Chapman Brothers and Robert Gober Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Chapman Brothers and Robert Gober - Essay Example To make the sculpture Gober inserted his own created pictures into layouts based on different newspapers. The photograph is of a bride with a story about the Vatican discriminating against homosexuals. The main message of this artwork is the right of homosexuals to get married. The next artist I am going to analyze are the Chapman Brothers. Chapman Brothers consist of two Brothers; Jake Chapman and Dinos Chapman who work in collaboration. Their artwork I shall analyze is â€Å"Death.† This is a controversial piece of work looks like blow-up sex dolls positioned in a very compromising manner. In truth, the sculptures are made of bronze and painted to appear as though they are made of plastic. The Chapman Brothers use the theme of anatomical and pornographic grotesque with a sequence of dummies, joined together, with reproductive organs in place of facial attributes. The Chapman Brothers work is normally interpreted to be extremely offensive, but they normally have a message behind it. The message of how Nazis killed and mutilated each other during the Second World War is the message passed

Different Types of Soils in India Essay Example for Free

Different Types of Soils in India Essay 1. Black soils The principal region of black soils is the Deccan plateau and its periphery extending from 8Â °45to 26o north latitude and 68o to 83o45 east longitude. They are formed from Deccan basalt trap rocks and occur in areas under the monsoon climate, mostly of semi-arid and sub-humid types. The overall climate of black soil region may be described as hot and dry summer, 40-100 cm rainfall per annum, mild to moderate winters and annual temperature ranges from 24-30o centigrade, mean maximum temperature during April-May ranges from 36~42Â °C arid mean minimum temperature during winter ranges from 15-24Â ° centigrade. Semi-arid to sub-humid, tropical to sub-tropical monsoon type climate with alternate dry and wet periods and calcification (formation of calcium carbonate) are favourable to the formation of black soils. The soils are characterised by dark grey to black colour with 35-60% clay, neutral to slightly alkaline reaction, high swelling and shrinkage, plasticity, deep cracks during summer and poor status of organic matter, nitrogen and phosphorus. Impeded drainage and low permeability are the major problems. Black soils. are divided into shallow black soil of a depth of 30-50 cms, medium black soils of 50-120 cm and deep black soils of more than 120 centimeters. The natural vegetation comprises dry deciduous species, viz palas (Butes frondoss), sisam (Dalbergia sisu), neem (Azadirachta indica) and teak (Tectona grandis). Cotton, sugarcane, groundnut, millets, maize, pulses, safflower are the common crops grown on these soils. Because of their inherent drainage problem, they are prone to salinity and sodicity under irrigated conditions unless proper drainage is ensured. Because of its high water retaining capacity, rainfed crops like minor millets, pulses like horse gram are vegetables of different types and citrus fruits can also be grown. These soils are also known as regurs, nullah regadi (a telugu word meaning black clay) and black cotton soils as cotton was the major crop grown in these soils. 2. Red soils These soils are derived from granite, gneiss and other metamorphic rocks. These soils are formed under well drained condition. The climate is semi-arid tropical with mean annual temperature of 25Â °C and mean annual rainfall from 75-100 cm. The soils are higher textured, friable structure and contains low soluble salts. They are slightly acidic to slightly alkaline, well drained with moderate permeability. They are generally poor in nitrogen, phosphorus, lime, humus etc. In this soil, lime concretions and free carbonates are absent. The red colour is due to the higher degree of hydration of the fericoxide in the soils. On uplands, they are gravelly sandy or stony and porous and light coloured on which food crops like bajra can be grown. On the lower plains and valleys, they are dark, coloured fertile loams, irrigated crops like maize, wheat, pulses, potatoes, fruits, millets etc can be grown. These soils have also been found under forest vegetation. Sometimes they found along with black soils (side by side) and also yellow soils (red and yellow soils). Excessive gravelliness, surface crust formation and susceptibility to erosion due to high slopes are some of the problems in these soils which can be overcome by adopting suitable measures. Morphologically the red soils can be divided into red loams which have a cloddy structure and argillaceous soil and red earths with loose friable top soil rich in sesquioxide type of minerals. 