The African American Term. Or Discrimination Essay

The African American Term. Or Discrimination - Essay Example His demand that he should be considered an African-American because he is an African and an American citizen sounds genuine at first glace. But Swarn reveals the issues related to such a proposition from the perspective of those who oppose it. The fact that Colin Powell, the son of Jamaican parents, and Barack Obama, the son of a Kenyan father and an African mother, have reached the pinnacles of US politics explains how the African immigrants have become an integral part of the black community. However, it remains to be seen whether the essentialist African-Americans would identify with them in all spheres. Mr. Alan Keyes, Obama’s Republican challenger for the Senate seat in Illinois had questioned Obama’s claim to be an African-American, stating that he lacks the consciousness that was formed by a heritage of slavery that the ancestors of African-Americans had gone through. Though Obama and Powell prefer to call themselves African-American, many of the children of Afri can Immigrants just prefer the term African, or Jamaican-African or Nigerian-African, depending on the places of their origin. Some others prefer the more generic term ‘black’ for their identity. Bobby Austin, who opposes the African immigrants being integrated to the category of African-Americans, explains that some people feared that â€Å"black immigrants and their children would snatch up the hard-won opportunities made possible by the civil rights movement†. Several surveys support this view, indicating that the children of black immigrants are making use of educational and employment opportunities in a greater number than African-Americans. Dr.Austin affirms that the suffering of the African-Americans that have lasted many decades is not at alleviated with the help of the civil rights movement, because the black immigrants pose a threat and hindrance to their social and cultural development. Mr. Obama’s view is that the African

An Inspector Calls Essay Example for Free

An Inspector Calls Essay Miss Sheila Birling, a prominent character in Priestlys play An Inspector Calls, undergoes many changes throughout the play. The audience and readers perspective towards her also alters. Sheila changes before our eyes from a little girl into a strong young woman. In the beginning, Sheila is described to us as being in her early twenties and very pleased with life. This gives us an impression that she is just a girl, who has not seen enough of the world yet and is very young in her thoughts. We see her as being very immature at first, addressing her parents as Mummy and Daddy. She is clearly a mummys girl who follows her parents instructions and orders For example, she meekly follows her mother to the drawing-room and leaves the men including her husband-to-be. Although she is engaged to Gerald Croft, Sheila places her husband-to-be on a pedestal, admiring him and calling h9im darling. She takes the engagement ring like a little girl would receive a new toy look, mummy! The way Sheila acts in the first part of the play makes her seem like someone who is soft, innocent and silly, or plain immature. After the Inspector arrives, our opinion towards her changes. After she confesses to the Inspector, Sheila breaks down. She feels very sorry for all the pain she has caused Eva Smith. The Inspector makes her feel responsible for using her wealth, importance and influence to get a truly innocent girl sacked from her last steady job. Sheila sobs and cries, like a child. However, our opinion really changes when she confronts Gerald. Sheila laughs hysterically, at the end of Act One, when she says, You fool. Of course he knows. And I hate to think what he knows that we dont know yet. This behaviour is rather like that of a teenager throwing a tantrum, showing her growing realisation and maturity. When Gerald begins to confess, Sheila shows a rebellious streak. She refuses to be led away by her parents who want her to be protected. This is like what the average adolescent would do when they wish to cross new territory. Sheila begins to control herself a little more rationally during Geralds interrogation Gerald falls off the high placing he was originally on as Sheila calls him by name rather than by some playful nickname.

