Where the Grass Is Greener - Literature Essay Samples

Many authors have identified the self-absorbed behavior of Emma Bovary as the key character quality that leads to her downfall, and modern analyses point to lack of social and educational opportunities as the root cause of the decline and death of the eponymous hero of Madame Bovary. However, Gustave Flaubert’s incisive and understated narrative provides a simpler and more fundamental explanation for the character’s increasing disassociation from reality and for the bad decisions she makes as a result. This essay will show that Emma Bovary suffers not from self-absorption but from a nagging certainty that other people’s lives are better than her own and that they are experiencing happiness that is denied to her. It is this certainty, coupled with a sense of unfairness, that drives every single bad decision Emma makes throughout the book. To Emma, the proverbial grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. No matter where she goes or what her life circumstances are, she is convinced that other people have it better. During her years in the convent school, she was allowed to amuse herself by reading French romance novels. These were not the highly sexualized books of today but adventure stories similar to The Three Musketeers. Such novels were plot-driven in a swashbuckling way. Every chapter contained cliffhanger drama and excitement. Compared to the staid, quotidian lifestyle in a convent school—and Emma at first knows no other since her father elected to keep her in the convent after her mother’s death—life outside the convent seems full of potential and excitement, especially when she receives letters from her friends who have moved back home or who have married. Compared to her life, theirs seem happy and exciting. So when her father calls her back home to live on the farm, Emma fee ls at first as though her life is about to begin. Once she arrives, her excitement fades into boredom and dissatisfaction as soon as the novelty wears off, and she is left with the question: â€Å"is this all there is?† The pattern repeats with her marriage to Charles Bovary and again when she gives birth to her daughter. But instead of finding satisfaction in her everyday life with brief periods of excitement for occasional treats, Emma responds to dissatisfaction by finding a new fence, deciding the grass is greener on the other side of it, and making a leap without regard for the consequences to herself or others. If for some reason things don’t go the way she plans, and when she experiences the very predictable consequences of her actions, she melts down in whatever fashion she believes is consistent with the people she identifies with—again without regard for the effect she is having on other people. Early in her marriage, Emma is dissatisfied as a rural health officer’s wife but she does not feel the need to imitate the other wives in the village. Whereas other women of the bourgeois class in that era typically raised chickens, took in laundry, rented out extra rooms, or cared for other people’s children to earn extra money, Emma sits idle and reads. She subscribes to a circulating library and continues to indulge not just in romance novels but in the notion that they somehow represent objective reality. To Emma, the fictional heroes and heroines and the worlds they inhabit are real, and their lives are far more exciting than hers. She does what she can to make her surroundings more beautiful and to imitate what she interprets as the customs of an upper-class woman. These include keeping a housemaid (despite being young, healthy, and without children), keeping her nails long and bleached, and spending more than is strictly necessary on furniture and household decor ations. Emma’s mother-in-law takes exception to what she interprets as spendthrift behavior. Her complaints, though minor, have a basis in fact. Yet they also foreshadow the years of compulsive spending that, abetted by the merchant Lheureux, eventually leads to her and Charles losing everything. A significant plot turn occurs when Emma and Charles are invited to a ball at the home of the wealthy d’Andervilliers family. This is an annual fall event before the wealthiest people in the area migrate away from their country estates and go to Paris or some other more comfortable location for the winter. The invitation is reciprocity for a gift of cherry tree cuttings from Charles: the Marquis d’Andervilliers, who is in the area with a member of his staff who needs medical attention, praises the cherry trees growing on the property Charles and Emma inherited from Charles’s first wife. Charles graciously sends fresh cuttings to replace the winter-killed trees on the d’Andervilliers property. To acknowledge the gift, the d’Andervilliers family sends Charles and Emma an invitation to their annual ball. The Marquis notes that since Emma does not curtsey like a peasant and is quite pretty, the young couple will not be noticeably out of place while enjo ying a once-in-a-lifetime event they will be able to tell their grandchildren about later. The couple buys new clothing for the event. But whereas Charles simply enjoys the novelty and has a reasonably good time, Emma comes to the conclusion that she has somehow been accepted into the upper class. She hasn’t. While at the d’Andervilliers ball, Emma sees and experiences things she’s only read about in books. She tastes pineapple for the first time, sees somebody pass a note to someone else, listens to people talk about Italy, and eats a formal meal. Yet she misinterprets much of what she is experiencing, especially when she sees something that appears to contradict what she’s read. When this happens, Emma decides that the people around her simply don’t know the customs of their own class as well as she does. She takes her theoretical knowledge as evidence that she has at least as much right to be part of the clique as the people who actually occupy it. At the dinner table, Emma is shocked to see that many of the women do not put their gloves in their wine glasses. What she does not realize is that there is a system of â€Å"silent service† communication so that diners at a formal event can communicate with the wait staff without interrupting the flow of conversation at the table. (Some of these signals still exist but they are not understood by wait staff.) Gloves in the wine glass, in Emma’s era, were a signal to not serve alcohol to that particular diner, who was generally a woman who was either pregnant or trying to get that way. The signal was in the same category as laying one’s knife at a forty-five degree angle, with the fork crossed over it with the tines down in order to signal the waiter to remove the plate. Having learned from her romance novels what the mannered elite did but not why they did it, Emma jumps to the conclusion that the women at the table who simply want a glass of wine with their meal are being rude. Emma is also disappointed at the appearance of her fellow diners. She expects to be surrounded by young and beautiful people, but since she is only a few years into her majority and the table contains all the upper-class people in the area, most of the women at the table are older than she. Many are middle-aged or elderly, and therefore very ordinary-looking to Emma’s eye. Furthermore, they are wearing styles from the previous season or even earlier. Emma herself has paid handsomely for a new gown cut in the latest fashion solely for the occasion, so she comes to the conclusion that her taste is better than that of the women around her. In reality, the d’Andervilliers ball is an annual event: an autumn farewell for local wealthy people and members of the nobility whose families have known each other for generations. Most of the guests are traveling to their winter homes in Paris where the major fashion houses are, where the real social season is about to start, and wher e their new clothing awaits them. They therefore select gowns from their existing wardrobes. The fact that Emma went to the expense of ordering a new ball gown and dresses just for one party is not evidence of her superior taste: it’s evidence that she didn’t already own appropriate clothing. She’d have displayed more savoir-faire by buying lightly used clothing in Rouen and having it altered: at least the clothing would have been from the right season and not obviously new. The most potentially embarrassing gaffe, for Emma, is when she waltzes with the Viscount. The handsome, wealthy bachelor is the highest ranked man present and has danced with Emma several times. In Emma’s novels, dancing with the same woman two or even three times is evidence of romantic interest. Yet when she manages to tangle the skirt of her dress up in his legs and briefly lays her head on his chest, he does not respond to the come-on. Instead of seducing her, he steers her toward a bench and dances with someone else, unaware that Emma has just identified him as her new romantic and sexual ideal. She invents all kinds of stories about how the cigar case with his coat of arms on it must have been a gift from a mistress. The Viscount—or at least, the impression Emma has of him at the ball—is the kind of man with whom Emma decides she could really fall in love. From that point forward she has a new romantic ideal, a secret fantasy with whom her husband Charles c annot possibly compete. She is not at all embarrassed by the waltzing fiasco; it is a mark of her lack of sophistication that it doesn’t occur to her that she should be. To Emma, at the ball it appears as though everything in her romance novels is coming to life. She feels as though she is finally starting to live because she’s personally experiencing the happiness and excitement she’s read about. She looks at the peasants and staff who peek through the window and thinks to herself that although she was born