The crusades Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

The crusades - Essay Example eds much light on many mystic forms and ceremonies yet extant, notably upon Freemasonry, the Tarot, and the later Kabalah, and is a great aid to the comprehension of the Astro-Theosophic schemes of the Rosicrucians.† (Carnahan) Another important text is the Talmud, composed of the Mishnah and the Gemara, both written in the early Middle Ages. The Talmud contains Jewish oral law and customs, although it has not been taken as religious authority by all Jews. The manuscript Toledoth Yeshu provides a Middle Ages Jewish version of the Christian gospels, in which Jesus is seen as a false prophet who used the Ineffable Name to perform miracles (Humm). The Medieval Christians used typological allegory to connect the Old Testament to the New Testament Bible. For instance, the Old Testament was seen as prophesizing Christ’s life. In the Old Testament, Jonah was freed from the whale after three days; likewise, Jesus rose from the tomb after three days. Many other Old Testament events are linked in this way to Jesus. Illuminated manuscripts from the Middle Ages were mostly of a religious nature. In the case of the Christians, illuminated manuscripts were usually either the Bible or a book of prayers. Jewish illuminated manuscripts include the Padua Ashkenazi Mahor (NYPL), which is a medieval Jewish festival prayer book that reflects the customs of the Jewish community in Germany. A traditional Jewish allegory in the Padua manuscript refers to Israel as a rose. An image of a Gothic gateway is used for the Gates of Mercy. During the early Middle Ages, there was much legislation concerning Jewish ownership of Christian slaves, sometimes prohibiting the situation (Glick 33). Jewish ownership of slaves was atleast partly related to the fact that many Jewish merchants specialized in long-distance trade, including transport of slaves (Glick 45). The Christian clergy tried to prevent the loss of Christian slaves into Muslim territory as well as the conversion of Christian

Tennis Elbow Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 5000 words

Tennis Elbow - Essay Example Tennis elbow is likewise observed in individuals who lift a lot at the elbow and who usually do tedious wrist movements. Tennis elbow is now commonly being referred to as tennis epicondylosis, discarding the "itis" suffix, due to the absence of pathological evidence behind the inflammation (Servier and Wilson, 375 and Xplain, 1). The muscles responsible for straightening the fingers and wrist originate from a small bone protrusion on the outer part of the elbow. The pain brought about by lateral epicondylitis is focused on this side of the elbow, from which it might gradually spread through the upper arm and the outer region of the forearm. The soreness is especially felt around the projection if the outer side of the elbow is strained and if the wrist is bent upwards against opposing force. The pain may be occasionally felt farther in the hand while grasping. Once the elbow tendons are inflamed, the tissues would hardly heal by themselves since they are frequently used when the hand grasps or is utilized in daily activities (Conway, 43). Tennis elbow affects both men and women, and is more common to those at the age of 40 and above. The acute type of the injury is commonly observed in active, young athletes while the chronic form exists in older individuals (Brown, 267). A case study involving an individual suffering from tennis elbow was done and will be presented in this paper. The anatomy and causes of the injury were examined; and available treatments were compared based on their efficiency and advantages. Case Report A 50-year old man, fond of playing tennis as recreation, suffered from tennis elbow on his right arm that had been persistent for five months after a tournament. The patient was no longer capable of playing tennis. He already resorted to physical therapy wherein he attended twelve sessions for one and a half months, but his condition appeared to lack significant improvement. The patient was administered cortisone as part of the treatment but the medication provided only minimal comfort and temporary relief. After being injected with the therapeutic drug, he was able to play tennis again with his elbow brace or strap to provide support. However, the temporary comfort lasted for only two weeks. The symptoms eventually returned and the patient described the damage to be his worst experienced pain. Anatomy Involved in the Injury Muscles The muscles important in elbow function are the biceps, triceps, wrist flexors attached to the medial epicondyle, and wrist extensors which are connected to the lateral epicondyle (Thomas and others, 459). Bones and Joints The main bones of the elbow are that of the upper arm and the forearm. The elbow joint has a complex mechanism of movement. The end of the radius bone at the elbow can be characterized as a knob with a cup. It is smooth enough to allow gliding of the edges with the bone ulna (Servier and Wilson, 376). The elbow is the joint that helps bend the arm and rotate the wrist. It is composed of the humerus or the bone of the upper arm, and the radius and ulna which comprise the forearm. These bones are moved at the joints with the aid of muscles, which are in turn attached to the bones by tissues collectively known as tendons.

