Argument in Encounters with the Archdruid Essay Example for Free

Argument in Encounters with the Archdruid Essay In the third section of John McPhees Encounters with the Archdruid, the author observes the discourse between conservationist David Brower and Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, Floyd Dominy, on the merits of dams in the southwestern United States. Brower hates all dams, large and small, while Dominy sees dams as essential to our civilization. The Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell, which Dominy created, are the main issue of debate between the two men. Floyd Dominy graduated from the University of Wyoming in 1932 and, after an unsuccessful stint as a teacher, became a county agricultural agent for the federal government in Wyomings Gillette County. This was the time of the Great Depression and also a great drought in the American Midwest, which quickly garnered the name of the dust bowl. Frustrated by the lack of water available to farmers in his county, Dominy orchestrated the building of many dams in Gillette County, providing water to thirsty farmers and their livestock. Rewarded with a job in the Bureau of Reclamation for his efforts, Dominy became the Bureaus director in 1959 and oversaw the construction of Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River. Completed in 1962, the 710 foot tall dam built out of 4.9 million cubic yards of concrete has a reservoir (Lake Powell) that has a maximum capacity of 27 million acre-feet and is the one of the largest reservoirs in the world. Lake Powell has become a popular water recreation site and provides homes with about 1 million kilowatts of hydroelectric power and 8.23 million acre-feet of water and irrigation per year. Dominy views the dam as a great asset, both to provide utilities and to provide recreation Now people can fish, swim, water-ski, sun-bathe. Cant you imagine going there with your family for a weekend, getting away from everybody? But Mr. Brower says we destroyed it. (174) David Brower was born in 1912 in Berkeley Hills, California. When he was young his father used to take him to the Sierra, where Brower found his love for nature. After leaving his study of entomology at UC-Berkeley, Brower left for the Sierra, and became a world-class mountaineer, conquering over seventy mountain peaks. John McPhee even mused that if he were to be set  down at night anywhere in the Sierra Nevada, with the coming morning he would know just where he is. After serving as a decorated platoon leader in World War II, Brower started his work with the Sierra Club, becoming the first executive director of the club in 1952. Over this remarkable period until his dismissal in 1969, Brower would become the worlds foremost naturalist and environmental conservationist. The flooding of Glen Canyon was very personal to Brower, and his failure to stop the dams construction haunted him for the rest his life. He referred to it as Americas most regretted environmental mistake, and the greatest failure of his life. (163) In 1952, the Echo Park and Split Mountain Dams were proposed, which threatened the Green and Yampa Rivers and Dinosaur National Monument. Brower led the Sierra Club into action. Successfully, under his leadership, the Sierra Club defeated the Bureau of Reclamation hands down. But the victory at Dinosaur Monument was tempered by the Sierra Clubs offer of support for a dam downstream at Glen Canyon a higher dam, in fact, than one proposed earlier by the Bureau of Reclamation. Brower spoke in favor of a high dam at Glen Canyon, a speech he came to regret until the very end. While his supporters urged him not to blame himself, he repeatedly reminded whoever would listen that he could have done more to stop it. He believed that the fact he da m existed was his fault. He felt that he was not adequately prepared for his own mission, and if he had been, the dam would not have been built. Brower referred to Glen Canyon as the place no one knew. Before the construction of the dam and the creation of Lake Powell, Glen Canyon was one of the remotest places in the United States. Few people ever set foot in the Canyon, and after the construction of the dam, no one else would ever see it. Brower viewed nature as a sacred place, a place that must be earned. He hated the idea of people developing wilderness areas. He felt that cities should have strict boundaries, and people should stay there. Brower and Dominy have conflicting views in this situation. Brower is disgusted by the development around Lake Powell and the destruction of the wilderness that is now beneath it. Lake Powell is a drag strip for power boats. Its for people who wont do things except the easy way. The magic of Glen Canyon is  dead. It has been vulgarized. (240) Dominy, on the other hand, is proud that he has created such a beautiful lake and has made it accessible to the masses. Dominy is tired of trying to satisfy a noisy minority while trying to bring water, power, and recreation to the people. Im a greater conservationist that you are, by far. I do things. I make things available to man. Unregulated, the Colorado River wouldnt be worth a good God damn to anybodyDo you want to keep this country the way it is for a handful of people? (240) Beside these arguments, there is also a more quantitative side to the debate. The ecological detriments of the Glen Canyon Dam have been well-documented. Extensive changes were brought about in the Colorado River ecosystem by the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam. Most of these alterations negatively affected the functioning of the system and the native aquatic species of the river. The reduced supply and transport of sediment is the primary factor responsible for the degradation of the post-dam Glen Canyon ecosystem. When the dam was completed, and the flow of the Colorado River was stifled, sediment traveling along with the river was blocked by the dam and began to build up in the Lake Powell reservoir. Due to the sediment-free water flowing evenly out of the dam and the associated extreme drop in water temperature, many species of fish, amphibians, and insects which use sediments for habitats, spawning ground, and protection, have been put at great risk. Another problem arising from the dam is silt aggradation. Aggradation is the accumulation of sediment where the river flow slows as it approaches Lake Powell. Aggraded sediment deposits accumulate upstream, eventually piling up hundreds of feet above the current reservoir level. Huge sediment deposits have already filled some of the upper sections of the reservoir. Under current hydrological conditions, enough sediment flows into Lake Powell to potentially fill it up to the river outlet valve level within 100 years. When silt reaches these safety valves, the dam will become unsafe and need to be decommissioned. Since the completion of the Glen Canyon Dam in 1963, enormous amounts of sediment have been steadily accumulating behind the dam.  While the impacts of sedimentation werent understood prior to the construction of the dam, significant problems have emerged with the relentless buildup of sediment behind Glen Canyon Dam. Economically, on the other hand, the Glen Canyon Dam has provided many benefits since its 1963 completion. It has provided water supply and power for much of the southwestern United States, and parts of Mexico. The Glen Canyon Dam is part of the Colorado River Storage Project, implemented mainly to supply power to Native American reservations, Rural Electric Co-ops, government facilities, and municipalities. The Glen Canyon Dam supplies 75-85% of the power generation for this project. 85% of the dams water goes to irrigation projects. With the input of irrigation, the arid regions of these states have become fertile agricultural lands. Because of the high productivity of these areas, many customers in the United States are provided with fruits and vegetables year-round. Lake Powell has also provided many economic benefits. It is one of the most popular tourist sites in the southwest, bringing in about 4 million tourists and $2.5 million each year. The Glen Canyon Dam issue is a complicated one. Do the benefits of electricity and water outweigh the ecological detriments? Is there any other option besides building a dam to provide these utilities? It is difficult to find unbiased information weighing these issues fairly. In addition there are the more metaphysical, moral issues surrounding dams. Is it right to impose ourselves upon nature is such a way? Are we really harming our future with short-sighted projects like the Glen Canyon Dam? The question is one of the true nature of progress and the advancement of civilization. Is the Earth meant to be subdued by man or to be preserved in a constant search for paradise? The ultimate goal, I suppose, is to find a way to make advance and enrich our lives without detriment to our environment.

