar to the trading system that has lowered sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions in a cost-effective way. This was a golden opportunity, as the restructuring bill is projected to save the average consumer roughly $200 a year, which would have more than offset the cost of reducing GHG [greenhouse-gas] emissions. Unfortunately, the White House chose to forgo this opportunity. † (Goldberg and Porter, 1998) According to Goldberg and Porter, loopholes in the Kyoto Protocol, adopted at the insistence of the United States, permit richer countries to avoid many of its mandated emission reductions by purchasing allowances from other countries through the protocol’s â€Å"flexibility mechanisms. † The Buenos Aires Climate Conference (1998) negotiated a mechanism allowing trade in greenhouse gas emission rights in two markets. The first market would allow â€Å"sellers,† nations which exceed greenhouse gas-reduction targets set in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, to offer their rights for sale to â€Å"buyers,† countries which have not met their targets. The second market, the Clean Development Mechanism, will allow industrialized countries to meet part of their greenhouse-gas-reduction quotas by transferring clean technology to poorer countries so that antipollution projects can be carried out there. â€Å"If it buys all (or most) of its reductions,† Goldberg and Porter write, â€Å"the United States will not get its own house in order. In the long run, efficiency and productivity in the U. S. economy will suffer because domestic industry will be shielded from any incentive to adapt† (Goldberg and Porter, 1998). Under these provisions, the United States could â€Å"purchase† emission reduction credits from nations, such as Russia and Ukraine, which reduced their greenhouse-gas emissions during the 1990s because their economic infrastructure collapsed. The continuing political wrangling over the Kyoto Protocol illustrates why the world is responding so slowly to the impending crisis of global warming. Climate diplomacy remains an arena dominated by competition of special (mainly national) interests. Meanwhile, a few countries, most of them in Europe, are taking steps to mitigate greenhouse forcing on their own. While British emissions of greenhouse gases by the year 2000 had fallen between five and six percent compared to the Kyoto Protocol 1990 targets, emissions in the United States rose 11 percent between 1990 and 1998. Canada’s greenhouse-gas emissions rose 13 percent during the 1990s, while several European countries (including Britain) made substantial progress toward meeting the goals of the Kyoto Protocol by reducing their greenhouse-gas emissions as much as 10 percent compared to 1990 levels. Denmark (which produces less than one percent of humankind’s greenhouse gases) underwent something of a mobilization against global warming during the 1990s. Denmark was planning â€Å"farms† of skyscraper-sized windmills in the North and Baltic seas that, if plans materialize, will supply half the nation’s electric power within 30 years. The Danish wind-energy manufacturers’ association believes that electricity produced through wind power on a large scale will be financially competitive with power from plants burning fossil fuels, which will be phased out if wind power proves itself. Svend Auken, Denmark’s environmental and energy minister, said that with half of his country’s power coming from Norwegian hydroelectric plants and the other half from wind power, the country is planning to meet its electricity needs within three decades while reducing carbon dioxide production to nearly zero. The wind farms must prove their endurance in winter storms and stand up to the corrosion of seawater, but if they can, Denmark’s windmills will prevent the production of 14 million tons of carbon dioxide a year. While the fossil-fuel economy remained firmly entrenched in most of the world at the turn of the millennium, gains were being achieved in some basic areas of energy conservation. In 1994, for example, the average person in the United States was recycling 380 pounds a year, up from 62 pounds in 1960, a 613 percent increase (Casten, 1998, 101–102). Following the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1972, the United States also made a concerted effort to limit the production of nitrous oxides by gas turbine engines. Before regulation, the typical gas turbine engine emitted 200 parts per million (p. p. m. ). Since then, several technological innovations have reduced emissions to below 10 p. p. m.. Technology was being developed in the late 1990s which could reduce the rate to two to three p. p. m. (Casten, 1998, 117–118). The problem is at once very simple, and also astoundingly complex. Increasing human populations, rising affluence, and continued dependence on energy derived from fossil fuels are at the crux of the issue. The complexity of the problem is illustrated by the degree to which the daily lives of machine-age peoples depend on fossil fuels. This dependence gives rise to an array of local, regional, and national economic interests. These interests cause tensions between nations attending negotiations to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The cacophony of debate also illustrates the strength and diversity of established interests which are being assiduously protected. Add to the human elements of the problem the sheer randomness of climate (as well as the amount of time which passes before a given level of greenhouse gases is actually factored into climate), and the problem becomes complex and intractable enough to (thus far) seriously impede any serious, unified effort by humankind to fashion solutions. References Casten, Thomas R. (1998). Turning Off the Heat: Why America Must Double Energy Efficiency to Save Money and Reduce Global Warming. Amherst, N. Y. : Prometheus Books. Gelbspan, Ross. (2004). A Global Warming. American Prospect, 31 (March/April). Goldberg, Donald, and Stephen Porter. (1998). In Focus: Global Climate Change. Center for International Environmental Law, May. Gordon, Anita, and David Suzuki. (2001). It’s a Matter of Survival. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Gore, Albert. (1992). Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin. Leggett, Jeremy, ed. (2000). Global Warming: The Greenpeace Report. New York: Oxford University Press. MacCracken, Michael. (1991). Greenhouse Gases: Changing the Global Climate. In Joseph P. Knox and Ann Foley Scheuring, eds. , Global Climate Change and California. Berkeley: University of California Press, 26–39. Weiner, Jonathan. (1990). The Next One Hundred Years: Shaping the Fate of Our Living Earth. New York: Bantam Books

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Realist Theory Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Realist Theory - Essay Example The theory infers that the system is continually changing to create adjustments to nations such that new systems are created or older are being restored. Therefore, the balance of power theory involves a specific power distribution between states of a system such that no single nation has too much or less of the other . This paper analyses this context and provides a historic case outlay on the application of this theory, the implications of the test results for the case and identifies if the theory is applicable to the case (Marshall, 1970). Over the years, the term balance of power has been used in different areas of history, politics and science each bringing foreword a different meaning from the other. This is due to the difference in the meanings that are portrayed by various states on the term power. To some, power means the use of political force, the superiority of economy or diplomatic coercion to create a desirable outcome by a state. To others, power refers to the ability of a state to impose its will on another despite the resistance raised while others view this concept as the ability of a state to influence the behavior of one or more states through policy implementation (Stanley & Fidler, 1991). The paper seeks to compare and contrast two segments on balance of power relating to the classical and the modern era of political thought which forms the major variable. The balance of power theory is used to illustrate different cases with the major being the Persian Gulf War . Here, the U.S is unwilling to destroy and entirely dismember Iraq due to the balance of power concept which prevented the interruption of the powers of the Middle East. The two concepts raised in the theory is effective in understanding the conduct of international relations and preservation of the international nations system. My conclusion about the performance of the theory here is that it is effective in analyzing the case and that it gives a clear basis on relations amongst states. The theory has a great performance in the case as it infers the effectiveness of balancing power and how this theory is applied in solving international disputes. The theory independent variables relate to issues that constitute a state such as power, balance and sovereignty that enables a state to be independent while the dependent variables are the states and the relations based on the theories. Others may relate to the classical and modern views of politics which are harmonized by the realism concept. The link among the two variables are that they both belong with the realism school of thought. In the classical view, states are created to prevent war. It claims that the society despite the corruption shelters men from harm but only if it is established and enforced in law (Stanley & Fidler, 1991). A democratic government established though the power of the people are perceived to be legitimate . Based on this concept, the function of the government is to implement the law s formulated, promote patriotism through education and promote wealth distribution to enhance cohesion (Micheal, 2000). The classical concept maintains that the balance of power prevents nations from breaking apart . The balance ensures that no particular state or an alliance of nations is allowed by unwritten laws to obtain more power, such that it overwhelms the rest and that this balance is independent. The modern era of

