Team assignment Essay Example for Free

Team assignment Essay John Describe which area you chose: urban, suburban, or rural. Describe the local form of government and identify the major elected officials of your selected area. Rural Area A Rural area is a geographic area located outside of cities or towns. It is also classified as encompassing all population, housing, territory not included within an urban area. Rural areas have a low population density and small settlements. Local governments are structured in accordance with the laws of the various individual states. Each state has at least two separate tiers of government counties and municipalities. Some states are divided even further into townships. The different types of local reflect the levels of population density; examples include city, town, borough and village. Some of the major elected officials are city council, town board, or board of aldermen. Gino Identify the major public policy issues, current events, and challenges this government faces and analyze one in depth. Discuss how the state government is addressing the issue you selected. Major public policy issue; Gay Lesbian marriage -many people versus the state law suits are now being heard at the Supreme Court. Congress is in a current session to create or deny their rights to be married. Challenge government faces today segregation between parties old world mentality loose financial spending unreasonable government control over state laws Current Event Gun Control -multitude public shootings have outraged the nation as congress re-evaluates the nations right to bear arms. What kinds of arms are allowed and which should be illegalized. Tyler + putting together Power point Provide realistic solutions to the public policy issues, current events, and challenges this government faces. One of the biggest public issues I see currently is gun control. Stricter background checks Regulate magazine capacity

What Are The Prospects Of Underwater Building Environmental Sciences Essay

What Are The Prospects Of Underwater Building Environmental Sciences Essay Population in Egypt increased in the last 10 years and reached 80 million with average annual growth 2.04%. Traffic congestion is the largest problem that Egypt faces, and it has a great effect on air quality, travelling time, business, and cost. The government always tries to solve the congestion by building new bridges, flyovers and subways, but unfortunately it fails due to the increase of population. In this report there is a study on building with a new technology which is building underwater. Although underwater buildings exist since 1960 but no one have heard about it. Building underwater will be advantageous to the environment if people succeed in achieving it. Everything can be built underwater like Houses, hotels, spa, restaurants à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ etc. to let people have a good life or vacation. The glamour view underwater of fishes, coral reefs and different creatures encourages people to build and live there. This report will discuss the possibility and the advantages of underwater buildings. The first section will define what underwater buildings are, and show the advantages and acceptance of them. The second will discuss the effect of underwater buildings on the environment. The third one will discuss the effect of underwater buildings on social life and the means of transportation. The fourth will discuss the materials used, ways of building and special requirements. The fifth will introduce the problems which face the underwater buildings. The sixth will show the ventilation systems that are used. The seventh, will be examples of existing and upcoming underwater buildings that make the reader able to visualize the idea well, and able to connect all the parts of report together. Finally, the conclusion will support and recommend building and living underwater to decrease congestion and pollution on the surface of the earth. What are underwater buildings? According to Dr. Khaled Abdelhady (Professor in architecture engineering, Shoubra University), underwater buildings are structures built underwater for different purposes each according to the type of building constructed (personal communication, 2010). It all started in the 1960s by Jacques Cousteaus team in the form of underwater research stations (underwater habitat, 2006). Underwater buildings already exist, but have you ever thought about going to an underwater building? Underwater building is the future foundation that has a great impact on the environment, we will be facing some problems while applying this technology but if we succeed in achieving it, it will be advantageous to our environment as it gets populated. It is true what was written in the Evolo magazine: Approximately 71% of the Earths surface is ocean, even more if climate change has its way; hence it is only natural progression that we will populate the seas someday. (Water-Scraper: Underwater Architecture, 2010). 1.1 Background on underwater building types When Dr. Khaled Abdelhady was asked about the types of underwater buildings he talked about the following types: 1.1.1 Infra Structures He said that infra structures are footings of buildings made under the water to let the building itself above the water, for example the bridges connecting cities like the golden gate bridge shown in figure 1.1 when you can see the base of bridge placed under the water (personal communication,2010). DSI_Seismic_Retrofit_Golden_Gate_Bridge.jpg Figure 1.1: Golden gate bridge (source: www.google.com) 1.1.2 Research centers Second, Dr. Khaled talked about the research centers underwater. He said that there are two types of centers, first is an underwater livings research center which examine and observe creatures underwater, and second there are scientific centers which search for petroleum in the bottom of seas and oceans (personal communication, 2010) 1.1.3 Tunnels As for underwater tunnels Dr. Khaled Said they are passage ways constructed underwater. There is a type made for internet main cables to be divided all over the world, telephone lines, and others. Other type is made for cars to go through underwater channels but for short distance rivers or water passages like tunnel Ahmed Hamdi at the Suez Canal in Egypt (personal communication, 2010). 1.1.4 Museums As for museums underwater, Dr. Khaled said there are 2 types, first one are museums made to see the underwater livings without having to go through the dangers of diving and for very old adults to be able to see them too, second there are museums made to see the old sunken monuments, why underwater? So that you can see them they exact way they were found in a beautiful creative way. And it has already been constructed like in Vasa Museum in Stockholm (personal communication, 2010). 