Humanity Of Science Fiction Humanity - 1877 Words

Humanity in Science Fiction The human experience can be well characterized by certain parts of the media we create. We reflect what we feel and face in our lives, in what we create, especially in our music and writing. The science fiction we create is especially reflective of these things, because it is often written in a way that explores the human condition as it is and as it may be in the future. These pieces of media do more than demonstrate the ideas of those who create them, they provide us with insight into the state of society at the time they were produced, allowing us to see the themes that are constant over the centuries. One of these themes is the struggle we face between the drive to do what we see as right and the instinct to†¦show more content†¦One example of this is the fixation the main character, Valentine Michael Smith, seems to have with the breasts of Jill, who happens to be the only female lead in the story. This fascination is played off as scientific curiosity, Smith was raised on mars and has never seen a human woman before, and the first reference to it may well be, but it is reinforced repeatedly despite not truly being important to the plot. This is actually a subtle way to undermine Jill’s status as a main character, sexualizing her without reason to detract from the potential she has as a part of the story. Acknowledging this for the sleight it is, allows us to see the prevalence of this throughout our media and our daily lives, even today. One of the darker parts of humanity is the tendency of the dominant group to find subtle ways to keep other groups from advancing, often my making them into objects and stereotypes in media. This is something we have been fighting as long as we have existed as a society, and we are still fighting it today. The video gaming industry is one of the more modern forms of media to fall prey to this attack on minorities. The Mass Effect series, for example, is one of the most popular sci-fi game franchises in the world. Set in the future of humanity, when humans have discovered a way to travel between galaxies, and that we are one of the latest intelligent species toShow MoreRelatedA Compare and Contrast of Horror and Science Fiction/Fantasy Genres1777 Words   |  7 Pagesproven to be as timeless as another genre: Science Fiction/Fantasy. At first, these two genres might at times seem similar as they have at several occasions been blended together, but their basic, common theme serves dif ferent meanings about humans. I shall compare and contrast these two genres and focus on both classic films and modern films. From the Horror genre perspective I shall discuss Psycho (1960) and The Mist (2007), while in the Science Fiction/Fantasy genre I will examine 2001: A SpaceRead MoreScience Fiction, And, Star Wars And The Time Machine1487 Words   |  6 PagesScience fiction, a genre which has elapsed over decades in the industry, has gained many followers in its several forms of media. Science fiction, in the same sense, has also been analyzed for its value and has received many â€Å"Authorities† in the sense that these individuals allow for a more comprehensive look at this type of genre. Different types of subgenres have emerged due to the enhancement of â€Å"New Trains of Thought† produced by these â€Å"Authorities† and have taken this genre into a new perspectiveRead MoreInsight Into the Past and Present with Science Fiction 0.4 by Mike Lanceste r574 Words   |  3 PagesThrough analysing science fictions texts, it is clear that they emphasise the past and present issues of humanity by exaggerating their subsequent consequences in the future. 0.4 by Mike Lancester is a science fiction text which evidently represents the discrimination inflicted upon the ‘inferior’ races by the more ‘superior’ races. As this aspect of discrimination has occurred in the past, such as the racism faced by Aboriginal people, Lancester gives us an insight into the past of humanity. FurthermoreRead MoreAnalysis Of Isaac Asimovs The Last Question1002 Words   |  5 PagesThe genre of science fiction combines the wonder of mankind’s capacity to explore the great unknown within us all and a writer’s ability to take readers beyond the farthest reaches of time and space. H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, and Edgar Rice Burroghs continue to be recognized today for their contributions in the creation of the science ficti on genre for their roles as fathers of science fiction, introducing the literary heroics of mankind from the inky-black depths of uncharted seas to the horrorsRead More Pollution and Environment Essay - Man Has No Responsibility to the Environment1455 Words   |  6 Pagesenvironmental morality. These questions presuppose that there is something which unites all of humanity under a common banner. In fact, there is not. Over time, there