Argumentative Synthesis

In Mr. Siemiesz’s part he clarified about the National Security Consequences of U. S Oil Dependence and how it could be fixed and changed for the wellbeing of the nation; Mr. Siemiesz laid out explicit focuses or steps the nation could take to roll out those improvements he plot in the part. â€Å"Those significant vitality providers from Russia to Iraq to Venezuela have been progressively capable and ready to utilize their assets to pressure their vital and political objectives.That these country’s are expending less oil less then the entirety of different nations particularly the United States. The Fact is that the U. S. makes up to 4. 6% of the world’s populace yet utilizes 25% of the world’s oil. So the test of this is throughout the following quite a long while the U. S. requirements to back off and quit devouring a great deal of Oil and ideally find better approaches to discover energy†. In Mr. Franco’s section â€Å"205 approaches to spare the Earth† discloses a few different ways to spare the planet; the creator of the part Thomas L. Friedman talks in his article about the word â€Å"Green† and how that term is utilized, he proceeded in the article to state that individuals need to discover approaches to improve the earth and suggested that it is to the greatest advantage of the world to safeguard the world he goes into ways for instance like residents of the world ought to being reusing and to help decorate the planet.Mr. Franco’s section reasons that the nations of the world need to learn better approaches to improve the earth for everybody. The essential suggestion behind the study of environmental change is so solidly established in the laws of material science that no sensible individual can contest it. Every single other thing being equivalent, including carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphereâ€by, for instance, consuming a huge number of huge amounts of oil, coal and common gas†will make it warm up. That, as the Nobel Prizeâ€winning scientist Svante Arrhenius initially clarified in 1896, is on the grounds that CO2 is generally straightforward to obvious light from the sun, which warms the planet during the day.But it is moderately murky to infrared, which the earth attempts to reradiate again into space around evening time. In the event that the planet were a featureless, monochromatic billiard ball without mountains, seas, vegetation and polar ice tops, a consistently rising centralization of CO2 would mean a consistently warming earth†. The earth’s temperature can go up and devastate the polar ice tops and slaughters a ton of fish and raise the water and flood states. Harvests are going to dry out so we can’t eat anything.People are exploiting it and obliterating our planet. â€Å"The Greenhouse Effect is likewise contrasting with an Earth-wide temperature boost that it is a procedure by which warm radiation from a planetary surfa ce is consumed by environmental ozone depleting substances and is re-emanated every which way. Since part of this re-radiation is back towards the surface, vitality is moved to the surface and the lower atmosphere†. Accordingly, the temperature there is higher than it would be if direct warming by sun based radiation were the main warming mechanism.Global warming of the Earth's surface and lower air is accepted to be the consequence of a reinforcing of the nursery impact for the most part because of human-created increments in climatic ozone depleting substances by which warm radiation from a planetary surface is consumed by environmental ozone depleting substances and is re-transmitted every which way. Since part of this re-radiation is back towards the surface, vitality is moved to the surface and the lower air. In Mr. Anderson’s part discloses to the peruser how Oil is basic to the U. S. Economy and how their aren’t any suitable choices that the creator accept s will set the United States on the way to vitality freedom; The Author Price kept on saying that â€Å"politicians and hippie misdirected Americans about the real factors of vitality which lead to enactment that harms America in the worldwide marketplace† Price accepts that they genuinely don’t comprehend what is happening with regards to the earth and he kept saying that is the reason the United States is so reliable on remote oil.Mr. Anderson’s section closes with the accompanying â€Å"price concedes American imports of unrefined are high however observes no plausible other option. The interest for vitality in America is basically extraordinary and oil is essentially to significant for the economy†.

Americas racial front Essay Example for Free

Americas racial front Essay This sacred writing, taken from Matthew 15:8, signifies immaculately what was, what is, yet ideally what won't generally be the situation of Americas racial front. In 1964, a Civil Rights Act was passed prohibiting isolation in schools and other open spots. Following its section, outright demonstrations of prejudice were no longer endured in the United States. This implied to absolute racial slurs, and freely affirm ones concurrence with racial generalizations came to be viewed as offensive or politically incorrect†. Along these lines, however in more incognito structures than in times past, bigotry yet pops up. Maybe this is on the grounds that America, however shrouded in the excellent piece of clothing we allude to as fairness, is yet recolored with the wrongdoing of bigotry. This reality is generally clear in the very places in which it was initially prohibited. One of the numerous reasons for which this law was passed was to forestall age, sex, and racial segregation in the field of medicinal services. Lamentably, in light of the fact that segregation is certainly not a pointless issue, yet rather a genuine worry because of its systematization, old individuals have kicked the bucket in enormous numbers due doctors who didn't hold their mend in sufficiently high respect to follow legitimate (however now and again, inconvenient) strategy. Also, gay people are frequently experience repulsive bedside habits from specialists who can't help contradicting the manner by which they’ve picked to live their lives, and tragically African American men, ladies, and youngsters are continually exposed to inferior consideration just because of the shade of their skin. This revolting picture is in no way like the quite one painted by America for others to see.