1.1.5 Hotels restaurants and entertainments Another type that Dr. Khaled Abdelhady talked about was the entertainment types of buildings. There are hotels, spas, and restaurants built underwater so that people could have a nice a vacation, a massage or a meal while watching the fishes and creatures underwater. There are also games made underwater like in Disney land roller coaster as shown in figure 1.2 when you can see people getting into the water while on the roller coaster (personal communication, 2010).manta.jpg Figure 1.2: Disney land roller coaster (Source: www.google.com) 1.2 Advantage and acceptance of underwater buildings Underwater buildings have a lot of advantages to people in Egypt. It will lower the crowded places above land. It will increase the technology usage to be able to build it. It will help improve tourism as people will come from all over the world for entertainment under the red sea, and enjoyment of the astonishing numerous kinds of fishes and corals, and in same time conserve the corals from being touched and hurt by people diving. After asking a large number of people if they would accept going to an underwater city for entertainment, vacation or tourism, it was surprising that most people accepted the idea. This means that if the idea actually gets accomplished, it will be widely spread between people so quickly and it will be successful in Egypt. And as you can see in figure 1.3 the number of people accepting is about triple the number of people refusing. Figure 1.3: Chart shows the number of the acceptance and refusing people 3. Social aspects Overcrowding is considered the worlds problem, which is growing constantly and leads to many other problems. This serious dilemma prompted people to think about the colonization of the oceans, which led them to think about the underwater buildings. As we know, water covers 70% of the earths surface, while land areas form a very small percentage. Taking a look at the earth from outer space, we will find that the blue color dominates, and this will raise a lot of questions about how to exploit these areas. From this point, people begin to study the possibility of building underwater and make use of such great surfaces. Lets find out if people will welcome the idea of living underwater in the future, or it will be a useless project. Due to high cost, these underwater buildings will be limited to a certain level of people, and may be considered as a kind of prosperity. However, if we take into account that the technology advances, so there will be a way to reduce the cost. But if complete cities were built underwater, would people accept such change in their life. Some people cannot live without the sun and do not imagine themselves in a place somewhat isolated. Others want really to try this new life, and enjoy the calmness and the glorious vision. In conclusion, living underwater may become a reality if its benefits overcome its difficulties and problems. 3.1 Means of transportation After searching for the possible means of transportation to live under water, it was found that there are two possibilities. First, as many people will think, submarines would serve as the main mean of transportation. For example, thinking about its cost and applicability, we will find that it is the suitable one. Lets move to the other possibility, at a larger scale, and talk about underwater tunnels. There are some existing underwater tunnels, which would be very effective to attain a certain underwater building or complete city in the future. For example, in Dubai, Hydropolis is an underwater hotel, but it is still under construction. As it is described in figure 3.1, the developers of this project explains: It will include three elements: the land station, where guests will be welcomed, the connecting tunnel, which will transport people by train to the main area of the hotel, and the 220 suites within the submarine leisure complex.(Joachim Hauser, N.D.). C:UserspcDesktopHydropolis dubai.jpg Figure 3.1: The land station of Hydropolis (Source: Design build, ND.) 4. Construction and structure aspects 4.1 The material used   Although many materials exist for building, the one that meet the requirements with the lowest costs are to be chosen. At this level the cost will be minimized. . When choosing the materials to be used in the construction, it is important to ensure that the weight limit is not exceeded. (Carl T.F. Ross Mark El-Hajj ) The main material used for construction underwater was a special type of steel and acrylic. The acrylic material is used mainly for visibility, while the steel is used for reinforcements (supports). (Carl T.F. Ross Mark El-Hajj ) High strength steel is used as it is relatively cheap, and has its high yield strength. It is not also a good conductor of electricity and heat. It is a high corrosion resistance. (Carl T.F. Ross Mark El-Hajj )   Acrylic material is used instead of glass; It is better than glass due to being less dense, and it is also has higher impact strength than the glass. Acrylic gives the natural size and colors of the surrounding materials than glass. It is also good insulator of electricity which is good in seeking the health and safety of customers and underwater creatures. (Carl T.F. Ross Mark El-Hajj ) 4.2 Construction It is known that the wages for underwater construction would be greater than on land construction, due to the difficulty faced during the working underwater. Another problem would arise; the building is large in size. For solving these problems, they divide the building into parts and building each part on land then assemble them under the water. (Carl T.F. Ross Mark El-Hajj, ..) 4.3 Maintenance The maintenance process is a costly process especially when dealing with an underwater maintenance. The below figure shows us how this problem can be solved, by dividing the building into parts that can be separated from the whole building; these parts can be transferred to land so that a cheaper maintenance can take place. (Carl T.F. Ross Mark El-Hajj ) Figure 4.1: The maintenance process (Source: Carl T.F. Ross Mark El-Hajj) The transparent part of the building should be always clean, so that the customers can see the marine clearly in all the time. This situation can be achieved by an automated system which uses a self cleaning coating known as the smart material. (Carl T.F. Ross Mark El-Hajj ) 5 Problem which face underwater building 5.1 Cost Building under water is a very expensive process due to the machines, instruments and skilled workers. Building under water also contains some of welfare as figures (5.1, 5.2) illustrate and it needs to huge budget.Poseidon Figure 5.1: Example of under waters welfare (Source: blog.hotelclub.com/top-five-underwater-hotels/) Dreams, however fabulous, remain unfulfilled without the cash to support the commitment; the hardest part of the process was finding sponsorship to the tune of à ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬550m.Thats what brought me to Dubai. Still, it was a battle which took two-and-a-half years and proved tougher than developing the project itself. No bank would pay such an amount. Its a risky investment, as there are no pilots. We had to convince investors that it is safe and will bring returns on investment. (Hauser, ND), so companies accept to co-operate with its rival to complete under water building project. 5.2 The problem of Erosion Erosion  is the process of  weathering  and transport of solids (sediment,  soil,  rock  and other particles) in the natural environment or their source and deposits them elsewhere. It usually occurs due to  transport  by wind, water, or ice so engineers should choose the appropriate materials for under water building. 