among them, she has finally found the place where she truly belongs. This extreme joy and satisfaction is an emotional high point for her. But she fails to recognize that it’s a high point for the other people at the ball as well. Even among the wealthy elite, when the party’s over, it’s time to go home. She doesn’t understand that, even for the rich, life has to go back to normal. Emma expects—because of what she’s read—that this group of people move from one exciting experience to the next. Thus, the next morning when people are offered a light brunch before leaving, Emma is surpris ed to notice that the hosts are not serving Champagne wine with the meal. In Emma’s mind she has been accepted, permanently, as a member of the social elite. Therefore, when she returns to her country home with its magnificent cherry trees, she compares it with the d’Andervilliers mansion and finds it wanting. In fact, everything, including Charles, is suddenly inadequate. She fires the elderly maid Nastasie, who loyally served Charles’s first wife and who kept house for Charles after the lady died, because Nastasie does not display the formal, subservient behavior Emma believes she saw at the ball. Yet in the bourgeois class of the time, women Emma’s age seldom employed servants at all unless they were sickly or busy with children or a family business. Furthermore, such servants as people had were generally poorer relatives or family friends helping out in exchange for food, lodging, and a bit of money. When Nastasie does not have dinner ready on her arrival, Emma rebukes her. When she talks back to Emma as though she were spea king to a social equal which she is, Emma throws a tantrum and fires Nastasie on the spot. To replace her, Emma hires a young girl who can be taught to always say â€Å"madame†, to bring Emma a glass of water on a tray instead of just handing it to her, and to do the housework and cooking while Emma enjoys uninterrupted leisure time. This turns out to be a financially stupid idea: the new maid steals from her. After the ball, Emma reminisces about it, talks constantly about it, and apes some of the external habits and expectations of people she saw there, alienating the local women in the process. She studies Italian, reads different magazines, and buys an expensive writing-desk. But instead of writing a note of thanks to the hostess, and instead of sending letters around to some of the other guests to find out how to return the Viscount’s lost cigar case—activities that would have been normal and natural in the d’Andervilliers’ social circle—she decides she has nobody to write to. This prevents her from ever forming the social attachments she will need in order to participate in her new group. Aside from her beauty and manners, Emma has very little to offer the upper-class families with whom she now seeks to socialize. She is not in a position to, say, reciprocate the d’Andervilliers invitation by hosting a ball and inviting the people who entertained her. Nor can she provide artistic or intellectual stimulation: she has not traveled abroad, she can play the piano but has no great skill as a musician, she is not well educated, nor does she display the sort of conversational skill that is valuable to a hostess. In fact, the text does not show her engaging anyone in conversation. Thus, Emma develops no social or emotional connection with her hosts or with any of the other guests. In fact she’s a minor nuisance. Her fainting spell causes her host to order a window broken so that she can get air, and she makes a joke of herself on the dance floor. This, plus her lack of polite follow-up correspondence with the d’Andervilliers family, guarantees that there is no reason to invite her and Charles back. Unlike a true social climber such as Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair, who never went to a party without trying to make friends with as many of the other attendees as possible, Emma does not solidify her new social contacts. So when she is not invited back the next year, it comes as no surprise to the reader but it is a horrible shock to Emma, who finds a large metaphorical fence between herself and the green pasture where she thinks she belongs. She therefore does what any romantic heroine would do: she collapses and refuses to tell anybody what’s wrong. Emma starts to snap out of her expectation-induced depression when Charles sells his profitable practice in Tostes and buys one in a different town called Yonville. It is not the change of scenery that intrigues her: it is a young clerk named Là ©on. He introduces her to poetry, which allows for the expression of far more sublime extremes of human experience compared to Emma’s romances. Emma decides that she has a â€Å"noble soul† and is therefore a more sensitive and refined creature than the others around her. So she begins to do things that she believes are appropriate to a noble, poetic soul: she is devastated at having given birth to a girl instead of a boy through whom she could live vicariously, and hands the baby off to a wet-nurse at the first opportunity. She also cultivates a platonic but intense emotional attachment to Là ©on that includes a gift of an expensive feather-bed. She notices he is in love with her, or at least attracted to her, and they carry on what in modern times would be called an â€Å"emotional affair†. Fantasizing about life on the other side of the fence, Emma compares her husband to the evanescent image of the waltzing Viscount, the young and intelligent Là ©on, and the exaggerated romantic ideals she reads about in her poetry. Charles now appears to Emma to be mediocre, somewhat disgusting, and thoroughly inadequate. She starts to do small things to improve him: insisting he wear gloves, and being fastidious about his appearance. Charles, naively, believes Emma is doing these things out of love for him. In reality she becomes increasingly frustrated. She assuages her feelings by behaving like any virtuous heroine of a sonnet cycle: she and Là ©on exchange long, lingering glances and subtle hints. She gives him a lavish gift in the form of a feather-bed, alternately encouraging and discouraging him. But instead of responding like a poetic suitor and pursuing her for years or risking his life for her Her o-and-Leander style, Là ©on leaves town. Shocked, Emma collapses again. This emotional overreaction, which is now becoming Emma’s standard response to disappointment, is consistent with what Tennyson’s Lady of Shallot or any other tragic poetic heroine might do. Emma’s next peek at the other side of a fence comes when the wealthy Rodolphe Boulanger decides to introduce her to horseback riding and adultery. He accomplishes the latter with a series of dramatic sighs, references to his unhappiness, and a conveniently placed shelter when the two of them are caught out in the rain. The initial seduction having been accomplished, Emma embraces her new identity as adulteress and proceeds to act out every possible dramatic excess. She does everything she believes an adulterous woman should do: she dresses outrageously in a man’s vest, she smokes cigars in public, and her speech and her facial expressions become more direct in a sexual way. She does not avoid speculation or discovery; in fact, she invites it because she wants the drama. She takes risks, exchanging love letters with Rodolphe and walking across the countryside to surprise him in the morning. She begins to spend more than she should on cosmetics, lemons to bleach her nails , and gifts for men that never seem to be worn or used by Charles. Gradually she ruins her reputation in Yonville: people are convinced she is having an affair with some wealthy man, but they do not know with whom. She even sneaks Rodolphe into her home while Charles is present, asking Rodolphe if he has a pistol to â€Å"protect† her against her husband. Rodolphe, meanwhile, has no reason to hate Charles much less to shoot him, and he finds Emma’s suggestion ridiculous. Sensibly, he conducts his affair with Emma much the way he has done with his other flings. He does not buy Emma lavish gifts lest they give away evidence. But he is more than willing to accept the cigar case, the silver-handled cane, and the other indulgences Emma buys for him. In Emma’s mind, she is reenacting her fantasy story about the Viscount receiving gifts from his wealthy and indulgent mistress. It is the gifts for Rodolphe, together with other expenses for clothing and perfumes she cannot afford, that begins to drive Emma into debt. She buys on credit from the merchant Lheureux, who has a history of encouraging people to accumulate debt only to sell of the notes at a profit and force a bankruptcy. The affair continues for four years, during which time Emma becomes bored. She drives up the excitement level in several ways such as by sneaking Rodolphe into the house at night while Charles is present—she asks Rodolphe if he has a pistol to protect her from Charles’s wrath if they are caught, which is something Rodolphe finds ridiculous—but ultimately she discovers that adultery can be just as dull and boring as marriage. So she casts about for another, greener pasture and she finds it: she wants to be married, just not to Charles. Accordingly, she and Rodolphe plan to elope and live happily in an obscure village somewhere as husband and wife. Rodolphe thin ks it’s a fantasy, but Emma makes secret preparations. She buys traveling trunks and a new wardrobe through Lheureux, all on credit. On the day of the scheduled departure, Rodolphe comes to his senses and leaves town, sending Emma a farewell note in a basket of apricots. Emma—predictably at this point—collapses again. As usual, Emma does not recover until she finds a new way to self-identify. She turns to religion, spends a small fortune on a prie-dieu, and fancies herself the quintessential repentant Mary Magdalene. She enjoys