Its Time to Terraform Mars :: Argumentative Persuasive Essays

It's Time to Terraform Mars "Earth is Heaven. Venus is Hell. Mars is neither, yet." K.G.M. Paterson Introduction Our solar system began to form 4.6 billion years ago from a swirling mass cloud. Give or take a couple of million years, the gas cooled and joined to form large bodies called â€Å"protoplanets,† which later became the planets we know today. Whatever was left after the planets formed became comets or asteroids, strewn about all over the solar system. After 100 million years, the enormous ball of gas at the center of this swirling mass cloud overheated and exploded in a huge nuclear reaction. This reaction gave birth to the sun we know today. This sun has enough energy to provide for nine planets, and just the right mix of masses and orbits to provide Earth with the right ingredients to support life. Of course, after many more millions of years, these right ingredients led to the recipe for human life; soon people of the ancient world observed the movements of the planets. The ancient Greeks thought they were wandering stars, and gave them the name planetes, or wanderers . Of course, the Romans conquered the Greeks, and renamed the planets after their gods. Earth is the only planet whose name doesn’t derive from ancient Greek or Roman mythology. Earth comes from the Old English word Gaia; but the Romans called our planet Terra, hence Terra Firma. Mars was said to be named after the god of war because of its angry red color; but early on Mars was worshipped as a god of growth and fertility. Earth This third rock from the sun has just the right mix of variables to encourage and sustain life on it for so many years. But why here and no where else you ask? Most of it has to do with the fact that it is the third rock from the sun. The distance from the sun (150 million km) is just the right distance to allow for water to exist as a liquid, an important ingredient to sustain life. With over 2/3 of the planet covered with water, the Earth’s oceans are perfect for regulating the temperature of the planet at a consistent 22 °C, another important ingredient to allow life to survive. With a powerful magnetic field

