Those Evenings free essay sample

â€Å"Come on. No fair,† said John. â€Å"You guys always win!† â€Å"John that’s what happens when you don’t guard your flag,† I said. â€Å"Fine then, we QUIT!† This would an example of a typical Tuesday evening. After school on Mondays and Tuesdays, I head over to John and Kate’s. As soon as I walk through the door Kate suffocates me with her bear hugs. She’s strong for a five year old. I make my way into the family room where I pry John away from the TV. When you’re six, going on seven, you have to keep up on the latest Pokemon episodes. Soon afterwards, the door bell rings about 50 times without pause. I know exactly who it is. â€Å"LUKE!† said John. Sure enough, Luke and his sister Olivia come rushing in with only one thing on their minds. Hide and Seek Capture the Flag. You’re probably wondering what in the world is that? It is a game I made up. We will write a custom essay sample on Those Evenings or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page It’s like Capture the Flag, but instead of two bowling pins set on each side of the gym, we use bike helmets hidden in the yard. Soon, I am surrounded by kids and there is nowhere to go. I look to my left and then to the right. â€Å"Alright!† I say. I look down at their tinny little munchkin faces. â€Å"We can play, but only for a little bit.† At first I’m not really in the mood to run around. I’ve just had a long day at school and I’d really like to get a head start on my homework, but as soon as the game gets started, it’s hard not to get engrossed. I find myself doing ridiculous victory dances whenever my team finds a helmet or tags the enemy. After a good hour or so, I sit down on the porch step and watch them play. Capture the Flag Hide and Seek in reality is just a silly game used to keep the John and Kate entertained. After a couple of weeks I can see changes in the John’s behavior. He used to be the worst sport. John was always the first one to cry about losing. Now he is congratulating the opposing team. Kate knows that she can be just as fast as the boys. They work together instead of against each other, even if that means teaming up on me for an extra treat. Was it because of a silly game or are they just growing up. Maybe it’s both. Next fall I will be leaving for college and I am going to miss Monday and Tuesday evenings.

Trust in John Carpenters THE THING essays

Trust in John Carpenter's THE THING essays In John Carpenters The Thing, trust in desperate times is a major theme. The movie is set up like its own experiment, testing the reactions of a crew when an alien moves among its ranks, disguised as one of them. The men, who have been living together and became friends, immediately lose trust in one another. Their response to the lack of trust among friends is tested throughout the film, each crew member showcasing a different response. The many different responses cannot be analyzed without giving the plot away, but the few chosen in the paper are the major ones. These events show that trust is an incredibly important factor in any relationship. Without trust, you quickly lose things such as security and optimism. The lack of trust makes every interaction between two people suspicious, and more problems can stem from there. Trust is the most important part of a healthy relationship. The affective component of trust is some kind of feeling of security, hopefulness or optimism (Miller). Whether it be friendly or romantic, trust in any relationship cannot be replaced. If one friend cannot rely on another to be truthful, then it is impossible to place confidence in that friend in future situations. A good example of the importance of trust amongst friends is shown in John Carpenters The Thing. In The Thing, two scientists and a team of 10 helpers have set up camp in Antarctica. All radio communication has been lost, so they have no access to the outside world. They stumble upon a neighboring research community, burnt to the ground. There, they see what looks like a crashed spaceship buried deep within the ice. Back at their home base, a stray dog they picked up turns into a gruesome, shapeless monster, and kills a few of their sled dogs. The team finds it while it is morphing into a dog imitation, and kills it with a flamethrower. One of the doctors examines it, and looks at what ...

