Comparisons of war poems Essay

In exploring the portrayal of war in the poetry of Wilfred Owen and Shakespeare one can see the contrasting attitudes and realities of war. In before Agincourt set in 1415 composed by Shakespeare, he portrays the glory and honour in war, whilst Anthem for doomed youth composed by Wilford Own set in 1914 is expressing the meaningless and realistic thoughts of view. In the first stanza which Shakespeare has composed in the poem before Agincourt. He uses manipulating concepts that convey the message that war is a great adventure and that you should die for your country. Whilst Anthem for Doomed youth is doing the exact opposite and tries to convince the reader that war is a horrific ordeal. As the two poems where written in an interval of five hundred years it shows us very clearly the different point of few people had in their perspective time about war. Before Agincourt is a very patriotic and heroic poem. In the first stanza Shakespeare uses a courageous tone. He uses emotional adjectives and verbs to make the reader feel the same as he does. He also uses a lot of positive nouns to create this affect e.g. â€Å"greater share of honour’ â€Å"Gods will†. There is not much alliteration or any form of onomatopoeia in the first stanza. The second stanza uses a lot of emphasised words and longer pauses before the next line he also uses repetition of words starting with M. In the last stanza of the poem he does not use any assonance, onomatopoeia and alliteration technics to emphasize his poem. He only uses strong punctuation and pauses to create a very positive approach on war. This poem could be used as a propaganda device. Anthem for Doomed Youth composed by Wilford Owen. In the title of this poem Wilford is expressing that war is negative. â€Å"Doom† is a simile to convey inevitability of death, Doom also uses assonance with the double O’s. It has an affect of being scary and threatening. The first stanza uses repetition to add rhythm and onomatopoeias to create a more realistic approach on war. The second stanza uses a lot of repetition and emphasised words. e.g. â€Å"No mockeries†, â€Å"no prayers nor bells†. No mockeries is implying no more joy and that they can’t be mocked any more because they have perished. The â€Å"No† is also emphasised to give the poem more rhythm. No prayers nor bells. Is repetition, it also has a sad motive. The tone goes up to give the poem more negativity and sadness by elongating some words. The third stanza uses a rhetorical question to start off with. The mood is a lot softer. This is created by the poet using a softer tone to shorten the â€Å"S’s, P’s and R’s†. He uses repetition to try and enhances the reader’s sadness and visual imagery. There are also a lot of similes and metaphors used. E.g. pallor, paleness, brows, forehead. In the last stanza there is a vast amount of imagery of death. There is an ethical custom to conclude his poem. â€Å"Drawing down of blind† this is what people at home did when a close relative died. Comparing these two poems reveals that Shakespeare’s before Agincourt uses a lot less alliteration and repetition making the poem more joyful and honourable for war. In conclusion Shakespeare is totally glorifying war while Wilford more realistically looking at war as a horrifying killer concept. Style wise I prefer Shakespeare poem having a nice ring to its rhythm but the content of his poem is out dated and modern man would find it hard to agree with his idealistic point of views. Personally I can understand Wilford’s Owens point of view better then Shakespears. War is a horrifying non justifiable matter and should not be promoted.

Have Terrorism Laws been Helpful?

There have been numerous debates that have risen from analysis related to terrorism laws that were passed in the United States of America and Europe since the horrific attack on 11th September 2001 that killed scores of people and wounded thrice the number of the dead. The terrorism, counter terrorism and anti terrorism laws have all been scrutinized to weigh their suitability. Sharp criticism has befallen the laws, the public too is eager to know if the laws are more beneficial than they detrimental or if the reverse is actual status quo. Such debates have always led to repeals or amendments of the laws in question, one revision of the laws has proved not to be enough as there is always a word or two to adjust to deem the laws plausible by the masses, the government and the observers. I will be dissecting the whole with precision to draw a line between the merits and demerits of the laws.Proposing argumentThe main goal behind every terrorism law across the world is to prevent terrorism acts and protect its citizens from the adverse effects of it. Zooming on the American and countries under the European dynasty we notice that there has an immense reduction in attacks from both internal and external sources. Domestic and mass terrorism has been cut by more than 35% if the statistics are compared with ones taken two decades before 2001(gray-2018). This has created a business environment conducive for investors to come into the country because they have a natural feeling that they will be safe and their business will bloom. Trust on the USA government has increased as we see many foreign leaders come to the country whenever they are under threat from external sources (Beckman-2016). The security agencies have been unified by the laws and they all share information about security conditions of specific areas and individuals. Proposing defense The fluidity is one that One police department can notice a terrorist threat, pass the information for investigation to done by another unit, give the findings to the threat alert department while another can be sent to apprehend the suspect depending on their locality and expertise they have. This smooth flow of command and swift take of action has instilled a sense of security and patriotism of citizens to the governments of the. Civilians can spot a suspect and notify the relevant authorities without fear of being tracked by the suspect in the equation. Let us take a brief walk down the history lane to and peruse through the terrorist reports to get a vantage point on this issue. Statistics reveal that there had been 2608 terrorist attacks between 1970 and 2001; the year that terrorism laws were fortified, that was an aggregate of 65 attacks per year. Most of them were executed using bombs and congested public areas were the main targets. After the laws were passed, we have seen the number drop by a whopping 94% annually. This is because there have only been 8 terrorist attacks on American soil since 2001 to 2017. In these unfortunate incidences on 102 people died capped with 333 injuries. 6 out of the 8 cases have been launched by lone slayers, one executed by an American couple; the 7 acts were carried out using guns and only the Boston marathon case was a bombing attack made. This number is way low than and somewhat insignificant when compared to the fatalities of 11th September 2001. This is a case that strongly backs the argument that laws have been very beneficial as they have served their objectives and succeeded in meeting their goals. Opposing argumentI am meant to believe that the terrorism laws that were drafted and passed are not meant for the better good of civilians. There are arguments around that point is that the laws were drafted out fear and vengeance and thus failed to solicit essential views from security stakeholders and the general public. That is a claim enough to show that they are meant to serve other interests. Critics on this front argue that a lot of money is being siphoned out of the national coffers to service the numerous security departments that were formed under the laws. The money cannot be clearly be accounted and a dubious justification is given to it; it is a matter of national security (Beckman-2016). The main enemies of these laws are not terrorists but human right activists; they claim that the laws are not compatible with universal human rights and should be rephrased or better still repealed.Opposing defenseWe begin introduce this front by giving the basic definition for the word terrorism; violence against civilians to achieve military or political objectives. The media has been the casualty of the draconian laws as there right to information and freedom of expression has been gagged. The governments always hoodwink the public that all that is done for their own good; it is a matter of national se curity. Then a question arises, how news reporting become a threat to the civilians? Such questions arose when Mr. Miranda was detained in Heathrow airport for 9 hours and forced to surrender his documents and media devices to the security agencies for scrutiny in august 2013. He was on his way to Brazil from Germany. No weapon was found on him and no criminal bodies had tied links with him at any point of his life yet he was arraigned for in the British courts to answer to terrorism charges. The judges found that the evidence against him was far more blasphemous to the law practice than it was a joke to media profession. Mr. Miranda won the case and showed that the laws can be more devastating to the media practice and the civilians as they only serve the political interests (chi-2015). No appeal was made to the decision made by the court proving the main point; the laws need to reviewed from the beginning and if after the review the laws still fall below the universal human rights code then they should be abolished. Argument analysisFrom this argument we see that both fronts had their points to stress on. The claims given by the opposition are more than the proposing gave but the evidence provided by the proposing side is way more overwhelming than the evidence produced by the opponents. The narrative leaned towards the proposing side as it gave claims baked by detailed evidence. Objectivity was to be the main key; the proposers said that the laws truly served their purposed as they reduced terrorism attacks significantly while their critics did not give any link to the main topic of the team. My analysis on this case also leaned on the proposing side as the issue of security should always precede any other issue; it is the foundation that harmonizes the cultural, social and economic factors of the society. The right to privacy and freedom of privacy would not find space in the human conscious if he was constantly exposed to continuous threat and imminent demise. The opposing gave a radical approach and failed to first acknowledge that their fields exist simply because their security is guaranteed. I feel like that the claims about governments wasting civilian resources would have helped the opposing side prove their point but they failed to provide relevant evidence to that matter. All that the opposition posed were questions that they themselves failed to provide answers to; what is the main objective of the laws if the public feels disfavored by them? Who are the laws meant to serve? We are aware that security agencies have been set up to tap information from the civilian devices; what happened to the right to privacy? (Giroux-2016) Their side would be formidable if they answers and backing evidence to all of them. Journalists claim that they are affected yet they hold side on the topic. Then I formed a question, what if they report news that exposes a government hence drawing the attention of terrorists? Furthermore, they proposed that the laws be abolished but did not give a better alternative. I wish that the opposition had thought the whole issue out than leave the case in a limbo.ConclusionTruth of the matter is that the proposing side was strong and well planned compared to their critics but the points stated by the weak side on this debate hold water. The laws should be more inclusive to other sectors of human cycle and not look like it overrules all the other rules and universal privileges that come with them. State agencies always motivate people verbally by asking them to report any suspicious people or activities to them but it is high time they started acting receptive (boister-2018). That said does not admonish the fact the fact the laws are made for the better good of people and stability of all other spheres. It is important that all parties realize that the laws are as important as any other on the land and should approached with care as it defends the well being of human life. I propose that the laws be amended, not repealed.ReferencesInternational law and the use of forceC Gray-2018Comparative legal approaches to homeland security and anti-terrorismJ Beckman-2016Impossible to regulate: social media, terrorists, and the role for the UNP Wu Chi-2015Beyond the spectacle of terrorism: global uncertainty and the challenge to the new mediaHA Giroux- 2016An introduction to transnational criminal lawN Boister- 2018

Bible Mysteries

The Disciples is an episode part of the Bible Mysteries is very interesting and informative video clips that I have been watched. It showed how Jesus influenced others through his thoughts and being a good leader to his followers. Through his good quality, the people of the Galilee believed to his teaching and valuable effort and faith that attracted by the disciples to Jesus Another value that attract them to Jesus is that He can heal anything but for Jesus we don’t need to be sick because god can heal us, if we have faith for him which are the key to receive the healing from god. The disciples also attract to Jesus by helping others without anything to receive in return, he already contented to see happy image of a person. Through this video presentation, it really affects me because it reveals the fulfillment that has in Jesus, providing grace to his followers that if you believed with him through our faith we can reach the glory of god. Through the movie, the disciples are like me who am very devotee of god. I believe the presence of god will always be in my heart if we believe with him and have a strong faith to consider his grace. God commanded us if we choose to follow him like he did to the disciples. Jesus is just like our teacher. He serves himself and teaches us to do good action and blessing will come if we put his teachings into practice. For me, God is the greatest servant in our universe. He always there to sustain everything we depend on for our lives. In this video, I would like to be god who’s giving all his self to help others without anything to receive in return maybe in a simple way of helping, I would be able to live closer to him through my mission to help others especially those person who in needs such young kids who doesn’t have the ability to go in school, through volunteering, I will ease the burden in their heart and in a simple way of helping it can help a big chance to the kids to learn new things like what Jesus did in his mission. God is spiritual hero who always there for us, we must have to believe and have faith with him.