putting on a pious act, but eventually she gets less attention from the village priest and the other religious women. She doesn’t experience the great emotional passion the famous saints and sinners did, she experiences no great religious ecstasy, and quiet contemplation and meditation on the divine turns out to be a bore when nobody’s watching. So her familiar â€Å"is-this-all-there-is† sensation sets in again. Charles takes her to Rouen to consult with one of his old mentors, and encounters not just his frenemy Homais but also Là ©on. On Homais’s advice, Charles buys opera tickets. This is another key turning-point that is often overlooked by critics. Yet it is as vital to Emma’s character development as the d’Andervilliers ball . Opera is an art form that capitalizes on overblown, dramatic emotion expressed through music. Every aspect of a character’s feelings, thoughts, and living spiritual essence is condensed into song and channeled—with suitable orchestral backing—through the one perfect expressive medium in the world. This medium of course is the human voice. Even heavy metal doesn’t bring as much drama (although the costumes tend to be similar and it’s also just as hard to understand the lyrics). Emotional extremes don’t get any bigger than they do on the operatic stage. So when Emma is exposed to opera, it affects her even though she tries to hide it. It doesn’t help that the author Flaubert chooses to send Emma to Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, which is one of the most overblown, extravagant Gothic tragedies ever to hit the stage. Lucia di Lammermoor is based on The Bride of Lammermoor by Sir Walter Scott, one of the romance writers whose work Emma devoured in her youth. In the story, the heroine Lucy is deceived and trapped into a loveless marriage. She goes insane, murders her unwanted bridegroom, and then commits suicide. The romantic lead role is being sung by the famous tenor, Lagardy, and Emma falls completely into the production. Like many women in the audience, she briefly identifies as Lucy. She wondered why she didn’t do as Lucy did, and physically resist to the point of having to be carried down the aisle. She now reflects that she was just as unhappy and unwilling to marry Charles—a fact not supported by the early part of the text. She adopts the fictional Lucy, complete with the dramatic hyperbole, as her romantic ideal. Not only should she be as full of emotional excess as an operatic heroine, but if things get bad, perhaps instead of fainting or collapsing, she should do as Lucy di d instead. So now she regards herself not as a member of the nobility born by accident into the wrong class, not as a â€Å"noble soul† who feels emotion more keenly and is therefore above the mundane conventions that govern ordinary mortals, and not as a repentant religious devotee. She’s an over-the-top dramatic diva. So she does what an operatic heroine with a bent for adultery could be expected to do: in the cab on the way home, when her old fondness for Là ©on returns, she acts on it. Emma’s hedonic adaptation, and her new self-identification as a tragic heroine, requires that she see Là ©on as much as possible. She capitalizes on the death of Charles’s father to spend time in Rouen pretending to settle the estate, then she pretends to take piano lessons and spends even more ridiculous sums of money traveling to Rouen and renting a room for their weekly trysts. When the bills come due she combines them and takes out further loans from Lheureux at an exorbitant rate of interest, and she tries to sell off the little house with the cherry trees in order to pay the bills but is cheated out of the money by Lheureux and his cronies. She insists on entertaining her lover lavishly, as she did Rodolphe, but she is also sexually aggressive and proactive. Her tastes in reading change again: she reads violent pornography with stories of Rabelaisian orgies, and she begins to believe as though she thinks such behavior ought to be normal. Her excesses begin to fri ghten Là ©on, who tries to end the affair when Emma starts showing up at his office. The first time it’s charming; after that, it becomes creepy. Until one of his colleagues writes to his mother, saying your son is ruining himself with a married woman, the young man does not break off the affair. When the storm cloud of debt finally breaks over the Bovary household, Emma tries to get money from many sources. Her maid suggests that she negotiate with a local wealthy man who admires her, however when he proposes an affair Emma draws herself up like an offended opera heroine and flees, only to go to Rodolphe with the exact same proposition, which Rodolphe refuses. With Charles away, she submits to the indignity of having the house gone through and itemized, right down to the contents of the secret drawer in her desk with its hidden cache of love letters. Presently Emma begins to do what Lucy did in the opera: she starts to go insane. First she proposes that Là ©on steal the money from his employer, and when Là ©on fobs her off she walks home hallucinating. She imagines scenes from her past, including the waltzing Viscount who fails to materialize and save her from the predictable consequences of her decisions. At this point, there is nowhere for Emma to turn and nobody who can help her. Indeed, the consequences of her bad decisions are closing in on her and there’s only one more pasture left to flee to where the grass might be greener. Emma therefore does not melt down as she has done in the past. Instead, she seeks â€Å"the other side† with a lethal dose of arsenic. Lurching from one disappointment to the next, Emma never succeeds in enjoying happiness or pleasure for more than a few hours at a time. Yet when each new circumstance fails to bring a permanent improvement to her mood, instead of understanding that pleasure and excitement are fleeting and transitory by nature, Emma continues to seek out what appear to be more promising circumstances based on her superficial observations. This she does without regard to her actions’ effect on other people. When the reality fails to measure up to her grotesquely inflated expectations, she responds with the kind of tantrum consistent with her chosen identity. Self-absorbed she may be, yet self-absorption is only a symptom of Emma’s deeper problem, which is her inability to understand that life is short, pleasure is fleeting, and envy of others is ultimately pointless because there is no such thing as a life without pain, frustration, or boredom. References Dumas, Alexandre (Pà ¨re). The Three Musketeers. Le Sià ¨cle, March-July 1844. Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary. La Revue de Paris, October-December 1856. Scott, Sir Walter. The Bride of Lammermoor. 1819. (Donizetti’s opera came out in 1835). Thackeray, William Makepeace. Vanity Fair. 1847-1848.

Biography of Thomas Edison, American Inventor

Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847–October 18, 1931) was an American inventor who transformed the world with inventions including the lightbulb and the phonograph. He was considered the face of technology and progress in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Fast Facts: Thomas Edison Known For: Inventor of groundbreaking technology, including the lightbulb and the phonograph Born: February 11, 1847 in Milan, OhioParents: Sam Edison Jr. and Nancy Elliott EdisonDied: October 18, 1931 in West Orange, New JerseyEducation: Three months of formal education, homeschooled until age 12Published Works: Quadruplex telegraph, phonograph, unbreakable cylinder record called the Blue Ambersol, electric pen, a version of the incandescent lightbulb and an integrated system to run it, motion picture camera called a kinetographSpouse(s): Mary Stilwell, Mina MillerChildren: Marion Estelle, Thomas Jr., William Leslie by Mary Stilwell; and Madeleine, Charles, and Theodore Miller by Mina Miller Early Life Thomas Alva Edison was born to Sam and Nancy on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio, the son of a Canadian refugee and his schoolteacher wife. Edisons mother Nancy Elliott was originally from New York until her family moved to Vienna, Canada, where she met Sam Edison, Jr., whom she later married. Sam was the descendant of British loyalists who fled to Canada at the end of the American Revolution, but when he became involved in an unsuccessful revolt in Ontario in the 1830s he was forced to flee to the United States. They made their home in Ohio in 1839. The family moved to Port Huron, Michigan, in 1854, where Sam worked in the lumber business. Education and First Job Known as Al in his youth, Edison was the youngest of seven children, four of whom survived to adulthood, and all of them were in their teens when Edison was born. Edison tended to be in poor health when he was young and was a poor student. When a schoolmaster called Edison addled, or slow, his furious mother took him out of the school and proceeded to teach him at home. Edison said many years later, My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me, and I felt I had someone to live for, someone I must not disappoint. At an early age, he showed a fascination for mechanical things and chemical experiments. In 1859 at the age of 12, Edison took a job selling newspapers and candy on the Grand Trunk Railroad to Detroit. He started two businesses in Port Huron, a newsstand and a fresh produce stand, and finagled free or very low-cost trade and transport in the train. In the baggage car, he set up a laboratory for his chemistry experiments and a printing press, where he started the Grand Trunk Herald, the first newspaper published on a train. An accidental fire forced him to stop his experiments on board. Loss of Hearing Around the age of 12, Edison lost almost all of his hearing. There are several theories as to what caused this. Some attribute