16th Century English Weapons Essays - Projectile Weapons

16th Century English Weapons 16th Century English Weapons During the 16th century England and much of Europe found itself in turmoil and in a constant state of war. The outbreak of fighting led to the invention and development of new weapons and the growth and change of weapons of old. The development of weapons was a trademark of the time, with a sort of renaissance, or re-birth in the field of weaponry (Miller). The technology was highlighted by the invention of gunpowder by the Chinese which eventually found its way to England (Grolier). However, the use of gunpowder was minimal, because the use of had yet to be perfected. The technological advancement most useful during the period was progression of the metals used in weaponry. The new forms could be found in the production of swords, arrows, cannons, and armor, as well as varies siege weapons. The three major categories of weapons used during the 16th century were handheld, siege, and missiles. The primary use of handheld weapons is for the obvious is hand to hand combat in close quarters. Handheld weapons were not always the most efficient weapons but played a major role in battle because of their simplicity. An entire army would depend on the use of foot soldiers and simply outnumber their opponent while fighting in the trenches (Grolier). Siege weapons were effective not on battles on an open area, but rather when one army would attack the fortress or castle of the other army. The siege weapons were used to either knock the gate at the entrance of the castle, or other wise gain entry, or to hurl large objects or arrows over the defensive walls around the perimeter of the castle. Fire was another common tactic used with siege of castles, as well as the use of the newly found gunpowder (Revell, "Missile"). The third type of weapons are missile weapons, which came to be the signature of the time period. The missile weapons were fired or projected from a distance and were found effective due to their range, but accuracy became important and so did the skill involved in warfare. Handheld weapons represented a large portion of the weapons used during 16th Century warfare (Iannuzzo). Most commonly used was the sword. Throughout the middles ages, metals were developed to withstand more abuse and thus became more effective (Iannuzzo). The metals now had to strong enough to pierce through the newly developed armor of the time (Revell, "Armour"). The use of carbonized iron, which was heated, beaten, and cut the process repeated many times over to form a solid and durable and lighter than previous swords. The double edge sword was far superior in strength and sharpness of the other swords of the time (Grolier). The 16th century also brought forth the use of flamberge sword that had an undulating cutting edge, that was believed to be able to easily pierce the armor, but was too awkward for battle and was eventually abandoned. By this time the Great sword, sometimes over six feet in length, were being deployed. This sword was deadly only because of the pure size of it. The great swords required enormous strength just to hold and even more to be effective. Eventually the great sword became too awkward to use in battle just as the flamberge. These two inferior swords took a back seat to the smaller and more agile estoc sword. The estoc had a narrow triangular blade that was used to pierce the joints in the armor, rather than slash through it. But the progression in the strength of these swords made it able for the estocs to be strong enough to pierce through entire plates of the armour (Revell, "Armour"). This more effective sword led to a revolution in the art of sword fighting, because now a soldier must be able to beat an opponent with speed and quickness, rather than raw strength. The second type of handheld weapon that made an impact during the 16th century, were maces. The mace was as a secondary weapon that was used after the initial charge, where swords were the primary weapon (Iannuzzo). Maces were heavy lead balls attached to a chain, which was attached to the metal handle that the warrior would hold. They were small and quick enough to crush a man's skull (Revell, "Armour"). Early maces that were smooth were found to slide off the armor and not cause much damage. This lead to the elaboration of putting metal spikes on the ball that would be able to puncture the armor and cause injury to the

When does life begin essays

When does life begin essays Three Perspectives on When Life Begins Subject: Where does life begin? That is the age-old question. The decision that legalized the right to an abortion in all 50 states and sparked a political debate that remains charged to this day. Topic: Many questions surround abortion. What really makes someone human? Sub Topics: a) Some suggest life begins when the soul is created. b) Others advocate it is when the child is capable of giving and receiving love. c) Some suggest that life begins at conception. In this paper I will argue the validity of each of these issues. Topic @ Some have tried to find an answer in a religious belief, such as suggesting that human life begins when the soul is created. Others object that such answers cannot be used as a basis for law, because that would be a violation of separation of church and state. . There is a far bigger problem with such a definition of life. In the essay, When Does Life Begin?, Jay Johansen says, ...the soul definition, this one may be philosophically interesting but is of little practical use, as it is not at all clear how we could determine when someone first becomes conscious. The author means that no one knows when the soul is created, and it is difficult to see how we could find out. If someday, someone invented some kind of machine that could detect and measure a soul, this might become a useful definition. Until then, it can only be a subject for speculation. Topic B: Or consider human life begins when one is capable of giving and receiving love. Dr Schwarz argues, Imagine a case of two children. One is born comatose and he will remain so until the age of nine. The other is healthy at birth, but as soon as she achieves the concept of a continuing self for a brief time, she too lapses into a coma from which she will not emerge until she is nine. Can anyone seriously hold that the second child is a person ...

How the iPhona Changed Modern Economics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

How the iPhona Changed Modern Economics - Essay Example According to the company, an estimated 200,000 iPhones were pre ordered the very day that the phone went on sale in the country and another 400,000 were sold on that day. The company was able to attract so many buyers because of the popularity that the phone had gained over the Chinese market because of the sale of its previous model, which had further excited a wider consumer base. Even though the phones are more expensive, they offer better features as well as data services which have attracted.In economic terms, it is clear and evident that this particular phone has appealed a great deal to at least half of the Chinese market because more and more people have bought it at the price at which it was launched. The iPad was also released in China and went on sale at a fast pace as well. However, the crux of the matter remained that the iPhone’s demand exceeded the supply that the company was able to give to the people. This goes to show that there was an extension of demand in the particular commodity at the same or even higher price. Since the iPhone 4 was costlier than the previous version, an extension (and not just an increase) in demand can be noticed here in economic terms which means that there is movement along the demand curve.As per the article, â€Å"As of the second quarter, Apple was the fifth-largest smart phone vendor in China with 7.1% of shipments, according to Beijing research firm Analysys International. Nokia Corp. had the largest share with 26.7%.†Ã‚  

Iphone Sales Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Iphone Sales - Essay Example Based on the statistics it can be reflected that iPhone in the last 4 year has reached to the historical peak, with more than 100% year-on-year growth in the every quarter. Moreover, in the first and second quarter, iPhone sales grew between 20% and 45% respectively in the market UBS's i.e. the well known foreign investment bank highlighted the fact that in the September quarter of 2015, the sales figure of iPhone is expected to reach 49 million. This suggests optimistic growth prospects of the iPhone sales on the basis of ‘iPhone Monitoring Modeling’, which mainly inferred from the search of iPhone in the worldwide network. Over the past four years, the growth in the iPhone was recognized to be around 73%, 20%, 13% and 35% respectively. Moreover, it has been affirmed that in the upcoming year the sale of iPhone is expected to rise due to high response and attractiveness of iPhone 6s among the customers. In this regard, it has been highlighted that there are still 73% of iPhone users willing to upgrade the configuration with big size screen of the iPhone 6 and iPhone Plus, so the new generation sales of the same period continue to grow more. In fiscal 2016, it is expected that iPhone sales would increase by 6% to 245 million units. Apple continues to benefit from China's growth, according to the data provided and during the second quarter, the iPhone's search volume rose 100% year-on-year. Apple is a successful case in China, besides consumers are willing to upgrade the iPhone with higher prices.