3. Laterites and lateritic soils Laterite is a geological term and means literally a rock. The laterites and lateritic soils have been loosely used in the same sense. The lateritic soils are enriched with oxides of iron and aluminium, under the conditions of high rainfall with alternate dry and wet periods. During rainfall silica is leached downwards and iron and aluminium oxides remains in the top layers. Laterites are usually shallow and gravelly at higher lands, but are very deep loam to clay soils in the valleys where good paddy crops are produced. Higher landy soils are poor in nutrient status where as lower level soils are dark and richer in nutrients and organic matter. All lateritic soils are poor in calcium, magnesium, nitrogen, phosphorus and potash. They are generally well drained and porous. The soil reaction is more on the acidic side. On laterites, as already mentioned, rice is grown at lower elevations and at higher elevations, tea, coffee, cinchona, rubber and cashewnut can be grown under good soil management conditions. On the whole, laterites are poor in fertility and readily respond to manuring and good cultivation. Based on the climate lateritic soils are grouped into high rainfall areas with strongly and weakly expressed dry season and humid zones with pronounced dry wet periods. 4. Alluvial soils Alluvial soils, cover the largest area in India (approximately 7 lakh km2) and these are the most important soils from agricultural point of view. The main features of alluvial soils have been derived as silt deposition laid down by the Indian river systems like the Indus, the Ganges, the Brahmaputra and the rivers like Narmada, Tapti: Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna and Cauvery. These rivers carry the products of weathering of rocks constituting the mountains and deposit them along their path as they flow down the plain land towards the sea. Geologically, the alluvium is divided into recent alluvium which is known as Khadar and old alluvium, as bhangar. The newer alluvium is sandy and light coloured whereas older alluvium is more clayey, dark coloured and contains lime concretions. The soils have a wide range in soil characteristics viz. acid to alkaline sandy to clay, normal to saline, sodic and calcareous, shallow to very deep. The climate ranges from arid to humid s ub-tropical. The following groupings of alluvial soils may be recognised: alluvial soils (Khadar, bhangar and highly calcareous), deltaic alluvium, coastal alluvium, coastal sands, calcareous sierocomic and grey-brown soils. a. Alluvial soils The alluvial soils occuring in the Indo-Gangetic plains and the Brahmaputra valley cover a large area. The soils are transported and deposited by the rivers from the parent material. The rivers are the Ganga, Jamuna, Brahmaputra and their tributaries. The soils are deep and hard pans in the subsoil are calcareous (made of calcium carbonate) and acidic. These are deficient in nitrogen, phosphorous and humus, but not in potash and lime. These soils are fertile amongst all the soils of India. They produce a wide variety of crops like rice, wheat, sugarcane, jute and potato. They are distributed mainly in the northern, north-western and north-eastern parts of our country. b. Deltaic alluvial soils They are formed from sediments carried by rivers and deposited in the mouths of rivers joining the sea. The deltas of the Ganga, Brahmaputra, Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna and Cauvery are the most important ones. In Gujarat, the deltaic alluvial soils which are sandy loam to clay loam are locally called Goradu soils. The Godavari and Krishna rivers pass through basaltic region having black soils and these soils are dark and fine textured. The Cauvery delta soils are significantly clayey and Ganga delta soils show high accumulation of organic matter, as in the Sunderbans of West Bengal, due to swampy vegetation. These soils are fertile and grow a wide variety of crops suited to climatic conditions. c. Coastal alluvium Soils developed on coastal alluvium are found along, the sea coasts. Soils are dark coloured, coarse textured and poor in fertility. Some soils are saline due to the inundation of sea water. Such soils in the Konkan coast of Maharashtra are called Khar soils. d. Coastal sands Sandy soils occur prominently in the coastal area of Tanjavur district of Tamil Nadu, along the Kerala coast, Bapatla in Guntur distrjct of Andhra Pradesh and Puri district in Orissa. If sandy soils are not saline, plantation crops like coconut, cashew and casuarina can be taken up for cultivation. Other soils under alluvium are calcareous sierozomes and grey brown soils. Calcareous sierozomes can be seen in the desertic region of Haryana and Punjab. The word sierozem denotes a group of soils having a brownish-grey surface horizon with a sub-layer of carbonates which is developed under mixed shrub vegetation in a-temperate to cool, arid climate. Grey-brown soils as the name itself indicates its nature, can be found in, desert soils of Rajasthan. 