All for Love Essay Example for Free

All for Love Essay A parent-child relationship involves a lot of complexities. Basically, parents are responsible to provide for their children’s needs, whether material or immaterial. They are expected to perform duties to their children in spite of personal issues they have to deal with. Conversely, for children, there is the constant struggle to win their parents’ approval. These complexities in the parent-child relationship are illustrated in Sherman Alexie‘s, â€Å"Because My Father Always Said He was the Only Indian who Saw Jimi Hendrix Played ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at Woodstock† and D. H. Lawrence’s â€Å"The Rocking Horse Winner. † Analyses of the characters’ traits and motives provide a better understanding of how these complexities affect the relationship between parents and children. In addition, plot analyses help draw out a possible solution to the conflict. Told in the first person, â€Å"Because My Father Always Said He was the Only Indian who Saw Jimi Hendrix Played ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at Woostock† is a short story that talks about a father-son relationship. The son named Victor, serves as the narrator, who gives a picture of his father’s relationship with him and his mother by revealing his father’s character—his racial ideologies, hobbies, and behavior. In his revelation, the narrator gives a lighthearted view of the conflict zeroing on his father’s irresponsible behavior. Citing his father’s claim that he was the only Indian who watched Jimi Hendrix play the national anthem, the son establishes his father’s uniqueness and at the same time, his hippie attitude. Likewise, his father’s appearance to famous magazines as he knocks down an officer in defense of his political ideologies, illustrates the father’s aggressive and violent nature. Moreover, the accident the father suffers from while riding a motorcycle demonstrates his adventurousness. In sum, these descriptions show signs of the father’s irresponsible behavior, the wrong decisions he makes throughout his life. Particularly, the claim he makes regarding the concert of Jimi Hendrix demonstrates the tendency of the father to create and amuse himself with lies. Moreover, as Victor implies, his father is preoccupied with his own ambition and adventures, and he covers up his shortcomings by telling stories, and attributing his life-long search for meaning to his cultural origins. The father reasons out that his being an Indian affects him to behave the way he does. He uses his cultural origin to justify his weaknesses as a father, his obsession for music, and his erratic behavior. Parenting proves to be a difficult task for the father, mainly because of his confinement to his own affairs, his irresponsible nature. His attempt to establish individuality makes him unable to perform his obligations to his family. His acts of merrymaking with his friends and continuous search for adventures show his unpreparedness and incapability to fulfill his role as a husband and father. The difficulty of becoming a good parent is likewise tackled in D. H. Lawrence’s story. However, unlike the personal issues that the father deals with in Alexie’s story, the conflict is associated with the mother’s materialist disposition. Due to the extravagant life she is used to, the mother always feels the need of the family to produce more money. Even the house is personified as someone who whispers, â€Å"There should be more money. † Hence, the mother is always preoccupied with the thought of finding money, or as she tells her son, to being â€Å"lucky. † The excessive materialism of the mother causes her to feel indifferent towards her children. The narrator states that deep inside, â€Å"she knew that at the centre of her heart was a hard little place that could not feel love, no, not for anybody. † This indifference is what Marx (111) refers to as â€Å"alienation† in his â€Å"Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. † In simple terms, Marx implies that as people’s material needs grow, the need to produce money and to work becomes greater. In this process, workers or proletarians such as the mother soon lose control of their lives and their selves, just as they lose control of their work. Although the mother in the story is not characterized as a usual worker, her materialist needs make her a victim of the materialistic society in which she belongs. Considering this, the alienation she experiences is one that dehumanizes her, and disables her to establish emotional connection with her children. Considering the mother’s attitude of living beyond their means, the story closely mirrors Veblen’s (â€Å"The Theory of the Leisure Class†) view of the consumerist world. As the author claims, the consumerist equate personal happiness with consumption and the purchase of material things. In his â€Å"Theory of the Leisure Class,† the author discusses that people waste money and resources in order to display a higher status than others. In the story, the family â€Å"lived in a pleasant house, with a garden, and they had discreet servants. † Although they cannot afford such luxury, the parents maintain a high standard of living in order to feel superior to their neighbors. Acknowledging the need to produce more money, the mother works â€Å"secretly† in town, designing dresses for women. Even this effort of the mother reflects her consumerist attitude. As Veblen views, for the consumerist, the woman’s role is limited to that of a housewife, as this would show off a mans success. In the story, the wife works secretly in order to pretend that the family has enough