The Character of Cyrano De Bergerac :: Cyrano Bergerac

The Character of Cyrano De Bergerac A man who knows every thing, has never ending wit and charm, and has a way with words like none other, but is still to horrid to convey his true feelings to a beautiful woman. This poor but yet amazing man is Cyrano from the play "Cyrano De Bergerac" by Edmond Rostand. This man has more intellect than sand in a desert and is the most courageous Gascon of all. Yet he has one tragic physical flaw. He has an enormous nose, of which he is very self conscious about and only he can talk about it. If any one else has anything to say about it the better say something very witty or there done for. All of this is portrayed in one of Cyrano's speeches on page 40-41. The speech reveals how clever and smart he is when he says things like "what a sign for a perfume shop" (41) and "Is that a conch, and are you Triton rising from the sea?"(41). Cyrano reveals a lot about himself in his speech like how intelligent he is to use such big intellectual words off the top of his head. Cyrano uses phrases like "The end of it must get wet when you drink from a cup. Why don't you use a tankard?"(40) And words like Grandiloquent to show off his wit. Most people in that age weren't educated as well as Cyrano was and that showed a lot when he spoke. Not many people in the room knew that grandiloquent meant pretentious or non straight forward. Aristophanes was also another word that no one ever used or knew what it meant. Cyrano also revealed that he had no patience for people that made fun of, or picked on those that were less fortunate. Cyrano thought as himself as less fortunate to have a nose like his. So when people made fun of it he got very angry but yet he never lost his cool. So Cyrano would just take care of business with the bully in a entertaining manner and then be on his way. In his speech he showed his willingness to fight and his aptitude to make people mad at him.

Leonardo da Vinci :: essays research papers

Leonardo da Vinci, perhaps the greatest man in history, invented thousands of things including the helicopter, tank and portable bridge. Leonardo was not only an inventor ,but a sculptor, an artist and an architect. He was born 1452 in the small town of Vinci ,in Tuscany. His father was a wealthy notary and his mother a peasant woman. In the mid 1460s the family moved to Florence here he was given the best education Florence could offer. He advanced rapidly socially and intellectually . He was very handsome and a fine musician. About 1482 Leonardo entered the service of the duke of Milan. Due to a recommendation stating that he could build portable bridges and knew techniques in constructing canons, ships and catapults as well as other weapons. He served as principle engineer in the duke’s military projects. In 1502 Leonardo entered the service of Cesare Borgia, duke of Romagna. He served as Cesare’s chief architect and engineer. Leonardo supervised work on the fortresses of the papal territories in central Italy. In 1506 Leonardo went to Milan again at the summons of its French governor Charles d’Amboise. For the next six years he divided his time between Milan and Florence. He still continued his engineering projects and worked on a figure for a monument to a commander of the French forces in the city. Although Leonardo produced a small number of paintings he was an influent artist. The Mona Lisa, his most famous work, is a great example of two techniques sfumato and chiaroscuro of which he was one of the first great masters. Because none of Leonardo’s sculptural projects were brought to completion, his approach to three dimensional art can only be judged by his drawings. As a scientist he towered over his generation.

Genzyme Corporation Essay

Genzyme has a tradition to be financed with equity. High equity ratio has advantages such as low agency costs related to debt, lower financial stress and more flexibility for management, which is especially crucial for start-up companies, such as in the early stage of Genzyme. However, besides losing the tax shield from debt, high equity financing leads to an increasingly diffused ownership, which would in turn causes problems such as shareholder – management principal – agent problem and asymmetric information problem. Principal – agent problem: As agent of the shareholder (principal), management should aim at maximizing shareholders’ value, i.e. the market value of the equity. However, management tends to serve its own interests. In order to make management act in line with the shareholders’ interest, agency costs of managerial incentives are induced. For Genzyme, to increase leverage is one way to reduce managerial incentives related agency costs . However, management generally does not prefer debt, since higher leverage implies higher risk for bankruptcy as financial distress increases with the leverage level. In order to mitigate this problem, Genzyme can try to offer compensation contracts which reflect compensation to the firm specific risks that managers are facing. This will make sure management to act in line with shareholders’ interest. Beside principal – agent problem, low debt equity ratio can also cause high adverse selection cost induced by asymmetric information. Asymmetric information problem: the separation of ownership and control of the firm will lead to asymmetric information problem. Management obviously has more information than shareholders and often will not disclose certain crucial information about firm’s strategic plans or operations. This will naturally have impact on the market value of a public traded firm like Genzyme. With asymmetric information, the market value of the firm might not reflect the true value of the firm. The market value tends to reflect a pooling equilibrium, because of high adverse selection. Fully separating equilibrium can only be obtained through firm’s sending unique, powerful but costly signals to the market. Therefore, Genzyme Corporation faces high signaling cost relat ed to adverse selection induced by asymmetric information problem. Debt again serves good to mitigate information asymmetry problem and to discipline management.

