Starship Troopers - a fascist book and an anti-fascist movie essays

Starship Troopers - a fascist book and an anti-fascist movie essays Robert A. Heinlein's 1955 novelStarship Troopers? and its message could be described as fascist, provocative, irresponsible and unpalatable. Paul Verhoeven's 1997 film Starship Troopers can, however, lay claim to being the ideological polar opposite of the novel. Verhoeven achieves this anti-fascist message within a fascist framework mainly through the usually subtle use of symbolism and satire Heinlein's 22nd century earth is at war with an arachnid "bug" race from another galaxy. "They are tough and we are tough and only one of us will win and the other gets wiped out," explains our hero Johnny Rico of the rugged Mobil Infantry, illuminating well the state of mind of the war between Japan and the United States during World War II, as well as the barely restrained ferocity of the Cold War afterwards. Rico's old high school teacher Rasczak plays the stand-in for Heinlein's philosophy of animproved? future society which emerges after following the "decadence and collapse of the democracies of the 20th century" after which the surviving veterans take over. Heinlein pays unconvincing lip service to the idea of a free society where civic service is voluntary and civil liberties are respected, but the soul of his argument lies in the military and the service of the State. The formation of young men and women does not take place primarily in schools, families, churches, sporting teams, universities, or human affection. In Heinlein's idealised future, this takes place in boot camp, reminiscent of totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany and Maoist China. Fully half the novel takes place during Rico's basic training into the Mobil Infantry where he and his fellow recruits are humiliated, broken-down, and re-made into selfless members of an elite military unit. Potential soldiers learn that life is about duty, serving the collective, sacrifice, and punishment; perhaps echoing his own days as a midshipman at the U.S Naval Academy and ...

Environmental protection is more important than economic profits Essay

Environmental protection is more important than economic profits - Essay Example Given the increased world population, there is a strain on the natural resources as people depend on natural resources to advance industrially and technologically. Today, because of the rivalry between environmental protection and economic profits, countries have failed to implement their different laid down environmental policies effectively, and this has put the environment at a greater risk of continued degradation, which will be detrimental to the human population in future. The debate whether to make environmental protection a priority or not applies to all world countries. In most countries, all corporations and businesses must have their environmental policy; this shows how crucial the environment is. However, do corporations fulfil their environmental policies, or is it just for a show? Today, scientists and other experts recognize the looming effects of the environmental hazard. Therefore, corrective measures should be taken today to ensure restoration of the environment, th an waiting until things go out of hand. Natural law does not forgive, then why provoke it yet its wrath is hard to withstand? The environment today is in a pathetic state. The amount of natural forests cleared is devastating. It is saddening how humans are mercilessly strangling Mother Nature, and yet it is from her they get their breath of life. Humans destroy the environment in pursuit of their economic establishments. The knowledge humans lack is that once they are done destroying mother nature, all their technological and industrial advances, and booming economies will count as nothing when mother nature’s provoked ghost comes back to haunt them. Their mega economies will be destroyed, including the populations, and this is quite derogatory. It is therefore sensible that states change their greedy ways and stop overexploiting the environment in pursuit of their economic ambitions. The desires for economic profits should not override the importance of the environment. Glob al warming is already here with us. This has resulted in a great instability in the environment. Its effects are witnessed every day. The tsunamis, hurricanes, tornados, and floods cause great destructions in the affected countries, lives are lost, property destroyed, infrastructure destroyed, and families displaced. Scenes from the more recent hurricane Sandy can attest to this. This destroyed communication lines, buildings, roads, and other infrastructure, in addition to the loss of lives and displacements of families. This will cost the USA millions of dollars to fix. Therefore, establishing the economy at the expense of the environment is like a zero-sum game. The environment will always get back to us and damage the economies. Therefore, the environment proves that it is the most important. Environmental protection is a matter of life and death in all countries. Today individuals, states, scientists and countries in general realize that the future of the planet earth is in dire need of safeguarding, due to the environmental massacre that is witnessed today, all in the name of economic advancement. The main elements in state economies, which lead to environmental degradation, are the by-products from industries. Industrialization is good for human survival as it positively influences the economy. However, lack of controlled industrialization is what causes environmental protection and economic profits to be at loggerheads. Today, we

