Free Essays on Pools

The American media system is spinning out of control in a hyper-commercialized frenzy. Fewer than ten transnational media conglomerates dominate much of our media; fewer than two dozen account for the overwhelming majority of our newspapers, magazines, films, television, radio, and books. With every aspect of our media culture now fair game for commercial exploitation, we can look forward to the full-scale commercialization of sports, arts, and education, the disappearance of notions of public service from public discourse, and the degeneration of journalism, political coverage, and children's programming under commercial pressure. For democrats, this concentration of media power and attendant commercialization of public discourse are a disaster. An informed, participating citizenry depends on media that play a public service function. As James Madison once put it, "A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both." But these democratic functions lie beyond the reach of the current American media system. If we are serious about democracy, then, we need to work aggressively for reform. What kind of reform? In broad terms, we need to reduce the current degree of media concentration, and, more immediately, blunt its effects on democracy. More specifically, we need special incentives for nonprofits, broadcast regulation, public broadcasting, and antitrust. I present these proposals as the start of a debate about media reform, not as ultimate solutions. I am sure that spirited discussion will improve these ideas: my immediate concern is to get that discussion started. I will not dwell here on the weaknesses of the current US media system, beyond summarizing arguments that I (and many others) have made elsewhere. The point here is to begin answering the natural follow-up to such criticisms: "If the status quo is so bad, what do you propose that wou... Free Essays on Pools Free Essays on Pools The American media system is spinning out of control in a hyper-commercialized frenzy. Fewer than ten transnational media conglomerates dominate much of our media; fewer than two dozen account for the overwhelming majority of our newspapers, magazines, films, television, radio, and books. With every aspect of our media culture now fair game for commercial exploitation, we can look forward to the full-scale commercialization of sports, arts, and education, the disappearance of notions of public service from public discourse, and the degeneration of journalism, political coverage, and children's programming under commercial pressure. For democrats, this concentration of media power and attendant commercialization of public discourse are a disaster. An informed, participating citizenry depends on media that play a public service function. As James Madison once put it, "A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both." But these democratic functions lie beyond the reach of the current American media system. If we are serious about democracy, then, we need to work aggressively for reform. What kind of reform? In broad terms, we need to reduce the current degree of media concentration, and, more immediately, blunt its effects on democracy. More specifically, we need special incentives for nonprofits, broadcast regulation, public broadcasting, and antitrust. I present these proposals as the start of a debate about media reform, not as ultimate solutions. I am sure that spirited discussion will improve these ideas: my immediate concern is to get that discussion started. I will not dwell here on the weaknesses of the current US media system, beyond summarizing arguments that I (and many others) have made elsewhere. The point here is to begin answering the natural follow-up to such criticisms: "If the status quo is so bad, what do you propose that wou...

Blog assigment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Blog assigment - Essay Example Each of the seven sections represent a crucial scenario about Balinese, the activities undertaken, the environmental setting of the essay and the unfolding eventualities given the observed scenarios. The seven sections therefore provide a step by step analysis of the essay in the light of keeping the audience at par with the author so that the transition from one section to another is understood. Geertz treats the Balinese and the unfolding events as units to every section. This is the reason why different figures of speech have been used. The seven sections cannot be said to be similar, though they are closely related. Different forms of writing have been employed. Figurative language has been used extensively across the essay. Narration is evident alongside use of numbers to represent different scenarios. Footnotes are also extensively employed. The outline is not consistent with some sections having subheading and subtitles, while others do not. The essay outline is unique to every section, thereby presenting a unique switch and transition from one section to another due to the idea event flow and logic dynamism employed in the essay, making idea presentation

The Influence of My Life Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The Influence of My Life - Essay Example The person who has had the greatest influence on my life is my Mother. She has been a constant motivating force, always challenging me in a loving way to reach higher, and to love and honor myself. She has taught me the importance of education and the joy that cultivating a passion for reading can bring to my life. My mother has frequently stressed over the years the importance of setting personal goals for myself. My parents divorced when I was a toddler, leaving her a single parent. I watched as she struggled to care for me and learned from her unwavering dedication to raising me well. As tired as she was from her long or stressful days, she never once neglected to check my homework, nor did she miss an opportunity to help me learn a lesson. My two favorite memories from childhood are of dinnertime and bedtime. During dinnertime we would rehash our day, and my mother would offer me praise and encouragement for my accomplishments, or would challenge me and offer direction when I had come up short in some way. At bedtime we would select a book to read and we would lose ourselves together in its pages. My grandmother has also motivated me throughout my life. She, more than anyone else, has been the source of my strength. My grandma took my love of history and used it as a tool to mold, teach and direct me through life, which helped me become the person I am today.

