Free Essays on Living in a Lifeboat

In his 1974 paper titled â€Å"Living on a Lifeboat†, Garrett Hardin reduces growing populations and immigration to a metaphor of living in a lifeboat. The premise of the paper is that each country is like a lifeboat, only capable of handling a certain number of people. Once that capacity is reached, there runs a risk of upsetting the balance, and overturning the lifeboat, or society. If the lifeboat is already at capacity, then no more can be let on the boat, as well as no more can be born on the boat, until there occurs a death, creating a space for someone new. The United States is a lifeboat, and there are many people foundering in the ocean, wanting a chance to board our lifeboat, since it would yield a good, fruitful life. However, admitting many people would be detrimental to the health and success of the lifeboat. Of course, with this idea, there arises many ethical and moral issues, along with the practical. These can be looked at through many viewpoints, but t he most favorable one is the viewpoint of oneself, and your own survival. Since Hardin proposes that the United States lifeboat only give wisdom, not food, to other foundering lifeboats, we could incorporate the idea of one Jonathan Swift, and pass this wisdom onto other lifeboats, thus increasing their chances at survival. Hardin first observes that the people residing in the lifeboat could take a Christian or Marxist viewpoint of the whole matter. That is, try to help all of the people who are looking to join your lifeboat. If this were to occur, the occupancy of the lifeboat would soon far exceed the capacity of it, and it would sink, killing all aboard, including oneself. His second observation is that there is a limited number of empty spaces aboard the lifeboat. Thus a small number of people can be admitted to your lifeboat. But then arises the question, how do you decide who comes on. Is it a first come, first served basis, or should there be a sele... Free Essays on Living in a Lifeboat Free Essays on Living in a Lifeboat In his 1974 paper titled â€Å"Living on a Lifeboat†, Garrett Hardin reduces growing populations and immigration to a metaphor of living in a lifeboat. The premise of the paper is that each country is like a lifeboat, only capable of handling a certain number of people. Once that capacity is reached, there runs a risk of upsetting the balance, and overturning the lifeboat, or society. If the lifeboat is already at capacity, then no more can be let on the boat, as well as no more can be born on the boat, until there occurs a death, creating a space for someone new. The United States is a lifeboat, and there are many people foundering in the ocean, wanting a chance to board our lifeboat, since it would yield a good, fruitful life. However, admitting many people would be detrimental to the health and success of the lifeboat. Of course, with this idea, there arises many ethical and moral issues, along with the practical. These can be looked at through many viewpoints, but t he most favorable one is the viewpoint of oneself, and your own survival. Since Hardin proposes that the United States lifeboat only give wisdom, not food, to other foundering lifeboats, we could incorporate the idea of one Jonathan Swift, and pass this wisdom onto other lifeboats, thus increasing their chances at survival. Hardin first observes that the people residing in the lifeboat could take a Christian or Marxist viewpoint of the whole matter. That is, try to help all of the people who are looking to join your lifeboat. If this were to occur, the occupancy of the lifeboat would soon far exceed the capacity of it, and it would sink, killing all aboard, including oneself. His second observation is that there is a limited number of empty spaces aboard the lifeboat. Thus a small number of people can be admitted to your lifeboat. But then arises the question, how do you decide who comes on. Is it a first come, first served basis, or should there be a sele...

CORREGIDORA essays

CORREGIDORA essays Gayl Jones's Corregidora is not your typical response to a long and rather terrifying history of slavery in the Americas. Instead, it is an attempt to humanize the ugly experiences of older African-American generations. While on the surface, it appears another story focusing on the history of slavery in Americas; it is nonetheless a deeper and more complex analysis of that period in time. Ursa, is the protagonist of the novel, who is burdened by the painful history of her family and believes she is responsible for passing the stories on to the next generation, the way her mother and grandmother did. However since she has not experienced slavery in the way her ancestors did, Ursa relives those experiences through her music. For Ursa, music is her savior. She believes it can help her find the liberation from past that she seeks so ardently. However because of the fact that her ancestors including her mother and grandmother, constantly remind her of their past, Ursa is perpetually haunted by her family history. Music is important to her as she says in the novel, "I am Ursa Corregidora. I have tears for eyes. I was made to touch my past at an early age ... Let no one pollute my music. I will dig out their trumpets. I will pluck out their eyes" (77). Music is her sole means of redemption because in the absence of authentic records, Ursa felt her blues could the pain and suffering of her ancestors to next generations. Corregidora has both real and symbolic value in the book because on the one hand he is the person who destroyed the lives of Gram and Great Gram while on the other, he also symbolizes male legacy of chauvinism and exploitation that threatens the female freedom and existence. In the novel, Ursa is so intricately connected with her family history thatr everything that happens to her is linked with some past ugly experience of her ancestors. For example, when she becomes infertile ...