Indoor Play Area for Children in Highcross Mall in Leicester in the UK Essay

Indoor Play Area for Children in Highcross Mall in Leicester in the UK - Essay Example The creative ideas and innovative designing of play centre are discussed in detail to land on a conclusion that an effectively designed play centre at Highcross Leicester would certainly attract more and more number of parents enclosed by their kids to the shopping mall, the sales graph of which has the chance of ever going up. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction†¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ 4 Problem†¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ 4 Aims and Objectives†¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ 5 Methods†¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ 5 Business Plan†¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ 6 Time-frame†¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ 11 Possible constraints†¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ 12 Outcome/Discussion†¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ 12 Conclusion†¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ †¦ 16 Introduction: Customised childcare in UK was very poor two decades ago. When compared to other European countries and Western side of the Globe, UK’s child care systems were low in intensity. Mothers of UK found the period between childbirth and schooling too long to sustain especially when they happened to be employees. Lack of state and private initiatives to find out alternative childcare systems were ascribed to their opting part-time employment rather than full-time jobs. However, internal and external influences have paved way for emergence of a series of childcare legislations in the final decade of 20th Century. The years that followed Childcare Act 2006 saw a leap in childcare development. The Brighton and Hove City council has recently published in February 2010 an updated information sheet ‘Running a Crecheâ⠂¬â„¢ in which a clear definition of creches is envisaged. It reads: - facilities which provide occasional care for children under eight and which are provided on particular premises on more than five days a year. They need to be registered where they run for more than two hours a day, even when individual children attend for shorter periods. Some are in permanent premises and care for children while parents are engaged in particular activities, eg, shopping or sport. Others are established on a temporary basis to care for children while their parents are engaged in time-limited activities, eg, a conference or exhibition. Problem: Our aim of designing a play space inside the shopping Mall at Leicester, UK should never be considered as an easing knack for parents in their busy schedules of shopping and other activities so that they can lessen the burden of their childcare activities. Instead, the play area is to be designed in such a way it nourishes creativity among kids. Aim and Ob jectives: The purpose of this report is to investigate and analyse information in connection with formation of a creche in the busiest shopping centre in Leicester. Although a play zone in a shopping Mall in which the ‘play’ serves a subsidiary (Sarah and Valentine, 2009, p.89) and supporting function, our aim in this study is to evolve a method/ design of creche with creative elements so that parents’ responsibility of robust childcare is shouldered. The chief predictors in this endeavour are obtaining valid permission from authorities and ensuring a considerably greater natural environmental design. Methods: The method in gathering information to plan and implement this project included primary and secondary