Philosophy And Modernity Essay Example for Free

Philosophy And Modernity Essay The conflict between Philosophy and Modernity is a never ending topic. Each of the terms is individually supported by the corresponding generations. But those who support modernity, at least at some point of life will surely support philosophy. That is the power of philosophy. Let us take a mishap as example that shows us how these two issues conflict with each other. The terrorist attacks of September 11 still haunt the minds of Americans unnerved by the enormity of the crime. We need to know what could have inspired someone to do such a thing. It is bad enough to experience such a monstrous event; to feel it is inexplicable, an act with no conceivable motive, only adds to the sense of unreality. What is the source of this hostility? What ideas, values, and attitudes give rise to it? Lewiss observation contains the seeds of the two leading schools of thought about the answer to this question. Both schools place Islamist hatred of the USA in a larger cultural and historical context. Both are plausible, and in many respects they are compatible. But they differ in what they see as the essential terms of the ongoing conflict, and in their implications for the future. One school holds that the war on terror reflects an underlying conflict between Islam and the West as civilisations. Each is united, as a civilisation, by the loyalty of its people to a narrative of their past, a common religion, and shared ideas, values, and ways of life. The current tensions between Islam and the West are only the latest of the conflicts that have occurred over the centuries. The USA is a particular object of hostility now because it is the most powerful Western country. Those who reject modernity are to be found in every nation and civilization. The second school holds that terrorists hostility is directed at the principles and values of the West. On this view, what they hate is not the West as a society or a civilisation per se, but rather the culture of modernity. Modernity was born in the West, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but it is not inherently tied to the history or customs of any one society. It is a constellation of universal values the secular culture of reason, science, individualism, progress, democracy, and capitalism that have spread worldwide in different forms and to varying degrees. By the same token, those who reject modernity, who fear and wish to destroy it, are to be found in every nation and civilisation. And invariably they hate the USA as the fullest, most persuasive, and thus most dangerous embodiment of that culture. There are as many battles within civilisations as between them. Muslims saw military success as a mark of Allahs favour. As Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a prominent Iranian philosopher and historian, observes, During the first twelve centuries of its historic existence, Islam lived with the full awareness of the truth and realisation of Gods promise to Muslims that they would be victorious if they followed His religion. Such verses as There is no victor but God, which adorns the walls of the Alhambra, also adorned the soul and mind of Muslims. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, however, the tide turned. The scientific and industrial revolutions vastly increased the wealth and the military power of the West. After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, the Middle East was taken over by European nations and broken up into colonies and protectorates. Today, despite decolonisation, the countries of this region remain poor and backward by comparison not only with the West but also with the booming economies of East Asia. Oil revenue has showered wealth on the region, but economic growth has been held back by layers of regulations, wasteful government enterprises and investments, not to mention corruption. Because of their strategic location, Middle Eastern countries were pawns of the Cold War but were rarely true partners or friends of either power. Now, Muslims feel they are at the mercy of a global economy driven by Western capitalism. They feel invaded by Western popular culture, which they regard as morally decadent. Israel is the salt in all these wounds a nation of people who came from the West, tore a patch of land from Islam, turned it into a vibrant, wealthy economy, and acquired the military prowess to defeat its Arab neighbours. The result of all this, is a feeling of humiliation a growing awareness, among the heirs of an old, proud, and long-dominant civilisation, of having been overtaken, overborne, and overwhelmed by those whom they regarded as their inferiors. Having tried to take on Western ways, with dismal results, they are increasingly drawn to the idea that the solution is a return to the pure Islamic faith that reigned in the days of their former greatness. The clash-of-civilisations school doubtless represents part of the truth of the matter. But it is not the whole truth, and not the fundamental truth. Its chief shortcoming is that it exaggerates the extent of agreement in outlook, values, ideas, and loyalties among people who share the common history and culture that define a civilisation. In fact, there are as many battles over these issues within civilisations as between them especially in the West. The hijackers target was a temple of modernity. At the level of fundamental philosophical principles, however, the Enlightenment period was much more important as a turning point in the West, and in a way created a new civilisation. Anti-modernism Modernity was born in the West in a radical transformation of its past. The world of the Middle Ages, built around the world-view of Christian Scholasticism, was a society of religious philosophy, feudal law, and an agricultural economy. Out of this soil, the Renaissance and Enlightenment produced a substantially new society of science, individualism, and industrial capitalism. When we examine the wider context of Islamic terrorism, it is clear that a hatred of modernity is its driving force. The cultural foundation of this new society, if we state it as a set of explicit theses, was the view that reason, not revelation, is the instrument of knowledge and arbiter of truth; that science, not religion, gives us the truth about nature; that the pursuit of happiness in this life, not suffering in preparation for the next, is the cardinal value; that reason can and should be used to increase human wellbeing through economic and technological progress; that the individual person is an end in himself with the capacity to direct his own life, not a slave or a child to be ruled by others; that individuals have equal rights to freedom of thought, speech, and action; that religious belief should be a private affair, tolerance a social virtue, and church and state kept separate; and that we should replace command economies with markets, warfare with trade, and rule by king or commissar with democracy. It is therefore misleading to call our civilisation Christian, even though that remains the largest religion in terms of adherents. The West may still be a culture of Christians, by and large, but it is not a Christian culture anymore. It is a secular culture. And that is what the Islamists hate most about us. The al-Qaeda hijackers did not target the Vatican, the capital of Western Christianity whose leaders launched the Crusades. They did not attack the British Foreign Office, which directed colonial policy in the Middle East after World War I. They attacked the World Trade Centre, the proud symbol of engineering audacity and global commerce, where businesses from scores of countries (including many Muslim countries) worked in freedom and peace, creating wealth and investing in material progress. Their target, in short, was a temple of modernity. The culture of modernity is not a Western good but a human good Modernity meant people changing their relationship with both the world and themselves. For the first time, through science, they realised that many things, such as certain weather patterns or illnesses, were not a matter of fate. The social order no longer seemed impossible to change either. Revolutions could sweep away despots and people could improve their living standards. The threat posed by the Islamist terrorists derives not from their Islamic background but from the ideas, values, and motivations they share with anti-modernists everywhere-including in the West. In that regard, they have not merely assaulted our civilisation. They have attacked civilisation as such. Civilisation is the condition a society attains when it emerges from prehistoric barbarism and begins to apply intelligence systematically to the problems of human life, by creating technologies of production like farming, technologies of cognition like writing, and technologies of social order like cities and law. The culture of modernity is one of these permanent contributions the most important. Though Western in origin, it is not a Western good but a human good. It has vastly expanded our knowledge of the world; brought a vast increase in wealth, comfort, safety, and health; and created social institutions in which humans can flourish. Anti-modernism is not simply loyalty to pre-modern stages of civilisation on the part of people who have not yet discovered reason and individualism. It is a postmodern reaction by people who have seen modernity and turned against it, who hate and wish to destroy it. This is a profoundly anti-human outlook, and there can be no compromise with it. As we take aim at the terrorists who have attacked us, we must also take intellectual aim at the ideas that inspire them.