means support their needs. As Veblen proposes, by not allowing the wives to take outside professions, a man could show off his economic status, although in the story, these are all a facade invented by the mother. Like the father in Alexie’s story, whose individuality seems to come first before all aspects in the world, the mother possesses a selfish attitude, which considers everything alright as long as her material needs are met. This submission to material things illustrates nothing but her selfishness. According to Stebbins (82-83) â€Å"the person who has the least interest in continuing the relationship normally possesses the greater power and is most liable to resort to exploitative behavior. † In the two stories, we see the parents as those who are less interested to continue their relationship with their children. In â€Å"The Rocking-Horse Winner,† the selfishness of the mother is best reflected in her request to withdraw the full amount that Paul secretly endows her. Although the mother uses the money to provide better education to her children, these are all due to her pride, her ambition to be regarded as superior to their neighbors. Moreover, her disinterest to find out whoever bequeaths her the big sum proves her ingratitude and materialist disposition. Furthermore, her insensitivity to her son’s condition, the fact that the three collaborators, the son, the uncle, and the servant are able to continue their deals without the knowledge of the family, provides a more lucid proof of the selfish nature of the mother. As the story relates, the selfish behavior of the mother drives the son to eagerly and desperately please her. Snodgrass (191) offers Freudian analyses of Paul’s character, claiming that the son’s effort to win his mother’s affection is Oedipal in nature. However, one may note that there is no established feud between Paul and his father. In fact, not much is said about the father; therefore, this claim cannot be fully established. Nevertheless, through the selfishness of the mother, one may see why the son becomes obsessed in the betting game. Ultimately, it is the mother’s materialistic ambition that drives the son to engage in the betting habit. It is also that, which leads him later to lose his senses. It can be noted that during their conversation, when Paul inquires about luck, the mother points out, Its what causes you to have money. If youre lucky you have money. Thats why its better to be born lucky than rich. If youre rich, you may lose your money. But if youre lucky, you will always get more money. This statement makes the son realize the importance of money and luck. As the mother equates luck with having money, the son struggles to find luck in order to please his mother. As the narrator reveals, the children in the house feel the indifference in the look of their mother. Thus, Paul, imbued by a son’s inherent desire to gain approval and be loved, forces himself to be lucky. More than the competition that some critics establish between the father and the son, it is the son’s emotional needs that move him to create something to please the mother. The same need for affection and approval motivates Victor. As he illustrates the sacrifices he and his mother bear just to please his father, one gets the notion of a one-way relationship where the father is at most on the advantage. The attention Victor gives his father justifies this notion. Specifically, his effort to listen and learn his father’s music, the acquired love for Jimi Hendrix, and the mere belief that his father was the only Indian who watched Hendrix’s performance of the â€Å"Star-Spangled Banner† attest to the son’s struggle to win his father’s affection, and to keep the bond between them. The problem of winning their parents’ affection is very visible in the two stories. Although this issue may look petty for some, it is revealed to be a serious issue in the two stories, especially â€Å"The Rocking-Horse Winner. † As the story shows, this conflict is what makes Paul go insane, rocking his toy horse unceasingly until it gives him the idea of who will win the race. At first, one can imagine that the habit of the son may just be a simple game he plays, but at the end, as the mother witnesses his son rocks his toy horse like a madman in the middle of the night, one can sense the psychological damage that results from the child’s longing for his mother’s love. The behavior and illness that the son shows at the end demonstrate the psychological damage he undergoes. Particularly, as the races draw near, the child develops some anxiety to come up with a forecast of who will win the race. As he already loses in the first two races, his anxiety grows worse, realizing that he has only one chance left to win during the season. As such, the simple anxiety then grows worse into a General Anxiety Disorder (GAD), affecting his whole system, making him unable to sleep and eat, gain consciousness, or in other words, continue with his normal life. In addition to GAD, psychologists may also agree that Paul develops psychological gambling. According to Franklin (Psychology Information Online), psychological gambling is an â€Å"impulse control problem which consists in persistent maladaptive gambling that creates serious life problems for the individual. † It is different from recreational gambling in that it affects seriously the way one lives, suggesting failure to function normally as an individual. As the story portrays, Paul seemingly lose his senses as he rocks his toy horse in the middle of the night. He also shows abnormal behavior as he repeats, â€Å"Malabar,† the name of the horse that will win the final race.