Relationship Of Playing Online Games To Student Behavior And Academic Performance

In the present time, most adolescents get hooked on to online gaming. Online games are video games played through a form of computer network. Online games can range from simple text based games to games incorporating complex graphics and virtual worlds populated by many players simultaneously. Gaming faces criticism by groups who point out that some of the programs contain objectionable content. As the children clicked together with spreading of online games, parents and instructors are alarmed, but researchers questioned whether these games can be harnessed into educational purposes.The purpose of this research is to know the Relationship of Playing online games to the students’ behavior and academic performance and what are its positive and negative effects. With this research, people will be able to comprehend on what the students are enjoying so much about online games and why they let it affect their behavioral and academic performance.Related LiteratureElectronic games h ave become ingrained in our culture. Children’s fixation with these games initially alarmed parents and educators, but educational researchers soon questioned whether the motivation to play could be tapped and harnessed for educational purposes. However, although many claim that educational potential lies within video games, they still have not been universally been regarded as a quality learning tool. According to Patricia Greenfield (Mind and Media) claimed in 1984 that with increasing technology and increased research that future video games would be a vital component to the educational process. David Sheff (Video Games: A Guide for Savvy Parents) said almost the exactly same thing in 1994.It seems as if the issue of using video games for educational purposes is still not fully accepted and their implementation brings forth many concerns. Thus, it is also seen that we have constantly regarded video games as having high potential and that their use in education will be vita l in the near future. However, these visions have remained the same as time has passed and the foreseeable goal of implementation has still yet to be reached, for we keep pushing the time line further into the future.Video games are seen as a good learning tool because many think that they can teach children in ways that their teachers are failing by sparking their minds, stimulating their thinking, and inspiring their imagination.Playing Online games are one of the medium of entertainment especially in the student of (Holy cross of Davao College). Virtual or cyber games over internet are direct personally to each individual user. It encourages and requires the participation of individual user or gamester. It is an inexpensive in the sense that the internet connections for the online games are easily accessible everywhere and anywhere and affordable days. This aspect works in association with the personal characteristic and importance of discipline to the individual (student) gamest er. The effective advertisement and promotions of online games developers caught the youth or student’s attention to response.These qualities of online games advertisement give it immense influence over a vast range and sizeable number of student especially in (Holy cross of Davao College). Certainly, it is not just a matter of a single flick. Online game is a business and profit has to generate. Apparently, businesses, or anyone for that matter, do not see many monetary profits from hardcore developmental animation, graphic development, and as businesses, they must do everything to maximize profits. The children, teenager or students are where the money and corporate boards of many online game sites decided that these are the ones who must be targeted. The more children, teenager or students playing at strategic times of the day, the more they could advertise and give promos. DLSU..Taha, Jackilyn A. Relationship Of Playing Online Games To Student Behavior And Academic Performance In the present time, most adolescents get hooked on to online gaming. Online games are video games played through a form of computer network. Online games can range from simple text based games to games incorporating complex graphics and virtual worlds populated by many players simultaneously. Gaming faces criticism by groups who point out that some of the programs contain objectionable content. As the children clicked together with spreading of online games, parents and instructors are alarmed.Playing Online games are one of the medium of entertainment especially in the student of (Holy cross of Davao College). Virtual or cyber games over internet are direct personally to each individual user. It encourages and requires the participation of individual user or gamester. It is an inexpensive in the sense that the internet connections for the online games are easily accessible everywhere and anywhere and affordable these days.This aspect works in association with the personal character istic and importance of discipline to the individual (student) gamester. The effective advertisement and promotions of online games developers caught the youth or student’s attention to response. These qualities of online games advertisement give it immense influence over a vast range and sizeable number of student in (Holy cross of Davao College). Certainly, it is not just a matter of a single flick. Online game is a business and profit has to generate.Apparently, businesses, or anyone for that matter, do not see many monetary profits from hardcore developmental animation, graphic development, and as businesses, they must do everything to maximize profits. The children, teenager or students are where the money is at, and corporate boards of many online game sites decided that these are the ones who must be targeted. The more children, teenager or students playing at strategic times of the day, the more they could advertise and give promos.