Ghost Story of the Landon House Essay examples -- Urban Legends Ghost

Landon House: Urbana, Maryland Urban legends and ghost stories play an important role in society. Supernatural and â€Å"uncanny† events are evident in the folklore of every culture. Stories of the supernatural, such as ghosts and magic, are typically passed down as oral traditions from generation to generation. With the advent of mass media, such as television and the Internet, ghost stories can become easily popularized. The realm of ghost stories and urban legends is divided among skeptics and believers. However, â€Å"the lack of verification in no way diminishes the appeal urban legends have for us,† (Brunvand 2). Whether one believes in ghosts or not, it is not uncommon for some people to blame peculiar happenings on the supernatural. This is not unlike the unexplained chill that goes up you spine or makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck. Regardless whether a ghost story is fantastical or ostensibly based in truth, the overall impact of the story on the listeners depends on t he delivery of the orator. When prompted for a ghost story or urban legend of our town, my girlfriend pointed to the Landon House as a source for several ghost stories and supernatural happenings. I was told this story while driving back from the movie theater at about one A.M. The route back to our homes ironically leads past the Landon House. We both also live approximately one mile from it. As we turned off the highway, onto the deserted back roads, she began the story: For as long as anyone can remember, late at night at the Landon house a white figure of an old woman carrying a candle has been seen walking through the hallways of the second floor. Passersby claim to witness the flicker of a candle in a window long after the fina... ... story and compare it to those that already exist. As any story gets passed along, the minor components will always vary with the stable elements will remaining the same. The symbols in the Landon House ghost story, specifically the old woman, the civil war soldiers, and the dogs, show that our society believes that repeated actions transcend time, that death leaves its mark, and that disturbing the peace of spirits tends to â€Å"awaken† them. Works Cited Brunvand, Jan Harold. The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends & Their Meanings. New York: W. W. Norton, 1981. Cannon, Timothy L., Nancy Whitmore. Ghosts and Legends of Frederick County. Frederick, Maryland: Studio 20 Inc., 1979. Dunne, Patrick. "Ghost Stories Haunt Landon House." The Frederick Newspost 27 Oct. 2005. 6 Apr. 2008 http://www.gazette.net/stories/102705/newmnew200912_31894.shtml.