it to the aftereffects of scarlet fever, which he had as a child. Others blame it on a train conductor boxing his ears after Edison caused a fire in the baggage car, an incident Edison claimed never happened. Edison himself blamed it on an incident in which he was grabbed by his ears and lifted to a train. He did not let his disability discourage him, however, and often treated it as an asset since it made it easier for him to concentrate on his experiments and research. Undoubtedly, though, his deafness made him more solitary and shy in dealing with others. Telegraph Operator In 1862, Edison rescued a 3-year-old from a track where a boxcar was about to roll into him. The grateful father, J.U. MacKenzie, taught Edison railroad telegraphy as a reward. That winter, he took a job as a telegraph operator in Port Huron. In the meantime, he continued his scientific experiments on the side. Between 1863 and 1867, Edison migrated from city to city in the United States, taking available telegraph jobs. Love of Invention In 1868, Edison moved to Boston where he worked in the Western Union office and worked even more on inventing things. In January 1869 Edison resigned from his job, intending to devote himself full time to inventing things. His first invention to receive a patent was the electric vote recorder, in June 1869. Daunted by politicians reluctance to use the machine, he decided that in the future he would not waste time inventing things that no one wanted. Edison moved to New York City in the middle of 1869. A friend, Franklin L. Pope, allowed Edison to sleep in a room where he worked, Samuel Laws Gold Indicator Company. When Edison managed to fix a broken machine there, he was hired to maintain and improve the printer machines. During the next period of his life, Edison became involved in multiple projects and partnerships dealing with the telegraph. In October 1869, Edison joined with Franklin L. Pope and James Ashley to form the organization Pope, Edison and Co. They advertised themselves as electrical engineers and constructors of electrical devices. Edison received several patents for improvements to the telegraph. The partnership merged with the Gold and Stock Telegraph Co. in 1870. American Telegraph Works Edison also established the Newark Telegraph Works in Newark, New Jersey, with William Unger to manufacture stock printers. He formed the American Telegraph Works to work on developing an automatic telegraph later in the year. In 1874 he began to work on a multiplex telegraphic system for Western Union, ultimately developing a quadruplex telegraph, which could send two messages simultaneously in both directions. When Edison sold his patent rights to the quadruplex to the rival Atlantic Pacific Telegraph Co., a series of court battles followed—which Western Union won. Besides other telegraph inventions, he also developed an electric pen in 1875. Marriage and Family His personal life during this period also brought much change. Edisons mother died in 1871, and he married his former employee Mary Stilwell on Christmas Day that same year. While Edison loved his wife, their relationship was fraught with difficulties, primarily his preoccupation with work and her constant illnesses. Edison would often sleep in the lab and spent much of his time with his male colleagues. Nevertheless, their first child Marion was born in February 1873, followed by a son, Thomas, Jr., in January 1876. Edison nicknamed the two Dot and Dash, referring to telegraphic terms. A third child, William Leslie, was born in October 1878. Mary died in 1884, perhaps of cancer or the morphine prescribed to her to treat it. Edison married again: his second wife was Mina Miller, the daughter of Ohio industrialist Lewis Miller, who founded the Chautauqua Foundation. They married on February 24, 1886, and had three children, Madeleine (born 1888), Charles (1890), and Theodore Miller Edison (1898). Menlo Park Edison opened a new laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, in 1876. This site later become known as an invention factory, since they worked on several different inventions at any given time there. Edison would conduct numerous experiments to find answers to problems. He said, I never quit until I get what Im after. Negative results are just what Im after. They are just as valuable to me as positive results. Edison liked to work long hours and expected much from his employees. In 1879, after considerable experimentation and based on 70 years work of several other inventors, Edison invented a carbon filament that would burn for 40 hours—the first practical incandescent lightbulb. While Edison had neglected further work on the phonograph, others had moved forward to improve it. In particular, Chichester Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter developed an improved machine that used a wax cylinder and a floating stylus, which they called a graphophone. They sent representatives to Edison to discuss a possible partnership on the machine, but Edison refused to collaborate with them, feeling that the phonograph was his invention alone. With this competition, Edison was stirred into action and resumed his work on the phonograph in 1887. Edison eventually adopted methods similar to Bell and Tainters in his phonograph. Phonograph Companies The phonograph was initially marketed as a business dictation machine. Entrepreneur Jesse H. Lippincott acquired control of most of the phonograph companies, including Edisons, and set up the North American Phonograph Co. in 1888. The business did not prove profitable, and when Lippincott fell ill, Edison took over the management. In 1894, the North American Phonograph Co. went into bankruptcy, a move which allowed Edison to buy back the rights to his invention. In 1896, Edison started the National Phonograph Co. with the intent of making phonographs for home amusement. Over the years, Edison made improvements to the phonograph and to the cylinders which were played on them, the early ones being made of wax. Edison introduced an unbreakable cylinder record, named the Blue Amberol, at roughly the same time he entered the disc phonograph market in 1912. The introduction of an Edison disc was in reaction to the overwhelming popularity of discs on the market in contrast to cylinders. Touted as being superior to the competitions records, the Edison discs were designed to be played only on Edison phonographs and were cut laterally as opposed to vertically. The success of the Edison phonograph business, though, was always hampered by the companys reputation of choosing lower-quality recording acts. In the 1920s, competition from radio caused the business to sour, and the Edison disc business ceased production in 1929. Ore-Milling and Cement Another Edison interest was an ore milling process that would extract various metals from ore. In 1881, he formed the Edison Ore-Milling Co., but the venture proved fruitless as there was no market for it. He returned to the project in 1887, thinking that his process could help the mostly depleted Eastern mines compete with the Western ones. In 1889, the New Jersey and Pennsylvania Concentrating Works was formed, and Edison became absorbed by its operations and began to spend much time away from home at the mines in Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Although he invested much money and time into this project, it proved unsuccessful when the market went down, and additional sources of ore in the Midwest were found. Edison also became involved in promoting the use of cement and formed the Edison Portland Cement Co. in 1899. He tried to promote the widespread use of cement for the construction of low-cost homes and envisioned alternative uses for concrete in the manufacture of phonographs, furniture, refrigerators, and pianos. Unfortunately, Edison was ahead of his time with these ideas, as the widespread use of concrete proved economically unfeasible at that time. Motion Pictures In 1888, Edison met Eadweard Muybridge at West Orange and viewed Muybridges Zoopraxiscope. This machine used a circular disc with still photographs of the successive phases of movement around the circumference to recreate the illusion of movement. Edison declined to work with Muybridge on the device and decided to work on his motion picture camera at his laboratory. As Edison put it in a caveat written the same year, I am experimenting upon an instrument which does for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear. The task of inventing the machine fell to Edisons associate William K. L. Dickson. Dickson initially experimented with a cylinder-based device for recording images, before turning to a celluloid strip. In October 1889, Dickson greeted Edisons return from Paris with a new device that projected pictures and contained sound. After more work, patent applications were made in 1891 for a motion picture camera, called a Kinetograph, and a Kinetoscope, a motion picture peephole viewer. Kinetoscope parlors opened in New York and soon spread to other major cities during 1894. In 1893, a motion picture studio, later dubbed the Black Maria (the slang name for a police paddy wagon which the studio resembled), was opened at the West Orange complex. Short films were produced using a variety of acts of the day. Edison was reluctant to develop a motion picture projector, feeling that more profit was to be made with the peephole viewers. When Dickson assisted competitors on developing another peephole motion picture device and the eidoscope projection system, later to develop into the Mutoscope, he was fired. Dickson went on to form the American Mutoscope Co. along with Harry Marvin, Herman Casler, and Elias Koopman. Edison subsequently adopted a projector developed by Thomas Armat and Charles Francis Jenkins and renamed it the Vitascope and marketed it under his name. The Vitascope premiered on April 23, 1896, to great