Day the Earth Stood Still

Ill never forget the day the earth stood still. It was as if the planet’s entire population had conspired against me to formulate the most detrimental plan that would forever change my life. In fact, it still seems like just yesterday Becky and I were walking on the beach hand in hand with that new relationship glow in our eyes. We were always a great team. A modern day Bonnie and Clyde it seemed like. But as the saying goes, things are never what they appear to be. The first time Becky and I considered one another an item, it seemed weird because we had always grown up best friends. We had never intended to be more than that but after spending countless hours together, we began to realize that our friendship started to develop into something more. At first, things were going really well. She was always really adamant about spending as much with me as possible, and we were always together. We would sit around my house and watch movies as we ate popcorn and acted like your typical adolescent couple. The only difference was this wasn’t puppy love to me, this was the real thing. Unfortunately after about a year, things progressively slowed down and our â€Å"newlywed† antics eventually died out. Things just didn’t seem as exciting as they used to be. Although we still hung out all the time, Becky started to drift. Her calls became more infrequent and her monotone voice provided a clear indication that she just didn’t feel the same anymore. Even still, we tried to fight through it and after a while things got somewhat better. It was only a few months later that our relationship went sour again. No matter how hard I tried, my best was just never good enough. Everything became an argument and it seemed like Becky and I had gone from being perfectly compatible, to mixing like oil and water. It’s sad to say, but I must have been blinded by all of the â€Å"I love you† and â€Å"you’re the only one I ever want to be with† comments because I became completely oblivious to what was occurring literally right under my nose. One night, I decided I would surprise Becky at her house after she got out of work. My plan was to sneak through her window, light up several candles throughout her room, and set a romantic tone for the evening. I called her several times and strangely, she didn’t pick up. Becky always worked late as the head waitress at Hooters, and she would always show up to my house dead tired from working so much. I figured she was probably just really busy and wasn’t able to answer her phone. Either way, I decided that I would go to her house about an hour prior to her getting out of work to ensure that I wouldn’t let her spoil the surprise in the event she came home early. I decided that I would go in through the back entrance of her complex, and park my car behind her building to avoid being spotted. I pulled in and began looking around for parking spaces that Becky wouldn’t drive by. As I pulled around the left side of the three story white building, I noticed something extremely odd. Becky’s car was parked in a guest parking spot. Not only was it parked in such a strange location, but it was sitting on the complete opposite side of her apartment. That’s when a feeling shot through my blood, and a voice within me began to tell me that something wasn’t right. I began creeping along side the building watching my every step to make sure I didn’t make any noise. I tried to look through her window but her blinds were down and the light was off. I walked slowly to the front door and turned the golden handle. I’ll never forget the sound of the door as I cracked it open slowly. It was so loud and blatant it seemed like the next door neighbors could have heard it. Luckily for me though, nobody did. I tip-toed to the door and put my ear up against it, only to hear the sounds that any man would pay to never have to listen to. I stormed through the door only to find Becky in bed with one of my co-workers who was also my best friend. I stood there speechless. I don’t think that anyone can fathom the feeling that runs through you when something like that happens. It’s not so much the actual sight of it that really made me feel like I had been treated so unfairly, it was the â€Å"it’s not what it looks like† and â€Å"let me explain† comments that did it. After I stood there with a smirk that would have made the devil cringe, I politely excused myself, told them I was sorry, and walked back to my car. Oddly enough, it would have been a lot easier to burst open the door, yell, scream, and really let them know how unfairly I had been treated by both of them. But what was the point? Once I left, they would go back to what they were doing and I would look like complete fool. Instead, I decided to be the bigger person, change my number, and let Karma do the rest.