Vague and Ambiguous

One main task of critical thinking is to identify these linguistic pitfalls. Let us start with the first major pitfall – obscurity. â€Å"Obscurity† here refers to unclear meaning. A concept or a linguistic expression can be unclear for various reasons. One reason is that it might be  ambiguous, i. e. having more than one meaning. The other reason is that it might be  vague. A term is said to be vague if there are borderline cases where it is indeterminate as to whether it applies or not.Finally, a term might also have an unclear meaning in that its meaning is  incomplete. Let us look at these cases one by one.  § M08. 1 Ambiguity There are actually different kinds of ambiguity: Lexical ambiguity This is a single word or term having more than one meaning in the language. For example, the word â€Å"deep† can mean profoundity (â€Å"What you have said is very deep. â€Å"), or it can be used to describe physical depth (â€Å"This hole is very deep†). Similarly for words like â€Å"young† (inexperienced or young of age), â€Å"bank† (river bank or financial institution), etc. Referential ambiguity It is not clear which thing or group is being referred to.This often arises when the context does not make it clear what a pronoun or quantifier is referring to. â€Å"Ally hit Georgia and then she started bleeding. † Who is hurt? Ally or Georgia? â€Å"Everybody is coming to the party. † Certainly â€Å"everybody† does not refer to every human being in the whole world. But then which group of people are we talking about? Of course in normal situations the speaker usually has some specific group of people in mind. Many people like to make very general statements, such as â€Å"All politicians are corrupt†. Literally, this statement implies that there is no politician who is not corrupted.But of course we can think of many counterexamples to such a claim. So the person who makes the statement might say â€Å"I don't really mean each and every politician. † But then who exactly are the people referred to? Syntactic ambiguity This means having more than one meaning because there is more than one way to interpret the grammatical structure. This can happen even when it is clear what the meanings of the individual words are. â€Å"We shall be discussing violence on TV. † – It might mean the discussion will be conducted during a television programme, or it might mean  violence on TV  is the topic to be discussed.When dealing with ambiguous language the thing to do is of course to clarify the meaning of the expression, for example by listing out all the different possible interpretations. This process of removing ambiguity is call â€Å"disambiguation†.  § M08. 2 Vagueness An term is  vague  if it has an imprecise boundary. This means that there are cases where it is indeterminate whether the term applies or not. For example, a small but c losed room with no windows or doors and no light inside is certain dark. If we switch on a 100W lightbulbs inside it will become bright.But we turn on the dimmer for the light and dim the light slowly until it goes out, then the room will gradually change from a bright room to a dark one. But there is no precise point at which the room suddenly ceases to be bright. Similarly, there is no precise point at which the room suddenly becomes dark. The terms â€Å"dark† and â€Å"bright† do not have clear boundaries of applications in this situation, and we say that these terms are vague. The term â€Å"a tall person† is also vague in that there are certain cases where it is hard to say whether a person is tall or not, but this indecision is not due to lack of knowledge about that person's height.You might know exactly how tall that person is, but still you don't know whether he is tall or not. This is because the meaning of the term is not precise enough. Other exampl es of vague terms : â€Å"heavy†, â€Å"dark†, â€Å"mountain†, â€Å"clever†, â€Å"cheap†. Notice that  we should make a distinction between vagueness and ambiguity. A word can be vague even though it is not ambiguous, and an ambiguous term having more than one meaning would not be said to be vague if the different meanings it has are very precise. Vague terms can be useful in everyday life  because often we do not have to be too precise.How precise we should be depends of course on the context. A form of (bad) argument about vagueness which we often encounter : â€Å"There is really no difference between X and Y because it is often quite unclear whether something is X or Y. † Example : â€Å"There is really no such thing as objective truth or falsity. Whether something is true or false is often hard to say. † This is a bad argument because even though a distinction might have borderline cases, it does not follow that the distin ction is not real. For example, it might sometimes be unclear whether a room is dark or bright.But (a) there is still a real distinction between dark and bright rooms, and (b) there can be clear cases where we have one but not the other. Vagueness should be avoided when we want to speak precisely, as vagueness decreases the informational content of a claim. For example, compare these sentences : â€Å"He is quite old, actually exactly eighty years old. † â€Å"He is quite old, actually about eighty years old. † â€Å"He is quite old. † Many students often like to ask questions such as : â€Å"Is there going to be a lot of homework for this course? † â€Å"Is the final exam going to be difficult? â€Å"But of course words like â€Å"difficult† and â€Å"a lot† are vague. Vague terms can make a claim vague and impossible to confirm or disprove. Horoscope predictions for example : â€Å"Be prepared for a change of direction this week as some thing crops up. † – SCMP Sunday Post Magazine. â€Å"This piece of news is going to affect the market somewhat. † But of course one might try to use vagueness to one's advantage in order to be non-committal or imprecise. â€Å"As a minister I agree that to some extent I am responsible. † â€Å"The government will deal with this problem in an appropriate manner when the right time comes. †  § M08. Incomplete Meaning A term has an  incomplete meaning  if the property or relation it expresses depends on some further parameter to be specified by the context, either explicitly or implicitly. This includes terms such as â€Å"useful†, â€Å"important†, â€Å"similar† and â€Å"better†. Practically all objects are useful and important only in some respects but not others. For example, is love more important than money? Well, it depends. If you are starving to death, then money is more important. But if you are trying to de termine which of the two contributes more to a happy and fulfilling life, then the answer might be different.So just saying that something is useful or important is empty unless it is made clear in what way it is so. This is also necessary if we want to evaluate whether what is said is true or not. â€Å"The education director shall visit Scotland to study their educational system because it is similar to the one in Hong Kong. † â€Å"Will this year's final exam be similar to the one last year? † â€Å"It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But . . . it is better to be good than to be ugly. † –   Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900) â€Å"Art never improves, but . . . the material of art is never quite the same. † –   T. S. Eliot (1888 – 1965)

