What are some specific allusions in A Separate Peace?

Because the novel is set during World War II and is intrinsically connected to the war, historical allusions play a major role in the book.

Historical allusions: In Chapter 2, Finny discusses the bombing of Central Europe with the professors and their wives (26). Similarly, when Finny creates his own game in the same chapter, he decides to name it "blitzball" (37) in connection with the Blitzkrieg (Germany's lightning-fast invasion of Poland). Later in Chapter 7, Brinker teases Quackenbush about "Mussolini's" army, being a "kraut" (German), and Pearl Harbor (all references to America's WWII enemies or attacks--98). In Chapter 8, as Finny rants about the stupidity of enlisting (because he can no longer enlist), he mentions Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the Yellow Peril (references to China and the leaders of what would eventually be Taiwan--109).  In a similar discussion about the war, Finny tells Gene that the "fat old men" are just making up the war to keep the younger generation from taking their jobs.  He is referencing stock market gurus and other wealthy tycoons who made money from WWII industry (115).

Knowles includes other historical allusions and literary ones (when he discusses the classes/subjects that the boys study).

I am writing on whether beauty pageants exploit females. I need a great attention grabber. Any ideas?

The word exploit has two slightly different meanings. In general it means making use of something or putting something to some useful purpose. For example, we speak of exploiting a gold mine to produce gold. The other meaning has a negatively charged emotional connotations. As per this meaning, exploitation means to make unfair use of something for selfish purpose.

If we allege that beauty pageants make unfair use of females, then we should should be able to specify in what way the females are being used unfairly. There are many ladies who work on job that require much harder work with much less pay than a ladies who may be be a part of a beauty pageants. For example, a lady who may be employed by a small factory for assembly work. If we don't consider that millions of such ladies are exploited, then it is rather puzzling for in what way ladies working on beauty pageants are exploited.

What are the advantages of having both an immune and an inflammatory system of defense?INDIVIDUAL WITH AN INEFFECTIVE IMMUNE SYSTEM CANNOT REACT...

The immune system evolved and was complexed structural and functional under permanent selective pressure which  infectious agents exert , which tend to invade, to colonize and multiply in the tissues. The structure of the immune system is a direct reflection of its interaction with the diversity of infectious agents that stimulate it. The two opposing forces have shaped each other in constant conflict. Hosts that do not neutralize the infectious agent are doomed to death, and those who survive are better adapted to resist subsequent infections. Antigenic heterogeneity problem of viruses and pathogenic bacteria is important not only theoretically, but is essential to the practical issue of vaccination, because there is risk of stimulating immune response without effective protection. The consequence of stimulating an immune response may be ineffective or even aggravation of infectious disease and activating autoimmune pathogenicity mechanisms.

The immune response has to counter not only the diversity of antigens to which it is exposed, but must find the response to changes in biochemical structure, at the different strains of microorganisms.
 

A plane is flying horizontally with speed 315m/s at a height 2770m above the ground, when a package is dropped from the plane. The acceleration of...

The first part of the answer regarding first package requires no calculation. The package will have the same horizontal speed as the plane, and therefore, when the package hits the ground, the plane will be directly above the package.

To calculate the horizontal distance of the package from the drop point, we first calculate t, the time taken for the drop using following equation:

t = (2s/a)^1/2

Where s = vertical distance travelled during drop = 2770 m

and a = acceleration = 9.8 m/s^2

Therefore: t = (2*2770/9.8)^1/2 = 23.7762 s (approximately)

Horizontal distance of package

= t*horizontal speed = 23.7762*315 = 7489.503 m (approximately)

Now taking up the solution for the second package:

(Please note that same symbols have been used for the solution to problem relating to the first and second package, but their values are different.)

It is assumed that the package is thrown at vertical speed of 52 m/s with respect to the plane. Therefore the package will have a constant horizontal component of speed equal to speed of plane. This is given as 315 m/s.

Given: Initial vertical velocity of package = u = 52 m/s

vertical distance travelled = s = 2770

vertical acceleration = a = 9.8 m/s^2

Final vertical velocity = v = ?

Time taken for the package to hit the ground = t = ?

To find v we use the expression: v^2 = u^2 + 2as

Therefore v = (u^2 + 2as)^1/2

= (52^2 + 2*9.8*2770)^1/2 = 238.7384 (approximately)

Also: t = (v - u)/a = (238.7384 - 52)/9.8 = 19.0549 (approximately)

Horizontal distance travelled by package = t*(horizontal speed)

= 19.0549*315 = 6002.3041 m (approximately)

Magnitude of velocity of package at the time of drop as seen by an observer from ground is given by the following equation.

Magnitude of net velocity = [(horizontal velocity)^2 = vertical velocity)^2]^1/2

= (315^2 +52^2)^1/2 = 319.2632 m/s approximately

What is William Bradford's "The History of Plymouth Plantation" about?

This book was written by William Bradford, who governor of the Plymouth Colony for over 30 years.  The Plymouth Colony is the colony that was founded by the famous Pilgrims, who came to America in 1620.  In the book, Bradford tells the story of the founding of the colony and its subsequent history.

Bradford starts his story with the Pilgrims' desire to leave Holland and come to America so they could live by the rules of their Puritan faith.  He discusses the hardships of the voyage on the Mayflower and of the early "starving time" after the colony was established.  He then continues the narrative through the first Thanksgiving and the rest of the colonies early history.  The account ends in 1647.

What would be a good thesis statement for this Macbeth essay prompt?here is the prompt: through sharp contrast, a character foil enhances certain...

through sharp contrast, a character foil enhances certain traits of a central character. Analyze how one or more secondary characters operate as foils and are employed to develop both character and theme in macbeth...

What this means/is after is about how one character exists in the play to show us more about the main character.

Your thesis theme could be: 'How does Shakespeare use the character of Lady Macbeth to enable us to understand the motivations of Macbeth better?'

You could approach this from a feminist perspective...does Lady MacBeth serve a character purpose independantly of Macbeth, or does she exist only to tell us about Macbeth? For instance half way through the play when she ceases to 'be useful' she disappears, then returns later having gone insane and commits suicide. So she exists to show us how Macbeth can be manipulated by his wife and that he loves her at the start of the play ('dearest chuck') - she is ambitious for him and could be seen as acting as 'Eve' to tempt him to destruction - as indeed so could the witches.

Examine their relationship and consider if it is possible to see her as a true independant character, or is she only a plot device to get Macbeth to act in certain fashions.

Could be interesting...hope this has been helpful.

What is being talking about in Act II, scenes 3 & 4 of Macbeth?What are they trying to say to us?

Act-II, Scene-III (Synopsis):-As there is more knocking,the drunken porter finally opens the door. Macduff and Lenox enter. Macbeth joins them and Macduff goes in to awaken Duncan. He returns with the news of murder; Lenox investigates the scene and says that the guards seem to have committed the murder as stained with blood they stll slept. Macbeth puts on a show of grief and Lady Macbeth faints(suspected pretence). Macbeth kills the King's guards as if out of anger. Malcolm and Donalbain fearing that their lives are at stake, take to their heels, to England and Ireland respectively.

Dramatic Significance:- The drunken porter's queer imagination and humourous description is structurally important because it is an effective preparation for the tense situation that follows. As the murder of the King is pronounced, the terrified Macbeth wishes that had he died a little earlier he would have been a blessed man. That Macbeth kills the guards is counter-factual.

Act-II, Scene-IV (Synopsis):-Outside Macbeth's castle Ross talks with an old man about the natural calamities that have come to pass this night of murder. Macduff comes in and informs Ross that suspicion has fallen on Malcolm and Donalbain, and it seems that the guards did the deed on their instructions. Macbeth has been chosen the King and has gone to champion coronation.

Dramatic Significance:- The description given by Ross about the previous night's horror is a dramatic interpretation in order to intensify the gravity of the situation. The information regarding the portents is theatrical that gives vent to an air of inauspiciousness. The sudden departure of Malcolm and Donalbain proves anything but promising future for Macbeth.

Was the Civil War worth fighting? Why?The Civil War did end slavery, however it did little to improve the lives of African Americans after the war.

The Civil War had an enormous effect on industry in the North. As a result, it helped change the U.S. from a country that was farm centered and plantation-centered to one that was mechanical and was reliant on the market system. Before the civil war there was only a small industry in the North. During the summer of 1860, the US had 128,300 companies registered as industry. New York and Pennsylvania the most industry.

On the down side, many of the African Americans who had been slaves went back to work doing the same thing they had been doing before; however they got paid. Not necessarily with money but by obtaining land rights for their modest homes. Howver the playing field was slightly better for African Americans because they had "some" rights. Of course, the later civil rights movement built on the successes of the civil war.

Some African Americans moved to the north where they were treated better than in the south. Since industry had grown there were more jobs there, so their economic situation improved.

In Romeo and Juliet, Act 3 scene 1, Tybalt dies, who kills him? And what are the killer's consequences?

Tybalt dies because Romeo kills him.

Romeo kills Tybalt because Tybalt has killed Malvolio.  The two of them were fighting and Romeo was trying to break it up.  When he did, he got in Malvolio's way and that allowed Tybalt to kill Malvolio.  So Romeo gets mad and kills Tybalt.

The consequence is that Romeo gets sent out of the city (he is exiled).  But if you think about it, the real consequence is that Romeo himself dies.  When he gets exiled, Friar Lawrence has to come up with his big scheme to prevent Juliet from marrying Paris.  If he hadn't had to do that, Romeo wouldn't have thought Juliet was dead and wouldn't have killed himself.

Please explain, "what a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties," (Hamlet Act II, Scene 2).

In Act II Sc.2 Claudius and Gertrude are worried that Hamlet has become insane. They don't know that Hamlet is only pretending to be mad and so Claudius asks Hamlet's two friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to cheer him up and find out the reason for his strange behaviour and see whether his parents can help him out of his difficult situation:

"To draw him on to pleasures and to gather, So much as from occasion you may glean, Whether aught, to us unknown, afflicts him thus That, opened, lies within our remedy."