Chemometric Technique to Determine Rice Types

Chemometric Technique to Determine Rice Types CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1Â  Background of Study Rice (Oryza Sativa) is a type of cereal food in which most people consumes. As acereal grain, it is the most widely consumed staple food for a large part of the worlds human population, especially in Asia [1]. Rice is perhaps the most remarkable of cultivated crops, for although possessing the roots of a dry land plant, it flourishes in swamps or under irrigation, and in Asia has produced one or more crop annually for centuries (Grist, 1965). Commercially available rice is distributed in different varieties in the market. Classification of product brands and type of products is a very active area for the application of chemometric classification procedures [2]. The use of specific sensors for characterizing foodstuffs or in this case rice is being replaced by a trend to draw on the wealth of information available from the data provided by current analytical instrumentation. The extraction of useful information from an amount of data and the optimum use of this analytical information are important objectives of chemometrics [3]. Since the infrared spectra contain significant information about all the components of a complex mixture, FTIR is a very powerful and general technique for investigating the structure of rice components. In association with chemometric treatments such as principal component analysis (PCA), vibrational spectroscopy allows classification of foods (rice) to be undertaken without any chemical analysis [2]. The main advantage is that no prior information on the sample is needed since the significant information is extracted during statistical treatment. The spectral information will constitute the experimental data which are analysed by PCA and HCA. 1.2Â  Problem Statement Research on rice till this date mostly focused on its genome in order to increase the nutritional values. An example of product that has made it through this kind of research is Golden Rice. There is very little research on focusing in determination of types of rice using combination of spectroscopy and chemometrics technique let alone combination of Infrared Spectroscopy and chemometrics. Due to this, little is known about which or what variables is responsible in the types of rice grouping when pattern recognition is applied. Hence, this research is important in identifying what variable is responsible for the grouping of samples. 1.3Â  Research Objective The aim of this study is to apply chemometric technique to determine the types of rice that will be analyze through Infrared Spectroscopy in order to assess the potential relationship between the element content and types of rice. 1.4Â  Significance of Study This study is important to determine the variables that responsible in differentiation and variety types of rice. With the combination of Infrared Spectroscopy spectra of the samples prior to grouping of samples using pattern recognition, this is a quick method to classify rice compared to the use of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy with pattern recognition or other instruments. 1.5Â  Scope of the Research In this research, type of rice to be samples is based on definition of rice’s type in Malaysia by Padi Beras Nasional Berhad [4]. There are 7 samples to be test which all of them are to acquire at local stores. Analysis of the sample will be done through Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) and pattern recognition which include Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Cluster analysis. CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1Â  Rice in History Humankind progression in term of social and cultural was partly due to the discovery of agriculture. This development gave a massive impact on the way human been living their life by choosing to settle down in one place instead of constantly moving around looking for places with new food sources. Archeological evidence founds all over Asia proposed that rice must be at least eight thousand years old, thus eliminating theory that rice was among the first cereal to be cultivated due to general believed that agriculture first started around the Mesopotamian region in the valley between Euphrates and Tigris [5]. One of these is related to the extraordinary concentration of rice production in a small part of the world. Approximately 90% or more of the world’s rice is produced in the relatively tiny area in south, southeast and northeast Asia which often be refer to as ‘rice country’ [6]. Rice is produced in a wide range of locations and under a variety of climatic conditions, from the wettest areas in the world to the driest deserts. It is produced along Myanmar’s Arakan Coast, where the growing season records an average of more than 5100mm of rainfall, and at Al Hasa Oasis in Saudi Arabia [5]. Rice plays a major role economically, especially in countries where rice is considered as the main food. This is more accurate in most countries in Asia, because not only they consume rice daily, but also Asia is the main producer of rice [1]. Country like China, India and Thailand have long played major role in the development of rice, economically. The success of the crops not only important to the grower, but also affect the community either directly or indirectly [1]. 2.2Â  Types of Rice There are dozens of different ways to classify the scores of types of rice from all over the world, but rice is generally described as being long-, medium- or short-grained [5]. These are some of the most common types youll find in supermarkets andgourmet stores, as well as a few specialty rices that were seeing more and more often. In the world market as well as in Malaysia, much emphasis is placed on grain length and whiteness as a criterion of grade and quality. Other factors such as palatability characteristics (appearance, cohesiveness, tenderness and flavor) also constitute as important considerations in quality grading [4]. In Malaysia, the main varieties of rice found in retail outlets are ordinary local and imported white rice, brown unpolished rice and specialty rice such as fragrant rice, Basmati, parboiled and glutinous rice. The main criteria in the classification are length of grain, content of head rice, content of broken rice and milling degree [7]. 2.3Â  Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) provides specific information about chemical bonding and molecular structure, making it useful for analyzing organic materials and certain inorganic material. It can be utilized to quantitative some components of an unknown mixture. It can be applied to the analysis of solids, liquid and gasses. The term FTIR spectroscopy refers to a fairly recent development in the manner in which the data is collected and converted from an interference pattern to a spectrum [8].When the material under investigation is put into an FTIR spectrometer, it will absorb the radiation emitted and the successful absorption will display the uniqueness or fingerprint of the material under investigation [9]. Samples for FTIR can be prepared in multiple ways depending on its physical state. For solid samples, it will be ground into a fine powder with an agate mortar and pestle with an amount of the suspending salt, which usually be KBr due to it being transparent to infrared radiation. This powder is then compressed through a bench top hydraulic press into becoming a thin pellet which can be analyzed [10]. Another method to prepare solid samples is by dissolving it in a suitable solvent such as methylene chloride and the solution is dropped onto a salt plate. After the solvent evaporates, a thin-solid film of the compound remains on the plate [11]. Meanwhile, liquid samples can be examined directly as a thin film between two sodium chloride plates. 2.4Â  Chemometrics The term chemometrics was coined in the 1970s and is defined as the chemical discipline that uses statistical and mathematical methods for selecting and optimizing analytical and preparative methods, as well as procedures for the analysis and interpretation of data [12]. 2.4.1Â  Pattern Recognition The overall goal of pattern recognition is classification. Developing a classifier from spectral, chromatographic, or compositional data may be desirable for any number of purposes including source identification, presence or absence of disease in a patient or animal from which the sample has been taken, and food quality testing to name just a few [13]. The classification step is often accomplished using one of several techniques that are now fairly well established including PCA, HCA, KNN, statistical and regularized discriminant analysis. Techniques of pattern recognition are applicable to data drawn from virtually any physical process. The data may be qualitative, quantitative, or both which is they may be numerical, pictorial, textural, linguistic, or any combination thereof. Meanwhile, one of the most important and oft-used data analysis methods is the eyeball technique, Subjective assessment of data patterns has long been a method accepted by many traditional data analyzers. Statistical analysis proceeds slowly by hand, more rapidly with hand calculators and can be quite fast with modern computers [14]. CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 3.1Â  Samples A total of 7 different samples of rice will be use for this study. All of the samples will be obtain from various supermarkets and grocery stores in Johor Bahru and Seremban area. Various brands and types of rice are selected in order to get as much variation as possible. 3.2Â  Analysis of Sample Spectra of the rice samples will be acquired using (model number) instrument with KBr disc. The wavelength is set up to range from 4000cm-1 to 400cm-1. 3.3Â  Software Chemometrics analysis is the main part in this research as the data obtained from spectroscopic analysis will be analyses so that the important data can be identified and useable information can be deduced from the data. The key to chemometrics is to understand how to perform meaningful calculations on data. In most cases these calculations are too complex to do by hand or using a calculator, so it is necessary to use some software. Three softwares will be use for the data analysis as listed in table below. 3.4Â  Procedures CHAPTER 4 RESULT 4.1Â  Expected Result It is expected that Principal Component Analysis (PCA) will reveal multiple grouping due to different types of rice being used as samples. Furthermore, by comparing the score plot with the loading plot, the unknown variable that causing the samples to be group as it is will be identify. REFERENCES Calpe, C. (2006). Rice: International commodity profile.Rome: Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. Brereton, R. (2009). Introduction. InChemometrics for pattern recognition(pp. 1-24). Chichester, U.K.: Wiley. Brereton, R. (2002). Intro. InAn introduction to chemometrics: Data analysis for the laboratory and chemical plant(pp. 1-12). New York: Wiley. RICE TYPES IN MALAYSIA. (2011). Retrieved October 16, 2014, from http://www.bernas.com.my/index.php/rice-types-in-malaysia Bhattacharya, K. (2011). An Introduction to rice: Its Qualities and Mysteries. InRice Quality a Guide To Rice Properties And Analysis.(pp. 1-18). Burlington: Elsevier Science. Wong, L. C., Emrus, S. A., Bashir, B. M., Tey, J. Y. (2010, June). Malaysian Padi Rice Industry: Applications of Supply Chain Management Approach. In National Rice Conference Swiss Garden Golf Resort Lumut(pp. 28-30). Grist D. H. (1986). Tropical Agricultural Series. Rice, 6, 3-12, Longman Group Limited. Introduction to Infrared Spectroscopy. (2011) Fundamentals of Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy, Second Edition (pp. 1-17): CRC Press. King, PL, Ramsey, MS, McMillan, PF, Swayze, G. (2004). Laboratory Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy methods for geologic samples. Infrared Spectroscopy in Geochemistry, Exploration Geochemistry and Remote Sensing, Mineralogical Association of Canada, Short Course, 57-91. Hauser, Martin, Oelichmann, Joachim. (1988). A critical comparison of solid sample preparation techniques in infrared spectroscopy. Microchimica Acta, 94(1-6), 39-43. Stuart, Barbara. (2000). Infrared Spectroscopy Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology: John Wiley Sons, Inc. Beebe, k.R, Pell, R.J., Seasholtz, M.B. (1998). Chemometrics: A Practical Guide. New York. John Wiley Sons, Inc. 61-65. Lavine, B., Workman, J. (2010). Chemometrics.Analytical chemistry,82(12), 4699-4711. Theodiridis, S., Koutroumbas, K. (2006). Pattern Recognition, Third Edition. Amsterdam, Boston. Academic Press. 1.