Just answer the fellowing questions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Just answer the fellowing questions - Essay Example Although most of the raw materials used by Samsung are manufactured in South Korea, the company also imports materials from other countries most notably the US. The company has a factory in Texas that manufactures semiconductors that are also used in the production of Apples’ iPhones and iPads. Once the product is assembled, it is packed and shipped to various Samsung wholesale stores. Retailers purchase the product from these stores before selling it to the consumer. On 1st December 2014, the New York Times published an article that highlighted China’s resolve to deny British MPs entry to Hon Kong. According to the article, the government of China has taken this step because of concerns over British attitude toward the ongoing protests in Hong Kong. Britain, on the other hand, feels that it has a responsibility of overseeing a democratic ruling of Hong Kong as per the provisions of the 1984 agreement between China and Britain (Perlez 1). The author of the article avoids adopting an orientalist explanation by withholding his opinion. To achieve this, the author focuses on reporting the situation with little evaluation. The author, therefore, leaves it to his readers to make a decision on whether the government of China is right to deny British MPs entry to Hong Kong. Orientalism is however evidenced by British lawmakers resolve to be allowed entry to Hong Kong. Terming the action by the Chinese government as â€Å"overtly confrontational, † Mr. Ottaway, a British lawmaker, does not seem to believe in China’s ability to handle the protests in Hong Kong (Perlez 1). Germany is one of the largest countries in Europe in terms of geographic area and population. Its neighbors include among other countries Belgium and France. While Germany’s international boundary with Belgium is relatively streamlined with little meanders, the country’s boundary with France seems to advance into Germany’s territory. One of the possible

Air Force Careers and Benefits in Military Aviation of Canada Essay

Air Force Careers and Benefits in Military Aviation of Canada - Essay Example The air force also supports the Canadian interests in the foreign lands outside North America. This includes providing support to the organizations like UN, NATO and also other contingency operations where air force involvement is necessary. The military organization also provides assistance on humanitarian gronds to the other countries. Now the basic research question that remains is whether the military aviation of Canada and America should operate together or not. In the national level the military organization (Air Force) assists other government bodies in enforcing the Canadian law and regulation and also provides a national level air search and most importantly plays a big part in the rescue operations. Being one of the major military unit in North America as it is, the air force of Canada influences the domestic and international operations of the government in a huge way. For that reason when an individual gets into the system he or she has to undergo rigorous training schedu le. The primary training is the trade and technical training where the individual is informed about the technical complexities of the operations and gradually they get well acquainted with the technical details.

Mapleland Fiber Network (MFN) Essay Example for Free

Mapleland Fiber Network (MFN) Essay The city of Mapleland, Oregon, which owns and operates its own power utility, built a fiber-optic network to monitor power meters at residents’ homes. The network is called Mapleland Fiber Network (MFN). Because MFN had more capacity than was needed to monitor meters, the city expanded its services to offer access to the network for citybusinesses. The businesses use the network to communicate with each other and to access the Internet. At the MFN headend, which is located with the city government offices, three routers and WAN links connect to the Internet for use by the city. The businesses on MFN also use these routers to reach the Internet. In addition to the business service, MFN also offers cable modem service to homes. A cable modem router at the MFN headend connects to the fiber-optic network. In the city neighborhoods, hybrid fiber-coax nodes bring coax cabling to each street and into the homes for cable modem Internet access. The MFN backbone consists of a fiber-optic Gigabit Ethernet network that runs through the city in a ring topology. The fiber-optic ring connects the hybrid fiber-coax nodes that bring coax cabling to each neighborhood. Also connected to the ring are six data routers. Each router links one or more Mapleland businesses to MFN via simple point-to-point connections. At the business, the fiber-optic network enters the building and connects to a media converter. A UTP cable connects to the media converter and typically to a 100-Mbps Ethernet switch. The switch links the business’s computers and servers in a star opology via UTP cabling. 1. Draw a network map that shows the topology of the MFN and how the main components are connected. 2. What other information would you gather to improve your map and add more detail? 3. Mapleland is considering expanding the MFN to include wireless access for its residences. What additional investigation will you do to prepare for a citywide wireless network? 4. What security concerns do you have for the wireless network?