Referring to your Wider Reading Essay

By Comparing Extracts A, B and C and Referring to your Wider Reading, Examine how Typical in both Style and Treatment of Subject Matter these writings are of Literature from or about the First World War The experiences of men and women within the war differed drastically, due to the different roles played by each gender; women lacked knowledge of the trauma undergone by soldiers on the frontline, due to their lack of personal experience. However, there was not only contrast between men and women in their attitudes and view of the war: Depending on the nature of their involvement in the war, attitudes of women were many and varied, as were those of men. Written by Jessie Pope, a writer well-known for the propaganda portrayed by her poetry throughout the war, ‘Who’s for the Game?’ harbours an extremely motivational, patriotic tone. This is due to the fact that Pope was commissioned to write poems that would encourage young men to join up and fight for their country. As such, this poem illustrates Pope’s utilisation of certain literary techniques in order to rouse an arguably ill-founded passion inside young men to fight to defend their country. Pope’s use of rhetorical questions throughout this poem acts as a gripping device, and holds the attention of the reader; ‘Who’s for the game, the biggest that’s played, The red, crashing game of a fight?’ †¦Who’ll give his country a hand?’ As well as demonstrating Pope’s use of rhetorical questions and the patriotism within her poetry, this quote also illustrates her technique of comparing the brutal war to a sport’s ‘game’, which is further supported by her statement; ‘Who’ll grip and tackle the job unafraid?’ in which sport’s terminology is utilised, in order to enable her target audience, the young men of the time, to relate to what is being said: Sport’s games were popular amongst boys of the early Twentieth Century, and by comparing the war to a such a game, Pope appeals to these boys. The above quote also demonstrates Pope’s technique of challenging the masculinity of the young men, as she implies that those who don’t fight are cowards, again this is further developed by the statement; ‘Who would much rather come back on a crutch Than lie low and be out of the fun?’ As she was ignorant of the brutality of the reality of war, Pope’s idealisation of, and her naà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ve, patriotic approach to the war enraged many of those who were actively involved in the fighting. World War One poet, Wilfred Owen, particularly despised Pope for her habit of romanticising the aspects of war that she was ignorant of. He was in fact so passionate about his dislike for her that he directly addresses her, in ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’, when he states, ‘If you could hear†¦the blood Come gargling from the froth corrupted lungs†¦ My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori’. Expressing a similar attitude to that of Pope, Marian Allen glorifies the war in her poem, ‘The Wind on the Downs’, in which she speaks of her inability to accept the death of a loved one. In support of this subject matter, a disbelieving, longing tone is conveyed, with a sense of naivety also conveyed by Pope in ‘Who’s for the Game’. This naivety is present due to the lack of personal experience that these two writers have had of the brutal reality of the First World War. As Pope remained on the home front in order to write poetry for the newspapers, Allen was typical of many more women at the time of the war; she remained at home whilst her lover went to fight in the war, and consequently she had view of war that was such due to the propaganda portrayed by the media and writers such as Pope. Allen’s use of soft and endearing language develops this idea of Allen as a naà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ve writer in terms of the War, as her failure to accept her lover’s death is symbolic of her genuine ignorance to the nature of his death, and in fact life, whilst serving. The repetition of this denial towards her loss reinforces this point; ‘You have not died, it is not true†¦ That you are round about me, I believe†¦ How should you leave me, having loved me so?†¦ It seemed impossible that you should die’. That we’re introduced to the concept of his death through her line, ‘Because they tell me, dear, that you are dead,’ carries with it an air of denial, due to her expression that she was told, and not that she actually believes it herself. The line would be much less effective had it said ‘Because you are dead’. Allen’s idealisation of her lover and his life in, and out of the war, may be due to the manner in which she received the news of his death, and how little of the truth she was told. This is a subject directly addressed by Siegfried Sassoon in ‘The Hero’, as he speaks of the ‘gallant lies’ an officer had delivered to the mother of a soldier who had actually died a horrific death. It is portrayed by Allen that her and her lover ‘thought of many things and spoke of few’ when he returned home on leave, thereby conveying that he found it difficult to speak of the truth to her. This seeming feeling of not being able to