Blood Diamond Essay Example for Free

Blood Diamond Essay The makers of â€Å"Blood Diamond,† an exceptionally thriller starring a most excellent Leonardo DiCaprio, want you to know there may be blood on your hands, specifically your wedding finger. The story involves so-called conflict diamonds, illicitly mined stones that have been used to finance some of the most vicious wars in Africa. If films were judged solely by their good intentions, this one would be best in show. Instead, gilded in money and dripping with sanctimony, confused and mindlessly contradictory, the film is a textbook example of how easily commercialism can trump do-goodism, particularly in Hollywood. The 2006 movie (Blood Diamond) was recently seen by me, this is an American political war thriller film produced and directed by Edward Zwick, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly and Djimon Hounsou. The title refers to blood diamonds, which are diamonds mined in African war zones and sold to finance conflicts, and thereby profit warlords and diamond companies across the world. During Sierra Leone Civil War in 1996–2001, the film shows a country torn apart by the struggle between government soldiers and rebels. It also portrays many of the atrocities of that war, including the rebels amputation of peoples hands to discourage them from voting in upcoming elections. The films ending, in which a conference is held concerning blood diamonds, is in reference to an actual meeting that took place in Kimberley, South Africa in 2000 and led to the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, which seeks to certify the origin of rough diamonds in order to curb the trade in conflict diamonds. In the face of the evidence, it is impossible to list any benefits for blood diamonds. They have been condemned by the United Nations. The sheer scale of the civil war in Sierra Leone they helped to fund, in which an estimated 120,000 people were killed from 1991 to 2001, proves that these illegitimate diamonds do nothing but cause human suffering. In February 2011, Charles Taylors trial before the Special Court for Sierra Leone heard that he received mayonnaise jars full of blood diamonds from the Revolutionary United Front, providing them with the arms they needed in return. The U. S. appens to be the largest consumer of conflict diamonds, purchasing over $33. 7 billion dollars’ worth of the rocks in 2005. Wondering what conflict diamonds are? I’m no fawning fan of DiCaprio, but the film â€Å"Blood Diamond† is nowhere near as fictional as we’d like it to be. Conflict diamonds involve abuse, corruption and death. There goes that gorgeous, shimmery, sparkling stone set in platinum I’ve been dreaming about. This movie and together with some other researches I did has made me to come into a conclusion and a question if I would ever wear a diamond. Here are important reasons, We’ve been conditioned to want a diamond. Who isn’t tired of the advertising and marketing ploys used to brainwash us into believing our value as women rests on the size of our†¦gem? (Toss that in with measurements and marital status and we’ve got an endless supply of not-good-enough. ) Marketers have thrown us a giant, glittering bone, and watched the profits pile up as we’ve chased, fetched and rolled over in order to conform to what we’ve been conditioned to believe is the only acceptable standard. Diamond prices have been artificially inflated by the diamond cartel. The average diamond sold in the U. S. has been over-graded in quality by 2 grades, and the average U. S. couple pays twice what they should for an engagement ring. Do i really want to enter into a lifelong commitment with a man who’s willing to waste his hard-earned cash on a diamond, especially when said diamond is ridiculously overpriced? Diamond mines damage the environment. This is important, even though it’s true of all types of mining, not just diamond mining. Mines are dangerous for workers (including children) and threaten our planet, too. I wish there were a way to dig that deep without so much damage. A diamond is not forever. Nothing is forever. Engagements, marriages, jobs, you name it. If they happen to last a long time, then you are indeed a very lucky person. Why do we kid ourselves into believing that a sparkling rock, delivered to us on the backs of the abused, purchased for more than it’s worth, marketed for more than it means and obtained at the expense of our own dear planet will keep love alive?.