René Magritte Essay -- Arts Paintings Art History

Renà © Magritte Belgian Surrealist artist Renà © Magritte was a master not only of the obvious, but of the obscure as well. In his artwork, Magritte toyed with everyday objects, human habits and emotions, placing them in foreign contexts and questioning their familiar meanings. He suggested new interpretations of old things in his deceivingly simple paintings, making the commonplace profound and the rational irrational. He painted his canvasses in the same manner as he lived his life -- in strange modesty and under constant analysis. Magritte was born in 1898 in the small town of Lessines, a cosmopolitan area of Belgium that was greatly influenced by the French. Twelve years later, Magritte, along with his parents and two younger brothers, moved to Chà ¢telet, where the future artist studied sketching. On vacations with his grandmother and Aunt Flora during the summer months, Magritte frequented an old cemetery at Soignies. In this cemetery, Magritte often played with a little girl, opening trap doors and descending into underground vaults. This experience would prove a great influence upon his later artwork, as wooden caskets and granite tombstones recur in many of his paintings. Magritte also developed a fascination with religion around this time, often dressing up as a priest and holding mock mass services in complete seriousness. In 1912, Rà ©gina Bertinchamp, Magritte's mother, committed suicide by drowning herself in the Sambre River. The night of her suicide, the Magrittes followed Bertinchamp's footprints to the river, where they found her dead with her nightgown wrapped around her face. Magritte was 14 at the time. He would claim years later that his only recollection of his mother's death was his pride at being the center of attention and his subsequent identity formation as the "son of a dead woman." Some critics point out that several of the subjects in Magritte's paintings are veiled in white sheets as a reference to his mother's suicide. A year later, Magritte's father moved the family to Charleroi. It was in Charleroi that Magritte would meet his future wife Georgette Berger on a carousel at the town fair. However, the two would not see one another again until a chance meeting in Brussels years later. In Charleroi, Magritte quickly lost interest in his studies and asked his father for permission to study at the Acadà ©mie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. ... ... Faubourg in Paris. The exhibition caused much scandal, but won few admirers. Soon after, Magritte resigned to his original style, though he bitterly attributed this retroaction to his desire to please Georgette, who preferred his earlier paintings. He continued to acquire much success all over the world with paintings such as L'Empire des Lumià ¨res (The Empire of Lights, 1954), which employed standard Surrealist techniques and precise Magritte lines. On August 15, 1967, Magritte died in Brussels. Unlike many of his Surrealist counterparts, Magritte lived quite humbly and incon uously. He did not draw much attention to himself, and he lived life relatively uneventfully. Despite his unassuming lifestyle, though, Magritte managed to leave an artistic legacy of transforming the ordinary into the fantastic. While some art historians attribute Magritte's art to his desire to oppose and combat the triviality of everyday life, others suggest that his work goes beyond escapism and serves to reveal some of the murkier and complex aspects of the human condition. Whatever the impetus was for his art, it is certain that Magritte's works are at once hauntingly beautiful and deeply provocative.

