Tuesday, January 28, 2020

The quiet American

The quiet American Summary: Fowler is a Journalist and he has left his wife. Then he lived in Saigon during the French-Vietnamese war, along with a Chinese woman, Phuong. An American diplomat, Pyle will also feature. He has read books about China, which have influenced his thinking throughout, because he has quite a few strange ideas about the course of the war. Pyle is also in love with Phuong Fowler goes a few days to the battlefield at Phat Diem, where he describes the situation. To his amazement Pyle will also show up, to tell that he wants to marry Phuong. He made the trip in spite of all the dangers to tell Fowler that he must not go to Phuong before Fowler is back. When Fowler is back goes he, Pyle en Phuong talk about her future. Phuong says nothing. Then goes Fowler to a special place 50 miles north of Saigon. There he sees Pyle. Because his belly is broken, he goes back with Fowler. Then they are without gasoline. They go to a guard tower along the road. Then there are soldiers but the soldiers dont see the tower. Pyle and Fowler managed to escape, but thereto Fowler breaks a leg. Romanisatie weergevenPyle brings him to a hospital, and so he saves his life. Romanisatie weergevenPhuong comes to visit him in hospital, but after a few weeks she finally chooses to Pyle. Romanisatie weergevenShe leaves Fowler because he cant marry her. In the meanwhile Pyle supports the third army. Romanisatie weergevenLater, a bomb is not stopped when a military parade had been cancelled. When Fowler come off this, he enabled his own connections to murder Pyle. After that Romanisatie weergeven Fowler and Phuong are back together and happy. Analysis interpretation Genre: A psychological war novel, because the main character has lots of troubles during war. Themes: War : the story is set during the war in Vietnam. Relations: in the story, two friends named, Fowler an Pyle, are fighting about the love of a girl named, Phuong. Structure: There are many flashbacks, so the story is not chronological. The book contains three parts. Those three parts contain out of four chapters. In the end Pyle dies, so the end is closed. Characters: There are three main characters in the story: Fowler: A journalist. He is a person with guts, but doesnt always take everything for granted. Pyle: he is involved in the war as an American diplomat. he is an honest person and he has much trust in other people. Phuong: She is a Vietnamese woman. She is the fiancà ©e of Pyle, but after he was murdered, she married Fowler. She is easily suppressed, and she Quigley does what other people tell her to do. Time: The story is set during the Vietnamese war between the Vietminh and the French. Its exactly from March 1952 till June 1955. Perspective: The story is told by Pyle. space: the story is set in Saigon and Hanoi. Those are the biggest towns in Vietnam. Language and style: The story language is English dialogue. There are much conversations between the main character and another person. The story is pretty serious because there are not much comic moments in the story. Personal opinion Opinion Cornà © I tought the book was very confusing for somewhone how never red a english book. In the first pages was one of the main characters ,Pyle, dead, but in the other pages he was alive. After al I new it was a flashback but I didnt new that before. But it was a exciting book because war had a major role. I always like books where war played a major role. When I must read a book for Dutch, I prefer book with war. Those books are exciting and sometimes the contain humor. Humor is also a major factor for a book. Humor didnt sit in The quiet American. That was very unfortunate. In the end it was a exciting book but I dont think I will read it again. There was to many humor and it was confusing. I think I must have a book without flashbacks. A book with no flashbacks reads a lot better. Opinion Martijn I think this book is very good written. The was in the book is very well describe and it is very realistic. I found the book very bold, this is mainly because the story takes place during the war. A very big drawback of this book is that there very difficult words are used. This is very difficult to get into the story and it is much harder to understand the story. And it is especially difficult if youre bad in English, like me. The characters in the book will fit well into the story home, also the characters are very realistic. This makes the book more attractive So if someone like it to read English books , than is this book a real must. Opinion Jogchum This book was hard for me to understand, because there are many difficult words in the book, and Im not really good at English. I think this book was exciting, because it goes about war, and mostly books about war are exciting. I found the book well written, because the characters that the author used well described. Furthermore, the author has much knowledge of war, because he used this knowledge, you could notice that many things from the war emerged. Romanisatie weergeven I thought it was a realistic book, because it could happen in real life. Opinion Jochum In my opinion, this book wasnt really a exiting book. It was pretty hard to read and because of that it became a little bit boring. That it was hard to read was because it was English. Not that I have trouble reading English, but the book contained a lot of English proverbs. When I read English I just translate the words, but here I had much misunderstandings. There were proverbs like: Slow fire ah boil hard cow-heel. There were also a lot of difficult words like, vaguely, reassuring and crippled. I also had a continuous feeling that the phrases were grammatically incorrect, but that could be, because that this is an old book or that this book is written in a different dialect. The story was pretty exiting tough, because it was about war. And war is an exiting time. Unfortunately I didnt really understand the story, because of the difficult words and proverbs. Background Information of Graham Greene Graham Greene was an english author, play wright and literary critic. Unfortunately he is deceased. He was born on the 2th of october 1904 and was passed away on the 3th of april 1991. His father was director of his school. He went below to the balliol college on the unversity of Oxford. His first book was published in 1925. He where Catholic after he graduated. He where a journalist but this wasnt a succes. He caused the bankruptcy of the magazine he worked for. His books are modern-realistic style. It contains often people who doubt themselves and the darkside. His books were divided into thrillers with entertainment, but those books had philosophical side. His reputation was built on the literary books as the power and the glory. He becames famous because he brought together the entertainment and literature.

