Cultural representation of Italians in the media. Looking at the MTV Essay

Cultural representation of Italians in the media. Looking at the MTV series Jersey Shore - Essay Example Alternatively, they are momma’s boys. They all have names like Pauly and Joey, and eat spaghetti every night. Of course, this is not the case – Italians are just as nuanced as anybody else. Some may fit the stereotype, and most probably do not. Nonetheless, the cultural portrayals of Italians have been largely negative, and there is no place where this is more evident than the television show Jersey Shore. The show is based upon 10 Italian-Americans living in a house on the Jersey Shore in the first season, and Miami Beach in the second season, and centers around the exploits of the â€Å"Guidos† and â€Å"Guidettes† in the house. The girls are high maintenance, crass, vain and drunk. The boys are perpetually tanned, with blow-out hair, muscular, crass, vain and drunk. They all hook up with random people, and say cuss words every other word. They are all apparently low class, and, with the exception of one of the boys, uneducated. In short, the show takes every negative stereotype of the Italian American and adds a few more. And, unfortunately for the Italian Americans in society, the show is a huge hit. Basic Concepts – Collective Identity, Culture and Cultural Sociology To understand why Jersey Shore is so offensive to Italian-Americans, one must understand the basics of culture, identity and ethnic identity. These are all basic concepts that ties in why television shows that feature stereotypes are harmful to targeted groups. The first concept that needs to be understood is that of culture, as television shows, such as Jersey Shore would be considered to be a part of our popular culture. Culture refers to the way that individuals make sense of their world, and a way to individuals to find meaning (Cushman, 1996, p. 7). Events that occur in the individual’s world are thus interpreted through the culture of the individual, and this is one way that individuals understand the modern world. The social world is what provid es the basis for an individual’s culture, specifically the concrete experiences experienced by this individual. Culture is reflexive, in that people make culture, and culture makes the individual. This is how both individual and collective identities are formed. (Cushman, 1996, p. 7). A person’s life is shaped by culture because culture imposes inherent patterns that are formed by communal life, logic and narrative, and discourse and language. In this way, culture forms the self, as the growth of the self is dependent upon external images and social bonds (Bruner, 1990, p. 42). The internal thoughts, feelings and states of consciousness that an individual has is externalized and shared by concrete representations of culture and are formed into cultural objects, which includes television programs (Cushman, 1996, p. 90). Moreover, culture helps frame the individual’s experiences and acts, because these are realized by the individual when he or she participates in culture’s symbolic systems (Bruner, 1990, p. 33). Culture is how individual meaning becomes communal and public (Bruner, 1990, p. 34). Moreover, there is proof that television series, among other cultural objects, impact the culture because culture is learned, not innate. This was shown by the studies done by Eisenhart (1995). Eisenhart set out to find out what aspects of a given culture influences individuals, and why this would be so (Eisenhart, 1995, p. 4). Eisenhart posited that there would be different ways of transmitting

The Sole Purpose of The One Percent Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

The Sole Purpose of The One Percent - Essay Example Once this occurs, it will be very difficult for equality to ever exist in the United States again, since the rich will never give these democratic rights back to the poor once they have taken them. The one percent is based on the idea that one percent of the American population controls the majority of the country's wealth. This leaves the other 99 percent of people to fight over whatever money is left over. Capitalism is based on the idea of a free market, where individuals can make as much money as they want under the system. Those who are successful within the system become rich, while those who are unable to succeed are forced under the rich. The idea is also that a trickledown effect will occur, since the rich will pay the rest of society for services that are needed. This is quickly disappearing from society, however, since the rich are becoming greedier than ever before. They want to make much more money than they will ever need, which causes problems for