Examining Local Solutions Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Examining Local Solutions - Research Paper Example In regard to Toronto city, these sites are considered to be the contaminated sites, which appear to be so because of previous land-use activities, which among other things involves, waste disposal and manufacturing (Adkin 65). This problem has been extensive in Toronto due to gradual, but steady increase of industries in the urban center. Due to this fact, there have been efforts to transfer industries in the outcasts of the city. As a result, there have been vacant industry sites, which poses a great threat to environmental and health hazards to city dwellers. In light with these deliberations, it is apparent that the effort to develop the brown fields in Toronto is for the good course of solving some underlying problems associated wit h these sites. Some of these sites risks safety of people living around these areas. For example, it is obvious that some of these sites contain empty or uncovered construction grounds, which poses a risk of people being hurt as they pass by these sit es. The most at risk are children who are fond of playing in such grounds. Due to constructions that took place before the sites have been vacated, it is apparent that such constructions interferes with landscapes. This may cause soil erosion, and which consequently may lead to formation of gullies and eventually land slides (Todd 28). Abandoned sites also pose a threat of health hazards to people leaving in the neighborhood. For example, these sites may contain bushy grounds, which can attract hiding sites for mosquitoes. The sites may also contain grounds that act as mosquito breeding grounds. Mosquitoes cause malaria, which a fatal disease. It is also argued that people tend to stigmatize such sites. They consider them unpleasant for human beings, thus stigmatizing them. However, if these sites can effectively be developed, they can benefit both the government and people living around these areas. For example, if there could be measures to rehabilitate or develop these sites, the government can earn some revenue from them (Tomalty Para 6). Some of the ways through which government can develop these sites is through constructing social amenities, which can help improve the lives of the city dwellers. The government can also set up various government offices which can be used to facilitate government operation within the city. This would reduce congestion of some offices in the city, this enhancement of service delivery to the citizens. The private sector can also be allowed to develop these sites. This can allow the government to collect taxes from such developments, thus earning some revenue (Melissa and Erica Para 3). Additionally or alternatively, these sites can be put under greening programs. This involves planting of trees and other vegetation which help preserve the environment. Since the city is filled with much of carbon emissions mostly emanating from automobile, making such sites go green would help solve the problem of carbon emission. Vegetation helps absolve carbon dioxide and in return produces oxygen, which is healthy for human beings. Rationale for possible solutions The issue of brown fields affects people in the surrounding and the whole society in one way or another. Therefore, it is apparent that civil society involvement would be the best option in the effort to develop and solve problems associated with these sites (Heynen, Kaika and Swyngedouw 53). This is arguably true because when these

Management Accouting Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Management Accouting - Essay Example (Accounting Tools) If a company produces 2 different products namely Pi and Chi, the Company has cost of overheads which is 500. The company can allocate the costs on the basis of material cost of each product. If material cost of each of Pi and Chi is 200 and 300 respectively then the allocation will be as follows: In this method the indirect and overhead costs are apportioned by allocating proportionate costs to the products. The indirect costs can be apportioned by proportionate allocation on the number of units etc. If a company produces two products, Pi and Chi. The Company may apportion the overheads on a proportionate basis, by apportioning the cost on basis on ratio of 2:3. If the total budgeted cost is  £10,000. This method allocates the overhead costs to the manufacturing cost of products. The rates of absorption are used as benchmarks by the company and can be labor hour, machine hour or any other rate which suits the company’s overhead absorption. If the company is produces a product which requires labor for the production, then the company may apply labor hours of direct labor cost for the basis of absorption of the overheads to the cost of the product. If a company absorbs the overhead cost at a rate of  £10 per machine hour and the produces two products i.e. Pi and Chi and the products require 200 and 300 machine hours respectively then the company may absorb the overheads as follows. The traditional approaches to costing of the overheads has not been beneficial to the companies as these approaches are unable to provide the accurate allocation of the manufacturing and overhead costs to the products as per their actual share. Activity-based costing (ABC) is a modern and more established costing model which is used to allocate the costs that are attributable to the activities according to the usage of respective resources in accordance

Wiccan Religion Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Wiccan Religion - Research Paper Example Some of the Basic Tenets/Principles of the Wiccan Religion Are;1. The Wiccan holidays are based on the phases of the moon and earth’s rotation. Apart from the monthly esbats, there are eight primary sabbats in the Wiccan religion.2. The environment should be taken care of and honored. As such, it is the Wiccan follower’s personal responsibility to conserve the environment and promote ecological balance since the environment is divine.3. The divine power in the Wiccan religion contains both the male and female aspects. Hence, both genders are held to be equal. Therefore, the Wiccans honor or worship both the male god and the female goddess.  4. The Wiccan religion has no central authority figure. They believe that all people/ members are sacred and can communicate with the gods. In other religions, only the priests or pastors are honored to communicate with the gods.5. Each and every person must take responsibility for his/her actions. Hence, they should readily accept the outcomes of their actions.Beliefs Concerning Life and DeathAccording to the Wicca religion, material life begins in the womb. Next, they believe that in life, they should strive to live peacefully by not intentionally causing any harm to others. What a person does in his/her life will be repaid thrice in the afterlife. This implies that they believe in karma. The Wicca religion believes that there is an afterlife after death. When a person dies, he /she transitions into a different life where he/she will be reincarnated back in different forms.

Evaluation and analysis of mission statments Essay

Evaluation and analysis of mission statments - Essay Example The industry chosen happens to be hospitality; luxury hotels to be more specific. The three companies chosen are Burj Al Arab, Al Qasr and Shangri-La Hotel (Kotler, 2001). Mission Statement Burj Al Arab To be the most deluxe hotel in the world, with a team of dedicated to provide outstanding personalized services, surpassing expectations of the guests by providing the ultimate Arabian hospitality experience. Al Qasr Can do attitude towards all its guests Shangri-La Hotel To delight the guests every time by developing an engaging experience straight from the heart. Comparison Although there are certain differences in all the three mission statements mentioned above, there is one common factor among all of them. All the three companies have put the customers as the main focal point of the mission statement. Hence while considering the part: for whom exactly the company does it; there are lots of similarities. While considering the fact what the company does; it can be seen the mission statement of Burj Al Arab is the most clear and concise. Also while considering the fact of how a company does it; Burj Al Arab would be ahead of the other three as the hotel has mentioned about providing personalized experience through dedicated and experienced team. Evaluation and Critique The mission statements have been analyzed based on the clarity, scope and consistency. It has also been checked whether it has been able to answer all the three questions discussed before in a clear and concise fashion. The mission statement of Burj Al Arab is very much clear. It talks about the target market segment clearly, about the services to be offered and also about the way the services would be delivered to the customers. One of the most interesting things about the mission statement has been the fact that it mentions about the â€Å"Arabian Experience†; i.e. the organizations looks to introduce the guests to the native cultural heritage. The only criticism could be that the missi on statement is a bit too long. But overall, a part of the small issue regarding the length, the statement is very much clear, concise and reflects the values and objectives of the company (Czinzota, Ronkainen, Moffett, Marinova & Marinov, 2009) Although just like Burj Al Arab, Al-Qasr is also a very famous hotel; but unlike Burj Al Arab, the later does not have a clear business statement. Although the company talks about ht target market segment, but it does not talk about the way the company looks to provide the services. Hence it is to be said that there is a lot of room for improvement at least in the case of mission statement of Al-Qasr. The mission statement of Shangri-La Hotel is quite good. It is clear and concise. It has put the customers or the guests at the heart of the statement and also it talks about providing services straight from the heart; this would helps the company to develop an emotional relationship with the customers. However, it is believed that there is roo m for improvement when it comes to describing the way the services would be delivered to the customers. what a company does how does the company do it for whom exactly the company does it Burj Al Arab 5 5 5 Al Qasr 1 1 3 Shangri-La Hotel 4 4 4 Mission Statement of the proposed company The name of the company has been chosen as Arabian Nights. The reasons for such a choice is simply due to the fact that; Arabian night’

Healthcare Ethics Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Healthcare Ethics - Case Study Example As part of his training, Alex is rotating through the emergency room and has been asked to take x-rays of the head and neck of an alert yet seriously injured patient Mr. Hanson. The x-ray supervisor/instructor, Ms. Dubois, is present when Alex attempts the x-rays that require the patient to be manipulated into particular and potentially painful positions. Nothing is said to the patient other than "we are going to take some x-rays sir!" After three unsuccessful attempts, the patient complains about the pain and the x-ray supervisor takes over and completes the procedures with success. Now, the importance of discussing this topic is in order for us to know the possible risks in medical trainings. If you were a student of some sort of a medical/health care and you don't know what to do next to proceed on to the next step and you forgot to seek assistance on your superior, it is essential to learn the ethics in healthcare. Sometimes, we neglect the importance of knowing the moral standards in every medical aspect. We just rely on our own capabilities and confidently do what it needs to be done and we forgot to consider some other things on handling that kind of situation. Now, let us deal with these following questions: (1) identify the people/parties that have a stake or interest in the scenario mentioned above, and explain how the interests may conflict. (2) Identify the ethical principles that may be applied in resolving the dilemma in the scenario. Discuss the prima facie duties and principles. The people/parties that are related in this scenario are the medical students who currently undergo trainings with the help of their instructors. But there are situations where in the instructor failed to inform the patient that he/she is with a student. It is good to expose the students on such trainings but they also need to consider some other things, such as educating the trainees well when it comes to proper healthcare ethics. Conflicts may rise if this cannot be fulfilled. But, it is also the responsibility of the trainer to remind the student to comply on all the instructions and it is important to orient the student first on how to have the right approach on every patient even though the student was on training. It is the right of the student to be well-informed, in order for him to know everything well. The ethical principle that can be applied on this scenario/situation is to have beneficence and that is to act in the best interest of the patient and to be more sensitive in the needs of every patient. And that is the end of this paper about the healthcare ethics that should be practiced on actual hospital/clinic duties or even on trainings. References: 1.)

Enterprise and Entrepreneurial Management Essay - 1

Enterprise and Entrepreneurial Management - Essay Example The Business Plan The business plan is the enterprise on paper. It is an attempt to capture in so many words and graphs what the business would be or look like when it is eventually implemented. It is an attempt to depict on paper the idea brewing in the mind of a would-be entrepreneur that he feels very strongly would transform into a successful venture. The business plan is the idea initially taking textual and graphic form. Literature is abundant with what makes a good business plan. Many authors would establish business plan formats containing the elements that would make a sound plan composition together with the elements’ sequencing. This paper however shall not dwell on the creation and development of these elements but shall focus on the process of planning, providing weight to the issue of the why and the how of the planning process. Business Plan Elements and the Planning Process Kuratko and Hodgetts (2009) offer the following elements in a business plan: executive s ummary, the business opportunity, market potential, market analysis, competition analysis, technical data of product or service, commercial strategy, methodology of operation, vision-mission and financial projections. These elements however are outputs of an enterprise planning process that proceeds with the idea generation, setting up of strategic objectives, analysis and research of market, understanding competition, understanding the financials and formulating the competitive strategies (Kuratko and Hodgetts, 2009). Critical Analysis Seeding the Idea: It s simple logic that there is always a purpose or reason for business, and if one pursues the economic theory... The paper tells that it is simple logic that there is always a purpose or reason for business, and if one pursues the economic theory that business is meant to generate profits for its owners, it follows that the business must be attractive to its intended customers to generate a green bottom line. An enterprise begins with an idea, whether it is a product or service, and that idea must answer a need of the market. This process of idea generation is otherwise known as the creative process or simply, creativity. Of course, it is now known, courtesy of brilliant thinkers such as Harper and Drucker, that creativity is the seed of innovation, where innovation is the finished product or service that benefits the market. It was Drucker who said that â€Å"innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship – the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.† It would be necessary as an approach to this analysis to first define what an entrepreneur is b efore proceeding to create the attribute silhouette of the successful enterprise owner. As literature has an abundance of such a definition, this paper shall adopt the version of Drucker in his famous book Entrepreneurship and Innovation. An entrepreneur, according to Drucker, is one who always searches for change, responds to it and explores to the maximum its potential as an opportunity. Many authors and researchers have ventured into identifying the attributes that successful entrepreneurs possess.

