Simulation Proliferation and the City Essay examples -- Essays Papers

Simulation Proliferation and the City Mr. Hand wears all black, is tall, thin, and pale. He floats around a dark city and ends far too many lines with a creepy self-affirming â€Å"yesss.† In Dark City (Alex Proyas 1998) we see over and over again indications of the tropes and repetitions that make up the urban/filmic imagination. Not quite vampires, not quite grey aliens, not quite business men, not quite religious, not quite serial murderers, Mr. Hand and the other Strangers seem to be archetypal characters of the city. Is the imagination a domesticating function, territorializing wild occurrence and happenstance into termed rearrangements of what has come before? Or is it an explosive and infinite fountain of creativity? Modern metropolises and imagination present themselves together in such films as mutually helpful tools for inspecting one another – but my effort is to use the city to discuss several imaginations. As is only obvious enough from one city dweller talking to another, imagination (m oreso than representation or memory) is home to the ever changing city. Conversely, however, the city enables a specific citified imagination, with its own structure and economy. To begin, though, I want to interrogate, as a point of departure, the philosophy of fantasy in a highly commercial, idyllic, anti-city movie. Those lucky children of the 80’s witnessed the depiction and eventual summarization of the relation between fantasy, imagination, fiction, story, and control in the politico-creative manifesto, The Neverending Story (Wolfgang Peterson 1984). In the movie, Sebastian (a somewhat troubled young boy) reads a book (whose unfolding is the main content of the screen) and is then implicated in the collapse of a fantas... ...gination can be spoken of as a discourse that is ultimately just about itself: it is only by imagination that one imagination is to discover anything about the next – yet this ethereality is not only not troubling for the stability of simulation, but itself stabilized by the overproduction of simulacra such that its processing is pressured into sheer reactive creativity. The strikingly bizarre and symptomatically fascinating point, though, is why imagination might have almost anything at all to do with simulation, but this is just the predominant strength of an imagination over its inscription, by representation, into broader circulating winds of reality: its apparent nihilism. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Ã… ½iÃ… ¾ek, Slavoj. â€Å"Passion in the Era of Decaffeinated Belief.† Thy Symptom Issue 5, Winter 2004.

Desiree’s Baby and Battle Royal: Character Comparison Essay

Reasons the main characters in Desiree’s baby and Battle Royal choose different paths to solve their problems Racism has deterred many Africans from living happily, for from the two given stories we saw that one took her own life for that and the other had to suffer all the cruelty and inequality of the whites in order to continue his academic life. In the stories, our main characters had both chosen different paths, solutions to their problem. The reasons that lead to this dissimilarity were that both of them were different people with different stands in society and also their situations were not alike. As a woman, Desiree’s joy in life lied in her happy family yet she was deserted by her own husband. Armand’s treatment towards Desiree made her became miserable and so when she left with the child, she had nothing to live for. Armand and Desiree were very much in love at the beginning of the story and Desiree could not cope without him. Desiree did not understand what she had done but she felt guilty. Armand thought that she had betrayed him that she was an unfaithful wife. The change in Armand’s attitude towards his wife affected Desiree and due to this she killed herself and her child. On the other hand, our young African-American narrator was a slave. He was and always has been an obedient slave who believed if he worked hard enough the white community would accept him. Thus, through all the abuse and after being treated as an entertainment, he still held on to his speech the one thing he was firmed of. And in the end, though he was very confused if his grandfather’s words were true he had to go continue his academic life first, which left him in a crossroad. Furthermore, Desiree was adopted by a well-respected family and also she married Armand who was also from a wealthy family, which put a lot of pressure on her to be a perfect woman. So when her husband falsely accused her of being black, she was confused since it went against everything she had been in her whole life: good, kind, and pure. She was shocked to see happiness taken away from her so easily and also to see that she had became a humiliation to her husband’s and her own family. That also is why she chose death as her solution. In contrast to Desiree the narrator’s family in Battle Royal were all slaves. They were not ashamed of it. They believed in â€Å"Equal but separate. †, they always taught their kids to be good and their good deed will be rewarded. This point was proven when white people gave the narrator a scholarship. At that point he had caught glimpses of the cruelty of the white society but still he was very grateful for that scholarship hence, it blindfolded him from the real truth. Moreover, Desiree chose death for herself because she thought she had nothing left to live for in this world, she was treated like an outcast. Of course we can argue that she had to live for her baby, but in the end she did what she did to save both of them. She was scared and she knew for sure that in this society no one would accept her baby. She did not want her child to go through what she had thus ending both of their lives was the easiest choice. However, our narrator in Battle Royal, not like Desiree, he had a choice. He could go to college be an obedient African-American like he was and everything would stay perfectly fine. He could have a life and he was not going to throw that rare opportunity away which is why his choice of path was not remotely as same as Desiree’s in the other short story. In conclusion, our characters had unraveled their problems through different ways. Desiree chose to commit suicide and our narrator in Battle Royal continued with his life though he was unsure what he should do. They chose differently because they were different person, they came from different society class at that time, and their problems were not the same. But in the end, Desiree and the African-American narrator were both victims of racism which were portrayed differently in both of our short stories but still were saying in Desiree’s case what tragic did racism brought and in our young narrator’s case that how racism can be covered with the sentence â€Å"Equal but separate. †