An analysis of Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art”

The poem â€Å"One Art† by Elizabeth Bishop uses simple and elegant verse as a poetic device to help it achieve its purpose and to convey its theme. Bishop’s poem is about the way in which people feel about losing things within their lives and how this can affect them. Bishop’s argument, through her poem, is that in order for people to learn the art of losing, they must practice on smaller things and eventually losing other things will not be so hard on them. The poetic element that she uses with such success is the language choice she uses, and in particular the rhythm of the poem, which makes it easy to read.The theme of the poem, the idea of mastering the art of losing, is expressed through the use of simple language, the author’s use of her own personal losses to bring the theme to the forefront, and enhanced by the rhythm of the poem’s words. Bishop’s poem is able to take an idea, that of loss, and successfully relay its theme and achiev e its purpose by directing it toward a wide audience of women who must deal with loss. Her audience is an important influence in how Bishop wrote the poem.â€Å"One Art† by Elizabeth Bishop is a poem that does not use symbolism and strange descriptions to create the theme of the piece, and the result is a poem that deals with loss: â€Å"The art of losing isn’t hard to master,/ so many things seem filled with their intent,/to be lost that their loss is no disaster† (Bishop). Bishop’s use of language is unique in that it is modern and almost as if she is speaking it and her use of proper English and grammar comes across as well. The result of this is that the poem appears to be sound advice from a woman who has had many life experiences and can be trusted to share her wisdom with the rest of the world. She writes from her own experiences with lines like, â€Å"I lost my mother’s watch. And look! My last,/ or next to last, of three beloved houses we nt./ The art of losing isn’t hard to master† (Bishop).She is able to give the reader a sense of how much loss she has endured and by doing so, she is actually making it more realistic to the reader to believe the theme of her poem. Bishop is able to use simple words that almost anyone can understand to bring to light her ideas about loss. She does not use any fancy punctuation or grammar, nor does she try to hide the meaning within metaphors and similes. Bishop clearly writes a poem in her own voice so that she can get her point across to others like her, most especially women who have dealt with similar loss.The rhythm of the poem is a particular element of the poem that becomes especially important in a short poem of this nature because it helps the flow of the words. Each of the verses contains a rhythm to it, either by using words that rhyme at the end of every other line or simply choosing words that make up the stressed and unstressed syllables of the iambic meter (Sound and Rhythm). In the fifth verse, Bishop writes,†I lost two cities, lovely ones, And, vaster,/ Some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent/ I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster† (Bishop). The writer uses the words vaster and disaster to create a rhythm that helps the poem flow, and she does the same with other word choices throughout the poem: master and disaster, fluster and master, last, or and master. This element is even more important to the success of the poem when it is read aloud by the reader because the way we speak translates into how effective the iambic meter and the flow of the poem truly is.Bishop’s poem gains it real effectiveness by being simply realistic. The author is a woman who uses her own experiences to reach out to her audience and bring them a poem with a theme that is important to many people, especially women. When she talks about losing a gold watch or forgetting names she is hitting on an important thing to many women: the idea of losing something that is sentimental to them, like their mother’s watch, or getting older and forgetting things or having problems with their memory. It’s important to remember that the writer’s own experiences and ideas become a part of the poem and that helps enhance its believability to the audience. She even opens herself up in the final verse, talking about losing someone she loves and losing the â€Å"joking voice, the gesture I love!† (Bishop).She opens herself up to the audience in a way that is raw and real, bringing to light issues about loss that all of us will at one time experience or endure, but in particular her intended audience becomes important to the effectiveness of the poem. The poetic device she uses, that of the simple language, becomes that which is most important in making the poem work for the audience. Anytime a poet is able to write a poem in a way that makes it sound, if spoken aloud, as if it is someone speaking t o you and giving you advice, it is obvious that the writer meant it to come across in such a way. It makes it easy for the reader to understand what the whole point of poetry is really, and that is the theme it is trying to convey and the purpose with which it was written.The theme of this poem is so important to understanding why the author uses the device that she does because throughout the poem, the simplicity that Bishop uses in her poetry helps to transcend the generational gap between the author and the reader. Bishop was an older lady with many life experiences to draw from when she wrote much of her poetry and for this reason, she is able to get away without using fancy words or poetic devices that do not make sense. She writes simply, in short words, in a type of dialogue that seems as if she is simply speaking it.The beauty of the poetry is that it like she is able to create her theme by sculpting it with terms and words that everyone can understand readily. Her point of view is that something as complex and yet simple as loss can be an art form and that by viewing it as such, we do not simply run away from loss when we experience it, we have to learn to embrace it and further learn from it so that in our lives we can cope with it with dignity as time goes by. Even the death of a loved one can be something that can be endured with grace and dignity.So why is it an art form to learn to deal with loss? Perhaps in the mind of Bishop it is something that needs to be embraced as a part of life just as one would embrace their gift at writing or any other type of art. When people are enduring pain and are going through problems in their lives, they must be able to move forward. This is Bishop’s theme. She is trying to teach us to look at loss in a completely different way than we had previously been looking at this type of pain. As a part of life it is something that we need to understand and it would only benefit us to learn how to understand it. B ishop’s beautiful verse and her use of poetic devices translate her own ideas into the purpose of the poem. In the end, she succeeds in using the poetic device of language and iambic meter to create a flowing style of poetry that is simple and yet elegant.Elizabeth Bishop uses the simple language and iambic meter to create a poem that easily achieves its purpose of helping enlighten the readers about how loss can affect someone and how it is an art to be able to deal with loss. By using the poetic devices she does, Bishop is able to create an atmosphere in the poem that lets it flow nicely and helps the poem to put across its theme. Without the style of writing that Bishop uses the poem would not be able to achieve its important purpose and the author would fail in her attempt to put across the moral that she wishes her audience to learn from her own experiences and what she has learned from them. â€Å"One Art† is a simple poem that achieves its purpose without the ai d of intricate and complex poetic devices, and in so doing is perfectly targeted to her audience and accomplishes her goal.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Works CitedBishop, Elizabeth. â€Å"One Art.† Poetry Translation Project. 26 Jan. 2007.â€Å"Sound and Rhythm.† English Literature. Fu Jen University. 26 Jan. 2007.

