Beowulf and 9-11 essays

Beowulf and 9-11 essays Parallels between Beowulf and the World Trade Center Tragedy Beowulf, the story of a single man who brings a super power to its knees is a story that is cliched many times in contemporary works. In the wake of the recent tragedy involving the World Trade Center I believe this epic takes on a whole new meaning. As previously stated this story of a single man by the name of Beowulf who has an unlimited amount of respect from his people and loyalty toward his country decides to attack an immovable super power by the name of Grendle. To parallel this to the recent tragedy I would associate Beowulf with Osama Bin Laden and Grendle with the United States of America. This comparison might offend many people but I believe that with much unbiased thought the connections are undeniable. First of all Grendle is a hated individual with an unprecedented amount of power, too much of the world mainly Arabic and Islamic nations this is exactly how the United States is perceived. At the beginning of this epic Grendle makes the first strike and attacks helpless civilians, much like what the United States did during their bombing raids of Arabic nations such as Iraq and Afghanistan and even during the Vietnam war an example of that would be the massacre at May Lai. Then came the coming of Beowulf a man who most likely unfamiliar to Grendle, Beowulf took Jute civilians and trained them to fight and not fear Grendle, much like how Osama Bin Laden trained and funded Arabic and Muslim civilians to fight and not fear the United States, also Osama bin Laden was a very obscure individual to many Americans before this weeks tragedy. During the battle between the two enemies, Beowulf mortally wounds Grendle and the beast crawls back to its lair to recover and to plan its next attac k. In relation to last weeks situation, Bin Laden wounded Americas economy and pride and as of late America has been plotting its next move against Bin laden and the Arab...