5.3 The location of petroleum Figure 5.2 shows that any accident may happen in the sea to the drilling machines and machinery for searching for oil or to any ship in the sea may harm the design of the building and it is out of control.C:UsersHPDesktoppaste.jpg Figure 5.2: The accident of the drilling machine (Source: http://Oc-Po/Petroleum-from-the Ocean.htmlhttp://www.waterencyclopedia.com http://www.waterencyclopedia.com http://www.waterencyclopedia.comunderwater-hotels/) 5.4 The problem of heat of water The temperature of the water is highly variable over the surface of the water, it is heated from the surface downward by sunlight, but at depth most of the water is very cold. (Martha R.  Scott, ND) 5.5 The problem of pressure Pressure plays a big role in influencing the foundations of the building also workers face difficulties either during the construction process or during the maintenance process. 6. Environmental building aspects No doubt that the first thing that comes in our mind while talking about underwater buildings is the problem of ventilation. Ventilation is defined as a: process of supplying fresh air to an enclosed space and removing from it air contaminated by odors, gases, or smoke . Therefore, there must be a source of renewable air that helps in breathing, and getting rid of undesirable gases, like carbon dioxide and others. Lets explore a solution, for the ventilation problem, that was applied while building Holland tunnel, an underwater tunnel. Tunnels, specifically, have a great problem with ventilation, due to gases produced by trains and automobiles. This problem was addressed by Clifford Holland, the tunnels designer. His aim was to find ways to clear exhaust fumes and pump in fresh air, achieving this by using ventilation towers, like the one illustrated in figure 5.1, and fans to move air in and out. Finally, air can be renewed every 90 seconds. (Howstuffworks, ND.) Figure 6.1: Inside a Holland Tunnel ventilation tower (Source: Eric and Edith Matson, ND.) The ventilation systems that can be applied while building, can be divided into two methods: natural ventilation and mechanical ventilation. Natural ventilation depends on an open window if the architecture permits, so it cannot be used in underwater buildings. Therefore, mechanical ventilation is applied to ventilate these buildings. The most important thing is the way to get oxygen needed for breathing. Breathing under water could happen in several ways; such as hydrolyzing the sea water, reversing osmosis, or suctioning methods through air pumps. (Chamberland, ND.). Oxygen can be extracted from seawater since people will live underwater, and it will be a practical method. Reverse osmosis is an effective method used in water treatment; and in the future it will be used to get oxygen, while living underwater. Suctioning oxygen, using air pumps, would help in both getting oxygen and providing good ventilation. 7. Examples 7.1 Dubai Underwater Hotel It is still under development. The hotel location will be 33 feet underwater. Its total cost is over $550 million. The land station will be connected with the underwater section with a 515 meter long tunnel through which an automatic train will transport people to the underwater hotel. It is 260 hectares area consisted of 220 suits bubble shaped 20 meters underwater. The hotel will also have several security measures. It has a series of watertight doors in case of any rapture. It will also have its own missile defensive system in case of any terrorist attack. 7.2 UNDERSEA RESORTS- Poseidon Mystery Island The idea was for the American engineer Bruce Jones. The Poseidon Resorts Mystery Island shown in figure 7.1 could be reached by elevator. It is a 1.1 million square foot , 40 feet under water. Room standard area is 550 square foot. (wayfaring,2007) . The budget of the project is $100 million. http://www.wayfaring.info/images/poseidon_mystery_island_5.jpg Figure 7.1: Poseidon Mystery Island (Source: www.wayfaring.info) 7.3 Ithaa underwater restaurant It is the 1st of its kind in the world. It is 16 feet below the surface of Indian Ocean. It is encased in clear acrylic. The ithaa restaurant can be reached by a wooden walkway shown in figure 6.2 from over the water. It was hard to build it on the beach of rangali due to technical challenge, limited resources and quality problems. (Wikipedia, 2010). It was constructed in Singapore. Its construction began in May 2004, and it was completed in October 2004 including installation of the acrylic arches, air conditioning and electric ducts. Its life span is 20 years. http://travel.spotcoolstuff.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/under3.jpg Figure 7.2: Ithaa underwater restaurant (Source: www. Wikipedia.com) 7.4 Jules Undersea Lodge It is the worlds first underwater hotel, originally built in the early 1970s. It was opened to the public in 1986. (hotelclub,2007).The entrance to the hotel is 21 feet underwater on the sea floor. The Lodge is fully stocked with compressed air.

Essay --

Beloved The story in Beloved authored by Toni Morrison was centered on the aftermath experience of the protagonist; Sethe as a slavery escapee. The story which defied chronology was mirrored in flashbacks. The harsh experience of slavery was still patent and the memories of bitter struggles were still haunting the characters. There was an inhibition in the ability to move on. The ruination of identity by slavery and competence of language were two vital themes in the story and would be further analyzed. Ruination of identity by slavery as theme depicted the physiological, mental and spiritual burden of slavery which is inescapable as it continues to haunt the characters like Sethe and Paul D who experienced it. Slavery was accompanied with negativity on the true identity of oneself and this made story have several situations of self-denial and estrangement. For example, Paul D was unsure of whether the wailings and tears of grief, he was feeling were coming from himself or someone else: â€Å"In the boxes the men heard the water rise in the trench and looked out for cottonmouths. They squatted in muddy water, slept above it, peed in it. Paul D thought he was screaming; his mouth was open and there was this loud throat-splitting sound--but it may have been somebody else. Then he thought he was crying. Something was running down his cheeks. He lifted his hands to wipe away the tears and saw dark brown slime†. The slaves received endured inhuman conditions which included being traded as a normal good in exchange for paper money. Paul D always questioned his worth as a human and suffered from inferiority of being insecure of whether or not he was truly a â€Å"man†. Sethe also experienced the cruelty of slavery. She once intrude... ...ry when Paul D and prison inmates from Georgia sang about their past experiences and dream; â€Å"garbling the words so they could not be understood; tricking the words so their syllables yielded up other meanings†. In another case, Stamp Paid saw through the window, two backs and went to see for himself; believing that â€Å"the undecipherable language clamoring around the house was the mumbling of the black and angry dead†. The titling of the story comes down to what is regarded as language misunderstanding. At the burial of her daughter whom killed by her hand, Sethe misunderstood the minister’s address referring to the living as â€Å"Dear beloved† and interpreted it as referencing to the dead. The meaning of words depend heavily the changing interpretation of words: figures of speech rely on the capability of words to connect and disconnect with the definitions of words.