Tuesday, August 27, 2019

Capital budgeting project Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Capital budgeting project - Essay Example The given project was related to design and estimate the capital budget of Wright Dive Shop, the shop aimed to expand its operations by purchasing a new Air Compressor. The first step of designing the capital budget was to estimate the cash flows of the project, the acceptance and the rejection of the project depends on the analysis of these cash flows. Latterly the strength was judged by using the Payback Period, Net Present Value of the project and the Internal Rate of Return. These three processes are considered to be the capital budgeting rules that help to estimate the strength of the project. The process of Capital Budgeting was used to determine the cash flows of the purchase. The Initial investment was calculated by adding the purchase price and the investment made to increase the working capital of the business operations. The total initial investment was 425,000 (including the purchase price i.e. 325,000 and the investment in Net Working Capital i.e. 100,000). The depreciation value was identified by using the MACRS- 10 years table (7 year’s values were used). The assumptions were provided in the case and these assumptions were applied to the labor and gas costs. The labor costs were assumed to increase by 3% till the 3 year, the 4th year increment was 5 % and 7% increment was estimated for the 5th, 6th and 7th year. The Gas costs were assumed to fluctuate at 7% every year till the year 4 and after that the value of increased to 9%. The cash outflows were subtracted from the cash inflows and hence the net cash flows were extracted after deducting the variable and fixed costs and adding back the depreciation of the compressor as it is a non cash item. The cash flows were then used to identify the strength of the investment opportunity. The payback period was used to identify the number of years in which the project was assumed to pay off the initial investment. The total initial investment was

Review Questions Week 10 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Review Questions Week 10 - Essay Example In that regard, they are trained on how to take risks and innovations. Code of ethics are significant to the organization because through them people in the organization create socially responsible behavior within the organization. Similarly, people within the organization enhance openness. On the same note, code of ethics emphasizes integrity within the organization. All these are possible because code of ethics creates an ethical environment where people observe binding factors that come in the form of mission and shared goals. In return, the organization has an effective leadership. Every leader has a duty to ensure that the organization has a code of ethics and the same is adhered to all the time. High power distance refers to situations in which, the leaders and the followers do not usually interact as equals while in low power distance cultures, leaders and followers occasionally interact as equals. There are potential problems in situations where the leader comes from a high power distance culture and the followers from a low power distance culture. The problem could arise due to lack of contact, given that the followers would be willing to make contact with the leader who, on the other hand would not be willing to interact with them. Lack of interaction and difference in approaches could have an impact on the organization. Authentic leadership is the ability to make good decisions and communicate effectively with the rest of the team. Secondly, authentic leadership involves real commitment to the organization’s goals and also committed to ensuring that the followers are equally motivated with an aim of ensuring achieving organization goals. Thirdly, they possess courage and strong character while discharging their duties in the organization. Fourthly, an authentic leader work hard to avoid failure because that would lead to distrust from the others. The essence of this

Monday, August 26, 2019

Summary and reaction Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Summary and reaction - Essay Example It also touches on the role that the relationship of parents plays in influencing the perception of the generation on marriage and parenting. This is particularly in relating the opinion of the Y generation on the importance of having a child grow up with parents to be happy despite having unmarried parents (Hanna 2). In our modern society, the concept of marriage among the populations has a wide variety of opinions this is concerning the importance attached to it and how many are willing to participate in a marriage. In this light, the Y generation, at 30 percent, put successful marriages as being of equal value as good parenting. This is as opposed to the value attached to marriage by the X generation which 35%, places a successful marriage at the same level as good parenting. These issues when put into perspective in the American population, reveal that about 40% of the American population believes that marriage is a potentially obsolete institution (Hanna 1). The said 40% marks a sharp increase in those who believed the same thing since the late 1970s, 1978 to be precise. Therefore, I believe that the sharp increase denotes the loss of confidence in the institution over the given span of time. However, the Y generation, also called millennials, bears mixed reactions and opinions towards the issue of marriage. This is concerning declaring marriage as a dead institution or even embracing it. This is because they do not embrace it openly, or rush to the altar as the researchers put it, and neither do they declare it dead. In addition, a large percentage of millennials asked about their appreciation for marriage expressed the desire to get married at one time. This is also expressed by young adults relating to the wide options they have concerning getting married. In this light, they regard marriage highly despite the open acceptance of the concept of having children outside wedlock (Hanna 2). The above issue

Sunday, August 25, 2019

Music Censorship Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Music Censorship - Essay Example There are two sides on this issue, there those supporting and others opposing music censorship. At this point, the main question that lingers in many is what action transcends from the consumer matter to the censorship matter. A study carried out by Rabkin (2002) indicates that, censorship plays a fundamental role to the American government. One of the issues involving music censorship is at what age is appropriate for children to listen and watch music that is profanity. Following this, this paper affirm that parents and governments should not desist their children from listening to music, because as they do that, they deny them from grasping what’s happening in the society. It is worth noting that, music may serve as a purpose of motivation, or be used for moral, military, religious, or political reasons. These ideas may augment critical thinking and encouragement to many who are wounded by life experiences and encourage those desiring to achieve their dreams. It may express aspirations and hopes thus, promote a desirable society. Music is free expression of thoughts and ideas thus no one should be stopped from expressing his or her thoughts. Countries like China, Sudan, and Afghanistan comprehend the need of breach of musician’s rights to the freedom of expression in music (Szurek, 2008). However, other countries like Algeria and USA keep off popular music in the concert stage and out of the retail and media. In ex-Yugoslavia, musicians encounter challenges as their freedom of free expression has much been affected (Dahir, 1995). Many nations fail to regard music as the therapy to life and instead see it as vulgarity and cursing. However, this is not the case in most cases as some songs are just ridiculous and funny and they create a platform to understand how the world is. Those in support of music censorship believe that children are not mature people to listen and watch music with profanity.

Saturday, August 24, 2019

Team process feedback Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Team process feedback - Essay Example Having received our results, it was unanimously agreed that we would have posted a better performance had we keenly followed the rubric. We should have elaborated more on what was cast on the presentation slides. Furthermore, had we met physically as a whole group, it would have boosted our cohesion and thus the overall performance. Despite the busy schedules that each of us run on, we scored grade B+. Even though we were aiming higher than that, this was still commendable. Our group has remained steadfast with no major challenges. Tasks assigned to each member are executed as planned and in a timely manner with emails and texts providing an effective and timely means of communication. The group has further portrayed willingness to work and high levels of professionalism. Nonetheless, failure to practice before presentations could have cost us the lower than expected performance. I suppose that practicing prior to class presentation would have improved our performance. Weekly meetings would be useful to us as they would provide an opportunity to evaluate the assignments for the following class, assign each member a task and discuss our progress. This could be a brief meeting that would just seek to ensure that everyone is aware of how and what to do before breaking up for everyone to concentrate on their tasks. This could have made us not to forget to introduce the team members during the presentation which is one thing that I believe negatively affect ed our performance. Had we focused on the rubric, then such mistakes would not have occurred. We now appreciate that the rubric is a critical guide for professors in grading performance and therefore the need to follow it to the latter. Whereas group projects usually have numerous challenges, this group has proved the opposite right as we have not had issues with members not doing what they are assigned to