Deletion Essay -- Biology, DNA

Deletion is a mutation in which a part of the chromosome or the DNA is absent or lost. It may be inherent, or it may be due to improper chromosomal crossing-over during meiosis. This deletion is responsible for the abnormalities in the patient. One of the known disorders seen due to deletion is the Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome. Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome (WHS), first described by Wolf et al[1] and Hirschhorn et al[2], results from the hemizygous deletion of the distal short arm of chromosome 4. Due to the complex and unmarked expression of this disorder, the WHS syndrome is presumed to be a contiguous gene syndrome with an indeterminate number of genes responsible for the phenotype i.e. a multigenic etiology. [3][4] The size of the terminal deletion may vary from a subtle 1.4Mb to a classic 30Mb [5]. Earlier genotype-phenotype correlation studies reveal that the main characteristic feature of WHS - the ‘Greek warrior helmet face’, is caused due to the hemizygosity of the WHSC1 gene located in the WHS critical region (WHSCR).[5] Various other genes are also located in the WHSCR which are responsible for most other phenotypic features. More precisely, the Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome critical region (WHSCR) is located at 4p16.3 region. Approximately 25% of the patients with WHS deletion in this region are not detectable by cytogenetic karyotyping [6]. Hence, FISH has to be performed. The prevalence of this syndrome is estimated to be 1 in 50,000 births [7] with a female to male ratio of 2:1[8]. Case report: A baby was born with low birth weight of 1.8 kg to a 36 yr old father and 32 yr old mother. The proposita is the 6th girl child of the non-consanguineous parents. As can be seen from the pedigree chart shown in figure 2, the mothe... ...infant with Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome: a dilemma in determination of the optimal timing of delivery. Clinical Medicine: Case reports. 8. Society for the Study of Behavioral Phenotypes (SSBP) Information sheet: Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome. Registered Charity number 1013849. 9. Altherr, M.R., Bengtsson, U., Elder, F. F. B., Ledbetter, D. H., Wasmuth, J. J., McDonald, M.E., Gusella, J. F., Greenberg, F. Molecular confirmation of Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome with a subtle translocation of chromosome 4. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 49: 1235-1242, 1991. [PubMed: 1746553] 10. Althea T. Impact of chromosome 4p-syndrome on communication and expressive language skills: A preliminary investigation. Language, Speech and Hearing Services in Schools. Vol 41 265-276 July 2010. 11. Harold Chen. EMedicine Specialties> Pediatrics: Genetics and Metabolism Disease> Genetics. Updated Jun 16, 2009.

Animala and Human Language Essay

AAnimals and human language Features and characteristics Linguistics is defined as the systematic study of language – a discipline which describes language in all its aspects and formulates theories as to how it works . Language is the specialized sound signaling system which seems to be genetically programmed to develop in humans. Humans can, of course, communicate in numerous other ways, they can work, wave, smile, tap someone on the shoulder, and so on. It is clear that humans can transfer language to various other media: written symbols, Braille, sign language , and so on. Sign language is particular has interesting characteristics which are not to be participated in spoken word. However, language based on sound is more widespread and more basic , so it is given more importance in this analysis. Language is apart of culture, it is apart of human behavior. It is an acquired habit of systematic vocal activity representing meanings coming from human experience. Some features of difference between human language and animal communication. Use of sound signals When animals communicate with on another, they may do so by a variety of means. Grabs, for example, communicate by waving their claws at one another. But such method are not as widespread as the use of sounds, which are employed by humans , bird s, monkeys, and many other species. So our use of sound is no way unique. Sound signals have several advantages . They can be used in the dark , and at some distance to allow several messages to be sent. By regarding language basically as sound,. The linguist can take the advantage of the fact that all human beings produce speech sounds with essentially the same equipment. Even foreign language may sound strange or difficult to use , al of them can be described by accounting the movement of the articulatory organs that produce them. Arbitrariness An animal communication, their a strong recognizable link between the actual signal and the message an animal wishes to convey .An animal who wishes to warn off an opponent may simulate an attacking attitude . In human language there is no link between the signal and the message .The symbols used are arbitrary .There is no connection, for example , between the word elephant and the animal it symbolizes. Onomatopoeic words such as quack- quack are exceptions and they are relatively few. The need for learning Animal communicate with each other without learning. Their systems of communication are genetically inbuilt. This is quite different from the long learning process needed to acquire human language, which is culturally transmitted, and totally conditioned by the environment, and there is almost some type of innate predisposition towards language in anew born child. But this latent potentiality can be activated only by long exposure to language which require careful learning. Duality In animal communication vocal signals have a stock of sounds which vary according to species. cow, for example, has ten, a chicken has around twenty, and a fox over thirty. Human language works rather differently. Each language has a stock of sound units or phonemes, the average number is between 30 to 40.But each phoneme is normally meaningless in isolation. It become meaningful only when it is combined with other phonemes. That is, the sounds such as f, g, d, o mean nothing separately. The normally take on meaning only when they combined together in various ways, as in fog, dog, god. This organization of language into layers- a layer sounds which combine into a second layer of larger unit- is known as duality or double articulation. communication system with duality is considerably more flexible than one without it, because afar greater number of messages can be sent. Displacement Most animals can communicate about things in the immediate environment only. A bird utters its danger cry only when danger is present. It cannot give information about a peril which is removed in time and place. Human language can communicate about things that are absent as easily as about things that are present. This apparently rare phenomenon, known as displacement, does occasionally appear in the animal world . but this ability is limited for animal communication. Human language can cope with any subject whatever, and it does not matter how far away the topic of conversation is in time and place. Creativity(Productivity) Most animal have very limited number of messages they can send or receive . This restriction is not found in human language which is creative or productive. Human can produce novel utterances wherever they want to. A person can utter a sentence which has never been said before, in most unlikely circumstances, and still be understood. Patterning Human language is not a haphazard heap of individual items .Humans do not juxtapose sounds and words in a random way. Instead, they ring the changes on a few defined patterns. In English, for example, the sounds a.b, s,t. have only four possible ways to arrange bats, tabs, stab,or bast, but not sbt, abts, stab because the ‘rules’ subconsciously followed by people who know English do not allow these combinations for a new word. Similarly, consider the words, burglar, loudly, sneezed, the, only three combination are possible : The burglar sneezed loudly. Loudly sneezed the burglar The burglar loudly sneezed. (perhaps) English places firm restrictions on which item can occur together, and the order in which they come. Every item in language has its own characteristic place in the total pattern. Language can be regarded as an intricate network of interlinked elements in which every item is held in its place and given its identity by all the other items.

