What it Means to be a Thinking Reed :: Essays Papers

What it Means to be a Thinking Reed The quotation above, taken from Pascal’s Pensà ©es, seems disparaging of reason. Reason, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and that which has traditionally been held as the central attribute that differentiates humans from beasts, is here said to be limited and restricted in its powers. Instead of being able to grasp the truth about the universe in its entirety, instead of having that Cartesian hope where one â€Å"firm and immovable† (Descartes, p.63) point is established and a systematic understanding of everything takes shape, reason is lowered and its powers are diminished. In many ways â€Å"the heart,† an ambiguous and mysterious concept that possesses knowledge that reason can never hope to possess, takes the place of reason. From this quotation one might be tempted to conclude that â€Å"the heart† is infinitely more important than reason. Such a conclusion is far from the mark. Pascal ultimately believes that when faced with the challenge of t rying to live in the best possible way, people desperately need both reason and â€Å"the heart.† Exploring how two quotations taken together define â€Å"the mind† and â€Å"the heart† and the relationship they have with one another shows that â€Å"the mind† and â€Å"the heart† must work together to guide human beings on their quest for how to live best. The two quotations that will commence the investigation are as follows: Principles are felt, propositions proved, and both with certainty though by different means. (p.28) The heart has its order, the mind has its own, which uses principles and demonstrations†¦. (p.94) Before seeing the relationship between â€Å"the heart† and â€Å"the mind† that is implicit in these two quotations, one must first understand what Pascal means by the order of â€Å"the mind.† According to the two quotations the mind’s order includes using â€Å"Principles and demonstrations† to prove propositions with certainty. The word â€Å"demonstration† denotes a rigorous, methodical procedure that procures certitude. Logical proofs are excellent examples of demonstrations since they utilize sound, truth-preserving laws to deductively move from premises to certain conclusions that follow from those premises. Demonstration, though, is only half of what Pascal believes comprises the order of the mind: â€Å"the mind has its own [order], which uses principles and demonstrations† (p.94). The mind needs both principles and demonstrations in order to function, and logical proofs show this to be true. The first requirement for a logical proof is an assumption; before the truth-preserving laws of logic can be executed, an assumption must first be stated.

Beattie noted in his history paper Essay

Shakespeare died over 400 years ago. So, Hiram inserted a quote by Shakespeare from the play Hamlet into an essay without using quotation marks or citing the reference. I disagree that the essay was not cited and no questions  marks were used when the quote was inserted. If you do not cite a quote that was copied from a text, even if the author has died, this was being considered plagiarism. If you would have paraphrased the quote that would be difference because you are taking pieces of the quote and putting the rest in your own words. Beattie noted in his history paper the fact that representatives from the 13 British colonies signed the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776, but he did not cite a source for the information. I disagree that Beattie did not cite the source. Consider that he noted a fact that the British colonies signed the Declaration in the year 1776. He mentions the year of when the Declaration was signed, so this should be cited. When taking notes about the American Revolution. Sara found a quote of Benjamin Franklin’s words, which she paraphrased. She inserted it into her paper without quotation marks or a reference to Benjamin Franklin. I disagree that Sara did not cite her paper. When paraphrasing if you state the author and the year, a source should be cited. Jeffery wrote a paper on popular music in which he claimed that many songs came from earlier sources. He included the entire song lyrics from the Beatles and compared them to the lyrics of a song by a folk singer from the 1930s. He cited the Beatles. Although he included the lyrics from the 1930 song, he did not include a reference to the source. I agree that Jeffrey cited the singer of the song lyrics. I disagree that he did not reference the source. Whenever you site a source from a textbook you should include a reference page. The reference gives you all the information on where you have found your information.