Learning Plan Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Learning Plan - Essay Example On the other hand, many patients presenting in to the emergency department may not have that serious a clinical situation. However, an emergency nurse should be equipped with knowledge, expertise, learning, and clinical skills to handle these alone at her level. There are several varieties of patients that may attend emergency department seeking care. Of these certain categories of patients may need immediate nursing or physician care since they may be potentially life-threatening. These include airway compromise, cardiac arrest, severe hemodynamic shock or compromise, injury or cases of multiple trauma, or altered level of consciousness. Certain other cases are also emergent, but may wait for some time. These are patients sustaining head injuries, severe trauma, lethargy or agitation, conscious overdose, severe allergic reaction, chest pain, chemical exposure to the eyes, severe back pain, gastrointestinal bleeding with unstable vital signs, cerebrovascular accidents with deficits, severe asthma, abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhea with dehydration, acute psychotic episodes, fever in children, severe headache, severe acute pain of any origin, neonatal diseases, or sexual assault (Fry, 2008). Nurses may encounter cases of head injury pres enting in an alert state but with vomiting, mild to moderate asthma, moderate trauma, cases of abuse or neglect, GI bleeding with stable vital signs, and patients with history of seizure who are alert on presentation. Many other conditions are trivial, which can be really very efficiently treated by the emergency nurses, and these include alert head injury without vomiting, minor trauma, vomiting or diarrhea without dehydration, earache, minor allergic reactions, foreign body in the cornea, and chronic back pain. There may also be cases of sore throat, cases with minor symptoms, or chronic abdominal pain (Schriver et al., 2003). Anticipated Nursing Role To be able to deliver competent care, being a registered nurse, the emergency nurse must be able to assess, plan, implement, and evaluate nursing care alone or in collaboration with the emergency physician in order to achieve the goals of care and health outcomes in such patients. This must be either independent or interdependent care delivery within the framework of accountability and responsibility (Hageness et al., 2002; ANMC, 2004). Where possible, according to competency standards, the emergency nurse would also deliver education in order to promote and maintain health with a preventative approach. The nurse would demonstrate critical thinking and analytic abilities for care decision making and would demonstrate satisfactory knowledge base. She would be able to appraise her own knowledge and learning in order to engage in professional development through a pathway of evidence-based care (ANMC, 2004). From this angle, an emergency nurse has certain roles while delivering care to a patient presenting into the emergency department. The initial action is assessment, and a systematic and methodical assessment process through primary and secondary surveys enable the nurse to identify and prioritize the needs of such patients. The primary assessment consists of a rapid

Hinduism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Hinduism - Essay Example However, this is depended on the moral quality of the actions in the previous life. According to the reincarnation beliefs, people take one form of life before taking a different form in another life (Somer and CarmitOr-Chen 460). As such, life does not stop at any particular time; rather, life is a process that keeps on evolving continuously. According to their beliefs, argues Burch (76), when one dies as a human being, he could take the form of an animal, which when dies may take the form of an insect. After the insect dies, it may assume the form of a carrot and later a human being again. There is thus no particular time when the life of one particular generation would ever end, concludes Davidson (123). Unlike other religions such as Islam and Christianity, which believe in the end of life after the death of a person, Hinduism holds different views. However, a person does not emerge in the next life as the previous life; he or she assumes this form as a spirit, and as such, point out Hui and Peter (453), people have hope that they will not entirely vanish from the world. Thus, a man who dies before the birth of his daughter could re-emerge in the daughter buy his spirit entering in the daughter. The belief tries to explain the similarities in people’s characteristics, behaviorisms, and mannerisms. Living people could possess characteristics of a long dead person, and thus, Hindus belief that the spirit of the long dead person reincarnated in the new person. Some Hindu cultures, due to the reincarnation belief, do not eat particular kinds of animals or plant’s (Waterhouse 97). To them, these are spiritual, and are the very kinds that people assume through their reincarnation process. Thus, eating such plants and animals would be killing a person. However, even if I were to believe in re incarnation, I would not agree with the argument that some of the animals having a higher likelihood of people reincarnating through them than others. I would a rgue that all animals and plants, just as if they have equal opportunities of life, have equal opportunities of taking part in the reincarnation process. After all, they all will die at some point, and are too have to reincarnate to one particular form. Although the belief has widely spread in other religions and cultural practices, initially, reincarnation was an eastern religions belief, especially within the Hinduism religion (McClelland 15). However, currently, philosophies such as dianetics and channeling appear to embrace the concepts of reincarnation. In the past, the eastern religions did not consider reincarnation as a good thing; instead, to them it was a bad thing. The ancient belief, assuming the state of nirvana in essence, to them was an escape from the wheel of rebirth. Further, the beliefs held that while reincarnating, when the metaphysical devotion of a soul enters the body of a person was an impure rite of passage. Although conceptually closely related to reincarn ation (Almeder 81), I think the new age religions belief in being born again is a mirror concept to reincarnation. To these religion though, being born again is a good thing rather than a bad thing. Being born again, having a perverse goal differentiates it from the original meaning of reincarnation. Being born again prepares a person to what exactly one

Lemon as Flea Preventer Essay Example for Free

Lemon as Flea Preventer Essay Pets such as dogs needs to be treated with proper nourishment and needs to be walked, exercise and to be played outside. Dogs need a natural environment. They cannot always stay in the house so they need to go outside to breathe fresh air and get socialized with other dogs. But by providing them so, they can pick up insects and other diseases. Fleas and Lice are often health problems of dogs and this may also affect the host family where the dog lives by spreading fleas around the house and might cause allergies and infection. Fleas feed on the blood of dogs, they also sometimes bite humans. They can live without food for several months, but females must have a blood meal before they can produce eggs. They can deliver about 4000 eggs on the hosts fur. Since Nueva Vizcaya is known to be the citrus capital of the Philippines. That is, there are plenty of Vitamin C rich fruits growing in these areas which can be proven and used as a subject to prevent fleas and lice for dogs given that vitamin C is known as an acid. I, the researcher have decided to formulate an investigatory project to prove if citrus is effective as flea and lice preventer with the titled: Citrus Extract as Dog Flea and Lice Preventer wherein the citrus fruit will be cut into pieces, be extracted through boiling and then sprayed directly to dog fur. Statement of the Problem: This investigatory project is made to determine whether the extract of citrus fruit will be an effective Flea and lice preventer. Specifically, it seeks to find out: * Are there significant differences on the prevention time of Fleas and Lice using citrus extract with various amounts? Statement of the Hypothesis: The following statements will be investigated Ha: There are significant differences on the prevention time of fleas and lice using citrus extract with various amounts. Ho: There are no significant differences on the prevention time of fleas and lice using citrus extract with various amounts. Scope and Delimitation: This research study entitled â€Å"Citrus Extract as Dog Flea and Lice Preventer† will be conducted on June-September 2013 at Solano High School. It will only investigate on how effective the citrus fruit extract on preventing fleas and lice by comparing the prevention time of fleas and lice with various amounts of citrus extract by decoction. It will not focus on killing fleas and lice, the chemical analysis of citrus fruits, Other parts of the citrus plant (only the fruit) and the life cycle stage of the fleas and lice (egg, pupa, and adult) Significance of the Study: This study may be beneficial to the following: * Flea and Lice Preventer Manufacturers- there might be a possibility of using cheaper yet effective raw materials that could prevent them from spreading too much. * Consumers of Flea and lice Preventer- they can now make homemade flea and lice preventer for their pet dog * Community- it will lessen flea infected dogs easily without spending money on expensive commercial flea and lice preventer and by using a nature-friendly one. * Economy- to find a way of producing cheaper and more nature-friendly flea and lice preventer. Definition of Terms: The following terms are defined according to their use in the study: * Decoction- it is a process of extracting though boiling. -refers to the process of boiling the citrus fruit. It will be used as the flea and lice preventer. * Preventer- refers to the substance which prevents fleas and lice from going in the dog’s fur. * Flea and Lice- insects that bites in the dog’s fur for blood. * Citrus- a fruit rich in citric acid. * Dog- a domesticated canine mammal commonly kept as house pets Flea and Lice Independent Variable 1. Citrus fruit extract concentration. Research Paradigm: Dependent Variable 1. Time for the extract to last its ability to prevent fleas and lice. Expected Outcome: 1. The dog given with citrus extract will not contract with Fleas and/or Lice. 2. The citrus extract flea and lice preventer can compete with other commercial flea and lice preventers. Explanation: In this study, the researchers will only make one flea and lice preventer spray which is made from boiled citrus extract. I’ll also be also using a commercial flea and lice preventer as the control variable. The effectiveness of the citrus extract will be measured by observing the time for the fleas and lice prevented from the dog in each set-up. The expected outcome is that the citrus extract flea and lice preventer can be as effective as the commercial flea and lice preventer.