acclaim. Patent Battles Competition from other motion picture companies soon created heated legal battles between them and Edison over patents. Edison sued many companies for infringement. In 1909, the formation of the Motion Picture Patents Co. brought a degree of cooperation to the various companies who were given licenses in 1909, but in 1915, the courts found the company to be an unfair monopoly. In 1913, Edison experimented with synchronizing sound to film. A Kinetophone was developed by his laboratory and synchronized sound on a phonograph cylinder to the picture on a screen. Although this initially brought interest, the system was far from perfect and disappeared by 1915. By 1918, Edison ended his involvement in the motion picture field. In 1911, Edisons companies were re-organized into Thomas A. Edison, Inc. As the organization became more diversified and structured, Edison became less involved in the day-to-day operations, although he still had some decision-making authority. The goals of the organization became more to maintain market viability than to produce new inventions frequently. A fire broke out at the West Orange laboratory in 1914, destroying 13 buildings. Although the loss was great, Edison spearheaded the rebuilding of the lot. World War I When Europe became involved in World War I, Edison advised preparedness and felt that technology would be the future of war. He was named the head of the Naval Consulting Board in 1915, an attempt by the government to bring science into its defense program. Although mainly an advisory board, it was instrumental in the formation of a laboratory for the Navy that opened in 1923. During the war, Edison spent much of his time doing naval research, particularly on submarine detection, but he felt the Navy was not receptive to many of his inventions and suggestions. Health Issues In the 1920s, Edisons health became worse and he began to spend more time at home with his wife. His relationship with his children was distant, although Charles was president of Thomas A. Edison, Inc. While Edison continued to experiment at home, he could not perform some experiments that he wanted to at his West Orange laboratory because the board would not approve them. One project that held his fascination during this period was the search for an alternative to rubber. Death and Legacy Henry Ford, an admirer and a friend of Edisons, reconstructed Edisons invention factory as a museum at Greenfield Village, Michigan, which opened during the 50th anniversary of Edisons electric light in 1929. The main celebration of Lights Golden Jubilee, co-hosted by Ford and General Electric, took place in Dearborn along with a huge celebratory dinner in Edisons honor attended by notables such as President Hoover, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., George Eastman, Marie Curie, and Orville Wright. Edisons health, however, had declined to the point that he could not stay for the entire ceremony. During the last two years of his life, a series of ailments caused his health to decline even more until he lapsed into a coma on October 14, 1931. He died on October 18, 1931, at his estate, Glenmont, in West Orange, New Jersey. Sources Israel, Paul. Edison: A Life of Invention. New York, Wiley, 2000.Josephson, Matthew. Edison: A Biography. New York, Wiley, 1992.Stross, Randall E. The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2007. Biography of Thomas Edison, American Inventor Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847–October 18, 1931) was an American inventor who transformed the world with inventions including the lightbulb and the phonograph. He was considered the face of technology and progress in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Fast Facts: Thomas Edison Known For: Inventor of groundbreaking technology, including the lightbulb and the phonograph Born: February 11, 1847 in Milan, OhioParents: Sam Edison Jr. and Nancy Elliott EdisonDied: October 18, 1931 in West Orange, New JerseyEducation: Three months of formal education, homeschooled until age 12Published Works: Quadruplex telegraph, phonograph, unbreakable cylinder record called the Blue Ambersol, electric pen, a version of the incandescent lightbulb and an integrated system to run it, motion picture camera called a kinetographSpouse(s): Mary Stilwell, Mina MillerChildren: Marion Estelle, Thomas Jr., William Leslie by Mary Stilwell; and Madeleine, Charles, and Theodore Miller by Mina Miller Early Life Thomas Alva Edison was born to Sam and Nancy on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio, the son of a Canadian refugee and his schoolteacher wife. Edisons mother Nancy Elliott was originally from New York until her family moved to Vienna, Canada, where she met Sam Edison, Jr., whom she later married. Sam was the descendant of British loyalists who fled to Canada at the end of the American Revolution, but when he became involved in an unsuccessful revolt in Ontario in the 1830s he was forced to flee to the United States. They made their home in Ohio in 1839. The family moved to Port Huron, Michigan, in 1854, where Sam worked in the lumber business. Education and First Job Known as Al in his youth, Edison was the youngest of seven children, four of whom survived to adulthood, and all of them were in their teens when Edison was born. Edison tended to be in poor health when he was young and was a poor student. When a schoolmaster called Edison addled, or slow, his furious mother took him out of the school and proceeded to teach him at home. Edison said many years later, My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me, and I felt I had someone to live for, someone I must not disappoint. At an early age, he showed a fascination for mechanical things and chemical experiments. In 1859 at the age of 12, Edison took a job selling newspapers and candy on the Grand Trunk Railroad to Detroit. He started two businesses in Port Huron, a newsstand and a fresh produce stand, and finagled free or very low-cost trade and transport in the train. In the baggage car, he set up a laboratory for his chemistry experiments and a printing press, where he started the Grand Trunk Herald, the first newspaper published on a train. An accidental fire forced him to stop his experiments on board. Loss of Hearing Around the age of 12, Edison lost almost all of his hearing. There are several theories as to what caused this. Some attribute it to the aftereffects of scarlet fever, which he had as a child. Others blame it on a train conductor boxing his ears after Edison caused a fire in the baggage car, an incident Edison claimed never happened. Edison himself blamed it on an incident in which he was grabbed by his ears and lifted to a train. He did not let his disability discourage him, however, and often treated it as an asset since it made it easier for him to concentrate on his experiments and research. Undoubtedly, though, his deafness made him more solitary and shy in dealing with others. Telegraph Operator In 1862, Edison rescued a 3-year-old from a track where a boxcar was about to roll into him. The grateful father, J.U. MacKenzie, taught Edison railroad telegraphy as a reward. That winter, he took a job as a telegraph operator in Port Huron. In the meantime, he continued his scientific experiments on the side. Between 1863 and 1867, Edison migrated from city to city in the United States, taking available telegraph jobs. Love of Invention In 1868, Edison moved to Boston where he worked in the Western Union office and worked even more on inventing things. In January 1869 Edison resigned from his job, intending to devote himself full time to inventing things. His first invention to receive a patent was the electric vote recorder, in June 1869. Daunted by politicians reluctance to use the machine, he decided that in the future he would not waste time inventing things that no one wanted. Edison moved to New York City in the middle of 1869. A friend, Franklin L. Pope, allowed Edison to sleep in a room where he worked, Samuel Laws Gold Indicator Company. When Edison managed to fix a broken machine there, he was hired to maintain and improve the printer machines. During the next period of his life, Edison became involved in multiple projects and partnerships dealing with the telegraph. In October 1869, Edison joined with Franklin L. Pope and James Ashley to form the organization Pope, Edison and Co. They advertised themselves as electrical engineers and constructors of electrical devices. Edison received several patents for improvements to the telegraph. The partnership merged with the Gold and Stock Telegraph Co. in 1870. American Telegraph Works Edison also established the Newark Telegraph Works in Newark, New Jersey, with William Unger to manufacture stock printers. He formed the American Telegraph Works to work on developing an automatic telegraph later in the year. In 1874 he began to work on a multiplex telegraphic system for Western Union, ultimately developing a quadruplex telegraph, which could send two messages simultaneously in both directions. When Edison sold his patent rights to the quadruplex to the rival Atlantic Pacific Telegraph Co., a series of court battles followed—which Western Union won. Besides other telegraph inventions, he also developed an electric pen in 1875. Marriage and Family His personal life during this period also brought much change. Edisons mother died in 1871, and he married his former employee Mary Stilwell on Christmas Day that same year. While Edison loved his wife, their relationship was fraught with difficulties, primarily his preoccupation with work and her constant illnesses. Edison would often sleep in the lab and spent much of his time with his male colleagues. Nevertheless, their first child Marion was born in February 1873, followed by a son, Thomas, Jr., in January 1876. Edison nicknamed the two Dot and Dash, referring