5. Desert soils In the north-western part of India, desert soils occur over an area of 0.29 million hecta,res, which includes a major part of Rajasthan, south of Haryana and Punjab and northern part of Gujarat. Rainfall ranges from less than 10 cms to 50 cms, mostly contributed during monsoon season. The region consists of sand dunes and undulating sandy plains. The temperature regime is very high throughout the year and a maximum of 50-60Â °C is recorded during summer. Due to high temperature organic-matter built up is very low. The soils in the plains are mostly derived from alluvium and are pale brown to brown to yellow brown and fine sandy to loamy fine sand and are structureless. The clay contents low and presence of alkaline earth carbonates is an important feature. The nitrate nitrogen and phosphorus makes the desert soils fertile and productive under proper moisture supply. By increasing the water holding capacity, the productivity of the soils can be increased which involve s addition of organic matter and clay. 6. Tarai soils The word tarai is a hindi word, which means moist. Thus, i\ is a wet regime having high water table. Tarai soils are foot hii soils and extend in strips of varying widths at the foot of Himalayas in Jammu and Kashmir, Uttar-Pradesh, Bihar and West-Bengal. Soils under the natural conditions are thickly vegetated and swampy. Several types of grasses and trees from the native vegetation on removal of which the soils become highly productive. The soils are formed from the materials that are washed down by the erosion of mountains. They are alluvial origin. High soil moisture content all through the year results in luxuriant vegetation dominated by tall grasses. They are neutral to slightly alkaline with significant amounts of organic matter. The texture varies from sandy loam to silty loam. Generally, these soils are fertile and by providing proper drainage, the productivity can be increased.

Role of Penelope in Homers Odyssey Essays -- Homer Odyssey Essays

The Role of Penelope in Homer's Odyssey The character of Penelope in Homer's Odyssey has served as an archetype of femininity proper. Her physical attributes, while comely by even the most demanding standards, are veiled. Her intellectual attributes are veiled too. She seems more often than not to wear a veil of tears (for her man) or a veil of silence (for her own wishes), or ineptitude (in her dealings with her son). She is certainly no Helen. She is not flaunting or whore-ish. She is not unconcerned with the needs of others, nor flippant about marital bonds, nor the loyalty of her heart. She does not steal the show, as Helen does time and again when she upstages her husband (who, by the way, may be a bumbler in the presence of his wife) in her attempts to control the situations in which she finds herself. Penelope is no Helen. Penelope is the archetype of femininity proper in every western misogynist's dream. However, this archetype is nothing more than fantasy. Penelope's veil does not need to be understood as a sign of her absence, or her impotence, or her archetypal femininity. If it were, how could we explain that Penelope can accomplish against great odds staying married to Odysseus, awaiting his return, reigning over his kingdom in his absence, all the while protecting the well-being of her son? One could argue that Penelope was not responsible for the outcome of these events, but rather merely the recipient of the forces of the universe that existed in her life. If this is the case, namely that Penelope never acted as an agent in the shaping of her own destiny, then why does Homer even bother telling us anything about Penelope as he tells us about Odysseus? To this I would agree, countering only on the grounds... ... the art of reflexive rhetoric acts only on impulse, or fails to act at all. While Penelope certainly has moments of all three (impulse, failure, and deliberate action), her impulse and failure only serve to dilate (not Subjugate) the sense of her freedom and power in her deliberate moments. Moreover, far from dehumanizing Penelope, (casting her away as absent/impotent/feminine), the wide range of her intellectual and emotional responses makes her a more human character than the constant and predictable Odysseus. The purpose of this paper is not to uncover Penelope, stripping her of her veil, leaving her exposed and vulnerable to the cold stare of analysis. Rather, it is to cultivate an imagination that can look upon the veiled Penelope and respect that which is covered so alluringly: her reflexivity, her rhetoric, and the cunning of her feminine deliberation.