The two friends readily agree to help Claudius and Gertrude and they meet Hamlet and begin to quiz him about his strange behaviour. Hamlet as soon as he meets them realises that they are decoys meant to remove his disguise and expose him, so he becomes very depressed that his two friends have turned traitors and he speaks these lines. Hamlet praises God's creation "Man" in fantastic terms:

"What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
world! the paragon of animals!"

But he concludes by remarking that man is nothing more than"quintessence of dust." That is God created man from dust and after he dies will become nothing but dust. Man for all his physical beauty and intellectual achievements is nothing but dust.

Hamlet thus indirectly expresses his contempt for his hypocritical friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

compare the "enemy" or "enemies" i Lord Of The Flies with the "enemy" or "enemies" into thin air.Who or what are they?what power(s) do they have?I...

The first enemy would be the "beast" or evilness that exist within us all. The beast that the boys see is symbolic of the evilness that exist within us all that in society, due to conformity of rules and values, the majority of us surpress. The island is a small representation of our larger society and is used to show how without the rules and regulations of soceity we could regress to our primal instincts, which Golding is suggesting is evil more so than good. One enemy the boys must confront is overcoming and supressing the evilness that lurkes within themselves without the regulations of modern society. Jack, who becomes the literal enemy they all fear, is the one who is defeated by the "beast" or the evilness that exist within himself.

Jack uses their fear of this symbolic beast they all imagine they are seeing on the island, to win almost everyone's loyalty as the two tribes start to seperate. Ralph, who represents the idea that we are all  good rather than evil without the regulations of society to govern our behavior, must confront his enemy, Jack, who represents the other side of the argument that we are all evil without the regulations of society to govern us. Towards the end of the novel, the battle between good, Ralph, and evil, Jack, confront one another in a dash through the enflamed forest. With Ralph's rescue at the last minute, it can be assumed that Golding's purpose was to not only show how different we would all be without the laws and values of society to influence our behavior but possibly his support in Locke's theory that all homes are good by nature rather than evil as Hobb's believed.

Note: Locke and Hobb's were philosophers that argued whether humans were born naturally good or evil. Locke believed we were all born naturally good while Hobb's believed we entered into society and created laws to protect us from the evil of human nature.

How can we use elements of a literary work to give us clues about the works intended audience?literary work

This is a very difficult question to answer, not because it is irrelevant or vague because it has so many ambivalent aspects to it.

First and foremost, is there an intended readership or audience in the mind of the author at the time of composition? The idea of the 'target audience' works in definitive genres like high art, low art, children's literature and so on. But in today's postmodern literary world, when high and low art forms are mixed up and all genres deconstructed, the very idea of a 'target audience' is in shambles. Secondly, the figuration of the authorial intent is not something that we talk about these days. The text is seen as an independent body, instead.

But with reader-response theory, the role of the audience has really been foregrounded especially in the cognitive act of completing the authorial meaning if there is one at all. The technique of the inbuilt reader is used in many of the contemporary works and that characterization can give he readers some idea about the intended audience.

Apart from this the style or the content of a work, the motifs involved the kind of characterization, the language in which it is written basically depending on the order of difficulty sometimes do give us a rough idea of the kind of readership, for which it is meant.

What is the relationship between information technology and environment?

The relationship between information technology and the environment is sort of mixed.  In some ways, IT is good for the environment, but in other ways it is bad.

Bad: The main problem with IT is the fact that, as we get more and more IT, the demand for electricity rises (as more people want to use electronics in more ways).  This, of course, means more fossil fuels will be burned to make the electricity.  In addition, some compnents of electrical devices are very harmful to the environment if not properly disposed of.

Good: Ideally, IT can be used to help reduce stress on the environment.  A good example of this is the "smart grids" that are under development.  These would, it is hoped, help us use electricity much more efficiently, thus reducing the demand for electricity and the amount of resources used to produce that electricity.

I hope this is the sort of thing you meant by your question.

Describe the walking stick and the inscription on it?

In the novel 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' by English author Arthur Conan Doyle, the walking stick is an important prop. It is able to 'tell' the detective quite a lot about its owner. It first appears in the morning - it was not there the night before so must have been left by an unseen night visitor. Their guest did not wait to say hello or goodbye - so Holmes and Watson must do the best they can with a guess. They must examine it in minute detail. This is what they can safely surmise:

It is inscribed 'To James Mortimer, M.R.C.S from his friends of the C.C.H.' Holmes must deduce certain things. as the C.C.H. is a hospital, (Charing Cross London)he guesses that the night visitor was a doctor (he was right - it turned out the doctor's marriage had meant a move to the country. The teeth marks on the stick were small - which suggested a small dog. It turns out to be a spaniel.

The medical connection is significant as Doyle's bio shows he was influenced his lecturer Dr Joseph Bell at medical school.

Which are the symptoms of Canavan disease?

Canavan Disease is a cerebral degenerative disease.  It is a gene related disorder that occurs in birth.  The white material in the brain becomes spongy and fluid fills the gaps.  The disease affects the person’s myelin sheath, fibers that protect nerve endings, resulting in neurological breakdown.  Symptoms progress rapidly and include mental retardation, loss of or undeveloped motor skills, swallowing difficulties, and floppy lucid movement of the extremities and neck. It can also result in vision loss, paralysis, and hearing problems. 

The disease tends to be ethnic related targeting Ashkenazi Jews and Saudi Arabians.  The gene is only transferred when both parents are carriers.   It can be detected early through blood tests.  Prognosis for the outcome of the disease is very poor.  Children with this disease usually die before they reach 4 years of age.

Canavan Disease was diagnosed by Myrtelle Canavan in 1931.

The Canavan Foundation is an organization that has been developed to help provide information and research regarding the disease.

Other names for the disease include Van Bogaert-Bertrand disease, and

 aspartoacylase deficiency.

I have to write an essay on Hamlet and the title is Hamlet is a coward . . . . . discuss

Yes, in Hamlet's own estimation of himself he is a coward. It's not that he is a coward in the strictest sense of the word, however. It is not that he lacks courage and is "lily livered." No, he sees himself as a coward in that what he has to do takes him so long for he thinks too much and too deeply on it; he thinks and plans rather than acts. Maybe that's what all cowards do, but Hamlet thinks to a fault, and he knows it.

In three soliloquies, Hamlet chastises himself and calls himself a coward for pondering rather than acting:

First, in Act 2 , Scene 2, from the "O, what a rogue and peasant I am" soliloquy:

A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak

Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,

And can say nothing! No, not for a king,

Upon whose property and most dear life

A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?

Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?

Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face?

Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat,

As deep as to the lungs?

Next, from the "To be or not to be" soliloquy of Act 3, Scene 1:

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pitch and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action.

And finally, in Act 4, Scene 4, he is once more tortured by the thought that he may be a coward in the "How all occasions do inform against me" soliloquy:

Now, whether it be

Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple

Of thinking too precisely on the event—

A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom

And ever three parts coward—I do not know

Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do,'

Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means

To do't.

So, is Hamlet a coward? Maybe a bit. Certainly he thinks he might well be. But it's more to the point to believe that he loves his life, regrets that the need to revenge his father's murder has befallen him, and knows that he is ill prepared, temperamentally, to do the deed. For he is a man of thought and not of action... he is a schoolboy-prince who has to force himself into a situation and a frame of mind to finally risk his life to do what he knows must be done.

Why is the old man Winston talks to in the bar unable to tell him whether the old days had been better than times are now?(chapter8)

When Winston goes in to the pub, he wants to talk to the old man and ask him if things were better before the revolution.  He talks to the man at length, but can not get an answer that satisfies him.

What he says is that the man is too old to tell him.  He says that the many remembers too many random details about his past life, but nothing of importance.  He remembers, for example, when he last saw a top hat, but he no longer has the clarity of thought needed to think about a "big picture" question like "was life better before the revolution."

So, the short answer is that the man is too old.

What is the significance of the opening scene of Macbeth?

The short and precise opening scene sets the tone for the play in a general and philosophical way. It is a universal evocation of the problem of evil in the moral universe of man.

1. The scene foregrounds the witches and thus the role of the supernatural in the play.

2. They are three in number; three is the mystical number.

3. They speak in Trochaic as opposed to the general Iambic rhythm of the play. There is a distinction drawn between the human and the supernatural even on the level of accentuation.

4. They speak in an ironic order and sequence, though they are agents of disorder and anarchy.

5. The scene builds up great suspense around the absent figure of Macbeth who seems to be the centre of their attention.

6. The setting of the scene, the heath along with the thunder and rain create the ideal aura.

7. The scene has great contemporary popular appeal given that witches were so popular figures of imagination in Elizabethan England.

8. The 'battle' motif introduces the moral conflicts of the play. It is a battle that can be both lost and won.

9. The words of the witches set up the important theme of equivocation. The element of redundancy in their speech, as their prophecy would reveal is lethal.

10. Most importantly the scene ends with the maxim of the play. We know what to expect now. The black and white binary of good and evil is deconstructed as the deadly chiasmic utterance projects the ambivalent mutuality of the fair and the foul, of which the tragedy of Macbeth is soon to become an example.

Explain the quote "Art thou a man? Thy tears are womanish thy wild acts denote the unreasonable fury of a beast."

These lines come from Act III, Scene 3.  Romeo has killed Tybalt and will be banished from the city.  He's talking to Friar Lawrence and The Nurse at this point and has just said that he wants to find out what part of his body makes him a Montague so he can cut it out.  He wants to do this because he feels that his family name makes it hard for him and Juliet to be together.

It is at this point that Friar Lawrence speaks the lines you cite.  When he does so, he is going on the old idea that women lacked the ability to reason and to think clearly.  He is telling Romeo that he is essentially losing it.  He's telling Romeo to snap out of it, stop being desperate and like a woman or an animal (like I said, they didn't think much of women's intellectual capacities).