Differential Literature :: Reading Literature Writing Authors Essays

Differential Literature The health and well-being of literature in America is something that many Americans spend a lot of time thinking, worrying, and theorizing about, a fact that can be told by the new reading promotional campaigns that roll out at seemingly regular intervals (Read!, Reading is Fundamental, Read and Rise, etc.) It is (at least partially) because of the passions aroused by this topic that when the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) released a report entitled Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America (RAR), many people voiced their opinions on the quality of the research methods used to gather the data, the accuracy of the data, and the soundness of the conclusions which were drawn from them. From nearly the day of its release up to today, people are speaking (and writing) their mind about the report’s worth. The report, which used the data from the literature portion of the census beaureau’s 2002, Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, came to many conclusions, all of which revolved around one of their determinations: Americans are reading what it calls literature less than they used to. The data that they used also suggested that the rate of this decrease is accelerating. RAR also finds this decline in the literature readership to be true for all racial, gender, and age groups, although it is slightly more pronounced in some than others – most notably men are reading less than women, reading with minorities is decreasing faster than with Caucasian, and the young faster than the middle aged. Really, though, their main worry comes from a link that has been drawn from the data collected in other studies. This conclusion is that readers of literature are more socially active, engaged, and assumedly productive. There are many conceivable reactions to the NEA’s report. To some people, reading can fairly accurately be described as their religion (Early Modern European Studies Major, 2004) and they may want to add additional information to the report. Many people want to point out the possible flaws and inaccuracies of the text and, of course, there are others who just always need to add their two cents into the pile. Whatever their reasons for their responses, the commentaries that have been written give a surprisingly diverse number of arguments for and against the validity of the report.

Effects Of Divorce On Children :: essays research papers

Since there is a lot discussion of the effects of divorce on children, I choose this to be my topic. In 1991 Amato and Keith (researchers) examined the results of 92 studies using 13,000 children ranging from preschool to young adults to determine what the overall results indicated. The overall result of this study was that children from divorced families are on "average" somewhat worse off than children who have lived in nuclear families. These children have more trouble in school, more behavior problems, more negative self-concepts, more problems with peers, and more trouble getting along with their parents. Overall, the children are more alike than different. Amato tells us that average differences do not mean that all children in divorced families are worse off than all children in intact families. One way to examine this issue is illustrated by findings of Mavis Hetherington. Hetherington, like many others, finds these average differences, but she also looked at some of her measures and examined the degree to which children in divorced and intact families were more severely impaired. Here we find some important differences. On a measure of behavioral problems, Hetherington reports that 90% of adolescent boys and girls in intact families were within the normal range on problems and 10% had serious problems that we would generally require some type of help. The percentages for divorced families were 74% of the boys and 66% of the girls in the normal range and 26% of the boys and 34% of the girls were in the negative scale. The differences between children in different kinds of families are parental Loss, economic loss, more stress, poor parental adjustment, and exposure to interparental conflict. All experts will agree that any life altering change is effective on a child's life.

A Dirty Job Chapter 14

14 BARKING MAD Charlie opened the door and Lily breezed by. â€Å"Jane said you have two huge black dogs up here. I need to see.† â€Å"Lily, wait,† Charlie called, but she was across the living room and into Sophie's room before he could stop her. There was a low growl and she came backing out. â€Å"Oh my fucking God, dude,† she said around a huge grin. â€Å"They are so cool. Where did you get them?† â€Å"I didn't get them anywhere. They were just here.† Charlie joined Lily just outside the door to Sophie's room. She turned and grabbed his arm. â€Å"Are they, like, instruments of your death dealing or something?† â€Å"Lily, I thought we agreed that we wouldn't talk about that.† And they had. In fact, Lily had been great about it. Since she'd first found out about him being a Death Merchant, she'd hardly brought it up at all. She'd also gone on to graduate from high school without getting a major criminal record and enroll in the Culinary Institute, the upside of which was that she actually wore her white chef ‘s coat, checked pants, and rubber clogs to work, which tended to soften her makeup and hair, which remained severe, dark, and a little scary. Sophie giggled and rolled over against one of the hounds. They had been licking her and she was covered with hellish dog spit. Her hair was plastered into a dozen unlikely spikes, making her appear a little like a wide-eyed Anim character. Sophie saw Lily in the doorway and waved. â€Å"Goggie, ‘Ily. Goggie,† she said. â€Å"Hi, Sophie. Yes, those are nice doggies,† Lily said, then to Charlie: â€Å"What are you going to do?† â€Å"I don't know what to do. They won't let me near her.† â€Å"That's good, then. They're here to protect her.† Charlie nodded. â€Å"I think they are. Something happened last night. You know how the Great Big Book talks about the others? I think one of them came after her last night, and these guys showed up.† â€Å"I'm impressed. I'd think you'd be more freaked out.† Charlie didn't want to tell her that he was worn out from freaking out the day before about his little girl killing an old man with the word kitty. Lily already knew too much, and it was obvious now that whatever lay below was dangerous. â€Å"I guess I should be, but they aren't here to hurt her. I need to go check the library in Berkeley, see if there's anything about them there. I need to get Sophie away from them.† Lily laughed. â€Å"Yeah, that's going to happen. Look, I have work and school today, but I'll go do your research for you tomorrow. In the meantime you can try to make friends with them.† â€Å"I don't want to make friends with them.† Lily looked at the hounds, one of whom Sophie was pounding on with her little fists as she laughed gleefully, then looked back at Charlie. â€Å"Yes, you do.