What do you understand by the term ‘hegemony’?

Introduction This essay will consider the meaning of the term ‘hegemony’. It will weave personal interpretation with the academic literature, concentrating on Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony. Hegemony arguably originated with the Ancient Greek conception of political and military dominance (hegemonia means ‘leadership’ and ‘rule’) (Chernow and Vallasi 1994: 1215). According to the traditional conception of hegemony the ‘ruler’ (hegemon) imposes its will upon subordinate states through the exercise or threat of military power, which is then translated into political dominance (Antoniades 2008). In the modern world, this kind of hegemony has largely disappeared. The mechanisms of control now operate in civil society in more subtle forms, such as politics, ideology, and the media. This essay will discuss some interpretation of hegemony and how they relate to contemporary capitalist society. Some scholars and political commentators, suc h as the former French Minister of Foreign Affairs Hubert Vedrine, believe that the United States is currently a global hegemon due to its widespread influence in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan. However, as realist scholars such as Mearsheimer and Nye point out, the United States has never established a system of governance in these regions (Nye 1993). This political and military hegemony has largely disappeared. In its place one might say that there is a kind of ‘cultural hegemony’. This concept was theorised in the early 19th century by the Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci, who argued that the capitalist state was divided into two spheres, the ‘political society’, which rules through the use of force, and the ‘civil society’, which rules through popular consent. The latter is the public realm in which people, groups, trade unions and political parties interact. In this sphere, the ruling elite reproduce their ideology in popular cu lture and thus ‘manufacture consent’ for the bourgeois domination of the proletariat (Simon 1990). Domination is not imposed by force, but rather is adopted unwittingly and under the pretense of ordinary cultural development (Simon 1990; Bullock and Trombley 1999). This theory was adapted from Marx’s analysis of the socio-economic class system (another example of a hegemonic theory), and in a sense is part of a larger set of theories hypothesising that culture, ethics, and norms arise through what Bernard Mandeville called ‘the artifice of politicians’, although Gramsci placed greater emphasis on intellectuals. Indeed, it might be fitting to suggest that scholars such as Anderson and Hobsbawm, who spoke of ‘imagined communities’ and ‘invented traditions’, respectively, are also working within an intellectual framework of cultural hegemony. However, it is important to note that these theories do not describe an exploitative, alienating relationship in the same way as cultural hegemony does. Both Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony and the modernist theories of nation are accurate in their analysis. Whether in the form of informal social and moral traditions transmitted from parent to child, or more structured systems conveyed through instruments such religion and law, culture is a means for the elite to control and manipulate the masses. As modernist anthropologists argue, patriotism is a particularly potent hegemonic force. Created in its present form in the 18th century by the state, today it provides justification for the foreign conflicts of the bourgeoisie. George Bush’s rhetoric related to the Iraq War (2003 – 2011) employed subjective concepts of the ‘enemy’, as well as identity terms such as ‘them’ and ‘us’, linguistic and cultural constructs designed to win over the American population. Contemporary democracy is one of the clearest f orms of cultural and political hegemony. It is an idealised political type, inculcated in the civil domain since the enlightenment, and now ‘perfected’ through universal suffrage. In Britain, politicians are almost exclusively from the middle class (usually educated at Oxford or Cambridge). Western liberal democracy is presented by the bourgeois state, operating in the civil realm, as the only viable political system. Thus the entire population willing participates in a game in which the middle class is demonstrably dominant. Cultural hegemony can be seen with more clarity by looking at contemporary capitalist media. In many cases, the International News Agencies, such as Thomson Reuters, the Associated Press, and Agence France-Presse, control the information consumed by the public from start to finish. For example, in