So essentially the Friar is telling Romeo to stand up, be a man, and deal with what's happened.

Comment on "The Lagoon."

The main theme of the story is that death is inescapable, humans often have the illusion that through 'true love' nothing can touch us, and that love makes one whole. In order to succeed in life, one must overcome these illusions.

Man does not contemplate the mortality of life when blinded by youth and courage. The guilt which will inevitably haunt Arat over this unforgivable act betrayal of is veiled by the illusion that love is worth fighting and sacrificing for. Arat, like all men, clung to the illusion of Utopia and “a country where death is forgotten—where death is unknown” (Conrad, 1897) with Diamelen, and later finds that the guilt of his betrayal both to his Rajah and his brother would hang over him like the darkness of the night or the ghosts which the crew believed would perpetually haunt his dwelling. In an insight into the heart of man, Arat states “What did I care who died? I wanted peace in my own heart” (Conrad, 1897). The illusion of peace is an idea which Conrad would be well versed in; a man who led life of torment, who allegedly unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide at a young age, who saw the very animalistic nature of man during his years exploring the uncharted colonies of Great Britain in the Navy and was the victim of a torrid love affair himself.

In Ender's Game, what is the meaning of the quote: "They aren't normal. They act like -- history"?

This quote comes at the beginning of Chapter 7, while the teachers are discussing Ender's progress at the Battle School. Since the children there are gifted, and since they are put through tests and hardships that most other children never experience, the children at Battle School are more adult than is typical:

"They're the most brilliant children in the world, each in his own way."

"But shouldn't they still act like children? They aren't normal. They act like -- history. Napoleon and Wellington. Caesar and Brutus."
(Card, Ender's Game, Google Books)

The children form factions and align themselves behind leaders because they have little adult supervision. Being forced to act in adult ways changes their mentality, and since the Battle School is military, they start to think in military ways. This shows how pragmatic the Battle School is in creating leaders for war; it is harsh, and some call it inhumane, but with the existance of the human race at stake, it works. These children lose their childish innocence quickly, and become capable of making decisions that affect others.

How can I start off an argument essay? My essay is about abolishing grades in school.

In argumentation, there are 4 types of claims. I suggest choosing a "policy" claim since you are advocating a change in future practice.  Here are the 4 types of claims.

•fact: claims which focus on empirically verifiable phenomena

•judgment/value: claims involving opinions, attitudes, and subjective evaluations of things

•policy: claims advocating courses of action that should be undertaken

•definition/classification: indicates what criteria are being used to to define a term or what category something falls into

Also, there are two organizational models in policy debates: Cause/Effect and Problem/Solution.  Pick either one for this topic, but I think problem/solution might be better if there is evidence to support the change.  Then, organize the paper like you would most others.  All writing is essentially persuasive.

A. Material to get the reader's attention (a "hook")

B. Introduce the problem or topic

C. Introduce your claim or thesis, perhaps with accompanying qualifiers that limit the scope of the argument.

Qualifiers, according to the Toumlin model of argumentation, are:

•"phrases showing what kind and degree of reliance is to be placed on the conclusion, given the arguments available to support them.” To set the degree of certainty, state a “qualification—‘usually,’ ‘possibly,’ ‘barring accidents,’ and so on.”

Can you determine which two unknown elements has the largest radius? Explainif the only known information is that the atomic number of one of the...

Generally, the radius of an atom decreases going across a row of the Periodic Table, and increases going down a column of the table.  Since more positively-charged protons are being added to the nucleus, the overall charge pulls all orbiting electrons closer. However, at the forth row, exceptions begin to occur.  This is due to how electrons start filling in the outer shells; sometimes an electron will orbit in a more distant shell before all the sub-orbits are occupied. See link for a graphical representation of atomic radii for each element.

Knowing that there's a difference of 20 in the atomic number of unknown elemental samples doesn't help;  Silver (Ag) has an atomic number of 47, Cobalt (Co) has one of 27, but silver has a smaller radius, even being further across the column and further down the row.

Can you provide one example of historical context in each chapter of the novel, Cold Mountain?

    Okay. Here goes:

THE SHADOW OF A CROW:  The bloody battle of Cold Harbor is referenced.

THE GROUND BENEATH HER HANDS:  There is mention of the trench warfare in Petersburg.

THE COLOR OF DESPAIR:  The English-made Whitworth rifle, a favorite of snipers, is seen standing against the wall.

VERBS, ALL OF THEM TIRING:  Ada retold the plot of the book, Little Dorrit.

LIKE ANY OTHER THING, A GIFT:  Inman speaks of his knowledge of the brightest star of Orion and sharing it with a Tennessee boy after the battle of Fredericksburg.

ASHES OF ROSES:  Ada and Ruby meet some pilgrims who are fleeing the Federals in Tennessee and on their way to Camden, South Carolina.

EXILE AND BRUTE WANDERING:  Inman tells Veasey about the "blowup" at Petersburg (The Battle of the Crater).

SOURCE AND ROOT:  Ada talks of reading from the book, The Conduct of Life.

TO LIVE LIKE A GAMECOCK:  The yellow man tells of a breakout of prisoners at Salisbury prison.

IN PLACE OF THE TRUTH:  Ada reads from the latest North American Review.

THE DOING OF IT:  Inman dreams his dream of Fredericksburg.

FREEWILL SAVAGE:  Stobrod mentions his preference for spending time in Richmond's taverns.

BRIDE BED FULL OF BLOOD:  Inman says he "attended the fight at Sharpsburg."

A SATISIFIED MIND:  Ada is mindful of the witches of Macbeth.

A VOW TO BEAR:  Inman's mind pictures the land of Bartram.

NAUGHT AND GRIEF:  Stobrod declares that he'd probably be back in Virginia with a musket soon.

BLACK BARK IN WINTER:  Ruby describes all the landmarks needed to reach Cold Spring Knob and on to Beech Gap.

FOOTSTEPS IN THE SNOW:  Ada mentions The Ancient Mariner.

THE FAR SIDE OF TROUBLE:  Ada tells of the letters she mailed to Virginia.

SPIRITS OF CROWS DANCING:  Inman speaks to Ada of Texas, Colorado and Wyoming.

OCTOBER OF 1874:  Ada reads about Baucis and Philemon.

Explain: "time held me green and dying / though i sang in my chains like the sea."

These are the final lines of Dylan Thomas's poem Fern Hill. The poem is a subtle reworking of the Romantic (especially) topos of childhood and a pure world of nature where divine communion is felt. Thomas evokes a quasi-Wordsworthian journey into the past through the device of memory. But it is a movement that takes one back to a point 'below time' where the adult poetic consciousness, while reflecting back upon the apparently pristine days of childhood, can only figure out the anticipatory signs of a disaster,then  tunfathomed.

What Thomas fundamentally wants to show as a critique and subversion of the Wordsworthian temporal backtracking is that there is always an interpenetration at work in memory and the process is never capable of a true return but only a reconstitution of the past in terms of the present consciousness.

This interpenetrational irony is apparent in these lines. The two lines combine what the poet as a little boy had felt in the soon to be destroyed Fern Hill (in course of German Blitz) and what the mature creative consciousness underscores as the then unacknowledged undercurrent of time and its flux. The process of maturation is also a process towards the inevitable; thus the paradoxical coupling of 'green' and 'dying'. Time kept gnawing from within, a process to which the little boy was hardly sensitive as he kept articulating his absolute freedom, another illusion for he was singing like the roaring sea (another symbol of the flux) but only in chains. These chains of time that constitute the sea of its own self embody mortality and it is this very site that ironically becomes the space for the paradoxical exercise of human freedom.

What role did the government play during the late 19th century, in promoting westward settlement and eastern industrial growth?

One can not under value the project that was the expansion of the rails westward in the post Civil War decade. This was considered a national  imperative as well as the overriding mood of the populous of the east to expand with the "Manifest Destiny" Goods had to be made, sold and transported west from the smoke-filled cities of the East

Certainly this amount of material and hardware had to come from the fire-blast furnaces of the East and Mid-west. The role of law makers, politicians and government was at each small twist in this slow yet never-stopping westward encroachment. Park lands were delineated, Indians were displaced and moved, herds of the indigenous buffalo were governmentally exterminated and the country would have a new thriving product and vitality often because of these newly exploited and dwindling resources. Most raw supplies would be reworked into a multitude of things in the factories of Chicago, New York, Buffalo and Saint Louis.

Steps on how toilet rolls are made in industry.

Paper is a thin layer of fiber, and, in the case of many sorts, composition presents wood fiber,too . Paper in continuous roll is produced in this way: wood fibers flow in a wire sieve, which causes the fibers to align parallel to the direction of shaking. As the water flows, "fabric" is able to stand, then is passed through some drums, to remove excess water, then rolls over drying rollers which remove the remaining water. The paper obtained is then treated, smooth and wound.

Marketing of printed toilet paper experienced a real boom in the autumn of 2001, when a California company came on the market with rolls on which were printed the faces of some of dictators and terrorists. At the $ 5 price for a set of four reels, North American entrepreneur then sold more than 10,000 pieces, both through its own store and online. In 2002, a company in Germany  imitated him somewhat, launching on market, printed toilet paper with the text of mysteries (the Germans went on the idea that the toilet is "one of the few areas where humans still read"). And then, several advertising agencies  in UK began to use, mostly as a medium for messages of their clients, toilet paper.

Ink used for prints must have a special formula that would not attack the skin, to be organic, non-toxic, biodegradable and does not stain. In general, there are used water based inks, because of the possibilities of recycling waste water resulting from the process of printing.

To what extent is Hamlet's will free?

His "to be or not to be" speech, is about the will to live. It is his choice whether to live (be) or not, so his free will starts with this most fundamental choice. In choosing to 'not exist,' he'd be escaping the external forces of history which have put him in an unfortunate situation. On the other hand, in choosing to be, he can then do his best to exercise his free will against, or in spite of, those forces.