Intellectual Property and the Future of the Music Industry Essay

Corruption, Conscience, and Copyright: The Current State of Intellectual Property and the Future of the Music Industry â€Å"Today’s pirates operate not on the high seas but on the Internet, in illegal CD factories, distribution centers, and on the street. The pirate’s credo is still the same--why pay for it when it’s so easy to steal? The credo is as wrong as it ever was. Stealing is still illegal, unethical, and all too frequent in today’s digital age. That is why RIAA [Recording Industry Association of America] continues to fight music piracy.† – RIAA.com The human conscience is a powerful tool. And if you are like most Americans, you probably consider yourself to be a rather moral person, at least based upon your own morality, your own conscience. Chances are, however, that you have engaged in some form of illegal activity during your life: speeding down a familiar road, jaywalking across an empty street, driving with a broken blinker. Assuming you consider yourself to be of high moral stature, how does your conscience reconcile this? The answer: the unlawful does not always imply the unethical, and that which is illegal is not necessarily immoral. Since the digital revolution in the 1990’s, the downloading of copyrighted music has skyrocketed. The Recording Industry Association of America, RIAA, has denounced music piracy, claiming that it is both illegal and immoral. And they drive a hard bargain, arguing the following: 1. Downloading music is against the law. 2. Downloading music betrays the songwriters and recording artists who create it. 3. Downloading music stifles the careers of new artists and up-and-coming bands. 4. Downloading music threatens the livelihood of the thousands of working people who are em... ...ec_39_00000201----000-.html Blackburn, David. On-line Piracy and Recorded Music Sales. Dec. 2004. http://www.katallaxi.se/grejer/blackburn/blackburn_fs.pdf CD Baby. Who/What are we? http://cdbaby.com/about Holahan, Catherine. Downloading Music’s New Deal. Business Week Online. Oct. 31, 2006. p8-8, 1p. Leach, Eric and Henslee, Bill. Follow the Money: Who's Really Making the Dough? Nov. 1, 2001. http://emusician.com/mag/emusic_follow_money_whos/index.html Lessig, Lawrence. The Limits of Copyright. June 19, 2000. http://www.lessig.org/content/standard/0,1902,16071,00.html McCourt, Tom, and Burkart, Patrick. When Creators, Corporations and Consumers Collide: Napster and the Development of On-line Music Distribution. 2003. Sage Publications. Music United. Why You Shouldn't Do It. http://www.musicunited.org/4_shouldntdoit.html