to telegraphic terms. A third child, William Leslie, was born in October 1878. Mary died in 1884, perhaps of cancer or the morphine prescribed to her to treat it. Edison married again: his second wife was Mina Miller, the daughter of Ohio industrialist Lewis Miller, who founded the Chautauqua Foundation. They married on February 24, 1886, and had three children, Madeleine (born 1888), Charles (1890), and Theodore Miller Edison (1898). Menlo Park Edison opened a new laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, in 1876. This site later become known as an invention factory, since they worked on several different inventions at any given time there. Edison would conduct numerous experiments to find answers to problems. He said, I never quit until I get what Im after. Negative results are just what Im after. They are just as valuable to me as positive results. Edison liked to work long hours and expected much from his employees. In 1879, after considerable experimentation and based on 70 years work of several other inventors, Edison invented a carbon filament that would burn for 40 hours—the first practical incandescent lightbulb. While Edison had neglected further work on the phonograph, others had moved forward to improve it. In particular, Chichester Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter developed an improved machine that used a wax cylinder and a floating stylus, which they called a graphophone. They sent representatives to Edison to discuss a possible partnership on the machine, but Edison refused to collaborate with them, feeling that the phonograph was his invention alone. With this competition, Edison was stirred into action and resumed his work on the phonograph in 1887. Edison eventually adopted methods similar to Bell and Tainters in his phonograph. Phonograph Companies The phonograph was initially marketed as a business dictation machine. Entrepreneur Jesse H. Lippincott acquired control of most of the phonograph companies, including Edisons, and set up the North American Phonograph Co. in 1888. The business did not prove profitable, and when Lippincott fell ill, Edison took over the management. In 1894, the North American Phonograph Co. went into bankruptcy, a move which allowed Edison to buy back the rights to his invention. In 1896, Edison started the National Phonograph Co. with the intent of making phonographs for home amusement. Over the years, Edison made improvements to the phonograph and to the cylinders which were played on them, the early ones being made of wax. Edison introduced an unbreakable cylinder record, named the Blue Amberol, at roughly the same time he entered the disc phonograph market in 1912. The introduction of an Edison disc was in reaction to the overwhelming popularity of discs on the market in contrast to cylinders. Touted as being superior to the competitions records, the Edison discs were designed to be played only on Edison phonographs and were cut laterally as opposed to vertically. The success of the Edison phonograph business, though, was always hampered by the companys reputation of choosing lower-quality recording acts. In the 1920s, competition from radio caused the business to sour, and the Edison disc business ceased production in 1929. Ore-Milling and Cement Another Edison interest was an ore milling process that would extract various metals from ore. In 1881, he formed the Edison Ore-Milling Co., but the venture proved fruitless as there was no market for it. He returned to the project in 1887, thinking that his process could help the mostly depleted Eastern mines compete with the Western ones. In 1889, the New Jersey and Pennsylvania Concentrating Works was formed, and Edison became absorbed by its operations and began to spend much time away from home at the mines in Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Although he invested much money and time into this project, it proved unsuccessful when the market went down, and additional sources of ore in the Midwest were found. Edison also became involved in promoting the use of cement and formed the Edison Portland Cement Co. in 1899. He tried to promote the widespread use of cement for the construction of low-cost homes and envisioned alternative uses for concrete in the manufacture of phonographs, furniture, refrigerators, and pianos. Unfortunately, Edison was ahead of his time with these ideas, as the widespread use of concrete proved economically unfeasible at that time. Motion Pictures In 1888, Edison met Eadweard Muybridge at West Orange and viewed Muybridges Zoopraxiscope. This machine used a circular disc with still photographs of the successive phases of movement around the circumference to recreate the illusion of movement. Edison declined to work with Muybridge on the device and decided to work on his motion picture camera at his laboratory. As Edison put it in a caveat written the same year, I am experimenting upon an instrument which does for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear. The task of inventing the machine fell to Edisons associate William K. L. Dickson. Dickson initially experimented with a cylinder-based device for recording images, before turning to a celluloid strip. In October 1889, Dickson greeted Edisons return from Paris with a new device that projected pictures and contained sound. After more work, patent applications were made in 1891 for a motion picture camera, called a Kinetograph, and a Kinetoscope, a motion picture peephole viewer. Kinetoscope parlors opened in New York and soon spread to other major cities during 1894. In 1893, a motion picture studio, later dubbed the Black Maria (the slang name for a police paddy wagon which the studio resembled), was opened at the West Orange complex. Short films were produced using a variety of acts of the day. Edison was reluctant to develop a motion picture projector, feeling that more profit was to be made with the peephole viewers. When Dickson assisted competitors on developing another peephole motion picture device and the eidoscope projection system, later to develop into the Mutoscope, he was fired. Dickson went on to form the American Mutoscope Co. along with Harry Marvin, Herman Casler, and Elias Koopman. Edison subsequently adopted a projector developed by Thomas Armat and Charles Francis Jenkins and renamed it the Vitascope and marketed it under his name. The Vitascope premiered on April 23, 1896, to great acclaim. Patent Battles Competition from other motion picture companies soon created heated legal battles between them and Edison over patents. Edison sued many companies for infringement. In 1909, the formation of the Motion Picture Patents Co. brought a degree of cooperation to the various companies who were given licenses in 1909, but in 1915, the courts found the company to be an unfair monopoly. In 1913, Edison experimented with synchronizing sound to film. A Kinetophone was developed by his laboratory and synchronized sound on a phonograph cylinder to the picture on a screen. Although this initially brought interest, the system was far from perfect and disappeared by 1915. By 1918, Edison ended his involvement in the motion picture field. In 1911, Edisons companies were re-organized into Thomas A. Edison, Inc. As the organization became more diversified and structured, Edison became less involved in the day-to-day operations, although he still had some decision-making authority. The goals of the organization became more to maintain market viability than to produce new inventions frequently. A fire broke out at the West Orange laboratory in 1914, destroying 13 buildings. Although the loss was great, Edison spearheaded the rebuilding of the lot. World War I When Europe became involved in World War I, Edison advised preparedness and felt that technology would be the future of war. He was named the head of the Naval Consulting Board in 1915, an attempt by the government to bring science into its defense program. Although mainly an advisory board, it was instrumental in the formation of a laboratory for the Navy that opened in 1923. During the war, Edison spent much of his time doing naval research, particularly on submarine detection, but he felt the Navy was not receptive to many of his inventions and suggestions. Health Issues In the 1920s, Edisons health became worse and he began to spend more time at home with his wife. His relationship with his children was distant, although Charles was president of Thomas A. Edison, Inc. While Edison continued to experiment at home, he could not perform some experiments that he wanted to at his West Orange laboratory because the board would not approve them. One project that held his fascination during this period was the search for an alternative to rubber. Death and Legacy Henry Ford, an admirer and a friend of Edisons, reconstructed Edisons invention factory as a museum at Greenfield Village, Michigan, which opened during the 50th anniversary of Edisons electric light in 1929. The main celebration of Lights Golden Jubilee, co-hosted by Ford and General Electric, took place in Dearborn along with a huge celebratory dinner in Edisons honor attended by notables such as President Hoover, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., George Eastman, Marie Curie, and Orville Wright. Edisons health, however, had declined to the point that he could not stay for the entire ceremony. During the last two years of his life, a series of ailments caused his health to decline even more until he lapsed into a coma on October 14, 1931. He died on October 18, 1931, at his estate, Glenmont, in West Orange, New Jersey. Sources Israel, Paul. Edison: A Life of Invention. New York, Wiley, 2000.Josephson, Matthew. Edison: A Biography. New York, Wiley, 1992.Stross, Randall E. The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2007.

The American Revolution Was A Political Disturbance That...