confide in anyone one the home front was common amongst soldiers in the First World War. R.C Sherriff demonstrates it in his play ‘Journey’s End’ through Stanhope’s reluctance to take leave, and Susan Hill illustrates it through Hilliard’s emotional isolation from his family in ‘Strange Meeting’, as he cannot even speak to his sister of the ‘nightmares’ he encounters whilst at home on leave. Had Allen known the honest nature of her lover’s death, and life at war, she may have expressed a different view through this poem. Vera Brittain did gain an insight into the reality of what life must have been like for the men at war, through receiving her dead fiancà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½Ã¢â‚¬â„¢s uniform via post. The refined view she adopted of the war was aided by the condition of the uniform; ‘damp and worn and simply caked with mud’, exhibiting the ‘hole’ made by the bullet that killed him. These quotes are taken from Extract C, an extract from ‘Letters from a Lost Generation’. In this particular letter, Brittain is writing to her brother about the terrible ordeal of examining the uniform, an experience that proved to be somewhat revelatory for Brittain, as it was this following the loss of her fiancà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ that spurred her to join up and become a V.A.D. Brittain composed this letter in 1916, which was a pivotal year within the war; a year in which many attitudes of those who previously supported the war were manipulated by its seeming newfound futility. Owen expresses in ‘Futility’, ‘Was it for this the clay grew tall?’ which strongly conveys his view that the war became superfluous, and that the Earth did not develop to be destroyed in such a brutal, futile way. Siegfried Sassoon also made a famous declaration stating his opposition to the continuation of the War in 1917, as a result of events in 1916, such as the infamous ‘Battle of the Somme’. This declaration, and therefore Sassoon’s change of view towards the war is a component of Pat Barker’s ‘Regeneration’. The form of a letter allows Brittain to utilise several literary techniques, such as varying sentence lengths and use of the five senses to create impact. Effective examples of blunt sentences used by Brittain are, ‘It was terrible’ And ‘No, they were not him’. These two statements demonstrate how Brittain made use of short sentences in order to reflect the blunt, direct nature in which her realisation of the reality of war hit her. In contrast to these short sentences, Brittain displays many complex sentences in order to convey a vivid image of the scene of the uniform before her; ‘The mud of France which covered them was not ordinary mud; it had not the usual clean, pure smell of earth, but it was as though it were saturated with dead bodies- dead that had been dead a long, long time.’ This sentence illustrates Brittain’s use of powerful adjectives, such as ‘saturated’, to strengthen her intended effect, and her application of the repletion of ‘long’, and ‘dead’, in order to emphasise certain factors of what she is conveying. Varying sentence lengths is not a facet of either Allen’s ‘The Wind on the Downs’ or Pope’s ‘Who’s for the Game’. This is due to these extracts taking the forms of poems, which makes it difficult for such a technique to be applied. However, Pope manages to exploit her chosen form of a poem in order to aid her purpose. She imposes a strong marching rhythm, which is supported by the typical ABAB rhyme scheme, thereby giving her poem a sense of soldiers marching to war, which can be perceived by the young men reading it. Similarly, Allen makes use of a regular rhyme scheme in order to give her poem fluidity and enhance the idealised depiction of death, which inevitably highlights Allen’s ignorance to the truth of conditions at war. Pope employs simple language and colloquialisms in her poem, due to its form and audience: As it appeared in a national newspaper, the audience was broad, and so the use of simple language meant the poem would appeal to everyone. The colloquialisms, such as ‘lie low’ ‘†¦give his country a hand’ illustrate Pope’s ability to relate to her intended audience, as boys of the time would find this language common and therefore easy to relate to. The patriotism conveyed by Pope is also illustrated through the latter of the two colloquialisms above. This patriotic attitude was shared by Rupert Brooke, as is conveyed through his poem, ‘The Soldier’ when he writes; ‘A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam’ Brooke died of dysentery before carrying out any active service in the war, and therefore, he too was ignorant of the true conditions of life in the trenches. Thus, his poetry often illustrated naivety and patriotism, similar to others, like Pope and Allen, who were ignorant of the brutal reality of war. Through comparing these three texts we can consequently deduce that although one would assume women to have adopted a romantic view towards the act of fighting for one’s country due to their lack of active involvement in the war, there were actually a range of views produced amongst women as a result of the first world war, expressed through their various pieces of literature.