Friday, August 23, 2019

Various kinds of fast food items that may cause cancer among regular Essay

Various kinds of fast food items that may cause cancer among regular consumers - Essay Example major restaurants along with fast-food chains such as McDonald’s and Burger King among others accusing these fast food giants to serve food items comprising carcinogens, resulting in augments risks of cancer (Anrig, â€Å"The Fast-Food Dilemma: Trans Fats and Cancer Risks†). In general, fast foods or junk foods represent empty calorie based food items. In this regard, empty calorie based foods are regarded as those items containing high proportion of calorie and have deficiency in micro-nutrients like minerals, vitamins, amino acids and fiber among others (Ashakiran and Deepthi 7-15). It can be apparently viewed that junk foods are normally featured as easily accessible, quick and economical substitutes, especially to home-cooked meals (Demand Media, Inc., â€Å"Definition of Fast Foods†). In precise, junk food items are quite easy to prepare as well as to consume and are also readily available in abundance as well as in wide range of varieties. They are typicall y observed to have lesser nutritional value along with comprising greater level of sugar, fat and salt. A few of the common junk foods comprise carbonated drinks, snack foods that are salted and fried food items. It is quite evident in this context that the consumption of fast foods has become one of the major problems for the individuals in today’s modern day context, as this particular social trend causes significant negative effects on the human health and also on the average mortality rate in the societal realm. In response it can be noted that there are certain nations, which have adopted effective actions in order to address and mitigate the aforesaid problem identifiable as a 21st century social lifestyle trend. It is in this context that higher amount of taxes are imposed by governments on fast food... Various kinds of fast food items that may cause cancer among regular consumers It can be apparently observed in this similar concern that fast foods or junk foods impose severe impacts upon its regular consumers’ health in terms of serious chronic diseases, such as cancer, tumor, ulcer and many others. As a consequence, regular intake of fast food items has also contributed towards the rising number of instances of diseases such as diabetes mellitus and coronary artery infection among others. By taking into concern the impact of fast or junk foods upon the health of the individuals, it can be affirmed that regular consumption of healthy or nutritious foods has been replaced by the latest food mantra served by many large brands around the globe. With this concern, the research paper intends to analyze the various kinds of fast food items and other food items that may cause cancer among regular consumers. Moreover, the average quantity consumption of fast food that can lead to cancer has also been researched in this paper. Accordingly, certain solutions or preventive measures have been suggested in the research paper that can be beneficial in mitigating the increasing number of cancer patients in the worldwide context. From the above analysis, it can be affirmed that there are different sorts of fast food products, which may cause high cancer risks among its regular consumers. This disease might appear in the form of liver, breast and prostate cancers.

Thursday, August 22, 2019

Tulsa Race Riot Essay Example for Free

Tulsa Race Riot Essay During the early 1900’s, America has experienced an act of hatred and despair. Envy became the motive to suppress the masses and the death of hundreds of innocent people became the result. But how did all of this occur without any written record except for the painful memories forever instilled in the minds of the victims? Where were the authorities? Where was the so called â€Å"justice† that these people deserved? All of these questions replayed in my mind that night. On February 11, 2011, I attended an enrichment program at the Ray Charles Performing Arts Center at Morehouse College. At this enrichment program, there was a special viewing of the documentary Soundtrack for a Revolution followed up by a questions and answers segment. Before the showing, there was nice musical performance presented by two individuals. The performance itself gave an overview of the Tulsa Race Riot. Shortly afterwards, the film started. Prior to this event, I have the opportunity to do research on this tragedy about a year ago, but never had been as deeply concerned about the incident just by reading about it. The film was well put together and definitely caught my attention. Soundtrack for a Revolution told the story of Tulsa, Oklahoma during the early 1900’s and how it was a haven of flourishing black business. Everyone’s wealth within the black community helped boost each other’s business. It literally was considered the â€Å"Black Wall Street†. The dollar there circulated approximately thirty to one thousand times and sometimes took an entire year before the currency left the community. But, many people did not take a liking to the amount of wealth and success the black people of Tulsa, Oklahoma had. They grew envious and felt the need to suppress and even eliminate this epidemic. On May 31st through June 1st in 1921, they took action and for eighteen hours straight, they attacked. On those two days, hundreds of whites had gathered arms against the unarmed African Americans. So many of them were murdered and those who survived were left with nothing but tears and the painful memories. The movie forwarded to a more recent time and focused on the survivors of that dreadful day. It has been so many years since that event and the survivors have yet seen justice from the state and country whose purpose was to ensure their equality. I’ve watched the film and how they were ignored by court judges and the only reconciliation that those who have managed to live received was nothing but a bronze metal. From what I have been watching, that piece of metal could not have given them proper justice. In the 1950s and 60s, America became a volatile and confused nation as the Civil Rights Movement gained momentum, and black Americans demanded equality, both in the eyes of the legal and social systems. Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. orked tirelessly in the fight against injustice and inequality, and ultimately paid for his dedication with his very life. His main goal was to have peace for both whites and blacks. He wanted everyone no matter what color to get along and live among each other instead of being segregated. His advice, as his speech implies, was not to judge one another by the color of their skin but by the contents of their characters. This injustice that occurred in Tulsa was the exact opposite of Martin Luther King Jr. s vision for the world. This is why he fought so long and hard for. As far as the survivors, I really hope that they will get the justice that they truly deserve. I do not know exactly how they can accomplish this specifically, but I do know that, with persistence and being resilient, they will finally accomplish this long awaited justice. The Tulsa Race Riot was more than just a tragedy against another race, I believe it was another tragedy against mankind.

Wednesday, August 21, 2019

Pest Control and Waste Management Essay Example for Free

Pest Control and Waste Management Essay Pests cause a lot of destruction to the crops. Even though there are lots of chemical pest controls available to help reduce or remove the presence of these destructive pests, the non-chemical pest control is the most reliable and safest form of pest control. One of the most destructive pests that are encountered by many farmers is the beetle. Non-chemical pest control can be done in many different ways like applying balanced fertilizer to keep the crops and soil healthy and free from beetles, removing weeds from that may surround the crops, and using milky spore powder when dealing with Japanese beetles. In addition with these, according to HGTV, â€Å"planting pest-resistant species that contains insecticide in nature can also help in getting rid of these pests(Non-Chemical Pest Control, 2006). † The production of a healthy and productive crop system all depends on the supervision of the farmer itself. Nevertheless, non-chemical pest control is all about prevention. I will not be in opposition to the idea of having hazardous waste landfill, waste treatment plant, deep-injection well, or incinerator in our community. The waste of a community grows enormously as time passes by. These wastes can affect the health and livelihood of a community. The presence of hazardous waste landfill, waste treatment plant, deep-injection well, or incinerator in a certain community reduce the waste that may cause pollution and other negative effects on the residents of a certain community. The hazardous waste landfill keeps the hazardous waste from going into the soil and eventually to our body. Incineration is only an alternative to land filling. Incineration is not a very good way of waste reduction because it produces toxic air pollutants that can even cause a great problem to the health of the community. These systems are of great help in the reduction of waste although it is inevitable that wrong management of these waste management system may always lead to an unlikely consequences like the pollution that can be brought about by incineration.