Monday, January 20, 2020

Moore’s Proposed Proof for an External World :: Philosophy Literature Essays

Moore’s Proposed Proof for an External World In his â€Å"Proof of an External World†, Moore puts forth several supported hypotheses in regards to the nature of the existence of things outside the self. Primarily, Moore discusses hands; his argument is that if he can produce two hands then it follows logically that two hands must exist. Furthermore, Moore puts forth the theory that if hands exist then this alone is proof of an external world. In opposition to Moore’s opinions will be found three main arguments: firstly that all of Moore’s evidence is based upon sensory input, secondly that the truth of one fact based on the truth of another fact forms an Epistemic Circle in this case, and finally that the evidence out forth by Moore, even if proved, does not necessarily prove the fact that he is attempting to prove. Moore’s â€Å"Proof of an External World† is based on the fact that he has two hands. Moore’s argument for the existence of these hands is as follows: I can prove now, for instance, that two human hands exist. How? By holding up my two hands, and saying, as I make a certain gesture with the right hand, >Here is one hand=, and adding, as I make a certain gesture with the left, >and here is another=. And if, by doing this, I have proved ipso facto the existence of external things, you will all see that I can also do it now in numbers of other ways: there is no need to multiply examples.1 Moore’s evidence for the existence of hands is based entirely upon data received from the senses, yet in no way at any time does Moore even put forth any proof in support of the assumption that his senses are indeed functioning correctly and are not in fact deceiving him. Take for example the argument put forth by Descartes that reads as follows: I will suppose therefore that not God, who is supremely good and the source of truth, but rather some malicious demon of the utmost power and cunning has employed all his energies in order to deceive me. I shall think that the sky, the air, the earth, colours, shapes, sounds and all external things are merely the delusions of dreams which he has devised to ensnare my judgment.

Sunday, January 12, 2020

Are Technology Advances Bad for Society?