Kobe Earthquake Case Study

Great Hanshin / Kobe earthquake In the early of January 17th in 1995 at 5:46pm, while many were still sleeping peacefully, the destructive Great Hanshin earthquake, which measured 7. 2 on the Richter scale, struck the Japanese city of Kobe. Kobe has a population of 1. 5 million people and is a major port for importing and exporting goods for Japan, situated south of the main island, Honshu, on a narrow strip of land between the ocean and high mountain ranges, it lies above the junction of the Philippine and Eurasian plates.Kobe has rarely been affected by major earthquakes, only small tremors occasionally, but this earthquake that lasted for a whole 20 seconds, was the biggest to hit japan in 47 years. Japan is situated on the margin of the Eurasian plated, where the Philippine sea plate is being subducted below the Eurasian plate, resulting in Japan having greater than average seismic and volcanic activity. Immediately south of Osaka bay is a fault called the median tectonic line (M TL) and it was sudden movement along this fault that triggered the earthquake that hit Kobe.The movement was caused by the friction from the Eurasian and Philippine plates converging. The earthquake had a shallow focus, only 16 km below the surface, which had caused it to become so destructive. Kobe was largely affected, as the epicentre was only 30 km from the city centre. Japan is said to be the most earthquake prone country but this was proved otherwise in the Kobe earthquake. The 20 second earthquake caused the ground to move up to 50 centimetres horizontally and up to 1 meter vertically.The primary effects from the seismic waves shaking the crust were severe causing the collapse of buildings, bridges and roads. With a total of 75 000 buildings damaged or destroyed and all major road and rail way links damaged all communications from the east and west of japan were cut off. The after shocks from the earthquake caused the problems to become worse with a total of 5000 people dead, 300 000 homeless and 68 children orphaned. The earthquake also triggered a number of fires, congestion, chaos and business closures.Because of the severity of the earthquake it made it extremely difficult for emergency services to reach the worst affected parts of the city. All gas, water and telecommunications were cut off making it extremely hard for emergency crews to communicate and for fire fighters to put out the fires across the city, leaving the fire fighters to watch helplessly as Kobe burned. The earthquake caused a total of 100 billion dollars of damage with economic damage taking up 100 million dollars.Many typical Japanese insurance policies did not cover earthquakes, causing many families to loose everything. In the first few days food, blankets, medical supplies and clean water were of short supplies and the winter weather made it worse with temperatures dropping to -2. Because of the severity of the earthquake and the shortage in supplies, authorities found the disa ster difficult to cope with and the special defence forces were unable to reach the site until 4 hours after the earthquake with the original team only consisting of 170 troops.Even though the earthquake had such a large impact on all aspects of japan at the time it did not take them all to recover and get back on track with the short-term relief and rescue measures put in place they were able to get water, electricity, gas and telephone services were fully working by July and by august the railways were back in service. The port was rebuilt and the import volumes recovered fully within a year and the exports were nearly back to normal. The earthquake also caused a major decline in Japanese Stock market which then caused a domino effect on the banks but despite this damage the local economy recovered quickly.

Raging Against The Machine essays

Raging Against The Machine essays Imagine the world without music. Or imagine a world where we are told what to play, what to sing and even what we may listen to in the privacy of our own homes. That world already exists. A very politically charged band known as Rage Against Machine is one band out of thousands that has run into problems with the explicit nature of their music. To make a statement, Rage Against The Machine (RATM) had hung two upside-down American flags from their amps. Seconds before they took the stage to perform Bulls on Parade, Saturday Night Live (SNL) and NBC sent stagehands in to pull the flags down. The inverted flags, says Tom Morello (Rages guitarist), represented our contention that American democracy is inverted when what passes for democracy is an electoral choice between two representatives of the privileged class. Americas freedom of expression is inverted when youre free to say anything you want to say until it upsets a corporate sponsor. Finally, this was our way of expressing our opinion of the shows host, Steve Forbes. RATM first attempted to hang the flags during a pre-telecast rehearsal, SNLs producers demanded that we take the flags down, says Morello. They said the sponsors would be upset, and that because Steve Forbes was on, they had to run a tighter show. SNL also told the band it would mute objectionable lyrics in Bullet In The Head (Which was supposed to be RATMs second song). SNL even insisted that the song be bleeped in the studio because Forbes had friends and family there. On shows opening night, following the first performance, with the flags being torn down, RATM were approached by SNL and NBC officials and ordered to immediately leave the building (Hendrickson). Why did Saturday Night Live invite Rage Against The Machine to perform on their show when they disagree with what the band represent...