Homosexuality Post War

Homosexuality Post War The Democratisation of Gender after the Sexual Offences Act (1967) and How It Affects Queer Studies E.M. Forsters novel Maurice, written between 1913 and 1914, but not published after his death in 1970, is a seminal work providing a moving, personal portrayal of homosexuality and homophobia in 20th-century England. Exploration of its detailed accounts of attitudes about homosexuals and their various reactions to the discrimination they faced—for instance, denying their homosexuality and marrying; embracing their homosexuality, but discreetly; leaving the country for more open-minded cultures—serves as an excellent starting point for exploring the underlying cultural framework and values which will form the subject matter of this essay. Of no small note is that Forster, whose reputation as a literary genius, believed his own homosexuality too powerful a secret to come out, as it were, until after his death, in a way squandering his own social power and the potential to liberate both himself and other homosexuals. Britain, origin of so much cultural and political vibrancy and of the democratic principles which are now held to be self-evident in modern Western nations, had a particularly difficult time ridding itself of a virulent and persistent form of discrimination: its stubbornly conservative refusal to accept homosexuality and homosexual behaviours into the cultural norm of its society. Indiscreet homosexuals in England of the 20th century could look forward to a life of bigotry and discrimination, to say nothing of financial and personal ruin and imprisonment, as homosexuality was still a criminal offence in England until 1967. â€Å"The limits of the sexually acceptable are still there. Geographical location and economic status significantly affect how free individuals are to choose to be open about their sexual orientation. And some orientations are still problematic.† As the above quotation suggests, the issue of homosexuality remains a divisive issue. This is in spite of forty years passing since the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Britain; forty years that have also witnessed the gay community (both males and females) move in from the margins of mainstream society in order to occupy more powerful positions of authority. This has been meted out in political office, in popular culture and in the global mass media. Yet, in spite of this, there remains at the dawn of the twenty first century a sense that homosexuality is a lifestyle that stands at odds to all that decent society holds dear. Even in the United Kingdom, probably the most secular country in the world, the moral aspect of homosexuality is never far from the surface of the debate over how gay people are supposed to integrate into a predominantly heterosexual sphere. This is the crux of the debate discussed herein. For the purpose of perspective, the following essay must adopt an integrated approach, attempting to synthesise the theoretical and historiographical debates regarding the experiences of gay people in post war Britain. In this way, we can trace the social, political and legal evolution of the democratisation and liberalisation of sexuality and gender in the UK while at the same time offering a critique of the aims and achievements of the gay movement at this time. Furthermore, the continuities and changes of the homosexual landscape in post war Britain can be more accurately depicted amid the relevant academic literature of the times. A conclusion can then be sought that attempts to place the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 within its correct historical and theoretical context. First, however, a brief overview of this Act of Parliament must be ascertained so as to establish a conceptual framework for the remainder of the discussion. The Sexual Offences Act that was passed by Westminster in 1967 was a landmark piece of legislation that sought to address the harsh legal inequalities between homosexual and heterosexual people with regards to their private lives and the way in which these private lives were dictated by the public and political sphere. The impetus behind the reform of laws pertaining to homosexuality in the United Kingdom came from the Wolfendon Report, which was commissioned in 1957 to highlight the essential differences between crime and sin. Essentially, while society and the manufacturing of cultural consensus may indeed have deemed homosexuality as a sin (or a sickness) to equate it with criminality was deemed in many circles to be anachronistic and blight against post war British civilisation and its values. This is an important point and one that ought to be borne in mind throughout the discussion: the 1967 Sexual Offences Act marked the first serious attempt at the legal decriminalisation of homosexuality in the United Kingdom since the Buggery Act of 1533 when the British state first sought to wrest the issue of gay coupling away from the ecclesiastical courts and into the legal courts of the realm. Viewed through this prism, the 1967 Sexual Offences Act can be seen to be a symptom of the broader civil rights movement of the 1960s which oversaw the criminalisation of inequality relating to gender, race, creed and religion in all of the major countries of the western hemisphere. The Act could not have come about without there first having been in place the existence of liberal youth culture that was able to use the tools available within a democratic state in order to lobby the political establishment for social and cultural reform. Thus, although the Act itself has since been open to charges of hypocrisy (the result of the Act witnessed an increase rather than a decrease in the numbers of arrests of gay men for breaking the new law) and prejudice (the Act clearly and identifiably differentiates between homosexual and heterosexual people with regards to the ‘age of consent with twenty one being used for gay people in comparison to sixteen for straight people) it should nevertheless still be seen as an important milestone in the evolution of a more egalitarian British society. Certainly, in legal terms, 1967 must be seen as the starting point of any discussion with regards to the democratisation of homosexuality in post war Britain as before the advent of the Sexual Offences Act homosexual acts were seen as essentially criminal activities and therefore placed outside of the bounds of the rules, regulations and customs of decent, civilised society. Therefore, while mainstream culture and the political establ ishment may well have both publicly and privately continued to denounce homosexuality in all its forms as a sin (and preferred to keep homosexuality firmly outside of the realms of civilised society), the removal of the spectre of a criminal offence telegraphed a major turning point in the way in which gay people were viewed and treated in post war Britain. Furthermore, without the Act, the subsequent achievements of the gay movement in the UK would never have been able to begin to take place as the legal framework in which the gay movement lobbied for reform during the 1970s and 1980s would not have existed. Democratisation of sexuality in post war Britain thus begins in 1967. However, as suggested above, the 1967 Sexual Offences Act has left itself open (particularly within the gay community) to claims of being as an essentially conservative measure that was only passed due to reasons of political expediency as opposed to the political establishment in Britain actually wishing to see a tangible democratisation of sexuality. By establishing such a high age of consent for gay couples, the Act only served to cement the social stigma associated with homosexuality because after this point it was seen by law in Britain to be a coupling that was deemed unsuitable (and illegal) for young people to engage in. Considering that the teenage years are the most important stage of sexual development in both males and females, the high age of consent deliberately aimed to restrict the practice of homosexuality amongst the very demographic that would be most likely to engage in ‘experimental sexuality. This only increased the sordid image of homosexuals in Britain a t the time, implying that adult homosexual men were in some way intent upon ‘grooming young males to join their own sexual brand of subculture. Viewed through this prism, the Sexual Offences Act can be seen to be a positive legal step but likewise a negative cultural step. The increase in the number of arrests of gay men in the years that immediately followed 1967 should be seen as testimony to this ultimate perpetuation of inequality pertaining to sexuality which was the socio-political residue of the Sexual Offences Act. In this way, the myth of the permissive society was established to satisfy the libertarian ideology of the left wing of the political elite. The satisfaction and status of gay people, on the other hand, seems not to have been a consideration concerning the passing of this landmark piece of domestic legislation. In specific terms of the evolution of queer theory, the 1967 Sexual Offences Act can be seen to have helped to create fertile grounds for the blossoming of the domestic and international gay rights movement because of the way in which the Act of Parliament served to legally solidify the differences between homosexual and heterosexual people. This sense of marginalisation from mainstream society was aided by the Stonewall Riots which took place in New York City in 1969 in response to police brutality against homosexual and transgender people at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. This episode provided the impetus behind the formation of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) which was established in July 1969, quickly becoming a trans-national phenomenon that deeply influenced the gay rights movement in the UK. The cumulative result of the prejudices legalised in the 1967 Sexual Offences Act in addition to the prejudices brutally realised in New York City in the Stonewall Riots was to con struct a gay movement that was both durable and international. Furthermore, the perceived injustices of the 1960s also served to ally the lesbian and gay movements so that one tangible homosexual community was evident by the turn of the decade in both Europe and the United States of America. This time period was therefore a crucial moment in the development of queer theory in post war Britain. However, it can be argued that by forming a global gay movement that judged membership with the movement in terms of sexual identity, international movements such as the Gay Liberation Front succeeded only in affirming the divisions put forward by measures like the Sexual Offences Act. Queer theory, from the outset, was intent upon challenging the mainstream socio-political status quo by using means that were essentially counter productive in light of the gay movements arguments that gender and sexual identity was not ‘fixed or compartmentalised according to ones sexuality but was in fact much more fluid and interchangeable. Indeed, queer theorists have since argued that the compartmentalisation of gender is likewise flawed with Anne Fausto-Sterling arguing that â€Å"male and female are not enough.† By separating ‘them'(heterosexuals) from ‘us (homosexuals and transsexuals) the queer movement merely served to corroborate the fragmented vision of mainstream s ociety and to further alienate homosexuality from mainstream culture and, as a result, to condemn queer theory to a discernible subculture status. Consequently, the 1967 Sexual Offences Act taken within the broader context of the worldwide civil rights movement of the 1960s can be seen to be an important milestone within the evolution of queer theory as not only did politicised society initiate a clear dividing line between the homosexual and the heterosexual communities but also the homosexual community itself was largely responsible after this point for perpetuating this divide. In the final analysis therefore, it is difficult to envisage this development as positive or progressive. Indeed, as Michael Botnick demonstrates below, this lack of awareness on both sides of the historical debate resulted in a discernible lack of consensus by the turn of the millennium. â€Å"The lack of open-mindedness toward complex and graduated positions makes it difficult to obtain a full hearing of the issues, especially if those issues are value laden and cognitively dissonant to the audience (generally the public at large, the state, major corporations or other mega-organisations such as the media.)† At this point in the discussion, attention must move away from the historiographic look at the formation of the gay rights movement within the context of the late 1960s to turn instead towards analysis of queer theory in post war twentieth century Britain. As has already been intimated, the evolution of queer theory in the UK is intrinsically tied to the advent of the Sexual Offences Act of 1967. The injustices conceptualised in this Act served to galvanise the gay community amid the broader backdrop of a civil rights movement that was established in order to attempt to attain parity on the grounds of race, religion and gender as well as parity on the grounds of sexuality. This wider multicultural influence is the key to understanding how the doctrine of queer theory in post war Britain quickly became divorced from the social, cultural and political reality of maintaining a subcultural movement within the context of a liberal democracy. It is certainly no coincidence that the guiding principle of queer theory was inherently similar to the guiding principle of the other civil rights movements of the epoch: all highlighted the fallacy of using identity (be it sexual, racial, religious or gender) as a means of organising political society. All of these movements should therefore be viewed as part of a wider post-structuralist theory which advocated the end of identity based upon gender, sexuality, race and religion in favour of adopting a more egalitarian approach. In this way, post-structuralist theory was keen to destroy the link between â€Å"dominant western forms of rationality with male power and control over women and nature, which is associated with violence, oppression and destruction.