the poor because this money comes out of their pockets. In previous generations, the middle class made up the majority of American society, since corporations were forced to pay their workers a fair wage. Today, however, much of this work can be outsourced to other countries at lower wages, which has left many Americans without jobs. Under a democratic system, the people should hold the majority of the power. Unfortunately, the current system has been influenced the presence of these major corporations. These corporate interests are able to make donations to political campaigns and the politicians respond by passing legislation that makes it easier for these corporations to capitalize on the average citizen. The country’s political system is based on money and if the average person does not have any money, it is almost impossible for that individual to make a difference. The goal of these corporations is to make it even easier on themselves to make money and, eventually, the 99 percent will no lo nger have a voice. If you look at what a company like Wal-Mart has done over the years, it makes sense. Wal-Mart pays its employees minimum wage and, therefore, it is able to offer products for a lower price than competitors. The company will then go into an area and put all of its competitors out of business very quickly, since consumers are attracted to low prices. This takes money away from the small business owners who owned the competitor stores and takes money away from the community as a whole because all of the profits from Wal-Mart head to the corporate offices. Unless something is done in the near future, it will be almost impossible for the United States to regain its place as a democratic union and the land of opportunity. Today’s opportunities are mostly working for the one percent for whatever wage the employer decides to pay. If you do not want that job, someone else will surely take it, since jobs are becoming more scarce. Unfortunately, the power than these c orporations have over the political spectrum are making it much more difficult. If Wal-Mart is donating large amounts of money to the Republican Party, that party will do whatever it can to keep that stream of revenue, since it can help the party get into power. Therefore, the corporation that donates this money has a major influence over the party’

Death by Cell Phone Essay Example for Free

Death by Cell Phone Essay The newspapers are replete with scores of vehicular accidents. One reads of how a delivery van careens off the railing of a skyway and lands on top of a passenger bus underneath, crushing several people to death. Another article will be about a cargo truck losing its brakes and running through the red light at a busy intersection and in the process slams broadside into private vehicle. Still another might be of an SUV that crashes against a flimsy construction barrier and lands into a deep excavation †¦. Poor maintenance, lack of defensive driving skills, and carelessness probably account for these accidents. Now, another one can be added to this list of causes: driving while using a cell phone. This is about as commonplace as finding chewing gum under a movie theater seat but certainly, much more dangerous. Availability has determined usage; if it is there – even while driving – use it, is the motto. One wonders how the ‘’civilized’’ world fared without the cell phone. But for some reason or another it did. It was not too long ago that the Spanish galleons took over 3 months of sailing to deliver a letter from Spain to the colonies. And how the roundtrip – the time it took for this same letter to be answered – might have taken anywhere from 6 months to a year. Fast forward to today and the thought of leaving a ringing cell phone unanswered for a few minutes– even while driving – is unthinkable. One can argue that the case against using cell phones while driving is exaggerated; after all there are ‘’hands-free’’ cell phones that allow one to use the cell phone and drive at the same time. We are, after all, multi-taskers, it is argued. While this facility is available, how many do in fact use ‘’hands-free’’ cell phoning. Next time you are on the expressway or freeway, check. While you are at this, also find out how many use the cell phones: those coming at you, those to your left, those to your right, those behind you. Is it 1 in 10? 