Deconstructing redemption in The Road

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. [email  protected] 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 t he 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 mischief 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 ho rror 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"f eeds 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 form 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 relentlessl y 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 d on'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 experiment 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 absenc e 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 hi s 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, heaven ly 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 ins tability 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 solu tions. 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 solving 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 dyin g 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 discour se 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 f ind, 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 u ndesirability, 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"iconoclas tic† 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 re minders, 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. Wha t 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 pe rspective, 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 see n.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, pre serving 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.

Free Essays on The Impact Of The Cold War On American Foreign Policy

The Cold War emerged out of the post-World War II struggle between the United States (US) and its allies and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and its allies. During the Cold War period, which lasted from the mid-1940s until the end of the 1980s, American foreign policy and international politics were heavily shaped by the intense rivalry between these two great blocs of power and the political ideologies they represented: democracy and capitalism in the case of the United States and its allies, and Communism in the case of the Soviet bloc. The principal allies of the United States during the Cold War included Britain, France, West Germany, Japan, and Canada. On the Soviet side were many of the countries of Eastern Europe- including Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, East Germany, and Romania- and, during parts of the Cold War, Cuba and China. American journalist Walter Lippmann first popularized the term cold war in a 1947 book by that name. By using the term, Lippmann meant to suggest that relations between the USSR and its World War II allies (primarily the United States, Britain, and France) had deteriorated to the point of war without the occurrence of actual warfare. Over the next few years, the emerging rivalry between these two camps hardened into a mutual and permanent preoccupation. It dominated the foreign policy agendas of both sides and led to the formation of two vast military alliances: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), created by the Western powers in 1949; and the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact, established in 1955. Although centered originally in Europe, the Cold War enmity eventually drew the United States and the USSR into local conflicts in almost every quarter of the globe. It also produced the Cold War arms race, which became an intense competition between the two superpowers to accumul ate advanced military weapons. Hostility between the United States and the USSR had i... Free Essays on The Impact Of The Cold War On American Foreign Policy Free Essays on The Impact Of The Cold War On American Foreign Policy The Cold War emerged out of the post-World War II struggle between the United States (US) and its allies and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and its allies. During the Cold War period, which lasted from the mid-1940s until the end of the 1980s, American foreign policy and international politics were heavily shaped by the intense rivalry between these two great blocs of power and the political ideologies they represented: democracy and capitalism in the case of the United States and its allies, and Communism in the case of the Soviet bloc. The principal allies of the United States during the Cold War included Britain, France, West Germany, Japan, and Canada. On the Soviet side were many of the countries of Eastern Europe- including Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, East Germany, and Romania- and, during parts of the Cold War, Cuba and China. American journalist Walter Lippmann first popularized the term cold war in a 1947 book by that name. By using the term, Lippmann meant to suggest that relations between the USSR and its World War II allies (primarily the United States, Britain, and France) had deteriorated to the point of war without the occurrence of actual warfare. Over the next few years, the emerging rivalry between these two camps hardened into a mutual and permanent preoccupation. It dominated the foreign policy agendas of both sides and led to the formation of two vast military alliances: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), created by the Western powers in 1949; and the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact, established in 1955. Although centered originally in Europe, the Cold War enmity eventually drew the United States and the USSR into local conflicts in almost every quarter of the globe. It also produced the Cold War arms race, which became an intense competition between the two superpowers to accumul ate advanced military weapons. Hostility between the United States and the USSR had i...