Graphic Design in the 1950s Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Graphic Design in the 1950s - Assignment Example The assignment "Graphic Design in the 1950s" talks about the ways the graphic design was done in the 1950s. To follow Warhol's passage from commercial artist to the world star is to chart an intriguing transition. The term printing refers to an image consisting of pure black and white with no tonal gradation. For an image to be reproduced through letter press printing, it must meet or condition of line art. An ink drawing is a camera ready the both is economically expedient and visually direct, closely resembles the original. A typical illustration of the shoe by Andy, he demonstrates how a color image is produced from line art. Base layer carries an ink drawing of a patterned shoe, and the second layer on a transparent overlay elaborates the pattern. Most of the dramatic events in the history of graphic art were the invention of photography, whose impact was immediate. Before the introduction of the half tone process in the 18th century, wood engravers reproduced photographs by translating them by hand into patterns of black marks. The process of photographic was widely used in the printing of line drawing; illustration could prepare drawing of arbitrary dimension, which could be then photographically reduced. Some illustration continued to approximate the realism of photography and photographs remained the routine source material throughout the industry, many commercial artists worked to define the products of the hand against those of the camera, marketing drawing that was totally different.

Microcredit Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Microcredit - Essay Example From the research paper of Agnes Loteta Dimandja, the economical status of Africa and the status of the women of the region and the present situation of the country in context of the human rights of the women can be concisely understood. Statistics from IMF, World Bank and other institute revealed that the poorest person on the earth lives in the Sub-Saharan Africa and probably she is a woman. As per the current situation of the Africa, where the basic human right are being violated, women are denied their dignity. It has been observed that the women in these societies came to be some of the first victims of the ongoing situation of violence and this is because of their internal wars. Women in these nations are found to beg for peace as peace is something that should exist as the necessary condition for development. This picture depicts the dominated position of the African women (Dimandja, 2004). Niara Sudarkasa has conducted a study regarding the status of the women in the indigenous African Society. As per her view, in the African Societies the female and the male have been time and again described as the complementary and separate. Usually it has been seen that, whenever any writer compare female and male in Africa, in most of the occasions, they certify men with a higher status and to be in a better situation and the women are portrayed as a saddle in home and domesticity (Sudarkasa, 1986). Wail S. Hassan has discussed about the â€Å"Man & Masculinity† in his article â€Å"Gender (and) Imperialism†. In his article, he had added the view of Judith Butler, who argued that gender assumed normative masculinity which has balanced against the femininity interpreted as deviation. This normative masculinity declares itself in colonial dissertation. During that time, as per the Frantz Fanon and Cornel, the racial discourse has symbolized the