To be sure, he is at the mercy of external forces. Claudius murders his father, marries his mother and his father's ghost demands revenge. Call it fate, god's will, dumb luck, etc., these events are beyond his control. Hamlet exercises his free will in how he plays and manipulates the 'players' (the characters in the play, Hamlet), who cause these events. He delays killing Claudius, to the ghost's dismay. He uses "The Mousetrap" to reveal Claudius' sin in front of the court. Prior to this, he resists killing Claudius while he's praying because this would be a better death than the one his father had. So, in waiting to expose Claudius in the most dramatic way possible, Hamlet is in charge of when the play's dramatic end occurs. Using the play (within the play), "The Mousetrap," Shakespeare is underscoring a kind of self-reflexivity. And it is this: The 'method to his madness' was Hamlet's manipulative method. He bewilders the other characters (Ophelia most harshly) in such a way that he not only wishes to control events, but the other characters' minds as well. Recall the line, "The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king." Since he manipulates events and characters' thoughts as well, he is, in a sense, writing what happens: he's writing his own play. Writing your own future is as free as it gets. But clearly, his mother's death and probably his own were not part of his plan. So he has free will to choose certain things, but he is at the mercy of the outcome: the dynamics of cause and effect.

How does the typeface "helvetica" connect to the graphic design industry?

Helvetica is a popular font, now over 50 years old. It is a sans serif font, meaning that it has no additional ornament at the ends of the lines and circles which make up each letter. In fact, the type that I am using right now is sans serif, or "without serif."  Helvetica was created by Max Meidiger for a foundry in Switzerland, and its name is based on the Latin name for Switzerland, Helvetia.  Because it is simple and somewhat bold, it is a popular choice for industry.  I have included a link to information about a film that covers the font and its history and a site that explains more about the font.  Once you can identify it, you will see it everywhere! 

What thesis could be used to bring an ethical, psychological, historical or economic approach to the study of Tennyson's poetry?

A massive question that is asked in many of the poems of Tennyson is about the value of life and in particular whether it is better for people to live pale imitations of life, even though they are trapped from truly living, or to live truly, even though if that act of living will surely bring them death. This seems to relate to the ethical question of what kind of value do our lives have and is it fair for humans to have a "life" that isn't really a life in any way at all. Note for example how this is explored in "The Lady of Shallot," which is one of many poems by Tennyson where a character is trapped away from society by "four grey walls and four grey towers" on an island, and is only able to see the world through the reflection that is shown on her mirror. It is when the Lady of Shallot sees the young, virile and handsome Sir Launcelot that she decides to look upon life and truly live, even though she knows it spells her doom. The same themes of entrapment can be seen in various other poems such as "The Sleeping Beauty" and "The Kraken." Note, for example, the final two lines of "The Sleeping Beauty":

She sleeps, nor dreams, but ever dwells

A perfect form in perfect rest.

Such lines beg the question that if this is a "perfect form," what value is her life is she is unable to participate in it? An excellent thesis that could be used to explore this ethical issue would therefore be:

The characters in Tennyson's poems are unable to participate in life and are only able to live half-lives, which shows that any life, even a short or tragic one, is better than a life that is not really a life at all.

This would allow the exploration of various other characters Tennyson presents, such as Mariana, in the exploration of this ethical issue. 

What is the significance of Doodle's interaction with the ibis in "The Scarlet Ibis"?

The ibis symbolizes Doodle, and he recognizes this connection when the bird falls out of the tree.  Doodle's parents want him to leave the bird alone, but Doodle--seeing the similarities between the fragile bird and himself--will not let it be.  He buries the bird, and the self-sacrificing act drains his strength.

Other similarities between Doodle and the bird are that they both have a scarlet exterior and seem out of place in their environments.  In fact, the arrival of an ibis at the beginning of the story causes Brother to flash back to his boyhood with Doodle.  Likewise, when Brother finds Doodle dead in the rain, his form reminds the narrator of the fallen scarlet ibis.  Neither Doodle nor the bird is expected to survive, but both leave indelible impressions on those who come in contact with them.

In a chemical equation, which comes first the products or the reactants?How can you remember it? Use Rest In Peace RIP.... Answer: Reactants

Starting from the product definition that says that it is the consequence of a process or series of circumstances, it can be concluded that the product is always the result of something, so it has to occupy the second place, first place being occupied by what is leading to the appearance of the product,in the case of chemical reaction, reactants.

Chemical transformations that substances suffer are called chemical reactions.Substances which react between them are called reactants and after reaction substances are known as reaction products.Chemical reactions are classified taking into account the type of reactants and the type of reaction products (simple substance or compound), in four main types:

- Combining Reaction;

- Reaction of decomposition;

- Replacement or substitution reaction;

- Exchange reaction.

Substitution reaction has as reactants simple substance and  a composed substance.In every substitution reaction a simple substance takes the place of an item from a substance composed. (A + BC = AC + B)

The best known substitution reactions are those between :

- A metal and an acidic solution;

- A reactive metal and water;

- A metal and a solution of a salt.

Acronym RIP (rest in peace, you've suggested) is a bit morbid but very popular and easy to remember, but can I make a suggestion of another acronym, of common usage ?

 For example RRP (recommended retail price), which suggests the cycle reactant-reaction -product:

R- REACTANTS R-REACTION P-PRODUCTS

I need help writing an essay on how Rick Braithwaite develops through the story in the book TO SIR WITH LOVE

I would think that one of the best ways to approach this topic would be to chart how Braithwaite changes as a teacher in his approach with students.  Perhaps, this could begin with analyzing how he functions as a teacher at the start of the work.  He examines his classroom as something temporary and not permanent.  There is a level of detachment between he and the students, which allows much of their behavior to derail his attempts.  He is more susceptible to the faculty lounge gossip and presents himself in a tentative and reticent manner.  Over the course of the work, though, this changes as his methodology begins to form as he becomes more engaged within what he is doing and more interactive with the children.  He begins to withstand the barbs of the other faculty, and is more committed to the idea that what he is doing holds meaning and purpose.  Charting this change in both his approaches as teacher and person might be a good way to begin and develop this paper.

What is "The Portable Phonograph" about?

"The Portable Phonograph" is a short story by Walter Van Tillburg Clark.  The setting is the desolate nature of the world after some type of cataclysmic ending where little in terms of life and civilization exist.  While the story is written before the advent of nuclear war, one can perceive that something on this level has taken place  (1941, the year of its writing, was when the Second World War had reached its zenith in terms of world participation.)  The story's setting is a cave where a handful of people have saved four books from the previous civilization:  Dante, Shakespeare, the Bible, and Herman Melville.  These four books and a portable phonograph with a Debussy record are all that are saved.  The story raises interesting and powerful questions about art and its legacy, the transcendent appreciation of beauty, and the idea that human beings can be capable of greatness and elevated notions of the good as well as the baser notions of existence and pure, selfish evil.

Phonology- outline the functions of the velum in speech.

The velum (it's normally spelled with just one 'l') is also known as the soft palate. It is the soft area in the back of the throat, beyond the hard palate, and consists of a covered sheet of muscle that ends in the uvula.

The velume is occasionally used in the production of consonants in English:

- "g" and "k" are the voiced and voiceless velar stops

- "ng" is the velar nasal

Other languages, such as German, make heavier use of the velum in consonant production.

English speakers do use the velum regularly in vowel production. When the velum is closed, the vowel is oral (the air comes out only through the mouth). When the velum is open, the vowel is nasal (the air comes out through the nose). An example of an oral vowel is the "a" in the word "bat"; an example of a nasal vowel is the "a" in the word "man." In English, nasal vowels regularly come before the nasal consonants "m," "n," and "ng."

What is the character sketch of Mathilde in the short story, "The Necklace"?Please, it should be related to the question.

Mathilde Loisel is the beautiful but disillusioned protagonist of Guy de Maupassant's short story "The Necklace." She lives in a middle class world with her husband, a clerk with the Department of Education, who provides her with the necessities of Parisian life, but Mathilde dreams of bigger things. She believes that she was destined for a life among the wealthy upper class, and this overwhelming desire has virtually consumed her. 

She suffered intensely, feeling herself born for every delicacy and every luxury. She suffered from the poverty of her dwelling, from the worn walls, the abraded chairs, the ugliness of the stuffs. All these things, which another woman of her caste would not even have noticed, tortured her and made her indignant.

Her unhappiness will be quenched by jewelry, fine clothing and extravagant meals, she believes, and her husband tries to appease her when possible. When he presents her with invitations to an important ball, she shows her disappointment because

“... Only I have no clothes, and in consequence I cannot go to this party. Give your card to some colleague whose wife has a better outfit than I.”

She convinces her husband to give her 400 francs for a new dress, and she decides to borrow an expensive necklace from her rich friend, Madame Forestier. At last, Mathilde would be able to present herself properly in society, if only for an evening. It was indeed a night to remember:

Mme. Loisel was a success. She was the prettiest of them all, elegant, gracious, smiling, and mad with joy. All the men were looking at her, inquiring her name, asking to be introduced. All the attaches of the Cabinet wanted to dance with her. The Minister took notice of her. She danced with delight, with passion, intoxicated with pleasure, thinking of nothing, in the triumph of her beauty, in the glory of her success, in a sort of cloud of happiness made up of all these tributes, of all the admirations, of all these awakened desires, of this victory so complete and so sweet to a woman’s heart.

But this night will become the apex of Mathilde's ascent to high society. Later that night, she discovers that she has lost the borrowed necklace. When it cannot be found, the husband borrows money to replace the necklace--valued at 36,000 francs--and the family undertakes a long decline into near poverty. The Loisels move into a cheaper apartment and save every cent they could earn. Mathilde fires her servant and resorted to doing all of the cleaning and housekeeping herself. She bargains with the grocer and street vendors for the cheapest prices and her clothing becomes old and worn. It takes the Loisels 10 years to pay off the cost of the necklace.

Mme. Loisel seemed aged now. She had become the robust woman, hard and rough, of a poor household. Badly combed, with her skirts awry and her hands red, her voice was loud, and she washed the floor with splashing water.