† Queer theory should be seen as an important part of this desire to deconstruct male-ordered politicised society and to reconstruct this society not along lines pertaining to identity but along lines pertaining to humanity instead. In terms of results, the deconstruction of male-centric society can be seen to have had a positive impact upon the fusion of homosexual and heterosexual cultures in post war Britain, certainly after the 1980s when the AIDS epidemic in the United States quickly became a worldwide manifestation of what Stan Cohen had in the 1970s referred to as ‘moral panic disseminated by an increasingly powerful global mass media apparatus. Whereas the 1970s and the 1980s can be seen as a historical period of continuity with regards to the perpetuation of sexuality-based injustices in Britain, the 1990s on the other hand can be interpreted as a period of change when the barriers constructed by male-ordered mainstream society were slowly, yet clearly being eroded in o bvious ways. Politicians, for instance, in the 1990s were no longer punished in any tangible electoral way for being ‘outed as homosexual. The briefly successful New Labour career of Peter Mandelson is testimony to this development. Likewise in popular culture where international stars such as George Michael (who was afraid to admit his sexuality in the 1980s) have been able to thrive in both the heterosexual and homosexual spheres regardless of their own sexual preferences since the 1990s. The turn of the millennium also witnessed a legal progression concerning gay people and their civil rights with amendments to the Sexual Offences Act (passed in 2003) in Britain eventually giving rise to parity with heterosexual people with regards to the age of consent. Indeed, it can be argued that the 2003 Sexual Offences Amendment Act is as fundamental and extensive as the changes which were telegraphed when the Theft Act (1968) replaced the outmoded Larceny Act (1916). In the UK in the twenty first century the age of consent for both heterosexual and homosexual people is at last set at sixteen, finally putting to an end the decades-long association of homosexuality with perversity and social abnormality. Yet, appearances can be deceptive. While the 1990s and the first decade of the twenty first century may appear to be the dawn of a new era of equality with regards to gender and sexuality, the reality may in fact be better understood as a period of continuity with the perceived advances of gay people during this time being nothing more than a mirage as male-dominated society continues to give piecemeal concessions to those marginalised elements of post modern culture in order to maintain the faà §ade of a permissive contemporary society. â€Å"It seems were an altogether more open, more tolerant, sexier society and its getting better all the time. Or is it? Is mainstream culture just flirting with a bit of the other in order to keep us all on a broadly straight line?† This sense of duplicity inherent concerning queer theory and socio-political reality in the contemporary era has served to render queer theory a doctrine of continuing importance in western culture. Contemporary gender theorists such as Judith Butler (whos book Gender Trouble was published in 1990 selling over 100 000 copies internationally) directly challenged the notion of gender (and indeed sexuality) as a means of cultural identity, going so far as to cite the creation of international feminism as the reason behind womens continuing experience of inequality. Butler thus called for a re-evaluation of queer theory in light of the mistakes made by the various civil, gender and sexual rights movements of the 1960s. â€Å"The domains of political and linguistic ‘representation set out in advance the criterion by which subjects themselves are formed, with the result that representation is extended only to what can be acknowledged as a subject. In other words, the qualifications for being a subject must first be met before representation can be extended.† Butlers theory remains a cornerstone for queer theory in post war Britain as the travails of the womens since the passing of the Sex Discrimination Act in 1964 largely mirrors the troubles of the gay movement since the inception of the Sexual Offences Act in 1967. As a result there is a large body of academic literature available that is dedicated to queer theory and to placing contemporary queer theory within the historiographical context of the gay experience in the past forty years. Much of the commentary bequeathed by this body of literature tends to underscore the essential continuity that characterises the development of sexuality in Britain (and indeed throughout the West) since the 1960s. Jeffrey Weeks, for example, sees this continuity as a symptom of contemporary societys inability to comprehend sexuality within its correct (and complex) historical context. â€Å"There is a struggle for the future of sexuality. But the ways we respond to this have been coloured by the force of the accumulated historical heritage and sexual traditions out of which we have come: the Christian organisation of belief in sex as sacramental and threatening, the libertarian belief of sex as subversive, the liberal belief of sex as source of identity and personal resource, all rooted in a melange of religious, scientific and sexological arguments about what sex is, what it can do and what we must or must not do. We are weighed down with a universe of expectations. Sexuality could be a potentiality for choice, change and diversity. Instead we take it as destiny, and all of us, women and men, homosexual and heterosexual, young and old, black and white, are held in its thrall, and pay its expensive dues.† Weeks succinct observations quoted above could quite feasibly have featured in his best selling book, Coming Out (originally published in 1977) such is the lack of tangible progress made by mainstream society in the authors view. This is entirely due to the fact that the vast majority of society has managed to evade the true nature of the issue where sexuality is neither a ‘choice nor a ‘cross to bear but is instead a complex fusion of the two. Weeks concludes that it is the very absence of a ‘right or ‘wrong answer with regards to the definition of sexuality that makes mainstream society unable to adequately confront the issue of homosexuality even at the start of the twenty first century. Of course, the issue of homosexuality has been greatly affected by the rise in significance (at least in cultural terms) of bisexuality. Not only has bisexuality served to confuse the majority of mainstream society (in so much as mainstream society has been instructed to think in terms of black and white; right and wrong) about the nature of homosexuality, the advent of bi-theory has telegraphed a schism in queer theory. Indeed, it is a common view of the bisexual community that traditional queer theory â€Å"can be understood as a particularly virulent strain of the disease affecting contemporary theory more generally, especially in so far as it addresses sexuality as a central concern in the guise of ‘queer theory.† Thus, the very term ‘queer is seen, ironically, as an exclusive phrase that implies that bisexual people, on account of their continuing sexual association with heterosexual people, are intrinsically more allied to straight culture than they are to the homosexual community. This schism mirrors the divide in the feminist movement when a more radical ‘second wave of feminism â€Å"drew, in the first instance, upon the theoretical writings of lesbian feminism in the early 1970s† only for the lesbian feminist community to later accuse the heterosexual feminist community of ‘betrayal on the grounds that straight women continued to participate in sexual activity and engage in what Pateman terms ‘sexual contracts with men in the guise of sex, marriage, home and family. Further confusion has been added to this maelstrom with the advent of trans-theory and the increasing legal and political recognition of trans-gender people, which has clearly impacted upon the evolution of queer theory in post war Britain. Jason Cromwell sees this development as â€Å"making the visible invisible†, which is in direct opposition to the principles of the gay community which has historically intended to make the invisible visible. In addition there are not surprisingly critics from the straight mainstream culture who see queer theory as a barrier (rather than a facilitator) to a greater democratisation of sexuality in the contemporary era. Critics argue that queer studies places too much emphasis upon differentiation which, in turn, elevates the status of the gay and lesbian experience to a position that is over and above its true worth within the broader sphere of cultural studies. This only serves to increase the gulf between the ‘included and the ‘excluded members of society. Furthermore, queer theory has been challenged in a more direct way as critics argue the primacy of the queer belief that sexuality is not ‘fixed. Tim Edwards, for example, has recently argued that sexual identity is in fact much more rigid and compartmentalised than queer theory suggests. Edwards does not agree with the assumptions made by, amongst others, Judith Butler and David Gauntlett who both show how, for ins tance, the media has helped to solidify the construction of identity based upon gender and sexuality respectively. Instead he argues that in real terms gender and sexual identity does not only exist at the level of discourse (as argued by Butler) but instead exists as â€Å"an institutional social practice.† It can be seen that queer theory and its discontents have historically argued over ideological terrain pertaining to sexuality, gender and identity with a discernible lack of consensus emerging from the ensuing theoretical debates. It is also noticeable that the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 remains largely conspicuous by its absence from the vast majority of this theoretical debate with regards to queer theory in post war Britain. Where the Act is mentioned, it tends to be referred to as a piecemeal political measure that â€Å"proved repeatedly unsuccessful, largely because of popular mobilisation against restrictive changes.† Even in legal terms, the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 remains open to charges of being a draconian, anachronistic measure by contemporary queer theory as it was still deemed a criminal offence for people under the age of twenty one to engage in homosexual activity. This only served to criminalise the essential experimentalism inherent in young people of b oth sexes and to perpetuate the association of homosexuality as a sordid and sinful affair. A more important watershed date according to post war queer theorists was the 1980s and the advent of the AIDS epidemic. Beginning on the west coast of the United States and quickly transferring over the Atlantic to Britain and Western Europe, the AIDS epidemic was an epidemic more in terms of the effect that it had upon mainstream, straight culture than the medical effect that the virus had upon the human race. Looking back on the media texts and images of the time, one can certainly see how the disease was blown out of all proportion to its true danger. Furthermore, it is plain to see that this was due to the sexual nature of the illness and, specifically, the fact that it had begun in the gay community. Once more, therefore, gay men were accused of leading a hedonistic lifestyle the lack of the practice of safe sex being the starting point for the spreading of the disease. The AIDS epidemic also served to re-ignite traditional Christian doctrine that was and remains vehemently opposed to the legalisation and democratisation of homosexuality. Hard-line Christian activists even went so far as to claim that the AIDS virus was Gods punishment to all society for allowing gay people the right to practice their sordid sexuality in mainstream culture. The combined effect of this hysteria served to make the 1980s as opposed to 1967 the key date in queer theory in post war Britain. As Jeffrey Weeks declares, â€Å"the homophobia that was encouraged by AIDS demanded, and in fact greatly strengthened, lesbian and gay identities.† With this in mind, attention must now be turned towards reaching a conclusion as to the significance of 1967 within the broader discussion of the democratisation of sexuality in post war Britain. â€Å"That some people have decided preferences does not seem to be in doubt. What is now fast disappearing is the myriad of ways in which various human societies have managed to cope with the fact.† As Naphy aptly suggests, the rate at which homosexuality has been integrated into mainstream culture should be judged within the much wider context of western civilisation over the past two thousand years as opposed to the forty years that have passed since the inception of the Sexual Offences Act in 1967. Ultimately, although progress concerning the democratisation of homosexuality may have met many obstacles in a variety of different guises be they legal, political, social, religious or cultural there cannot be any doubt that the gay community landscape has changed beyond all recognition in Britain since the end of the 1960s. Moreover, it would be difficult to launch an argument against 1967 being the key year within this evolution of queer theory in modern Britain as this was the date that marked the beginning of the solidification of a trans-national gay movement as well as the end of the historical marginalisation of homosexuals within the broader context of mainstream society . The fact that the fruits of this dual, spontaneous realisation did not immediately materialise in the form of a democratisation of sexuality should not be seen as a great surprise. Like the womens movement of the same era, there can be little doubt that the legal measures passed by parliament such as the Sex Discrimination Act served only to halt the advance of womens rights as the movement inevitably splintered on matters pertaining to race, ideology and increasingly sexuality. In this way, the lesbian agenda became increasingly divorced from the mainstream feminist agenda in the same way that the bisexual agenda has become noticeably more antagonistic towards queer theory and the homosexual community. It can be argued that this is nothing more than an inevitable by-product of a post-industrial capitalist society that has made a cultural and economic commodity of sex and sexuality to such a degree as to destabilise the solidarity of the global gay and womens movements worldwide. T hus, being a political as well as a sexual activity, homosexuality has been (and will remain) both historically and theoretically deeply influenced by the social, political and economic environment in which it is culturally defined. Bibliography Botnick, M.R. Gay Community Survival in the New Millennium. New York and London: The Haworth Press, 2000. Butler, J. Gender Trouble. Hammondsworth: Penguin Classics, 2006. Cohen, S. Folk Devils and Moral Panics. London: Paladin, 1973. Cromwell, J. Transmen and FTMs: Identities, Bodies, Genders and Sexualities. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1999 Edwards, T. â€Å"Queer Fears: Against the Cultural Turn.† Journal of Sexualities. Vol. 1, No.4, 2004. Eisenstein, H. Contemporary Feminist Thought. London: Unwin, 1984. Fausto-Sterling, A. The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female are not Enough. Kimmel, M.S. (Ed.) Sexualities: Identities, Behaviours and Society. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Gauntlett, D. Media, Gender and Identity: an Introduction. London: Routledge, 2002. Hall, L.A. Sex, Gender and Social Change in Britain since 1880. London: Macmillan, 2000. Kimmel, M.S. (Ed.) Sexualities: Identities, Behaviours and Society. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004 Naphy, W. Born to be Gay: a History of Homosexuality. London: Tempus, 2004. Pateman, C. The Sexual Contract. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988. Spargo, T. Foucault and Queer Theory. London: Icon, 1999. Storr, M. â€Å"Post-modern Bisexuality.† Weeks, J., Holland, J. and Waites, M. (Eds.) Sexualities and Society: A Reader. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002. Weedon, C. Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory. Oxford and New York: Blackwell, 1987. Weeks, J. â€Å"Necessary Fictions: Sexual Identities and the Politics of Diversity.† Weeks, J., Holland, J. and Waites, M. (Eds.) Sexualities and Society: A Reader Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002. Weeks, J. Coming Out. London: Quartet Books, 1977. Weeks, J. Sexuality and its Discontents: Meaning, Myths and Modern Sexualities. London: Routledge, 1995. Homosexualities in Post War Britain: The Democratisation of Gender after the Sexual Offences Act (1967) and How It Affects Queer Studies Core Course: Gender and Society in Britain and Europe, c.1500 to the Present