Capital Projects Recommendation 2 Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Capital Projects Recommendation 2 - Assignment Example Operating cash flows includes; sales revenue, cost of production, income before taxes, marginal tax rate, depreciation, increase in working capital. Terminal cash flow includes; decrease in working capital, salvage value, marginal income tax rate. Cost of capital evaluates the cost of borrowing to pay for the project. This value is set as the benchmark for the lowest possible return. Opportunity cost determines the cost for taking advantage of one option over another. Break-even point determines if the project would contribute to the growth of the company. Capital budgeting technique uses different formulas for analysis of financial values to determine if a company should proceed with the planned investment or not. These formulas contain various parameters, and they have specific concepts. These parameters are Net Present Value (NPV), Internal Rate of Return (IRR), and Payback method. Embedded concepts of these parameters helped me evaluating fully equipped facility cost. Capital budgeting technique requires calculating OCF. All three parameters; NPV, IRR, and Payback use OCF values. NPV evaluates present value of the future cash flows that the project generates during its life (â€Å"What is NPV†). In simple language if the value of money generated during the project life is higher that the initial investment, the project makes money. IRR determines (Mohr) the cost of return at which all cash inflows (revenues) equals the present value of cash outflows (initial investment plus any other expenses). In other way, it is the cost of capital at which NPV is zero. Hence, if IRR is higher than the cost of capital, the project is making money. Payback period calculates the length of the time it will take to get back company’s initial investment. In other words, this method defines how long would it take to get the investment money back. Theses three parameters tell me; (1) how long would it take to get the initial investment back, (2) how much money the

Things Fall Apart Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Things Fall Apart - Essay Example The fact that he has three wives in and of itself illustrates his misogynistic nature and attitude. He is terribly cruel to his son Nwoye, as he feels that Nwoye is not masculine enough and that he is feminine and weak. Nwoye begins to behave in more masculine ways to please his father Okonkwo, as anything less is simply unacceptable and can lead to a beating from his father. Okonkwo is a portrait of dominant male ideology as he causes his family a great deal of pain and suffering because of this ideology. Okonkwo is rarely able to display emotion and is depicted as first and foremost, seeking to be masculine and in control. He is depicted however, at one point in the story, as a concerned parent, when he ventures out looking for Ezinma, after she is taken by Chielo. The reader also sees throughout the piece, Okonkwo’s difficulty in dealing with change in his environment, especially from a racial point of view. White men are coming to his village and living among his clan, only to cause Okonkwo to feel threatened and then to finally feel defeated. This is understandable as the white settlers only seek to change the ways and beliefs of the natives of Nigeria. These expressions of anti-colonialism seem to reflect the ideas of Achebe as well, as a prevailing theme surrounding the colonists seems to be their inability to speak the language of the tribe. This is ultimately what prevents them from understanding the ways of the tribe. Interestingly, as much as Okonkwo opposes the whit e man and his religion (Christianity), his son Nwoye converts to this very religion. Certainly, this is an illustration on the conflicts that arose during colonization. The white men brought their religion and beliefs to the Igbo people, and certainly Okonkwo represented the institution of tradition and culture. Further evidence of this is the fact that Okonkwo participates in the death of Ikemefuna, the sacrificial boy from a neighboring village