† â€Å"Yeah, I guess I do,† Charlie said. â€Å"Have you ever seen a dog that size before?† â€Å"There are no dogs that size.† â€Å"What do you call those, then?† â€Å"Those aren't dogs, Asher, those are hellhounds.† â€Å"How do you know that?† â€Å"I know that because before I started learning about herbs and reductions and stuff, I spent my free time reading about the dark side, and those guys come up from time to time.† â€Å"If we know that, then what are you going to do research on?† â€Å"I'm going to try to find out what sent them.† She patted his shoulder. â€Å"I have to go open the shop. You go make nice with the goggies.† â€Å"What do I feed them?† â€Å"Purina Hellhound Chow.† â€Å"They make that?† â€Å"What do you think?† â€Å"‘Kay,† Charlie said. It took a couple of hours, but after Sophie started smelling like diaper surprise, one of the giant dogs nosed her toward Charlie as if to say, Clean her up and bring her back. Charlie could feel them watching him as he changed his daughter, grateful that disposable diapers didn't require pins. If he'd accidentally poked Sophie with a pin, he was sure one of the hellhounds would have bitten his head off. They watched him carefully as he moved her to the breakfast bar, and sat on either side of her high chair as he gave her breakfast. As an experiment, he made an extra piece of toast and tossed it to one of the hounds. It snapped it out of the air and licked its chops once, eyes now locked on Charlie and the loaf of bread. So Charlie toasted four more slices and the hounds alternately snapped each out of the air so swiftly that Charlie wasn't sure he didn't see some sort of vapor from the pressure of their jaws clamping down. â€Å"So, you're hellish beasts from another dimension, and you like toast. Okay.† Then, as Charlie started to toast four more slices, he stopped, feeling stupid. â€Å"You don't really care if it's toasted, do you?† He flipped a slice of bread to the closest of the dogs, who snapped it out of the air. â€Å"Okay, that will speed things up.† Charlie fed them the remainder of the loaf of bread. He spread a few slices with a thick coat of peanut butter, which did nothing whatsoever, then a half dozen more he spread with lemon dishwasher gel, which appeared to have no ill effect except that it made them burp neat, aquamarine-colored bubbles. â€Å"Go walk, Daddy,† Sophie said. â€Å"No walk today, sweetie. I think we'll just stay right here in the apartment and try to figure out our new pals.† Charlie got Sophie out of her chair, wiped the jelly off her face and out of her hair, then sat down with her on the couch to read to her from the Chronicle's classified ads, which was where he plied a large part of his business, other than the Death stuff. But no sooner had he settled into a rhythm than one of the hellhounds came over, took his arm in its mouth, and dragged him into his bedroom, even as he protested, swore, and smacked it in the head with a brass table lamp. The big dog let him go, then stood staring at Charlie's date book like it had been sprayed with beef gravy. â€Å"What?† Charlie said, but then he saw. Somehow, in all the excitement, he hadn't noticed a new name in the book. â€Å"Look, the number is thirty. I have a whole month to find this one. Leave me alone.† Charlie also noticed in passing that engraved on the hellhound's great silver collar was the name ALVIN. â€Å"Alvin? That's the stupidest name I've ever heard.† Charlie went back to the couch, and the dog dragged him back into the bedroom, this time by the foot. As they went through the door Charlie reached for his sword-cane. When Alvin dropped him Charlie leapt to his feet and drew the blade. The big dog rolled over on his back and whimpered. His companion appeared at the door, panting. (Mohammed was the hound's name, according to the plate on the collar.) Charlie considered his options. He had always felt the sword-cane a pretty formidable weapon, had even been willing to take on the sewer harpies with it, but it occurred to him that these animals had obviously wiped the floor with one of those other creatures of darkness and had no problem sitting down and eating a loaf of soapy toast a couple of hours later. In short, he was out of his league. They wanted him to go retrieve the soul vessel, he would retrieve the soul vessel. But he wasn't leaving his darling daughter alone with them. â€Å"Alvin is still a stupid name,† he said, sheathing the sword. When Mrs. Korjev arrived, Charlie had put Sophie down for her nap, and a dark pile of hellhounds was napping by her crib – snoring great clouds of lemony-fresh dog breath into the air. It was probably part of Charlie's rising rascal nature, but he let Mrs. Korjev enter Sophie's room with only the warning that the little girl had a couple of new pets. He suppressed a snicker as the great Cossack grandmother backed out of the room swearing in Russian. â€Å"Is giant dogs in there.† â€Å"Yes, there are.† â€Å"But not like normal giant dog. They are like extra-giant, black animal, they are – â€Å" â€Å"Like bear?† Charlie suggested. â€Å"No, I wasn't going to say ‘bear,' Mr. Smart-Alec. Not like bear. Like volf, only bigger, stronger – â€Å" â€Å"Like bear?† Charlie ventured. â€Å"You make your mother ashamed when you are mean, Charlie Asher.† â€Å"Not like bear?† Charlie asked. â€Å"Is not important now. I am just surprised. Vladlena is old woman with weak heart, but you go have good laugh and I will sit with Sophie and huge dogs.† â€Å"Thank you, Mrs. Korjev, their names are Alvin and Mohammed. It's on their collars.† â€Å"You have food for them?† â€Å"There are some steaks in the freezer. Just give each one of them a couple and stand back.† â€Å"How they like steaks done?† â€Å"I think frozen will be fine, they eat like – â€Å" Mrs. Korjev raised a finger in warning; it lined it up with a large mole on the side of her nose and looked as if she was sighting down a weapon. † – like horses. They eat like horses,† Charlie said. Mrs. Ling did not take her introduction to Alvin and Mohammed with quite the composure of her Russian neighbor. â€Å"Aiiiiieeeeeeeeee! Giant shiksas shitting,† exclaimed Mrs. Ling as she ran down the hall after Charlie. â€Å"Come back! Shiksas shitting!† Indeed, Charlie returned to the apartment to find great steaming baguettes of poo strewn about the living room. Alvin and Mohammed were flanking the door to Sophie's room like massive Chinese foo dogs at the temple gates, looking not so fierce as shamefaced and contrite. â€Å"Bad dogs,† Charlie said. â€Å"Scaring Mrs. Ling. Bad dogs.† He considered for a moment trying to rub their noses in their offense, but short of bringing in a backhoe and chaining them to it, he wasn't sure that he could make that happen. â€Å"I mean it, you guys,† he added, in an especially stern voice. â€Å"I'm sorry, Mrs. Ling,† Charlie said to the diminutive matron. â€Å"These are Alvin and Mohammed. I should have been more specific when I said I'd gotten new pets for Sophie.