Critical thinking Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 6

Critical thinking - Essay Example He uses the church as a source to refer to the hard hearted in support of his position. The church through the ages has at times adopted the doctrine of compel violet, a kind of political dominants, a kind of cultural superiority, a means of political dominance. According to Aristotle the essence of happiness is prosperity combined with virtue. When someone is happy, that is when he or she can make many friends, build a family, make wealth, live long life, excel, have athletic powers and therefore good virtue. Rhetoric is known as the ability of using language efficiently. Aristotle asserts, rhetoric is useful in that; it helps to discover the known and the unknown about a subject. Normally, we use language- in speech or in writing- we engage in a rhetorical work (McKeon, 148). Absolute certainty assumes the knower to understand each concept in its full extension and in its relationship to all other concepts. Absolute certainty precludes doubt of any nature. Absolute certainty holds every thought in total context and always relates all information together as one unified whole. Absolute certainty, defined in this full extension of the term, is possible only to an absolute being that enjoys absolute knowledge. The Corpus of marvel exists when someone evokes or experienced surprise or wonders where as a miracle is an event that occurs inexplicable as per the laws of nature and is taken to be supernatural. Hume defines miracle as a transcriptional of law of nature by a specific volition of Deity. Personally, some experiences are inexplicable i.e. when I got healed stomach ulcers without undergoing any medication (Bailey, Alan & Dan, 212). There are four methods by which we can assure the truth of something. First, is by trusting the source of the information (Lee, 37). For example, by reading a book or review a research study; by using references other than scientific studies such as religious literature. In all cases, the information is usually made clear and