Science and Religion Essay Example for Free

Science and Religion Essay Assess the view that science has replaced religion as the main ideological influence in society today? (33 marks) It will be important to assess the view that science has replaced religion as the main ideological influences in society today. The enlightenment project could be seen as the start of the debate between religion and science as the main ideological influence in society today. As moments in the 16th century had lead to the first real questions of religion being asked. As the contribution of natural sciences such as Biology, Chemistry and Physics grew it lead to more doubts about religion. As Da Vinci acts can be seen as an example of this, he had stolen bodies from graveyards and drew the inside of them which was as ethically wrong but beneficial in helping scientist asses the human body. Leading to people questioning the amount religion had done for society. Therefore showing science has replaced religion as the main influence in society today. As one sociologist Popper argues that science is a open belief system where every scientist’s theory can be falsified, as science can be open to criticism and tested by others. For example if scientist argues water boils at 100 degrees Celsius this can be tested (falsified). However with religion this is impossible as you are unable to test religious ideas on what happens after death. This leads to religion not being falsified and science ruled by the theory of falsification. Thus leading to Popper to believe science has been successful in explaining and controlling the world becoming the main ideological influence in society today. As Kuhn argues Religion consist on too many paradigms, as he believes there should be one dominate paradigm such as Science. As in religion you have many different religious such as Christianity, Islam and Judaism making it difficult to have one dominate paradigm. While science has one dominate paradigm. As Kuhn accepts that paradigms can change for example it was believed the earth being flat which was the dominate paradigm however had changed. As religion consist of too many, thus for Kuhn science has replaced religion as the main ideological influence in society today. Interactionist believe a scientific fact is simply is a social construction, it can’t be seen as a scientific fact because of the case study ‘little green men’. Researchers from the Cambridge astronomy laboratory annotated the patterns shown their printout from the radio telescope as LGM 1 and LGM2 which being published would have ended their careers. This lead to them believing the patterns was a type of unknown stars bringing internationalist to the conclusion that scientific fact is simply a social construction. Thus science is not replacing religion as both are just social constructions. Beck a late modernist believes that science has lead to a negative impact on society, as science has caused an increase risk in accidents, illness and major disasters like never before. For example of nuclear bombs has lead to the fear of war and a loss of millions of lives. Giddens similar to Beck believes science has lead to a negative impact on society such as the recession. As advancement in technology has lead to many losses of jobs, particularly in the financial industry which is more capital intensive then before. Thus leading to both Beck and Giddens arguing science has replaced religion as the main ideological influence in society today but negatively. However Beck’s views on how were faced with risk of accidents, illness and major disasters on a everyday scale can be seen as over exaggerated. Lyotard a postmodernist believes both science and religions are metanarratives of modern society. As a metanarrative is a ‘big story’ such as the enlightenment project, Christianity’s view of life. As Lyotard argues that people no longer trust scientist, as science has lead to a chance of nuclear war and fail to cure cancer. Leading to people not accepting science and postmodernist such as Lyotard believing it’s a metanarrative with no absolute truth. However Lyotard’s theory can also be seen as a metanarrative therefore contradicting him-self. Thus Lyotard believes both science and religion is a metanarrative and provides society with no benefits. George Bush can be seen as Christian fundamentalist being a man of the Old Testament which led to his religion influencing his opinions and polices on certain issues. As being a Christian he believes abortion is the same as murder and single sex marriages are seen as a big sin. This may have lead to policies created to make both of these harder to achieve. As being a born again Christian while George Bush was the Governor of Texas there were 131 state executions. Thus showing in the United States religion is still the main ideological influence in society today. To conclude it is inconclusive that science can be seen replacing religion as it varies depending on country and can change as more sociological views are brought forward.

With it’s tight structure, poetry can accommodate great passion. Do :: English Literature

With it’s tight structure, poetry can accommodate great passion. Do you agree with this statement? You should base your answer on a close examination of two or three poems covering at least two groups. ‘With it’s tight structure, poetry can accommodate great passion’. Do you agree with this statement? You should base your answer on a close examination of two or three poems covering at least two groups. Although it could be argued that poetry can accommodate great passion I disagree with this statement. The two poems I have chosen to examine, ‘Marged’ by Gillian Clarke and ‘Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’ by Dylan Thomas, show different emotions that I believe disprove the statement. The first, ‘Marged’, is lacking in emotion and the second, ‘Do Not Go Gentle’, does more than accommodate the passion, it emphasises and releases the feelings felt by the poet. ‘Marged’ by Gillian Clarke is a Shakespearean sonnet, with three quatrains and a couplet at the end, however the poet has altered the form to change the style of the poem. For example the lines do not have ten syllables as a normal sonnet but vary in length. Also there is only a half-rhyme scheme with words such as ‘bed’ and ‘died’ in the first quatrain on alternate lines. It could be argued that the tight structure of the sonnet restrains the passion felt because of the syllables but as Gillian Clarke has ignored this rule and has different numbers of syllables this sonnet does not constrain passion. This argument would apply more if Clarke had written a passionate poem but as it is the poem is lacking in emotion of any kind. ‘Marged’ is about Clarke thinking of the previous owner of the house she lives in. The words do not emote a sad mood; Clarke is remembering the dead old lady but is herself distanced from the death and therefore does not feel sad. The use of the preposition ‘she’ shows the reader that the feelings are distanced; use of ‘you’ would have made the poem more direct and emotional. In contrast to this, ‘Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’ by Dylan Thomas is a very emotional poem in the traditional form of a villanelle. 'Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night' is addressed to the poets father and is plea that the man doesn’t die quietly. The use of ‘you’ makes the poem very personal and it is clear from the start of the poem that the poet feels very strongly about the issue. In the title and first line the emphasis is on the words ‘Not’ and