Mathematics Technology Lesson Plan :: essays research papers

NTeQ Lesson Plan Project Title: Developing Time Management Unit Topic: Statistics and Data Collection Grade Level: High School (9th-12th) Overview: Students all over the world seem to battle with time management. Many students are involved in extra-curricular activities, or they work while they attend school. Therefore, they not only have the burden of the everyday school assignments, they have several responsibilities outside of school itself. This project will allow students to communicate with students from other tellecollaborating classrooms to discuss the issue of expectations versus time and create a project on their data. This project will provide the opportunity to research topics on how our lifestyles affect our health. Another important aspect of this project is to propose ideas for why we are so constricted by time and if our time constraints have changed over the years. The project will take three weeks to complete and it will address content in mathematics, health, history, and language arts. The students will be responsible for developing their own questions in the survey they will conduct. The surveys will need to be word processed. They will survey a variety of people asking fellow students how much time they spend various activities each day. The students will then classify the information into categories they feel are important. These categories can be discussed with the tellecollaborating classrooms for further input. Once they have collected sufficient data they will present the information on a spreadsheet through a program like Microsoft Excel. After analyzing the data the students will research the information they found through resources such as the library and/or Internet. Once the students have gained sufficient knowledge from their research they will need to develop a paper/presentation on the effects of time constraints and how it has changed through out the years. They can begin by organizing their ideas using concept map software. In displaying the data t he student will have the opportunity to develop a PowerPoint presentation. Objectives: Students will be able to: †¢Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Collect data and present ideas that support the data. †¢Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Present the data in the form of a spreadsheet. †¢Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Analyze data to support and draw conclusions. †¢Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Classify information. †¢Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Identify ways to collect information. †¢Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Express data and interpretation of data in a presentation. †¢Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Expand their understanding of mathematics in real world settings. †¢Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Understand and interpret graphs and charts. Benchmarks/Standards: Patterns, Relationships and Functions (Strand I, Standard I, and Benchmark II) Analyze, interpret and translate among representations of patterns including tables, charts, graphs, matrices and vectors. Patterns, Relationships and Functions

Deceit and Sexual Women’s Sexual Sins in Dante’s Inferno

Dante’s representations of women and feminine sexuality in the Inferno show contrasts within the various natures of women and their sexuality. His era’s vision of the perfect woman one that idealized beauty, passiveness and purity is represented by his life long love Beatrice. This ideal and its representation in Beatrice are contrasted with the dark depictions of women, their sexual sins, devious devices, and evil act, which Dante encounters in hell. This paper will argue that the severity of condemnation in hell for women’s sexual sins is related to the increasing degrees of deceit. Dante’s perspective of the evil side of femininity becomes apparent from the opening of the inferno. Dante, in midlife, strays from his path into a â€Å"dark wood,† where he is able to see a bright mountain. In his quest to reach his goal, he is thwarted and driven deeper into the wood by the ravenous and promiscuous she-wolf described as â€Å"She tracks down all, kills all and knows no glut, but, feeding she grows hungrier than she was. She mates with any beast† Canto1, lines 92-95 [i] The she-wolf portrays the worst characteristics of women; she reflects lust, pride and avarice. These traits and characteristics are a foreshadowing of the sins possessed by the many women whom Dante will later encounter. This monster is contrasted by Dante’s feminine ideal, his true love Beatrice. She reflects a divine love sent by the purest of women, the Virgin Mary, and even asks Virgil to guide Dante through the hell. Her motivation is clear â€Å"It is I Beatrice, who send you to him I come from the blessed height for which I yearn. Love called me here. Canto 2 lines 70-73[ii] It is her love that provides Dante with the courage to move through Hell and onto the path of God’s light. In many ways, she is his personal savior. Divine, virginal and pure in nature, Beatrice is the perfect woman and all feminine creatures or monsters within Hell are her contrasting antitheses. In the second circle, that of â€Å"the carnal† or lustful we find various famous lovers from throughout history buffeted about in a whirlwind of an endless storm. â€Å"And this, I learned, was the never ending flight Of this who sinned the flesh, the carnal and lusty Who betrayed reason to their appetite. Canto 5, 37-40 [iii] The women condemned to this level of hell knowingly lived their lives in tempestuous adultery and in whirlwind romances, deceiving the men in their lives. When Dante asks who is condemned here, Virgil mentions famous lovers from throughout history. For instance, Virgil mentions first the Empress Semiramis, the perverse Assyrian queen who legalized incest in her kingdom[iv] :â€Å"Lust and law were her one decree† Canto 5, 57[v] There as well are the adulter ers Cleopatra, Helen (of Troy), and Dido, the Carthaginian queen who, when jilted by her love, commits suicide[vi],[vii]. The overwhelming impression given by the emphasis on women is that they are deceitful and at fault in these relationships. It is as if the men were simply swept along like dry leaves by the wind of lust or love. Dante then speaks to two lovers there called Francesca da Rimini and her brother in-law Paolo Malatesta, illicit lovers murdered by Gianciotto Malatesta Francesca’s husband. [viii] They explain that they fell in love reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere, which was so romantic that they developed feelings for one another. They present themselves as victims of the love’s trials, but there is more to this story than what they contest, for the marriage of Francesca to her husband was necessitated as a peace pact between two warring clans- the Rimini and the Ravina[ix]. The traditional story is that the wedding was arranged, and the handsome and dashing Paulo was initially used to deceive her from learning the identity of the true spouse, Gianciotto â€Å"the cripple,† but on the wedding night, Francesca learns the truth. On their deaths Paulo was a fifty-year old father of two sons and Francesca was a mother of a nine year old daughter[x]. This love was clearly more than a moment of weakness or a whirlwind romance because it clearly was a lengthy affair. The start of this relationship was based on deception and they may believe that this is a sin of love, and they would be naively deceiving themselves by accepting little to no responsibility for their actions. Their greatest desire in life was to be together in a whirlwind love; ironically, this has become their fate. Dante the pilgrim moves on through the layers of hell, seeing or meeting other women who represent other degrees of sin. Entering the eighth circle of hell, the circle of frau, in Canto 18, he enters the second malebolige of this level, reserved for the flatters. Here, he sees a woman scratching and scraping herself while she swims in a grotesque pool of excrement. Virgil informs him that: â€Å"It is the whore Thaius who told her lover When he sent to ask her, ‘Do you thank me much? ’ ‘Much? Nay, past all believing! Canto 18 lines 131-133[xi] Thais once was a beautiful courtesan, but she was a woman of degraded sexuality, who prostituted herself with both her body and her speech. She was a whore, who teased, seduced and sold herself to many men for her own gains. Her greatest sin that consigned her to wallow in this pool of feces, deeper in hell than the forlorn lovers, was not her pandering of bodily desires, but her intentional deceit through the â€Å"prostit ution of words†[xii]. She was a victim of the salacious flattery she offered her lovers the while among the living. More sinful than her exploitation of men through sex without love was the overwhelming and ridiculously insincere compliments that she gave men; those lies are now represented by the feces in which she exists. In one of the deepest pits of the underworld, as Dante moves through the eighth circle of hell and the tenth malebolige, he moves through the pit of falsifiers and the evil impersonators. There, he encounters Myrrha, the mother of Adonis. She is running about, much like an insane, vampiric beast, pale, naked and unclean, snapping her teeth as she runs by. Virgil tells him that â€Å"that ancient shade in time above Was Myrrha, vicious daughter of Cinyras Who loved her father with more than rightful love. he falsified another’s form and came Disguised to sin with him just as that other Who runs with her in order that he might claim The fabulous lead-mare† Canto 30 lines 37-43[xiii] Myrrha is dammed in one of the deepest pits of hell for her incestuous relationship with her father, King Cinyras. Her intentional betrayal of her father the king, through her disguise as another lover to seduce her father, is a premeditated act of sexual treachery. This disturbingly lustful act of deceit leaves her pursuing flesh, much like she did her father in life. The corrupt world of Dante’s Inferno allows sinners to get a perverted version of what they sought through out their lives. Dante’s true love, Beatrice, is a pure and virginal woman, which is a contrast to the women committed to hell. The depths of hell that these women are condemned to for their sexual sins are the result of the deceit with which they acted. The more deceitful and heinous the act or treachery, the more severe the punishment and the deeper that woman is in hell.