Dreams: The Peach Orchard

Hina Matsuri – The famous festival of dolls celebrated in the shroud of pink peach blossoms. During the doll festival, dolls represent the peach trees – without the peach trees, the dolls would represent nothing. A similar event happened in the life of a young boy who lost an orchard of peach trees after being cut down, one after another, by his own family. The boy felt a sense of loss during this, supposed to be, an enthusiastic and very memorable day. The young boy got scolded after providing six servings of a particular food, when there are only five people to be served. The boy, however, did see a sixth person. It was a young girl in pink dress or kimono, which he followed soon after towards the orchard. Eventually, he saw the dolls from his sister’s collection brought to life in the peach orchard. They first speculated on the boy’s innocence and they found out how the boy loved the peach trees and the orchard. The dolls, being moved by the boy’s tears and sympathy, performed a slow graceful dance. The dance was accompanied with gagaku music and after the dance the boy saw an illusion of the peach trees in full blossom. However, it was only momentarily. The truth eventually came out, where the scene shows the chopped peach trees in the orchard. Nevertheless, a glimpse of hope was provided for the boy after seeing that there is a new peach tree in the orchard and it was just about his height. The young girl who ran to the orchard may be the representative of/ or doll symbolizing the new peach tree. The movie ended showing the young boy sadly looking at the new peach tree as the scene fades to black (Kurosawa, 1955). Reference Kurosawa, Akira (1955) Dreams: The Peach Orchard. Warner Bros.