The Ants and The Bees: Comparing the Social Structure of these Colonia

A queen, drones, and workers share a common place in life. They all live in a bee and ant colony striving together to accomplish their specific jobs. Living in a world where females are your workers and protectors of the queen, and drones are used to multiply the colony, and then die. When you look passed the buzzing of ants, you see a very sociable creature working like a well oiled machine. When you hear the dirt on the bees, they may look sociable, but deep down, it’s another world. A world where queens kill sibling sisters, and the drones are ejected out into the cold to starve just for the sake of their colony. Where females defend the nest and die 100% of the time after the sting. Bees and ants, both considered sociable insects, have a very different view on sociability. The colonies of ants and bees are broken down into several different categories. The top of the chain consist of the queen in both colonies. The colony depends on the queen to produce the eggs for their survival. This is the only function for the queen. She is able to choose what gender the eggs will become by fertilizing or not fertilizing them. She is capable of keeping the balance of the colony in check by choosing the gender of her eggs. Unfertile eggs become the drones of the colony, where fertile eggs becomes the female workers. The males, or drones of the colony serve only one purpose, and that is to fertilize the eggs. The drones do no maintenance work, no tending to the colony, no foraging, and they shortly die after mating with the queen. The workers of the colony are all female and mostly foragers, but some do have different task within their society (Stanger et al., 1971, p.10-11). The same can be implied to the ant colony which is made up of ... ...ned (Layton, 2008, p.1). They clamp on with there mighty jaws, rotate in a circle, and sting their victim while still clamped on. Some ants do not have a stinger. They simply drop poison unto their victims skin. Bees and ants live in a social nest setting, where there is a queen, drones, and workers. At first glance they may seem to be almost the same, one with wings and one without. Storing honey for rougher seasons and times, protecting by stinging, and having different types that are more harmful than others. At a closer look, ants are more the social creatures than bees. Living with more than one queen and sharing the neighboring colonies workers. Bees seem to live a more a closed off, mobster type. The queen killing off her sister rivalry to rule over the colony. Bees and ants may be similar in social structure, but different when you get down to the dirt.

Catcher in the Rye Essay: Holden - The Misfit Hero -- Catcher Rye Essa

The Misfit Hero of The Catcher In The Rye      Ã‚     The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger was published in 1951. "A recurring theme in J.D. Salinger's stories concerns people who don't fit in with the traditional American Culture. Salinger's 'misfit heroes', unlike the rest of society, are caught in the struggle between a superficial world and a conscious morality" (1 Wildermuth). In his attempt to create a new and realistic portrayal of the times, Salinger first, effectively creates Holden Caulfield, the main character. Second, he sends his character on a quest, and third he titles his novel to sum up the whole overview of the story.    In creating his character, Holden Caulfield, Salinger uses profanities and obscenities as an attempt to portray the world of most adolescents. He creates a character that is not really in rebellion against the established values of the adult world, but as a victim. Holden is possessed with a strong sense of justice and respectability. His moral system and sense of justice force him to find horrible flaws in society, which he sums up with the word "phony". "Holden's principle difficulty is not that he is a rebel, or that he hates the society he lives in, or its morals, nor that he is a coward, but rather that he is unable to sort out, or to purge himself of his burden of sensation. He is blocked with memory and experience, and Salinger indicates this in the intentional confusion of time in his thoughts" (53 Kaplan). Holden, much like Salinger himself, is a person who is removed from society and therefore more independent than the person who must rely upon society.    Catcher In The Rye is an episodic novel about an adolescent boy on the brink of adulthood. Yet, the action itself i... ... Frangedis, Helen. "Dealing with the Controversial Elements in The Catcher In The Rye". English Journal. 77.7 (1988): 72-75. Kaplan, Robert B. Cliff's Notes: Catcher In The Rye. Lincoln: Cliff's Notes, Inc., 1999. Marsden, Malcolm M. If You Really Want To Know: A Catcher Casebook. Chicago: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1963. Miller Jr., James E. "American Literature". World Book Encyclopedia. Volume 1. Chicago: World Book Inc., 1983. Pinsker, Sanford. The Catcher In The Rye: Innocence Under Pressure. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1993. Roemer, Danielle M. "The Personal Narrative and Salinger's Catcher in the Rye". Western Folklore 51 (1992): 5-10. Salinger, J.D. The Catcher In The Rye. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1951. Wildermuth, April. "Nonconformism in the Works of J.D. Salinger." 1997 Brighton High School. 24 November 1999. Catcher in the Rye Essay: Holden - The Misfit Hero -- Catcher Rye Essa The Misfit Hero of The Catcher In The Rye      Ã‚     The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger was published in 1951. "A recurring theme in J.D. Salinger's stories concerns people who don't fit in with the traditional American Culture. Salinger's 'misfit heroes', unlike the rest of society, are caught in the struggle between a superficial world and a conscious morality" (1 Wildermuth). In his attempt to create a new and realistic portrayal of the times, Salinger first, effectively creates Holden Caulfield, the main character. Second, he sends his character on a quest, and third he titles his novel to sum up the whole overview of the story.    In creating his character, Holden Caulfield, Salinger uses profanities and obscenities as an attempt to portray the world of most adolescents. He creates a character that is not really in rebellion against the established values of the adult world, but as a victim. Holden is possessed with a strong sense of justice and respectability. His moral system and sense of justice force him to find horrible flaws in society, which he sums up with the word "phony". "Holden's principle difficulty is not that he is a rebel, or that he hates the society he lives in, or its morals, nor that he is a coward, but rather that he is unable to sort out, or to purge himself of his burden of sensation. He is blocked with memory and experience, and Salinger indicates this in the intentional confusion of time in his thoughts" (53 Kaplan). Holden, much like Salinger himself, is a person who is removed from society and therefore more independent than the person who must rely upon society.    Catcher In The Rye is an episodic novel about an adolescent boy on the brink of adulthood. Yet, the action itself i... ... Frangedis, Helen. "Dealing with the Controversial Elements in The Catcher In The Rye". English Journal. 77.7 (1988): 72-75. Kaplan, Robert B. Cliff's Notes: Catcher In The Rye. Lincoln: Cliff's Notes, Inc., 1999. Marsden, Malcolm M. If You Really Want To Know: A Catcher Casebook. Chicago: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1963. Miller Jr., James E. "American Literature". World Book Encyclopedia. Volume 1. Chicago: World Book Inc., 1983. Pinsker, Sanford. The Catcher In The Rye: Innocence Under Pressure. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1993. Roemer, Danielle M. "The Personal Narrative and Salinger's Catcher in the Rye". Western Folklore 51 (1992): 5-10. Salinger, J.D. The Catcher In The Rye. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1951. Wildermuth, April. "Nonconformism in the Works of J.D. Salinger." 1997 Brighton High School. 24 November 1999.

Primary Prevention of Breast Cancer

Choose a health topic related to primary prevention, secondary prevention, or tertiary care. Explain why this is an important topic of discussion based on your personal belief, and based on valid research. Paper should be 1. 5 – 2 pages. APA format must be followed. Detailed assignment information will be provided. Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in women and the 2nd most leading cause of their death. It is estimated that 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their life time and it will claim as many as 40,000 lives in the US only. ( http://www. nationalbreastcancer. rg/breast-cancer-facts) Primary prevention can play a key role in substantially reducing the chances of developing breast cancer Early detection through screening can make treatment process easier and less extensive. Primary prevention is all about reducing the risk factors that may enhance one’s chjances of getting breasts cancer specially if there is a history of breast canc er in the family. Long term heavy smoking and alcohol consumtion can increase the chances of developing breast cancer. (http://www. cancer. org/acs/groups/content/@epidemiologysurveilance/documents/document/acspc-030975. df American cancer society) â€Å"Prevention is the best cure† is a very wise proverb. Necessary precautions can prevent major health problems altogether. The major focus of primary prevention is to prevent a diseases before it occurs. One of doing so is by controlling the risk factors in healthy people that may lead to the disease. There are several different approaches such as clinical prevention which includes interactions with a health proifessional, community based efforts such as awareness programs, laws and plocies etfc. , and work place health programs that promote healthy life style etc.Family history of breast cancer can almost double the risk of getting breast cancer which makes the Its important to cultivate a healthy life style to avoid this prob lem altogether and promote healthy habits and activities than can reduce the chances significantly. Since breast cancer prevention are risk based Determining the risk factor is the first step in designing a prevention plan. Chemoprevention, tamoxifen although can help reduce the risk factors by as much as half but they don’t come without their own risk are not widely practiced.Therefore, primary prevention which is now evolving itself to include cancer screening, imaging, pathalogial findings and level od suspicion etc along with computer programs and special algorithms can help reduce the chances and early detection. The trends show that breast cancer has been on the rise and many people don’t have access to treatment and affordability is another factor. Between 1975 to 1990 it increases and then dcresed byh 2. 34 percent between 1990 and 2002. Black women have a higher percentage of mortality compared with the rest of the races in the US.Dying of Breast Cancer in the 1800sThere are many factors that determine the risk of getting cancer. In female the risk increases with age which can be coped with adjusting to a new life style and observing high precaution. Family history (first or second degree of relation) can increase the risk higher and if more than one family member had cancer it would increase the risk even further that’s why education of such people right from the first case is very important. Girls from young age should be nurtured in a way to adopt a healthy life style and a life style that decreases the chances of getting breast cancer.Different levels of Reproductive Hormones that change with a woman’s age andfor some other reasons such as pregnancy and nulliparity etc also play a role in determining the risk factors. Mind benign breast malfunction can also increase the chances of having breast cancer in later stages of a woman/s life. Irradiation at early age also increases risks of getting breast cancer. Prevention th rough lifestyle. Diet and nutritions is controversial but fat consumtion has been associated with breast cancer.Different studies have shown conflicting results and therefore this area is open for more research. Obesity, however, has been clearly associated with raising the risk factor just like smoking and long term alcohol consumtion does too. Primary prevention. Life style modification studies have yielded different and controversial results. However, disregarding the impact od life syle change, it can lead to better health over all as well reduce the over all risk factor. This may include physical activity, healthy weight, avoiding smoking and limiting alcohol consumption.Ec. Women with high risk of cancer due to genetic mutation may consider non Some primary prevention measures such as prophylactic oophorectomy in young women(35 and under) has shown to reduce the breast cancer by 60 percent but this surgery comes with many unpleasant symptoms. Such as mood changes, night sweats and hot flashes etc. Prophylactic mastectomy which is the removal of both or one breast is also a primary prevention techniques but its drawbacks may outweigh its benefits. Therefor this practice is limited to women with a very high risk of breast cancer.Chemoprevention techniques such as tamoxifen and raloxifene can reduce the risk to one half. But this form of prentive techniques such as tamoxifen shows an increased risk of endometrial cancer in women over the age of 500 (PRIMARY PREVENTION OF BREAST CANCER, SCREENING FOR EARLY DETECTION OF BREAST CANCER, AND DIAGNOSTIC EVALUATION OF CLINICAL AND MAMMOGRAPHIC BREAST ABNORMALITIES Therese B. Bevers) Although most women may not deveop cancer in their life time but prevention techniques and precautions and habits can ensure early detection. Primary prevention saves time, costs related to the treatment, discomfort and pain.CLINICAL REVIEW Women at High Risk for Breast Cancer—What the Primary Care Provider Needs to Know Nelia A fonso, MD Primary prevention would encompass not only a healthy life style which includes measures to avoid exposure to carcinogen exposure and health promoting activieties and habits . the focus is block the cancer from eve ndeveloping or delay its development to malignancy. And for people who have a high risk of cancer (due to genetic mutation etc ), it includes administration of chemopreventive agents or surgeries that require removal of some body parts. ( http://www. ns. org/ClinicalResources/BreastCancer/Prevention/Types) Environmental factors exposure to insecticides etc can increase the chances of developing cancer. ( http://www. cancer. gov/cancertopics/pdq/prevention/breast/HealthProfessional/page2) http://www. cancer. org/acs/groups/content/@epidemiologysurveilance/documents/document/acspc-030975. pdf self examination. Periodic mammography 40 percent cases of cancer can be avoided just by making lifestyle changes. (http://www. kingsfund. org. uk/projects/gp-commissioning/t en-priorities-for-commissioners/primary-prevention)Regular primary care can reduce mortality rate over a period of just 5 years. (http://sphhs. gwu. edu/departments/healthpolicy/dhp_publications/pub_uploads/dhpPublication_3BBD241A-5056-9D20-3DC72347BA069B17. pdf) having a primary care physician decreases the likelihood of getting diseases and increases the effectiveness and appropriateness of care. Having one particular person as a primary health provider means fewer prescriptions and fewer tests more and decrease of emergency care. Primary health care can reduce expenses. Hospitalization and down time can be avoided. Interventions such as smoking

