Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka and Why Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka and Why - Essay Example My reactions to Gregor surprised me, for the creature he has become, 'monstrous vermin', and the habits he develops as his condition deteriorates, eating rotting food and leaving sticky messes, is one most likely to cause revulsion. Instead, he elicits most positive emotions. In particular, he arouses feelings of pity, compassion and sympathy for his plight, while his family tend to make me feel disgusted with them and their treatment of this changed Gregor. Only his mother continues to want to protect him, even after seeing him as 'an enormous brown patch against the flowers on the wallpaper.' In asking myself why I should feel this way, I am led to look deeply at my own beliefs and values. I begin to liken Gregor's plight to someone having a mental breakdown, a stroke, or being terminally ill, or suffering dreadful disfigurement. If this happened to me or someone I cared about, coping would be hard but I would hope that kindness and concern would be given to the 'changed' me, and that people would remember that the real person is still in there somewhere. Although Grete does initially look after her brother, it is she who wants to kill him, telling her father, 'It's got to go....you've got to get rid of the idea that that's Gregor'.

Life without computers

Life without computers Nowadays, we cannot imagine our life without computers and the fact is that they have become so important that nothing can replace them. They seem to be everywhere today. Since 1948 when the first real computer has been invented our life has changed so much that we can call it real digital revolution. First computers differed from todays ones. They were so huge that they occupied whole rooms or buildings being relatively slow. They were not faster than modern simple watches or calculators. Nowadays they are also used by scientist and they may also be as huge as the old ones but they are millions times faster. They can perform many complex operations simultaneously and scientist practically cant do without them. Thanks to them people has access to enormous amount of information. Gathering data has never been more simple than now. They are not only used in laboratories but also in factories to control production. Sometimes it is computers who manufacture other computers. But not only in science and industry computers are being used. Thanks to them modern medicine can diagnose diseases faster and more thoroughly. Also in banking system computers have become irreplaceable. They control ATMs, all data is stored on special hard disks and paper isnt used in accountancy any more. Furthermore, architects, designers and engineers cant imagine their work without computers. This machines are really everywhere and we depend on them also in such fields as criminology. They help police to solve crimes and collect evidence. Moreover, computers are wide-spread in education. Except their classic tasks such as administration and accountancy they are used in process of learning. Firstly, they store enormous amount of data which helps students to gain an information. Secondly, thanks to special teaching techniques and programs they improve ours skills of concentration and assimilation of knowledge. They have become so popular that not knowing how to use them means to be illiterate. Of course except this superb features there is also dark side of computer technology because every invention brigs us not only benefits but also threats. HARDWARE Our PC (Personal Computer) is a system, consisting of many components. Some of those components, like Windows and all your other programs, are software. The stuff you can actually see and touch, and would likely break if you threw it out a fifth-story window, is hardware. The system unit is the actual computer; everything else is called a peripheral device. Your computers system unit probably has at least one floppy disk drive, and one CD or DVD drive, into which you can insert floppy disks and CDs. Theres another disk drive, called the hard disk inside the system unit. You cant remove that disk, or even see it. But its there. And everything thats currently in your computer is actually stored on that hard disk. (We know this because there is no place else inside the computer where you can store information). The floppy drive and CD drive are often referred to as drives with removable media or removable drives for short, because you can remove whatever disk is currently in the drive, and replace it with another. Your computers hard disk can store as much information as tens of thousands of floppy disks, so dont worry about running out of space on your hard disk any time soon. As a rule, you want to store everything you create or download on your hard d isk. Use the floppy disks and CDs to send copies of files through the mail, or to make backup copies of important items. RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY (RAM) Theres too much stuff on your computers hard disk to use it all at the same time. During the average session sitting at the computer, youll probably use only a small amount of all thats available. The stuff youre working with at any given moment is stored in random access memory (often abbreviated RAM, and often called simply memory). The advantage using RAM to store whatever youre working on at the moment is that RAM is very fast. Much faster than any disk. For you, fast translates to less time waiting and more time being productive. So if RAM is so fast, why not put everything in it? Why have a hard disk at all? The answer to that lies in the fact that RAM is volatile. As soon as the computer is shut off, whether intentionally or by an accidental power outage, every thing in RAM disappears, just as quickly as a light bulb goes out when the plug is pulled. So you dont want to rely on RAM to hold everything. A disk, on the other hand, holds its information whether the power is on or off. THE HARD DISC All of the information thats in your computer, so to speak, is stored on your computers hard disk. You never see that actual hard disk because its sealed inside a special housing and needs to stay that way. Unlike RAM, which is volatile, the hard disk can hold information forever with or without electricity. Most modern hard disks have tens of billions of bytes of storage space