The Debate on Euthanasia: Utilitarianism

The Debate on Euthanasia: Utilitarianism Cory Thomas Is it appropriate to end the life of a person in a critical condition who is experiencing extreme torment and enduring? This paper is going to look at how the ethical theory of utilitarianism applies to the controversial issue of euthanasia. Distinctive moral positions and contentions are held for various types of euthanasia. Therefore in this paper, I will discuss active and passive euthanasia from a utilitarians perspective. In addition, the utilitarian views of voluntary and non-voluntary euthanasia will be explored. Euthanasia, also called helped suicide, is the act of discharging a person from a hopeless malady or unbearable enduring. There are two principle types of euthanasia. Aside from the fact that life is taken from these patients, the process differs between active and passive forms. In both, life is taken from the patient who is suffering from a hopeless malady. However, active euthanasia is a demonstration of executing the individual by deadly infusion to bring about quick and effortless passing. In contrast to this, passive euthanasia is when you kill that person by taking away something significant they needed to live. This can be in the form of terminating ones life support or withdrawing from medical care immediately. The second types of willful extermination are voluntary and non-voluntary. Voluntary willful extermination is the point in which the individual, who is at deaths door offers, agree to seek euthanasia. Non-voluntary is when the terminally ill is not able to give consent so they give the approval through another person. This all being said and for the purpose of this paper, I will be focusing on active-voluntary euthanasia from the utilitarian point of view.ÂÂ   Euthanasia is a social problem because most people dont agree that individuals, especially terminally ill patients in excruciating pain, should be able to end their lives.ÂÂ   This is also extremely controversial if this patient cannot give consent for themselves. There is a great deal of debate encompassing euthanasia, which revolves around whether it ought to be lawful. The debate encompassing euthanasia includes numerous religious, therapeutic and sociologic perspectives. Jeremy Bentham, a philosopher from London, created the principles of moral philosophy called utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is the creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness(Mill Pg. 4). This means that through a utilitarianism perspective, a deed or task must be done in terms of the greater good. Whats more, the best joy rule expresses that an ethical activity is one that expands the aggregate utility on the planet. As it were, if an activity is moral, it raises the measure of satisfaction on the planet. This permits activities to be positioned by profound quality. In the event that an activity fulfills one individual, it is ethically right. In spite of the fact that if another activity would make more than one individual cheerful, that activity is all the more ethically right. Utilitarianism expresse s that something is good or great when it delivers the best measure of useful for the best number of individuals. Its a hypothesis of standardizing morals that asks whether a particular activity is great or awful, moral or unethical. The main principle of Benthams theory is the Principle of utility. By utility is meant the property of something whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness (all equivalent in the present case) or (this being the same thing) to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered (Bentham Pg.7). Utility measures the happiness or unhappiness that results from a particular action. When applying or taking this from the perspective of an ill patient, the controversy comes from whether or not this patient should be granted peace from suffering, for their own happiness, or suffer longer for the happiness of their loved ones. Mill portrays the distinction of delights as quality in joys, or what makes one joy more profitable than another. While examining delights, simply as a joy and thats it, it ought to be in more prominent sum and create the most great. Process separates amongst higher and lower-quality joys. On the off chance that a delight were of higher quality, then more individuals would pick it over an alternate joy. As indicated by Mill, this is valid, regardless of the possibility that this joy is joined by uneasiness and that same individual would not exchange it for a more noteworthy measure of the other joy. With all this being said about utilitarianism, and now applying utilitarianism to euthanasia, there are different moral positions for different forms of euthanasia. For purposes of this paper and arguments sake, Im going to discuss active voluntary euthanasia. Mills Greatest Happiness Principle states that, actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness (Mill Pg. 4). Mill would agree with active voluntary euthanasia because it leads to the greatest happiness of the patient and the family. Therefore from the utilitarian point of view they would agree with active voluntary euthanasia. One objection to utilitarianism is individual rights. People will argue that just because something makes someone happy, it does not make the action right. Think of it from a moral perspective, as this can be applied to various parts of life. Take for example theft. Is it wrong to steal millions of dollars in medicine to heal your sick spouse because you are too poor to afford paying for it? Furthermore, it isnt right to hurt certain people with a specific end goal to fulfill other individuals? Another protest would be that individuals trust that utilitarianism is excessively requesting. Utilitarianism infers that we ought to dependably act keeping in mind the end goal. Individuals that protest say this is excessively strict of a necessity. It is soliciting excessively from individuals to be constantly spurred to advance the general satisfaction. What happens when the general bliss has been accomplished? There are going to be individuals who are unsatisfied and the circle will procee d. One study to this is to understand the definitive results of your actions. The thing about utilitarianism is that it is a type of consequentialism, meaning an action is judged by it consequence. Regardless of whether an activity is ethically right or wrong depends completely on its results. Consequentialists will state that activities are correct when they expand for more noteworthy benefit. With the objection of utilitarianism being too demanding, Mill states, no system of ethics requires that the sole motive of all we do shall be a feeling of duty; on the contrary, ninety-nine hundredths of all our actions are done from other motives, and rightly sothe motive has nothing to do with the morality of the actionthe great majority of good actions are intended not for the benefit of the world, but for that of individuals, of which the good of the world is made up (Mill Pg. 13). Work Cited Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism

Movie Piracy Essay -- essays research papers fc

The subject of my paper focuses on movie piracy. Movie Piracy by definition is the illegal copying of movies for personal or commercial use. This is a new epidemic that is affecting the film industry financially on a global level. What are the necessary steps that can be taken on behalf of the film industry that can stop this illegal practice from occurring? Once you walk down the city streets of New York, you can easily find vendors selling their bootleg DVD copies of new released movies for half the price of a movie ticket. At the moment the quality of the movies aren’t at its best, but with the technological advancements, the quality of these bootleg DVD’s are getting better, which means that movie piracy is actually on the rise. This continues to worry both film studios and copyright activist. Movie companies are the ones suffering the most from this illegal practice. While they continue to produce $100 million movies, their profits continue to fall, when people de cide to either pick up a burned copy or download the movie off some illegal Internet site. This essay takes a look at the different forms of movie piracy and what different organizations, such as the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and its international counterpart, MPA (Motion Picture Association), are doing to combat this illegal practice. There are many different forms of piracy and can all affect the movie industry in various ways. The most common type is known as â€Å"Optical Disc Piracy,† which is a major threat to the movie industry. â€Å"Pirate optical discs, which include Laser Discs (LD), Video Compact Discs (VCD) and Digital Versatile Discs (DVD), are inexpensive to manufacture and easy to distribute. In 2000, over 20 million pirate optical discs were seized, and by comparison, 4.5 million videos were seized worldwide in the same period† (Anti-Piracy). Most of this bootleg movies are made through the common practice of recording the movie with a hand held camcorder in the theatres and then being copied or burned onto a VHS or DVD. Illegal copies of certain box office movies are also made from legitimate advance copies of these movies, which are used for screening and marketing purposes. For that reason, one cannot be mistaken into thinking that people in the streets commit most of the pira cy. There was investigation done by AT&T and the Univers... ...ey can also use technology to their advantage. Just the way a rented DVD has a device that prevents a person from recording the movie on to another DVD or VHS, their movies should contain the same device. Although movie piracy is a lucrative business, each small step that the film industry takes, is a small step in preventing movie piracy from occurring. Bibliography 1. "Anti-Piracy." Anti-Piracy. Motion Picture Association of America. 29 Mar. 2005 . 2. Hansell, Saul. "A Supreme Court Showdown." Technology. 28 March 2005. New York Times. 29 March 2005 . 3. Knight, Will. "Insiders Blamed For Most Online Movie Piracy." New Scientist.com. 15 Sep. 2003. New Scientist. 30 Mar. 2005 . 4. Liddle, Craig. "Movie Piracy On The Rise." Electricnews.net. 12 July 2004. ENN. 29 Mar. 2005 . 5. "Movie Piracy." The Cheating Culture. The Cheating Culture. 29 Mar. 2005 . 6. Pruitt, Scarlet. "MPAA: Movie Piracy Is the New Plague." 09 July 2004. PC World. 29 Mar. 2005 .