Health Improvement Essay

To address this challenge, the world’s governments committed themselves at the United Nations Millennium Summit to the Millennium Development Goals, including the overarching goal of halving extreme poverty by the year 2015. Yet, our planet’s capacity to sustain us is eroding. The problems are well-known – degrading agricultural lands, shrinking forests, diminishing supplies of clean water, dwindling fisheries, and the threat of growing social and ecological vulnerability from climate change and loss of biological diversity. While these threats are global, their impacts are most severe in the developing world – especially among people living in poverty who have the least means to cope. Is this environmental decline inevitable in order for poverty to be reduced? We argue not. Indeed, quite the opposite is true. If we do not successfully arrest and reverse these problems, the world will not be able to meet the Millennium Development Goals, particularly the goal of halving extreme poverty. As this paper demonstrates, tackling environmental degradation is an integral part of effective and lasting poverty reduction. The 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) provides the international community with a pivotal opportunity to redirect the global debate, and to forge a more integrated and effective global response to poverty and environmental decline. To succeed, we need to focus on the most important links between poverty, the environment and sustainable development. For many, ensuring sound environmental management means curtailment of economic opportunities and growth, rather than their expansion †¦ too often; it is viewed as a cost rather than an investment. Prepared as a contribution to the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development focuses on ways to reduce poverty and sustain growth by improving management of the environment, broadly defined. It seeks to draw out the links between poverty and the environment, and to demonstrate that sound and equitable environmental management is integral to achieving the Millennium Development Goals, in particular eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, reducing child mortality, combating major diseases, and ensuring environmental sustainability. Four priority areas for sustained policy and institutional change are highlighted: ?Improving governance for pro-poor and pro-environment policies, institutions and services, with particular attention to the needs of women and children; ?Enhancing the assets of the poor and reducing their vulnerability to environment-related shocks and conflict; ?Improving the quality of growth to protect the asset base of the poor and expand opportunities for sustainable livelihoods; ?Reforming international and industrialized country policies related to trade, foreign direct investment, aid and debt. Policy opportunities exist to reduce poverty and improve the environment The environment matters greatly to people living in poverty. The poor often depend directly on natural resources and ecological services for their livelihoods; they are often the most affected by unclean water, indoor air pollution and exposure to toxic chemicals; and they are particularly vulnerable to environmental hazards such as floods and prolonged drought, and to environment-related conflict. Addressing these poverty-environment linkages must be at the core of national efforts to eradicate poverty. Many policy opportunities exist to reduce poverty by improving the environment – but there are significant and often deeply entrenched policy and institutional barriers to their widespread adoption. The past decade of experience since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio reveals some important lessons that help point the way forward. Three broad lessons are highlighted here: ?First and foremost, poor people must be seen as part of the solution – rather than part of the problem. Efforts to improve environmental management in ways that contribute to sustainable growth and poverty reduction must begin with the poor themselves. Given the right incentives and support – including access to information and participation in decision-making – the poor will invest in environmental improvements to enhance their livelihoods and well-being. At the same time, however, it is essential to address the activities of the non-poor since they are the source of most environmental damage. The environmental quality of growth matters to the poor. Environmental improvement is not a luxury preoccupation that can wait until growth has alleviated income poverty, nor can it be assumed that growth itself will take care of environmental problems over the longer-term as a natural by-product of increasing affluence. First, this ignores the fundamental importance of environmental goods and services to the livelihoods and well-being of the rural and urban poor. Second, there are many examples of how bad environmental management is bad for growth, and of how the poor bear a disproportionate share of the costs of environmental degradation. Ignoring the environmental soundness of growth – even if this leads to short-run economic gains – can undermine long-run growth and its effectiveness in reducing poverty. ?Environmental management cannot be treated separately from other development concerns, but requires integration into poverty reduction and sustainable development efforts in order to achieve significant and lasting results. Improving environmental management in ways that benefit the poor requires policy and institutional changes that cut across sectors and lie mostly outside the control of environmental institutions – changes in governance, domestic economic policy, and in international policies. Improving governance ?Integrate poverty-environment issues into nationally-owned poverty reduction strategies, including macroeconomic and sect oral policy reforms and action programmes, so that they can become national sustainable development strategies. Engage poor and marginalized groups in policy and planning processes to ensure that the key environmental issues that affect them are adequately addressed, to build ownership, and to enhance the prospects for achieving lasting results. Address the poverty-environment concerns of poor women and children and ensure that they are given higher priority and fully integrated into poverty reduction strategies and policy reforms – for example, the growing burden of collecting scarce water and fuelwood supplies, and the effects of long-term exposure to polluted indoor air. Implement anti-corruption measures to counter the role of corruption in the misuse of natural resources and weak enforcement of environmental regulations – for