Performance Style of Dave Brubeck

The performance style of Dave Brubeck Dave Brubeck’s unique performance style is characterized primarily by his use of polytonality, polyrhythm, and immense amounts of improvisation. His style grew from his upbringing and as he put it, â€Å"different approach to all of the normal things†. By no means did Dave take the normal approach; he made it all the way threw the conservatory with out being able to read the piano music he was playing. His ability to think on the spot and his amazing ear took jazz to the next level.He took jazz to a world of difficult technicality and created sounds with depth that amazed all who had the opportunity to listen to him. Brubeck once stated, â€Å"And there is a time where you can be beyond yourself. You can be better than your technique. You can be better than most of your usual ideas. And this is a whole other category that you can get into†-Dave Brubeck. Brubeck always went above and beyond, breaking convention. It is this unc onventional approach that defined Dave Brubeck’s Style. Polytonality as Dave described it, â€Å"(is) using multiple key centers at the same time. He was known for incorporating this technique in to many of his performances, although he admits to not knowing that he is doing it at the time. He naturally did things that were way ahead of his time. His compositions were known to use polytonality although Dave probably would not play them as he had notated them on the page. In the Dave Brubeck Oral History Project he describes a polytonal piece; â€Å"One of the early pieces I wrote in 1946 as a student with Darius Milhaud, had three different clefs instead of two clefs treble, treble, bass rather then treble clef, bass clef.And, I'd be playing a swing bass in this hand in one key, and then adding on these other things in other keys. † The use of this technique is very aptly described by Mark McFarland who wrote; â€Å"Brubeck's use of polytonality helps to project a ge neral decrease or increase in relative dissonance, thereby clarifying the formal structure on both the small- and large-scale. The comparison with tonal theory extends to include pivot chords; with Brubeck, such chords simultaneously serve as the final chord in a polychordal passage and as the first and most exotic chord in a tonal passage. †Dave Brubeck’s use of polytonality in his performance of jazz standards had a permanent affect on the history of jazz. He brought old tunes to new levels of technicality and virtuosity and in a greater sense, defined a new era in which new ideology and contemporary progression came to light. In 1961 Dave Said â€Å"I wanted to do things poly-rhythmically because I thought that jazz was much too tame. The way I wanted to set up the group was that the drummer would be playing one rhythm, the bass player another rhythm, and Paul [Desmond] and I could play in either of those rhythms or a new rhythm . . it’s time that jazz musici ans take up their original role of leading the public into more adventurous rhythms. † Polyrhythm is defined by the Grove Music Dictionary as; the superposition of different rhythms or meters. Meaning that you have two or more conflicting pulses in piece. Dave believes his best example of polyrhythm can be found in his solo on Raggedy Waltz at carnage hall. He describes that â€Å"one two, one two† is on the left hand against the waltz in 3 in his right hand. This is only one of many examples of Dave’s use of â€Å"poly-rhythmical play†.He is also known for writing pieces in what are generally considered to be strange meters for jazz. For example Take 5, Unsquare dance or Blue Rondo A La Turk. These pieces feature drastically different rhythmic structures then what was normal were a driving force in what made Dave Brubeck’s music popular. His unique way of interpreting standards using polyrhythms and giving them an entirely new feel and inspiring a generation of musicians to go further outside the box in jazz performances. Brubeck’s polyrhythmic ideas challenged the minds of both performers and listeners.Improvisation has been an essential part of jazz sense its origin, however Dave Brubeck took it to a whole new level. During his time at College Of The Pacific he managed to get all the way to his last year before any one knew that he couldn’t read music. This was all because of his remarkable improvisation skill and excellent ear. He tells a story of a recital he played at Mills College under Darius Milhaud, where he draws a blank in the middle of the first of two pieces but instead of stopping he simply begins to improvise freely and does the same for the second piece.At the end of the concert the audience applauded being none the wiser, this is because of his ability to so improvise with such complexity so freely. The only person who knew what happened Darius Milhaud who told him â€Å"Boo-Boo [nick name for Brubeck] , very good, but not what you wrote! † Brubeck credits much of his inspiration for such improvisation to the great Johan Sebastian Bach, because of the similarity between the figured base that Bach would play over with the choir and the chord changes that he and other jazz musician play over today.With the inspiration of Bach and his own remarkable natural abilities, Brubeck challenged conventional improvisation and built a complex foundation for a new form of improvisational jazz. Dave Brubeck’s performance style can be described using many musical terms such as polytonal or polyrhythmic, but the truly defining factor of his performance style is that it is unique. He himself admits to having each solo being a different from the next often not grasping the true complexity of what he had just played. Ever performance is different from the next. Dave Brubeck is great because he is unique.

How Do You Remove Salt From Water

Ive been asked How do you remove salt from water? enough times that I suspect finding the answer to the question is a common science assignment. So... how do you do it? You can boil or evaporate the water and the salt will be left behind as a solid. If you want to collect the water, you can use distillation. One way to do this at home would be to boil the saltwater in a pot with a lid. Offset the lid slightly so that the water that condenses on the inside of the lid will run down the side to be collected in a separate container. Congratulations! Youve just made distilled water. When all of the water has boiled off, the salt will remain in the pot. Evaporation works the same way, just at a slower rate. To evaporate water to obtain salt, place the salt water in a wide, shallow dish. This shape offers maximum exposed surface area, which aids evaporation. You can speed up the process by placing the dish in a warm, sunny window or by blowing a fan over it. If you place it outdoors, evaporation is quick on a warm, sunny, breezy day. It will be slower on a cloudy, cold, or humid day. Crystallizing salt from salt water doesnt leave behind pure water, although it does remove a lot of the salt. The remaining liquid will be a less-than-saturated solution.