John Steinbecks East of Eden - The Character of Adam Trask :: East Eden Essays

The Character of Adam Trask in East of Eden In Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, the word love is defined as a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person. Love can bring two people together but it can also have a person be rejected by another because of love. In the novel East of Eden by John Steinbeck, the main character, Adam Trask, confronts a feeling of love throughout the whole book but he either rejects the love of people who care about him or has his love rejected by the people that he cares about. When Adam was a young man in the beginning of the novel, his father, Cyrus Trask loved him but Adam did not love him back and when Adam went into the army he did not come back home until his father's death. Later on in the story Adam really loved his wife, Cathy, but she didn't love him back and so when she tried to leave him and he would not let her, she shot him. Even though Adam survived he was demoralized for most of his life because he still loved her. Through Adam's ex periences of love in the novel, John Steinbeck shows that Adam Trask has an inability to handle love. When he first appears in the novel, Adam Trask is a young man who is not loved by his brother or mother but only by his father. Cyrus had punished Adam before and had tried to teach him to be a soldier and so Adam hated him for that and when Cyrus told him he loved him, Adam did not accept his love. Cyrus tells Adam, "I think you're a weakling who will never amount to a dog turd. Does that answer your question? I love you better. I always have. This may be a bad thing to tell you, but it's true. I love you better. Else why would I have given myself the trouble of hurting you?" (Steinbeck 28). Cyrus is telling Adam that he has always loved him and that the only reason that he punished him is because he loved him. He wants Adam to go into the army because he knows that Adam would be courageous and since Cyrus was in the army, he wants to pass on the legacy. When Adam came home from his discharge, his brother and him were talking about their father and Adam told him the truth.

Critical Thinking Scenario: Blood Money Essay

The purpose of this essay is to provide an explanation for the relationship between critical thinking and ethics based on an ethical scenario called, Blood Money as analyzed from a critical thinking perspective. First, the moral responsibility of the participants in the scenario and the stakeholders’ moral failings will be defined. Next, the conflict of obligations or ideals will be analyzed while the best possible outcomes for the given consequences will be provided. Last, a brief analysis will be presented which describes the relationship between ethics and critical thinking. Critical thinking is a form of deliberate decision making based on reflective judgement. It is used for problem solving that involves evaluating and weighing two or more pieces of incoming information. Australian Moral Philosopher, Peter Singer, defined ethics this way: â€Å"Ethics is a major branch of philosophy, encompassing right conduct and good life. It is significantly broader than the common conception of analysing right and wrong. A central aspect of ethics is ‘the good life’, the life worth living or life that is simply satisfying, which is held by many philosophers to be more important than moral conduct†, (Singer, P. 2011). Simply, ethics refers to a set of theoretical morals that involves right conduct meant for the greater good. Critical analysis The scene begins with a group of under cover reporters who discover a Chinese business of the purchase and sale of human organs from the bodies of Chinese prisoners who are ordered to be executed in China. The Chinese and United States governments both denied that such a business exists. The under cover reporters who worked for Primetime Live managed to tape the transactions during their investigation which began is New York City’s Central Park and continued all the way to a military based hospital located in Hong Kong,  China. The reporters discovered that the Chinese military was