When it Rains

When it Rains Just two and a half weeks and freshman year is over. Ill spare you the Oh the memories, it went by so fast, if only I had more time crap and skip straight to what the end of the semester at MIT is actually like: STRESSFUL! Just like in high school, a favorite strategy of professors is to assign tests right before finals (to minimize the amount of new material between the last test and the final), meaning I had an 18.03 test a week ago and an 8.02 test this week. Actually, instead of putting these into paragraph form, let me do a quick rundown of what Im doing and what stuff is due: Wednesday 8.02 PSET due (havent started) 2.001 PSET due (halfway there!) Powerpoint for Toy Design (havent started) Thursday UROP Toy Lab (work on presentation/build toys) Friday 18.03 PSET due (havent started) UROP Meeting Saturday Work on Toy Design all day Sunday Work on Toy Design all day Monday Work on Toy Design all day Tuesday Toy Design Presentations So, lets see, where does that put me? Ive got a physics test I havent studied for, a 2 PSETS I havent started, a presentation due tomorrow that I havent touched, and five toys to help build and present in exactly one week (seriously, Toy Design is freaking me out right now). But wait, theres more! Ill save the full story for later because its ongoing, but I still havent taken my pre-employment drug test for Hasbro so I need to find time for that. Oh, and did I mention that last night the hard drive on my computer randomly died. Thats right, just went away. I spent 5 hours running diagnostics and talking to tech support this morning trying to figure out what happened before we finally worked it out such that Ill get a new hard drive mailed to me, completely clean. Just one more thing to add to how busy I already am, rebuilding my computer. Ill have to get Microsoft Office and Mathematica shipped to me from home, Ill have to reinstall Dreamweaver, Portal, SecureFX, the MIT VPN, replace all my bookmarks in Firefox, change all of my user settings around, install Matlab and SolidWorks again, get iTunes up and running, and everything else necessary to restore my computer to its original state. Do I have time for any of this? Right, two weeks before finals, hardly! IHTFP much? Yes methinks, back to tooling . . .