Our Daily Bread Essay Example for Free

Our Daily Bread Essay Our Daily Bread, as the title suggests this is not about bread, as I hoped it was. Rather its about people earning their bread, their livelihood. The term ‘bread’ is derived from the larger term ‘bread-winner’ as the one who is the primary provider of the household, and the ‘daily bread’ is simply referring their daily livelihood. As my time spent in the US, I often used to wonder how the different food companies were able to produce mass amount of food to keep the population fed. This movie is the answer and the revelation of how food is produced in Europe and the Western hemisphere. The film starts off as we get a glimpse of daily sanitation rituals being carried off at a meat farm. The different scenes show us to transportation of livestock, machine assisted watering of plants, and a conveyor belt at a poultry farm where they separate the males from the female chickens (I know this as I have seen this done before in a different setting). The machinery at poultry farm shows precision and efficiency as it sorts the young chicks into moving bins. The vaccination routine is also machine assisted which increases efficiency and production for the poultry farm. After few seconds, the young chicks have grown and we are shown the worker feeding them. The shot transitions into a break room where the worker is on a break with bread and tea, all alone. Next, we get the scene from a vegetable farm. A tractor picks the potatoes from the ground. Next shot, the workers prepare and wear protective gears to apply pesticides and fertilizers to the plants. But most of the work is done by machine assistance, needing almost no human intervention. It seems as the vegetables are being grown inside a greenhouse setting which allows vegetables to be grown all year long, without any weather restrictions. The only human labour being done is picking of the ripened vegetables. After work, the worker seem to be enjoying a small break, again alone. Now we see a bull and a cow where it seems breeding is in process. A closer look and we find that the workers are actually collecting the sperm. We find the sperm is transferred to medical examinations, I dont know exact ly why but possibility could be to efficiently use the sperms to fertilize every fertile egg they can afford without any loss. And of course, we see a healthy calf being born. But it is pretty amusing to see how the cow was cut open and the calf was pulled out, how could that really be possible? How much medication could the animal be on since it wasn’t moving or making any noise as such? And are there any advantages of this type of birth for animal? Next, we see a series of shots of men in tractors who are doing farm work with machine assistance. This shows the efficiency that is earned by machine which helps humans achieve more with less time spent and more time to spend on luxury, or more work. We return back to the poultry farm, the egg farming room to be exact. The eggs are hatched and due to the design, they are conveniently accessible by the farmers to pick. A worker is shown to be holding a chicken as he walks around the egg farm, possibly to warn other hens who dont lay eggs. In actual note, he maybe was checking for chickens which are dead. In the next shot, the workers are transported to a huge plantation to harvest crops growing under the ground, only time where tractors arent used. This is possibly the first time where machine use is limited to just watering the plants. Now we are shown our way to a pig farm. They are transported on a line into a machine where they are slaughtered by a machine. The human labour is limited to keep the line moving and in order. The machines are also used for most of the heavy work as boiling the skin and dissecting the pigs open. The human job is limited to cleaning up whatever else the machines may have left out and separating internal parts. We are also shown the marvel of modern technology with a biplane is used to fertilize the crops. There are also shots of heavy machinery usage in farms. Then we see a moving harvest truck where the outside workers are picking the vegetables and inside simply packaging them. Now we move to a cow-ranch. The cows are milked by machines in a rotating carousel. The cows dont seem to mind so much, as it seems to be part of their daily routine. Next, a visit to the deep underground salt mines where machines are used to do most of the heavy work such as carrying out the salt from place to place and outside the mine itself. A transition moves from underground to underwater as we see a fish-farm where hundreds and hundreds of fishes are seen in a small area. This also makes it easier for the huge pipe to suck out the fishes from the water and into the boat. They are transported to a factory where humans align the fishes to feed into the machines. Apparently the machines havent learned to distinguish the fish head from the tail, yet. The fishes are cut and cleaned by series of machines and then moved onto another human where he puts them on another machine to move them to another section. Here, the worker seems pretty bored of the routine task he has, perhaps feel ing like the machine at this point because of his job task. Next we see bunch of workers cleaning the fish for final prep before shipping them out. Now we come to a pig-farm. The two series of shots seems interesting as the first represented insemination of pigs by tube and next shows the piglets born in captivity, just like ‘The Matrix’. Just like in the movies, they grow up and the next shot seems as if the male pigs were being castrated. One can only understand why so, as they dont want to overproduce and give out the employees any bonuses. Or maybe not. The next series of shots show how chicken and cattle are prepared for consumption; as they are killed by the machines with little or less human effort required in the process. The final shot shows the end of the day routine- how everything is cleaned and sanitized for the next day of work. Despite all this, the workers in all places couldnt wait for their daily bread, their hard earned break from their work. Perhaps the routine manner of their tasks has become so innate to them that they dont seem to mind how their own food is being produced. For me, it was a bit amusing and shocking to see the conditions of animals but maybe after a few more views, I wouldnt mind it either. This movie shows the heavy usage of machinery used in the production of food, be it salt, pigs, chicken, vegetables, fish, or pigs. It was also amusing, in a way, to see how breeding had gone into the next level by scientific usage to effectively get their result financially and also in economic ways to feed the ever growing world population. It seemed as almost if humans were not the only ones alienated from nature, but also the animals which were being artificially inseminated and mutilated against their wills. The workers didn’t seem to care much for what they were doing either, as long as it made their breads. It seemed as they had been trained to do this for so long that they were used to it- like machines with machine hearts and machine minds. In another view, the unnatural size of the bulls in the breeding house seemed as if they were so-much genetically engineered to produce the maximum amount of meat possible. Perhaps they had mixed something in the dry grass that was being blown into their small cages they were put-in. The growing population also has seemed to affect the unnatural process by which plants were grown with usages of pesticides and fertilizers. The use of greenhouses portrays, in a way, the plant’s alienation from nature as it was now possible to grow all plants in any weather or conditions. The absence of narration or subtitles leaves the movie-watcher to make their own conclusion and perspective. The filmmaker, as I understand, doesn’t want to change our habits but simply be aware of the ways in how the planet is being fed. If anything, this should be seen by as many people as possible to make them aware of the status of food production and the status of the subjects which are involved in the food production i.e. humans, plants and animals alike. I must say some of the scenes in the movie are quiet disturbing but that is the current status of our population and food production required to feed them.

