Cady and Brutus Essay Example for Free

Cady and Brutus Essay Brutus and Cady emerge as the most complex characters in Julius Caesar and Mean Girls respectively. They are each stories tragic heroes. In each of their soliloquies, the audience gains insight into the complexities of their motives. Brutus is a powerful public figure, but he appears also as a husband, a master to his servants, a dignified military leader, and a loving friend. Cady starts off as virtually nothing, but eventually becomes a direct parallel in terms of Brutus’s power. The conflicting value systems that battle with each other in the play as a whole are enacted on incredibly small level in Brutus’s mind. Even after Brutus has committed the assassination with the other members of the conspiracy, questions remain as to whether, in light of his friendship with Caesar, the murder was a noble, decidedly selfless act or proof of a truly evil callousness, a gross indifference to the ties of friendship and a failure to be moved by the power of a truly great man. Brutus’s rigid idealism is both his greatest virtue and his most deadly flaw. In the world of the play, where self-serving ambition seems to dominate all other motivations, Brutus lives up to Antony’s elegiac description of him as â€Å"the noblest of Romans.† However, his commitment to principle repeatedly leads him to make mistakes that cost him much: wanting to curtail violence, he ignores Cassius’s suggestion that the conspirators kill Antony as well as Caesar. In another moment of rampant idealism, he again ignores Cassius’s advice and allows Antony to speak a funeral oration over Caesar’s body. As a result, Brutus forfeits the authority of having the last word on the murder and thus allows Antony to incite the shocked Roman crowd to riot against Brutus and the other conspirators. This is similar to when Regina George incites the entire school into chaos using the â€Å"burn book.† Brutus later endangers his good relationship with Cassius by self-righteously condemning what he sees as dishonorable fund-raising tactics on Cassius’s part. This is similar to how Cady views Regina, with respect and with friendship, but also with contempt. In all of these episodes, Brutus acts out of a desire to limit the self-serving aspects of his actions; ironically, however, in each incident he dooms the very cause that he seeks to promote, thus serving no one at all. The changes that shape Brutus and Cady are very interesting because they correlate so well. These changes occur because of the spurring of other characters. In Julius Caesar, Brutus is spurred on by Cassius and his conspirator band. In Mean Girls, Cady is spurred on by Janice (who is Cassius’s parallel). This spurring directly influences the characters actions and thoughts. Brutus probably wouldn’t ever have acted on this plot if it wasn’t for Cassius’s flattering comments. Cady wouldn’t have followed her path if she didn’t befriend or follow Janice’s ideas. Brutus and Cady develop along the same line in their respective stories, which is to be expected as they are the same character in similar settings.

Industrial Revolution Essay -- essays research papers

How Did The Industrial Revolution Affect A Person’s Quality of Life? One’s quality of life is defined as the degree of well-being felt by a person or a group of persons. It is concerned with a citizen’s consumption of goods and services, human rights and the environment. The industrial revolution have produced great wealth to many citizens that influences their state of well being. Others may argue that the changes and advancements in society have brought the burden of scarce resources, diseases and pollution among it’s people. Rather the opposite is true, the positive effects that the revolution have introduced such as the high availability of employment, food, and human rights and the opportunity for future growth overpowers these problems. Therefore it is accurate to say that the benefits of the industrial revolution have improved one’s quality of life. One characteristic that concerns the condition of a person’s life is the freedom for an occupation. This period of change have conducted the use of machinery for many types of production. Some believe that the substitution of machines for human labor have created high rates of unemployment for many nations. Before the revolution, jobs were very limited because work was accomplished through animal power and hand labor. Also many tasks required men with considerable skills which could only be accomplished through long hours of work and practice. In the past and in the present it could be clearly seen that the sprouting fa...