First Generations

In her book First Generations, Carol Berkin basically aims to show the readers the power of women which can be traced through our history. Differentiating itself from traditional historical texts, studies, and researches, the book does not omit the valid experiences of women during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It wants to show that women of all races -European, Indian, and African- were critical components of 17th- and 18th-century American history.As such, the author tried to examine the various cultures, ideologies, belief and political systems that were present during those early times in relation to the roles and norms that enveloped women. With this goal at hand, she tried to find evidences and narrative accounts of the lives of ordinary women. She tried to figure out how these ordinary lives were governed, affected, and altered by the varying social expectations about women.Through all of this, Berkin tries to emphasize that women were active partakers in the makin g of history and the alteration of social norms, values, and systems even at a time when they were denied of equal rights. The book’s efficacy in providing deeper knowledge of American Culture To identify the efficacy of a classified historical narrative and exploration, the bases that will be used are the conciseness of the narrative, and its accuracy.Basically, the book presented a complete and concise narrative since it presented a multicultural setting as it tackles the experiences of women from various cultural and racial backgrounds. It involves the analyses of women of European, Indian, and African originalities. However, the book does not stop at carefully delineating women through their race and culture. Instead, Berkin moves a step higher in careful analysis and examination as she explores not only the popular and prominent women from the various cultural originalities.She presents a book which explores the lives of women through the varied roles that they perform- as wives, as daughters, as mothers, and as social participants- in relation to their occupation and social class. A particular example is Berkin’s citation of Margaret Hardenbroeck, a trader. Berkin was able to track down the life of Hardenbroeck, and illustrate how her colonial life as a businesswoman was altered by English colonization of Netherlands. In the book, Hardenbroeck’s economic problems, legal rights, and socially-related issues were examined in relation to what her husband have experienced.By doing so, Berkin was able to demonstrate the differences among the social expectations and pressures between a man and a woman. Another identity that Berkin also examined in the book was Eliza Lucas Pinckney. Unlike Hardenbroeck, Pickney was not very exposed to matters of businesses, colonization, and governmental restrictions at first. Instead, she was constantly struggling to fulfill her domestic responsibilities that were traditionally assigned to women. By these, it means that Pinckney was more concerned and burdened with her roles as a wife, a mother, and a daughter.However, economic circumstances prompted her to adopt expertise in entrepreneurship as she later became the proprietor of her father’s and late husband’s plantations. Berkjin narrates that overtime, Pinckney then developed â€Å"a consciousness of self and a confidence in reason† which she garnered from her education. Through these two, Berkin made a valid conclusion when she pointed out that social class altered the supposed to be gender-specific roles of colonial American society.In the case of accuracy, it can be observed that Berkin lacked primary materials. As such, she tried to overcome the scarcity of primary sources through thorough research and cross-checking with secondary sources. She even acknowledges the said issue when she stated that though â€Å"studies of New England marriage patterns based on diaries and letters and studies of Chesapeake m arriage patterns drawn from demographic data are equally valid,† such cannot be used for a carefully derived cross-culture comparison.However, it seems that her lapse in conclusive data should not be regarded as an important component in her descriptive analysis of the daily lives of women from various geographic regions. It appears that the careful analysis of women of varied social class, racial background, and geographic location during those times is accurate enough to guarantee that the narrative is a well-researched work fit for collections on women studies.As such, the book gave its readers a deeper knowledge of American culture since it was able to touch on a rarely tackled historical subject and component- women. Moreover, the historical exploration that it presented was rather seemingly complete narrative of women history as Berkin explored marriage, motherhood, social interaction, labor, and beliefs. To add to that, the exploration was done in a compare and contrast manner between the social experiences and pressures faced by men and women.Thus, it was clear why women garnered different roles and patterns of empowerment and development from men. Overall, the book demonstrated that women were important factors in history creation and societal alteration. REFERENCES Berkin, Carol (1997). First Generations: Women in Colonial America. First Generations by Carol Berkin. Retrieved January 31, 2008 from www. powells. com/cgi-bin/biblio? inkey=62-9780809016068-0 First Generations by Carol Berkin. Retrieved January 31, 2008 from http://search. barnesandnoble. com/booksearch/isbnInquiry. asp? z=y&endeca=1&isbn=0809016060&itm=2#TABS