Lord of the Flies and Psychology

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, narrates the story of a group of English boys as they struggle to survive on an uncharted, uninhabited island. The boy’s airplane crashes into the island and kills any adults on board — leaving the boys to fend for themselves. Ralph and Piggy meet each other first and, upon Piggy’s counsel, Ralph decides to call a meeting of all the boys by blowing on a conch shell. The boys quickly begin to form a society in which they elect Ralph as their leader. A boy called Jack quietly disagrees and believes that he should lead the group. As times passes, Jack and his choir become hunters for the rest of the boys and they begin to enjoy the ways of a predator. As Jack grows more savage, he becomes unhappy with the way that Ralph leads the boys and decides that he will go to the other side of the island and start his own tribe. Boys slowly begin to leave Ralph to join Jack. The boys become so savage that they kill two boys and they plan to kill Ralph. Just as Jack has cornered Ralph, a naval officer appears and rescues them all. Golding depicts not only the struggle of the boys to survive, but also the psychological reasoning that leads the boys to abandon the civilized nature that they know. Through characterization and setting Golding creates in his novel, an ideal forum for validating psychological principles introduced by Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, and Carl Jung. Sigmund Freud was a psychologist who pioneered the thought that the mind contains three different levels, the id, the ego, and the superego. The id bases itself on the pleasure principle; it meets basic needs. The id wants a quick satiation of needs and has no consideration for the reality of a situation. The ego bases itself on the reality principle, it understands that other people have needs and desires and that impulsiveness or selfishness can cause harm in the future. The ego meets the needs of the id, while taking the reality of the situation into consideration. The Superego develops due to the moral and ethical restraints placed on a child by influential adults in their lives. One could compare the superego to the conscience, as it dictates belief of right and wrong. Golding acknowledges these different states of consciousness within his novel by using characters to represent each one. For instance, Jack represents the id. Jack never takes into consideration the best thing for the group or himself in the long run and he holds himself accountable to no set of rules or any code of ethics. â€Å"Bollocks to the rules! We're strong – we hunt! If there's a beast, we'll hunt it down! We'll close in and beat and beat and beat† (91). Jack addresses the issue of a beast believed to inhabit the island by filling his thirst for violence and neglecting to take into consideration that confronting a beast will most likely lead to danger. Jack’s reasoning involves selfish motives; he wants to get rid of the beast, he wants to kill, he does not care that he has potentially placed the others in a dangerous situation, nor does he realize the ludicrousness of the beast, Jack has neglected reality entirely. Piggy represents the ego. He constantly tries to reason with the other boys, when he and Ralph first meet, Piggy understands that the other boys also landed on the island and someone needs to find and help them. â€Å"We got to find the others. We got to do something† (14). Piggy also realizes that the boys will most likely stay on the island for a while before someone rescues them — if someone ever rescues them at all. Piggy understands the boys while staying in touch with reality and he knows that if he does not find the smaller boys and take care of them, they will die. Piggy comprehends the seriousness of their predicament and realizes what it will take to keep everyone in order and alive. Simon represents the superego because he adheres to the principles instilled in him by society and civilization. After Jack has killed a pig for the first time, he and his clan approach while chanting, Piggy whimpers and â€Å"Simon hushed him quickly as though he had spoken too loudly in church† (69). Simon’s conscience keeps Piggy in line even when dealing with savage Jack. Towards the end of the novel, the other boys savagely murder Simon; when the boys kill Simon they also kill their conscience, they kill the rules and implications set upon them in order to keep society civilized and from this point until the boys get rescued their savage nature completely takes over and nothing holds them back any longer. Alfred Adler believed that personality difficulties are rooted in a feeling of inferiority. He also believed that people focus on maintaining control over their lives. Golding shows these ideas in his novel. Piggy, Ralph, and Jack all have issues with inferiority and control, in some way each of them feels inferior and each them strives for control. The other boys consider Piggy substandard to them because physically he is not their equal, Piggy realizes that the other boys perceive him this way and tries to make up for it with his intellect and emphasis on the rules, which leads into Piggy’s control issue he tries to use control to counter act the feeling of being out-classed. Jack always strives for superiority, from the very beginning Jack feels that he should be chief instead of Ralph. Jack crumbles underneath his need to become more superior than Ralph and decides to takes control of his situation and forms his own tribe. Jack tries to control his life by getting his way and convincing other boys to get his way as well. Ralph fears inferiority, leadership thrusts itself upon Ralph but he holds his position in very high regard. As Ralph loses support from his tribe, he loses his superiority and he begins to lose faith in himself and become more nervous. Ralph does not like the loss of control in his tribe or in his life, the signal fire and getting the boys to help him make shelters was so important to him for this reason. Adler studied various types of people and he came to the conclusion that there are the four main types of people: The ruling type that tries to control others, the getting type that tends to go along with others ideas, the avoiding type that tries to isolate themselves to avoid defeat, the socially useful type that values having control over their lives and strive to do good things for the sake of society. Jack represents the ruling type with his demand that the boys do as he says â€Å"‘go on’ the two savages looked at each other, raised their spears together and spoke in time. ‘The chief has spoken’ â€Å"(141). Jack thrives off of ruling and absolute power. Sam and Eric fit into the category of the getting type, they tend to go along with and do what others tell them to do. Whenever Ralph is their chief they listen to him and go along with what he says, and then when Jack captures them and takes them to his tribe they adhere to his code and do what he says. Sam and Eric follow — they do not contribute to creative thought but they willingly take part in its aftermath. Simon represents the avoiding type, he largely keeps to himself, and he goes and finds a secret place where he can sit alone in the quiet with his thoughts. Ralph represents the socially useful type, he likes to have control of the boys but, unlike Jack he wants them to do things for the betterment of the group. Adler’s ideas come to life in Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Psychologist Carl Jung believed that symbol creation was a key in understanding human nature. Symbols express something essentially unknown in the best way possible. The boys in Lord of the Flies create a symbol for their fear, at times the boys feel afraid and they cannot exactly express why. The boys create the symbol of the beast because they cannot touch or see their fear and so they imagine a beast that they could touch and see. Whenever Simon recognizes that the thing to fear lies within the boys he also creates a symbol, the Lord of the flies. Jung also believed that the introvert and the extrovert make up the main components of personality. The introvert, like Simon, tends to keep to themselves, and find more interest in ideas than in people. â€Å"Simon paused. He looked over his shoulder as jack had done at the close ways behind him and glanced quickly around to confirm that he was utterly alone† (56). The extrovert however, is outgoing and socially oriented. Both Jack and Piggy fit the description of extroverts because, they both freely express their ideas and long for others to hear and admire them. According to Jung a person that has a healthy personality can realize these opposite tendencies and can express each. Ralph most closely adheres to Jung’s theory about healthy personality. Ralph has a need for socialization but, he also knows when he needs time for reflection and thought, many times Ralph wishes that he had time to gather his thoughts before he had to go and present them in front of the rest of the tribe. When reading Lord of the Flies some readers may miss the latent meaning and only focus on the manifest. Readers who do not take in deeper psychological nature of the novel would attribute the boy’s different reaction to the island, to differences in personality and background instead of the boys taking on the image of the different levels of consciousness. This reader might think that they could not keep order simply because they are just young boys when their real motives were their subconscious need for superiority. The entire novel deals with the psychological principles set forth by Freud, Adler, and Jung; it could be considered a case study that verifies the very things that these psychologists believed.