example, the destructive impacts of illegal logging and unregulated mining, or the preference for construction of new power and water investments over increasing the efficiency of existing investments. ?Improve poverty-environment indicators to document environmental change and how it affects poor people, and integrate into national poverty monitoring systems. This should be complemented by measures to improve citizens’ access to environmental information. Enhancing the assets of the poor ?Strengthen resource rights of the poor by reforming the wider range of policies and institutions that influence resource access, control and benefit-sharing, with particular attention to resource rights for women. This includes central and sub-national government, traditional authorities, the legal system, and local land boards, commissions and tribunals. Support decentralization and local environmental management – land, water and forest resource management, and provision of water supply and sanitation services – by strengthening local management capacity and supporting women’s key roles in managing natural resources. ?Expand access to environmentally-sound and pro-poor technology, such as crop production technologies that conserve soil and water and minimize the use of pesticides, or appropriate renewable energy and energy e fficient technologies that also minimize air pollution. This includes support for indigenous technologies, and the need to address the social, cultural, financial and marketing aspects of technical change. ?Promote measures that reduce the environmental vulnerability of the poor by strengthening participatory disaster preparedness and prevention capacity, supporting the formal and informal coping strategies of vulnerable groups, and expanding access to insurance and other risk management mechanisms. Reduce the vulnerability of the poor to environment-related conflict by improving conflict resolution mechanisms in the management of natural resources and addressing the underlying political issues that affect resource access. Improving the quality of growth ?Integrate poverty-environment issues in economic policy and decision-making by strengthening the use of environmental assessment and poverty social impact analysis. Improve environmental valuation at both the macro and micro level, in order to highlight the full cost of environmental deg radation for the poor in particular and the economy in general, and to improve economic decision-making. ?Expand private sector involvement in pro-poor environmental management to maximize the efficiency gains from private sector participation, while safeguarding the interests of the poor. This requires capacity within government to negotiate with the private sector – for example, to ensure that utility privatization benefits the poor – and to forge effective public-private partnerships that enhance the poor’s access to environmental services. ?Implement pro-poor environmental fiscal reform including reform of environmentally-damaging subsidies, improved use of rent taxes to better capture and more effectively allocate resource revenues, and improved use of pollution charges to better reflect environmental costs in market prices. Reforming international and industrialized country policies ?Reform trade and industrialized country subsidy policies to open up markets to developing country imports while avoiding environmental protectionism, and to reduce subsidies that lead to unsustainable exploitation – such as subsidies for large-scale commercial fishing fleets that encourage over-harvesting in developing country fisheries. . Make foreign direct investment more pro-poor and pro-environment by encouraging multinational corporations to comply with the revised OECD Code of Conduct for Multinational Enterprises, and to report on the environmental impact of their activities in line with the UN Environment Programme’s Global Reporting Initiative. ?Increase funding for the Global Environment Facility as the major source of funding for global public goods in the environment, such as a stable climate, maintenance of biodiversity, clean international waters and the protective ozone layer. These benefit the whole world as well as the poor themselves – so the rich world must pay a fair share for their maintenance. ?Enhance the contribution of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) to national development objectives by strengthening developing country capacity to participate in the negotiation and implementation of MEAs (for example, to ensure that the Clean Development Mechanism promotes investments that benefit the poor). Also, improved coordination is needed between MEAs so that scarce developing country capacity is used most effectively. ?Encourage sustainable consumption and production – industrialized country consumers and producers through their trade, investment, pollution emissions and other activities affect the environmental conditions of developing countries. Making rich country consumption and production more sustainable will require a complex mix of institutional changes – addressing market and government failures as well as broad public attitudes. Enhance the effectiveness of development cooperation and debt relief with more priority for poverty-environment issues, particularly for the poorest countries where aid and debt relief continue to have a valuable role to play in helping governments to make many of the changes recommended above. Mainstream environment in donor agency operations through staff training, development and application of new skills, tools and approaches, and revisions to the way resources and budgets are allocated. Transparent monitoring of progress against stated objectives and targets is needed in order to hold development agencies accountable and to ensure that a commitment by senior management to addressing poverty-environment issues is put into practice throughout the organization. Conclusion This paper looks ahead with some degree of hope and optimism for the future – there are sometimes win-win opportunities, and there are rational ways of dealing with trade-offs. Environmental degradation is not inevitable, nor the unavoidable result of economic growth. On the contrary, sound and equitable environmental management is key to sustained poverty reduction and achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. There are significant policy opportunities to reduce poverty and improve the environment, but more integrated and pro-poor approaches are needed. The World Summit on Sustainable Development is an opportunity to focus on what is most important and to forge a coherent framework for action, with clear goals and achievable targets backed-up by adequate resources and