Family life Essay

Family life is full of challenges, but when we make wise choices, it is also rewarding. Family Life includes dozens of practical units on human development (childhood, teen years, adulthood, and aging), and living in a family (couple relationships, parenting, strengths, connections). All of these materials are intended to help you make choices that will make your family life more effective and satisfying. Family Life. A family is a household of people related by blood or marriage. More specifically, we can define a family as husband and wife (or one parent), with or without never-married children, living together in the same dwelling. A household may contain more than two generations of people. The family is the foundational institution of society ordained by God. It is constituted by marriage and is composed of persons related to one another by marriage, blood or adoption. A safe haven in which family members esteem and honor one another. A place where words and actions communicate value and respect to everyone, young and old. A reliable sanctuary where each person receives grace – unconditional acceptance and extravagant generosity with no strings attached. A place where a person finds others available, attentive, and emotionally connected to them. A community of celebration, laughter, and play. A safe haven where family members can let their hair down, reveal themselves fully, and know one another intimately. Family roles are the recurrent patterns of behavior by which individuals fulfill family functions and needs. Individual members of families occupy certain roles such as child, sibling, grandchild. Along with roles come certain social and family expectations for how those roles should be fulfilled. For example, parents are expected to teach, discipline, and provide for their children. And children are expected to cooperate and respect their parents. As family members age, they take on additional roles, such as becoming a spouse, parent, or grandparent. A person’s role is always expanding or changing, depending upon his or her age and family stage. Individuals within a family have both instrumental and affective roles to fulfill. Each serves an important function in maintaining healthy family functioning. Instrumental roles are concerned with the provision of physical resources (e.g., food, clothing, and shelter), decision-making and family management. Affective roles exist to provide emotional support and encouragement to family members. Both sets of roles must be present for healthy family functioning. In addition, families must also consider issues of roles allocation and accountablility. Communication is the way you let other people know about your ideas and feelings. It is much more than the words you say. It is what you say, how you say it, why you say it, when you say it, and what you don’t say. It is your facial expression, your gestures, your posture, and your vocal tones. Good communication isn’t something that just happens between members of strong families; they make it happen. Good family communication involves being both an active listener and a thoughtful speaker. In this way children can see how to communicate well and how to have more control of their lives. A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children’s children: and the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just. – Proverbs 13:22 The Bible speaks often about leaving an inheritance for our children – not necessarily as a command, just as prudent advice. Applying this principle to material things, it is easy to see how helpful it would be to have the parent generation jump-starting their children’s generation with sound financial teaching and the means for them to start their own families with tangible goods rather than debt. This second generation will then, in turn, be able to help the third generation so much more, and so on. I am not talking about amassing and hording money. Rather, I was thinking along the lines of how in the old days, families would pass part of their land on to each of their children, and help them build a house/farm on it, or how the family business would be passed down from father to son for generation after generation. The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage. – Psalm 16:6 Regardless of your financial standing, this same principle can be applied to the spiritual realm, which is also infinitely more important than the physical/material. The testimonies have I taken as an heritage for ever: for they are the rejoicing of my heart. – Psalm 119:111 When we think about the importance of passing on to our children a heritage of godliness, living a life that strives to be in line with Bible principles becomes a much more urgent responsibility.