Lakota Woman Essay -- American History Native Americans Essays

Lakota Woman Mary was born with the name Mary Brave Bird. She was a Sioux from the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. She belonged to the "Burned Thigh," the Brule Tribe, the Sicangu. The Brules are part of the Seven Sacred Campfires, the seven tribes of the Western Sioux known collectively as the Lakota. The Brule rode horses and were great warriors. Between 1870 and 1880 all Sioux were driven into reservations, fenced in and forced to give up everything. Her family settled in on the reservation in a small place called He-Dog. Her grandpa was a He-Dog and told about the Wounded Knee massacre. Almost three hundred Sioux men, women, and children were killed by white soldiers. Mary was called a iyeska, a breed which the white kids called her. She had white peoples blood in her. Her face was very Indian, but her skin was light. She hated being "white" and loved the summer because she would tan and make her look more Indian. She had a husband from the Crow Dogs which were full-bloods. They were the Sioux of the Sioux. Her people had very strong family ties and everyone cared for everyone. Still even though the white man has ruined their close family ties they have many traditions which keep the intermediate family closely tied together. The whites however completely destroyed the tiyospaye, which is the extended family like the grandparents, uncles and aunts, in-laws and cousins. The government tore the tiyospaye apart and forced the Sioux into the kind of relationship now called the nuclear family. Those who refused to be ruined by the government were pushed back in the country and into isolation and starvation. Her father, Bill Moore, was only part Indian and mostly white. He left almost immediately after Mary was born becaus... ...eonard returned home the entire town came to welcome him. When Leonard returned home the entire tribe came to welcome him. They had a big feast and Mary too was honored. Mary got a new name, Ohitika Win, Brave Woman. She was very honored and proud to have a True Indian name. Both Leonard and Mary had to get used to the changes they both endured over the time Leonard was in jail. Mary was no longer a shy Sioux woman walking with downcast eyes in the footsteps of some man. Mary and her sister were apart for a long time and grew far apart. They no longer viewed things as they used to. Mary Promised herself that she would Sun Dance for four years straight. She started to dance by making flesh offerings for those brothers and sisters who had died. "It was at that moment that I, a white-educated half blood, became wholly Indian. I experienced a great rush of happiness."