on them. Which, in English, means that you can create, save, and download files for months or years without using up all the storage space it provides. In the unlikely event that you do manage to fill up your hard disk, Windows will start showing a little message on the screen that reads You are running low on disk space well in advance of any problems. In fact, if that message appears, it wont until youre down to about 800 MB of free space. And 800 MB of empty space is equal to about 600 blank floppy disks. Thats still plenty of room. SCSI SCSI is a type of interface used for computer components such as hard drives, optical drives, scanners and tape drives . It is a competing technology to standard IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics). While the less expensive IDE technology is built into motherboards, SCSI is a technology that must be added by purchasing a SCSI controller. The SCSI card fits into an internal PCI slot. SCSI devices are then connected to this card. SCSI devices, particularly hard drives, are designed to be used 24/7 in addressing the needs of the server market. For this reason, SCSI drives are usually made to higher standards and carry longer warranties than IDE drives of comparable capacity. However, the added speed and quality come at a price. SCSI components are significantly more expensive than their IDE cousins. THE MOUSE Obviously you know how to use your mouse, since you must have used it to get here. But lets take a look at the facts and buzzwords anyway. Your mouse probably has at least two buttons on it. The button on the left is called the primary mouse button, the button on the right is called the secondary mouse button or just the right mouse button. Ill just refer to them as the left and right mouse buttons. Many mice have a small wheel between the two mouse buttons. THE KEYBOARD Like the mouse, the keyboard is a means of interacting with your computer. You really only need to use the keyboard when youre typing text. Most of the keys on the keyboard are laid out like the keys on a typewriter. But there are some special keys like Esc (Escape), Ctrl (Control), and Alt (Alternate). There are also some keys across the top of the keyboard labeled F1, F2, F3, and so forth. Those are called the function keys, and the exact role they play depends on which program you happen to be using at the moment. Most keyboards also have a numeric keypad with the keys laid out like the keys on a typical adding machine. If youre accustomed to using an adding machine, you might want to use the numeric keypad, rather than the numbers across the top of the keyboard, to type numbers. It doesnt really matter which keys you use. The numeric keypad is just there as a convenience to people who are accustomed to adding machines. Most keyboards also contain a set of navigation keys. You can use the navigation keys to move around around through text on the screen. The navigation keys wont move the mouse pointer. Only the mouse moves the mouse pointer. On smaller keyboards where space is limited, such as on a notebook computer, the navigation keys and numeric keypad might be one in the same. There will be a Num Lock key on the keypad. When the Num Lock key is on, the numeric keypad keys type numbers. When the Num Lock key is off, the navigation keys come into play. The Num Lock key acts as a toggle. Which is to say, when you tap it, it switches to the opposite state. For example, if Num Lock is on, tapping that key turns it off. If Num Lock is off, tapping that key turns Num Lock on. INTERFACE CONTROLLERS Interface controllers (parallel, serial, USB, Firewire) to connect the computer to external peripheral devices such as printers or scanners. GRAFICS Graphics controller that produces the output for the monitor. The term computer graphics includes almost everything on computers that is not text or sound. Today almost every computer can do some graphics, and people have even come to expect to control their computer through icons and pictures rather than just by typing. Computer graphics as drawing pictures on computers, also called rendering. The pictures can be photographs, drawings, movies or simulations pictures of things which do not yet exist and maybe could never exist. Or they may be pictures from places we cannot see directly, such as medical images from inside your body. SOFTWARE Software is a generic term for organized collections of computer data and instructions, often broken into two major categories: system software that provides the basic non-task-specific functions of the computer and application software which is used by users to accomplish specific tasks. System software is responsible for controlling, integrating and managing the individual hardware components of a computer system so that other software and the users of the system see it as a functional unit without having to be concerned with the low-level details such as transferring data from memory to disk, or rendering text onto a display. Generally, system software consists of an operating system and some fundamental utilities such as disk formatters, file managers, display managers, text editors, user authentication (login) and management tools, and networking and device control software. Application software, on the other hand, is used to accomplish specific tasks other than just running the computer system. Application software may consist of a single program, such as an image viewer; a small collection of programs (often called a software package) that work closely together to accomplish a task, such as a spreadsheet or text processing system; a larger collection (often called a software suite) of related but independent programs and packages that have a common user interface or shared data format, such as Microsoft Office, which consists of closely integrated word processor, spreadsheet, database, etc.; or a software system, such as a database management system, which is a collection of fundamental programs that may provide some service to a variety of other independent applications. Software is created with programming languages and related utilities, which may come in several of the above forms: single programs like script interpreters, packages containing a compiler, linker, and other tools; and large suites (often called Integrated Development Environments) that include editors, debuggers, and other tools for multiple languages.