Themes in Heart of Darkness Essays

Themes in Heart of Darkness Essays Themes in Heart of Darkness Essay Themes in Heart of Darkness Essay Essay Topic: Heart Of Darkness â€Å"Heart of Darkness,† is regarded as one of the best and by far the most talked about novels of Joseph Conrad. The novel is not only read for it s unique settings, a variety of its interesting events, symbolic implications, exploration of ancient traditions but the popularity and literary status of novel owes a great deal to its multi-dimensional themes that have the power and vigor to penetrate deep down into the human psychology. Various critics ever since the publication of the novel have tried to find the real theme of the novel and have interpreted the hidden motives of interpreted Conrad in their style.But the most interesting comment comes from a famous and eminent Critic of the novelist. He says: â€Å"Heart of darkness† is a master-piece of abstract art by majestic painter, each time you look at it, you get a new meaning, different themes appear and reappear to the conscience, and what’s more the stream of thought continues to give food to the soul c ompare to an abstract meaning as every time when we read to find new meaning like abstract painting. There is hardly any doubt about the validity of the above statement. The real charm of the novel lies in its thematic depth. No, doubt, the novel is read about all over the world for its variety of themes; but this is also a fact that â€Å"darkness† evil nature of man is more hesitate theme prevailing in human heart is the most dominating theme of the novel, though there are other visible themes such as selfishness of modern man, inefficiency, imperialism and historical perspective. â€Å"Heart of Darkness† in fact dopiest the darkness of the human heart. The novelist wants to suggest the notion that all the development in the modern world and especially in Europe hasn’t been darkness is present in every man’s heart, and only in Africa able to sweep away the real darkness, ignorance, and brutality. We appear deceptively acceptable in society. The modern civilization has ju

A Song Analysis by Walt Whitman

The poem, A Song, by Walt Whitman appears in Leaves of Grass. This edition collection of poems appeared in 1867. It is the workshop for the other versions that followed. â€Å"A Song† is not as well-known as some of Whitman’s other songs. This one like many of his poems celebrates comradeship and nature. It appears in the Calamus section of the 1867 book. It does not appear in later additions. The poem praises the soldiers who fought for America’s freedom. The emphasis on comradeship grows throughout the four stanzas. It starts with life-long love grows to manly love and ends with high-towering love. He uses lots of images from nature as well including â€Å"trees along the rivers,† â€Å"along the shores,† â€Å"all over the prairies. † This emphasis of the water is no coincidence as ships and those that worked on them fascinated Whitman. He loved ride the ferries and spend time along the East River in New York state. His patriotic side shines through this poem too with phrases like â€Å"the continent indissoluble,† â€Å"divine magnetic lands,† â€Å"O Democracy. † His ideals of a united nation present in the poem, contrast with the country as it really was, with racial problems and disputes between the North and South. This ideal grew out of his visits with wartime veterans after seeing the harm that segregation did to the country. At very young age, this ideal emerged through his friendship with Tom Paine, who wrote Common Sense. Whitman wrote this poem shortly after the Emancipation Proclamation produced the freedom that many questioned could ever occur. Keats, Bryant, and Emerson inspired much of his poetry and followed their examples especially in his newer editions of Leaves of Grass. In â€Å"A Song,† music tries to ring through the words. Whitman was a master at matching images with musical sounds. The reader can almost hear the river through the trees or the song of the prairies. In the poem, his love for music reaches out to people. Music is universal and brings people of all races together. Whitman seems to say that through song all nations can achieve these things. By replacing the â€Å"I† in this poem with songs or song, the reader sees how important song and music became to Whitman. Whitman was largely self-taught learning his trade as a teenager. He worked in a print shop. He learned much about journalism and grew to love writing in all its forms. Among other things, he was a schoolteacher, a journalist, an editor. He also wrote fiction and essays.

Special Interest Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Special Interest - Essay Example The aims and objectives of Interest groups are set in such a way so as to benefit the group members or a specific portion of society, for example procuring government subsidies to farmers. There are also issues which cover the public interest in the broader sense such as improving air quality. Berry (1999) believes that the interest groups in the United States act as mediators in conveying the opinion and requirements of the common man to the elected representatives. Individuals can find an interest group that can address or focus on his personal problem. The directories of American Voluntary Associations provide an overview of what these interest group associations aim at and why they are formed. The Gale Research Encyclopedia of Associations is considered as the most acceptable listing of interest groups. Most of these groups seek to influence the public policies. Prior to 1970, the records in America had information on interest groups which were actively involved in business, labor and agriculture. As per the findings of Baumgartner and Leech (1998), the interest group universe has become more complicated since then. With the industrialization, the agricultural groups have started dwindling and have lost influence in the United States. Large number of new interest groups has come into existence, some of them are mentioned below: The large multinational corporations have much influence and say, states Sinclair (2000). These companies will be generally members in more than one trade association. These associations represent the view of the industry they are associated with. The National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are supported by the big corporations and these â€Å"umbrella† groups represent and speak on behalf of the entire business community, believes Victor (2001). Professionals also