2 in 10? More? Actuarial scientists will probably advise you to raise your insurance coverage or perhaps even suggest that you start taking another form of transportation (e. g. the subway or some such) even if 1 in 10 of these motorists used the cell phone while driving. It might be argued that the ‘’risk’’ of getting into a vehicular accident while using the cell phone is over-rated? Is it? Consider the statistics: how fast is the average speed on an expressway? How many are using cell phones? How many seconds – or micro-seconds – does it take to initiate an accident? If the answers are that the average speed on an expressway is 60 mph, that at any given time there are more than 1 in 10 using a cell phone and that accidents can occur in the blink of an eye†¦well the answer becomes deathly obvious. An act that has previously been regarded as a remote possibility now assumes the prospect of a distinct probability. All too often, when we read of these things we deal with them by insulating ourselves with anesthetic reassurances that the likelihood is remote, that this are the dire warnings of alarmists, that it cannot happen to us – after all, we are not as ‘’careless’’ as the others. All that can be said in answer to this is that do not let the morgues and cemeteries get crowded with like-minded motorists. It is not too late to stop using the cell phone while driving. Resist answering that phone; it is probably not that important. It can wait. Your life and those of others depend on it

Sylvia Plath And Her Poem Daddy

Sylvia Plath And Her Poem Daddy Sylvia Plath was an American poet and novelist, but also a mother, teacher and wife (Plath, p.2). She was born in Boston Massachusetts on October 27, 1932 (Ibid, p.2). Her mother Aurelia Schober Plath was a first generation American of Austrian descent. Her father Otto Emile Plath was an immigrant from Grabow, Germany (Ibid.). Sylvia Plaths father died of complications of diabetes on November 1940 a month after her eighth birthday (Wikipedia.org/Sylvia Plath). Sylvia Plaths father was not a German Nazi, as readers of the poem Daddy are made to believe. Otto Plath was a distinguished professor of biology and German language at Boston University (Plath, p.3). He was known throughout the world as an authority on bees as well (Ibid.). In Sylvia Plaths poem titled Daddy, a theory exists the poet speaker is addressing both her dead father, but for the most part her husband and father figure, English poet Ted Hughes. To understand this theory, one must recall the meaning of the Oedipus complex as well as the Electra complex. The Oedipus complex is defined as a transition in a male childs life, where the child has a psychological desire to sleep with the mother and kill the father (From Sigmund Freud). The Electra complex, on the other hand, states that a female child has a romantic desire toward the father and rejection of the mother. Psychologically, as an adult, the female looks for a husband that provides the father figure for her; that is, a man that will takes over all the roles of the real father (From Sigmund Freud). The poem Daddy by Sylvia Plath is a fantasy poem rebuking not her dead father but the father figure in her husband Ted Hughes. The poem, Daddy, was written on October 12, 1962 before Sylvia Plath committed suicide (Wikipedia). Almost all of Sylvia Plaths poems were written during the second part of the feminist struggle of the 60s and 70s (Wikipedia.org/Feminism). The poem was posthumously published in a collection of poems under the heading of Ariel, which was submitted with a Forward by her daughter Frieda Hughes Plath (Plath, p. 16). That collection of poems contained in the Ariel collection made Sylvia Plath a household name (Ibid.). In her poem Daddy, Plath uses the Holocaust as a pivot point to rebuke her husband and father figure, and laments her father who died when she was eight years old. Listening to Sylvia Plath read her own poem Daddy, the listener detects a childs tone filled with considerate, unselfish love and affection when she reads and pronounces the word Daddy. The listener also detects the difference in tone when she recites the rest of the lines in the poem. The tone is more harsh and filled with hate, rage and anger (YouTube, http://www.youtube.com). The form of the poem is Free Verse with sixteen Cinquain stanzas. The poem also contains intermittent iambic verse throughout with no continuous pattern. The use of metaphors, symbolism and similes, throughout the stanzas gives the poem a semblance of balance. The entire poem in itself, however, is a metaphor. The speaker uses the first person descriptive voice. The theme of the poem is feminist in nature; that is, a female persona climbing to freedom from dominance of the father figure. She desires to be free from male domination, authority and control in order to be able to have the right to be her own persona. The mood of the poem is conversational (Aird, p. 82). The poem does not follow a rhyming scheme, but it does follow a nursery rhyming type of sound throughout the poem. In addition, a rhyme oo sound