† Actually, he had been vague on purpose, hoping for some sort of hysterical reaction. Not that he really wanted to frighten the old lady, it's just that Beta Males are seldom ever in a position to frighten anyone physically, so when they get the opportunity, they sometimes lose their sense of judgment. â€Å"Is okay,† said Mrs. Ling, staring at the hellhounds. She seemed distracted, mainly because she was. Having recovered from the initial shock, she was doing the math in her head – a rapid-fire abacus clicking off the weight and volume of each pony-sized canine, and dividing him into chops, steaks, ribs, and packages of stew meat. â€Å"You'll be all right, then?† Charlie asked. â€Å"You not be late, okay?† said Mrs. Ling. â€Å"I want to go to Sears and look at chest freezer today. You have power saw I can borrow.† â€Å"Power saw? Well, no, but I'm sure Ray has one he can lend you. I'll be back in a couple of hours,† Charlie said. â€Å"But let me clean this up first.† He headed to the basement in hopes of finding the coal shovel that his father had once kept there. As they parted ways that day, both Charlie and Mrs. Ling were counting on Sophie's history of high pet mortality to quickly solve their respective poop and soup problems. Such, however, was not to be the case. When several weeks passed with no ill effects on the hellhounds, Charlie accepted the possibility that these might, indeed, be the only pets that could survive Sophie's attention. He was tempted, many times, to call Minty Fresh and ask his advice, but since his last call might have caused the hellhounds to appear in the first place, he resisted the urge. Lily's research trips yielded little more: â€Å"They talk about them all through time,† Lily said, calling from the Berkeley library on her cell phone. â€Å"Mostly it's about how they like to chase blues singers, and evidently there's a German robot soccer team called the Hellhounds, but I don't think that's relevant. The thing that comes up again and again, in a dozen cultures, is that they guard the passage between the living and the dead.† â€Å"Well, that makes sense,† Charlie said. â€Å"I guess. It doesn't say where that passage is, does it? What BART station?† â€Å"No, Asher, it doesn't. But I found this book by a nun who had been excommunicated in the 1890s, isn't that cool? This library is amazing. They have like nine million books.† â€Å"Yes, that's great, Lily, what did the ex-nun say?† â€Å"She had found all the references for hellhounds, and the thing they all seemed to agree on was they serve directly the ruler of the Underworld.† â€Å"She was Catholic and she called it the Underworld?† â€Å"Well, they threw her out of the Church for writing this book, but yeah, that's what she said.† â€Å"She didn't have a number we could call in case they got lost.† â€Å"I'm over here on my day off, Asher, trying to do you a favor. Are you going to keep being a smart-ass about it?† â€Å"No, I'm sorry, Lily. Go on.† â€Å"That's it. It's not like there's a care-and-feeding guide. Mostly, the research implies that having hellhounds around is a bad thing.† â€Å"What's the title of this book, The Complete Guide to the Fucking Obvious?† â€Å"You're paying me for this, you know? Time and travel.† â€Å"Sorry. Yes. So I should try to get rid of them.† â€Å"They eat people, Asher. Who's riding the duh train now?† So, with that, Charlie decided that he needed to take an active role in ridding himself of the monstrous canines. Since the only thing about the hellhounds that he could be sure of was that they would go anywhere he took Sophie, he brought them along on their trip to the San Francisco Zoo, and left them locked in the van with the engine running and a shop-vac hose run from the exhaust pipe through the vent window. After what he considered to be an extraordinarily successful tour of the zoo, in which not a single animal shuffled off the mortal coil under the delighted eye of his daughter, Charlie returned to the van to find two very stoned, but otherwise unharmed hellhounds who were burping a burnt plastic vapor after having eaten his seat covers. Various experiments revealed that Alvin and Mohammed were not only immune to most poisons, but they rather liked the taste of bug spray and consequently licked all the paint off the baseboards in Charlie's apartment in the week following the exterminator's quarterly service. As time wore on, Charlie tried to measure the danger of having the giant canines around against the damage that would be done to Sophie's psyche from witnessing their demise, as she was obviously becoming attached to them, so he backed off the more direct attacks on them and stopped throwing Snausages in front of the number 90 crosstown express bus. (This decision was also made easy when the city of San Francisco threatened to sue Charlie if his dogs wrecked another bus.) Direct attacks, in fact, were difficult for Charlie (as the only true Beta Male martial art was based entirely on the kindness of strangers), so he turned on the hellhounds the awesome power of the Beta Male kung fu of passive aggression. He started conservatively, taking them for a ride over to the East Bay in the van, luring them onto the Oakland mudflats with a rack of beef ribs, then driving away quickly, only to find them waiting in the apartment when he returned, having covered the entire living room with a patina of drying mud. He then tried an even more indirect approach: crating up the hounds and air-freighting them to Korea in the hope they would find themselves in an entre, only to find that they actually made it back to the shop before he had time to sweep the dog hair out of his apartment. He thought that perhaps he might use their own natural instincts to chase them away, after he read on the Internet that the essence of cougar urine was sometimes sprinkled on shrubs and flowers to keep dogs from urinating on them. After a fairly exhaustive search through the phone book, he finally found the number of an outdoorsman's supply store in South San Francisco that was a certified mountain-lion whizz dealer. â€Å"Sure, we carry cougar urine,† the guy said. He sounded like he was wearing a buckskin jacket and had a big beard, but Charlie might have just been projecting. â€Å"And that's supposed to keep dogs away?† Charlie asked. â€Å"Works like a charm. Dogs, deer, and rabbits. How much do you need?† â€Å"I don't know, maybe ten gallons.† There was a pause, and Charlie was sure he could hear the guy picking flecks of elk meat out of his beard. â€Å"We sell it in one-, two-, and five-ounce bottles.† â€Å"Well, that's not going to do it,† Charlie said. â€Å"Can't you get me like a large economy size – preferably from a cougar that's been fed nothing but dog for a couple of months? I assume that this is domesticated cougar pee, right? I mean you don't go out in the wild and collect it yourself.† â€Å"No, sir, I believe they get it from zoos.† â€Å"The wild stuff is probably better, huh?† Charlie asked. â€Å"If you can get it, I mean? I don't mean you personally. I wasn't implying that you were out in the wild following a mountain lion around with a measuring cup. I meant a professional – hello?