Internet Access Essay -- Internet Web Cybespace Essays

Internet Access   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  It would be helpful to provide a brief historical summary of the Internet before jumping into the different means of accessing "The Net".   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The Internet was developed primarily by Vinton Cerf, an American computer scientist, in 1973 as a part of a United States Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency project managed by American Engineer, Robert Kahn. In 1984, the project was turned over to the private sector and to government research and scientific agencies for further development. In 1993, the Internet was turned over to the public and by early 1995 access was available in over 180 countries and there were over 30 million users. It is expected that 100 million computers will be connected to the public Internet by the year 2000.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The public Internet can be accessed in several different ways: through a LAN, by a host, terminal access or gateway access. A LAN is a Local Access Network where there are a group of computers and other devices that are spread over a relatively limited area and connected by a communications link. This also allows you to communicate with any other computer on the network. If you access by a host, it is usually done through a LAN or with telephone lines and modems combined with Internet software on a personal computer. Terminal access is usually done by a telephone line and a modem and it is used with terminal- emulation software on a personal computer. This also allows you to int...

Country Side

Country Side Freedom surrounds those who aspire to achieve lonesome from the rest of the world. The perfect getaway is something that most people deserve once in a while. Complete solitary from everything and everyone nothing but fields for miles and miles away. The country side has a lot to offer the spectacular view and stunning landscape. It doesn’t matter whether it is winter, spring, fall or summer because either of these seasons changes the fact of how admiring the view is from a far. I am a victim of this ignorance. I never realize how precious and beautiful the country side is until I saw Harvey George W. ainting, New England Landscape, at the Andersons Gallery in Beverly Hills that opens my eyes into larger sense of beauty and strength. Harvey George W. was known for his Techniques of Fly Tying Fishing. Harvey was born on November 14, 1911, in Dubois, Pennsylvania. His father Archibald accepted a job as a stock farmer in Lansdale, Pennsylvania. That’s where he got inspired by painting the New England from his childhood memories. While Harvey was in the farm he had learned so many things and to appreciate what was handed to him, he did not come from a wealthy income family and all he could have done is go by what his expectation were.His Father Archibald teaches him how fish by the stream right off the stream. Even more he was being afflatus by the nature that surrounded him. Harvey is not a well-known artist but more for his achievements at Penn State University. At Penn State he teaches Fishing Tying for the first Time in history and that class was accredited in 1947. Also he got offered to run in the Olympics but then he was diagnosed with pneumonia and did not get to compete. In my perspective view, seeing this painting of the country side makes me want to forget about life and go there to escape from the everyday basis.The scenery is breath taking. The tree that is located on the center left hand is perfected it reflects how privacy i s supposed to be like. The stack of hay behind the giant tree is a symbol of freedom. The hay represents how everyone who would like to be stress free can just hide behind a tree and forget about their existence. The farm town is far away like it’s supposed to be and endless fields. This portrait reminds me of my own family ranch in Mexico; it made me realize that I am taking that part of my life for granted. Country Side Country Side Freedom surrounds those who aspire to achieve lonesome from the rest of the world. The perfect getaway is something that most people deserve once in a while. Complete solitary from everything and everyone nothing but fields for miles and miles away. The country side has a lot to offer the spectacular view and stunning landscape. It doesn’t matter whether it is winter, spring, fall or summer because either of these seasons changes the fact of how admiring the view is from a far. I am a victim of this ignorance. I never realize how precious and beautiful the country side is until I saw Harvey George W. ainting, New England Landscape, at the Andersons Gallery in Beverly Hills that opens my eyes into larger sense of beauty and strength. Harvey George W. was known for his Techniques of Fly Tying Fishing. Harvey was born on November 14, 1911, in Dubois, Pennsylvania. His father Archibald accepted a job as a stock farmer in Lansdale, Pennsylvania. That’s where he got inspired by painting the New England from his childhood memories. While Harvey was in the farm he had learned so many things and to appreciate what was handed to him, he did not come from a wealthy income family and all he could have done is go by what his expectation were.His Father Archibald teaches him how fish by the stream right off the stream. Even more he was being afflatus by the nature that surrounded him. Harvey is not a well-known artist but more for his achievements at Penn State University. At Penn State he teaches Fishing Tying for the first Time in history and that class was accredited in 1947. Also he got offered to run in the Olympics but then he was diagnosed with pneumonia and did not get to compete. In my perspective view, seeing this painting of the country side makes me want to forget about life and go there to escape from the everyday basis.The scenery is breath taking. The tree that is located on the center left hand is perfected it reflects how privacy i s supposed to be like. The stack of hay behind the giant tree is a symbol of freedom. The hay represents how everyone who would like to be stress free can just hide behind a tree and forget about their existence. The farm town is far away like it’s supposed to be and endless fields. This portrait reminds me of my own family ranch in Mexico; it made me realize that I am taking that part of my life for granted.