She has completed the full cycle of social status.

How does Scout's attitude toward superstition change over the course of the story?

The older Scout gets in the Harper Lee novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, the less she mentions her beliefs in superstition. But, neither Jem nor Scout can ever be accused of possessing the knowledge of or belief in the occult as, say, Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer. Even as a youngster, Scout is much too intelligent to put much faith in such supernatural poppycock.

She claims to be "lucky to have Dill," calling him a "pocket Merlin" because of his "eccentric plans, strange longings and quaint fancies." Boo Radley is, of course, a source of ghoulish fantasies. Jem and Scout always pass the Radley Place "runnin'," and the children constantly issue dares to one another that involve getting closer to the mysterious neighbor inside. When they discover the shiny, Indian Head pennies in the knothole, Scout decides that "finders were keepers," and Jem claims they had "real strong magic." Jem later teaches Scout about "Hot Steams"--spirits "who can't get to heaven." But even at her early age, Scout doesn't believe much of Jem's fantastic tales, telling Dill that "Calpurnia says that's nigger-talk."

Once Jem and Scout learn that the presents in the knothole, the mended pants and the blanket (given to Scout on the night of Miss Maudie's house fire) come from Boo, they come to realize that he is not a spirit of the night but a caring human being who oddly prefers the sanctuary of his home. Boo seems to be the root of their superstitions, and they soon disappear when Boo's own humanity emerges. By the end of the novel, Scout's fears about Boo have disappeared.

    We laughed. Haints, Hot Steams, incantations, secret signs, had vanished with our years as mist with sunrise. "What was that old thing," Jem said. "Angel bright, life-in-death; get off the road, don't suck my breath."
    "Cut it out now," I said. We were in front of the Radley Place.

Well, almost disappeared.

What did the Eskimo students do after they were educated in Julie of the Wolves?

In the more remote places in Alaska, such as in Mekoryuk where Julie lived with her Aunt Martha, there was no high school.  Eskimo children of wealthy families were sent to the mainland for further schooling after their middle school years, but for those whose parents could not afford to do so, options were limited.  The Eskimo culture was dying at the time of the story, and what little employment there was available was largely provided by white tourists and military installments.  Frequently, Eskimo girls like Julie were pawns in arranged marriages at a very young age.  Julie's father Kapugen had arranged for her to marry Daniel, the son of Naka, when she turned thirteen.

According to Kapugen, Julie could refuse the arranged marriage if she so chose, but Julie opted to go through with it because her only other option was to remain with her Aunt Martha, who was a bitter and controlling woman.  To her dismay, she discovered that her betrothed, Daniel, was mentally handicapped, but was reassured by Daniel's mother Nusan that he was a good boy and would "be like a brother" to her.  In reality, Nusan was covetous of the extra help Julie would provide in helping her "make parkas and mittens for the tourists", which is how she made her living.  At first, things were tolerable under these arrangements, but when Daniel, goaded by his friends, tried to exercise his marital rights and "mate" Julie, Julie decided that she must flee the situation.

Although arranged marriages were common during this time for young Eskimo girls who did not have the means of continuing their education through high school, they were apparently not as binding as they might have seemed.  This was illustrated when Julie's friend Pearl advised her not to pay any attention to the fact that she was married.  Pearl said that "most of these arrangements (were) for convenience", and that if Julie was unhappy, all she needed to do was "leave the house or run away and everything (would be) forgotten".  Arranged child marriages were common during those times, but equally common were child divorces (Part 2 - "Miyax, the Girl").

What is the difference between respiration and photosynthesis?

Respiration occurs in all living things--including plants. Respiration can be aerobic(with oxygen present) or anaerobic(without oxygen). It is a process by which chemical energy in food is released for use in the cell in the form of ATP. In aerobic respiration, glucose is converted to carbon dioxide, water and 36 ATP, a high energy compound used by cells for energy. An example of anaerobic respiration is when yeast cells ferment glucose to form alcohol and carbon dioxide, both waste products and 2 ATP. Photosynthesis is the process by which green plants and algae convert carbon dioxide and water, in the presence of light energy absorbed by the pigment chlorophyll, into glucose(chemical energy) and oxygen(waste product). Respiration releases the energy stored in the chemical bonds of glucose and photosynthesis stores light energy in the form of chemical energy--glucose.

Why didn't Candy go into town with the rest of the men?

Candy in the short story "Of Mice and Men" is old, frail, and missing a hand.  He is no longer welcomed into the group of young men who go into the town to drink and have festivities. His presence is a reminder of they will one day become if they continue in their current jobs and lifestyle as ranch hands.  In many ways Candy is washed up.  He is no longer needed or desired as company.   He recognizes this in himself and no withdraws from the company of others until he meets Lennie and learns about Lennie and George's dream. It gives Candy hope which is something he has no felt in a long time. 

Is there an example of verbal irony in book 12 of The Odyssey?

There are three kinds of verbal irony: sarcasm, overstatement, and understatement.  The Odyssey is short on sarcasm and understatement; as a work from the epic tradition with elements of science fiction fantasy, it is heavy on overstatement:

In book XII, examples are as follow:

Speaking of the Scylla and Charybdis, Circe says this to Odysseus:"Here not even a bird may pass, no, not even the timid doves that bring ambrosia to Father Jove, but the sheer rock always carries off one of them, and Father Jove has to send another to make up their number; no ship that ever yet came to these rocks has got away again, but the waves and whirlwinds of fire are freighted with wreckage and with the bodies of dead men."  No ship has ever gotten away?  Hmm...  Sounds like overstatement to me...

Circe says this Odysseus, who wants to fight Scylla and Charybdis: ""'You dare-devil,' replied the goddess, you are always wanting to fight somebody or something; you will not let yourself be beaten even by the immortals."  Always fighting?  I think not...  More overstatement.

She also says, "Neptune himself could not save you."  Hyperbole, exaggeration, verbal irony.

The sirens likewise use verbal irony: "No one ever sailed past us without staying to hear the enchanting sweetness of our song- and he who listens will go on his way not only charmed, but wiser, for we know all the ills that the gods laid upon the Argives and Trojans before Troy, and can tell you everything that is going to happen over the whole world.' "  No one?  Overstatement.

Then Odysseus says, "My Friends, this is not the first time that we have been in danger, and we are in nothing like so bad a case as when the Cyclops shut us up in his cave."  Not the first time, huh?  That's an understatement!

Critically examine Shaw's attitude to "The Woman Question" with particular reference to Candida.

The phrase 'The Woman Question' relates to the feminist issues concerning the rights, liberties and roles of women in Europe in the later half of the 19th century.

Shaw's 'problem play', Candida, deals with 'The Woman Question' in so far as it is a play about the issue of freedom of a domestic woman who is at the centre of the dramatic discourse. Her very name, Candida, suggests openness/frankness of her mind. She is a middle aged home-maker, the wife of a socialist clergyman, James Mavor Morell. Morell enjoys popularity and fame as a public speaker and a social reformist, but he is absolutely dependent on Candida who has to protect and help her husband out. There comes a young poet, Eugene Marchbanks, who informs Candida about another world, a world of poetry and imagination beyond the routine of domesticity. Morell becomes suspect of a 'calf love' between the poet and his devoted wife. He feels scared because his stable status of a successful husband depends a lot on Candida's self-sacrifice in the role of a wife. Morell has always believed himself as strong, though his strength is a false impression born of a patriarchal mindset. The climax is reached in the 'auction scene' at the end of the play. Candida places herself at an auction before her husband and her young lover. Morell offers her all that relates to the so-called social-domestic status of a woman, wheras Marchbanks offers her all that relates to passion and imagination. Candida chooses 'the weaker of the two', and Morell looses his sense believing that she has chosen her poet-lover. Morell is indeed weaker than Marchbanks who leaves Candida to mingle with the darkness of the night.

Shaw uses a trite love-triangle only to turn it upside down in his characteristic iconoclastic manner. The woman in this three-some relationship comes out triumphant: she neither leaves her husband to go with her lover; nor does she apologise for her mistake to stay back; nor is she driven out by her husband. A radical feminist shall never be happy with the Shavian resolution, for Candida is still not liberated from domestic servility. But Shaw's Candida must be a very different woman who has realised and registered her clear control and supremacy over her husband. Now on, Morell has to live as 'the weaker' of the two.

Why do you think the villagers bury Mr. Hooper without removing his veil?

Throughout the narrative of Hawthorne's story, "The Minister's Black Veil," the congregation has been threatened by the veil that the minister has donned.  While they at first suspect him of sin, as they come more into contact with him, the members of the congregation become more introspective, and they seem anxious about what Mr. Hooper may perceive from behind his veil, for they cannot interpret the meaning of his "sad smile" without seeing his eyes.

The longer that Mr. Hooper wears his veil, the more disturbed the members of the congregation become, fearing that their own sins have been exposed.  And, much like the members of Hester Pyrnne's community in "The Scarlet Letter" who walk the other way when they see Hester approach, lest his face reveal something that incriminates them, or makes them feel their own guilt, Mr. Hooper's congregation bury the minister with his veil intact, reinforcing Hawthorne's theme of the Puritans' "secret sin" and the unredemptive culture of Puritanism. 

Still, Mr. Hooper himself has refused to remove his veil, so the reader is left with some ambiguity as to what the minister himself may have done.  Since part of the title of the story is "A Paradigm," perhaps the veil is a model for even the readers' "secret sins." 

Why are indifference curves in economics slope downward?

Samuelson and Nordhaus define indifference curve as:

A curve drawn on a graph whose two axes measure amounts of different goods consumed. Each point on such a curve, indicating different combinations of the two goods, yields exactly the same level of satisfaction to a given consumer.

It is quite true that law of diminishing marginal utility ensures that indifference curves are downward sloping. Further it also ensures that the indifference curves are convex to the origin. But downward sloping curve is possible also when the marginal utility is constant rather than diminishing with the total quantity consumed.