The American Revolution was a political disturbance that happened between 1765 and 1783 during which colonists in the Thirteen American Colonies disallowed the British monarchy and aristocracy. Which they then overthrew the authority of Great Britain, and founded the United States of America. Beginning in 1765, members of the American colonial society prohibited the authority of the British to tax them without colonial representatives in the government. The Patriot leadership professed the political values of liberalism and republicanism to discard monarchy and aristocracy, and proclaimed that all men are created equal. Congress rejected British plans requiring allegiance to the monarchy and rejection of independence. As a result of protests by colonists, there was the Boston Tea Party in 1773 during which patriots destroyed a batch of taxed tea from the Parliament which controlled and favored East India Company. The people wanted to be heard, they didn’t want to be controll ed. The colonists wanted a say in what goes on in their country because that’s why many came to America, they wanted to escape the harsh environment of the tyrants who lead their country. The American Revolution is a significant topic in U.S. history because it had meaning even outside the North American continent. Its success strengthened the thought of natural rights throughout the Western world. In a very real sense, it was an originator to the French Revolution. It made such an impact to many

Persuasive Essay The Toilet Paper - 711 Words

There’s a saying, it’s that the three necessities of life are food, shelter, and toilet paper. In 1890, when toilet paper was first put on a roll, was when the world truly started. Toilet paper is the best invention ever created because it gets us clean and fresh in seconds. Joseph Gayette was the man behind it all. His invention has and will be used in the world for hundreds and hundreds of years. It’s almost as if you didn’t even leave to do your business. Imagine a life without toilet paper, I just couldn’t do it. Toilet paper is so easy to get rid of, practically everywhere, and it’s clean and effective. Have you ever thought where it goes once you flush it? Once you flush, you never have to see it again. That’s unless you work at†¦show more content†¦The concept of toilet paper is genius. The concept allows us to grab, and rip of a piece without touching the next piece. No one wants to get gross bathroom germs. Common ill nesses, like a stomach bug, pass through bathrooms, and fungi like, athlete’s foot, occur in the bathroom from walking bare foot. Everyone gets the stomach bug at sometime, but most think of contracting the disease from being near someone that has it. In fact you get from being in a germ-filled bathroom. Imagine all of the times your mom told you to go wash your hands after you went to the bathroom, it’s because the bathroom can be a gross place. Things like toilet paper help us stay clean and reduce the amount of germs spread in the bathroom. Also, down there, it does a great job. I can walk around freely, after I do my business without worrying about stench, for I know toilet paper did a good job. I personally use Scott’s brand toilet paper, which I highly recommend. It’s very soft, and also very strong. Since, toilet paper is easy to dispose of, it’s everywhere, it’s one of the biggest marketed items, and a huge money maker, because you c an never have too much toilet paper. With a simple flush, toilet paper is gone. The simple design, is so well thought out, that germs don’t spread as much, as if they were in a container, like a tissue box. Where, when you go to grab the next piece you touch the box, and the next piece. You can’t go anywhere in the world withoutShow MoreRelatedOF MICE AND MEN ESSAY Libre2222 Words   |  9 PagesOf Mice And Men Essay Of mice and men essay State of California. essay writers salt lake city research paper writing chattanooga buy college ruled paper. 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Kant s Categorical Imperative For The Practice Of Modern...

Hamza Rafique 15 June 2014 Should Kant’s categorical imperative be supported in the practice of modern medicine? Introduction Immanuel Kant saw the importance of autonomy long before the field of medicine was as advanced as it is now through the second formulation of his categorical imperative: â€Å"Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end†. Kant recognises that it is autonomy that allows for self-actualisation and the manifestation of one’s identity through having the capacity to make self-governed choices. Therefore autonomy factor that gives humans the duty to treat each other as â€Å"ends† and to violate the†¦show more content†¦Kant provides us with these ethical guidelines however there are cases in medicine which illustrate that a physician’s expertise allows him to see that following a patient’s autonomous decision may lead to further suffering causing the health professional to take a paternalistic course of action. This e thical problem has lead me to investigate whether medical practice should uphold Kant’s categorical imperative, and if not where should we search for a way forward? I intend to analyse Kant’s ethics to see where its strengths and weaknesses lie when applied to the medical field before exploring other ethical theories in an attempt to find the most suitable means of decision making in medicine. I will use case studies to illustrate the point that Kant’s ethics, although perfect for an ideal world, does not work in the medical field, nor does a utilitarian approach. This leads us toward an intuitionist stance in order to keep the benefits of the categorical imperative offers us while maintaining applicability to medicine. How could the categorical imperative work in medicine? The categorical imperative does have strength in its principled and high minded nature that can be condensed down into the following three formulations: Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction.† â€Å"Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in

The Ethics of Consequences Utilitarianism

Questions: 1. Outline the reasons why utilitarian argue that under some circumstances lying can be justified ethically.2.Use this example to illustrate the difference between act and rule utilitarianism and discuss the objections to each position.3.Using examples discuss the possible strengths and weaknesses of consequentialism and when discussing lying in the context of youth work or human services work.4.Draw conclusions about whether consequentialism can ever justify lying to colleagues and clients in human services work. Answers: 1. There are a number of reasons that lying can be justified ethically under some of the circumstances. One of the examples for the same can be considered with the help of the police chief. It can be assumed that the police chief has been terrorized for a long time by a child rapist. If it is found that the rapist has did because of some circumstances. Now the fear of the rapist is the past, but they couldnt be convinced that he would be a rapist (Hinman, 2012). If the same policeman has arrested another person as a rapist who only has six months to live, will it be useful? The public will feel that the town is safer again. The man to be punished will die soon and he will also get the better care in the jail in comparison to the streets. The Utilitarian act may actually be useful in convicting the man though he was to die soon. Here the police has told lie to the people that there is no rapist in the town but it is justified as the people will live a better life. 2. The example of the policeman mentioned above is related to act utilitarian. Its objective is to ensure that the man is convicted. It is important to ensure that the Rule Utilitarian needs to ensure that the rules are applicable without qualification or if they have the specific qualification. The rule states that one should keep the promise made to the dead. Also, if the rule utilitarian believes that they can make the qualification in cases related to following the rule, it would lead to the bad consequences. For example: if someone breaks the promise which he made to the dead, they are someone who can think like an act utilitarian. The may also admit that they can disregard the rule when the utility demands the same. Thus, again act utilitarian seems to collapse. 3. Consequentialism is a completely normative ethical theory. This states that ethical action and the proposed method are considered important for deciding which act is the right and an ethical act. Strength of consequentialism is that it can be applied ubiquitously because each and every result have some of the consequences which can be measured. In addition to this, it can be applied systematically. In order to explain this, an example should be studied. Suppose, there is a group of people who are enslaved but are provided with some of the comforts such as house, nutritious food and good working hours (Hinman, 2012). Also, they have entertainment such as television, movies, music etc. for free for being a good slave. Because of this, the slaves dont feel discontent about their state in life. The masters on the other hand feel that they have slaves and are happy about them. But, the ultimate consequences of the act are that they are slaves. Also, slavery is something which cant be j ustified. 4. Consequentialism is something in which the results only lie on the final consequences of any incident. This is important to be considered as it can help the people to live their life in a proper manner. If the people are constantly under fears and tension, they will not be happy. But lying to the colleagues and clients in the human services work can be useful in many ways. References Hinman, L. (2012).Ethics: A pluralistic approach to moral theory. Nelson Education.