effective and transparent monitoring mechanisms. There can be no more important goal than to reduce and ultimately eradicate poverty on our planet. PART 1 Why the Environment Matters to People Living in Poverty â€Å"Water is life and because we have no water, life is miserable† (Kenya) â€Å"We think the earth is generous; but what is the incentive to produce more than the family needs if there are no access roads to get produce to a market? † (Guatemala) â€Å"In the monsoons there is no difference between the land in front of our house and the public drain. You can see for yourself† (India) In their own words, the environment matters greatly to people living in poverty. Indeed, poor people’s perceptions of well-being are strongly related to the environment in terms of their livelihoods, health, vulnerability, and sense of empowerment and ability to control their lives. Figure 1 provides a simplified framework for understanding how environmental management relates to poverty reduction, and why these poverty-environment linkages must be at the core of action to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and related national poverty eradication and sustainable development objectives. Environmental management for poverty reductionDimensions of povertyDevelopment goals Part 1 of the paper focuses on the poverty-environment relationship by examining how environmental conditions in both rural and urban settings relate to three key dimensions of human poverty and well-being: ?Livelihoods – poor people tend to be most dependent upon the environment and the direct use of natural resources, and therefore are the most severely affected when the environment is degraded or their access to natural resources is limited or denied; Health – poor people suffer most when water, land and the air are polluted; ?Vulnerability – the poor are most often exposed to environmental hazards and environment-related conflict, and are least capable of coping when they occur. We also are concerned with the relationship between growth and the environment and how it affects the poor and efforts to reduce poverty. The environmental soundness of growth matters considerably to the poor, and countries with similar levels of income and growth can have quite different levels of environmental performance. While Figure 1 illustrates the main pathways between environmental conditions and dimensions of poverty, in reality these linkages are multi-dimensional, dynamic and often inter-connected: ?Poverty is now widely viewed as encompassing both income and non-income dimensions of deprivation – including lack of income and other material means; lack of access to basic social services such as education, health and safe water; lack of personal security; and lack of empowerment to participate in the political process and in decisions that influence one’s life. The dynamics of poverty also are better understood, and extreme vulnerability to external shocks is now seen as one of its major features. Environment refers to the biotic and abiotic components of the natural world that together support life on earth – as a provider of goods (natural resources) and ecosystem services utilized for food production, energy and as raw material; a recipient and partial recycler of waste products from the economy; and an important source of recreation, beauty, spiritual values and other amenities. The nature and dynamics of poverty-environment linkages are context-specific – reflecting both geographic location and economic, social and cultural characteristics of individuals, households and social groups. Different social groups can prioritize different environmental issues (Brocklesby and Hinshelwood, 2001). In rural areas, poor people are particularly concerned with their access to and the quality of natural resources, especially water, cro p and grazing land, forest products and biomass for fuel. For the urban poor, water, energy, sanitation and waste removal are key concerns. Poor women regard safe and physically close access to potable water, sanitation facilities and abundant energy supplies as crucial aspects of well-being, reflecting their primary role in managing the household. ?Environmental management, as used in this paper, extends well beyond the activities of public environmental institutions. In relation to poverty, environmental management is concerned fundamentally with sustaining the long-term capacity of the environment to provide the goods and services upon which people and economies depend. This means improving environmental conditions and ensuring equitable access to environmental assets – in particular land and biological resources, and safe and affordable water supply and sanitation – in order to expand poor people’s livelihood opportunities, protect their health and capacity to work, and reduce their vulnerability to environment-related risks. This broader conception of poverty and environment, and of environmental management, is essential to understanding the linkages between them and to identifying appropriate policy and institutional options for improving these linkages. There have been some impressive gains since the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment – the first global conference devoted to environment and development issues. There has been a proliferation of environmental policies and institutions at national and sub-national levels, and environmental issues are firmly placed on the agendas of governments, civil society and the private sector. Major global environmental agreements have been forged and global environmental organizations established. Environmental sustainability has become a core concern of bilateral and multilateral development cooperation, and billions of dollars have been spent on environment-related programmes and projects. Tangible progress also has been achieved ‘on the ground’, although the picture is usually mixed. For example, in the 1990s some 900 million people gained access to improved water sources. However, this was merely enough to keep pace with population growth, and about 1. 2 billion people are still without access to improved water sources, with rural populations particularly under-served (Devarajan et al, 2002). Another example is the productivity of soil used for cereal production, which increased on average in developing countries from 1979-81 to 1998-2000. However, it fell in some 25 countries, most of them in Africa, with land degradation being one factor behind the decline (World Bank, 2002c). Despite these gains, pressure on the environment continues to mount worldwide, posing major challenges to the prospects for poverty reduction and human development in developing countries, in particular the least developed countries.