Demand and Supply Curves

We have a certain commodity, `pure Malaysia Laptop’, whose market we are going to analyze. Assume that exogenous (external) forces are equal in magnitude, while supply–demand curves are unitary elastic. Given a certain event/scenario, (a) analyze the curve/s affected, shifts or movements and the direction, and (b) effect to equilibrium price (P*) and equilibrium quantity (Q*) Scenario 1 a. Prices of optical drives suddenly increase The production cost has increased so the supply decreases and eventually the price go up.The supply curve shifts to the left. b. A new market-standard operating system is released to the market but costs at least 50% higher than the previous edition This issue is considered another production cost so the supply curve shifts to the left. The supply decreases and price goes up. c. News spread that local laptops were contaminated with melamine Demand decreases because people buy less due to the news so the demand curve shifts to the left and the Q and P both decrease. d.Video chatting and internet-on-the-go become fad New technology makes people buy more of the product so demand increases and as a consequence the demand curve shifts to the right and price and quantity both increases. Scenario 2 a. China laptop manufacturers were permitted to enter the Malaysian market Cheaper products attract consumers, so the demand for our product decreases. The shift in the demand curve goes to left and the P and Q both decreases. b. Average desktop computer prices have plunged to all-time lowsIf desktop computers become cheaper the demand for laptops decreases so the demand curve shifts to left and eventually the P and Q decrease. c. New taxes were imposed to laptops sales (per unit tax) Imposing new taxes to laptops is additional cost for the production. so it affects the supply and the supply curve shifts to left. so the P increases and Q decreases. d. A recession/economic downturn cause the income of consumers to decline and cause t he prices of laptop parts to increaseWhen consumer’s income decreases, the demand goes down and the demand curve shifts to the left. On the other hand the prices of laptop parts increases and that makes the production costs to increase so the supply decrease and the supply curve shifts to left. So the quantity decreases while we have an ambiguous equilibrium price. Scenario 3 a. Biggest local laptop manufacturer suddenly become bankrupt and the government gives subsidy to consumers to purchase `educational and computer-literacy’ related goodsBy the biggest local laptop manufacturer going bankrupt, our company’s supply goes up and eventually the price goes up. The demand curve shifts to the left. So the Q decreases. b. New production techniques were adopted by local laptop manufacturer and prices of inputs in the production of desktop computer decline significantly When the prices for laptops decease the demand goes up and as a consequence the demand curve shifts to the right so the price and quantity increase.

A Day I’Ll Never Forget

When you wake up in the morning; you never know what to expect. People get up as though everyday will be a normal day. People go to work or school and live their daily lives. The day of October 31, 2011 my daughter's mother was induce becuase she was pass her due date. That day was crazy from waking up in the morning and the trip to the hositpal. From watching my daughter's mother go through the pain she went through and when the time came when my daughter was born was a unrealistic feeling. The day of October 31, 2011 I will never forget that day.My girlfriend and I woke up at five o'clock in the morning , and we said a prayer together. We got ready and left the house at 7 o'clock am. For some reason, driving to the hospital seemed to take longer than usual. I remember everything about this day as if it was yesterday. We arrived to Morton Plant Hospital and proceeded to the Labor and Delivery unit. The halls were very quiet and I remember thinking to myself this is it this is the da y thats gonna change my life forever. After the doctors and the nurses induce my daughter's mother it was nothing but a waiting period.After a few hours, my daughter's mother began to have some normal contractions she was able to handle them for small period of time; however, the contraction came to become more painful to her. I never wintessed anybody go thourgh no type of pain like she went thourgh. I ask her what the contractions felt like she said,† The pain is like having your insides twisted, pulled, and squeezed combined with someone stabbing you in the stomach. † The only thing I can say to myself is ouch! After hours of toture pain she couldnt take it anymore, so she went ahead a got a epidurals.When she got the epidural the pain easily ease away. Thank God for epidurals. The time has come after fourteen hours of been in the hospital it was time. My daughter's mother had a dialte to ten centemeter and it was time to push . I have never been so scared it was like I was in a hunted house and I couldnt get out. After a few pushes and me almost passing out on the floor she was finally here. When my daughter arrived, I jumped up really high and scream out it's a boy I dont know what I saw but I thought she was a boy.She was born healthy and was the cuties baby I ever seen. I never been so happy like I was that day. The day my daughter was born I will never forget. While I'll was expecting a baby boy; I got a beautiful baby girl. That day was a unforgetable day. From the time we woke up that morning and getting to the hositpal . Watching the labor pain my child's mother was going thourgh was the scariest thing I ever saw. The most important feeling was watching the birth of my child. Watching the birth of my baby girl was a unrealistic feeling.