is predominant on the first Cinquain stanza as well as on the last stanza of the poem (Strand and Boland, pp. 274-276, Lines 1-5 and 76-80). Examples of internal rhyme are in lines, 1, 23, 49 and 50. An example of alliteration exists in line 49. There are various repetitions in this poem as follows: You do not do, you do not do (Ibid. Line 1), Of wars, wars, wars. (Line 18), Ich, ich, ich, ich, (Ibid. Line 27 which means I want to, I want to). In addition, An engine, an engine (Ibid. Line 31), And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack (Ibid. Line 39), Panzer-man, panzer-man, O Youà ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬ (Ibid. Line 45) And get back, back, back to you, (Ibid. Line 59). Also Daddy, daddy, you bastard, Im through. (Ibid. Line 80) The speaker used figurative language throughout the poem. In addition, there are several similes in (Ibid. Lines 3, 32, and 34). The speaker uses hyperbole in lines 6, 11, 12, 49, 62, 69, 72, 73 and 76. Figurative language as an apostrophe is included in lines, 8, 9, 10, 46, 70, and 72. In addition, personification is included in lines 8, 10, 11, 36, 37, 46, 54, 62, 70, and 72. The imagery used by the speaker is relevant to sight, sound and touch, and it is void of smell and taste. The imagery of sound is present in lines 5, 16, 28, 34, 67, and 70. The imagery of sight is present in lines 8, 12, 13, 17, 18, 32, 36, 43, 44, 52, 57, 61, and 76. The touch imagery is present in lines 25, 26, 62, and 78. In the first stanza of the poem Daddy, Plath opens the poem with the affirmation that she no longer accepts the hurtful marriage by saying, You do not do, you do not do (Strand and Boland, pp. 274-276, Line 1). She further claims that she will no longer be bound to the darkness and forlornness of her father figure husband by saying, Any more, black shoe / In which I have lived like a foot (Ibid. Lines 2-3). She feels she has been held captive in a marriage that has gone sour and she has had enough. She agrees to divorce her husband and as a result, she is not restricted to the confines of a bad marriage. Even though she faces economic difficulties, it does not matter since she had been under those circumstances before as she says, For thirty years, poor and white. (Ibid. Line 4) In the second stanza, Sylvia Plath decides to accept her fathers death. She claims he had died before she had a chance to show her love for him (Ibid. Line 7). Her fathers dead body was placed, perhaps, in a body bag as she remembers; was heavy and filled with kindness, goodness and love as she says, Marble-heavy, a bag full of God. (Ibid. Line 8) In the third stanza, she remembers the place where her father was placed after his death. She had hopes her father would come back to her as she proclaims, I used to pray to recover you. (Ibid. Line 14), and she cries aloud, Ach, du. (Ibid. Line 15) hoping for her wish to come true. In the fifth stanza, Sylvia Plath refers to the many extramarital affairs her husband and father figure had. She is not sure who he loves, but she does not confront him since the thought of it was perhaps more hurtful than the action itself. In the sixth stanza, she makes a vivid portrayal of her suffering from her painful marriage and father figure by fantasizing of being à ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ ¦stuck in a barb wire snare. (Ibid. Line 26) In the seventh stanza, Sylvia Plath feels her father figure pushed her away as if an engine that has drove her to the brim of her fantasy of being a Jew persecuted by the German Nazis. An engine, an engine // Chuffing me off like a Jew. (Ibid. Lines 31 and 32) The circumstance surrounding her unhappy marriage makes her compare herself to a Jew being sent to the first Nazi concentration camp (Wikipedia.org/ Dachau concentration camp), or to the extermination camp in Auschwitz (http://en.wikipedia.org /Auschwitz concentration camp). The least she could expect from her father figure, was to be sent to the Nazi Belsen concentration camp to be exchanged for German prisoners of war held (http://en.wikipedia.org /Bergen-Belsen concentration camp) overseas. In the eighth stanza, Sylvia Plath considers herself an Aryan Gypsy which in à ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ ¦the Nazi minds there were contradictions between what they regarded as the superiority of the Aryan race and their image of the Gypsies Like the Jews, Gypsies were singled out by the Nazis for racial persecution and annihilation. (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org). Sylvia Plath enhances her belief of bad luck and the fantasy of being an Aryan Gypsy by mentioning the Taroc game cards as she says, And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack / I may be a bit of a Jew. (Strand and Boland, pp. 274-276, Lines 39 and 40) She mentions the Taroc pack twice, once to reference her destiny of her bad luck with her husband and the second to reference the destiny of bad luck with her father figure. Regardless, she still considers herself à ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ ¦a bit of a Jew. (Ibid. Line 40) In stanza nine and ten, she compares her husband and father figure to Adolf Hitler, With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygook. / And your neat mustache / And your Aryan eye, bright blue. // Not God but a swastika / So black no sky could squeak through. / Every woman adores a Fascist, / The boot in the face, the brute / Brute heart of a brute like you. // (Ibid. Lines 42-50) There is a correlation between the figure of Adolf Hitler and her husband and father figure whom also had extramarital dealings with other women. In addition, Ted Hughes was over six feet tall and always dressed himself from head to toe in black (Ted Hughes: An Introduction, Ann Skea). In stanza eleven, the symbolism for blackboard stands for dualism. On the one hand, Sylvia Plath sees her loving and missed father and on the other, she sees her father figure and husband. She sees her father as having a cleft in his chin instead of his foot. On the other hand, the dual figure she sees is that of her husband and father figure having a cleft in his foot much as a devil has. The eleventh stanza states, You stand at the blackboard, daddy, / In the picture I have of you, / A cleft in your chin instead of your foot / But no less a devil for that, no not / Any less the black man who // (Strand and Boland, pp. 274-276, Lines 51-55). She continues addressing her husband and father figure in stanza twelfth by saying, Bit my pretty red heart in two. / (Ibid. Line 56). Also in the twelfth stanza, Sylvia Plath claims she was ten years old when her father died. Several years later, she tried to commit suicide but was unsuccessful. She had hoped to be back with him and would have been satisfied even if there were no flesh left in his bones. She says in part, I was ten when they buried you. / At twenty I tried to die / And get back, back, back to you. / I thought even the bones would do. // (Ibid. Lines 57-60) In stanza thirteen Sylvia Plath refers to the failed attempt at suicide. She claims they were able to save her and thereafter she decides to make a model of her father; her father figure as she says, But they pulled me out of the sack, / And they stuck me together with glue. / And then I knew what to do. / I made a model of you, / A man in black with a Meinkapmf look // (Ibid. Lines 61-65) In stanza fourteenth, she refers to the rack as the wedding bed and having sex with her father figure after she accepted the marriage vows. Later she realizes the marriage is not working and agrees to dissolve the marriage. She decides not to agree to any calls for reconciliation, and refuses to listen to any communications coming from her father figure. She confesses to her father that her life is over with her father figure as she says in the fourteenth stanza, And a love of the rack and the screw. / And I said I do, I do. / So daddy, Im finally through. / The black telephone off the root, / The voices just cant worm through. // (Ibid. Lines 66-70) Stanza fifteenth is an affirmation that Sylvia Plath has accepted the departure from her marriage from her father figure much as she has accepted the death of her father. Sylvia Plath says, If Ive killed one man, Ive killed two (Ibid. Line 71). She refers to the father figure as a vampire whom has drained her lifes happiness for the seven years she was married to her husband and father figure. She says, The vampire who said he was you / And drank my blood for a year, / Seven years, if you want to know. / (Ibid. Lines72-74) In the last line of the fifteenth stanza, she tells her father he can now rest in peace, Daddy, you can lie back now. (Ibid. Line 75) In the sixteenth and last stanza, Sylvia Plath continues with her fantasy and is able to get rid of the vampire father figure, Theres a stake in your fat black heart (Ibid. Line 76). Sylvia Plath comes to a certain end in her life and tells her father people did not like her father figure. People knew the father figure was to blame for her failures by saying, And the villagers never liked you. / They always knew it was you. / Daddy, daddy, you bastard, Im through. // (Ibid. Lines 77-80) It is important to notice the uppercase D when she addresses her father and the lowercase d when she addresses her father figure. (Ibid. Line 80) Sylvia Plath continued her fantasy of being persecuted as a Jew by the German Nazis, and in particular