Bag of Bones CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I caught the measles when I was eight, and I was very ill. ‘I thought you were going to die,' my father told me once, and he was not a man given to exaggeration. He told me about how he and my mother had dunked me in a tub of cold water one night, both of them at least half-convinced the shock of it would stop my heart, but both of them completely convinced that I'd burn up before their eyes if they didn't do something. I had begun to speak in a loud, monotonously discursive voice about the bright figures I saw in the room angels come to bear me away, my terrified mother was sure and the last time my father took my temperature before the cold plunge, he said that the mercury on the old Johnson & Johnson rectal thermometer had stood at a hundred and six degrees. After that, he said, he didn't dare take it anymore. I don't remember any bright figures, but I remember a strange period of time that was like being in a funhouse corridor where several different movies were showing at once. The world grew elastic, bulging in places where it had never bulged before, wavering in places where it had always been solid. People most of them seeming impossibly talldarted in and out of my room on scissoring, cartoonish legs. Their words all came out booming, with instant echoes. Someone shook a pair of baby-shoes in my face. I seem to remember my brother, Siddy, sticking his hand into his shirt and making repeated arm-fart noises. Continuity broke down. Everything came in segments, weird wieners on a poison string. In the years between then and the summer I returned to Sara Laughs, I had the usual sicknesses, infections, and insults to the body, but never anything like that feverish interlude when I was eight. I never expected to believing, I suppose, that such experiences are unique to children, people with malaria, or maybe those suffering catastrophic mental breakdowns. But on the night of July seventh and the morning of July eighth, I lived through a period of time remarkably like that childhood delirium. Dreaming, waking, moving they were all one. I'll tell you as best I can, but nothing I say can convey the strangeness of that experience. It was as if I had found a secret passage hidden just beyond the wall of the world and went crawling along it. First there was music. Not Dixieland, because there were no horns, but like Dixieland. A primitive, reeling kind of bebop. Three or four acoustic guitars, a harmonica, a stand-up bass (or maybe a pair). Behind all of this was a hard, happy drumming that didn't sound as if it was coming from a real drum; it sounded as if someone with a lot of percussive talent was whopping on a bunch of boxes. Then a woman's voice joined in a contralto voice, not quite mannish, roughing over the high notes. It was laughing and urgent and ominous all at the same time, and I knew at once that I was hearing Sara Tidwell, who had never cut a record in her life. I was hearing Sara Laughs, and man, she was rocking. ‘You know we're going back to MANderley, We're gonna dance on the SANderley, I'm gonna sing with the BANderley, We gonna ball all we CANderley Ball me, baby, yeah!' The basses yes, there were two broke out in a barnyard shuffle like the break in Elvis's version of ‘Baby Let's Play House,' and then there was a guitar solo: Son Tidwell playing that chickenscratch thing. Lights gleamed in the dark, and I thought of a song from the fifties Claudine Clark singing ‘Party Lights.' And here they were, Japanese lanterns hung from the trees above the path of railroad-tie steps leading from the house to the water. Party lights casting mystic circles of radiance in the dark: red blue and green. Behind me, Sara was singing the bridge to her Manderley song mama likes it nasty, mama likes it strong, mama likes to party all night long but it was fading. Sara and the Red-Top Boys had set up their bandstand in the driveway by the sound, about where George Footman had parked when he came to serve me with Max Devore's subpoena. I was descending toward the lake through circles of radiance, past party lights surrounded by soft-winged moths. One had found its way inside a lamp and it cast a monstrous, batlike shadow against the ribbed paper. The flower-boxes Jo had put beside the steps were full of night-blooming roses. In the light of the Japanese lanterns they looked blue. Now the band was only a faint murmur; I could hear Sara shouting out the lyric, laughing her way through it as though it were the funniest thing she'd ever heard, all that Manderley-sanderley-canderley stuff, but I could no longer make out the individual words. Much clearer was the lap of the lake against the rocks at the foot of the steps, the hollow clunk of the cannisters under the swimming float, and the cry of a loon drifting out of the darkness. Someone was standing on The Street to my right, at the edge of the lake. I couldn't see his face, but I could see the brown sportcoat and the tee-shirt he was wearing beneath it. The lapels cut off some of the letters of the message, so it looked like this: ORMA ER OUN I knew what it said anyway in dreams you almost always know, don't you? NORMAL SPERM COUNT, a Village Cafe yuck-it-up special if ever there was one. I was in the north bedroom dreaming all this, and here I woke up enough to know I was dreaming . . . except it was like waking into another dream, because Bunter's bell was ringing madly and there was someone standing in the hall. Mr. Normal Sperm Count? No, not him. The shadow-shape falling on the door wasn't quite human. It was slumped, the arms indistinct. I sat up into the silver shaking of the bell, clutching a loose puddle of sheet against my naked waist, sure it was the shroud-thing out there the shroud-thing had come out of its grave to get me. ‘Please don't,' I said in a dry and trembling voice. ‘Please don't, please.' The shadow on the door raised its arms. ‘It ain't nuthin but a barn-dance sugar!' Sara Tidwell's laughing, furious voice sang. ‘It ain't nuthin but a round-and-round!' I lay back down and pulled the sheet over my face in a childish act of denial . . . and there I stood on our little lick of beach, wearing just my undershorts. My feet were ankle-deep in the water. It was warm the way the lake gets by midsummer. My dim shadow was cast two ways, in one direction by the scantling moon which rode low above the water, in another by the Japanese lantern with the moth caught inside it. The man who'd been standing on the path was gone but he had left a plastic owl to mark his place. It stared at me with frozen, gold-ringed eyes. ‘Hey Irish!' I looked out at the swimming float. Jo stood there. She must have just climbed out of the water, because she was still dripping and her hair was plastered against her cheeks. She was wearing the two-piece swimsuit from the photo I'd found, gray with red piping. ‘It's been a long time, Irish what do you say?' ‘Say about what?' I called back, although I knew. ‘About this!' She put her hands over her breasts and squeezed. Water ran out between her fingers and trickled across her knuckles. ‘Come on, Irish,' she said from beside and above me, ‘come on, you bastard, let's go.' I felt her strip down the sheet, pulling it easily out of my sleep-numbed fingers. I shut my eyes, but she took my hand and placed it between her legs. As I found that velvety seam and began to stroke it open, she began to rub the back of my neck with her fingers. ‘You're not Jo,' I said. ‘Who are you?' But no one was there to answer. I was in the woods. It was dark, and on the lake the loons were crying. I was walking the path to Jo's studio. It wasn't a dream; I could feel the cool air against my skin and the occasional bite of a rock into my bare sole or heel. A mosquito buzzed around my ear and I waved it away. I was wearing Jockey shorts, and at every step they pulled against a huge and throbbing erection. ‘What the hell is this?' I asked as Jo's little barnboard studio loomed in the dark. I looked behind me and saw Sara on her hill, not the woman but the house, a long lodge jutting toward the nightbound lake. ‘What's happening to me?' ‘Everything's all right, Mike,' Jo said. She was standing on the float, watching as I swam toward her. She put her hands behind her neck like a calendar model, lifting her breasts more fully into the damp halter. As in the photo, I could see her nipples poking out the cloth. I was swimming in my underpants, and with the same huge erection. ‘Everything's all right, Mike,' Mattie said in the north bedroom, and I opened my eyes. She was sitting beside me on the bed, smooth and naked in the weak glow of the nightlight. Her hair was down, hanging to her shoulders. Her breasts were tiny, the size of teacups, but the nipples were large and distended. Between her legs, where my hand still lingered, was a powderpuff of blonde hair, smooth as down. Her body was wrapped in shadows like moth-wings, like rose-petals. There was something desperately attractive about her as she sat there she was like the prize you know you'll never win at the carny shooting gallery or the county fair ringtoss. The one they keep on the top shelf. She reached under the sheet and folded her fingers over the stretched material of my undershorts. Everything's all right, it ain't nuthin but a round-and-round, said the UFO voice as I climbed the steps to my wife's studio. I stooped, fished for the key from beneath the mat, and took it out. I climbed the ladder to the float, wet and dripping, preceded by my engorged sex is there anything, I wonder, so unintentionally comic as a sexually aroused man? Jo stood on the boards in her wet bathing suit. I pulled Mattie into bed with me. I opened the door to Jo's studio. All of these things happened at the same time, weaving in and out of each other like strands of some exotic rope or belt. The thing with Jo felt the most like a dream, the thing in the studio, me crossing the floor and looking down at my