Tuesday, August 20, 2019

Evaluation Of Service Quality In Hotel Taj Marriot Tourism Essay

Evaluation Of Service Quality In Hotel Taj Marriot Tourism Essay To lead and become the international benchmark in the hospitality industry, not only in India but also in the Key regions of the world and To dazzle and delight our customers with utmost quality, food and beverage experience and exceptional service standards. The Taj Mahal hotel, Mumbai(india ) was opened on December 16,1903 under the taj group by Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, the founder of the Tata Group. htis hotel was incorporated with IHCL. Now currently Rs. 678 millions can be operated bythe taj hotels. t his is growing day by day and become th elargest hotel chain in the india. The Taj Mahal Palace Tower is one of the famous five star hotels in india and it is regarded as the most prestigious luxury five star hotel. This hotel is 105 years old hotel having the heritage building under the group of taj hotel resorts and palaces. The hotel taj mahal contains 565 rooms.this hotel was opened in 1903 commisioned in Indo-saracenic style by Tata. the hotel taj made unique history from his service sand and give best service sto their customers and supportive fro every need.it has marvellous artitecure which brings together Moorish , Florentine and oriental styles. It is a gracious landmark of Mumbai as it provides panoramic views of the Arabi an Sea and the Gateway of India. On novemeber 2008 , during the series of terroroist attacks in mumbai , the hotel taj marriot was under attack of the terrorists there is a big damage in the hotel including destruction of roof and about 167 hostages were therehe. After this attack the management of hotel annouced thathe hotel will be repared and the expenditure to repair it will be INR 5 billions and it will take 12 months to repair. In july ,209 , Hilary Clinton visit the Mumbai taj hotel and stayed there as the patway to improvement the hotel taj mahal,in October 12, 2006, the Company approved the Scheme, under Sections 391 to 394 of the Companies and this scheme was approved by the High Courts.   In July 2002, the hotel has won several international awards. The Taj hotel Group also obtained licenses to manage and operate two leisure hotels; the Rawal-Kot, Jaisalmer and Usha Kiran Palace, Gwalior in October 2002. Taj Group access to the midtown and North Mumbai market. The hotel has since been renamed as the Taj Lands End, Mumbai. An din tear 2003 the hotel taj celebrated its centenary of the opening of its flagship hotel. In 2004 it opened its first luxury service apartment Wellington Mews. The Taj Mahal Intercontinental Hotel in Mumbai consist of 582 rooms which are fully air condodtione dwith 49 suits.each room is equipped with data port , speaker phones , with IDD ,fax available , sea cty fcing rooms TV and satellite rooms , 24 service fro laundary service with eminent club rooms. This hotel in the Mumbai provide the top most services in the luxury hotels and majestic accommodation. During the recession period After the terrorist attack in 2008 taj has to face the financial problems and to rasise up from it this affects the occupancy rate of the hotel and to improve the occupancy rate the hotel offered the suite of $6750 per offer to attract te tourist . the torist in hotel taj came from the worldwide.after the attack the hoyel made a a mable memorialin the lobby for 131 guests and staff who died in terrorist attack. Now they have improved their security system by putting xray machines ansd metal detectors on the screen guessts at the entrance of the vechicals. According to business weekly news there is decline of 5.8 %in Mumbai for shares in Indian hotelsltd. Operator of taj brand . Beside of all these taj is one of the original grand hotel in the world. With the passing of time its reputation spread and grew constantly. LITERATURE REVIEW Literature review: Two major reasons exist for reviewing the literature. The first, the preliminary search that helps you to generate and refine your research ideas. The second, often referred to as critical review, is part of research project proper. (Sharp and Howard, 1996) Most research books argue that this critical review of literature is necessary. After through studies of different Export and import books and  literature, I have found that only a small portion is dedicated to the buyers and sellers behavior and most of the focus is given to, how to export and import. No doubt these were not adequate information to compete my research thats why I decided to search more and more information on topic and now hopefully I have gathered adequate information to deal with my Research methodology and to support my arguments. And this information, gathered from journal and articles will focus on the British and Pakistani textiles buyers and sellers perspective. The literature used in this research will also help in analyzing the issues and results critically either by comparing different point of views of different authors or by quoting statements in the favor of results. To gain products knowledge I will use my observations and company documents. Deductive approach: A theory/hypothesis is applied/tested by the collection of data. I shall use the literature to help me to identify theories and ideas that I shall test using data. I shall also develop a theoretical or conceptual framework which I subsequently test using data.   Inductive approach: Theory is developed after the data have been collected. I will be planning to explore my data and to develop theories from them that I shall subsequently relate to the literature. Review purposes: The literature review has a number of purposes. Many of these have been highlighted by Gall et al. (1996). These are To help you to refine further your research question(s) and objectives; To highlight research possibilities that have been overlooked implicitly in research to date; To help you to avoid simply repeating work that has been done already; To sample current opinions in newspapers, professional and trade journals thereby gaining insight into the aspects of your research question(s) and objectives that are considered newsworthy; To discover and provide an insight into research strategies and methodologies that may be appropriate to your own research question(s) and objectives; To discover explicit recommendations for further research. These can provide you with superb justification for your own research question(s) and objectives; Literature sources available: The literature sources available to help researcher to develop a good understanding of and insight into previous research can be divided into three categories: Primary (published and unpublished) Secondary Tertiary Primary literature sources  (also known as grey literature) are the first occurrence of a piece of work. They include published sources such as reports and some central and local government publications such as white papers and planning documents. They also include unpublished manuscripts sources such as letters, memos. There are so many published sources available from where I can get enough information about my research topic. Pakistani government published so much material on the export of Pakistan Textile industry. I read that publications and I got a good idea about the behavior of the Pakistani sellers and also about the buyers of the Pakistani Textile products. I also reviewed the reports, which are published by the British government about the import of the textile products from different countries. This is also helpful for my research topic. Secondary literature sources  such as books and journals are the subsequent publications of primary literature. These publications are aimed at a wider audience. They are easier to locate than primary literature as they are better covered by the tertiary literature. There is book by  Nasim Yousaf  with the title Export Import Apparel and Textiles from Pakistan will be quite helpful for my research. In this book there is so much information about the Pakistani textile industry and there is also some information about the buyers and sellers behavior. There is also enough information about the topic in so many articles and journals, which are written, by the Pakistani authors and British authors. From these articles and journals I got so much information about my topic. This will be helpful for me in the future. Tertiary literature sources  also called search tools, are designed either to help to locate primary and secondary literature or to introduce a topic. They therefore include indexes and abstract as well as encyclopedias and bibliographies. Export Promotion Bureau of Pakistan has a uploaded a website and on that website I found so much relevant material about my research topic. In that website there is so much information about the, share of Pakistani textile products in the international market, the information about the main buyers and sellers of textiles products, about the quality of the Pakistani textile products, in that website they also discussed the buyers expectation from the Pakistani seller. So this website of Export Promotion Bureau Pakistan is also a good source or information for my research topic. http://www.epb.gov.pk/epb/index.jsp Evaluating the literature: For evaluating the literature two questions frequently asked how do I know what I am reading is relevant? and how do I know when I have read enough? both of questions are concerned with the process of evaluation. You should, of course, read all the literature that is closely related to your research question(s) and objectives. The literature that is most likely to cause problems is that which is less related (Gall et al.; 1996). After collecting all the information from all of the sources then I will evaluate my literature that what is much important for my research and which is less important for my research topic. I will evaluate the literature by keeping some important in my mind like how recent the item is, do it have enough references, does the item support my research topic etc. Research Design and Methodology: The research philosophy: The research philosophy refers to the fundamental approach that research should be conducted. There are three views about the research process dominating the literature: positivism, interpretivism, and realism. The mixed approach will be applied in my research work, primarily because the subject matter is largely intangible, open to subjective interpretation and based upon social interaction.  As Saunders et al (2003, p99)  point that: there are two major advantages to applying multi-methods in the same study. First, different methods can be used for different purposes in a study. Secondly, it enables triangulation to take place.   Qualitative Approach: Secondary Research: Published  data that is Books about the export of Pakistan textiles and also about the buyers and sellers behavior of the Pakistan textile. Articles and Journals on Pakistan textile export for UK Chamber of Commerce Documents Internet Websites Past conducted research Print and electronic media Primary Research: Personal experience and observations: As I have worked in this industry thats why I know the trends in textile and the rules against conducting this business. I also have the idea of Britain buyers behaviors and about their needs and expectations. Pure Research: The research conducted for the topic will be pure and it will discuss the core issue for the sake of improving knowledge. It will directly discuss about the buyers and sellers behavior for the Pakistan textile industry in a theoretical way. Inductive Approach: My approach towards data gathering will be inductive, as it is a flexible structure to utilize all the data in your research findings and also based on qualitative data with a slight involvement of quantitative data. JUSTIFICATION HYPOTHESIS METHODOLOGY RESEARCH REPORT 2. SECONDARY RESEARCH PRIMARY RESEARCH QUALITATAIVE QUANTITATIVE SCOPE LIMITATION ETHICS