Specialty Hospitals and Community Hospitals Essay

Specialty Hospitals and Community Hospitals - Essay Example For instance, some cardiac hospitals had a tendency of treating cases that were more profitable as compared to the cases that community hospitals dealt with, whilst there was no conclusive determination as regards specialty hospitals dealing with surgical cases. Another realization of this analysis was the higher satisfaction from patients who received their treatment from specialty hospitals compared to other hospitals (Li & Wang, 2008). The conclusion drawn from this study was that specialty hospitals delivered care that was less uncompensated. However, the compensation of these costs came from payments done to corporate and property income taxes. Another mode of compensation was the failure to receive a disproportion share of hospital payments. On the other hand, the department of health concluded that some physicians usually referred patients to their private hospitals whilst still taking emergency calls from their departments in order to maintain their bases for referrals. These studied failed to identify a significant impact differential on both utilization and quality, and as such, recommended a modification on the prices of DRG in order to reflect costs much closely, as well as, eliminating any incentives provided. According to the studies and reports, it was impossible for MedPAC and the department of health to come up with a conclusive decision about the performance and activities of specialty hospitals. However, it was necessary to come up with a solid decision in order to determine the right position of specialty hospitals within the community. For instance, the CMS came up with certain decisions at the end of August 2006. It decided to follow up the recommendations made by the MedPAC in order to revise payments made to DRG for them to be much closer to other hospital costs as compared to hospital charges. In addition, it also seconded the proposed rule whereby specialty hospitals were to accept transfers of patients