Financial statements Patton

Financial statements Patton Introduction This paper is based on the Patton Fuller Community Hospital’s Annual Report for the year 2009. Physicians work at the hospital and own it too. They also govern the hospital together with the CEO and CFO. Despite sitting on the board, the CEO and CFO have no voting rights. This hospital aims at making a profit from its operations. The hospital obtains most of its revenue from in-patients rather than outpatients.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Financial statements: Patton-Fuller Community Hospital Virtual Organization specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More In the current year, the hospital took on additional debt. This debt was issued at an adjustable interest rate. Thus, the CFO has had to create a contingent liability in the financial statements in case the debt interest increases. PFCH has some investments that performed poorly this year. The loss has been recognized in the financial statements. On th e up side, the hospital will receive some funds from a deceased benefactor’s estate. The auditor’s report was unqualified. Audited vs. Unaudited Financial Statements Patton Fuller’s audited and unaudited financial statements are similar except for one line item. The expense ‘Provision for Doubtful Accounts’ had been understated in the unaudited accounts. This was adjusted in the annual report. Prior to the adjustment, the Statement of Revenue and Expenses indicated that the hospital had met its goal of profit-making and made $689,000. Unfortunately, after the adjustment, the hospital’s profit was reduced to a loss of $373,000. Net profit was overstated by double the amount. Clearly, the hospital is doing quite badly financially (Atrill, 2011). This increase in provision for doubtful debts also affected the Balance Sheet. The amount under receivables was adjusted downwards. To complete the double entry, retained earnings were also adjusted dow nwards. This difference is material as it can affect a decision made based on the financial statements. Supposing the financial statements were not audited, they would have misled readers to believe that the hospital was profitable. Revenue and Expenses Patton Fuller obtains its revenue from patients who use its services. Most of the revenue is from inpatients. However, in the current year, some third parties have been introduced. They will cover the patients’ hospital fees, but at a different rate than the normal. They are likely to pay less than the patients owe. This is the reason for the $1,000,000 adjustment. The Balance Sheet shows the amount of receivables owed to the hospital by patients. PFCH’s receivables are approximately 20% of revenue. The hospital needs to improve is debt collection. The fact that the revenue will now be received from a third party has affected Financial Reporting.Advertising Looking for essay on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More It has resulted in the increase of the allowance for doubtful debts (Barrow, 2011). The major expenses are Salaries, Benefits, Physician, and Professional Fees. It is possible that the physicians are paying themselves at a rate higher than the market rate. However, Professional fees are fixed and unavoidable. PFCH has organized its revenue into three different categories. Net Patient Revenue is obtained from the hospitals core business, while investment revenue is obtained from its stocks and other assets. Expenses are organizes by function. Conclusion Financial reporting provides useful information for investors and management to use in decision-making. The integrity of Financials can be increased by subjecting them to an audit. In the case of PFCH, audit adjustments reduced the supposed profit to a significant loss. The hospital should consider allowing management professionals to sit in the board and ha ve voting rights. This might improve its financial management and lead to profit making. References Atrill, P. (2011). Financial Management for Decision Makers. Chicago: Prentice Hall. Barrow, C. (2011). Practical Financial Management: Key Financial Statements Tools of Financial Analysis Business Planning and Budgeting. New York: Kogan Page.