have been many explanations of the crucial difference between humans and other animals -- and all have failed in some sense. Any definition of humanity is bound to either exclude some people or to simply restate the question. For instance, humanity has frequently been defined as the rational animal. (This definition was first formalizedRead MoreThe Science Fiction Film Genre Essay1683 Words   |  7 PagesScience Fiction Films The science fiction film genre has been around almost as long as movies have, but like the cinema it is still a fairly young art form. This genre came into existence shortly after the invention of the movie camera in 1888 and has endured for over one-hundred years. Science fiction is adaptive; it changes with the times and this trend can be seen in its incorporation of other genres, cultural history and technology. This essay will attempt to define the genre, chronicle the historyRead More The novel Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro740 Words   |  3 PagesSeveral years ago a novel was written that threw the science fiction genre on its head because of the way that it tells the story and twists the ideas of typical book genres. The novel Never Let Me Go, a story by acclaimed author Kazuo Ishiguro is about a young lady and her friends, figuring out who they are from adolescence to adulthood. While at first this may seem a typical coming of age story, the novel starts to turn into a science fiction story and goes back again and forces readers to changeRead MoreA Comparison of the Themes of Blade Runner and Brave New World1480 Words   |  6 PagesBrave New World ‘Humanity likes to think of itself as more sophisticated than the wild yet it cannot really escape its need for the natural world’ Despite different contexts both Aldous Huxley within his book Brave New World and Ridley Scott in the film Blade Runner explore the idea that humans feel themselves more sophisticated than the natural world, yet are able to completely sever relations between humanity and the nature. Through various techniquesRead MoreBook Report On The Steampunk Genre1274 Words   |  6 PagesNautilus than in the hands of the natives.†(Verne 89) The genre is adventure, science fiction, it is adventure because the entire book they are exploring the unknown.The science is because it is said to be some of the beginning of the â€Å"steampunk â€Å"genre. The Steampunk genre is a version of science fiction in which the machinery, mainly is based off steam powered type of machinery rather than the high tech machinery.The book is fiction because the book is not based off of anything that happened in real lifeRead MoreFarenheit451/Gattaca, Relationship Between Man and Machine1243 Words   |  5 PagesENGLISH ESSAY Science fiction is a genre of fiction revolving around science and technology, usually conveying the dystopian alternative future context, the pessimistic resultant of society. Ray Bradbury s Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and Andrew Niccols Gattaca (1997) both explore the values and concerns of human existence. Despite the difference in context, Gattaca and Fahrenheit 451 both extrapolate the relationship between man and machine in a metaphorical sense. Both pose similar dystopian concepts

Romanticism in Art History From 1800-1880

Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor in exact truth, but in a way of feeling. -- Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) Right there, courtesy of Baudelaire, you have the first and largest problem with Romanticism: it is nearly impossible to concisely define what it was. When we talk about Romanticism the Movement, we arent using the root word romance in the sense of hearts and flowers or infatuation. Instead, we use romance in the sense of glorification. Romantic visual and literary artists glorified things ... which takes us to thorny problem number two: the things they glorified were hardly ever physical. They glorified huge, complex concepts such as liberty, survival, ideals, hope, awe, heroism, despair, and the various sensations that nature evokes in humans. All of these are felt—and felt on an individual, highly subjective level. Aside from promoting intangible ideas, Romanticism may also be loosely defined by what it stood against. The movement championed spiritualism over science, instinct over deliberation, nature over industry, democracy over subjugation, and the rusticity over the aristocracy. Again, these are all concepts open to extremely personalized interpretation. How Long Was the Movement? Keep in mind that Romanticism affected literature and music, as well as visual art. The German Sturm und Drang movement (the late 1760s to early 1780s) was predominantly revenge-driven literary and minor-key musically but led to a handful of visual artists painting terrifying scenes. Romantic art truly got underway at the turn of the century and had its