Religious Views On Euthanasia And Assisted Suicide

Daniel Kessler Professor Brislen GREL 101 15 November 2014 Religious Views on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide Throughout the millennia since the origin of man, technology has continuously evolved contributing to a longer life expectancy among humans. Now, even terminally ill patients can be kept alive by medications and machines. These life saving devices also carry the potential to kill a human with little effort or time. The debate has arisen as to whether people have the â€Å"right to die† or often referred to dying with their dignity. The modern dictionary defines the right to die as, â€Å"a person s right to refuse extraordinary life-sustaining measures intended to prolong life artificially when the person is deemed by his or her physicians to be terminally or incurably ill†(right-to-die). As the questions circling these methods of killing grow, religious groups are beginning to take stances on the issue. Two of the largest religions in the world, Buddhism and Hinduism, have denounced the idea of death with dignity but f or different reasons. While neither religion is a supporter of the right to die, the rejections are not unanimous for either group. The history and core beliefs of each religion can help one understand why Buddhists and Hindus are against the concept of assisted suicide. Hinduism is the older of the two religions with its origination believed to be around 2500 B.C.E and some think it’s twice as old (V). Within Hinduism, there is no central founder and HindusShow MoreRelated Euthanasia Essay - Religious Views on Assisted Suicide1212 Words   |  5 PagesOfficial Religious Views on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   This essay is dedicated to the expression of the various official views of religious bodies within our nation. Most major denominations are represented. These religions have long been the custodians of the truth, serving to check the erratic and unpredictable tendencies of political, judicial and social bodies which would have Americans killing off their elderly and handicapped.    The National Association of EvangelicalsRead MoreEuthanasia Essay : Euthanasia And Euthanasia863 Words   |  4 PagesThis is why Euthanasia is important and summarizing the research that I found on Euthanasia. Euthanasia is important because there is a lot of arguments about Euthanasia. Some people support it and some people do not support Euthanasia (Euthanasia and assisted suicide- Arguments). Euthanasia allows people to be free from physical pain. It is the hastening of death of a patient to prevent further sufferings (Euthanasia Revisited). The religious argument states God chooses when human life ends. EuthanasiaRead More Assisted Suicide Or Euthanasia Essay1709 Words   |  7 Pages ASSISTED SUICIDE or euthanasia On July 26, 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld decisions in New York and Washington State that criminalized assisted suicide. As of April 1999, physicians-assisted suicide is illegal in all but a couple of states. Over thirty states have established laws prohibiting assisted suicide, and of those who don’t have statues, a number of them prohibit it through common law. In Michigan, Jack Kevorkian was initially charged with violating the state statue. HeRead MoreThe Euthanasia And Assisted Suicide1505 Words   |  7 Pageshave an assisted suicide death, which could cause several issue with the family members. Or if the child of the ill or elderly parent has to decide whether their mom or dad should go forward with active euthanasia, could also cause some issues amongst the family. Euthanasia and assisted suicide is a way for family members and friends to be able to say their goodbyes to their loved one and know that they won’t be suffering for much longer. First, this essay is going to explore what euthanasia and assistedRead MoreIs Euthanasia A Lethal Injection?1269 Words   |  6 Pagesto death, veterinarians will inform the owner on options of euthanasia or â€Å"putting the pet to sleep.† While the owner officially has to make the decision of putting the pet out of it’s pain or misery with a lethal injection. In the case of humans, rather than animals, whether or not a lethal injection should be given is a highly argued ethical and economical matter. In this paper, peoples’ cultures and how they affect the view of euthanasia, will be discussed along with the cost of medical proceduresRead MoreArgumentative Essay801 Words   |  4 PagesAcross the nation and world assisted suicide is an issue that has been gaining attention for several years. With famous cases such as Jack Kevorkian it has become a household term and everyone has an opinion. There are strong cases on both sides , but the bottom line is while it may sound good for the present, it is not for the future. Assisted Suicide should not be legalized in Alabama as the negative outcomes far exceed the positive outcomes in the areas of impact on society, politics and medicalRead MoreEssay on Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia911 Words   |  4 PagesAssisted suicide brings a debate that involves professional, legal and ethical issues about the value of the liberty versus the value of life. However, before conceive an opinion about this topic is necessary know deeply its concept. Assisted suicide is known as the act of ending with the life of a terminal illness patients for end with their insupportable pain. Unlike euthanasia, the decision is not made by the doctor and their families, but by the patient. Therefore, doctors should be able to assistRead MoreEthics of Euthanasia Essay1475 Words   |  6 Pagestype of relief from this hardship, even if that relief is suicide. Euthanasia or assisted suicid e is where a physician would give a patient an aid in dying. â€Å"Assisted suicide is a controversial medical and ethical issue based on the question of whether, in certain situations, Medical practioners should be allowed to help patients actively determine the time and circumstances of their death† (Lee). â€Å"Arguments for and against assisted suicide (sometimes called the â€Å"right to die† debate) are complicatedRead MoreThe Ethical Dilemmas Of Euthanasia Essay1638 Words   |  7 PagesThe Ethical Dilemmas of Euthanasia in Canada with the Legalization of Physician-Assisted Suicide This systematic analysis of the professional literature will explore the ethical dilemmas that Canadian medical professionals face while considering euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide, the latter of which was made legal in Canada on June 17, 2016 (Chochinov and Frazee, 2016). This paper will discusses the conflicts that healthcare professionals are faced with when looking at the quality of lifeRead MoreEssay on Euthanasia: We All Have the Right to Die1306 Words   |  6 Pages Physician-Assisted Suicide, or Euthanasia, is a serious issue, and it affects people throughout all walks of life. From teenagers with angst, to older adults feeling hopeless in their life, to the elderly suffering from terminal illnesses, suicide pervades throughout their thought processes as an alternative to their emotionally and physically pervasive situations. Euthanasia, or physician-assisted suicide, has a history dating back to the seventeenth century. Only recently has it become as controversia l