To ensure a downward sloping curve it is enough that reduction in quantity of one of the two goods represented on indifference curve must be accompanied by some increase in the quantity of the other good represented. Similarly increase in quantity of first good mus be accompanied by decrease in quantity of the other good. It is not possible for quantity for both the goods to increase or decrease simultaneously and still have the same combined utility of the two. If it was possible for combined utility of two goods to behave in this way than the indifference curve would have been an upward sloping curve.

When marginal utility of both the goods on indifference curves is constant then the indifference curve is a downward sloping straight line. When one of the two good has constant marginal utility and the other has diminishing marginal utility the indifference vurve is a curved line concave to the origin. When both the goods have diminishing marginal utility, the indifference curve is a curved line convex to the origin.

Source:

Samuelson P.A. and Nordhaus W.D., Economics, Eighteenth Edition, 2005, Tata McGraw-Hill, New Delhi

How did some states try to prevent African Americans from voting?

There were many ways that this happened (I am assuming you are talking about the time after Reconstruction when blacks had the official right to vote but were still not allowed to do so).  Some examples:

• Poll taxes -- the practice of charging people a tax to vote.  Since blacks were poorer on average than whites, this affected them more.


• Literacy tests -- laws were passed requiring blacks to prove they could read in order to be able to vote.  Many poor blacks were illiterate.


• Understanding tests -- these are like the literacy tests.  But here blacks had to show that they understood passages that they were required to read.  Both this and literacy tests could be made as hard as they wanted to by white supremacist election officials.


• White primaries -- in the South, only the Democratic Party could ever hope to win an election.  The Democratic Parties of many Southern states made their primary elections white-only.  They said this was legal because the Party was a private organization and could hold elections however it wanted.

These were the main ways of preventing blacks from voting.

How does Shakespeare present the relationship between male and female characters in "Julius Caesar?"

The relationship between male and female characters is best seen in Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" in the relationship between Julius Caesar and his wife Calpurnia and Brutus and his wife Portia.

Calpurnia is represented by Shakespeare as the humble and obedient wife of Julius Caesar. Her character is important for the following reasons:

1.To contrast the private, domestic life of Caesar with his public political life: Caesar makes his first appearance on the stage in a "nightdress" and the very first lines that Caesar utters refer to his wife, "Thrice hath Calpurnia in her sleep cried out/'Help ho! they murder Caesar." From the beginning of the play till now all that we have heard about Caesar relates to his warrior like and statesman like qualities. But, Shakespeare foregrounds his first appearance on the stage by presenting him as a worried and anxious husband who is ready to please her initially by agreeing not to go to the Senate,"and for thy humour I will stay at home."

2.To contrast fate and human will: Calpurnia's  intuitive fears,"O Caesar these things are beyond all use/And I do fear them,"  are contrasted with Caesar's self confidence, "It seems to me  most strange that men should fear/Seeing that death a necessary end/Will come when it will come."

3. Calpurnia's  interpretation of her dream is brushed aside and Decius' interpretation is accepted by Caesar to emphasise the significance of the public and the political over the private and the domestic, "How foolish do your fears seem now, Calpurnia."

4.Calpurnia represents the fear and the superstitious beliefs of the  contemporary Elizabethan audience concerning the supernatural.

Like Calpurnia, Portia is also a very humble and obedient wife. However, since Brutus is also a conspirator who is under a lot mental stress because of his plans to assassinate Caesar his relationship with his wife is strained and tense. The obvious reason being he cannot reveal and discuss the finer details of the conspiracy with his innocent wife Portia. This tension is palpable in Act II when Portia on bended knee begs of her husband to know the reason why he has not slept that night. Brutus offers evasive replies, and fortunately for him Ligarius, whom he had sent for, is heard knocking at his door. Brutus hurriedly asks Portia to leave saying that he will reveal everything to her later, "and by and by thy bosom shall partake/The secrets of my heart...Leave me with haste." And she being the obedient wife does so.

After Caesar's assassination and the consequent civil war, Brutus is fully involved in public affairs and circumstances force him to completely ignore his wife with tragic consequences. In ActIV sc.3, Brutus tells Cassius how pitiably she died. Brutus tells Cassius that Portia died by swallowing hot coals. Since Brutus had been away on his military campaign and on hearing that Octavius had joined forces with Antony, she had become very upset and mentally distracted. When she was left unattended she swallowed hot coals of fire and died:I

"Impatient of my absence,
And grief that young Octavius with Mark Antony
Have made themselves so strong:--for with her death
That tidings came;--with this she fell distract,
And, her attendants absent, swallow'd fire."

In marked contrast we never learn from the play how Calpurnia died.

To conclude, both Calpurnia and Portia are important inasmuch as they reveal more of the personalities of their husbands than about themselves.

What effects did the Great Depression have on U.S. foreign policy?

In general, American foreign policy moved more toward isolationism during the Great Depression.  There's no way to prove that it was the Depression that caused this, however.

During the 1930s, America tried more and more to devise ways to keep out of another war.  Americans had felt like they got sucked into WWI even though it was none of their business.  To prevent another war, the Neutrality Acts of the '30s were passed, preventing Americans from trading (and doing a few other things) with nations that were at war.

The other major change in US foreign policy during this time was the introduction of the "Good Neighbor Policy" by which the US moved towards letting Latin American countries do what they wanted without US interference.

Was the ending of "Alias Grace" satisfying or believable? What was the meaning of the novel? Did the end fit what it was trying to accomplish?

The real-life trial and events surrounding Grace Marks and the murders she was convicted for was such a mystery and fascination to many people during its day, and was left relatively unexplained and unsolved.  Records of the events, along with other people's speculations, all hypothosized different possible scenarios, and no one really knew the truth of what happened.  Margaret Atwood proposes one possible solution at the end of her book:  multiple personalities, or, as it is is called now, Dissociative Identity Disorder.  In this disorder, a person develops multiple personalities, and often, they are completely unaware of it.  And depending on the situation that the person is facing, a different personality might surface.  So, if they are in a stressful situation, their more aggressive and controlling side might take over.  If they are in a situation where they are threatened, a hostile, strong personality might take over, one that is better equipped to protect them from harm.  It is a very, very rare disorder, but it is real, and documented, and usually caused by trauma or intense stress.

Atwood seems to be implying that Grace had an alternate personality in the form of Mary, and it was Mary that took over for all of the unacceptable things that occurred; it was Mary who teased and flirted with the boys, possibly sleeping with them; it was Mary who committed the murders and manipulated McDermott into doing things.  That is the implication Atwood makes.  Now, whether or not Grace is faking Mary's personality, or if it is genuine is unclear.  Grace is always weighing what she will say to the various doctors that she encounters; this indicates an admission of guilt perhaps.  Or, it just indicates that she knows that what she says will determine her future.  So, that is left up to the reader to argue.

The ending is believable if you give credence to Dissociative Identity Disorder, and the fact that one personality can take over and cause you to commit horrific crimes.  It is satisfying in a certain fantastical way--it is a very dramatic, intense, and glamorized way to end the tale of Grace Marks.  If the purpose of the book was to solve the mystery, Atwood did provide a possible explanation.  If the purpose was to entertain, I think it certainly did that. If the purpose was to perplex and spark discussion and thoughts, I think it works on that level too.

I hope that those thoughts helped a bit; good luck!

What's a chiffarobe ?

A chiffarobe is mentioned several times in Harper Lee's novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. During the Tom Robinson trial, Mayella Ewell testifies that she asks Tom to come in and "bust up" an old chiffarobe for her. Bob Ewell has been keeping it in the yard to used for fire wood. Mayella promises Tom a nickel for his trouble. Atticus also questions Mayella about the chiffarobe, and she even clarifies the definition for him. A chiffarobe (also spelled "chifforobe") is a type of dresser with drawers that usually has space for hanging clothes as well. It is a combination of the words "chiffonier" and "wardrobe."

What did Okonkwo bring home from his trip to Mbaino?

Okonkwo brings home two humans from his trip. Both serve as some kind of recompense for a crime committed against Umuofia by the people of Mbaino. One person he brings back is a young woman. She will marry Ogbuefi Udo, whose wife was murdered while shopping in Mbaino.

The other is a 15-year-old boy named Ikemefuna. He will play a vital role in the novel. At first, he is terrified. He has been taken from his homeland, ripped from his family, & he is now turned over to Okonkwo. Ikemefuna's fate is uncertain: he belongs to the clan, but they must wait until the oracle decries his fate. Thus, he moves in with Okonkwo's family.

Ikemefuna soon proves a positive addition to the household. Okonkwo is happy because Ikemefuna is more like a son to him than his own, and he teaches Nwoye how to be more manly in Okonkwo's eyes. Nwoye is happy, because Ikemefuna treats him like a brother. He knows stories Nwoye's never heard, he can trap animals, he knows how to hunt: all these things impress Nwoye to no end. Yet this happiness will soon end. The oracle eventually reveals Ikemefuna's fate. It is an act that will change the course of the novel, & the characters' lives.

Who is Calpurina? What is her place in Finch household?

Calpurnia is the Finches housekeeper, and her primary role in the novel is to be a surrogate mother for Scout and Jem.

Early on, Scout is antagonistic toward Cal, as the two clash over Scout's treatment of guests.  When Walter Cunningham, Jr. comes for dinner and pours syrup on his plate, Scout calls out the offense, much to Cal's chagrin.  Cal teaches her to honor the guest - host relationship, that a host must make a guest feel welcome despite differences in peculiar habits.

Later, Cal will have a great impact on Scout and Jem's worldview when she takes them to the First Purchase Church.  This opens the children's eyes in terms of the impact of Jim Crow laws on the black community in the deep South.  More, the experience shows the solidarity among the poor blacks, for they raise money for the Robinson family.  Cal imparts advice similar to Atticus': you don't have to tell everything you know.  This reinforces the lessons empathy and restraint in communicating with others.