one of the primary players in this get-rich scheme which generated revenue in the hundred millions. Apparently, $30,000 can buy one kidney and pay for the transplantation. In fact, a down payment of $5,000 is all that is required to get placed on the reservation list. This black market of organs sales by the Chinese military was common knowledge which involved numerous doctors in this barbaric business. Before the prisoners were even executed, they were forced to accept anticoagulants prior to their execution in order to prevent their blood from clotting. Such acts alone are a violation of the prisoners’ human rights. Shockingly, an American company was discovered having an active involvement is this black market. It was confirmed that W.R. Grace Corporation played a crucial role in the success of the black market business by providing the Chinese Army with a fully equipped dialysis centre. Moral responsibilities There are three active participants and two passive participants in this scenario. The three active participants are the doctors, the Chinese military, and W.R. Grace who made the business possible. The two passive participants are the Chinese government and the United States government. The Chinese military was morally responsible for making sure that the prisoners’ consent was obtained for taking organs from their bodies after their execution. The doctors were morally responsible for protecting the prisoners’ organs and for exercising honourable conduct that falls in line with their Hippocratic Oath of ethics. W. R. Grace Corporation was morally responsible for ensuring that the hospital did not engage in unethical practices and more importantly, the company had a moral responsibility not to assist the hospital in doing so. The Chinese and Unites States governments shared the responsibility of protecting the prisoner’s rights which included the implementation o f such rights while preventing unethical practices. Stakeholders’ moral failings The moral failings of the stakeholders are different as the Chinese military failed in getting away from an unethical trade, the doctors failed morally in performing their moral duties and the American company failed in its moral duty by supporting and equipping a hospital involved in unethical  practices. The governments of China and the United States failed morally in ensuring implementation of human rights and ethical practices. Ideals or obligations in the conflict The ideal or obligations in the conflict include using the organs of the prisoners with their consent, instead of selling the organs it could be used for the needy, for example, poor Chinese population, and lastly educating people about the actions of the Chinese military and its objectives and benefits. Best outcome of the given consequences The best outcome of the given consequences is that the organs of people can be used for medical purposes provided they give their consent for it. Conclusion Ethics are a set of standards which people use for living a good life while critical thinking makes the ethics or causes to be fluid. Critical thinking is the concept emerged by applying cognition while ethics refers to the perception of right or wrong in a given situation. Ethical principles have global or universal overlaps, but the ethical problems and solutions are hardly universal. Here is when there is a need to draw the connection between ethics and critical thinking. Applying critical thinking in a defined situation enables people for making the right decisions about choosing right ethical principles for applying to a particular situation. References Foundation for Critical Thinking. (2013). Critical Thinking in Everyday Life: 9 Strategies. Retrieved from http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/critical-thinking-in-everyday-life-9-strategies/512 Manias, N., Monroe, D., & Till, J. E. (2013). Ethics Applied (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc. Paul, R. & Elder, L. (2001). Modified from the book by Paul, R. & Elder, L. (2001). Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life. Singer, P. (2011). Why Act Morally?. Cambridge Books Online, 3rd(30), 276-296.