Book Review on Urban Poverty Essay

Urban poverty is the outcome of urban-bias development projects being predominantly financed by the external capital, either in the form of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) or Aid. The urban-bias industrialization strategy performed as a pull factor for the rural unemployed. This strategy contributed to the expanding of urban informal sectors where unskilled as well as highly unorganized day labours remain concentrated in the urban and semi-urban areas. It is also debated that the redistribution of capital investment towards the rural based agricultural activities including plantation sectors through the coordinated efforts of both public and private sectors such as civil and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) can go a long way to break the growing negative effects of over urbanization on poverty, moral and social crimes as consequent of unequal economic growth. The author, Pramanik discusses urban poverty in Malaysia cases. He begins with the overview of the poverty scenario followed by research methods and research findings along with summarization & policy suggestions. This book contented five chapters including appendices, references and index. In the introductory chapter (pp. 1-5), Pramanik says poverty is a multi-dimensional phenomenon that is hard to come up with a universally acceptable definition of poverty. Most commonly argued issue on poverty is whether poverty should be looked at from absolute or relative perspective. Absolute poverty based on specific income level called poverty line income (PLI) that can be calculated either using the market value of a basket full of goods and services considered essential for reasonably acceptable standard of living. On the contrary, relative poverty arises when we talk about how good or bad one member is doing in relation to another member living in the same society. According to O’Boyle, poverty is a concept that is both absolute and relative because human beings are at the same time individual and social (O’Boyle E.  J, 1990). In chapter two (pp. 7-20), Pramanik talks about poverty scenario in Malaysia. He argues that the income poverty using official poverty line income seems near to the absolute poverty whereas the human poverty based on the degree of human deprivation resembles relative poverty, which is ensuing of unequal access to income earning opportunity. Because of this, the author focuses more on human aspect of poverty in terms of its long term implications of social factors. Micro level study (Pramanik, 2004) do suggest that family size either in urban or rural areas of the four concentrated states namely, Kelantan, Terengganu, Kedah and Perak is quite above the family size used for the national level. Pramanik (1997 & 2000) examined that rural poverty in the four poverty-concentrated states on multi dimensional aspects of the problem such as, social, economic, demographic, psychological, political, moral, historical, attitudinal, and natural factors. In chapter three (pp. 5-20), the author discusses regarding research methodology. The study is based on the primary data as well as secondary information. The primary data collected through the administration of well-structured questionnaire in the middle of 2006. The sampling technique used is purposive as well as random and based on participatory observation method. Around 3112 households from 8 major cities living in poverty concentrated areas classified by squatters, low-cost buildings, longhouses etc. were selected for data collection. He defined â€Å"household† as an entity of those living under the same roof as well as eating from the same kitchen. In chapter four (pp. 21-97), he talks about the research findings. The author uses purposive and collecting sampling technique to identify the level of poverty suffered by those living in the squatters and in the area/blocks/buildings designed for the lower income groups in the major cities of Malaysia. This is because those who are living in these areas suffer different degrees and types of poverty measured by the level of deprivations. The household having less than RM 398(less than half of the poverty line) is called hardcore poor, household earning equal to RM 398 but less than 663 is called overall poor and more than RM 663 is called non-poor. The best performing state in terms of lowest incidence of overall poverty (0. 9) with no hardcore poor followed by KL (2. 6) and JB (8. 1) inclusive of hardcore and overall poor. While less developed states- KB, KT, and AS, KB experiences the highest incidence of poverty hardcore poor and overall poor of 33. 7 followed by KT (23. 4) and AS (14). On the other hand, Sabah and Sarawak are worst performing states reported in 9MP and his survey data. The author suggests that as far as poverty reduction is concerned Sabah and Sarawak are still the worst among all other regions states in Malaysia in 2007. The poverty is gender bias is a universal when hardcore poverty is concerned. In terms of hardcore and overall poverty, the female –headed households are more likely to be poorer by 50 percent compared the male-headed households. The higher dependency of more members on a few incomes of earners in the households also creates a constraint on resources allocation by the poor households. Approximately 60 percent of poor household’s more than two members depend on the income of one earner. The lower dependency has implication for the ability of the poor households to hold out poverty at times of economic recession or downturn since higher dependency manifest through the lower dependency ratio is positively related to higher unemployment. Pramanik found on the distribution of households based on the dependency ratio and cities seem to suggest that the relatively higher percentages of households (68. 8) from LDS are associated with higher dependency as emerged through the lower coefficients of DR (

The Norman Conquest of England in 1066