Rushdie, Postmodernism & Postcolonialism :: Essays Papers

Rushdie, Postmodernism & Postcolonialism Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, published in 1980, was perhaps the seminal text in conceiving opinions as to interplay of post-modern and post-colonial theory. The title of the novel refers to the birth of Saleem Sinai, the novel’s principal narrator, who is born at midnight August 15th 1947, the precise date of Indian independence. From this remarkable coincidence we are immediately drawn to the conclusion that the novel’s concerns are of the new India, and how someone born into this new state of the ‘Midnight’s child’, if you will, interacts with this post-colonial state. To characterise the novel as one merely concerned with post-colonial India, and its various machinations, is however a reductive practice. While the novel does at various times deal with what it is to be Indian, both pre and post 1947, it is a much more layered and interesting piece of work. Midnight’s Children’s popularity is such that it was to be vote d 25th in a poll conducted by the Guardian, listing the 100 best books of the last century, and was also to receive the Booker Prize in 1981 and the coveted ‘Booker of Bookers’ in 1993. http://www.bookerprize.co.uk/ Why Midnight’s Children is much more than of interest to the reader interested in post-colonialism, is possibly due to its strong elements of magic realism, a literary device that goes hand in hand with postmodernism. Perhaps the most notable exponent of magic realism in literature is the Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, whose One Hundred Years of Solitude written in 1967 came to be seen as the standard bearer for the genre. Marquez was an undoubted influence on Rushdie’s work and in Midnight’s Children in particular, which was to adopt many of the surrealist ‘flights of fancy’ which characterise One Hundred Years of Solitude. The term was first used in a wider post-colonialist context in an essay by Jacques Stephen Alexis, of the ‘Magical Realism of the Haitians’ (Alexis 1956), although the term itself had been in circulation since Franz Roh the German art critic coined it in 1925. Yet the term only became popularised when it was employed to characterise the work of South American writers such as Marquez. More recently the term has come to refer to the inclusion of any mythic material from local written or oral culture used in contemporary narrative. The material is often used to examine the assumptions of Western narrative, which is usually categorised by its rationality and strict linearity.