by her father figure, to the end of her life. In her poem Lady Lazarus, she mentions the many times she tried to commit suicide, but was not successful. Before the first publication of the novel The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath carried with her to the end of her life, a correlation of being a persecuted Jew by her father figure. She committed suicide by turning the gas on in the oven of the house and symbolically placed her head inside the oven. She succeeds in killing herself on the 11th day of February 1963 (Aird, p. 13). Sylvia Plath was thirty years old (Ibid). Before carrying out her suicide, she placed a large bottle of milk in each of her childrens cribs and covered the bottom of the door leading to the childrens room with wet towels. The wet towel would prevent the gas from seeping into their room and keeping them from dying as well (wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia Plath). The next day an inquiry ruled her death was a suicide (Ibid). In her novel, The Bell Jar, which was first published under the pseudonym of Victoria Lucas, Sylvia Plath tells in a semiautobiographical story about her unhappiness. The novel enumerates the various conflicts in her life including her complex mental illness. Even today, Sylvia Plath has many fans. The gravestone, which bears her name, is found in Heptonstall churchyard in England (Wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia Plath # cite note). Some of Plaths supporters who have chiseled the name Hughes off it have repeatedly vandalized it. This practice intensified following the suicide in 1969 of Assia Wevill, the woman for whom Ted Hughes left Plath, which led to claims Hughes had been abusive toward Plath (Ibid). Ted Hughes died October 28, 1998 (Skea, Ann); it seems to be ironic, and perhaps symbolic that Ted Hughes died sixty-six years later and a day before Sylvia Plath birthday of October 27. According to [The] Dictionary of Literary Symbols, the number 666 is considered an imperfect number an d the famous number of the beast; that is, the devil (Ferber, p.141).

Homespun to Sophisticated: Place as Transformer :: Philosophy Philosophical Papers

Homespun to Sophisticated: Place as Transformer Works Cited Missing It is common in the transcendental philosophy to associate the act of transcending with a place. Philosophers, artists, and writers fled to Niagara Falls and the White Mountains in search of sublime scenery that would connect them with God. One of the leading Transcendentalists, Ralph Waldo Emerson, states that "Nature deif[ies] us with a few and cheap elements" (Emerson, 27). The essential communion between man and nature, through something he calls the "Oversoul," enables man to transfer the world into the consciousness, thereby uniting himself with God. Ironically, as the Transcendentalists were streaming into the countryside, young women from farms surrounding New England, especially from the White Mountains, were flooding the cities looking for work in the mills. The "Lowell Girls" went into the city to earn money for themselves or for their families and to undergo a transformation from a "homespun country bumpkin" to sophisticated, respected city woman with a "sense of independ ence." These changes and improvements were part of the Lowell experience. The owners of the mills created a myth of the mills as a transformer which was then perpetuated by the mill girls via word of mouth or through their writings in the Lowell Offering. The fictions in the Lowell Offering express their desire to be seen as transformed into the ideal woman. The act of self-representation through writing, which has as its central essence the transformative power of a place, was utilized by writers such as Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau. The popularity of their writing and their ideas of the importance of the individual's relationship with God, nature and work surely influenced the Lowell women's writing and their desire to be seen as transformed. According to Transcendental philosophy, "nature is transcendental" (Emerson 197). "There was nothing in the intellect which was not previously in the experience of the senses, by showing that there was a very important class of ideas or imperative forms, which did not come by experience, but through which experience was acquired; that these were intuitions of the mind itself; and [Kant] denominated them Transcendental forms" (Emerson 197). Man experiences God and his power in the natural world. Beauty which is unavoidable in the natural world has "the presence of a higher, namely, of the spiritual element ... essential to its perfection. ... Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue" (Emerson 28).