Village Life vs City Life

It is a firm belief on the part of people that there is a big difference between village life and city life. It is absolutely true that the life in a village and that in a city varies so much that the difference is glaring at times. In fact it can very well be said that people living in cities are different from people living in villages. It is normal feeling amongst us that city life is more enjoyable than village life. It is only an assumption. City life is endowed with a lot of advantages. This is because of the fact that there are a number of opportunities open to you in a city. City life is provided with a lot of facilities too. You would not find many facilities and opportunities in a village. Parents would be happy to send their children to cities for higher studies rather than to villages. Cities are endowed with quality higher education institutions whereas villages are not endowed with high quality colleges and universities. In addition to schools and colleges, city life is preferred for improved medical facilities. If someone falls ill in the family, you tend to take him or her to a popular hospital in a city since villages are not equipped with the best of medical attention. The number of hospitals in a city and the facilities are far more when compared to that in a village. A city has banks, cinema theaters, parks, golf courses, sports stadiums, clubs, hostels and shopping malls. The behavior of people in a city is different from that of the people in a village. People in a city are generally unfriendly and they maintain distant from others. The people in villages on the other hand are warm-hearted and friendly. Villagers receive you well where as city-dwellers tend to be within doors. People in villages are very helpful in nature whereas people living in cities tend to be more selfish in their attitude. A city is characterized by various kinds of pollution such as noise pollution, visual pollution and air pollution. This is due to that fact that there a number of factories, industries and mills in a city than in villages. Hence villages are endowed with pure air devoid of pollution. Visual and noise pollution are also less in villages. Since village life is calm and quiet and bereft of pollution of any kind, older people tend to settle down in villages after their retirement from service