Iago and Honesty in Shakespeares Othello Essay -- Othello essays Shak

Iago and Honesty in Othello    Iago uses the word "honest" in act three of Othello in three primary ways.   The first way he uses it is to mean honourable, about Cassio.   He uses this meaning of the word to force Othello to doubt Cassio's honesty, and question his hounorablility.   The second way is to mean faithful, both about Desdemona and Cassio.   Iago uses it in the context that the two may be "truthful," again to make Othello doubt.   The third way is Iago's most effective use, which is to use honest in the context to mean truthful, as in, he has told Othello the truth.   However, Shakespeare has created tremendous dramatic irony, for we know that Iago is being anything except truthful.   The three uses of the word honest are used largely in the subtext of the act, they are used by Iago to force Othello to question his wife's integrity, and honesty.   Shakespeare uses the word by Iago to plant tremendous doubt in Othello's mind.   The word is also used by Iago in the action line.   His objective is constantly to make Othello think things without actually being told them, and Iago's parroting of the word and constant useage do this quite nicely.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Iago initially uses the word honest to mean honourable, in reference to Cassio.   Othello has asked him if "he [Cassio] is not honest?"   To which Iago parrots back "Honest my lord?"   This usage is constant with what Othello means, whether Cassio is honourable or not.   However, Iago uses the word to cast doubt on Othello.   By parroting it back, he is making it seem to Othello that he does not want to answer the question, that he doesn't want to tell Othello something.   This is seen in the subtext that Iago wishes to create.   This use of it also contributes to Iago's objective, to... ...o uses the word almost laughingly behind Othello's back, telling him that he has been driven to honesty, when he know that Iago is only telling Othello half truths.   Shakespeare uses the word effectively to create dramatic irony.    Works Cited Barthelemy, Anthony G. "Introduction" Critical Essays on Shakespeare's Othello. Ed. Anthony G. Barthelemy Pub. Macmillan New York, NY 1994. (page 1-19) Jones, Eldred. "Othello- An Interpretation" Critical Essays on Shakespeare's Othello. Ed. Anthony G. Barthelemy Pub. Macmillan New York, NY 1994. Shakespeare, William. Othello. In The Electric Shakespeare. Princeton University. 1996. http://www.eiu.edu/~multilit/studyabroad/othello/othello_all.html No line nos. Snyder, Susan. "Beyond the Comedy: Othello" Modern Critical Interpretations, Othello Ed. Harold Bloom, Pub. Chelsea House New Haven CT 1987.   

George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language vs. Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal: Essay

George Orwell’s â€Å"Politics and the English Language† and Jonathan Swift’s â€Å"A Modest Proposal† are essays from two different times; the former written in 1946, and the latter in the 18th century. Both essays aim to spark people’s attention and address important national issues of their countries. â€Å"Politics and the English Language† basically presents Orwell’s opinion about the then-current state of the English Language—that it was decaying, just like what was happening to civilization at that time. He attributed the decay of the English Language to politics and economics, arguing that it is not just the fault of the writer that his words lack precision and has stale imagery, but it is rooted from political and economic causes, saying â€Å"†¦an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form.† On the other hand, â€Å"A Modest Proposal For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being Aburden to Their Parents or Country, and For Making Them Beneficial to The Public† presents Swift’s satirical critique of the English and Irish government, wherein he sarcastically suggested that in order for the Irish government to solve the national issues of poverty and overpopulation, they must sell the children of the poor, specifically one-year old babies, as food for the wealthy Irish and English people. He presented staggering calculations and economic strategies on how to achieve necessary solutions to end their national problems. He argued that the use of poor children as food for the wealthy will reduce the country’s population and improve the condition and living state of the poor Irish people because of the increased income they will get from selling their children. The points in which these two essays try to impose on their readers are much influenced by what was going on in their respective countries at the time the famous literary pieces were written. In Swift’s time, which was the early 18th century, several astounding issues were present in Ireland that struck Swift and led him to write his famous essay. One of these is the oppressive treatment of the Catholic peasants of Ireland by the English, which resulted in the peasants of Ireland to be experience extreme poverty. Swift published his essay as a pamphlet. On the other hand, Orwell’s essay was written in 1946, a time when Britain was in a hazy after-war state. Therefore political speeches were prevalent at that time; writers and speakers, as observed by Orwell, lack precision in their words and has a stale imagery in their messages. The way the two authors attacked their respective adversaries (in Swift’s case, the Irish government, and in Orwell’s, political writers and all writers in English in general) are completely different in a variety of ways. There is significant amount of   diversity of their style of writing even though they have the same goal in general, which is, in a shallow point of view, to spark, take hold—grope people’s attention through their essays to get them to read intently what the message of their essays bring. In terms of the persona of the essay, Orwell attacked writers as a linguist, analyzing what was faulty behind the use of language of writers in his time. The essay even has a persona of an English language instructor, as Orwell pointed out rules that he proposed everyone must use when writing: â€Å"(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.   (ii) Never us a long word where a short one will do.(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. (iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active. (v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. (vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.† Meanwhile, Swift attacked the Irish government in the persona of an economist, calculating how much percentage of the population will be decreased in case his proposal is applied, and other economic statistics in his time. A part of his essay presents then-current statistics of the kingdom of Ireland: â€Å"†¦ The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders; from which number I subtract thirty thousand couples who are able to maintain their own children, although I apprehend there cannot be so many, under the present distresses of the kingdom; but this being granted, there will remain an hundred and seventy thousand breeders. I again subtract fifty thousand for those women who miscarry, or whose children die by accident or disease within the year. There only remains one hundred and twenty thousand children of poor parents annually born†¦Ã¢â‚¬  The essays also differed in the type of language their authors used. Orwell’s â€Å"Politics and the English Language† used literal language. He said his points straight and direct, with no figurative speech whatsoever. Neither did he used euphemisms in criticizing the words and sentences and essays of the writers who, according to him, are faulty in their use of the English language: â€Å"These five passages have not been picked out because they are especially bad — I could have quoted far worse if I had chosen — but because they illustrate various of the mental vices from which we now suffer. They are a little below the average, but are fairly representative examples. I number them so that i can refer back to them when necessary: 1. I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become, out of an experience ever more bitter in each year, more alien [sic] to the founder of that Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him to tolerate. Professor Harold Laski (Essay in Freedom of Expression)†¦Ã¢â‚¬  On the other hand, the language of Swift’s essay, â€Å"A Modest Proposal†, is entirely figurative. The essay is classified as a political satire, incorporated with much sarcasm and irony. His irrational argument, which is to use the babies of poor families in Ireland as food for the wealthy English and Irish people, intensified by exaggeration, is actually a metaphor to attack the policies of the Irish government at that time. â€Å"†¦and therefore whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these children sound, useful members of the commonwealth would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation†¦ †¦a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.†