Tools for Drawing Simple Floor Plans

Sometimes all a homeowner needs is a simple floor plan to help with remodeling and decorating projects. You might think that you could find some easy tools on the web, but first youll have to wade through all of the software intended for 3D design. These programs are overkill for a floor plan. Fortunately, there are a variety of easy-to-use online tools to help draw simple floor plans. Determine Your Needs Why do you want to draw a floor plan? A landlord may want to show the setup of an apartment to a prospective tenant. A realtor may use a floor plan to sell a property. A homeowner may draw a floor plan to better formulate remodeling ideas or to decide where to place furniture. In all of these cases, a floor plan is used for communication—to visually express the use of space. Dont think that a floor plan will let you build a house or make extensive remodeling decisions. A floor plan sketch can communicate spatial ideas from a homeowner to a contractor, but the person doing the construction is the one who knows where the bearing walls and shear walls are located. Floor plans suggest general ideas, not detailed specifications. Use the Right Tool A good home design software program will let you create some pretty fancy renderings with elevation drawings and 3D views. But what if you only require a general idea of where the walls and windows go? In that case, you dont really need high-powered software just to draw these shapes and lines. Using inexpensive (or free) apps and online tools, you can whip together a simple floor plan—the digital equivalent of a napkin sketch—and share your plan on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social networks. Some tools will even let you collaborate with family and friends, providing an online page that everyone can edit. Mobile Apps for Drawing Floor Plans You wont need a computer to draw floor plans if you have a smartphone or tablet. A few of the most popular floor plan applications work on mobile devices. Browse the applications store for your device, and youll find a variety of options: RoomScan by Locometric would be fun to use even if you didnt need to draw a floor plan. Simply hold your iPhone or iPad up to an existing wall, wait for the beep, and calculations are made using the GPS and gyroscope functions. Like all apps, RoomScan is an evolving work-in-progress, moving toward its marketing goal of being The App That Draws Floor Plans By Itself.MagicPlan uses the camera and gyroscope functions of your mobile device to turn a 3D room into a 2D floor plan. The app also includes a tool to help you estimate the costs and materials for a project.Stanley Smart Connect, from Stanley Black Decker, is one of the first mobile apps by a major manufacturer. The Bluetooth-enabled program allows you to take measurements and design room plans using your smartphone. Online Tools for Drawing Floor Plans If youd rather work on a computer, the possibilities are almost limitless. Drawing floor plans on a big screen can make it easier to fiddle with the design. Online tools will let you create scale drawings to envision your remodeling and decorating projects—and most of these tools are free: FloorPlanner.com is free and allows users to create and save 2D and 3D designs. Pro and business memberships include additional tools for a fee.Gliffy Floor Plan Creator is a simple tool for drawing 2D floor plans that allows users to move around furniture and decor.SmartDraw is a graphics tool for creating flow charts, graphs, floor plans, and other diagrams.RoomSketcher is made for creating 2D and 3D floor plans. Basic features are free, but you have to pay a fee to use the advanced tools.EZ Blueprint is a simple program for Windows computers that allows users to generate basic floor plans and layouts. Designing on the Cloud Many of todays floor plan programs and applications are cloud-based. Simply, cloud-based means that the floor plan you design is stored on someone elses computer, not your own. When you use a cloud-based tool, you provide details such as your name, email address, and where you live. Never give out information that you feel violates your safety or privacy. Choose tools that youre comfortable with. As you explore cloud-based tools for drawing floor plans, also think about whether youd like to print out a copy of your design. Some cloud-based tools can be viewed online only. If youd like to make copies, look for software or apps that will allow you to download projects onto your own computer.   Despite these concerns, theres a lot to love about drawing on the cloud. Cloud-based programs and applications are wonderful for creating designs that can be easily shared. Some tools allow multiple users to work on the same design, so you can ask friends and family to make suggestions and changes.