† The bearded buckskin-sounding guy had hung up. So Charlie sent Ray over to South San Francisco in the van to buy up all the cougar whizz they had, but in the end it achieved nothing other than making the whole second floor of Charlie's building smell like a cat box. When it appeared that even the most passive-aggressive attempts would not work, Charlie resorted to the ultimate Beta Male attack, which was to tolerate Alvin and Mohammed's presence, but to resent the hell out of them and drop snide remarks whenever he had the chance. Feeding the hellhounds was like shoveling coal into two ravenous steam engines – Charlie started having fifty pounds of dog food delivered every two days to keep up with them, which they, in turn, converted to massive torpedoes of poo that they dropped in the streets and alleys around Asher's Secondhand like they were staging their own doggie blitzkrieg on the neighborhood. The upside of their presence was that Charlie went for months on end without hearing a peep from the storm drains or seeing an ominous raven shadow on a wall when he was retrieving a soul vessel. And to that end, the death dealing, the hounds served their purpose as well, for whenever a new name appeared in his date book, the hounds would drag Charlie to the calendar every morning until he returned with the soul object, so he went two years without missing or being late for a retrieval. The big dogs, of course, accompanied Charlie and Sophie on their walks, which had resumed once Charlie was sure that Sophie had her â€Å"special† language skill under control. The hounds, while certainly the largest dogs that anyone had ever seen, were not so large as to be unbelievable, and everywhere they went, Charlie was asked what breed they were. Tired of trying to explain, he would simply say, â€Å"They're hellhounds,† and when asked where he got them, he would reply, â€Å"The y just showed up in my daughter's room one night and wouldn't go away,† after which people not only thought him a liar, but an ass as well. So he modified his response to â€Å"They're Irish hellhounds,† which for some reason, people accepted immediately (except for one Irish football fan in a North Beach restaurant who said, â€Å"I'm Irish and those things aren't bloody Irish.† To which Charlie replied, â€Å"Black Irish.† The football fan nodded as if he knew that all along and added to the waitress, â€Å"Can I get another fookin' pint o' here before I dry up and blow away, lass?†) In a way, Charlie started to enjoy the notoriety of being the guy with the cute little girl and the two giant dogs. When you have to maintain a secret identity, you can't help but relish a little public attention. And Charlie did, until the day he and Sophie were stopped on a side street on Russian Hill by a bearded man in a long cotton caftan and a woven hat. Sophie was old enough by then to do a lot of her own walking, although Charlie kept a piggyback kid sling with him so he could carry her when she got tired (but more often he would just balance her while she rode on the back of Alvin or Mohammed). The bearded man passed a little too closely to Sophie and Mohammed growled and imposed himself between the man and the child. â€Å"Mohammed, get back here,† Charlie said. It turned out the hellhounds could be trained, especially if you only told them to do things they were going to do anyway. (â€Å"Eat, Alvin. Good boy. Poop now. Excellent.†) â€Å"Why do you call this dog Mohammed?† asked the bearded man. â€Å"Because that's his name.† â€Å"You should not have called this dog Mohammed.† â€Å"I didn't call the dog Mohammed,† Charlie said. â€Å"His name was Mohammed when I got him. It was on his collar.† â€Å"It is blasphemy to call a dog Mohammed.† â€Å"I tried calling him something else, but he doesn't listen. Watch. Steve, bite this man's leg? See, nothing. Spot, bite off this man's leg. Nothing. I might as well be speaking Farsi. You see where I'm going with this?† â€Å"Well, I have named my dog Jesus. How do you feel about that?† â€Å"Well, then I'm sorry, I didn't realize you'd lost your dog.† â€Å"I have not lost my dog.† â€Å"Really? I saw these flyers all over town with ‘Have You Found Jesus?' on them. It must be another dog named Jesus. Was there a reward? A reward helps, you know.† Charlie noted that more and more lately, he had a hard time resisting the urge to fuck with people, especially when they insisted upon behaving like idiots. â€Å"I do not have a dog named Jesus and that doesn't bother you because you are a godless infidel.† â€Å"No, really, you can not name your dog anything you want and it won't bother me. But, yes, I am a godless infidel. At least that's how I voted in the last election.† Charlie grinned at him. â€Å"Death to the infidel! Death to the infidel!† said the bearded man in response to Charlie's irresistible charm. He danced around shaking his fist in the Death Merchant's face, which scared Sophie so that she covered her eyes and started to cry. â€Å"Stop that, you're scaring my daughter.† â€Å"Death to the infidel! Death to the infidel!† Mohammed and Alvin quickly got bored watching the dance and sat down to wait for someone to tell them to eat the guy in the nightshirt. â€Å"I mean it,† Charlie said. â€Å"You need to stop.† He looked around, feeling embarrassed, but there was no one else on the street. â€Å"Death to the infidel. Death to the infidel,† chanted the beard. â€Å"Have you seen the size of these dogs, Mohammed?† â€Å"Death to – hey, how did you know my name was Mohammed? Doesn't matter. Never mind. Death to the infidel. Death to the – â€Å" â€Å"Wow, you certainly are brave,† Charlie said, â€Å"but she's a little girl and you're scaring her and you really need to stop that now.† â€Å"Death to the infidel! Death to the infidel!† â€Å"Kitty!† Sophie said, uncovering her eyes and pointing at the man. â€Å"Oh, honey,† Charlie said. â€Å"I thought we weren't going to do that.† Charlie slung Sophie up on his shoulders and walked on, leading the hellhounds away from the bearded dead man who lay in a peaceful heap on the sidewalk. He had stuffed the man's little woven hat in his pocket. It was glowing a dull red. Strangely, the bearded man's name wouldn't appear in Charlie's date book until the next day. â€Å"See, a sense of humor is important,† Charlie said, making a goofy face over his shoulder at his daughter. â€Å"Silly Daddy,† Sophie said. Later, Charlie felt bad about his daughter using the â€Å"kitty† word as a weapon, and he felt that a decent father would try to give some sort of meaning to the experience – teach some sort of lesson, so he sat Sophie down with a pair of stuffed bears, some tiny cups of invisible tea, a plate of imaginary cookies, and two giant hounds from hell, and had his first, heart-to-heart, father-daughter talk. â€Å"Honey, you understand why Daddy told you not to ever do that again, right? Why people can't know that you can do that?† â€Å"We're different than other people?† Sophie said. â€Å"That's right, honey, because we're different than other people,† he said to the smartest, prettiest little girl in the world. â€Å"And you know why that is, right?† â€Å"Because we're Chinese and the White Devils can't be trusted?