How to Conjugate Protéger (to Protect) in French

How to Conjugate Protà ©ger (to Protect) in French You will use the French verb  protà ©ger  when you want to say to protect. A verb conjugation is required if you want to use it for the past tense protected or the future tense will protect. This word has a couple tricks to it, but a lesson in its simplest conjugations will explain everything you need to know. The Basic Conjugations of  Protà ©ger Protà ©ger is both a stem-changing  and  spelling change verb. While that may seem scary at first, both issues have a purpose and are relatively easy to handle. The stem change occurs with the accented  Ãƒ ©Ã‚  in  protà ©ger. You will notice that in some forms- the present tense, in particular- the accent changes to an  Ãƒ ¨.  You will also notice that the future tense gives you the option between the stem changes.  Pay attention to this while studying so you can spell it correctly when needed.   The stem change pops up in the regular -er  conjugations where the ending begins with an  a  or  o.  For these, the  e  is retained to ensure the  g  has a soft pronunciation as it does in gel. Without the  e, the vowels would make it a hard sound as in gold. The indicative mood and the basic present, future, and imperfect past tenses are covered in this first chart. These should be your top priority to memorize because youll use them most often. All you need to do is pair the subject pronoun with the corresponding tense to learn which endings to use. For example, je protà ©ge means I am protecting and nous protà ©gions means we protected. Present Future Imperfect je protà ¨ge protà ©geraiprotà ¨gerai protà ©geais tu protà ¨ges protà ©gerasprotà ¨geras protà ©geais il protà ¨ge protà ©geraprotà ¨gera protà ©geait nous protà ©geons protà ©geronsprotà ¨gerons protà ©gions vous protà ©gez protà ©gerezprotà ¨gerez protà ©giez ils protà ¨gent protà ©gerontprotà ¨geront protà ©geaient The Present Participle of  Protà ©ger The spelling change is also required in the  present participle  of  protà ©ger because of the -ant  ending. The result is the word  protà ©geant. Protà ©ger  in the Compound Past Tense Another way to express the past tense in French is with the  passà © composà ©. This requires both the  past participle  protà ©gà ©Ã‚  and the present tense conjugate of the auxiliary verb  avoir. For example, I protected is  jai protà ©ge  and we protected is  nous avons protà ©gà ©. More Simple Conjugations of  Protà ©ger Once again, youll find some spelling and stem changes in the following conjugations. Also, the conditional- used for if...then situations- offers the option between the accented es. However, if you pay careful attention to those things, these forms of  protà ©ger  can be quite useful. The subjunctive, for instance, allows you to call the act of protecting into question. When reading or writing French, youll likely encounter  the passà © simple  or  the imperfect subjunctive  because these are literary tenses. Subjunctive Conditional Passà © Simple Imperfect Subjunctive je protà ¨ge protà ©geraisprotà ¨gerais protà ©geai protà ©geasse tu protà ¨ges protà ©geraisprotà ¨gerais protà ©geas protà ©geasses il protà ¨ge protà ©geraitprotà ¨gerait protà ©gea protà ©geà ¢t nous protà ©gions protà ©gerionsprotà ¨gerions protà ©geà ¢mes protà ©geassions vous protà ©giez protà ©geriezprotà ¨geriez protà ©geà ¢tes protà ©geassiez ils protà ¨gent protà ©geraientprotà ¨geraient protà ©gà ¨rent protà ©geassent The French imperative  may be useful for a verb like  protà ©ger. Its used for short and assertive statements, and when you use it, theres no need to include the subject pronoun.   Imperative (tu) protà ¨ge (nous) protà ©geons (vous) protà ©gez

Die vs. Dye

Die vs. Dye Die vs. Dye Die vs. Dye By Maeve Maddox Although referred to as a â€Å"hoax,† a recent false report of the death of a beloved celebrity was the result more of ignorance than of malice. The rumor may have stemmed from this headline above a story posted in September in the Empire News: Actress Betty White, 92, Dyes Peacefully In Her Los Angeles Home A pun that the headline writer must have thought was extremely clever is in fact an example of extreme bad taste. The story was about the fact that Betty White dyes her hair in the privacy of her home: â€Å"Betty is a solitary kind of person,† said Witjas [White’s agent]. â€Å"She likes to relax in her home with her animals, and she rarely likes to discuss the fact, at least in public, that she is actually a brunette. She has been dyeing her own hair in her home for decades. Betty  has often told me she feels it is relaxing and soothing to dye her own hair, peacefully in her home, where she can laugh and enjoy time with her animals. She’s said on more than one occasion that as a blonde, she has had ‘more fun’ in her roles, and in life.† Irresponsibility on the part of the publication, plus the weak spelling skills of some readers, produced the distressing rumor. The word die functions as both noun and verb. As a noun, it has more than one meaning: die (noun): a small cube of ivory, bone, or other material, having its faces marked with spots numbering from one to six. (The plural of the game piece is dice.) die (noun): an engraved stamp used for impressing a design or figure upon some softer material, as in coining money, striking a medal, embossing paper, etc. As a verb, die means, â€Å"to cease to live.† Its principal parts are: die, died, (have) died, dying. The word dye also functions as both noun and verb: dye (noun): color used to stain a substance. dye (verb): to impart a color to something (fabric, hair, etc.) The principal parts are: dye, dyed, (have) dyed, dyeing. The spelling distinction between dye and die is fairly recent. Dr. Johnson (1709-1784) spells both words die in his dictionary. Joseph Addison (1672-1719) spelled both words dye. The modern spelling distinction clearly serves a valuable purpose. As for punning headlines, they may be fun to write, but they can have unintended consequences. Related post: One Die, Two Dice Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Misused Words category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:What Does [sic] Mean?35 Genres and Other Varieties of FictionMood vs. Tense