Episode Mining and Genetic Algorithm - MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Episode Mining and Genetic Algorithm. Answer: Introduction: PepsiCo, Inc, Netflix, Inc, and Tesla Motors Inc is mainly identified as the overall stocks, which will be evaluated to identify its financial viability and detect investment scope. In addition, the adequate financial ratios are calculated to identify current position of the company and the risk involved in Investments. The companies selected from the portfolio are PepsiCo, Inc, Netflix, Inc, and Tesla Motors Inc, which would be further research to identify the investment scope in the company. the selected stocks are relevantly diversified, as the industry of chosen companies ranges from entertainment, beverages and automobile. The diversification is relatively high, as the companies does not fall under the same industry, which helps in spreading the risk from investment. The further research on the company would eventually help in identifying its current position and future scope, which is essential for continuing investing in the selected stocks (Lan, Lin and Lin 2015). Financial ratios are evaluated as follows for the selected companies. PepsiCo, Inc: PepsiCo, Inc 2015 2016 2017 Operating Margin 13.25% 15.58% 16.54% Debt/Equity 2.46 2.67 3.06 Quick Ratio 1.05 1.08 1.29 Gross Margin 54.44% 55.08% 54`69% The overall financial ratios of PepsiCo mainly depict the Company's financial strength which has improved over the fiscal years. the increment in operating margin and gross margin mainly state the financial capability of the organization to generate higher returns from its operations. Moreover, the quick ratio of the company has improved radically from 1.05 to 1.29. However, the depth to equity ratio has a relatively increased in three fiscal years, which increases the concern regarding insolvency (Reuters.com 2018). Netflix, Inc: Netflix, Inc 2015 2016 2017 Operating Margin 4.51% 4.30% 7.17% Debt/Equity 1.07 1.26 1.81 Gross Margin 32.27% 31.72% 34.49% Quick Ratio 0.65 0.38 0.52 The financial ratios of Netflix indicate the increasing stability of the organization in achieving higher returns from investment. However, the quick ratio has declined, while the debt to equity ratio has increased, which indicate the deteriorating financial position of the organization in the three fiscal years (Reuters.com 2018). Tesla Motors Inc: Tesla Motors Inc 2015 2016 2017 Quick Ratio 0.48 0.67 0.51 Operating Margin -17.71% -9.53% -13.88% Debt/Equity 1.91 1.26 2.22 Gross Margin 22.82% 22.85% 18.90% The financial position of Tesla Motors has a relatively indicated the deteriorating condition of the company over the period of three fiscal years. The financial ratios such as operating margin, gross margin and quick ratio as a relatively deteriorated over the period of the analysis, which indicates the rising problems of the organization. The rising debt to equity ratio also adds on to the deterioration in financial position of the company (Reuters.com 2018). The selection of stocks is relatively based on Instinct, as companies that are chosen for investment is the market leader of their segment. The emotional level is relatively used for selecting the stocks such as Tesla Motors for investment, who is incurring losses in their operations. Due to the emotional decision the overall investment risk in the portfolio is relatively increased, as Tesla motor Incs financial position has relatively deteriorated over the period. Investment was conducted on the basis of instinct rather than logical conditioning, where the aim was to maximize returns from companies that are market leader in their sector. Some of the researchers mentioned that maximum of the investors relies on trend to identify investment opportunity, which is mainly seen by companies that have adequate market cap in the capital market (Gottschlich and Hinz 2014). The evaluation of competitors position against the company is conducted as follows. PepsiCo, Inc: CompanyName Market Cap Close price P/E-Ratio Pepsico, Inc. 155,139,148 $ 109.26 32.42 National Beverage Corp. 4,113,244 $ 88.25 28.93 The competitive condition of PepsiCo can be identified from the above table, which depicts the overall rising competitive edge of the Company against its peers. the market cap, close price, and P/E ratio of the company is relatively higher than its competitor, which depicts the demand among potential investors (Reuters.com 2018). Netflix, Inc: CompanyName Market Cap Close price P/E-Ratio Netflix, Inc. 127,428,830 $ 293.65 234.92 Best Buy Co., Inc. 20,084,003 $ 71.04 21.66 From the evaluation Netflix is detected to have the highest competitive edge against peers, as the close price, market cap, and P/E ratio of the organization is relatively higher than its competitors. This rising competitive edge is making Netflix the market leader in the entertainment sector of US (Reuters.com 2018). Tesla Motors Inc: CompanyName Market Cap Close price P/E-Ratio Tesla, Inc. 51,311,139 $ 303.76 N/E Toyota Motor Corp Ltd Ord 2,993,076 $ 127.80 8.94 From the overall evaluation the P ratio of Tesla Inc is relatively not present in the current data of Nasdaq, which is due to the losses incurred by the organization. However, the competitiveness of the company has not deteriorated against its competitors, as the market cap and close price of Tesla Inc is relatively higher than Toyota Motor Corp. This relatively indicates that the competitiveness of Tesla is a relatively high, as they have the maximum share value in comparison to its competitors (Reuters.com 2018). CompanyName Close price 52 Weeks High-Low Pepsico, Inc. $ 109.260 $122.51/$105.938 Netflix, Inc. $ 293.650 $333.98/$138.66 Tesla, Inc. $ 303.76 $389.61/$244.5901 From the evaluation of above table relevant future prices of the organizations can be identified, as maximum of the stocks are not close to the 52 weeks high. This relatively indicates the possibility of rising prices, which could increase over the period of investment. Companies such as PepsiCo, Inc, Netflix, Inc, and Tesla Motors Inc are mainly evaluated from the above table, whose share prices relatively low. The detection of 52 weeks high and 52 weeks low mainly allows investors to understand the trend of a particular stock, which would eventually help in making adequate investment decisions (Lin, Huang and Tseng 2017). Therefore, from the evaluation of above table it could be identified that there is adequate scope Investments in PepsiCo, Inc, Netflix, Inc, and Tesla Motors Inc. Conclusion: The assessment mainly analyses the share price movement of PepsiCo, Inc, Netflix, Inc, and Tesla Motors Inc. which could eventually help in identifying the investment scope in these stocks. The ratio evaluation directly helps in detecting the investment scope of the selected company, which could eventually help in generating higher returns from investment. Reference and Bibliography: Chau, M., 2016.Method that forms investment strategy to invest and withdraw a company's stock or fund. U.S. Patent Application 14/804,359. Chui, A.C. and Titman, S., 2017. Investor Composition and Stock Return Patterns: A Study of Momentum in the Chinese A-and B-Shares Markets. Eng, W.K., Shukor, N.E.S.A., Ismail, N.R. and Halim, S.A., 2017. Golden cross as Buying Indicator for Stock Investment in Bursa Malaysia.Terengganu International Finance and Economics Journal (TIFEJ),2(2), pp.94-102. Gottschlich, J. and Hinz, O., 2014. A decision support system for stock investment recommendations using collective wisdom.Decision support systems,59, pp.52-62. He, L.M., Chen, S.D., Zhang, Z., Hu, Y. and Jiang, H.Y., 2016. A Decision Tree Model for Meta-Investment Strategy of Stock Based on Sector Rotating. InFSDM(pp. 194-207). Lan, Y.W., Lin, D. and Lin, L., 2015. Cointegration analysis of tourism demand by Mainland China in Taiwan and stock investment strategy.Journal of Economic Financial Studies,3(05), pp.01-09. Lin, Y.F., Huang, C.F. and Tseng, V.S., 2017. A novel methodology for stock investment using high utility episode mining and genetic algorithm.Applied Soft Computing,59, pp.303-315. Reuters.com. (2018).${Instrument_CompanyName} ${Instrument_Ric} Quote| Reuters.com. [online] U.S. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview/NFLX.OQ [Accessed 10 Apr. 2018]. Reuters.com. (2018).${Instrument_CompanyName} ${Instrument_Ric} Company Profile | Reuters.com. [online] U.S. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/companyProfile/PEP.O [Accessed 10 Apr. 2018]. Reuters.com. (2018).${Instrument_CompanyName} ${Instrument_Ric} Quote| Reuters.com. [online] U.S. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview/TSLA.OQ [Accessed 10 Apr. 2018]. Sun, S.L., 2016. A Decision Tree Model for Meta-Investment Strategy of Stock Based on Sector Rotating.Fuzzy Systems and Data MiningII: Proceedings of FSDM 2016,293, p.194. Vasconcellos, L.L.M., Wlademir, P., Vincius, A.D.L.M. and Joo, L.R., 2015. Analysis of the implementation of a stock investment strategy based on a decision aid tool.Contadura y Administracin,60(1), pp.113-144.