† â€Å"No, not because we're Chinese.† â€Å"Because we are Russian, and in our hearts are much sorrow?† â€Å"No, there is not much sorrow in our hearts.† â€Å"Because we are strong, like bear?† â€Å"Yes, sweetie, that's it. We're different because we're strong, like bear.† â€Å"I knew it. More tea, Daddy?† â€Å"Yes, I'd love some more tea, Sophie.† So,† said the Emperor, â€Å"I see you have experienced the multifarious ways in which a man's life is enriched by the company of a good brace of hounds.† Charlie was sitting on the back step of the shop, pulling whole frozen chickens from a crate and tossing them to Alvin and Mohammed one at a time. Each chicken was snapped out of the air with so much force that the Emperor, and Bummer and Lazarus, who were crouched across the alley suspiciously eyeing the hellhounds, flinched as if a pistol was being fired nearby. â€Å"Multifarious enrichment,† Charlie said, tossing another chicken. â€Å"That is exactly how I'd describe it.† â€Å"There is no better, nor more loyal, friend than a good hound,† said the Emperor. Charlie paused, having pulled not a chicken from the box, but a portable electric mixer. â€Å"A friend indeed,† he said, â€Å"a friend indeed.† Mohammed snapped down the mixer without even chewing – two feet of cord hung from the side of his mouth. â€Å"That doesn't hurt him?† said the Emperor. â€Å"Roughage,† Charlie explained, throwing a frozen chicken chaser to Mohammed, who gulped it down with the rest of the mixer cord. â€Å"They're not really my dogs. They belong to Sophie.† â€Å"A child needs a pet,† said the Emperor. â€Å"A companion to grow up with – although these fellows seem to have done most of their growing.† Charlie nodded, tossing the alternator from an eighty-three Buick into Alvin's eager jaws. There was a clanking and the dog belched, but his tail thumped against the Dumpster asking for more. â€Å"Well, they have been her constant companions,† Charlie said. â€Å"At least now we have them trained so they'll just guard whatever building she's in. For a while they wouldn't leave her side. Bath time was a challenge.† The Emperor said, â€Å"I believe it was the poet Billy Collins who wrote, ‘No one here likes a wet dog.'† â€Å"Yes, and he probably never had to get a squirming toddler and two four-hundred-pound dogs out of a bubble bath, either.† â€Å"But they've mellowed, you say?† â€Å"They had to. Sophie started school. The teacher frowned on giant dogs in class.† Charlie flipped an answering machine to Alvin, who crunched it up like a dog biscuit, shards of dog-spit-covered plastic raining down from his jaws. â€Å"So what did you do?† â€Å"It took us a few days, and a lot of explaining, but I trained them to just sit outside the front door of the school.† â€Å"And the faculty relented?† â€Å"Well, I spray-paint them with that granite-texture spray paint every morning, then tell them to sit absolutely still on either side of the door. No one seems to notice them.† â€Å"And they obey? All day?† â€Å"Well, it's just a half day right now, she's only in kindergarten. And you have to promise them a cookie.† â€Å"There's always a price to be paid.† The Emperor pulled a frozen chicken out of the box. â€Å"May I?† â€Å"Please.† Charlie waved him on. The Emperor tossed the chicken to Mohammed, who chomped it down in a single bite. â€Å"My, that is satisfying,† said the Emperor. â€Å"That's nothing,† Charlie said. â€Å"If you feed them mini – propane cylinders they burp fire.†

Han Dynasty and Mauryan/Gupta Dynasties

Han Dynasty (China) vs. Mauryan/Gupta Dynasties (India) The Han Dynasty lasted from 206 BCE – 220 BCE, and was in China. The Mauryan and Gupta Dynasty lasted from 322 BCE – 500 CE, and were in India. The Mauryan Dynasty ended by 185 BCE. The Gupta Dynasty started in 320 CE. In my essay I am going to be comparing and contrasting the 3 dynasty’s (2 of them as 1), and their control through religion, trade, male dominance, and how they fell. The Han Dynasty controlled their empire through Confucianism. One of the emperor’s, Han Wudi, established an Imperial University.Confucianism was the official course of study. If you wanted to become part of the government you had to have â€Å"graduated† from the University. Any person from an social class could go to the University. Going to the University actually could bump you up to a better social class. Most of the emperors of the Han Dynasty ruled through Confucians teachings: Ren, Li, and Xiao. While the Gu pta Dynasty went through a few religions; Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. They mostly used Buddhism and Jainism to control the empire. Both religions had many restraints on what you could and could not do.Jainism didn’t believe that women could go through the spiritual process unless they were reborn male. I don’t understand why in history women were always looked down upon, and weren’t allowed to do what males can do. They had different religions, but the same purpose. China’s one main trade was silk. Everyone wanted China’s silk because it was the best; plain and simple. Even if you tried to duplicate their stitching, it wasn’t as good. China was extremely secretive on how they created silk, and made items out of it. They were the only culture at the time who knew how to take care of the silk worms.Even if outsiders were able to sneak one out of the country, the worm died soon because they didn’t know the proper way to take of it. China only traded with villages outside their wall. India on the other hand traded across the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, and the Mediterranean. Their trade schedule depended on the monsoon winds. They traded from Asia to Persia. If you were born a Vaishyas you were a merchant/ trader. The social class you were born into decided what you did for a living. Male dominance; the only subject you can ever get me extremely wound up about.If I had lived during the time period of male dominance I would have been a very disobedient woman. In China according to Confucius, women were only around to serve their husbands and take care of the children. They were also not granted a proper education and most of them couldn’t read or write. Their duty was to be a good little house wife. In India arranged marriage was common. Father’s paid another family to have their son marry his daughter. The daughter could be eight years old, while the man she was married to was twenty. I think that†™s just wrong and disgusting. The Han Dynasty fell because of a rebellion.The people were tired of the tax raises. They didn’t like that they were forced to help build the Great Wall. They definitely didn’t like the property policies; having their land easily taken from them and given to someone richer. The Mauryan Dynasty fell because they kept devaluing the currency; making everything too expensive and it cause inflation. The Gupta Dynasty fell because it was continuously invaded by the White Hun’s. It disintegrated along regional fault lines. After the Gupta Dynasty fell smaller kingdoms were created and dominated India until the Mughal Empire.