Feminist Refutation of the Deconstruction of The True Confessions of Ch

A Feminist Refutation of the Deconstruction of The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle  Ã‚   As Captain Jaggery’s ostensibly moral imperative from Avi’s The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle implores, we the readers â€Å"protect the natural order of the world† through our disbelief in our heroine as reflected in our intuitive reflection upon and deconstructionalist critique of the book.  Ã‚  Ã‚   In fact, it is likely that our disbelief of Charlotte’s story is as much a comment on our attitudes towards gender roles as it is an educated and thoughtful response to its clues.   Even as we find ourselves believing along with the story, we, upon reflection, find valid ways to destroy that believability, in no small part because we define what she does as either â€Å"female† (believable) and â€Å"male† (not believable). The preceding was provided so that the student could gain an understanding of the paper. The complete paper begins below: So what we have here is a girl who admits she owns the weapon that murdered Mr. Hollybrass.   A girl who lied about where she got it.   A girl who was taught to use a blade, and learned to use it, as Mr. Grimes would have it, ‘uncommon’ well.   A girl who, all agree, is unnatural in every way she acts.   Gentlemen, do we not, as natural men, need to take heed?   Is it not our duty, our obligation, to protect the natural order of the world? (Avi, 178) As Captain Jaggery’s ostensibly moral imperative from Avi’s The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle implores, we the readers â€Å"protect the natural order of the world† through our disbelief in our heroine as reflected in our intuitive reflection upon and deconstructionalist critique of the book.  Ã‚  Ã‚   In fact, it is likely that our disbelief of Charlotte’s story is a... ...ive to males.   This in itself indicates a gender expectation on the part of the reader, one that predisposes the reader to disbelieve and should lead us all to re-examine our motivations in deconstructing the text.  Ã‚   Moreover, females and males alike colored Charlotte’s adaptation to her circumstances with a movement from a female role to a male role as if gender roles were intractable and binding from both the male and female points of view -- she wouldn’t be able to do it, despite the fact that quite possibly her own survival dictated she probably could have not done otherwise!   Once again, logic dictates that we at least acknowledge that our inability to accept Charlotte’s account could be more of a reflection of our gender expectations than her twisting of the truth.    Works Cited: Avi. The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. New York: Avon Books.1990.

Monday, August 19, 2019

Randolph Bourne Crying Out Against the Betrayal of the Values of Civilization :: Randolph Bourne Writers Essays

Randolph Bourne Crying Out Against the Betrayal of the Values of Civilization John Dos Passos wrote, that if ever a man had a ghost it was Bourne: A tiny twisted unscared ghost in a black cloak hopping along the grimy old brick and brownstone streets still left in downtown New York, crying out in a shrill soundless giggle: War is the health of the state. Dos Passos, 1919 (N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1932), pp. 105-106. When World War I erupted it came as a surprise to the overwhelming majority of American intellectuals. Its barbarity stuck them as anachronistic and they tended to view the conflict as a temporary sidetrack in the march of civilization, an expression of residual animal instincts. The dawn of the Enlightenment and the tremendous progress made in the Nineteenth Century made war seem quite uncharacteristic (in their view) of humanity's evolving nature. Of course, they saw themselves as important and instrumental in defining and fine tuning that nature. On the leading edge of political and social brilliance, ivy-league educated, born to lead and with the silver spoon in the mouth to prove it, they were socialists. And when President Woodrow Wilson (who had been re-elected as a peace candidate, under the slogan, "He kept us out of war") opted to throw the full weight of the country's resources into the European conflict, they rallied to his support. Randolph Bourne, who was to die in the flu epidemic shortly after the Armistice, cried out alone against the betrayal of the values of civilization by his fellow writers. He and his magazine paid a heavy price and, of course, he did not live to see the backlash following the war. The damage had been done; the stage was set for the idiocy of the conditions at Versailles, the ascendency of Adolph Hitler, the unimaginable horrors of National Socialism, and the destruction of the cities of Europe within the next thirty years. Randolph Bourne Crying Out Against the Betrayal of the Values of Civilization :: Randolph Bourne Writers Essays Randolph Bourne Crying Out Against the Betrayal of the Values of Civilization John Dos Passos wrote, that if ever a man had a ghost it was Bourne: A tiny twisted unscared ghost in a black cloak hopping along the grimy old brick and brownstone streets still left in downtown New York, crying out in a shrill soundless giggle: War is the health of the state. Dos Passos, 1919 (N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1932), pp. 105-106. When World War I erupted it came as a surprise to the overwhelming majority of American intellectuals. Its barbarity stuck them as anachronistic and they tended to view the conflict as a temporary sidetrack in the march of civilization, an expression of residual animal instincts. The dawn of the Enlightenment and the tremendous progress made in the Nineteenth Century made war seem quite uncharacteristic (in their view) of humanity's evolving nature. Of course, they saw themselves as important and instrumental in defining and fine tuning that nature. On the leading edge of political and social brilliance, ivy-league educated, born to lead and with the silver spoon in the mouth to prove it, they were socialists. And when President Woodrow Wilson (who had been re-elected as a peace candidate, under the slogan, "He kept us out of war") opted to throw the full weight of the country's resources into the European conflict, they rallied to his support. Randolph Bourne, who was to die in the flu epidemic shortly after the Armistice, cried out alone against the betrayal of the values of civilization by his fellow writers. He and his magazine paid a heavy price and, of course, he did not live to see the backlash following the war. The damage had been done; the stage was set for the idiocy of the conditions at Versailles, the ascendency of Adolph Hitler, the unimaginable horrors of National Socialism, and the destruction of the cities of Europe within the next thirty years.

Sunday, August 18, 2019

Resolving Conflict between Science and Religion: Reform Judaism and Sci

Resolving Conflict between Science and Religion: Reform Judaism and Scientific Thought    The relationship between science and religion is not easy to navigate. On the most basic level, they are viewed as different types of thought. Religion, it seems, deals with the subjective, spiritual realm. Science, on the other hand, seems to deal with facts. It may then appear easy to separate the two realms of thought, and philosophers, theologians and scientists have from time to time attempted to do this. Both science and religion make hypotheses about the fundamental nature of human existence and the nature of the universe, however, and inevitably the claims of each come into conflict. Whether this conflict occurs on a personal level or between opposing institutions, the claims of one often seem to place the other in dire jeopardy. We have seen demonstrations of such conflict throughout history, especially in relation to the Christian faith. For instance, few people have not heard about the adverse reaction of the Catholic Church when Galileo propounded his theory of a heliocentric universe. Even today, we are not free of conflicts that arise when religious doctrine conflicts with scientific theorizing. A prominent issue is creation, in which scientific theories about the big bang directly contradict the religious doctrine of the Christian faith, which understands creation through the story of Genesis in the Old Testament. It is an oversimplification to pit science and religion as bitter opposites, but it is undeniable that in many faiths there exists a continuing conflict between advancing scientific theories and the religious perspective. How, then, can one expect to be able to integrate a scientific understanding of the wor... ... faith that binds them to one another and to God. Bibliography Armstrong, Karen. A History of God. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1993. Barbour, Ian. Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997. "Human Stem Cell Research (5761.7)." CCAR Responsa. 30 April 2003 . Meyer, Michael A. and W. Gunther Plaut. The Reform Judaism Reader: North American Documents. Cambridge: UAHC Press, 2000. Nuesner, Jacob. Judaism in Modern Times: An Introduction and Reader. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1995. "On the Treatment of the Terminally Ill (5754.14)." CCAR Responsa. 30 April 2003 . Plaut, W. Gunther. The Rise of Reform Judaism. New York: World Union for Progressive Judaism, Ltd., 1963.