The Emh, the Financial Crisis and the Behavioral Finance

The EMH, the Financial Crisis and the Behavioral Finance 1. Introduction The Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) that was first proposed by Fama (1965, 1970) is the cornerstone of the modern financial economic theory. The EMH argues that the market is efficient and asset price reflects all the relevant information concerned about its return. The genius insight provided by the EMH has changed the way we look at the financial crisis thoroughly. However, the confidence in the EMH is eroded by the recent financial crisis.People can not help to ask: if the market is efficient and the price of assets is always correct as suggested by the EMH, why there exists such a great bubble in the financial market during the recent financial crisis? Apart from that, the EMH has even been criticized as the culprit of the recent financial crisis. (See Nocera, 2009 and Fox, 2009) Actually after the EMH was proposed, many anomalies have been found in the financial market and financial economists have develo ped many theories in order to explaining these anomalies.Among these the most influential one is the so called behavioral finance, which argues that the complex human behavior plays an important part in determining asset prices. The rest of the essay is arranged as follows. Section 2 explains what the EMH implies and its limitations. Section 3 emphasizes on explaining the usefulness of the EMH in the context of the recent financial crisis. Section 4 focuses on interpreting the behavioral finance. Section 5 concludes the essay. 2. The implications of the EMH According to Ball (2009), the implication of the EMH can be summarized as follows.The implication of the EMH can be decomposed into two parts. The first insight of the EMH is related to the most profound insights of classical economics, that is, there is no excess profit in a complete market, which is due to the fierce competition in the market. If there exists excess profit in such a market, then the entry of new producers will eventually eliminate it. The second insight is that information is symmetric dissemination, which implies that information can flow freely in the market without cost and time lag.Putting these two parts of insights together, the EMH implies that the market is efficient and asset prices reflect all the relevant information concerned about its return, and that investors can only get commensurate return with the cost of exploiting information due to the competition in the market. According to the EMH, people can only expect to get average return in the stock market and it is impossible to beat the market continuously. Note that it is futile to exploit information in order to get abnormal return does not mean that no one should act to exploit information.As a matter of fact, the EMH is a natural result of the fierce competition in the market—if there is no competition in the market, the market can not be efficient. In other words, asset price can not reach its equilibrium level a utomatically. Ice-cream producers face fierce competition from other producers in the market and it is impossible for them to get abnormal profit, but it is foolish for ice-cream producers to stop making ice-cream because they will get nothing if they do not work.Fama (1970) classifies the market into three categories: the weak form efficiency, the semi-strong form efficiency and the strong form efficiency. In the weak form efficiency market, asset prices reflect all the historical information, so it is impossible to obtain abnormal return using historical data and technological analysis is useless. In the semi-strong form efficiency market, asset prices reflect all the information that is publicly available, and thus it is impossible to get abnormal return using publicly available information.In the strong form efficiency market, asset prices reflect all the relevant information, including all publicly available information and inside information, so investors can only get average return and it is impossible to beat the market. 3. The performance of the EMH in explaining the recent financial crisis During the recent financial market, the stock market fell sharply, banks went bankrupt and the financial system was damaged seriously. This financial crisis has eroded the confidence in the EMH.The validity of the EMH and the existence of the efficient market are questioned broadly. If asset prices are always correct and reflect all the relevant information concerning about its return just as the EMH has suggested, why there exists such a great bubble in the financial market during the recent financial crisis? If the market is efficient, why the market fails to predict the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Bear Stern and other large financial institutions? Overall, the EMH fails to answer such questions.Moreover, the