greatest number of practitioners for the next 40 years. If you are taking notes, that is an 1800 to 1840 heyday. As with any other movement, though, there were artists who were young when Romanticism was old. Some of them stuck with the movement until their respective ends, while others retained aspects of Romanticism as they moved in new directions. It is not really too much of a stretch to say 1800-1880 and cover all of the hold-outs like Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1805-1873). After that point Romantic painting was definitely stone cold dead, even though the movement brought about lasting changes going forward. Emotional Emphasis The paintings of the Romantic period were emotional powder kegs. Artists expressed as much feeling and passion as could be loaded on to a canvas. A landscape had to evoke a mood, a crowd scene had to show expressions on every face, an animal painting had to depict some, preferably majestic, trait of that animal. Even portraits were not totally straightforward representations -- the sitter would be given eyes meant to be mirrors of the soul, a smile, a grimace, or a certain tilt of the head. With little touches, the artist could portray his subject surrounded by an atmosphere of innocence, madness, virtue, loneliness, altruism or greed. Current Events In addition to the emotionally-charged feelings one got from looking at Romantic paintings, contemporary viewers were usually quite knowledgeable of the story behind the subject matter. Why? Because the artists frequently took their inspiration from current events. For example, when Thà ©odore Gà ©ricault unveiled his gigantic masterpiece The Raft of the Medusa (1818-19), the French public was already well acquainted with the gory details following the 1816 shipwreck of the naval frigate Mà ©duse. Similarly, Eugà ¨ne Delacroix painted Liberty Leading the People (1830) fully aware that every adult in France was already familiar with the July Revolution of 1830. Of course, not every Romantic work related to current events. For those that did, however, the benefits were a receptive, informed viewership, and increased name recognition for their creators. Lack of Unifying Style, Technique, or Subject Matter Romanticism wasnt like Rococo art, in which fashionable, attractive people engaged in fashionable, attractive pastimes while courtly love lurked around every corner -- and all of these goings-on were captured in a light-hearted, whimsical style. Instead, Romanticism included William Blakes disquieting apparition The Ghost of a Flea (1819-20), sitting in close chronological proximity to John Constables comfortably rural landscape The Hay Wain (1821). Pick a mood, any mood, and there was some Romantic artist that conveyed it on canvas. Romanticism wasnt like Impressionism, where everyone concentrated on painting the effects of light using loose brushwork. Romantic art ranged from the smooth-as-glass, highly-detailed, monumental canvas Death of Sardanapalus (1827) by Eugà ¨ne Delacroix, to J. M. W. Turners indistinct watercolor washes in The Lake of Zug (1843), and everything in between. The technique was all over the map; execution was completely up to the artist. Romanticism wasnt like Dada, whose artists were making specific statements about WWI and/or the pretentious absurdities of the Art World. Romantic artists were apt to make statements about anything (or nothing), dependent on how an individual artist felt about any given topic on any given day. Francisco de Goyas work explored madness and oppression, while Caspar David Friedrich found endless inspiration in moonlight and fog. The will of the Romantic artist had the final say on the subject matter. Influences of Romanticism The most direct influence of Romanticism was Neoclassicism, but there is a twist to this. Romanticism was a type of reaction to Neoclassicism, in that Romantic artists found the rational, mathematical, reasoned elements of classical art (i.e.: the art of Ancient Greece and Rome, by way of the Renaissance) too confining. Not that they didnt borrow heavily from it when it came to things like perspective, proportions, and symmetry. No, the Romantics kept those parts. It was just that they ventured beyond the prevailing Neoclassic sense of calm rationalism to inject a heaping helping of drama. Movements Romanticism Influenced The best example is the American Hudson River School, which got underway in the 1850s. Founder Thomas Cole, Asher Durand, Frederic Edwin Church, et. al., were directly influenced by European Romantic landscapes. Luminism, an offshoot of the Hudson River School, also focused on Romantic landscapes. The Dà ¼sseldorf School, which concentrated on imaginative and allegorical landscapes, was a direct descendant of German Romanticism. Certain Romantic artists made innovations that later movements incorporated as crucial elements. John Constable (1776-1837) had a tendency to use tiny brushstrokes of pure pigments to emphasize dappled light in his landscapes. He discovered that, when viewed from a distance, his dots of color merged. This development was taken up with great enthusiasm by the Barbizon School, the Impressionists, and the Pointillists. Constable and, to a much greater degree, J. M. W. Turner often produced studies and finished works that were abstract art in everything but name. They heavily influenced the first practitioners of modern art beginning with Impressionism -- which in turn influenced nearly every modernist movement that followed it. Visual Artists Associated With Romanticism Antoine-Louis BaryeWilliam BlakeThà ©odore Chassà ©riauJohn ConstableJohn Sell CotmanJohn Robert CozensEugà ¨ne DelacroixPaul DelarocheAsher Brown DurandCaspar David FriedrichThà ©odore Gà ©ricaultAnne-Louis GirodetThomas GirtinFrancisco de GoyaWilliam Morris HuntEdwin LandseerThomas LawrenceSamuel PalmerPierre-Paul PrudhonFranà §ois RudeJohn RuskinJ. M. W. TurnerHorace VernetFranz Xaver Winterhalter Sources Brown, David Blaney. Romanticism.New York: Phaidon, 2001.Engell, James. The Creative Imagination: Enlightenment to Romanticism.Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981.Honour, Hugh. Romanticism.New York: Fleming Honour Ltd, 1979.Ives, Colta, with Elizabeth E. Barker. Romanticism the School of Nature (exh. cat.).New Haven and New York: Yale University Press and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000.

Insert Abbreviated Title Free Essays

Just as backup is important for computer systems at large organizations and businesses, home computers need backup as well. Although they may not hold important business data, support integrated real-time computing, failure of which would cause huge financial losses, but the personal computer holds data that is most of the time extremely personal and valuable at a personal level. In case of a system failure, theft or software corruption, extremely important data can be lost and recovery can cost a fortune. We will write a custom essay sample on Insert Abbreviated Title or any similar topic only for you Order Now Valuable data on PC’s include bank records and other financial information, memorable photographs, software purchased and downloaded off the Internet, music purchased and downloaded from the Internet, personal work projects, your e-contact book, organizers and schedules, internet browser bookmarks and any other important irreplaceable information. Why make backup? Statistics show that at least one in every hard disk drive gets corrupted every year and the cost of recovering data from such a disk can be as high as $7,000. (How To Keep Your Home Office Files And Data Safe and Secure , 2009) Annually, around 2 million laptops are stolen. Most of them end up in the wrong hands; people who misuse personal information. What can be done with this information can be fretful thought for owners. Even minor careless activities like children playing on the computer, liquid spills and power outages can cause a lot of damage to the system and can result in significant data loss. Recovering data has its threats as well. This brings up privacy issues and the threat of data duplication during the recovery process. All these factors contribute towards the importance of PC data back up. Frequency of Backup This concept is relative. Some people are more active PC users than others. They may work from home and/or perform important daily activities on the computer. Some use it for daily communication or use the PC as an entertainment center. The more frequent the PC use, the more frequent the data backup should be. All important files that are used most frequently, or are more frequently changed or altered, like journals, photo albums, browsing bookmarks, documents and cat-logs, should be backed up and updated as frequent as the change. Since my use of the PC consists of daily high frequency assignment and communication use, I decide to backup my important files daily at a specific time or after every time changes are made to a significant file. Automatic schedules are effective but they need special dedicated software aimed towards backup and data protection. I currently do not have any such software; therefore I plan on backing up my data manually. This allows me total flexibility. Although I have programmed backup reminders on my computer to make sure I do no forget my daily backup update. The update will consist of the simple copy pasting of the concerned files and folders and overwriting so that the most updated version is backed up and saved. Medium The device I use for back up is a simple flash memory drive. It has several advantages; firstly it is safe and non-volatile. It does not get corrupted easily and the silicon medium is quite durable. Flash drives can even survive being submerged in water and can be used after