old green IBM, the least. Mattie in the north bedroom was somewhere in between. On the float Jo said, ‘Do what you want.' In the north bedroom Mattie said, ‘Do what you want.' In the studio, no one had to tell me anything. In there I knew exactly what I wanted. On the float I bent my head and put my mouth on one of Jo's breasts and sucked the cloth-covered nipple into my mouth. I tasted damp fabric and dank lake. She reached for me where I stuck out and I slapped her hand away. If she touched me I would come at once. I sucked, drinking back trickles of cotton-water, groping with my own hands, first caressing her ass and then yanking down the bottom half of her suit. I got it off her and she dropped to her knees. I did too, finally getting rid of my wet, clinging underpants and tossing them on top of her bikini panty. We faced each other that way, me naked, her almost. ‘Who was the guy at the game?' I panted. ‘Who was he, Jo?' ‘No one in particular, Irish. Just another bag of bones.' She laughed, then leaned back on her haunches and stared at me. Her navel was a tiny black cup. There was something queerly, attractively snakelike in her posture. ‘Everything down there is death,' she said, and pressed her cold palms and white, pruney fingers to my cheeks. She turned my head and then bent it so I was looking into the lake. Under the water I saw decomposing bodies slipping by, pulled by some deep current. Their wet eyes stared. Their fish-nibbled noses gaped. Their tongues lolled between white lips like tendrils of waterweed. Some of the dead trailed pallid balloons of jellyfish guts; some were little more than bone. Yet not even the sight of this floating charnel parade could divert me from what I wanted. I shrugged my head free of her hands, pushed her down on the boards, and finally cooled what was so hard and contentious, sinking it deep. Her moon-silvered eyes stared up at me, through me, and I saw that one pupil was larger than the other. That was how her eyes had looked on the TV monitor when I had identified her in the Derry County Morgue. She was dead. My wife was dead and I was fucking her corpse. Nor could even that realization stop me. ‘Who was he?' I cried at her, covering her cold flesh as it lay on the wet boards. ‘Who was he, Jo, for Christ's sake tell me who he was!' In the north bedroom I pulled Mattie on top of me, relishing the feel of those small breasts against my chest and the length of her entwining legs. Then I rolled her over on the far side of the bed. I felt her hand reaching for me, and slapped it away if she touched me where she meant to touch me, I would come in an instant. ‘Spread your legs, hurry,' I said, and she did. I closed my eyes, shutting out all other sensory input in favor of this. I pressed forward, then stopped. I made one little adjustment, pushing at my engorged penis with the side of my hand, then rolled my hips and slipped into her like a finger in a silk-lined glove. She looked up at me, wide-eyed, then put a hand on my cheek and turned my head. ‘Everything out there is death,' she said, as if only explaining the obvious. In the window I saw Fifth Avenue between Fiftieth and Sixtieth all those trendy shops, Bijan and Bally, Tiffany and Bergdorf's and Steuben Glass. And here came Harold Oblowski, north bound and swinging his pigskin briefcase (the one Jo and I had given him for Christmas the year before she died). Beside him, carrying a Barnes and Noble bag by the handles, was the bountiful, beauteous Nola, his secretary. Except her bounty was gone. This was a grinning, yellow-jawed skeleton in a Donna Karan suit and alligator pumps; scrawny, beringed bones instead of fingers gripped the bag-handles. Harold's teeth jutted in his usual agent's grin, now extended to the point of obscenity. His favorite suit, the doublebreasted charcoal-gray from Paul Stuart, flapped on him like a sail in a fresh breeze. All around them, on both sides of the street, walked the living dead mommy mummies leading baby corpses by the hands or wheeling them in expensive prams, zombie doormen, reanimated skateboarders. Here a tall black man with a last few strips of flesh hanging from his face like cured deer-hide walked his skeletal Alsatian. The cab-drivers were rotting to raga music. The faces looking down from the passing buses were skulls, each wearing its own version of Harold's grin Hey, how are ya, how's the wife, how's the kids, writing any good books lately? The peanut vendors were putrefying. Yet none of it could quench me. I was on fire. I slipped my hands under her buttocks, lifting her, biting at the sheet (the pattern, I saw with no surprise, was blue roses) until I pulled it free of the mattress to keep from biting her on the neck, the shoulder, the breasts, anywhere my teeth could reach. ‘Tell me who he was!' I shouted at her. ‘You know, I know you do!' My voice was so muffled by my mouthful of bed-linen that I doubted if anyone but me could have understood it. ‘Tell me, you bitch!' On the path between Jo's studio and the house I stood in the dark with the typewriter in my arms and that dream-spanning erection quivering below its metal bulk all that ready and nothing willing. Except maybe for the night breeze. Then I became aware I was no longer alone. The shroud-thing was behind me, called like the moths to the party lights. It laughed-a brazen, smoke-broken laugh that could belong to only one woman. I didn't see the hand that reached around my hip to grip me the typewriter was in the way but I didn't need to see it to know its color was brown. It squeezed, slowly tightening, the fingers wriggling. ‘What do you want to know, sugar?' she asked from behind me. Still laughing. Still teasing. ‘Do you really want to know at all? Do you want to know or do you want to feel?' ‘Oh, you're killing me!' I cried. The typewriter thirty or so pounds of IBM Selectric was shaking back and forth in my arms. I could feel my muscles twanging like guitar strings. ‘Do you want to know who he was, sugar? That nasty man?' ‘Just do me, you bitch!' I screamed. She laughed again that harsh laughter that was almost like a cough and squeezed me where the squeezing was best. ‘You hold still, now,' she said. ‘You hold still, pretty boy, ‘less you want me to take fright and yank this thing of yours right out by the . . . ‘ I lost the rest as the whole world exploded in an orgasm so deep and strong that I thought it would simply tear me apart. I snapped my head back like a man being hung and ejaculated looking up at the stars. I screamed I had to and on the lake, two loons screamed back. At the same time I was on the float. Jo was gone, but I could faintly hear the sound of the band -Sara and Sonny and the Red-Top Boys tearing through ‘Black Mountain Rag.' I sat up, dazed and spent, fucked hollow. I couldn't see the path leading up to the house, but I could discern its switchback course by the Japanese lanterns. My underpants lay beside me in a little wet heap. I picked them up and started to put them on, only because I didn't want to swim back to shore with them in my hand. I stopped with them stretched between my knees, looking at my fingers. They were slimed with decaying flesh. Puffing out from beneath several of the nails were clumps of torn-out hair. Corpsehair. ‘Oh Jesus,' I moaned. The strength went out of me. I flopped into wetness. I was in the north-wing bedroom. What I had landed in was hot, and at first I thought it was come. The dim glow of the nightlight showed darker stuff, however. Mattie was gone and the bed was full of blood. Lying in the middle of that soaking pool was something I at first glance took to be a clump of flesh or a piece of organ. I looked more closely and saw it was a stuffed animal, a black-furred object matted red with blood. I lay on my side looking at it, wanting to bolt out of the bed and flee from the room but unable to do it. My muscles were in a dead swoon. Who had I really been having sex with in this bed? And what had I done to her? In God's name, what? ‘I don't believe these lies,' I heard myself say, and as though it were an incantation, I was slapped back together. That isn't exactly what happened, bur it's the only way of saying that seems to come close to whatever did. There were three of me one on the float, one in the north bedroom, one on the path and each one felt that hard slap, as if the wind had grown a fist. There was rushing blackness, and in it the steady silver shaking of Bunter's bell. Then it faded, and I faded with it. For a little while I was nowhere at all. I came back to the casual chatter of birds on summer vacation and to that peculiar red darkness that means the sun is shining through your closed eyelids. My neck was stiff, my head was canted at a weird angle, my legs were folded awkwardly beneath me, and I was hot. I lifted my head with a wince, knowing even as I opened my eyes that I was no longer in bed, no longer on the swimming float, no longer on the path between the house and the studio. It was floorboards under me, hard and uncompromising. The light was dazzling. I squinched my eyes closed again and groaned like a man with a hangover. I eased them back open behind my cupped hands, gave them time to adjust, then cautiously uncovered them, sat all the way up, and looked around. I was in the upstairs hall, lying under the broken air conditioner. Mrs. Meserve's note still hung from it. Sitting outside my office door was the green IBM with a piece of paper rolled into it. I looked down at my feet and saw that they were dirty. Pine needles were stuck to my soles, and one toe was scratched. I got up, staggered a little (my right leg had gone to sleep), then braced a hand against the wall and stood steady. I looked down at myself. I was wearing the Jockeys I'd gone to bed in, and I didn't look as if I'd had an accident in them. I pulled out the waistband and peeked inside. My cock looked as it usually did; small and soft, curled up and asleep in its thatch of hair. If Noonan's Folly