EMH also performs poor in explaining other financial crisis. One example is the Tulipmania that occurred in the 17th century. The prices of the tulip bulbs reached extremely high level which seriously deviates from its fundamental value that was suggested by the EMH. This apparent bubble is contradicted with the prediction of the EMH. In fact, the explaining power of the EMH becomes pale when confronting financial crisis. The EMH does not assume that investors are rational, but the EMH does assume that the market is efficient. But the reality may not be that simple.Investors may exhibit a lot of irrational behaviors in the real life, such as overconfident in their ability, following others readily, making wrong decisions when in exuberant state, and so forth. These irrational behaviors of investors without doubt will weaken the explaining power of the EMH. Apart from that, the EMH assumes that information is symmetric dissemination and can flow freely without cost and time lag, but information in the reality may not be symmetric disseminated, information may not be able to flow freely, this will also affect the validity of the EMH in explaining asset prices in the real life.Besides, factors such as sociological factors also play a part in determining asset prices. In author’s opinion, asset price is just like a glass of beer. At the lower part of the glass is the real beer, representing the intrinsic value of the asset that can be explained by the EMH. At the upper part of the glass is the foam, representing values that can not be explained by the EMH. In other word, the EMH can not explain bubbles, which is the systematic deviation of asset prices from their fundamental value.The EMH has even been criticized as the culprit of the financial crisis. In Nocera (2009) and Fox (2009), both of them believe that the notion of efficiency was responsible for the financial crisis. They argue that since the market is efficient and asset prices reflect all relevant information, the investors and supervisors feel it is unnecessary to look into the intrinsic value of assets, and so fail to be aware of the asset price bubbles, thus the financial crisis occurs.Actually, not soon after the EMH was first proposed, scholars have found many anomalies that contradict with the prediction of EMH. De Bondt and Thaler (1985, 1987) found that investors tend to overreact to unexpected news and events and such irrational behavior affects stock prices; Jegadeesh and Titman (1993) found that investors using trading strategies that buying past winners and selling past losers can get abnormal returns during the period 1965 to 1989. De Long, Shleifer, Summers and Waldman (1990) argue hat some anomalies such as the excess volatility of asset prices, the mean reversion in stock prices, and so forth, can be explained by the notion of noise trader risk. These studies have challenged the validity of the EMH. 4. The behavioral finance As has been described before, there are many anomalies that can not be explained by the EMH. Objectively speaking, these anomalies give impetus to the development and breakthrough of finan cial economic theories. Scholars so far have developed many models so as to explaining there anomalies, among which the most influential one is the behavioral finance.The behavioral finance takes psychological factors into account when determining asset price. According to Fuller (2000), the behavioral finance can be described in three ways. In the first way, he thinks that the behavioral finance is the integration of psychology and decision making science with the classical financial economic theory. In the second way, he views the behavioral finance as an attempt to explain the anomalies that have been observed and reported among current literatures in the financial market.In the third way, he thinks that the behavioral finance is a discipline that studies how investors make ‘mental mistakes’ in investment decision making process. The traditional asset pricing theories are developed under the assumption that investors are rational and thus can make right decisions, th at is, investors will not hurt themselves when making decisions. But the behavioral finance theory is developed under the assumption that investors are not always rational and human behavior is irrational at some time and that the financial market is sometimes inefficient.This assumption is much more reasonable than that of the traditional asset pricing theories. Ritter (2003) summarizes some irrational behavior of human beings, such as people tend to follow ‘heuristics’ or rules of thumb, which sometimes lead to biases, people are overconfident about their abilities, people act slowly to adjust to changes, people sometimes separate decisions which should be combined together in principle, and so forth. He argues that these irrational behaviors of investors will lead to misevaluation.Another