Still later on, when the kids become targets of violence, Atticus will ask Cal to stay the night with the kids for protection.  Such is his trust of Calpurnia.

What are some of the legal concerns that can result from unwise use of credit by business and consumers?What is meant by credit?

The word credit as used in this question means the willingness of lenders to loan or lend money to customers who may be business firms or individuals. The willingness of lenders to lend is based on their assessment of the capacity and willingness, that is credit worthiness, of the intending borrowers to repay the loan along with interest.

While the lenders make their best efforts to judge the credit worthiness of the borrowers, they can make mistakes. Major changes in economic conditions may impact the credit worthiness rating significantly. Therefore, the borrowers may not always be able to repay the loans they take. The unwise use of credit refers to the borrowers to borrow and spend more money than they can repay.

Unwise use of credit is bad for both borrowers and lenders. The lenders face the prospective of not being able to recover the money that they have lent, and therefore make losses in business. Even when they are able to recover the whole or part of their loans, they may have to spend lot of time and effort requiring expenditure of additional, effort, time and money in recovery process.

Unwise use of credit can create even greater problems for the borrowers. They may be forced, under the threat of legal action, forced to cut down expenses on essential expenses to repay the loans. also their assets such as automobiles and houses mortgaged by them to the lenders may be seized and sold for recovery of the loan.

In Bartleby, the Scrivener, the narrator introduces three other workers: Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut. What are they like?

Pertaining to the three employees of the narrator of Bartleby, the Scrivener, their nicknames are Turkey, Nippers and Ginger Nut. Turkey and Nippers are copyists. Turkey is approaching 60 years old and Nippers is about 25 years old. Ginger Nut is an office boy and apprentice law student of twelve years old.

Turkey is the one the narrator has the most to say about because Turkey is the oldest and presumably in his employee the longest. In the morning Turkey is diligent and an earnest worker who is an exceptional copyist (producing flawless handwritten copies of legal documents). But after stepping out at noon to eat lunch (or dinner, as they called it), he invariably comes back flushed and in a nervous hyper-energetic condition, the result of which is ink blotches on important legal documents. The narrator values his service and is accommodating (overly accommodating) of Turkey's strange afternoon behavior, even offering to let Turkey work half a day, a suggestion Turkey rejects. The narrator comments, "...he would not go. So I made up my mind to let him stay."

Nippers, the second copyist, also of remarkable skill, is anxious and agitated in the morning (while Turkey is calm) and wages an on-going battle with his scrivener's desk in attempt to make it comfortable and conducive to productive work--a battle he never wins though he may try ever so hard. After lunch, Nippers is calm and productive--when he chooses to be--and battles less with his desk (while Turkey gears up for blotting all the documents in hyper-activity).

Ginger Nut, the office boy and law student, mostly cleans, ignores his desk and studies, and goes on errands to fetch cakes and apples for Turkey and Nippers. So he is a student who doesn't really want to be one.

Then enters Bartleby whom the narrator hopes will influence the other with his quiet industrious ways but whom we learn "would prefer not to." And the narrator doesn't know how to free himself of any of these individuals!

In "1984" can you explain Winston's Reintegration?

To put it simply, they broke him down, breaking his will and mind.  Through a very slow, drawn-out process of starvation, mind-control, physical abuse and violence, threats and drilled backwards-reasoning, Winston's power of reasoning, self-dignity, individuality and self worth were stripped from him.  What was left was a robotic shell that was the perfect vessel for Party propaganda and servitude.

O'Brien would come in and state illogical things like "2 plus 2 equals 5," and beat and argue with Winston, starving him and humiliating him until Winston admitted that that was indeed a true statement, and actually partially believed it himself.  Through this process, anything that made Winston an individual, or gave him a sense of identity, was taken away from him.  He holds on to one thing until the very end, and that is his love for Julia.  He clings to that, vowing that they can't take that away.  But, through the use  of playing on Winston's terror of rats, he ends up betraying her also, begging them to put her in his place for the torture.  After Winston gets out, he meets Julia and finds that she betrayed him too--it's what the Party does, and both of them, along with their entire society, has fallen victim to it.

Winston emerges an automaton, a perfect servant for the party, not only in body, but in mind and soul too.  I hope that those thoughts helped; good luck!

Is the surprise ending of "The Gift of the Magi" a trick, or is it a logical ending?

In good literature there is always versimilitude.  That is, there is a likeness to the truth, to reality.  In order to establish this verisimilitude, a writer must establish in the exposition of his story for the results of the denouement.

In O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi," for instance, the exposition establishes the penurious condition of the couple:

The 'Dillingham' had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid thirty dollar per week. [Good money in the early 1900s]

  Della counts her change--$1.87--and sobs because she so wants to buy her dear husband a present. Although he does not earn as much, she is still proud of him and loves him dearly:

...whenver Mr. James Dillinngham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called 'Jim' and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young.

That the young couple would be willing to sacrifice their prized possessions for the love of the other-"foolishly," as O. Henry declares their actions--is entirely plausible.  Della catches herself in the mirror and realizes that she can obtain the money for her husband's gift.  Likewise, Jim who is so proud of his gold watch fob, is willing to pawn it for a gift for his wife. His reaction when he sees Della with her shorn locks demonstrates his love for her as he does not become angry and he makes no complaint as he throws the package onto the table. Calmly, he tells her to open the package and she will understand.  When she sees the contents, Della does not complain; instead, she comforts her husband," My hair grows so fast, Jim!"  Similarly, Jim consoles Della after seeing his "dandy" watch fob:

...let's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em awhile.  They're too nice to use just at present.  I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs.  And now suppose you put the chops on.

Unselfish and loving in the beginning, Della and Jim are as unselfish and loving in the denouement.  Indeed, there is verisimilitude to O. Henry's story, and the surprise ending is certainly reasonable, not to mention heartwarming.  As the critic Rena Korb writes,

Foreshadowed in the opening are the sacrifices that Della and Jim will make for each other.  Della shows herself already acquainted with saving and scrimping--elements of sacrifice; her ability to withstand the approach of the vendors highlights her ultimate willingness to give up something she values highly--her hair--for that which she values more:  the love of her husband.

What is the foreshadowing in "The Landlady"?

The reader is kept in Billy's point of view and picks up clues with the viewpoint character but attaches more significance to them. The first would be the cheapness of the rent, which is only five shillings and sixpence a night and includes breakfast the next morning. There were twenty shillings to a pound in those pre-decimalization days. A pound was worth about five American dollars. There were twelve pennies in a shilling. So a shilling was worth about twenty-five American cents and sixpence, or half a shilling, would be worth  twelve-and-a-half cents. Five and sixpence would be equivalent to $1.37. And this is a resort town!

The next bit of foreshadowing comes right after Billy enters.

There were no other hats or coats in the hall. There were no umbrellas, no walking sticks--nothing.

The landlady explains that she is

". . . just a teeny-weeny bit choosy and particular--if you see what I mean. . . . But I'm always ready. . . . just on the off chance that an acceptable young gentleman will come along. . . . Like you," she added, and her blue eyes traveled slowly all the way down the length of Billy's body, to his feet, and then up again."

At that point Billy should decide to get out of there.

The next foreshadowing comes when he sees the names and addresses of Christopher Mulholland and Gregory W. Temple in the guest book. Both names seem familiar, but he can't remember why. Again the landlady shows her interest in handsome young men.

"Oh no, I don't think they were famous. But they were incredibly handsome, both of them. . . .They were tall and young and handsome, my dear, just exactly like you."

Billy should at least be getting the idea that he might find her in his bed in the middle of the night. The reader is getting very suspicious of this woman but doesn't yet begin to suspect that she is a real lunatic who kills her guests. After all, this is a homey bed-and-breakfast establishment in the stodgy town of Bath.

The reader doesn't see anything suspicious about the landlady serving tea because this seems so characteristic of such a woman. The author has the reader suspecting that something may happen  after Billy has gone to bed. But here it is happening just a few minutes after Billy has signed the guest book. The tea actually seems like the opposite of foreshadowing.

Then the clues and foreshadowing get heavier and more ominous. Billy sips his tea and detects a strange smell. When she mentions that Mr. Mulholland "was a great one for his tea," Billy says, "I suppose he left fairly recently."

"Left?" she said, arching her brows. "But my dear boy, he never left. He's still here. Mr. Temple is also here. They're on the fourth floor, both of them together."

This is shocking. The reader feels certain she has murdered both young men. And then she says of Mr. Temple:

"There wasn't a blemish on his body. . . . His skin was just like a baby's?"

How could she know that?

At about this time Billy discovers that the parrot is not alive but stuffed. Then he realizes that the dachshund is also the work of a skilled taxidermist.

The tea tasted faintly of bitter almonds, and he didn't much care for it.

Now the reader realizes that it is too late for escape. Billy has drunk a cup of tea loaded with arsenic, and he is going to be the landlady's next victim. He asks if there haven't been any guests other than Temple and Mulholland in the last two or three years, and the story ends ominously with:

"No, my dear," she said. "Only you."

What are the thoughts of Madame Loisel in "The Necklace"?Guy de Maupassant's "The Necklace."

In Guy de Maupassant's writings, there is close psychological examination of the inner desires of people.  Clearly, from the beginning of his short story, "The Necklace," Madame Loisel is preoccupied with the desire to be of a higher class than that into which she has been born: 

She suffered endlessly, feeling herself born for every delicacy and luxury.  She suffered from the poorness of her house, from its mean [lowly] walls, worn chairs, and ugly curtains.

Maupassant writes that she is "one of those" beautiful young ladies who, lacking a dowry, must live in the bourgeoisie rather than the aflluent class.  Her envy of wealth and the social life that it includes produces a negativity in Mme. Loisel:

The sight of the little Breton girl who came to do he work in her house aroused heart-broken regrets and hopeless dreams in her mind. [The Celtic Bretons were very much looked down upon by the other French people.]