Body Culture

Chris Moss describes which sight that will meet you generally, when you meet up at a fitness centre. He thinks the fitness opinion is normalized. Too many men spend their time in the centre, Just because they want to get a great body and to be butchers. It has nothing to do with healthy and exercise. It's only for the sake of the appearance the men does lift weighting. He thinks that some of the only men who seemed to be relaxed at the gym are the fitness Instructors. They give a big part of their life to make other people healthy. The editors of Ms. Magazine got the same opinion In the other text.They focus on women and their breast. They think women and their view of breast implants have got out of hand. Already as kids the girls get feed with the form of the perfect breast by the Barbie mania. They think their breast should stand firm and high and out. Small breasts are now a kind of disease in some women's eyes. The editors mention that women often support the fight against breas t cancer, but a lot of women nevertheless have the breast Implants as their first priority. What many of hem don't know is that the implants can hurt their own body and destroy their health.Comment on the statement * â€Å"There is a link between physical beauty and sex appeal – and popularity, success, and happiness† The statement is probably how many people think. I am sure that many don't want to admit their thoughts, but this Is how many think. Like you could see In the previous texts about body culture, the body means a lot to people. Many look down at the overweight persons and look up to the beauties and the muscular ones. It's an evil circle. It is a very superficial statement. At least one part of the statement is not true.There is not necessarily a link between physical beauty and happiness and is a kind of naive to think such a thing. It is probably easier to get a job when you look good then if you are very ugly. No matter how focused you are on equalizing everybody opportunities you would hire the beautiful above the ugly, if Don applicants Ana ten same accomplishment IT you nave to see ten statement In context with the three other texts, you have to admit that it is statements and renouncement's like this one that helps create the ideals that so many people morbid try to live up to.This statement is very superficial and yet parts of it can be true in some connections. Write a letter * To your headmaster in which you argue for or against this ban Dear headmaster Brian. I do not care about your opinion about the dress code at school. I agree that students and especially girls are wearing overly provocative clothing. I do not think that it is the Job of the school to bring up the students, its Job is only two teach the students. You cannot do a ban, because they wear provocative clothing for leisure and not least when they finish school.I would say I have a better idea. As mentioned earlier, the school's Job to teach students. You can come up with some talking about rapists and miscellaneous criminals. Another idea could also be putting up posters with scare campaigns. I think many students will be affected by it. There will of course be pupils who will not be affected, but they can live their own lives and learn from everyday life and their surroundings. Best regards Simons Holstein.

The United States Federal Reserve s Quantitative Easing...

INTRODUCTION As part of our term project for the Topics in Macroeconomics class we were assigned the topic of linking the Keynesian view with the Great Depression of the 1930s as well as using it to explain and critically evaluate the United States Federal Reserve’s Quantitative Easing policy, which was employed in an effort to combat the downfall of the world economy in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008. The following resources were utilized to help us carry out our project: †¢ Quantitative Easing: A Keynesian Critique By Thomas I. Palley †¢ The History of Macroeconomics from Keynes’s General Theory to the Present By M. De Vroey and P. Malgrange †¢ Macroeconomic Principles – Chapter 17 By Libby Rittenberg and Tim Tregarthen WHAT†¦show more content†¦Policies that made the situation worst. CAUSES OF GREAT DEPRESSION The effect of great depression was mostly recorded in the United Nation. So we are going to discuss the causes that affected the U.S economy with a brief look at how the world economy was affected as a result. The main cause that is noted in history was the decline in the consumption level of the consumer, this had a direct effect on the production output and the inventories increased as the consumption level decreased to a great level. Due to this setback the U.S economy was brought down to the bottom, the aggregate demand decreased at a substantial level. THE MAIN CAUSES OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION Contrary to popular belief, the Great Depression did not originate from the stock market crash of 1929. Yes, the stock market crash did result in numerous people (mostly wealthy investors) losing a lot of money, but despite the gravity of the stock market crash we are reluctant to blame the stock market crash as a trigger. The roots of the Great Depression can be traced back to the First World War, which saw a large American infantry being mobilized. This mobilization meant that a larger number of resources were required to sustain the war efforts. Farmers across the US started to raise their production and consequently expanded rapidly to provide