Inconvenient truth Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Inconvenient truth - Essay Example ed terrestrial heat failing to reach the far atmosphere, hence it is trapped to the earth’s surface due to failure of leaving the earth surface, which in turn increases its normal temperature, resulting in many issues that are discussed by Gore (Kooten, 23). The issues include: The emission of greenhouse gases loads the atmosphere with carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping productions raises universal temperatures and prompts heavier precipitation events. Carbon dioxide resulting from burning fossil fuels and devastated tropical forests collects in the atmosphere, holding heat that would else have escaped into space, this confined heat increases the planet’s usual temperature. Some of the additional heat vaporizes water from the ocean and soil into the atmosphere. Furthermore, developing plants transfer water vapor into the atmosphere. As usual, global temperatures increase, and the warmer atmosphere can also grasp more moisture. Thus, when squalls occur, there is more water suspension present in the atmosphere to drop as hail, snow or rain. Globally, water suspension over oceans has enlarged by about 4% since 1970 according to the 2007 U.N. International Panel on Climate Variation report, it’s most recent (Seymour, 78). It only takes a minor variation in the quantity of water suspension in the atmosphere to have a major outcome. That’s because storms can attract upon water vapor from regions 10 to 25 times bigger than the exact area where the rain or snow in fact fall. Basing on the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s (USGCRP) latest report, scientists have detected less rain falling in light drizzle events and greater rain falling in the fullest precipitation occasions across the United States. From 1958 to 2007, the total rainfall in the heaviest 1 percent of storms improved by 31%, on average, in the Midwest and 20% in the Southeast. After a heavy drizzle event, there is little water suspension in the atmosphere, and consequently, dry periods

Homeostasis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Homeostasis - Essay Example The term homeostasis was first used by Walter Cannon in 1932 to illustrate the â€Å"maintenance of body’s dynamic constancy†. Homeostasis is a key concept in human physiology which represents the regulatory processes of the body for its optimum functioning mediated by several biochemical and physiological pathways. According to Gilbert, on a cellular level it is a practice through which a relatively constant electrical, chemical, osmotic and internal environment is maintained against a background of extensive range of metabolic demand, intake and loss. Maintenance of homeostasis is vital for the body as seen during exercise. The elevated cardiac and respiratory rates in response to increased CO2 and blood acidity must be readjusted later to meet the demand of lower metabolic rate. If this service is not done the body conditions lead to disease and ultimately death. Homeostasis is maintained by stimulus identification at tissue level with the help of sensors present in skin and sensory organs. These signals are then sent to peripheral sensory nerves and later to spinal cord and brain where depending on the type of stimulus a chain of physiological reaction is set off to maintain homeostasis in the body which may involve survive mechanism, stability in autonomic functions and immunological responses (Lawton, 2003). These responses are carried out by effectors such as muscles and glands. In some cases the responses to a stimulus are particularly elicited by either nervous or endocrine system however, in some cases it is a combination of both (Farabee, 2006). The process through which a constant internal environment (homeostasis) is maintained is known as homeostatic mechanism. Homeostatic control in the body is achieved through feed-back system which may be negative feed-back loop or positive feed-back loops. Negative feed-back loops (employed by most of the body’s systems) turns off the response to a particular stimulus thereby maintaining m ost of homeostatic activities while positive feed-back loop intensifies the effect of the particular response (Farabee, 2006). Positive feed-back intensifies the effects of change and therefore does not play a vital role in maintaining homeostasis. Stimulus? Sensor?Integrator? Effector Negative feed-back loop Systems involved in homeostasis: In a healthy body homeostatic maintenance is done by collaborative efforts of central systems of the body such as nervous, endocrine, circulatory, digestive and lymphatic. The balancing responses of these systems to a stimulus tend to maintain a proper homeostasis in body (Lawton, 2003). Major homeostatic controllers of the body are nervous and endocrine systems which constitute extrinsic control system. However, local or intrinsic control system usually involves an organ or a tissue e.g. dilation of blood vessels in reaction to higher levels of carbon dioxide and lower oxygen levels (Farabee, 2006).