External causes for Enron to collapse Essay

1) Deregulation Deregulation of the U.S. energy industry made possible Enron’s emergence as a major corporation, but also ultimately may have contributed to its collapse. The company successfully seized the opportunity created by deregulation to create a new business as a market maker in natural gas and other commodities. Enron successfully influenced policymakers to exempt the company from various regulatory rules, for example in the field of energy derivatives. This allowed Enron to enter various trading markets with virtually no government oversight. Arguably, regulation might have prevented Enron from taking some of the risks and making some of the mistakes which it did. While deregulation may initially have helped Enron, by allowing it to create and enter new markets, it later hurt the company by removing the very restraints that might have kept it from becoming fatally overextended. 2) Lax regulatory enforcement Arguably, government regulatory agencies failed to exercise sufficient oversight or to enforce the rules that were on the books. Regulatory bodies that failed to enforce the rules governing Enron’s actions included the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFEC). 3) Weak and ambiguous accounting standards Hindsight makes it fairly clear that the accounting standards promulgated by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) were too weak and too ambiguous with respect to the complex trading transactions and financial structures that Enron established and operated. Two areas stand out as ones of particular concern. First, the rules apparently permitted the widespread use of market-to-market (MTM) accounting in areas for which it was not originally intended. Second, the 3 percent rule for outside ownership of SPEs was arguably too low to maintain genuine independence. An underlying issue was that corporate practice (e.g., sophisticated online trading of complex financial derivatives) had outpaced the work of the rules makers,  leading to the application of rules in situations for which they were not originally designed. 4) A lack of independence on the part of the company’s auditors and law firms working for the company A key external issue was conflict of interest on the part of accounting and law firms working for Enron. Arthur Andersen, the company’s accounting firm, arguably had a conflict of interest in that Arthur Andersen provided both external audit services and internal consulting for Enron. If Arthur Andersen were to challenge the propriety of Enron’s financial statements in its annual audit, it ran the risk of jeopardizing its lucrative consulting and â€Å"inside† accounting work for its client. Moreover, relations between the two firms were unusually close, possibly undermining Arthur Andersen’s objectivity and independence. Similarly, Vinson & Elkins, Enron’s outside law firm, was seemingly under pressure not to question the legality of the Special Purpose Entities (SPEs) too closely, since Enron was a major client of the firm. 5) Inadequate campaign finance and lobbyist rules. Enron made extensive legal use of various techniques of political influence, including engaging the services of lobbyists, making extensive contributions to political campaigns, particularly using soft money, and hiring former government officials. One of the external causes, then, may have been campaign finance and other rules that permitted such legal exercise of corporate influence in policymaking. 6) Weak stakeholder oversight. A case can be made that external stakeholders–especially large institutional investors such as pension and mutual funds–failed to exercise due diligence. These institutional investors were happy to make handsome returns on their extensive investments in Enron in the late 1990s, but failed to become actively involved in corporate governance at the company until it was  too late.