had been adventuring in the night, there was no sign of it now. ‘It sure felt like an adventure,' I croaked. I armed sweat off my forehead. It was stifling up here. ‘Not the kind I ever read about in The Hardy Boys, though.' Then I remembered the blood-soaked sheet in the north bedroom, and the stuffed animal lying on its side in the middle of it. There was no sense of relief attached to the memory, that thank-God-it-was-only-a-dream feeling you get after a particularly nasty nightmare. It felt as real as any of the things I'd experienced in my measles fever-delirium . . . and all those things had been real, just distorted by my overheated brain. I staggered to the stairs and limped down them, holding tight to the bannister in case my tingling leg should buckle. At the foot I looked dazedly around the living room, as if seeing it for the first time, and then limped down the north-wing corridor. The bedroom door was ajar and for a moment I couldn't bring myself to push it all the way open and go in. I was very badly scared, and my mind kept trying to replay an old episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, the one about the man who strangles his wife during an alcoholic blackout. He spends the whole half hour looking for her, and finally finds her in the pantry, bloated and open-eyed. Kyra Devore was the only kid of stuffed-animal age I'd met recently, but she had been sleeping peacefully under her cabbage-rose coverlet when I left her mother and headed home. It was stupid to think I had driven all the way back to Wasp Hill Road, probably wearing nothing but my Jockeys, that I had What? Raped the woman? Brought the child here? In my sleep? I got the typewriter, in my sleep, didn't I? It's sitting right upstairs in the goddam hallway. Big difference between going thirty yards through the woods and five miles down the road to I wasn't going to stand out here listening to those quarrelling voices in my head. If I wasn't crazy and I didn't think I was listening to those contentious assholes would probably send me there, and by the express. I reached out and pushed the bedroom door open. For a moment I actually saw a spreading octopus-pattern of blood soaking into the sheet, that's how real and focused my terror was. Then I closed my eyes tight, opened them, and looked again. The sheets were rumpled, the bottom one mostly pulled free. I could see the quilted satin hide of the mattress. One pillow lay on the far edge of the bed. The other was scrunched down at the foot. The throw rug a piece of Jo's work was askew, and my water-glass lay overturned on the nighttable. The bedroom looked as if it might have been the site of a brawl or an orgy, but not a murder. There was no blood and no little stuffed animal with black fur. I dropped to my knees and looked under the bed. Nothing there not even dust-kitties, thanks to Brenda Meserve. I looked at the ground-sheet again, first passing a hand over its rumpled topography, then pulling it back down and resecuring the elasticized corners. Great invention, those sheets; if women gave out the Medal of Freedom instead of a bunch of white politicians who never made a bed or washed a load of clothes in their lives, the guy who thought up fitted sheets would undoubtedly have gotten a piece of that tin by now. In a Rose Garden ceremony. With the sheet pulled taut, I looked again. No blood, not a single drop. There was no stiffening patch of semen, either. The former I hadn't really expected (or so I was already telling myself), but what about the latter? At the very least, I'd had the world's most creative wet-dream a triptych in which I had screwed two women and gotten a handjob from a third, all at the same time. I thought I had that morning-after feeling, too, the one you get when the previous night's sex has been of the headbusting variety. But if there had been fireworks, where was the burnt gunpowder? ‘In Jo's studio, most likely,' I told the empty, sunny room. ‘Or on the path between here and there. Just be glad you didn't leave it in Mattie Devore, bucko. An affair with a post-adolescent widow you don't need.' A part of me disagreed; a part of me thought Mattie Devore was exactly what I did need. But I hadn't had sex with her last night, any more than I had had sex with my dead wife out on the swimming float or gotten a handjob from Sara Tidwell. Now that I saw I hadn't killed a nice little kid either, my thoughts turned back to the typewriter. Why had I gotten it? Why bother? Oh man. What a silly question. My wife might have been keeping secrets from me, maybe even having an affair; there might be ghosts in the house; there might be a rich old man half a mile south who wanted to put a sharp stick into me and then break it off; there might be a few toys in my own humble attic, for that matter. But as I stood there in a bright shaft of sunlight, looking at my shadow on the far wall, only one thought seemed to matter: I had gone out to my wife's studio and gotten my old typewriter, and there was only one reason to do something like that. I went into the bathroom, wanting to get rid of the sweat on my body and the dirt on my feet before doing anything else. I reached for the shower-handle, then stopped. The tub was full of water. Either I had for some reason filled it during my sleepwalk . . . or something else had. I reached for the drain-lever, then stopped again, remembering that moment on the shoulder of Route 68 when my mouth had filled up with the taste of cold water. I realized I was waiting for it to happen again. When it didn't, I opened the bathtub drain to let out the standing water and started the shower. I could have brought the Selectric downstairs, perhaps even lugged it out onto the deck where there was a little breeze coming over the surface of the lake, but I didn't. I had brought it all the way to the door of my office, and my office was where I'd work . . . if I could work. I'd work in there even if the temperature beneath the roofpeak built to a hundred and twenty degrees . . . which, by three in the afternoon, it just might. The paper rolled into the machine was an old pink-carbon receipt from Click!, the photo shop in Castle Rock where Jo had bought her supplies when we were down here. I'd put it in so that the blank side faced the Courier type-ball. On it I had typed the names of my little harem, as if I had tried in some struggling way to report on my three-faceted dream even while it was going on: Jo Sara Mattie Jo Sara Mattie Mattie Mattie Sara Sara Jo Johanna Sara Jo MattieSaraJo. Below this, in lower case: normal sperm count sperm norm all's rosy I opened the office door, carried the typewriter in, and put it in its old place beneath the poster of Richard Nixon. I pulled the pink slip out of the roller, balled it up, and tossed it into the wastebasket. Then I picked up the Selectric's plug and stuck it in the baseboard socket. My heart was beating hard and fast, the way it had when I was thirteen and climbing the ladder to the high board at the Y-pool. I had climbed that ladder three times when I was twelve and then slunk back down it again; once I turned thirteen, there could be no chickening out I really had to do it. I thought I'd seen a fan hiding in the far corner of the closet, behind the box marked GADGETS. I started in that direction, then turned around again with a ragged little laugh. I'd had moments of confidence before, hadn't I? Yes. And then the iron bands had clamped around my chest. It would be stupid to get out the fan and then discover I had no business in this room after all. ‘Take it easy,' I said, ‘take it easy.' But I couldn't, no more than that narrow-chested boy in the ridiculous purple bathing suit had been able to take it easy when he walked to the end of the diving board, the pool so green below him, the upraised faces of the boys and girls in it so small, so small. I bent to one of the drawers on the right side of the desk and pulled so hard it came all the way out. I got my bare foot out of its landing zone just in time and barked a gust of loud, humorless laughter. There was half a ream of paper in the drawer. The edges had that faintly crispy look paper gets when it's been sitting for a long time. I no more than saw it before remembering I had brought my own supply stuff a good deal fresher than this. I left it where it was and put the drawer back in its hole. It took several tries to get it on its tracks; my hands were shaking. At last I sat down in my desk chair, hearing the same old creaks as it took my weight and the same old rumble of the casters as I rolled it forward, snugging my legs into the kneehole. Then I sat facing the keyboard, sweating hard, still remembering the high board at the Y, how springy it had been under my bare feet as I walked its length, remembering the echoing quality of the voices below me, remembering the smell of chlorine and the steady low throb of the air-exchangers: fwung-fwung-fwung-fwung, as if the water had its own secret heartbeat. I had stood at the end of the board wondering (and not for the first time!) if you could be paralyzed if you hit the water wrong. Probably not, but you could die of fear. There were documented cases of that in Ripley's Believe It or Not, which served me as science between the ages of eight and fourteen. Go on! Jo's voice cried. My version of her voice was usually calm and collected; this time it was shrill. Stop dithering and go on! I reached for the IBM's rocker-switch, now remembering the day I had dropped my Word Six program into the Powerbook's trash. Goodbye, old pal, I had thought. ‘Please let this work,' I said. ‘Please.' I lowered my hand and flicked the switch. The machine came on. The Courier ball did a preliminary twirl, like a ballet dancer standing in the wings, waiting to go on. I picked up a piece of paper, saw my sweaty fingers were leaving marks, and didn't care. I rolled it into the machine, centered it, then wrote Chapter One and waited for the storm to break.