The Subjugation of Women in The Yellow Wallpaper -- The Yellow Wallpape

The Subjugation of Women in The Yellow Wall Paper  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚      In the nineteenth century, women in literature were often portrayed as submissive to men. Literature of the period often characterized women as oppressed by society, as well as by the male influences in their lives. The Yellow Wallpaper presents the tragic story of a woman's descent into depression and madness. Gilman once wrote "Women's subordination will only end when women lead the struggle for their own autonomy, thereby freeing man as well as themselves, because man suffers from the distortions that come from dominance, just as women are scarred by the subjugation imposed upon them" (Lane 5). The Yellow Wallpaper brilliantly illustrates this philosophy. The narrator's declining mental health is reflected through the characteristics of the house she is trapped in and her husband, while trying to protect her, is actually destroying her. The narrator of the story goes with her doctor/husband to stay in a colonial mansion for the summer. The house is supposed to be a place where she can recover from severe postpartum depression. She loves her baby, but knows she is not able to take care of him. "It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a dear baby! And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous" (Gilman 642). The symbolism utilized by Gilman is somewhat askew from the conventional. A house usually symbolizes security. In this story the opposite is true. The protagonist, whose name we never learn, feels trapped by the walls of the house, just as she is trapped by her mental illness. The windows of her room, which normally would symbolize a sense of freedom, are barred, holding her in. (Biedermann 179, 382). From the outset the reader is ... ...f the wallpaper . . . "(Gilman 647).      Bibliography Anderson, Daniel. *http://cwrl.utexas.edu/~daniel/amlit/wallpaper/whywrote/htm* Why I Wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper"? As it appeared in the October issue of The Forerunner, 1913." 1996. (19 Sept. 1998) Biedermann, Hans, ed. The Wordsworth Dictionary of Symbolism. Cumberland House: Hertfordshire, 1996 Cunningham, Iain and Holmes, Douglass. "Sensory Descriptions in The Yellow Wallpaper." 1977. http://englishwww.ucla.edu/individuals/mcgraw/wallpaper/senses.htm* (19 Sept. 1998). Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." Women's Work - An Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Barbara Perkins, Robyn Warhol, and George Perkins. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1994. 640-650. Lane, Ann J. To Herland and Beyond: The Life and Work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. New York: Pantheon Books, 1990.