Philosophy & Husserl on intersubjectivity Essay

According to Husserl, inter subjective experience plays a vital role in the constitution of the self as subjects that exist objectively, other experiencing object and the objective world governed by space and time. That’s why transcendental phenomenology tries to reconstruct the basic rational structures that enable constitutive achievements. From a first person perspective, intersubjectivity occurs when people undergo acts of empathy because an intersubjective experience is highly empathetic. This is because it occurs in the course of person’s consciousness and conscious attribution of acts that are intentional and directed towards other subjects. This is happens when people put themselves in the shoes of others and studying this experience suing a phenomenological attitude calls for bracketing of beliefs in the existence of the very targets of a persons acts ascription through the experiencing subject and ask questions whether internal beliefs justify our underlying intersubjective experience (Carrs, 1999) . Therefore it takes phenomenal investigation to expose these beliefs which are usually unconscious when the world is experienced in the natural attitude. One of the fundamental beliefs the Husserl uncovered is the expectation that any being that resembles and has similar mannerisms as myself always displays traits that are also familiar with mine which means that perception will be from an egocentric perspective. This means a person would look at another and the things the other one does from their own perspective allowing them to go into other persons shoes and this beliefs lets one to ascribe intentional acts to others instantly without drawing an external inference or making an analogy to ones case. This means that the belief in question must be in tandem with the personal belief system because it forms part of the pre-given intentional background which is also referred to as the life word. It is this life world that forms a basis where all acts ascriptions and all constuitive achievements tend to make sense initially before they get the ultimate justification. Husserl’s perception of the life world may be quite difficult but it is also very important. This perception can be approached in two different ways which are very compatible. It can be thought in terms of belief and in terms of things like senses which are culturally or socially established. Restricting ourselves to just one experience as a subject can make the lifeworld look like a rational structure that underlies a natural attitude which means that if the subject’s lifeworld has beliefs against which they base their every day attitude towards themselves, it is the objective world that receives the utmost justification. However, in principle, the beliefs that form a subject’s lifeworld are not immune to revision which means that Husserl is not an epistemological phenomenologist. What if people consider a single community of subjects within their common lifeworld or even the homeworld? This can be looked upon by first approximating the systems of senses and meanings which make up their common form of life as long as they conceive the world and themselves using parameters provided by this form of life. Considering subjects that belong to different communities, their lifeworld can be looked upon as an overall framework of senses and meanings that give room for collective translations of their respective home worlds. One of the intuitive achievements based on this explanation of the lifeworld and the practice of act ascription is a person self image which becomes a fully fledged person who exists as an element that has physical and psychological spatio temporal order. This self image is usually referred to as iterated empathy where one puts themselves into the shoes of another subject in a conscious manner that simulates them especially when the other person puts themselves into your shoes in return (Lauer, 1996). This way, one can make configurations wherereby for the other subject to manage to ascribe intentional acts upon you, he has to bodily identify with you as a full human being with flesh and blood and with the egocentric perspective having differences with their own This creates a conclusion that ones egocentric perspective is just one of the many perspectives that are used in the theory of intersubjectivity and from all the other strange perspectives, one appears as a physical subject in the midst of others in that world dictated by space and time. This means that the criterion of subject vs. identity applies to oneself and others too meaning that there is one living human body with one experiencing subject. However, Husserl does not want to deny that people ascribe to experiences especially the intentional experience like the animals. This is where the biggest problem and difficulty lies because there is a big bodily behavioral and bodily difference between human beings and animals. According to Husserl empathy also provides a background upon which practical, aesthetical and moral evaluations analysis of intercultural understanding can be given a critique which means that the foreign world can be constituted against a background of ones world or home world. Husserl’s asserts that even the objective world that is governed by space and time, and which is a significant part of people’s daily lifeworld is also constituted intersubjectively the same is true for the spatio- temporal set up that is made up of objective time and space. This brings in a question of how an abstraction of the spatio temporal object which is different from the same notion because it does not make a presupposition of any other subject can manage to observe another object from its won perspective. Husserl answers this question by arguing that for someone to put him or herself into the shoes of another subject and manage trio simulate their perspective upon the adjacent world dictated by time and space, one does not have to assume that that world is similar to their own though the conditions under which the subjects symbolizes the world should be different because they are based on an ego centric viewpoint. This means that all the spatio temporal objects that form ones worlds exist separately from ones subjective perspective and the specific experiences that one performs which must be part and parcel of an objective reality. It also means that perceptual subjects are transcendent because in any particular moment, they portray a very large number of features that are could not be perceived or expected earlier and some manifest themselves after further observation. However, this does not mean that the objective world found in the intersubjective experience is completely separate from the aspects under which the world is represented. According to Husserl another condition that makes intersubjective experience possible is the assumption that the other subjects mould the world into objects just as oneself does. This means that Husserl sticks to both Realist and idealist versions. Levinas critique For Husserl, the major philosophical question is the understanding of the link between contingent particular experience on one side and objective knowledge that is scientific on the other side meaning that one person’s intentional consciousness and the other person’s intentional consciousness are usually directed towards the same object (Cains, 1999). This means that the person that emerges fro Husserl analysis is just an alter ego meaning that the ego is me while the alter ego is the other. This is a postulation that was rejected by Emanuel Levinas because the question of intentionality is basically ethical instead of being epistemological and he claims that intentionality is just a form of representation. Levinas critiqued Husserl’s assertion because according to him, the latter has defied the Cartesian account of consciousness as a holder of ideas. He claims that the intentional object is not the existing object because of the bracketing of the existence of the intentional object. He claims that if experience is accounted for in terms of representation that is comprehended from this perspective, then the object of experience depends on consciousness and its from this point of view that it can be meaningful. Intentionality is therefore understood basically from an optical point of view where sight and light are involved. However according to Levinas, it is not what is seen that that speaks. For example, one can see a face but seeing it does not make if different from any other object. The face of another person is however always viewed in relation to my own and that is where Levinas make a distinction between the autre and the autrui and the two words are borrowed from French. The two words mean other but in different context. This reduces the world of phenomenological consciousness which should be widened though analogies projected by the other however, the other breaks in on such a world creating disruptions. Levinas therefore disagrees with Husserl by claiming that the other is not placed on a horizontal axis as Husserl had claimed, it is actually placed on a vertical axis according to Levinas. The other therefore addresses me and that address may not be verbal but that face will definitely speak to me about things which may not be there in the face that is on itself understood as an object of ones intentional consciousness List of references Cains, D, 1999, Formal and Transcendental Logic, The Hague: Nijhoff Carr, D ,1999, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press Carl, D, 1980, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy – Third Book: Phenomenology and the Foundations. Evanston:

Thanks for 24 Years of Service

1. How valid do you think the comments are that Russ is hearing? Answer – Students’ answers will vary with their age and experience. The issue is the validity of the comments. The issue is dealing with the perceptions. Basically, Russ needs to translate his experience into transferable job skills and sell himself as an adaptive person. Most of what he’s hearing is probably stereotypical, but he can’t re educate the job market; he has to reinvent himself. 2. If you were a small business executive in need of someone with extensive financial experience, would you consider Russ?Explain your position. Answer – Again students’ answers will vary. Pro—great extensive experience, new ideas from a different industry, and a high performance track record. Con—the need to adjust to a new company culture, possibility of leaving due to pay issues, not knowing the specific business. Discuss with students how they could address the cons either a s a business owner or as Russ. Business owner—assign a mentor to help cultural adjustment, offer pay incentives tied to company growth and profitability that could help make up for the pay cut.Russ—shift his own attitude and realize the world has changed, work for a temp agency to get experience in smaller companies, study the company’s industry and bring a series of new ideas with him to the interview that related specifically to a small company in that industry. 3. What suggestions might you make to Russ to help him find suitable employment? Answer – See comments under #2. Russ’ biggest challenge is changing his own mindset and then demonstrating that to potential employers. Focus on transferable, skills not specific job experience Thanks for 24 Years of Service 1. How valid do you think the comments are that Russ is hearing? Answer – Students’ answers will vary with their age and experience. The issue is the validity of the comments. The issue is dealing with the perceptions. Basically, Russ needs to translate his experience into transferable job skills and sell himself as an adaptive person. Most of what he’s hearing is probably stereotypical, but he can’t re educate the job market; he has to reinvent himself. 2. If you were a small business executive in need of someone with extensive financial experience, would you consider Russ?Explain your position. Answer – Again students’ answers will vary. Pro—great extensive experience, new ideas from a different industry, and a high performance track record. Con—the need to adjust to a new company culture, possibility of leaving due to pay issues, not knowing the specific business. Discuss with students how they could address the cons either a s a business owner or as Russ. Business owner—assign a mentor to help cultural adjustment, offer pay incentives tied to company growth and profitability that could help make up for the pay cut.Russ—shift his own attitude and realize the world has changed, work for a temp agency to get experience in smaller companies, study the company’s industry and bring a series of new ideas with him to the interview that related specifically to a small company in that industry. 3. What suggestions might you make to Russ to help him find suitable employment? Answer – See comments under #2. Russ’ biggest challenge is changing his own mindset and then demonstrating that to potential employers. Focus on transferable, skills not specific job experience