Global Warming and Greenhouse Gas Emissions :: Global Warming Climate Change

Global Warming and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Overall, emissions of CO2 increased by 0.3% to 6.8 tons per person in the United States. Emissions of greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide, which account for 17% of total greenhouse gas emissions, declined by 0.6%. Emissions from the industrial sector declined 1.3% even though the U.S. economy grew 3.9% in 1998. However, CO2 emissions from transportation grew by 2.4% while CO2 emissions of regulated utilities expanded by 3.2% as a result of a hotter than normal summer. Overall, 1999 U.S. greenhouse gas emissions were about 10.7 percent higher than 1990 emissions, which are estimated at 1,655 million metric tons carbon equivalent. The 1.1-percent average annual growth in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 to 1999 compares with average growth rates of 1.0 percent for the U.S. population, 1.5 percent for energy consumption, 2.2 percent for electric power generation, and 3.1 percent for real GDP Table ES2. U.S. Emissions of Greenhouse Gases, Based on Global Warming Potential, 1990-1999 (Million Metric Tons Carbon Equivalent) Gas 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 P1999 Carbon Dioxide 1,351 1,338 1,365 1,397 1,422 1,435 1,484 1,505 1,507 1,527 Methane 182 183 183 178 179 179 173 172 168 165 Nitrous Oxide 99 101 103 103 111 106 105 104 103 103 HFCs, PFCs, and SF6 24 22 24 24 25 29 33 35 40 38 Total 1,655 1,644 1,675 1,702 1,737 1,748 1,796 1,816 1,818 1,833 P = preliminary data.Note: Data in this table are revised from the data contained in the previous EIA report, Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 1998, DOE/EIA-0573(98) (Washington, DC, October 1999).Sources: Emissions: Estimates presented in this report. Global Warming Potentials: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 1995: The Science of Climate Change (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Energy End-Use Sector Sources of U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions, 1990-1999 Sector Million Metric Tons Carbon Equivalent PercentChange 1990 1999 1990-1999 1998-1999 Transportation 431.8 496.1 14.9% 2.9% Industrial 454.8 481.2 5.8% 0.2% Commercial 207.7 243.5 17.2% -0.4% Residential 254.2 290.1 14.1% 0.4% Note: Electric utility emissions are distributed across sectors. Total carbon dioxide emissions from the residential sector increased by 0.4 percent in 1999 (Table 6). Year-to-year, residential sector emissions are heavily influenced by weather. For example, in 1996, a relatively cold year, carbon dioxide emissions from the residential sector grew by 5.9 percent over 1995. In 1997, they declined by 0.

A Chronicle of the Plague

The Black Death: A Chronicle of the Plague by Johannes Nohl (1882–1963) is an illustrative book that traces down the flux of plague and its effects in Europe over the centuries. It examines this malady from historical and sociological perspective. The major contribution of Johannes Nohl is that he does not rely on secondary sources but has researched the contemporary chronicles to locate the pathos and miseries that this epidemic afflicted on the populations of Europe over the centuries.Scope of work is both intensive and extensive as he has provided an in-depth study that encompasses four centuries (1337-1720) and a vast geographical area from Western Europe to Russia and from Nordic ice-burgs to the Mediterranean Sea. In addition to being a historian, Johannes Nohl was also a psychoanalyst. So The Black Death: A Chronicle of the Plague is not a mere chronicle of the plague & its effects but also it further analyzes the socio-cultural, psychological and economic effects of th is epidemics on the whole European civilization that persist in certain societies hitherto.It beautifully blends the comprehensive accounts of the pandemic that caused almost 40 million deaths a single century during the fourteenth century alone with durable socio-cultural impact. The book also locates that how people countered these epidemics and what practical measures were adopted to tackle the problem at large scale. Nohl illustrate that Black Death changed the patterns of life and affected all facets of culture as people migrated from one geographical location to the other to escape themselves from this epidemic.First two chapters, The Aspect of the Plague and The Precursors of the Plague describe the nature of plague as it was understood by the contemporary societies. Nohl has explored through contemporary chronicles that Plague was considered a celestial phenomenon as plague use to visit the European societies sporadically in the form of a natural disaster. Furthermore, Nohl explores that most usual route of these epidemics were from India to Central Asia and then to Europe through