Deconstructing redemption in The Road Free Essays

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

Vizio Inc Case free essay sample

VIZIO is founded in 2002 by William Wang, with a startup capital of $600,000. The company produces high-quality flat-panel televisions at affordable prices. From 2002 to 2007, it realizes continuous growth and expansion. VIZIOR earns razor-thin margins, at a time when other famous brands such as Sony and Samsung still focus on high-end customers and charge a very high price for flat-panel television. By the end of 2007, VIZIO reached $1. 9 billion in revenue and shipped approximately 2800000 television sets. Its business model is based largely on the volume sales with discount retailers and the extremely low cost of operating expenses. However, things have been changed and VIZIO is facing challenges now. First, in 2007, Sony and Samsung introduced low-end and entry-level TV lines to compete directly against VIZIO’s products. At the same time, the whole industry has experienced price cutting and intense competition. Some of the companies were forced to exit from this market, such as Syntax-Brillian and Phillips, with a looming market expectation for 2008 after the financial crisis. Secondly, VIZIO’s market share of shipment for some models fell dramatically in the second quarter of 2008. It needs more finance if VIZIO wants to compete with giant brands in this industry at this time, in order to get sustainable profits. Analyzing: For sustainable growth, VIZIO needs to maintain its existing competitive advantage: keeping operation cost at a minimum level, while at the same time, carefully managing supply chain relationship, expanding product lines, building positive brand recognition, and keeping marching into selected international markets. Manage supply chain relationship with Amtran, while seeking other possible partnership, to decrease its dependent on Amtran. VIZIO uses a contract manufacturing model to produce flat-panel televisions. Amtran provided about 80% of VIZIO’s procurement and assembly work, and other partners all together provide the remaining 20%. However, Amtran also manufactures televisions for other companies such as Sony and Sharp. And in 2008, it formed a joint venture with LG Display. Before the joint venture, VIZIO contributes 80% to Amtran’s profits. However, by the changes in Amtran, the interest conflicts may jeopardize the future relationship between VIZIO and Amtran. In order to decrease this risk, VIZIO could start develop other reliable partnerships, and move some portion of production from Amtran to other partners. However, increasing the number of partners may lead to increasing cost for VIZIO, since there will not be a large bargaining power over each manufacturer. To address this incidental problem, the best way for VIZIO is to figure out a way to increase total number of shipments. Therefore, each manufacturer can capture more profits through mass production. Expand products lines to increase its competitive advantage. For now, VIZIO has four television product lines: 50’’ and Bigger, 42’’ to 49’’, 32’’ to 41’’ and 20’’ to 31’’, a total of 27 different kinds of products from lowest $399. 99 to highest $1699. 99 per set (from Exhibit 2). If VIZIO expand its product lines, and provide some other products such as TV or digital accessories, they can have large profits. In fact, VIZIO has already begun to produce accessories and even customized some models for its customers. Build brand recognition and increase advertising budget. The early success for VIZIO is that they took advantage of the pricing umbrella to establish a foothold. It provide the same high-quality flat-panel televisions while charges much less than other brand companies, such as Sony, Samsung. At the end of 2007, Samsung had a profit margin of 13. 4%, and this number rose to 14. 0% at the end of 2008. While at the same time, Samsung’s advertising expenses was kept at a relatively high level (from Exhibit 11 and Exhibit 9). Therefore, there is a positive relation between the cost of advertising and the sales. From TV brand survey conducted by Core Strategies Dec. 30 2008, Brand contributes 44% to VIZIO’s profits. In 2008, at the time of financial crisis, VISIO still realized light profits, and 44% of them came from the brand recognition. This suggests that the early marketing strategies took effect and VISIO has to continue marketing and branding. If it didn’t put efforts on branding, in the declining market, it is difficulty to make profits, especially when many big giant companies began to compete against VIZIO in the low-end television market. Select international expansion regions and appropriate discount retailers to cooperate. So far, VIZIO has partnerships with BJ’s, Costco, Kmart, Sam’s, Sears, Target and Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has strongest growth, because in 2008, it is the only discount store that realizes a positive profit margin (from Exhibit 13). By region, from 2008 to 2013, Latin American and Middle East Africa has the strongest growth rate at approximately 30% per year. Next are China, Eastern Europe and Rest APAC. VIZIO should focus on these areas for the international expansion. Now, VIZIO has entered Japan and Canada through Costco, Sam’s and Wal-Mart, but Japan and Costco don’t show strong growth signal. Wal-Mart has the largest number of international stores and a very mature inventory management and delivery system. Therefore, if VIZIO partners with Wal-Mart, it could benefit from Wal-Mart’s developed system and easily adapt to the local environment. To finance the sustainable growth, VIZIO requires substantial money. William started VIZIO with $ 600000. After that, it received two 2004 investments from Amtran and Hon Hai, totaling $2 million. It generate positive profit and free cash flows over consecutive five years. For now, it uses Vendor Managed Inventory model to minimize its storage cost and inventory level. The cash cycle is shorter for customers with high credit ratings, such as Wal-Mart, than customers with low credit ratings. Its suppliers are willing to extend the accounts payable period for customers like Wal-Mart, and for low rating customers, VIZIO provides credit insurance. But considering the future making campaign as well as international expansion, it is requires more fund. These are two possible solutions to address this problem: Attract venture capital. VIZIO has a very good business model, and a prosperous bright future. With venture capital’s investment, it could grow faster with sufficient fund. Sell shares to partners or suppliers. This can strength their common interest and make sure suppliers will do their most to keep VIZIO growing. Conclusions: Generally speaking, VIZIO has large chances to continue its growth when it maintain its competitive advantage, seek sufficient fund by attracting venture capital and selling shares to partner companies, and handle well with all parts of relationships.