Media’s Negative Effect on Women Body Image

I. Images in the media are having a negative impact on female body image and has given society a blurred meaning as to â€Å"beautiful† A. Models 1. Models give an unrealistic view of the ideal woman; they give the idea that you cannot be beautiful unless you are thin. 2. â€Å"The average model is taller and weighs 23 per cent, or almost a quarter, less than the average woman who is 5'4†³ and weighs 148 lbs. † (Canadian Women’s Health) 3. Model’s bodies have been getting thinner by the years, and as the bodys keep slimming down women and girls in society are becoming more unhappy with their selves. B. Economic goals . â€Å"There are no official statistics for spending on diet products, but estimates vary from $40bn to $100bn in the US alone – more than the combined value of the government's budget for health, education and welfare. † (Cummings) 2. By the media presenting an almost impossible ideal to get and maintain, the cosmetic and diet industry becomes profitable. 3. Ads are directed mostly to younger girls purposely. C. Health issues 1. Exposure to images of thin, young, air-brushed female bodies is linked to depression, loss of self-esteem and the development of unhealthy eating habits in women and girls. . The American research group Anorexia Nervosa & Related Eating Disorders, Inc. says that one out of every four college-aged women uses unhealthy methods of weight control (bulimia, anorexia, excess exercising, laxatives, skipping meals. ) 3. This has even affected younger girls, as low as 5-6 years old. 4. Nearly half of all preadolescent girls wish to be thinner, and as a result have engaged in a diet or are aware of the concept of dieting. (Tiggeman) 5. Researchers generating a computer model of a woman with Barbie-doll proportions, for example, found that her back would be too weak to support the weight of her upper body, and her body would be too narrow to contain more than half a liver and a few centimeters of bowel. A  real woman built that way would suffer from chronic diarrhea and eventually die from malnutrition. II. Although the damage has been well done, by eliminating the fake women pictures and providing the society with a healthier view of themselves, women’s views about themselves would be a lot healthier and they would feel uch happier. A. Although these campaigns have just started with their healthy ideas, many companies have tried to help with this problem and have received much positive feedback. 1. In 2004, Dove launched the very successful Campaign for Real Beauty which features real women, not models, advertising Dove's firming cream. (Dove) 2. Dove has also recently launched a new campaign, 3. In Septem ber 2006, a news and media furor erupted when Spain banned overly thin models from its fashion runways. 4. Dove produced this video in response to the negative comments of the changes of the company’s models called Evolution which shows the transformation from a regular women to a model and how unrealistic perceptions of beauty are. 5. In 2010, Dove ® set out a bold new vision for the brand with the Dove ® Movement for Self-Esteem. ( Dove) III. Not everyone agrees, however, that this is something wrong. A. The people that prosper from these ideas say 1. Women need to have more self control. a. It’s not like women can just avoid these ads, they are everywhere and have come to dominate our society. Depression and low self-esteem is not something that women want to have. Not everyone is born the same. 2. Obesity is a problem, thinner is healthier. a. Thinner can be healthier because obesity has become a growing issue but the media has taken it to their advantage. b. The thinness shown in magazines and models is not healthy, the models are always underweight which leads to fainting and serious health conditions including malnutrition. Works Cited â€Å"Beauty and Body Image in Media. † Media Awareness Network. N. p. , n. d. Web. 20 Nov 2011. . Cummings, Laura. â€Å"The diet business: Banking on Failure. † BBC news. N. p. , 05/02/2003. Web. 20 Nov 2011. . â€Å"Body Image and the Media. † Canadian's Women's Health Network. N. p. , 2005. Web. 20 Nov 2011. . â€Å"The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty. † Dove. Dove, n. d. Web. 20 Nov 2011. .

B4 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

B4 - Essay Example Ordinal and interval variables collect measurements. Interval data is actually measured on a continuous scale (actual quantities of some quality like height or age) while ordinal data is numerical form of classification, where whole numbers are used to denote order but the numbers themselves are not measures but a form of classification (GraphPad.com). Table 1: Variables Measured in the Survey Interval variables Ordinal variables Categorical variables Age Age category Gender Distance travelled Distance category Reason 1 Regularity of visits Reason 2 Satisfaction with: price Department Number of items Purchase Service Payment Quality Follow up Overall Store Contact The variables in the top row are italicized to indicate that they are independent variables. In this survey, it was hypothesised that demographic factors such as age and gender (pre-existing qualities or ‘independent variables) might influence opinions and behaviour of respondents (dependent variables). For men and wo men might differ in the distance they are prepared to travel to a store. Description of the Data Table 2 shows the number of women and men in the sample and various measures of their age profile. Table 2: Demographics of the Sample Gender All Women Men Number of people 582 373 (64%) 209 (26%) Mean age 42.6 42.8 42.3 Minimum age 17 17 17 Median age 42 42 42 Maximum age 75 75 74 The sample comprises 582 shoppers between the ages of 17 and 75, nearly two-thirds of who are women and just over third men. The age profiles of the men and women are very similar. Analysis of the distance travelled by respondents to the store where they were interviewed revealed a wide disparity. The modal distance (the most common length or trip) was less than a mile, but many had travelled much further, up to 53 miles. The median distance travelled was 5 miles and the mean just under 10. This indicates a positively skewed distribution where it is difficult to say what is the ‘typical’ distance travelled to the company’s stores. Inferential Statistics Table 3 shows the results for all shoppers, with men and women grouped separately. Separating women’s and men’s responses in this way allows a preliminary assessment of whether the independent variable (in this case gender) is influencing the dependent variable (distance travelled to the store). Table 3: Distance Travelled to the Store where Interviewed Distance travelled Less than 1 mile 1-5 miles 5-10 miles 10-30 miles Over 30 miles Total Women 49 (13%) 149 (40%) 83(22%) 69 (19%) 23 (6%) 373 Men 23(11%) 74 (35%) 51 (24%) 52 (25%) 9 (4%) 209 Total 72 223 134 121 32 582 The message is mixed: a higher proportion of the women than of the men travelled the shortest distances, but at the other end of the scale women were also more likely than men to have travelled the longest distances. A possible means of determining whether there is a difference between the distances men and women are prepared to travel to the company’s shops is to compare the mean raw distance (using the actual mileages rather than the categories) travelled by respondents of each gender. The mean distance travelled by the female respondents was 9.54 miles compared with 10.26 miles by the men. The standard deviations of the two samples are similar (11.1 and 10.6), so it is appropriate to conduct a ‘type 2’ test, but since the samples are independent and of different sizes we use an independent t-test