How Can Alternative Sources of Energy Be Harnessed

How can alternative sources of energy be harnessed effectively? Written by Jill (Huimei ZHOU) Nowadays, there are more and more alternative sources of energy for people to use. But in order to harness these alternative sources of energy effectively, different countries take different actions based on their own natural resources. This essay will show that how to make full use of energy from different countries' viewpoints. Undenied, many years ago, a lot of countries just use the fossil fuels to supply the energy that the whole city needs, but now the sources of energy are more than before, such as solar energy and biomass.So in this case, many countries try them best to harness the renewable energy to reduce the dependence on the traditional energy. Over the last five years, many European countries have increased their reliance on wind farms and hydroelectric dams because of more expensive fossil fuels. For example, in Sweden, the city Kristiantad is looking into building satellite b iogas plants for outlying areas and expanding its network of underground biogas pipes to allow the construction of more filling stations. [1]Besides the European countries, the United States also makes some measures to control the renewable energy more effectively. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the United Sates need to spend about 8000 US farms on installing biomass plants. [2] In order to cut down costs, a number of states and companies are considering new investments or programs. They hope to build plants in Calnifornia to turn organic waste from farms and gas from water treatment plants into biogas. [3] Because of less natural energy and more expensive fees, this way can help the whole state to meet requirements.Above on these countries' methods, we can clearly see that different countries have different environments and situations. So if a country want to harness alternative sources of energy, they should make more reasonable policies depending on their real conditions, which will be more useful. Reference: [1]Using waste, Swedish city cuts its fossil fuel use[1], Source Book, Paragraph 3. [2]Using waste, Swedish city cuts its fossil fuel use[1], Source Book, Paragraph 4. [3]Using waste, Swedish city cuts its fossil fuel use[1], Source Book, Paragraph 4.

Short - Causes of the Boer Wars essays

Short - Causes of the Boer Wars essays There were significant political conflicts between the two sides. The Boers treated all blacks very badly and did not give basic human rights even to the blacks working for them. They made them pay taxes but could not vote. It was said to be through religious reasons that the Boers treated blacks so badly. This awful treatment infuriated the British, who had abolished slavery in all its colonies as well as at home in 1834. The Dutch wanted to keep its slaves. Europeans working in the Boer territories were also mistreated. These Uitlanders as they were known were key to the Boers economic success, yet were still denied the vote. The war occurred also because of strategic reasons. The British had already seized Swaziland, Bechuanaland and Basutoland, which more or less surrounded the Boers who feared that if the British took any more territory, they could be under siege, particularly if their route to the sea was blocked. The British wanted to control all of Southern Africa, not just small areas that were isolated the Boers were their main opponents. There were economic issues involved in the war. The Boers took control of the Transvaal and set up the Orange Free State. They found gold in the Transvaal and this area became very rich indeed. Later diamonds were found in this area as well, and there was argument between the British and Boers over in which nations territory they lay. Certain individuals had a major role in provoking the war. Cecil Rhodes was probably the most ambitious of Britains leaders abroad. He was a real imperialist, and strove to expand the British Empire further, especially through his dream of a Cape Colony to Cairo railway. He was strongly anti-Boer, and his actions seemed to shape British policy back at home. Also highly influential was Sir Alfred Milner, who was the British High Commissioner and was also strongly anti-Boer. He ...

Analyse a text connected with your degree subject (which is Film and Essay

Analyse a text connected with your degree subject (which is Film and TV Studies) by applying the ideas of Marx and Althusser - Essay Example what Marx has said about History in his book The holy family, or Critique of critical criticism (1844), Generic thinks it should be understood that â€Å"cinema doesnt make itself, cinema isnt made for itself, cinema is made by and for us. Films relation to the mass becomes a question of how to understand its situation as a medium capable of reaching many millions of people, potentially disparate in place and time.† (Generic. 2006). In today’s world, cinema is still one of the most influential medium to reach a large mass of people across the world. All the social, political, cultural and ideological issues which have, or could have created raves in the history of human beings are dealt from a common or unusual perspective in cinema. A section of people use this medium to express their ideas and beliefs on a particular topic which sometimes collide with the established school of thoughts, and sometimes greatly accepted. The underlying discussion on the above-mentioned b ook focuses specifically on the aspect of feminism in line with the perceptions of Karl Marx and Louis Althusser. Marx’s ideology of history being the struggle between classes is also applicable in the history of feminism. Women as a dominated class have struggled for identity and existence against the male class. They have fought for their freedom from patriarchal control, for their rights and privileges as independent human beings. Women have evolved through slavery to primitive communism- a term supposed to have introduced by Marx to indicate rights of an individual to basic resources and freedom from authoritarian rule and hierarchical social structure. The Marxist theory of feminism focuses on shattering of capitalism in order to emancipate women. The capitalist society, which largely values personal assets to demarcate the social position of an individual, is at the base of women’s oppression, according to Marxist feminism. Marx and Engel analyses that if the capitalist society, which

Film Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Film - Essay Example However, in the later part, which is The Trip to Italy, the scenario is a bit different and these two men are again sent to Italy on a road trip to six different places starting from Pompei and ending at Capri, Amalfi Coast. Both Brydon and Coogan has started liking each other and their relationship has grew stronger. They travel across Italy in search of the finest food and beautiful scenery. the film also tells about the weak and crucial relationship of Coogan with his ex-wife and his teenage son. Coogan is now more accepting and happy then before. He is now accepting and forgiving Brydon’s enthusiastic and happy attitude. The film also offers strong humor as the duo imagines a scene from ‘Batman’ makes their voices as the character of Bane and others. In short, the film offers great fun and enthusiasm for the viewers. From some very fine and expensive foods from around Italy to the beautiful sceneries of Tuscany and Amalfi Coast, The Trip to Italy is a must watch. 52 Tuesday (2013) is family drama film directed by Sophie Hyde. The film begins when the sixteen years old Billie discovers that her mother’s gender transition. Bellie enjoys being with he mother a day back from school she discovers that her mother is now transited to a man and from now on called James. Bellie is asked to go to his father Tom. James, the transited mother promises Bellie that she will spend every Tuesday together. The film captures 52 consecutive Tuesdays and only Tuesdays to capture the year on the screen of this family. Bellie in the school gets attracted to a couple Josh and Jasmine and finds herself sexually drawn to the couple, on the other hand James begin with the testosterone shot and makes a sexual relation with his co worker Lisa and keeps this relationship secret from her daughter. After few weeks Bellie refuses to meet James, still have