The social role of magazines is as uncertain as their commercial basis Essay

The social role of magazines is as uncertain as their commercial basis - Essay Example Over the years, there have been reports of increasing demands among customers regarding a certain extent of control and influence over their media experiences as the media and technology industries have compelled them to do so. At present, digital formats can enable readers to easily navigate and establish interactions with the magazine content. Publishers have increased their ability in retaining the design conformity of a typical print magazine and, at the same, integrate the dimension of interactivity which attracts readers and generates a more engaging and dynamic experience (Machin and Thornborrow, 2003). In addition, the engagement of advertisements can also be enhanced owing to this digital resolution. However, there is still an increasing concern as to how magazines can retain their readers, establish and sustain effective brands, and increase profitability. Therefore, a number of factors must be emphasized, including brand awareness as well as the engagement of customers and their intentions to purchase. This paper will then focus on how readers relate to the magazine as a brand and how this process can influence their recall of the brand along with their intentions of purchasing such publications. Opportunities from the use of the new media have been recognized; if publishing will strongly depend on effective content delivery, consequently, the conventional print format will experience considerable threat. Retail wastage along with excessive reliance on distribution through newsstands has been associated with such format in the United States and in a number of European countries (Al-Olayan and Karande, 2000). On the other hand, the new delivery of media content has offered publishers and companies various opportunities; for instance, it helps reduce waste similar to the advantages of subscriptions, and provides real time interactivity between the readers and content. Such immediate interaction with these readers often entails a considerable culture ch ange which brand owners and manufacturers should effectively carry out to retain their readers. Finally, online publishers increase their ability in become a search engine with which a magazine site can help direct their readers to the source of information which they are seeking, implying that their magazine fits the readers’ lifestyle. Owing to the fact the online market has continued to present increased choices, one of the most crucial actors for success when using the new media is brand image (Vargo and Lusch, 2004). Many publishers have recognized that the branding concept is a solution to the threats of the new media. On the whole, the customers’ awareness of a certain product, also characterized as their ability to think back to it, has typically been viewed as a crucial factor that determines their choice of purchase. However, others have underestimated the advantages that branding can provide by overlooking the usage of new media or considering such as a non- profit platform, similar to the free supply of magazines during events. The fact that numerous publishers have been offering their magazine content for free through the Internet can bring about risks for these firms. As branding has been increasingly deemed as an important component for magazine publishers, this emphasizes the traditional role of these publications in the society, which is to bring together

Supply and Demand II Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Supply and Demand II - Assignment Example Draw this on your graph above. a. (Figure: Supply and Demand with Subsidy) Refer to the figure. Suppose a subsidy allows sellers to receive their product at the price of $8 with a quantity of 400 units. What is the dollar amount of the subsidy per unit of the good? 7. True, False, or Uncertain: A starving farmer accepting a loan from a moneylender at a 25% interest rate is an example of mutually beneficial exchange. Give a one-sentence explanation of your answer. b. If the elasticity of demand for spring break packages to Ibiza is -5, and if you notice that this year in Ibiza the quantity of packages demanded increased by 10%, then what happened to the price of Ibiza vacation packages? c. London real estate developers are building thousands of new student-friendly apartments close to the Strand campus. If you want to pay the lowest rent possible, should you hope that demand for apartments is elastic or inelastic? d. The town council degrees that thousands of apartments close to the Strand campus are uninhabitable and must be torn down next semester. If you want to pay the lowest rent possible, should you hope that demand for apartments is elastic or