“Federal Reserve” Bailouts will Devalue the Dollar

Since at least August of 2008, the privately owned Federal Reserve family of members banks are being bailed out by the US taxpayer. Some financial writers such as Rodgers (2008) hold that the bailout has been occurring for far longer, but at least as far as the rather timid news media are concerned, the â€Å"public† side of the bailouts has occurred since September of 2008. This will lead to a serious devaluation of an already devalued dollar. The reasons and theory will be described in the body of this paper.The basics are the following: after years of reckless lending and irresponsible spending by the public, the value of major investments, especially real estate, was dangerously overvalued. Continuing high returns gave banks incentives, at all levels, to extend credit with few controls, leading to the inevitable crunch that many mainstream writers claimed would never happen. The result, predictably, is that the larger institutions such as the major insurance form AIG, were to be bailed out.The mechanism for this bail out is rather simple: the â€Å"toxic† paper held by the private banks are to be exchanged for marginally less toxic paper from the Treasury. However, this paper has no value unless the Federal Government could borrow the money. At the moment, there is an inexplicable international trust in the American government to forward the money, but the official $800 billion figure is far from the truth. Far more money is needed, and has been invested in this scam already. The arguments in favor of the bailout are poor and contrived.They seem to revolve around the argument that if the major institutions fail, the shocks through the economy would be so bad as to affect even the most marginal taxpayer in America. With major bank and insurance failures, the ordinary man in the street would be severely affected. Hence, the bailout is meant to protect the taxpayer. In addition, the argument also tacks on the addendum that the paper taken from th e failing institutions will eventually be resold on the international markets once the crisis has passed and some level of confidence bas been regained (Warring, 2008).This argument is very poorly thought out, since, by the same token, one’s boss should have his debts paid by the US taxpayer since his failure would lead to his employees losing their jobs. Hence, his debts should be paid. The argument against the bailout is equally simple: it continually places the economy at the mercy of borrowed money, and, more importantly, that the people who helped create this crisis are precisely the same ones that are being rewarded through bailouts.It is fundamentally undemocratic and oligarchic in that the ordinary taxpayer in debt receives foreclosure, while the elite receive taxpayer money. Lastly, and more importantly relative to this essay, the continuing bailouts of the major economic players will dangerously increase the money supply and lead to hyperinflation (Warring, 2008). I n dealing with the question of inflation and the fall of the dollar, the nature of the Federal Reserve institution needs to be dealt with. First of all, the Fed was created in 1913 as a private institution, not a part of the federal government.Its member banks, according to Standard and Poor, are the Rothschild dynasty in London, the Seif dynasty in Italy, Lehman Bros in New York (allowed to fail in September), Chase Manhattan and Goldman Sachs, both in New York. While some may protest that the executive branch has some appointative power over the Fed, the reality is that the above firms are some of the most generous with their money in presidential campaigns, and the Federal Election Commission reports that Goldman Sachs was the leading campaign contributor to both Obama and McCain campaigns, with $4 million to Obama and almost $1.5 million to McCain (Open Secret Reports, 2009). Hence, it needs to be mentioned straight forward that the Fed banks are self governing and help elect th e president in the first place. Hence, given the makeup of the Fed’s board, little discussed outside the web, one can see that the bailout is over not merely the American financial sector, but the globe’s. The significance of the fed relative to dollar devaluation is that whatever the US government cannot raise though loans, itself repressive of the dollar’s value and repressive of international confidence, must be printed by the Federal Reserve members banks.In more detail, the situation looks like this: The Federal Reserve international financial board of governors decided to increase the Monetary Base (MB) of the country last year. The MB is defined as the total amount of money in circulation plus the reserve of the members banks. This came to $1. 4 trillion by last December, coming up from $800 billion a month prior (Engdahl, 2008). With this, banks still did not want to lend, and confidence did not increase. Hence, there is a huge pool of liquid that is for cing the dollar down that is not restoring confidence.This in part is because the US is broke, also in part that the amount of dollars held by foreign investors in China, the Arab World, Russia and India is a massive amount, continuing a downward pressure on the dollar and threatening the US with severe depression if these states decided to dump even a fraction of these dollars on the market. Is it possible that the bailout is really designed to give confidence to foreign governments and private banks who are thinking of purging their dollar reserves and moving to Euros?The reality is that if there is a threat of devaluation, then states and investors might be induced to sell, creating a panic and bottoming out the currency. Since the Fed will not disclose the recipients of the loans, and, further, the Treasury department will not disclose the nature of the toxic paper they are buying, there is no rebounding in confidence, hence, the dollar looks terrible in international eyes. Henc e, the Fed, realizing the state, which backs the dollar in the first place, has no money to lend, will merely print the money to fill the gap (Engdahl, 2008).Hence, given the stagnant MP, plus the fact that the bailout is being financed by foreign borrowing and by printing, there is no question that the dollar will fall. Since 2000, the dollar has lost 40% of its value against the Euro. In the chart below, the dollar is compared with the Euro during the bailout from 28 December 2007 to 27 January 2008. The below graph does indicate some recovery of the dollar against te Euro, but there can be no doubt as to the long term weakness of the US currency.Apparently, there is some mild increase in confidence that the bailout might make the US economy more solvent, but the below information is too limited for a full understanding. From the beginning of the bailout until mid November of last year, the US debt increased almost $958 billion. Add to this the record breaking trade deficit of alm ost $1 trillion, and the dollar is in serous trouble. The increase in public debt due to the bailout out is destroying the dollar’s value. According to Asia News (2008), the US is now committed to over $8.95 trillion dollars to the bailout. The total US economy was roughly $13 billion, with the full debt at about $10 trillion. About 61% of this debt was held by foreign investors, the majority Asian. Since trillions of dollars are held by Asian investors, and debt in the US (both private and public) reaches levels of complete insolvency, the Asians will insist on eliminating dollars as a method of doing business and hence, the dollar will not only loose value, but collapse, leading to a crisis of Argentinian proportions in 2009 (Asia News, 2008).This year, the same author at Asia News writes: â€Å"But Asia now understands that the increase of money supply decreases the intrinsic value of a currency. That is why China is seeking a possible and rational attempt to decouple Asi an currencies from the dollar, as recent news stories report. (Asia News, 2009). Hence, the math is simple: too many dollars in circulation, too much printing by the Fed to create the bailout liquidity means the devaluation and eventual collapse of the dollar, and the US taxpayer is powerless over the private Fed as well as the foreign investors that are publically now saying they will eliminate dollar reserves.The reality is this: once there is a sense that a country is insolvent, and that it simply cannot pay its debts, compounded by a massive bailout that the country cannot possibly finance on its own, investors run to get rid of dollars. Even worse, capital fight can result, where money begins leaving the insolvent country, in this case the US, investing instead in Russia, China, Thailand or the EU. Hence, the bailout is merely the tail end of a long fall in th US dollar, a powerful symbol of the US government and corporate governance to control investment and spending.

Electromagnets essays

Electromagnets essays Hans Christian Oersted was the first scientist to study electromagnetism. He was a physics professor at the University of Copenhagen. In 1819 he discovered that a magnetic needle is deflected at right angles to a wire carrying an electric current, thus initiating the study of electromagnetism. This discovery, which showed a connection between electricity and magnetism, was followed up by the French scientist Andr Marie Ampre, who studied the forces between wires carrying electric currents, and by the French physicist Dominique Franà §ois Jean Arago, who magnetized a piece of iron by placing it near a current-carrying wire. In 1831 the English scientist Michael Faraday discovered that moving a magnet near a wire induces an electric current in that wire, the inverse effect to that found by Oersted: Oersted showed that an electric current creates a magnetic field, while Faraday showed that a magnetic field can be used to create an electric current. The English physicist James Clerk Maxwell, who predicted the existence of electromagnetic waves and identified light as an electromagnetic phenomenon, achieved the full unification of the theories of electricity and magnetism. The Briton William Sturgeon invented the first electromagnet in 1823. An electromagnet is a temporary magnet, where the magnetic field only exists when electric current if flowing. An electromagnet is a device consisting of a solenoid (usually a cylindrical coil of insulated wire wound in the form of a helix), in which an iron core is placed. An electric current passed through the coil induces a strong magnetic field along the axis of the helix. When the iron core is placed in this field, microscopic domains that can be considered small permanent magnets in the iron align themselves in the direction of the field, thus increasing greatly the strength of the magnetic field produced by the solenoid. The electric current around the sol ...