Venture Capital Funding Essay

The determinants of Venture Capital Funding: Performance of US Venture Capital Firms against European VCsProblem Statement:Over the last decade, many researchers have praised the influence of Venture Capital (VC) as a key driver of entrepreneurism, start-ups, innovation and economic growth (Da Rin et al., 2006; Cumming, 2014). VC has long been studied and observed in the United States, it is for these positive reasons that the EU have outlined the development of VC as a major policy priority (EVCA, 2001). It is only within the last 20 years that the European Market has moved from being perceived as an â€Å"emerging market† in terms of VC, and that even by the start of the 21st Century, the aggregated investment volume was ˆ12 billion which was less than 25% of the American investment volume at that time (Hege et al., 2003; EVCA, 2001). Due to the relatively recent development of VC in Europe, there is a large gap in the existing research as to the effectiveness and influe nces of VC in Europe. Certainly Popov & Roosenboom, (2013) bemoan the fact that the majority of existing research into venture capital typically focuses its attention on the United States. Thus, there is a real shortage of effective empirical studies into the behaviours and qualities of European VC. Jeng and Wells (2000) support this view, explaining that factors such as the contracting, organisation of VC firms, exit decisions, and â€Å"the peculiarities of Europe† are not fully understood, nor has the features that European markets share with American ones have not been made in strong detail. Thus, this dissertation will provide a comparative study into the American VCs and European VCs. This micro-level study will to address the gap in existing research of the rate of return for VC in the US and the EU, possible the most influential emerging markets for venture financing.Purpose Statement:This research will look to examine the performance of US venture capital firms again st European venture capital firms to identify whether a gap exists between the two groups and to determine whether European VCs ca improve the rates of return from total investment based on funding frequency and other variables. The main objectives of this dissertation are: To determine if there is a gap in the levels of performance amongst American VC and European VC paying particular attention to the type of exit and rate of return. To explore whether any gap could be the result of major differences in the contractual relationship between VCs and startups in these regions or from the use of key tools that assert an active role of VCs in the process of value creation. To identify any relevant policy determinants including regional tax, investment protection/treaty, Intellectual property rights, and financial regulation. To determine whether US VCs have better screening skills than European VCs and whether this produces a higher degree of turning initial investments and funding frequency into successful ventures. Importance of the Study This research looks to address the gap in the existing research into the emergence of VC in European markets, and looks to benchmark this against VCs in the United States. Researchers, data providers, and trade associations have all observed the notable gap in existing research into VC in Europe (Da Rin et al., 2006; Cumming, 2014). Trade associations have even pointed to this gap in understanding as a primary factor that causes them to hesitate with early-stage financing. This dissertation study will also be significant as it will look to provide a critical, microeconomic analysis of the main drivers and influence of successful VCs in America and observe these against VCs in Europe, exploring contractual features and firm characteristics to define and quantify the determinants of VC returns. This will look to address the gap in existing research in the European VC sector and provide a greater understanding of VCs in Europe. Proposed Research Method A combination of quantitate and qualitative research tools will be used to complete this study. Research data will be found using a range of sources, including the World Bank, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Developmen (OECD) and other key institutions with data on several policy factors. These data sources will provide information on an expansive range of portfolio organizations, key investments and valuations. Quantitative data analysis will be completed using the statistical package software SPSS. The statistical package software benefits the cleaning and transformation of the data. Following the completion of the data collection stage, the researcher will analyse the raw data and assemble the results into a data matrix. This data matrix with contain the details of the study with key information sorted into columns, variable and values. The data matrix will then be used for statistical calculations and used for the analysis of the results. This dataset will allows the researcher to study organisation’s performance in terms of Internal Rate of Return (IRR) of the investment amongst the initial investment to the final value of the firm. This study will also aim to quantify the influence of VCs on project profitability in Europe and compare this to the United states. A valuation-based measure of the rate of return will be used to examine the characteristics of European VCs against US VCs. independent variables to be studied will include age (the time elapsed since the VC raised the first fund), Regional (does the VC only invest in their own country), Companies (the number of companies in the VCs portfolio), Duration (the average investment duration in years), and, finally, the taxation policies of the US and Europe. The following equation will be used to calculate estimated values (V1) for the first stage valuation for all European organizations: Qi = V1i=I1i. Here Qi represents the initial value for company, whereas i is the multiple of the initial investment. The average Qj ratio will be determined of all selected studies. Research Hypotheses The research will also use the following hypotheses: Hypothesis 1: European VCs performance is positively correlated with the rate of return of the investment between the initial investment and the final valuation of the project/firm. Hypothesis 2: increased continuity of VCs engenders a stronger relationship which reduces barriers to financing and will increase returns. Hypothesis 3: European Venture-backed companies could benefit from the presence of alternative investments besides independent VCs. ReferencesBlack, B. S., Gilson, R. J. (1998) ‘Venture capital and the structure of capital markets: banks versus stock markets, Journal of Financial Economics, 47, pp. 243-277. Cumming, D. (2014) Public economics gone wild: Lessons from venture capital, International Review of Financial Analysis, 36, pp. 251-260. Da Rin, M., Nicodano, G., Sembenelli, A. (2006) ‘Public Policy and the reaction of active venture capital markets’, in Journal of Public Economics, 90, pp. 1699-1723. EVCA (2001) A Survey of Private Equity and Venture Capital in Europe, Yearbook 2001 Green, J. (2004) â€Å"Venture capital at a new crossroads†, Journal of Management Development, 23(10), pp. 972 – 976. Hege, U., Palomino, F., Schwienbacher, A. (2003) Determinants of Venture Capital Performance: Europe and the United States, LSE Working Paper, 1, pp. 1-40. Jeng, L. A., Wells, P. C. (2000) ‘The determinants of venture capital funding: evidence across countries’, Journal of Corporate Finance, 6, pp. 241-289. Popov, A., Roosenboom, P. (2013) ‘Venture Capital and New Business Creation’, Journal of Banking & Finance, 37, pp. 4695-4710.