Personal Narrative My Life Changing Experience - 1368 Words

Manan Sood Jon Inglett, Stacey Paugh English Composition 1- 1113 February 15, 2014 My Life Changing Experience When I was 13 years old, my parents started to think about moving to United States because my dad was already working here for a company. We started all the immigration related process which took a while to end. When I was 14, one day I came back from school and my parents told me we were moving to US in 2-3 months. When I heard it first, I was happy, but later I started thinking about how I will be leaving everything behind. My family, friends and neighbors whom I have been with since I was little, I will be leaving all of them in a few months. As the date approached closer, we started to pack more and more things. There was†¦show more content†¦As we finally landed in America, I felt different. I was walking around in airport and observing everything. I saw different people, heard some languages that I have heard. Different people, environment and food made me think that I don’t belong here. When I was at the airport, I was watching TV. W hile I was listening to the person speaking on TV, I was thinking that I am not even able to follow what he was saying because my English was weak and he was talking really fast for me. When I sneezed, a person sitting next to me said some thing to me and then I started wondering what that person said, so I asked my dad and he told me that the person said â€Å"Bless you† because I sneezed. Then we were supposed to go to St. Louis because we were in the New York Airport. So we started to board the plane and it took off, and then instead of landing in St. Louis we landed in Canada. After we got off the plane we went to the questioning desk and the employee said that we were in Canada. Then my dad asked him about how we landed in Canada and she said she doesn’t know and she told us that she was going to contact the people in New York that why did we land in Canada. After contacting the New York airport, she told us that they were going to get us to St. Louis for free. We finally came to St. Louis and I relaxed for some time after the journey of about 25 hours. Then my dad enrolled me in a school. On the first day of my school, I was soShow MoreRelatedNarrative Therapy1612 Words   |  7 PagesNarrative therapy is a family counseling approach that continues to evolve and gain popularity in the field of therapy (Chang Nylund, 2013). Given the continued strides of narrative therapy this is a family counseling approach worthy of research. This paper will detail the beginnings of narrative therapy and those responsible for its development. 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