elizabeth Blackwell essays

elizabeth Blackwell essays Elizabeth Blackwells Legacy: Advancements in Medicine and Womens Rights Elizabeth Blackwell has contributed greatly to American society by expanding womens rights through her courage and determination to become the first woman doctor in America. In the mid and late 1800s, there werent many choices for women in the professions. Women mostly became housewives or worked in factories, and they only dreamed of becoming doctors, but Elizabeth Blackwell changed it all. Blackwell was accepted to Geneva College in New York because the medical students there had thought her application was a joke from a rival school. However, she soon gained her peers respect by her competence and hard work. After she graduated, she wanted it to make it possible for others to become doctors as she had. As a result, Elizabeth Blackwell used her writings to support her ideas that women are equal if not superior to men, and that they should be allowed to practice medicine. Blackwell used both religious and historical allusions in one of her books, The Laws of Life with Special Reference to the Physical Education of Girls, to illustrate how women are equal to men. In the Greek Myth, Athena is the goddess of agriculture and wisdom. Blackwell argues: when agriculture and wisdom were of such great importance, why would men name a woman as a symbol of these coveted concepts? Blackwell writes, Her mother was the wisest, her father the most powerful...she was the protectress of sate and of social institutions, and of all that gives t society its highest prosperity...maintained law and justice...she was the protectress of the defences of the state... (Blackwell 10). Men created a woman in the image of all these designations, and they worship her as she is part of a great deity, so then men should treat the women beside them at least as their equals. Elizabeth Blackwell further proves that women are equal to men th...

The Y2K Glitch and End of the Century Changes

The Y2K Glitch and End of the Century Changes While many were ready to party like it was 1999, many others predicted catastrophe at the end of the year from a small assumption made long ago when computers were first being programmed. The Y2K (Year 2000) problem came to exist culturally because of a fear that computers would fail when their clocks were meant to update to January 1, 2000. Because computers were programmed to automatically assume the date began with 19 as in 1977 and 1988, people feared that when the date turned from December 31, 1999, to January 1, 2000, computers would be so confused that they would shut down completely. The Age of Technology and Fear Considering how much of our everyday lives were run by computers by the end of 1999, the new year was expected to bring serious computer repercussions. Some doomsayers warned that the Y2K bug was going to end civilization as we know it. Other people worried more specifically about banks,  traffic lights, the power grid, and airports - all of which were run by computers by 1999. Even microwaves and televisions were predicted to be affected by the Y2K bug. As computer programmers madly dashed to update computers with new information, many in the public prepared themselves by storing extra cash and food supplies. Preparations for the Bug By 1997, a few years ahead of widespread panic over the Millennium problem, computer scientists were already working toward the solution. The British Standards Institute (BSI) developed a new computer standard to define conformity requirements for the Year 2000. Known as  DISC PD2000-1, the standard outlined four rules: Rule 1: No value for current date will cause any interruption in operation. Rule 2: Date-based functionality must behave consistently for dates prior to, during and after year 2000. Rule 3: In all interfaces and data storage, the century in any date must be specified either explicitly or by unambiguous algorithms or inferencing rules.   Rule 4: Year 200 must be recognized as a leap year.   Essentially, the standard understood the bug to rely on two key issues: the existing two-digit representation of dates was problematic in date processing and a misunderstanding of calculations for leap years in the Gregorian Calendar had caused the year 2000 to not be programmed as a leap year. The first problem was solved by creating new programming for dates to be entered as four-digit numbers (ex: 2000, 2001, 2002, etc.), where they were previously represented only as two (97, 98, 99, etc.). The second by amending the algorithm for calculating leap years to any year value divided by 100 is not a leap year, with the addition of excluding years which are divisible by 400, thereby making the year 2000 a leap year (as it was).   What Happened  on January 1, 2000? When the prophesied date came and computer clocks around the world updated to January 1, 2000, very little actually happened. With so much preparation and updated programming done before the change of date, the catastrophe was quelled and only a few, relatively minor millennium bug problems occurred - and even fewer were reported.