In order to escape from her perceived lowly position Madame Loisel imagines how life could be for her:

She imagined silent antechambers, heavy with Oriental tapestries, lit by torches in lofty bronze sockets, with two tall footmen in knee-breeches sleeping in arm-chairs....She imagined vast saloons, hung with antique silk, exquisite pieces of furniture supporting priceless ornaments, and small, charming perfumed rooms, created just for little parties of intimate friends, men who were famous and sought after, whose homage roused every other woman's envious longings.

Mme. Loisel even envies a friend and refuses to visit her because in her envy she "would weep whole days with grief, regret, despair, and misery." When her husband brings home the invitation to a ball, she derides his kindly gesture by asking what good it is to her when she does not own an adequate dress.  After her generous and loving husband offers to sacrifice the money he has saved for a rifle and spend it on a dress for her, she ungratefully bemoans the fact that she does not have jewelry to accompany such a dress.  Upon M. Loisel's suggestion to call upon an old school friend, Madame Forestier, Mme. Loisel does so.  And, so, the necklace that she borrows from her old friend proves pivotal to the plot of this story of the myopia of Mme. Loisel who places worth upon the false value of material possessions.  For, when this necklace is lost, she loses her beauty and grace as she must haggle with the grocer and scrub her own floors.  Her poor husband works constantly to repay the debt.  Their life together is spent in penury and pettiness, when it could have been filled with love.

Mme. Loisel's final disillusion comes at the denouement of the narrative, when with false pride she boasts to Mme. Forestier that the necklace that she returned to her former friend was such a good replica that it went undetected.  The irony of her years if struggle hit her when Mme. Forestier reveals that the original was faux, as false as the values of Mme. Loisel. 

What is the significance of Winston's Job?In the Story? To the Party? To Winston? If His job exisited in the real world?

Winston's job at the Ministry of Truth serves as a form of satire and irony.  We don't expect a censor, an agent of propaganda, to be a rebel.  His role in the party is to retroactively cover up the way the Party vaporizes people.  It is ironic that this will eventually happen to Winston; he will become an unperson, like Oglivy, the man whose records he sends to the ash heap of history.

Through Winston's job, Orwell give us access to the Ministry of Truth in Part I of the novel; later, he will give us access to the Ministry of Love in Part II.  Orwell's primary focus in the novel is on the death of language (Part I) and the death of the individual (Part II).  Winston sees both firsthand.

Censors exist in nearly every profession: schools, offices, government agencies, churches, entertainment industry, and especially the online world.  They may have a doublespeak title, like "editor."  For example, the MPAA hires a group to attach film ratings to motion pictures.  If the film is too sexually explicit or violent, the movie will be sent to the cutting room (like the Ministry of Truth) to have the racy parts cut.

I need some very good resources for my compare and contrast paper on football. I need this info ASAP, before tomorrow night!!!!

I think that you need to narrow your topic a bit. Football is a very broad topic, and there are many different directions you can go in in terms of comparing and contrasting the sport. Here are some different suggestions:

1) You could compare and contrast college football to professional football. Even from here there are a variety of topics you can choose. For example, how the rules are different, the playing/coaching style, how players are different, even the fans and stadiums

2) You could compare and contrast football in the early 20th century to football in the early 21st century

3)Compare and contrast different teams in professional or college football. How are they coached different, how to they practice, etc. 

Hope this helps!

In "The Crucible" give an example of an instance where Abigail acts selfishly.How is it selfish, the reason behind it, and how it leads to the...

Abigail acts selfishly almost exclusively.  I can't think of anything that she does that isn't selfish.  First of all, she lies about what was going on in the forest.  As Betty reveals, it wasn't just dancing that was happening, but Abby "drank a charm to kill Goody Proctor."  Abby lied about this to Parris, and then threatens the girls about telling anyone about what happened.  The charm drinking in the first place was selfish--she wanted to kill off Elizabeth to be with John, a definitely selfish move.  Then, to hide that selfish act, she threatens the girls and lies aobut it to Parris.  Lying about it, and threatening the girls serves only to protect her own skin, AND leads to all of the girls accusing others of witchcraft so that they won't get in trouble.  Those accusations lead to the direct downfall and death of many people.

Abby continues to act selfishly every time she makes an accusation, because it gives her power and attention, and keeps her secrets hidden, and each accusation that is made harms another person.  Her "needle in the belly" incident was selfish--it was just a way to get Elizabeth arrested so that she could be with John.  That led to Elizabeth's arrest, and indirectly, later on, to John's arrest.  Her actions in court in act three are all selfish.  She leads the girls in pretending Mary Warren is a witch--she does this to protect her name, because Mary is about to oust all of them as liars.  Her accusation of Mary is selfishly trying to protect her own reputation in the courts and town.  Accusing Mary leads to John's arrest.  Then, in the end, when Abby steals her uncle's money and bails town, that is selfish because she realizes the town hates her and will turn on her.  So, she ruins her uncle's wealth and reputation by leaving town with his money.

From the moment Abby enters the scene, she acts entirely in selfish ways, to the tune of destroying many, many lives.  I hope that helps; good luck!

Summarize "Sexual Orientation bias" in the media. Include, the ways in which sexual orientation bias may influence society's attitude towards crime?

All people, organizations and even the media has biases and agendas. Sexual orientation recently has been in the spotlight (last ten years or so), because it has become a more politicized issue. For this reason, views of sexual orientation are nearly everywhere - the news, politics, movies, books, etc. With reference to the media, I would say that there is a general acceptance of different sexual orientations and even the promoting of this. I see very few groups that speak against the diversity of sexual orientations. This fact, then, influences society, because people are media hungry. The average person watches so much TV. I forget the statistics, but it is staggering. If one ties this to crime, then I would say that there would generally be less hate crimes due to the tolerance that the media seeks to show, or at least one would hope so.

In "By the Waters of Babylon" what does John tell readers about the Forest People?

A careful reading of the text reveals tiny little clues about the Forest People, that John scatters throughout his narration.  The first mention of them come as he describes his own people.  He says that his people are "not ignorant like the Forest People" because they spin and sew their own clothes, and can read.  The Forest People have become illiterate and can't read "the old writings" like the priests in his tribe can.  He also mentions that the Forest People eat "grubs from the trees."

The next mention is that the Forest People are "afraid of the Dead Places," meaning, any place that has been nuked or destroyed by the "great burning" that was probably a nuclear holocaust of some sort.  The Forest People stay away from those areas, and from the city of the Gods.  He also mentions that the Forest People travel in hunting parties, and "could have killed" him if they came across him.  So, they are a people that kill and fight often, hunting their game and killing those that do not belong in their tribes.

The overal impression that is gathered from these descriptions is that John and the Forest People are a lot like the original Native American tribes--they both have different ways of living and gathering food, and different traditions and cultures.  It is that feel, in fact, that makes this story so intriguing, because at first glance, it is a story set in ancient tribes, but in reality it is in the future.  I hope that those thoughts helped; good luck!

What is Mark Twain's social criticism in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapters 1-7?

In these early chapters, Twain is satirizing the "sivilized" sciety that Huck has found himself thrust into. Most notably, the characters of the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson prove themselves religious and moral hypocrites. One of the more minor acts of hypocrisy Huck notices while in their care is the matter of smoking. He reports it thus:

Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But she wouldn't. She said it was a mean practice and wasn't clean, and I must try to not do it any more. That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don't know nothing about it. Here she was a-bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in it. And she took snuff, too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself.

So she won't let Huck smoke, but she herself will consume tobacco in another form: the very definition of hypocrisy. This is just one example of the social criticism Twain offers. The most glaring examples come in the form of the two women's religious practices, and the fact that they own slaves. For Twain, and hopefully for all people who consider themselves moral or people of faith, this is one glaring contradiction that cannot be reconciled. Calling their slaves in to say prayers before nighttime shows that they themselves see no problem with this arrangement.

Although Huck can't name it yet, he knows that there is something very wrong with his situation. He doesn't recognize the discrepancy between Miss Watson's criticism of him, & her insistence on describing herself as a good person, one going to heaven. This shows his innate awareness of people's actions, and sets up his later decision to remain with Jim wihtout turning him in.

What are all the disappointments in Hamlet's life?

Throughout the play, we can see how disappointed Hamlet is with himself. He knows he's not the right person for the heavy task given to him by his father's suffering and wandering ghost. Again and again he unpacks his heart, but he still does nothing. Here's just a sample of his numerous self-chatisements (Act 2, scene 2):

Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words
And fall a-cursing like a very drab,
A scullion! Fie upon't! Foh!

And then there are the people in his life with whom he is disappointed:

His mother. Even before he finds out about the murder, he is disappointed in her hasty marriage to Claudius. Here (Act 1, scene 2) he complains to Horatio:

The funeral baked meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven
Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio!

And, of course, after he finds out about the awful murder, he is furious with her. Here is only part of what he tells her when he confronts her with what she has done (Act 3, scene 4):

Ha! have you eyes?
You cannot call it love; for at your age
The heyday in the blood is tame, it's humble,
And waits upon the judgment; and what judgment
Would step from this to this? Sense sure you have,
Else could you not have motion; but sure that sense
Is apoplex'd; for madness would not err,
Nor sense to ecstacy was ne'er so thrall'd
But it reserv'd some quantity of choice
To serve in such a difference. What devil was't
That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-blind?

Ophelia. He thinks his girlfriend has betrayed him, and he sees her as he sees his mother: weak, fickle, false, and easily manipulated (Act 3, scene 1):

I have heard of your paintings too, well enough. God
hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another.
You jig, you amble, and you lisp; and nickname God's creatures
and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I'll
no more on't! it hath made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages. Those that are married already—all but
one—shall live; the rest shall keep as they are.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Hamlet suspects that these old school friends have been summoned by the king to spy on him and lead him into harm's way (Act 2, scene 2):

Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make
of me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know
my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery;
you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my
compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in
this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood,
do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call
me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you
cannot play upon me.

Yes, Hamlet is surrounded by disappointment, and surely it weighs him down into a depression that will lead to many deaths.