Saturday, August 17, 2019

The Life of Sculptor Constantin Brancusi

Our simplest words are often the deepest in meaning: birth, kiss, flight, dream. The sculptor Constantin Brancusi spent his life searching for forms as simple and pure as those words—forms that seem to have existed forever, outside of time. Born a peasant in a remote village in Romania, he spent most of his adult life in Paris, where he lived in a single small room adjoining a skylit studio. Upon his death in 1957, Brancusi willed the contents of his studio to the French government, which eventually re-created the studio itself in a museum (1. 1). Near the center of the photograph are two versions of an idea Brancusi called Endless Column. Pulsing upward with great energy, the columns seem as though they could go on forever. Perhaps they do go on forever, and we can see only part of them. Directly in front of the white column, a sleek, horizontal marble form looking something like a slender submarine seems to hover over a disk-shaped base. Brancusi called it simply Fish. It does not depict any particular fish but, rather, shows us the idea of something that moves swiftly and freely through the water, the essence of a fish. To the left of the dark column, arching up in front of a patch of wall painted red, is a version of one of Brancusi's most famous works, Bird in Space. Here again the artist portrays not a particular bird but, rather, the idea of flight, the feeling of soaring upward. Brancusi said that the work represents â€Å"the soul liberated from matter. †1 A photograph by Brancusi shows another, more mysterious view of Bird in Space (1. 2). Light from a source we cannot see cuts across the work and falls in a sharp diamond shape on the wall behind. The sculpture casts a shadow so strong it seems to have a dark twin. Before it lies a broken, discarded work. The photograph might make you think of the birth of a bird from its shell, or of a perfected work of art arising from numerous failed attempts, or indeed of a soul newly liberated from its material prison. Brancusi took many photographs of his work, and through them we can see how his sculptures lived in his imagination even after they were finished. He photographed them in varying conditions of light, in multiple locations and combinations, from close up and far away. With each photograph they seem to reveal a different mood, the way people we know reveal different sides of themselves over time. Living with art, Brancusi's photographs show us, is making art live by letting it engage our attention, our imagination, our intelligence. Few of us, of course, can live with art the way Brancusi did. Yet we can choose to seek out encounters with art, to make it a matter for thought and enjoyment, and to let it live in our imagination. You probably live already with more art than you think you do. Very likely the walls of your home are decorated with posters, photographs, or even paintings you chose because you find them beautiful or meaningful. Walking around your community you probably pass by buildings that were designed for visual appeal as well as to serve practical ends. If you ever pause for a moment just to look at one of them, to take pleasure, for example, in its silhouette against the sky, you have made the architect's work live for a moment by appreciating an effect that he or she prepared for you. We call such an experience an aesthetic experience. Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy concerned with the feelings aroused in us by sensory experiences—experiences we have through sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. Aesthetics concerns itself with our responses to the natural world and to the world we make, especially the world of art. What art is, how and why it affects us—these are some of the issues that aesthetics addresses. This book hopes to deepen your pleasure in the aesthetic experience by broadening your understanding of one of the most basic and universal of human activities, making art. Its subject is visual art, which is art that addresses the sense of sight, as opposed to music or poetry, which are arts that appeal to the ear. It focuses on the Western tradition, by which we mean art as it has been understood and practiced in Europe and in cultures with their roots in European thought, such as the United States. But it also reaches back to consider works created well before Western ideas about art were in place and across to other cultures that have very different traditions of art. THE IMPULSE FOR ART No society that we know of, for as far back in human history as we have been able to penetrate, has lived without some form of art. The impulse to make and respond to art appears to be as deeply ingrained in us as the ability to learn language, part of what sets us apart as humans. Where does the urge to make art come from? What purposes does it serve? For answers, we might begin by looking at some of the oldest works yet discovered, images and artifacts dating from the Stone Ages, near the beginning of the human experience. On the afternoon of December 18, 1994, two men and a woman, all experienced cave explorers, were climbing among the rocky cliffs in the Ardeche region of southeastern France. From a small cavity in the rock, they felt a draft of air, which they knew often signaled a large cavern within. After clearing away some rocks and debris, they were able to squeeze through a narrow channel into what appeared to be an enormous underground room, its floor littered with animal bones. Pressing farther into the cave, the explorers played their lights on the walls and made an astonishing discovery: The walls were covered with drawings and paintings (1. 3)—more than three hundred images as they eventually found—depicting rhinoceroses, horses, bears, reindeer, lions, bison, mammoths, and others, as well as numerous outlines of human hands. It was evident that the paintings were extremely old and that the cave had remained untouched, unseen by humans, since prehistoric times. The explorers agreed to name the site after the one in their number who had led them to it, Jean-Marie Chauvet, so it is called the Chauvet cave. What they did not realize until months later, after radiocarbon testing had accurately dated the paintings, was that they had just pushed back the history of art by several thousand years. The Chauvet images were made about 30,000 B. C. E. and are the oldest paintings we know. The paintings date from a time known as the Upper Paleolithic Period, which simply means the latter part of the Old Stone Age. Archaeologists have formed some tentative conclusions about how the paintings were done. Pigments of red and yellow ochre, a natural earth substance, along with black charcoal, could have been mixed with animal fat and painted onto the walls with a reed brush. In powdered form, the same materials probably were mouth-blown onto the surface through hollow reeds. Many of the images are engraved, or scratched, into the rock. More intriguing is the question of why the cave paintings were made, why their creators paid such meticulous attention to detail, why they did their work so far underground. The paintings clearly were not meant to embellish a dwelling space. The cave artists must have lived—slept, cooked their meals, mated, and raised their children—much nearer to the mouths of these caves, close to daylight and fresh air. Until the Chauvet cave was discovered, many experts believed that ancient cave paintings were done for magical assistance in the hunt, to ensure success in bringing down game animals. But several of the animals depicted at Chauvet, including lions and rhinos and bears, were not in the customary diet of early peoples. Perhaps the artists wished to establish some kind of connection with these wild beasts, but we cannot know for sure. Fascinating as these mysteries are, they pass over perhaps the most amazing thing of all, which is that there should be images in the first place. The ability to make images is uniquely human. We do it so naturally and so constantly that we take it for granted. We make them with our hands, and we make them with our minds. Lying out on the grass, for example, you may amuse yourself by finding images in the shifting clouds, now a lion, now an old woman. Are the images really there? We know that a cloud is just a cloud, yet the image is certainly there, because we see it. Our experience of the images we make is the same. We know that a drawing is just markings on a surface, a newspaper photograph merely dots, yet we recognize them as images that reflect our world, and we identify with them. The experience was the same for Paleolithic image-makers as it is for us. All images may not be art, but our ability to make them is one place where art begins. The contemporary British sculptor Anthony Caro has said that â€Å"all art is basically Paleolithic or Neolithic: either the urge to smear soot and grease on cave walls or pile stone on stone. †2 By â€Å"soot and grease† Caro means the cave paintings. With â€Å"the urge to pile stone on stone† he has in mind one of the most impressive and haunting works to survive from the Stone Ages, the structure in the south of England known as Stonehenge (1. 4). Today much ruined through time and vandalism, Stonehenge at its height consisted of several concentric circles of megaliths, very large stones, surrounded in turn by a circular ditch. It was built in several phases over many centuries, beginning around 3100 B. C. E. The tallest circle, visible in the photograph here, originally consisted of thirty gigantic upstones capped with a continuous ring of horizontal stones. Weighing some 50 tons each, the stones were quarried many miles away, hauled to the site, and laboriously shaped by blows from stone hammers until they fit together. Many theories have been advanced about why Stonehenge was built and what purpose it served. Recent archaeological research has confirmed that the monument marks a graveyard, perhaps that of a ruling dynasty. The cremated remains of up to 240 people appear to have been buried there over a span of some five hundred years, from the earliest development of the site until the time when the great stones were erected. Other findings suggest that the monument did not stand alone but was part of a larger complex, perhaps a religious complex used for funerary rituals. What is certain is that Stonehenge held meaning for the Neolithic community that built it. For us, it stands as a compelling example of how old and how basic is our urge to create meaningful order and form, to structure our world so that it reflects our ideas. This is another place where art begins. In our society, we tend to think of art as something created by specialists, people we call artists, just as medicine is practiced by doctors and bridges are designed by engineers. In other societies, virtually everyone contributes to art in some way. Yet no matter how a society organizes itself, it calls on its art-makers to fulfill similar roles. Stonehenge was erected in the Neolithic era, or New Stone Age. The Neolithic era is named for the new kinds of stone tools that were invented, but it also saw such important advances as the domestication of animals and crops and the development of the technology of pottery, as people discovered that fire could harden certain kinds of clay. With pottery, storage jars, food bowls, and all sorts of other practical objects came into being. Yet much of the world's oldest pottery seems to go far beyond purely practical needs (1. 