Steven Thai Ms. Katie English 110 Feb 28th, 2013 Are Technology Advances Bad For Society? Over the past 30 years, humans always tried to create something that helps us reduce the amount of work we have to do. Games were created to help human release our stress while mobile phones help us to call and access the internet anywhere we want. Technologies really help us in every task of our life. However, technological advances are bad for our society because of addiction, censorship, and they may lead us into another technological weapons war between countries around the world.First consider how addictive technology has become. According to Sherry Turkle from TED Talk, her daughter spent time with her friends together looking at their mobile phones devices (Ted. com). These kids had so much fun on their mobile phones that they didn’t even look at their friends. On the other hand, technology became an essential part of our lives right now. Most of us spend time with our electronic d evices that we forget where we were standing, what we were doing, or what is the purpose and objective of our life. What makes us addicted to mobile phones?Nowadays, we can do almost everything with our cellphones, such as playing videos games, accessing social networks, and watching videos online. These things have become too addictive to us, and we have spent so much time on such devices. Look back to 20 years ago, back when the time technologies were not very common compared to today. Eventually, we spent more time with each other; we hung out with friends. Technologies are advancing so rapidly that we have become addicted and have forgotten what surrounds us. Some people might argue that there is also a good side of technology advances.According to Dr. Rick Nauert, a Senior Editor of Psych Central, there was an unexpected discovery that playing video games helped human-beings reduce the production of the stress-related hormone cortisol (Psychcentral. com). In order to prove this , Dr. Nauert recorded a group of 23 newly recruited employees of a Montreal-based call center to play games. Later on, he found an amazing result that the games showed an average 17 percent reduction in cortisol production compared to the group who did not play games (Psychcentral. com). This showed that echnology advances can be applied for good purposes to our life. Although technologies help us to reduce the stress related hormone, it brings to us many health problems. Dr. Ripudaman, a master in science and a frequent computer user, claimed that there are heaths concerned when you sit and work in front of the computer for a long time, such as eyes problems from bright screen, and wrist ache after working at the computer all day (Ripudaman). In addition, if we keep using the computer for a long time, these problems grow bigger.We might have joint problems, and our eyes have to work a lot so they get worse, in which case it costs us a lot of money for eyes and back surgery (Ripudam an). Another thing to be concerned about when we use technology is government censorship. You would feel bad if you lost your own privacy when the government tracked down your phone record, and eavesdropped on your phone call. This is the world when you need your own privacy, but most of our technological devices such as cellphones and laptops are tracked down by our own government every minute.According to Jennifer Valentino, the FBI was concerned by the citizens when they had the rights to access people’s phone record after the attack of September 11th, 2001 (Devries). Additionally, Professor Stephen Vladeck from American University Washington College of Law had put a good question to all of us; â€Å"How can you protect the First Amendment rights at the same time as you protect the government’s interest in secrecy? † (Vladeck). More importantly, no one among us would have see that our record had been tracked down, which should be a concern for an individualâ €™s freedom.Others might claim that the government is doing the right thing in order to protect national security. By tracking down citizens’ record the government can easily find terrorists, who are trying to attack their country. After the incident on September 11th, the concerns over the government keeping track of people’s technological devices who they suspected as terrorists and a threat to the country (Vladeck). To answer for that, we should take China as an example; where the presses have been ranked as â€Å"not free† by Freedom House (Wikipedia. rg). In China, everything is monitored by the government mostly technological devices. We feel bad when our privacy are managed by the government. Therefore, these technology advances are not helping our life get better. Furthermore, technological advances help the government to access our privacy easily compared to our past 50 years. It leads us to a question, should we continue to use devices like cellpho nes, laptops or smartphone when the government is monitoring our activities through those devices?Lastly, technological advances can lead us to a world war. Countries with strong economies like the United States, China, and Russia always compete to have the strongest technologies for weapons in their hands. The rapid changes in technology help many countries in the world to create their own weapons, tanks, aircrafts, and nuclear bombs. Why are these countries are competing for war technology advances? Take a look at it this way, when a weapon or a bomb is created, it will be tested in Iraq or Afghanistan.There will be more deaths and bigger destruction as the technology of those weapons further advanced. The founder and leader of the Muttahida Quami Movement, Altaf Hussain, has brought us great attention to a possibility of a third world war, where these imperial powers continued to act in a presumptuous manner in world affairs (mqm. org). In fact, world powers countries should stop competing for war technologies advances with each other in the present world to make a better world, to bring peace to those countries whose need it.However, there are others who oppose that the United States and Russia are creating nuclear bombs and missiles defenses to protect their own national security. In reality, they are creating these defense systems to make other countries to be afraid of them. The more weapons and bombs created, the more deaths and destruction the world has to suffer. Instead of using billions and billions of dollars to make technological advances that kill people, we should use that huge amount of money to improve education, health care, and reduce the amount of starvation.There will be more people will feel happy as the government will use money to solve social and political problems. In general, by not using money to develop war technological advances, we can save a lot of lives, rather than killing them by weapons, bombs, and missiles and so on. In co nclusion, technological advancement has seen many negative impacts on our society; it causes unhealthy addiction, encourages government censorship, and might lead to another destructive world war. We must stop using technology devices, we should stand together to stop these bad problems from our life.For the great future of our young generation, for the better living of our life, we must stop the bad effect of technologies on our life. Work Cited â€Å"A Third World War May Start If Countries Continued to Compete with Each Other for Superiority: Altaf Hussain. † A Third World War May Start If Countries Continued to Compete with Each Other for Superiority: Altaf Hussain. Mutahida Quami Movement, 7 Jan. 2013. Web. 21 Feb. 2013. . â€Å"Censorship in China. Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 29 Jan. 2013. Web. 21 Feb. 2013 . Devries, Jennifer V. â€Å"Covert FBI Power to Obtain Phone Data Faces Rare Test. † Online. wsj. com. The Wall Street Journal, n. d. Web. 23 Feb. 2013 . . Hall, Canseco. â€Å"Texas A&M International University – Laredo, Texas. † Violent Video Games Help Relieve Stress, Depression, Says TAMIU Professor. N. p. , 17 June 2010.Web. 21 Feb. 2013. . Nauert, Rick. â€Å"Video Game Lowers Stress Hormone | Psych Central News. † Psych Central. com. N. p. , 24 Oct. 2007. Web. 21 Feb. 2013. . Singh, Ripudaman. â€Å"Health Problems Caused by Computer. † Articlesbase. com. Articlesbase, 21 Mar. 2009. Web. 21 Feb. 2013. .