the coverage of the Egyptian Revolution, they commissioned the citizen-journalists who captured the news and then edited the copy that was distributed to clients, all of whom operated under contracts (Macgregor 2013). As Macgregor (2013: 35) argues, the coverage of ‘any major incident in the world originates as often than not in the words, photos, audio, and raw film footage coming from three main international agencies’. The American ‘televangelist’ movement, which is broadcast on channels such as the Trinity Broadcasting Network and The God Channel (featuring popular sensations like Joel Osteen), have been effective in propagating the religious ideals of a select few to a wider population. In this way, the state can feed the population the kind of information that supports its own cultural agenda. The best examples of this, of course, come from the pages of history, as in when the Nazi regime launched a calculated propaganda campaign through posters, the development of the ‘Hitler Youth’, and other devices to convince the people of Germany to support the persecution of the Jews. It can be arg ued that in postmodern society, which is somewhat apathetic and cynical with regard to bourgeois cultural grade narratives, hegemony is less dominant. However, even here hegemonic capitalist consumerism has taken hold. The products produced by firms such as Google, Apple, and Nike provide the cultural pabulum for the people, who are controlled to an extent by corporations. The meaning of the term hegemony is really a matter of interpretation. Cultural hegemony of the Gramscian type can clearly be seen in contemporary society. Some of it manifestations are centuries old, such as patriotism and religion, while others, such as consumerism, are relatively (but not entirely) unique to modern capitalism. Ultimately, hegemony has a variety of meanings, perhaps even one for every set of social, political and cultural instruments of control. Reference list: Antoniades, A (2008) From ‘Theories of Hegemony’ to ‘Hegemony Analysis’ in International Relations Bullock, A. and Trombley, S. (1999) The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought (3rd ed.) Chernow, B. A. and Vallasi, G. A. eds. (1994) The Columbia Encyclopedia (Fifth ed.). New York: Columbia University Press Simon, R. (1990) Gramsci’s Political Thought: An Introduction, London: Lawrence & Wishart Ltd Macgregor, P. (2013) International News Agencies: Global eyes that never blink, chapter in Journalism: New Challenges (ed. Fowler-Watt, K. and Allan, S.) Centre for Journalism & Communication Research, Bournemouth University: pp. 35-63 http://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/cjcr/files/2013/10/JNC-2013-Chapter-3-MacGregor.pdf [Retrieved 21/02/2014] Nye, J. S. (1993) Understanding International Conflicts: An introduction to Theory and History. New York: HarperCollins

Nursing as a career Essay

           Nursing as a Career, Vocation, or Job? Nursing as a Career, vocation or just a job is a question that may receive many different answers. In my own personal opinion, I think that Nursing could be all three for different people or even all three things for the same person. Is it so hard to believe that someone’s job is their career, and even that the person is lucky enough to have a career/job as their vocation in life? I think not. A job is something that one gets paid for, makes a living off of it and takes pride in their work. A career is a lifelong commitment to a job or line of work. You get paid for it, you sometimes get benefits and even get to retire. A vocation is a calling in life. It is God’s chosen area for one to work in or do. It is a special talent. â€Å"Individual nursing practice is determined by the career path selected and is dependent upon education, experience, work setting and geographical location. Nurses may follow their personal and professional interests by working with any group o f people, in any setting, at any time. There is no profession which offers as many opportunities for diversified roles as does nursing.† (Sigma Theta Tau,2014) â€Å"Using Blum’s model of vocations it is argued that such occupations are socially expressed within practices embodying traditions, norms and a range of meanings: industrial, social, personal and moral. Vocational workers are those who identify in certain ways with these traditions, norms and meanings.†(PubMed, 2002) â€Å"Nursing as a job requires not only treating patients who are sick and injured, but also offering advice and emotional support to patients and their families, taking care of paperwork (lots and lots of paperwork), helping doctors diagnose patients and providing advice and follow-up care.† (Snagajob,2014)