dried out for a certain period of time. Secondly, it is a cheap medium. With higher capacity models coming in every month, the previous ones get cheaper drastically; I currently have one with a capacity of 16 Gigabytes. One can also own several flash drives. They also allow quick and seamless data transfer. Lastly, they are portable and easy to carry around, easy to use and totally hassle free. Critique The outlined plan is quite fool-proof and has no advantages except one threat; the portability and scale of the USB flash drive can also cause it to be stolen, misplaced or lost. This can cause the important data to be fallen in to the wrong hands or get destroyed. If the drive is protected and taken care of, then the back up plan can be very effective and convenient. References How To Keep Your Home Office Files And Data Safe and Secure . (2009). Retrieved July 19, 2009, from homeofficebuddy: http://www. homeofficebuddy. com/databackup/index. shtml How to cite Insert Abbreviated Title, Papers

The Challenges of Security Sector Reform

Question: Briefly highlight the value of the project? Answer: In the past decade, security has emerged as an essential component of national and international policy in conflict impacted society. SSR has its origins with peace building participations and it is designed to perform the development and security. It is critical to address the conflicts and establish the democratic accountability. Security sector reform has come a long way since it has emerged on the international security and policy development. This model is a mainstay in policy building and the main innovation of the SSR model is to focus on its governance. The effectiveness and professionalism of the security is not only measured by the security forces and its ability but also it helps to identify the forces that cannot perform their responsibilities effectively. (Gartland, 2015) The objective of SSR is to help the government of developing the countries completing their legitimate security functions through reforms that will deliver the security in an effective manner. It is designed to support the country specific conflict prevention programs and it is done by proper guidance on SSR policy between strategies. The major instruments of this strategy are military education courses, courses funded under defense. Security reform is a relative new and evolving concept that supports the countries to recognize security sector reforms such as to adopt a broad definition of the security sector, to understand the benefits of varying degrees from SSR and to build the capacity to assist reforming countries and to develop their own frameworks. (Beijing, 2002) Over the last decade, the losses to countries emerge from conflict and it has focused its attention on state security sectors. Thus, the UN, the World Bank have increasingly concerned with promoting security sector reform. The international community responds in a more integrated approach to deal with security issues and security reform is a part of an attempt to handle disorder and violence. Security sector reform aims to help states increase the security domain based on mechanisms that increases transparency and accountability. It is an essential element of the effort to increase governance. It aims and helps to understand the importance of governance issues and to deal with policy making. (Chanaa, 2002) Security sector reform also has wide range of implications for dealing with the establishments on security and development assistance. The implications only states to provide security assistance and the response of states to the 11th September terrorist attacks on the USA might delay the growth of the security sector reform agenda. Increase in its importance is being placed on development of cooperation and intelligence services. There is a risk that security sector reform will become subordinate to different anti-terrorism activities in countries with respect to the development of the cooperation. With respect to SSR, there could have participation of civil society and international community. It takes a long term view and develops a critical mass for reform and supports the development of national strategies of security. This motivates local ownership and ensures that the process of reform is consultative with respect to the support of capacity to governance reform. (Tadesse, 2007) References Beijing, S. 2002. Chapter 4: The challenges of security sector reform. Stockholm international peace research institute. Chanaa, J. 2002. Security sector reform: Issues challenges and prospects. The international security sector advisory team. Gartland, J. 2015. Comparing the EUs declaratory and operational foreign policies: The case of the EUs security sector reform mission in Guinea Bissau. Tadesse, M. 2007. Chapter 5: Overcoming challenges for security sector reform in the horn of Africa. ISS Africa.