Practical Demonkeeping Chapter 14-15

14 DINNER Travis parked the Chevy on the street in front of Jenny's house. He turned off the engine and turned to Catch. â€Å"You stay here, you understand. I'll be back in a little while to check on you.† â€Å"Thanks, Dad.† â€Å"Don't play the radio and don't beep the horn. Just wait.† â€Å"I promise. I'll be good.† The demon attempted an innocent grin and failed. â€Å"Keep an eye on that.† Travis pointed to an aluminum suitcase on the backseat. â€Å"Enjoy your date. The car will be fine.† â€Å"What's wrong with you?† â€Å"Nothing,† Catch grinned. â€Å"Why are you being so nice?† â€Å"It's good to see you getting out.† â€Å"You're lying.† â€Å"Travis, I'm crushed.† â€Å"That would be nice,† Travis said. â€Å"Now, don't eat anybody.† â€Å"I just ate last night. I don't even feel hungry. I'll just sit here and meditate.† Travis reached into the inside pocket of his sport coat and pulled out a comic book. â€Å"I got this for you.† He held it out to the demon. â€Å"You can look at it while you wait.† The demon fumbled the comic book away from Travis and spread it out on the seat. â€Å"Cookie Monster! My favorite! Thanks, Travis.† â€Å"See you later.† Travis got out of the car and slammed the door. Catch watched him walk across the yard. â€Å"I already looked at this one, asshole,† he hissed to himself. â€Å"When I get a new master, I will tear your arms off and eat them while you watch.† Travis looked back over his shoulder. Catch waved him on with his best effort at a smile. The doorbell rang precisely at seven. Jenny's reactions went like this: don't answer it, change clothes, answer it and feign sickness, clean the house, redecorate, schedule plastic surgery, change hair color, take a handful of Valium, appeal to the Goddess for divine intervention, stand here and explore the possibilities of paralyzing panic. She opened the door and smiled. â€Å"Hi.† Travis stood there in jeans and a gray herringbone tweed jacket. He was transfixed. â€Å"Travis?† Jenny said. â€Å"You're beautiful,† he said finally. They stood in the doorway, Jenny blushing, Travis staring. Jenny had decided to stick with the black dress. Evidently it had been the right choice. A full minute passed without a word between them. â€Å"Would you like to come in?† â€Å"No.† â€Å"Okay.† She shut the door in his face. Well, that hadn't been so bad. Now she could put on some sweatpants, load the refrigerator onto a tray, and settle down for a night in front of the television. There was a timid knock on the door. Jenny opened it again. â€Å"Sorry, I'm a little nervous,† she said. â€Å"It's all right,† Travis said. â€Å"Shall we go?† â€Å"Sure. I'll get my purse.† She closed the door in his face. There was an uncomfortable silence between them while they drove to the restaurant. Typically, this would be the time for trading life stories, but Jenny had resolved not to talk about her marriage, which closed most of her adult life to conversation, and Travis had resolved not to talk about the demon, which eliminated most of the twentieth century. â€Å"So,† Jenny said, â€Å"do you like Italian food?† â€Å"Yep,† Travis said. They drove in silence the rest of the way to the restaurant. It was a warm night and the Toyota had no air conditioning. Jenny didn't dare roll down the window and risk blowing her hair. She had spent an hour styling and pinning it back so that it fell in long curls to the middle of her back. When she began to perspire, she remembered that she still had two wads of toilet paper tucked under her arms to stop the bleeding from shaving cuts. For the next few minutes all she could think of was getting to a restroom where she could remove the spotted wads. She decided not to mention it. The restaurant, the Old Italian Pasta Factory, was housed in an old creamery building, a remnant of the time when Pine Cove's economy was based on livestock rather than tourism. The concrete floors remained intact, as did the corrugated steel roof. The owners had taken care to preserve the rusticity of the structure, while adding the warmth of a fireplace, soft lighting, and the traditional red-and-white tablecloths of an Italian restaurant. The tables were small but comfortably spaced, and each was decorated with fresh flowers and a candle. The Pasta Factory, it was agreed, was the most romantic restaurant in the area. As soon as the hostess seated them, Jenny excused herself to the restroom. â€Å"Order whatever wine you want,† she said, â€Å"I'm not picky.† â€Å"I don't drink, but if you want some†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"No, that's fine. It'll be a nice change.† As soon as Jenny left, the waitress – an efficient-looking woman in her thirties – came to the table. â€Å"Good evening, sir. What can I bring you to drink this evening?† She pulled her order pad out of her pocket in a quick, liquid movement, like a gunslinger drawing a six-shooter. A career waitress, Travis thought. â€Å"I thought I'd wait for the lady to return,† he said. â€Å"Oh, Jenny. She'll have an herbal tea. And you want, let's see†¦Ã¢â‚¬  She looked him up and down, crossed-referenced him, pigeonholed him, and announced, â€Å"You'll have some sort of imported beer, right?† â€Å"I don't drink, so†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"I should have known.† The waitress slapped her forehead as if she'd just caught herself in the middle of a grave error, like serving the salad with plutonium instead of creamy Italian. â€Å"Her husband is a drunk; it's only natural that she'd go out with a nondrinker on the rebound. Can I bring you a mineral water?† â€Å"That would be fine,† Travis said. The waitress's pen scratched, but she did not look at the order pad or lose her â€Å"we aim to please† smile. â€Å"And would you like some garlic bread while you're waiting?† â€Å"Sure,† Travis said. He watched the waitress walk away. She took small, quick, mechanical steps, and was gone to the kitchen in an instant. Travis wondered why some people seemed to be able to walk faster than he could run. They're professionals, he thought. Jenny took five minutes to get all the toilet paper unstuck from her underarms, and there had been an embarrassing moment when another woman came into the restroom and found her before the mirror with her elbow in the air. When she returned to the table, Travis was staring over a basket of garlic bread. She saw the herbal tea on the table and said, â€Å"How did you know?† â€Å"Psychic, I guess,† he said. â€Å"I ordered garlic bread.† â€Å"Yes,† she said, seating herself. They stared at the garlic bread as if it were a bubbling caldron of hemlock. â€Å"You like garlic bread?† she asked. â€Å"Love it. And you?† â€Å"One of my favorites,† she said. He picked up the basket and offered it to her. â€Å"Have some?† â€Å"Not right now. You go ahead.† â€Å"No thanks, I'm not in the mood.† He put the basket down. The garlic bread lay there between them, steaming with implications. They, of course, must both eat it or neither could. Garlic bread meant garlic breath. There might be a kiss later, maybe more. There was just too damn much intimacy in garlic bread. They sat in silence, reading the menu; she looking for the cheapest entree, which she had no intention of eating; and he, looking for the item that would be the least embarrassing to eat in front of someone. â€Å"What are you going to have?† she asked. â€Å"Not spaghetti,† he snapped. â€Å"Okay.† Jenny had forgotten what dating was like. Although she couldn't remember for sure, she thought that she might have gotten married to avoid ever having to go through this kind of discomfort again. It was like driving with the emergency brake set. She decided to release the brake. â€Å"I'm starved. Pass the garlic bread.† Travis smiled. â€Å"Sure.† He passed it to her, then took a piece for himself. They paused in midbite and eyed each other across the table like two poker players on the bluff. Jenny laughed, spraying crumbs all over the table. The evening was on. â€Å"So, Travis, what do you do?† â€Å"Date married women, evidently.† â€Å"How did you know?† â€Å"The waitress told me.† â€Å"We're separated.† â€Å"Good,† he said, and they both laughed. They ordered, and as dinner progressed they found common ground in the awkwardness of the situation. Jenny told Travis about her marriage and her job. Travis made up a history of working as a traveling insurance salesman with no real ties to home or family. In a frank exchange of truth for lies, they found they liked each other – were, in fact, quite taken with one another. They left the restaurant arm in arm, laughing. 15 RACHEL Rachel Henderson lived alone in a small house that lay amid a grove of eucalyptus trees at the edge of the Beer Bar cattle ranch. The house was owned by Jim Beer, a lanky, forty-five-year-old cowboy who lived with his wife and two children in a fourteen-room house his grandfather had built on the far side of the ranch. Rachel had lived on the ranch for five years. She had never paid any rent. Rachel had met Jim Beer in the Head of the Slug Saloon when she first arrived in Pine Cove. Jim had been drinking all day and was feeling the weight of his rugged cowboy charisma when Rachel sat down on the bar stool next to him and put a newspaper on the bar. â€Å"Well, darlin', I'm damned if you're not a fresh wind on a stale pasture. Can I buy you a drink?† The banjo twang in Jim's accent was pure Oklahoma, picked up from the hands that had worked the Beer Bar when Jim was a boy. Jim was the third generation of Beers to work the ranch and would probably be the last. His teenage son, Zane Grey Beer, had decided early on that he would rather ride a surfboard than a horse. That was part of the reason that Jim was drinking away the afternoon at the Slug. That, and the fact that his wife had just purchased a new Mercedes turbo-diesel wagon that cost the annual net income of the Beer Bar Ranch. Rachel unfolded the classified section of the Pine Cove Gazette on the bar. â€Å"Just an orange juice, thanks. I'm house hunting today.† She curled one leg under herself on the bar stool. â€Å"You don't know anybody that has a house for rent, do you?† Jim Beer would look back on that day many times in the years to come, but he could never quite remember what had happened next. What he did remember was driving his pickup down the back road into the ranch with Rachel following behind in an old Volkswagen van. From there his memory was a montage of images: Rachel naked on the small bunk, his turquoise belt buckle hitting the wooden floor with a thud, silk scarves tied around his wrists, Rachel bouncing above him – riding him like a bronco – climbing back into his pickup after sundown, sore and sweaty, leaning his forehead on the wheel of the truck and thinking about his wife and kids. In the five years since, Jim Beer had never gone near the little house on the far side of the ranch. Every month he penciled the rent collected into a ledger, then deposited cash from his poker fund in the business checking account to cover it. A few of his friends had seen him leave the Head of the Slug with Rachel that afternoon. When they saw him again, they ribbed him, made crude jokes, and asked pointed questions. Jim answered the jibes by pushing his summer Stetson back on his head and saying: â€Å"Boys, all I got to say is that male menopause is a rough trail to ride.† Hank Williams couldn't have sung it any sadder. After Jim left that evening Rachel picked several gray hairs from the bunk's pillow. Around the hairs she carefully tied a single red thread, which she knotted twice. Two knots were enough for the bond she wanted over Jim Beer. She placed the tiny bundle in a babyfood jar, labeled it with a marking pen, and stored it away in a cupboard over the kitchen sink. Now the cupboard was full of jars, each one containing a similar bundle, each bundle tied with a red thread. The number of knots in the thread varied. Three of the bundles were tied with four knots. These contained the hair of men Rachel had loved. Those men were long gone. The rest of Rachel's house was decorated with objects of power: eagle feathers, crystals, pentagrams, and tapestries embroidered with magic symbols. There was no evidence of a past in Rachel's house. Any photos she had of herself had been taken after she arrived in Pine Cove. People who knew Rachel had no clue as to where she had lived or who she had been before she came to town. They knew her as a beautiful, mysterious woman who taught aerobics for a living. Or they knew her as a witch. Her past was an enigma, which was just the way she wanted it. No one knew that Rachel had grown up in Bakersfield, the daughter of an illiterate oil-field worker. They didn't know that she had been a fat, ugly little girl who spent most of her life doing degrading things for disgusting men so that she might receive some sort of acceptance. Butterflies do not wax nostalgic about the time they spent as caterpillars. Rachel had married a crop-duster pilot who was twenty years her senior. She was eighteen at the time. It happened in the front seat of a pickup truck in the parking lot of a roadhouse outside of Visalia, California. The pilot, whose name was Merle Henderson, was still breathing hard and Rachel was washing the foul taste out of her mouth with a lukewarm Budweiser. â€Å"If you do that again, I'll marry you,† Merle gasped. An hour later they were flying over the Mojave desert, heading for Las Vegas in Merle's Cessna 152. Merle came at ten thousand feet. They were married under a neon arch in a ramshackle, concrete-block chapel just off the Vegas strip. They had known each other exactly six hours. Rachel regarded the next eight years of her life as her term on the wheel of abuse. Merle Henderson deposited her in his house trailer by the landing strip and kept her there. He allowed her to visit town once a week to go to the laundromat and the grocery store. The rest of her time was spent waiting on or waiting for Merle and helping him work on his planes. Each morning Merle took off in the crop duster, taking with him the keys to the pickup. Rachel spent the days cleaning up the trailer, eating, and watching television. She grew fatter and Merle began to refer to her as his fat little mama. What little self-esteem she had drained away and was absorbed by Merle's overpowering male ego. Merle had flown helicopter gunships in Vietnam and he still talked about it as the happiest time in his life. When he opened the tanks of insecticide over a field of lettuce, he imagined he was releasing air-to-ground missiles into a Vietnamese village. The Army had sensed a destructive edge in Merle, Vietnam had honed it to razor sharpness, and it had not dulled when he came home. Until he married Rachel, he released his pent-up violence by starting fights in bars and flying with dangerous abandon. With Rachel waiting for him at home, he went to bars less often and released his aggression on her in the form of constant criticism, verbal abuse, and finally, beatings. Rachel bore the abuse as if it were a penance sent down by God for the sin of being a woman. Her mother had endured the same sort of abuse from her father, with the same resignation. It was just the way things worked. Then, one day, while Rachel was waiting at the laundromat for Merle's shirts to dry, a woman approached her. It was the day after a particularly vicious beating and Rachel's face was bruised and swollen. â€Å"It's none of my business,† the woman said. She was tall and stately and in her mid-forties. She had a way about her that frightened Rachel, a presence, but her voice was soft and strong. â€Å"But when you get some time, you might read this.† She held out a pamphlet to Rachel and Rachel took it. The title was The Wheel of Abuse. â€Å"There are some numbers in the back that you can call. Everything will be okay,† the woman said. Rachel thought it a strange thing to say. Everything was okay. But the woman had impressed her, so she read the pamphlet. It talked about human rights and dignity and personal power. It spoke to Rachel about her life in a way that she had never thought possible. The Wheel of Abuse was her life story. How did they know? Mostly it talked about courage to change. She kept the pamphlet and hid it away in a box of tampons under the bathroom sink. It stayed there for two weeks. Until the morning she ran out of coffee. She could hear the sound of Merle's plane disappearing in the distance as she stared into the mirror at the bloody hole where her front teeth used to be. She dug out the pamphlet and called one of the numbers on the back. Within a half hour two women arrived at the trailer. They packed Rachel's belongings and drove her to the shelter. Rachel wanted to leave a note for Merle, but the two women insisted that it was not a good idea. For the next three weeks Rachel lived at the shelter. The women at the shelter cared for her. They gave her food and understanding and affection, and in return they asked only that she acknowledge her own dignity. When she made the call to Merle to tell him where she was, they all stood by her. Merle promised that it would all change. He missed her. He needed her. She returned to the trailer. For a month Merle did not hit her. He did not touch her at all. He didn't even speak to her. The women at the shelter had warned her about this type of abuse: the withdrawal of affection. When she brought it up to Merle one evening while he was eating, he threw a plate in her face. Then he proceeded to give her the worst beating of her life. Afterward he locked her outside the trailer for the night. The trailer was fifteen miles from the nearest neighbor, so Rachel was forced to cower under the front steps to escape the cold. She was not sure she could walk fifteen miles. In the middle of the night Merle opened the door and shouted, â€Å"By the way, I ripped the phone out, so don't waste your time thinking about it.† He slammed and locked the door. When the sun broke in the east, Merle reappeared. Rachel had crawled under the trailer, where he could not reach her. He lifted the plastic skirting and shouted to her, â€Å"Listen, bitch, you'd better be here when I get home or you'll get worse.† Rachel waited in the darkness under the trailer until she heard the biplane roar down the strip. She climbed out and watched the plane climb gradually into the distance. Although it hurt her face, and the cuts on her mouth split open, she couldn't help smiling. She had discovered her personal power. It lay hidden under the trailer in a five-gallon asphalt can, now half full of aviation grade motor oil. A policeman came to the trailer that afternoon. His jaw was set with the stoic resolve of a man who knows he has an unpleasant task to perform and is determined to do it, but when he saw Rachel sitting on the steps of the trailer, the color drained from his face and he ran to her. â€Å"Are you all right?† Rachel could not speak. Garbled sounds bubbled from her broken mouth. The policeman drove her to the hospital in his cruiser. Later, after she had been cleaned up and bandaged, the policeman came to her room and told her about the crash. It seemed that Merle's biplane lost power after a pass over a field. He was unable to climb fast enough to avoid a high-tension tower and flaming bits of Merle were scattered across a field of budding strawberries. Later, at the funeral, Rachel would comment, â€Å"It was how he would have wanted to go.† A few weeks later a man from the Federal Aviation Administration came around the trailer asking questions. Rachel told him that Merle had beat her, then had stormed out to the plane and taken off. The F.A.A. concluded that Merle, in his anger, had forgotten to check out his plane thoroughly before taking off. No one ever suspected Rachel of draining the oil out of the plane.