Dinosaurs (In Science) Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Dinosaurs (In Science) - Research Paper Example As in moderns day nature â€Å"nature abhors a vacuum† (Aristotle, quoted by Link, 2011 ) and so dinosaurs developed to fit into every niche, large, small, carnivorous, herbivorous etc. It is possible to tell what each creature ate if their teeth are examined. Just as the teeth of dogs and cows are very different, to suit their individual diets, so the teeth of meat eating dinosaurs are very different from those of the vegetarians. They also carried an impressive array of body part including such extras as scales, horns, collars and crests, what Viegas (2012) describes as ‘Feathered, clawed and jaws,’. So far, the remains of over 1,000 different dinosaur species have been identified from fossils though technically, birds are feathered dinosaurs, meaning dinosaurs aren't really extinct at all. The fact that some dinosaurs have been found which are feathered adds emphasis to evolutionary ideas and the hypothesis that birds are direct descendants of some dinosaurs, a n idea first put forward as long ago as 1870 ( Stone 2010) brings to mind other scientific questions such as who are the predecessors of mankind. Some, although not all dinosaurs, are known as being ‘bird hipped’ because of their particular anatomical features. They were . small, agile, and walked on two legs, unlike some much larger relatives. One such example is the Lesothosaurus Diagnosticus, a medium sized herbivore, first discovered in Southern Africa, within the kingdom of Lesotho, in 1978 ( National Geographic, 2012). It is so birdlike that it looks somewhat like a plucked bird. The dinosaurs were a highly diverse and successful group. They are often said to have lasted for far more than 100 million years, being the dominant from of life on land for some 160 million years, but if one includes birds then they are still around ( BBC, Science and Nature: Prehistoric Life, undated). Yet most of them did disappear, which has lessons perhaps for man , who acts as if th e world belongs to him by right. Dinosaur remains are often found in association with rocks which can be dated to a particular time. These rocks are usually sedimentary rocks, formed during a great ancient flood , massive floods are often being mentioned in ancient legends in many civilizations, despite the fact that the oldest humanoids found have been dated to only 4.4 million years ago (Schmid, 2009). Perhaps people were describing another cataclysmic flood. If so that will surely also be found in the geological record. According to Gilroy, most dinosaurs became extinct 65.5 million years ago, but it seems that there were survivors , and some dinosaur remains have quite recently been dated at some 700,000 years later (2011). So the picture isn’t at all clear. There was not for instance just one massive extinction period , but two. Viegas, ( 2012) describes the Permian extinction, when 90 per cent of all life on earth was destroyed, the most devastating extinction of all ti me, from insects to plants. Marine creatures as well as those on land were affected as well as amphibians and reptiles. Dinosaurs often had air sacs which enabled them to survive in poor air quality

Women in 20th century America Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Women in 20th century America - Essay Example Hence, the number of working women has increased since the last quarter of the 20th century. Women in 20th century America were more dedicated towards their families than they are today. In the colonial times, women would help their husbands with agricultural work, knit, sew etc. Also it was part of the mother’s job to make sure that she would effectively pass on all of her skills to her daughters so that she would in turn make a good wife/ mother. As time progressed, and the industrial revolution took place, changes occurred gradually. There were changes in methods of work, transportation etc. Consumer goods were now readily available which meant that the things that the women were required to do before were no longer required. This meant that there was more time for family. There was also a rise in perception of the people towards education and its importance. Unmarried females from the middle class got jobs and worked. More women were going for higher education. In the time of the World War II, more women got employment, whether they were married or not. In the later years, the rise in feminism in the 1960’s led women to organize for equal rights. In the 1960’s to 1970’s era there were much more women employed as ever before.