“50 first dates” Movie Review Essay

50 first dates was a fun and a colorful movie, which brings the audience into curiosity. The movie is about a guy named Henry trying to build a romantic relationship with a girl named Lucy. Henry before was in to short-term attractions to the tourist. He was afraid of commitment because of what he went through in college. He would jump from one sexual attraction to another not think anything of it. While Lucy who had a mental disorder called Goldfield Syndrome, which made her lose her short-term memory. Really had no chose on being in a relationship because she wouldn’t remember the person the next day. That all changed the moment Henry first saw her in the cafe. From then on Henry made all the effort he could give just to win Lucy’s heart. Despite the syndrome Henry managed to let Lucy know how much he loves her through a video tape that he takes every single day. In this way, Lucy will know what happened to her and the tape is used to remind her what she did the past days. Visual arts was important to Henry because without it he could’ve not let Lucy remember what happened to her. Besides the story of Henry and Lucy in 50 first dates, visual arts plays a big role in my life. Not only because it makes life more colorful, but to think that art can express itself into a greater way that is through what a man can see. Not only do the visual arts provide pleasure and creative inspiration, but they also help foster dialogue and bring important issues to the public eye.

Benefits and Health Risks Associated with Energy giving Drinks Essay

Benefits and Health Risks Associated with Energy giving Drinks - Essay Example Another secondary reason for this report is to understand the reasons why these drinks are used widely by youths or, in other words, and the consumption rate is widespread in youths (Aronson, 2011). A keen study, review, and analysis of the literature reveal that other stimulant and caffeine substances enclosed in these drinks have a positive and direct effect on the users too. The intended impact of energy drinks is to improve performance and provide sustenance, endurance, and concentration. Almost every Manufacturer pitches their products in work fields that require sustained alertness. But these drinks too have got no position in the adolescents and children’s diet (American Academy of Pediatrics, 20110). In addition, frequent or extreme intake of caloric energy drinks can largely enhance the risk for obesity or overweight adolescents and children’s. Discussion regarding educating the ‘users; of this drinks on how to use it appropriately, either by people who p articipates regularly in endurance or high-intensity of vigorous physical activity is the aim of the report (Brown, 2013). Energy drinks are grouped among beverages containing modest to relatively high levels of caffeine concentration, which gives a range of 50–505 mg caffeine/serving; 2.5–35.7 mg caffeine/oz, in comparison with other caffeinated beverages such as 6-ounce cup of coffee that range 77–150 mg; 12.8–25 mg caffeine/oz. In other words, energy â€Å"shots† are low-volume that is, 1–2 oz beverages and hence, records even a higher percentage in caffeine concentration more than other energy drinks (orange 100–350 mg; 90–171 mg caffeine/ oz (Maughan, 2001). The stimulants in these drinks include caffeine that is marketed as a provider of mental and physical stimulation (Brown, 2012). The energy drinks sometimes may or may not be carbonated though some; may also contain sugar or other sweeteners, amino acids, and herbal extracts. They are a subset or a division of the bigger group of energy products that include gels and bars, and distinct from drinks which are advertised to improve and enhance any performance (Millward, 2003).

Hitler table talk, 1941-1944 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Hitler table talk, 1941-1944 - Essay Example In this book, Hitler freely talks about his friends, failures, enemies, ambition and secrete dreams. During the midday and evening hours, Hitler turned down his guard to have a conversation with his most trusted men. Martin Bormann, Hitler’s acting private secretary, persuaded Hitler to allow him compiles the various conversations that were recorded by different people into a book. Hitler after his renowned tyranny had the plans to use this book as a reference material to write on the Thousand-Year Reich. In Hitler’s table talk book, there are 328 entries that were made with specified dates and time. Hitler’s close allies such as Todt, Himmler and other military leaders with exception of Goering were described to be present during these conversations as they could even pose questions to Hitler to which he responded. Hitler was such a person who contributed to any topic of discussion you could imagine of and he is the person that guided the directions of most talk s. During that period there was a war that was going on, but something interesting is that no talks were based on the war issue. Apparently these talks were mostly meant to divert people’s attentions from the war that was going on. Hitler was the German leader who was well educated and he specialized in the European history. He was a great racist and hated the Jewish people very much which worsened day after day. Some of the recorded statements involve Hitler narrating his strategic plans during the late 1932 power struggle and the resistance the Nazi party was subjected to. During that time, it is fascinating to see Hitler describing himself as the â€Å"builder† of capital cities, autobahns, and museums something that is ironical. Contrasts between Hitler’s support for Christianity and His hatred for the same In most of the recorded conversation, Hitler’s hatred for Christianity is more common than those of the Jews. Some of his negative talks about Chr istianity that supports Hitler’s hatred for Christianity includes; â€Å"what is this God who takes pleasure only in seeing men grovel before him† (Adolf & Gerhard, p143). â€Å"A negro baby, who has the misfortune to die before a missionary gets his clutches on him, goes to Hell†(Adolf & Gerhard, p69). â€Å"The catastrophe, for us, is that of being tied to a religion that rebels against all the joys of the nonsense† (Adolf & Gerhardp142). â€Å"Christianity is the worst of the regressions that mankind can every have undergone† (Adolf & Gerhard, p322). â€Å"While we are on this subject, let’s add that, even amongst those who claim to be good Catholics, every few really believe in this humbug. Only old women, who have given up everything because life has already withdrawn from them, go regularly to the church†(Adolf & Gerhard, p342). â€Å"Our apoch will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity† (Adolf & Gerhard, p 343). Hitler contradicts himself when he pretends to supports Christianity by saying â€Å"Christianity sets the example. What could be more fanatical, more elusive and more intolerant than this religion which bases everything on the love of the one and only God whom it reveals† (Adolf & Gerhard, p397). Other than Christianity, Hitler resisted the renewal of Wotan worship. From the book it is not difficult to realize that Hitler was a consummate rationalist. This is revealed when he said â€Å"but there will never be any possibility of National Socialism’