important assumption made by the behavioral finance is the limits to arbitrage. In a market where arbitrage can be carried out without limitation, mispricing of asset will be elimin ated quickly. But if there are limits to arbitrage, for instance, short sale is not allowed in the financial market, the misprcing of asset may not be eliminated. Under the circumstance that the mispricing of asset is seriously, arbitrager will even choose to give up arbitrage due to the huge risk involved in the arbitrage.This assumption implies that the market is inefficient when there are limits to arbitrage. De Long, Shleifer, Summers and Waldman (1990) maintain that in an economy where rational and irrational traders are mixed, the behavior of noise traders can have huge continuous impact on asset prices, because the huge risk arbitragers confront made arbitrage less attractive. The first scholar who stresses the importance of psychological factors in investment decision making is Keynes.Keynes argues that the ‘animal spirits’ of investors is the psychological foundation of irrational exuberance and crash. Kahneman and Tversky’s (1973, 1979) description on t he belief and preference of investors under uncertainty lays the theoretical foundation for the behavioral finance. After that, the behavioral finance develops rapidly and gradually become the most important branch of financial economics.By economic intuition, since that the behavioral finance takes psychological factors into account when determining asset prices and that these factors do have important impact on the decision-making behaviors of investors, we can say that in the short run the behavioral finance provides a better for the behavior of investors and the financial markets than the EMH. But in the long run, investors will eventually realize and correct their irrational behavior, and the EMH will perform better than the behavioral finance. . Conclusion Under certain assumptions, the EMH maintains that asset prices reflect all the relevant information about the asset, thus it is impossible for investors to get abnormal return and beat the market. The EMH implies that there is no unexploited profitable opportunity in the financial market. Although the EMH provides a useful insight through which we look at the financial market, the EMH fails to explain the more and more anomalies in the financial market.The EMH provides little useful explanation about the recent financial crisis. The validity of the EMH is questioned and the confidence in the EMH declines. Moreover, the EMH has even been criticized as the culprit of this financial crisis. Given the criticism the EMH suffers, scholars have developed varieties of theories so as to explain the anomalies in the financial market. Among these the most influential one is the behavioral finance.The behavioral finance studies how the behavior of human beings affects asset prices and the financial market. Based on the assumption that investors are sometimes irrational and the market is inefficient and that there are limits to arbitrage, the behavioral finance overall gives better explanations concerning the anoma lies in the financial market than the EMH. The behavioral finance is a rapidly developing field in the financial economics. Reference Ball, R. 2009) ‘The global financial crisis and the efficient market hypothesis: What have we learned? ’, forthcoming in Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn. com/abstract=1502815 (Accessed: 10 March 2010) De Bondt and Thaler (1985) ‘Does the stock market overreact? ’, Journal of Finance, Vol. 40, No. 3, pp. 793-805 De Long, Shleifer, A. , Summers, A. S. and Waldman, R. J. (1990) ‘Noise trader risk in financial market’, Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 98, No. 4, pp. 703-738 Fama, E.F. (1965) ‘Random walk in stock market prices’, Financial Analyst Journal, Vol. 21, No. 5, pp. 55-59 Fama, E. F. (1970) ‘Efficient market hypothesis: A review of theory and empirical work’, Journal of Finance, Vol. 25, No. 2, pp. 383-417 Fuller, R. J. (2000) Ã¢â‚¬Ë œBehavioral Finance and Sources of Alpha’, forthcoming in Journal of Pension Plan Investing, Vol. 2, No. 3 Fox, J. (2009) ‘The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward and Delusion on Wall Street’, New York: HarperCollins Jegadeesh, N. and Titman, S. 1993) ‘Returns to buying winners and selling losers: Implications for stock market efficiency’, Journal of Finance, Vol. 48, No. 1, pp. 65-91 Kahneman, D. and Tversky, A. (1973) ‘On the psychology of prediction’, Psychological Review, Vol. 80, pp. 237-251 Kahneman, D. and Tversky, A. (1979) ‘Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk’, Econometrica, Vol. 47, pp. 263-291 Nocera, R. (2009) ‘Poking holes in a theory on markets’, New York Times, June 5, 2009 Ritter, J. R. (2003) ‘Behavioral finance’ ,Pacific-Basin Financial Journal, Vol. 11, pp. 429-437