5). This elegant stemmed cup was formed around 2000 B. C. E. in what is now eastern China. Eggshell-thin and exceedingly fragile, it could not have held much of anything and would have tipped over easily. In other words, it isn't practical. Instead, great care and skill have gone into making it pleasing to the eye. Here is a third place we might turn to for the origins of art—the urge to explore the aesthetic possibilities of new technologies. What are the limits of clay, the early potters must have wondered. What can be done with it? Scholars believe such vessels were created for ceremonial use. They were probably made in limited quantity for members of a social elite. To construct meaningful images and forms, to create order and structure, to explore aesthetic possibilities—these characteristics seem to be part of our nature as human beings. From them, art has grown, nurtured by each culture in its own way. WHAT DO ARTISTS DO? First, artists create places for some human purpose. Stonehenge, for example, was probably created as a place where a community could gather for rituals. Closer to our own time, Maya Lin created the Vietnam Veterans Memorial as a place for contemplation and remembrance (1. 6). One of our most painful national memories, the Vietnam War saw thousands of young men and women lose their lives in a distant conflict that was increasingly questioned and protested at home. By the war's end, the nation was so bitterly divided that returning veterans received virtually no recognition for their services. In this atmosphere of continuing controversy, Lin's task was to create a memorial that honored the human sacrifice of the war while neither glorifying nor condemning the war itself. At the heart of the memorial is a long, tapering, V-shaped wall of black granite, inscribed with the names of the missing, the captured, and the dead—some 58,000 names in all. Set into the earth exposed by slicing a great wedge from a gently sloping hill, it suggests perhaps a modern entrance to an ancient burial mound, though in fact there is no entrance. Instead, the highly polished surface acts as a mirror, reflecting the surrounding trees, the nearby Washington Monument, and the visitors themselves as they pass by. Entering along a walkway from either end, visitors are barely aware at first of the low wall at their feet. The monument begins just as the war itself did, almost unnoticed, a few support troops sent to a small and distant country, a few deaths in the nightly news. As visitors continue their descent along the downward-sloping path, the wall grows taller and taller until it towers overhead, names upon names upon names. Often, people reach out to touch the letters, and as they do, they touch their own reflections reaching back. At the walkway's lowest point, with the wall at its highest, a corner is turned. The path begins to climb upward, and the wall begins to fall away. Drawn by a view of either the Washington Monument (as in the photograph here) or the Lincoln Memorial (along the other axis), visitors leave the war behind. In a quiet, unobtrusive way, the place that Maya Lin created encourages a kind of ritual, a journey downward into a valley of death, then upward toward hope, healing, and reconciliation. Like Stonehenge, it has served to bring a community together. A second task artists perform is to create extraordinary versions of ordinary objects. Just as the Neolithic vessel we looked at earlier is more than an ordinary drinking cup, so the textile here is more than an ordinary garment (1. 7). Woven in West Africa by artists of the Asante people, it is a spectacular example of a type of textile known as kente. Kente is woven in hundreds of patterns, each with its own name, history, and symbolism. Traditionally, a newly invented pattern was shown first to the king, who had the right to claim it for his own exclusive use. Like the Neolithic vessel, royal kente was reserved for ceremonial occasions. Rich, costly, and elaborate, the cloth distinguished its wearer as special as well, an extraordinary version of an ordinary human being. A third important task for artists has been to record and commemorate. Artists create images that help us remember the present after it slips into the past, that keep us in mind of our history, and that will speak of our times to the future. Illustrated here is a painting by a 17th-century artist named Manohar, one of several painters employed in the royal workshops of the emperor Jahangir, a ruler of the Mughal dynasty in India (1. 8). At the center of the painting we see Jahangir himself, seated beneath a sumptuous canopy. His son Khusrau, dressed in a yellow robe, offers him the precious gift of a golden cup. The painting commemorates a moment of reconciliation between father and son, who had had a violent falling out. The moment did not last, however. Khusrau would soon stage an armed rebellion that cost him the throne. Although the intricate details of Mughal history may be lost on us today, this enchanting painting gives us a vivid glimpse into their vanished world as they wanted it to be remembered. A fourth task for artists is to give tangible form to the unknown. They portray what cannot be seen with the eyes or events that can only be imagined. An anonymous Indian sculptor of the 10th century gave tangible form to the Hindu god Shiva in his guise as Nataraja, Lord of the Dance (1. 9). Encircled by flames, his long hair flying outward, Shiva dances the destruction and rebirth of the world, the end of one cycle of time and the beginning of another. The figure's four arms communicate the complexity of this cosmic moment. In one hand, Shiva holds the small drum whose beat summons up creation; in another hand, he holds the flame of destruction. A third hand points at his raised foot, beneath which worshipers may seek refuge, while a fourth hand is raised with its palm toward the viewer, a gesture that means â€Å"fear not. † A fifth function artists perform is to give tangible form to feelings and ideas. The statue of Shiva we just looked at, for example, gives tangible form to ideas about the cyclical nature of time that are part of the religious culture of Hinduism. In The Starry Night (1. 10), Vincent van Gogh labored to express his personal feelings as he stood on the outskirts of a small village in France and looked up at the night sky. Van Gogh had become intrigued by the belief that people journeyed to a star after their death, and that there they continued their lives. â€Å"Just as we take the train to get to Tarascon or Rouen,† he wrote in a letter, â€Å"we take death to reach a star. †4 Seen through the prism of that idea, the night landscape inspired in him a vision of great intensity. Surrounded by halos of radiating light, the stars have an exaggerated, urgent presence, as though each one were a brilliant sun. A great wave or whirlpool rolls across the sky—a cloud, perhaps, or some kind of cosmic energy. The landscape, too, seems to roll on in waves like an ocean. A tree in the foreground writhes upward toward the stars as though answering their call. In the distance, a church spire points upward as well. Everything is in turbulent motion. Nature seems alive, communicating in its own language while the village sleeps. Finally, artists refresh our vision and help us see the world in new ways. Habit dulls our senses. What we see every day we no longer marvel at, because it has become familiar. Through art we can see the world through someone else's eyes and recover the intensity of looking for the first time. Ernst Haas' photograph Peeling Paint on Iron Bench, Kyoto, 1981 (1. 11) singles out a small detail of an ordinary day and asks us to notice how rich it is if we really take the time to look. Rain has made the colors shine with fresh intensity, brilliant red against deep black, and the star-shaped leaves could almost be made of gold. After seeing through Haas' eyes, we may find ourselves—if only for a few hours—more attentive to the world around us, which is stranger, more mysterious, more various, and more beautiful than we usually realize. CREATING AND CREATIVITY Out walking on a rainy day in Kyoto, Ernst Haas could have noticed the park bench, smiled with pleasure, and continued on his way. Standing in a field over a century ago, Van Gogh could have had his vision of the night sky, then returned to his lodgings—and we would never have known about it. We all experience the moments of insight that put us where art begins. For most of us, such moments are an end in themselves. For artists, they are a beginning, a kind of raw material that sets a creative process in motion. Creativity is a word that comes up often when talking about art, but what is creativity exactly? Are we born with it? Can it be learned? Can it be lost? Are artists more creative than other people? If so, how did they get that way? Many writers and educators have tried to analyze creativity and determine what makes a person creative. 6 Although the exact nature of creativity remains elusive, there is general agreement that creative people tend to possess certain traits, including: †¢ Sensitivity —heightened awareness of what one sees, hears, and touches, as well as responsiveness to other people and their feelings. †¢ Flexibility —an ability to adapt to new situations and to see their possibilities; willingness to find innovative relationships. Originality —uncommon responses to situations and to solving problems. †¢ Playfulness —a sense of humor and an ability to experiment freely. †¢ Productivity —the ability to generate ideas easily and frequently, and to follow through on those ideas. †¢ Fluency —a readiness to allow the free flo w of ideas. †¢ Analytical skill —a talent for exploring problems, taking them apart, and finding out how things work. †¢ Organizational skill —ability to put things back together in a coherent order. We might bear that list in mind as we look at Tim Hawkinson's Emoter (1. 