trade groups and in Europe it used to spread along with waterways in the shape of a natural catastrophe.In the next two chapters The Medical Profession and Plague Remedies, Nohl discovers the available medical remedies in the medieval societies and how medical professionals reacted to it. Contemporary chironicles suggest that mostly people used to rely on religious conviction and pilgrimages rather than visiting a doctor. Most medical treatment was based on plant extracts. Availability and affordability of medicines were another problem due to mass scale spread and impact of the disease. Nohl looks into the various other socio-political aspects of the epidemic.For example, aadministrative precautions mostly included individual and group exclusion from the community of the hale and hearty. A systematic effort in this regards was not possible as plague used to erupt abruptly, s o it was administered intermittently. Nohl has not only provided the official and royal manuscripts and chronicles but to present the conditions and miseries of the general public, he has included chronicles of travelers, contemporary historians. These clearly manifest that plague had different effects of different social classes and each class was treated in a different way both socially and administratively.In addition to socio-cultural and political effects, epidemic of plague had cast their disturbing impact on the worldview Christian community. Church responded in its own way to the pandemic. The Church labeled it as a reaction of sins and their only remedy was ritualistic deliverance that would purge the sins. So ritualistic practices were used to organize at the individual and collective level. Some other Christian followers were of the view that world is overtaken by the evil as Divinity itself was a friend of mankind and how it could afflict it with such pathos and miseries .Another section of orthodox sect, The Luciferians were of the view that God had toppled down Lucifer, their lord, and had taken over heaven. So this is a natural response of this tragedy. (Nohl 1924, 161-163). Some other compared the disease as an Arial and celestial phenomenon that was beyond the strength and capacity of mankind. This view was further reinforced by the fact that prior to the Black Death, in 1117, the eruption of plague was coincided with a cosmic phenomenon that medieval mind was unable to comprehend. Nohl states in this regard thatIn 1117, in January, a comet passed like a fiery army from North toward the orient, the moon was o’ercast blood-red in an eclipse, a year later a light appeared more brilliant than the sun,. This was followed by great cold, famine and plague, of which one-third of the humanity have said to have perished. Nohl further describes same coincidences in 1568, 1582 and 1606 when Netherlands, Prague and Vienna were badly affected with pl ague. This shaped the general mentality that plague is an extra human phenomenon and mankind had no control over it. The social fabric of the whole European society was transformed by these notions and beliefs.Nohl depicts that beside human causalities, first social causality was breakdown of social order. There was â€Å"an incapacity to believe that so uncanny a disease as the plague could be attributable to natural causes† which led â€Å"the fateful misconception of [its] artificial production† (Nohl 171). This belief molded their worldview and they become more recluse and a believers in the fictitious remedial rituals. Nohl also illustrates an interesting but tragic fact that plague was intentionally passed on to others. He located the motive for this deliberate infection as infectants did not want to undergo the agonies alone.Furthermore, it was common belief that one could liberate oneself of his contagion by transmitting it to others (Nohl 171). Nohl also provi des evidences when someone infected his/her rival or enemy due to sheer malice and enmity. Sometime, Lutherans were blamed for this curse but more often Jews were labeled as propellants of this deadly disease. So they were persecuted on mass level to purge the society from this malady but it is a fact that Jews used running streams for their sanitary purposes unlike Christian who used contaminated public wells that were often a prime cause for dispersal of various diseases.Toward end, the book has an interesting chapter, The Erotic Element in the Plague that relation sexuality with deadly disease. This book covers all aspects of Black Death pertaining to the contemporary medieval societies and all these are supported with the contemporary chronicles. It not only provides a synopsis of whole epidemic history but provides an in-depth analysis of the entire phenomenon. References Nohl, Johannes. 1924. The Black Death: A Chronicle of the Plague. Translated by C. H. Clarke. New York: Har per and Brothers Publishers.