12). Like many of Hawkinson's works, Emoter looks like a do-it-yourself science project that has gotten a little out of hand. The stepladder on the floor houses a black-and-white television monitor tuned to a local broadcast station. Rows of light sensors attached to the monitor's screen react to changes in the moving image, sending signals through a tangle of cords, cables, and wires up to a large photograph of the artist's face. The components of the face—eyes, nostrils, eyebrows, and mouth—move continuously in response to the signals they receive, generating expressions that are as extravagant as a mime's. Certainly, sensitivity made Hawkinson a keen observer of faces, and originality suggested to him that such unlikely material as laboratory experiments monitoring brain waves, or antiquated scientific theories linking specific facial expressions to specific emotions, could inspire a work of art. Playfulness, flexibility, fluency, and productivity set him to exploring ways in which his project could be given form, while analytical and organizational skills allowed him to carry it to completion. The profession of artist is not the only one that requires creativity. Scientists, mathematicians, teachers, business executives, doctors, librarians, computer programmers—people in every line of work, if they are any good, look for ways to be creative. Artists occupy a special place in that they have devoted their lives to opening the channels of visual creativity. Can a person become more creative? Almost certainly, if one allows oneself to be. Being creative means learning to trust one's own interests, experiences, and references, and to use them to enhance life and work. Above all, it means discarding rigid notions of what has been or should be in favor of what could be. Creativity develops when the eyes and the mind are wide open, and it is as important to looking at art as it is to making it. We close this chapter by exploring what looking creatively might involve. LOOKING AND RESPONDING Science tells us that seeing is a mode of perception, which is the recognition and interpretation of sensory data—in other words, how information comes into our eyes (ears, nose, taste buds, fingertips) and what we make of it. In visual perception, our eyes take in information in the form of light patterns; the brain processes these patterns to give them meaning. The role of the eyes in vision is purely mechanical. Barring some physical disorder, it functions the same way for everyone. The mind's role in making sense of the information, however, is highly subjective and belongs to the realm of psychology. Simply put, given the same situation, we do not all notice the same things, nor do we interpret what we see in the same way. One reason for differences in perception is the immense amount of detail available for our attention at any given moment. To navigate efficiently through daily life, we practice what is called selective perception, focusing on the visual information we need for the task at hand and relegating everything else to the background. But other factors are in play as well. Our mood influences what we notice and how we interpret it, as does the whole of our prior experience—the culture we grew up in, relationships we have had, places we have seen, knowledge we have accumulated. The subjective nature of perception explains why a work of art may mean different things to different people and how it is that we may return to a favorite work again and again, noticing new aspects of it each time. It explains why the more we know, the richer each new encounter with art will be, for we will have more experience to bring to it. It explains why we should make every effort to experience as much art in person as possible, for physical dimensions also influence perception. The works reproduced in this book are miniaturized. Many other details escape reproduction as well. Above all, the nature of perception suggests that the most important key to looking at art is to become aware of the process of looking itself—to notice details and visual relationships, to explore the associations and feelings they inspire, to search for knowledge we can bring to bear, and to try to put what we see into words. A quick glance at Juan de Valdes Leal's Vanitas (1. 13) reveals a careless jumble of objects with a cherub looking over them. In the background, a man looks out at us from the shadows. But what are the objects? And what are the cherub and the man doing? Only if we begin to ask and answer such questions does the message of the painting emerge. In the foreground to the left is a timepiece. Next to it are three flowers, each one marking a stage in the brief life of a flower across time: budding, then blossoming, then dying as its petals fall away. Then come dice and playing cards, suggesting games of chance. Further on, a cascade of medals, money, and jewelry leads up to an elaborate crown, suggesting honors, wealth, and power. At the center, books and scientific instruments evoke knowledge. Finally, back where we began, a skull crowned with a laurel wreath lies on its side. Laurel traditionally crowns those who have become famous through their achievements, especially artistic achievements. Over this display the cherub blows a bubble, as though making a comment on the riches before him. A bubble's existence is even shorter than a flower's—a few seconds of iridescent beauty, and then nothing. Behind the books, a crystal globe resembles a bubble as well, encouraging us to see a connection. When we meet the man's gaze, we notice that he has drawn back a heavy curtain with one hand and is pointing at a painting he has thus revealed with the other. â€Å"Look at this,† he all but speaks. The painting depicts the Last Judgment. In Christian belief, the Last Judgment is the moment when Christ will appear again. He will judge both the living and the dead, accepting some into Paradise and condemning others to Hell. The universe will end, and with it time itself. We might paraphrase the basic message of the painting something like this: â€Å"Life is fleeting, and everything that we prize and strive for during it is ultimately meaningless. Neither wealth nor beauty nor good fortune nor power nor knowledge nor fame will save us when we stand before God at the end of the world. † Without taking the time to perceive and reflect on the many details of the image, we would miss its message completely. Vanitas is Latin for â€Å"vanity. † It alludes to the biblical book of Ecclesiastes, a meditation on the fleeting nature of earthly life and happiness in which we read that in the end, â€Å"all is vanity. The title wasn't invented or bestowed by the artist, however. Rather, it is a generic name for a subject that was popular during his lifetime. Numerous vanitas paintings have come down to us from the 17th century, and together they show the many ways that artists treated its themes. Closer to our own time, the painter Audrey Flack be came fascinated by the vanitas tradition, and she created a series of her own, including Wheel of Fortune (Vanitas) (1. 14). Knowing something of the tradition Flack is building on, we can more easily appreciate her updated interpretation. As ever, a skull puts us in mind of death. An hourglass, a calendar page, and a guttering candle speak of time and its passing. The necklace, mirrors, powder puff, and lipstick are contemporary symbols of personal vanity, while a die and a tarot card evoke the roles of chance and fate in our lives. As in the painting by Valdes, a visual echo encourages us to think about a connection, in this case between the framed oval photograph of a young woman and the framed oval reflection of the skull just below. Flack may be painting with one eye on the past, but the other is firmly on our society as we are now. For example, she includes modern inventions such as a photograph and a lipstick tube, and she shuns symbols that no longer speak to us directly such as laurels and a crown. The specifically Christian context is gone as well, resulting in a more general message that applies to us all, regardless of faith: Time passes quickly, beauty fades, chance plays a bigger role in our lives than we like to think, death awaits. Despite their differences, both Flack and Valdes provide us with many clues to direct our thoughts. They depict objects that have common associations and then trust us to add up the evidence. At first glance, a contemporary work such as Jim Hodges' Every Touch seems very different (1. 15). Every Touch is made of artificial silk flowers, taken apart petal by petal. The petals were ironed flat, intermingled, then stitched together to form a large curtain or veil. Yet although Every Touch may not direct our thoughts as firmly as the other works, we approach it in the same way. We look, and we try to become aware of our looking. We ask questions and explore associations. We bring our experience and knowledge to bear. We interrogate our feelings. We might think of spring. We might be put in mind of other art, such as the flowered backgrounds of medieval tapestries (see 15. 24) or the role of flowers in the vanitas tradition. We might think about flowers and the occasions on which we offer them. We might think about the flowers we know from poetry, where they are often linked to beauty and youth, for all three fade quickly. We might think about petals, which fall from dying flowers. We might think about veils and when we wear them, such as at weddings and funerals. We might notice how delicately the work is stitched together and how fragile it seems. We might think about looking not only at it but also through it, and about how a curtain separates one realm from another. The man in Valdes' painting, for example, draws back a curtain to reveal the future. Every Touch is not as easily put into words as the vanitas paintings, but it can inspire thoughts about many of the same ideas: seasons that come and go, how beauty and sadness are intertwined, the ceremonies that mark life's passing, the idea of one realm opening onto another, the fragility of things. In the end, what we see in Every Touch depends on what we bring to it, and if we approach the task sincerely, there are no wrong answers. Every Touch will never mean for any of us exactly what it means for Hodges, nor should it. An artist's work grows from a lifetime of experiences, thoughts, and emotions; no one else can duplicate them exactly. Works of art hold many meanings. The greatest of them seem to speak anew to each generation and to each attentive observer. The most important thing is that some works of art come to mean something for you, that your own experiences, thoughts, and emotions find a place in them, for then you will have made them live.