U.S. Governments Role in Sterilizing Women of Color

U.S. Governments Role in Sterilizing Women of Color Imagine going to the hospital for a common surgical procedure such as an appendectomy, only to find out afterward that you’d been sterilized. In the 20th century, untold numbers of women of color endured such life-altering experiences in part because of medical racism. Black, Native American, and Puerto Rican women report being sterilized without their consent after undergoing routine medical procedures or after giving birth. Others say they unknowingly signed documentation allowing them to be sterilized or were coerced into doing so. The experiences of these women strained relations between people of color and healthcare personnel. In the 21st century, members of communities of color still widely distrust medical officials. Black Women Sterilized in North Carolina Countless numbers of Americans who were poor, mentally ill, from minority backgrounds or otherwise regarded as â€Å"undesirable† were sterilized as the eugenics movement gained momentum in the United States. Eugenicists believed that measures should be taken to prevent undesirables from reproducing so that problems such as poverty and substance abuse would be eliminated in future generations. By the 1960s, tens of thousands of Americans were sterilized in state run eugenics programs, according to NBC News. North Carolina was one of 31 states to adopt such a program. Between 1929 and 1974 in North Carolina, 7,600 people were sterilized. Eighty-five percent of those sterilized were women and girls, while 40 percent were minorities (most of whom were black). The eugenics program was eliminated in 1977 but legislation permitting involuntary sterilization of residents remained on the books until 2003. Since then, the state has tried to devise a way to compensate those it sterilized. Up to 2,000 victims were believed to be still living in 2011. Elaine Riddick, an African American woman, is one of the survivors. She says she was sterilized after giving birth in 1967 to a child she conceived after a neighbor raped her when she was just 13 years old. â€Å"Got to the hospital and they put me in a room and that’s all I remember,† she told NBC News. â€Å"When I woke up, I woke up with bandages on my stomach.† She didn’t discover that she’d been sterilized until a doctor informed her that she’d been â€Å"butchered† when Riddick  was unable to have children with her husband. The state’s eugenics board ruled that she should be sterilized after she was described in records as â€Å"promiscuous† and â€Å"feebleminded.† Puerto Rican Women Robbed of Reproductive Rights More than a third of women in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico were sterilized from the 1930s to the 1970s as a result of a partnership between the U.S. government, Puerto Rican lawmakers and medical officials. The United States has ruled the island since 1898. In the decades following, Puerto Rico experienced a number of economic problems, including a high unemployment rate. Government officials decided that the island’s economy would experience a boost if the population were reduced. Many of the women targeted for sterilization were reportedly working class, as doctors didn’t think poor women could manage to effectively use contraception. Moreover, many women received sterilizations for free or for very little money as they entered the work force. Before long, Puerto Rico won the dubious distinction of having the world’s highest sterilization rate. So common was the procedure that it was widely known as â€Å"La Operacion† among islanders. Thousands of men in Puerto Rico underwent sterilizations as well. Roughly a third of Puerto Ricans sterilized reportedly did not understand the nature of the procedure, including that it meant they would not be able to bear children in the future. Sterilization was not the only way in which Puerto Rican women’s reproductive rights were violated. U.S. pharmaceutical researchers also experimented on Puerto Rican women for human trials of the birth control pill in the 1950s. Many women experienced severe side effects such as nausea and vomiting. Three even died. The participants had not been told that  the birth control pill was experimental and that they were participating in a clinical trial, only that they were taking medication to prevent pregnancy. The researchers in that study were later accused of exploiting women of color to acquire FDA approval of their drug. The Sterilization of Native American Women Native American women also report enduring government-ordered sterilizations. Jane Lawrence details their experiences in her Summer 2000 piece for American Indian Quarterly- â€Å"The Indian Health Service and the Sterilization of Native American Women.† Lawrence reports how two teenage girls had their tubes tied without their consent after undergoing appendectomies at an Indian Health Service (IHS) hospital in Montana. Also, a young American Indian woman visited a doctor asking for a â€Å"womb transplant,† apparently unaware that no such procedure exists and that the hysterectomy she’d had earlier meant that she and her husband would never have biological children. â€Å"What happened to these three females was a common occurrence during the 1960s and 1970s,† Lawrence states. â€Å"Native Americans accused the Indian Health Service of sterilizing at least 25 percent of Native American women who were between the ages of 15 and 44 during the 1970s.† Lawrence reports that Native American women say INS officials did not give them complete information about sterilization procedures, coerced them to sign paperwork consenting to such procedures and gave them improper consent forms, to name a few. Lawrence says Native American women were targeted for sterilization because they had higher birthrates than white women and that white male doctors used minority women to gain expertise in performing gynecological procedures, among other dubious reasons. Cecil Adams of the Straight Dope website has questioned whether as many Native American women were sterilized as Lawrence cited in her piece. However, he does not deny that women of color were indeed targets of sterilization. Those women who were sterilized reportedly suffered greatly. Many marriages ended in divorce and the development of mental health problems ensued.

Criminology journal article critical evaluation Essay

Criminology journal article critical evaluation - Essay Example Therefore, qualitative analysis will allow any researcher to document and bring out relationships between the research question and data sources , develop patterns and trends, themes and categories, which best helps a researcher to understand the data and make meanings from the trends established. This makes qualitative analysis through surveys the best research approach to employ in any social phenomena. Yang & Wayckoff (2010) in their research Perceptions of safety and victimization: does survey construction affect perceptions? Clearly indicate the appropriateness of a survey in establishing trends, themes, and relationships between collected data sets and the subjects to better understand a social issue. The research seeks to establish whether question order in surveys involving victimization have any effect on the answers provided by respondents, in establishing the respondent’s characteristics, and question order effects in understanding the best way to arrange questions in a survey involving victims of criminology. This study aims at establishing social relationships between crime victims and survey questions to measure how such victims would respond to questions related to victimization; this implies the research question just like any other social research questions aims at establishing patterns and trends to make a hypothesis regarding the behavior of such victims in answering survey questions. As Livesey (2006) explains, such a study would apply a positivists approach in methodology which makes it possible to establish social behavioral patterns. Therefore, the survey methodology as used in this research is appropriate and ideal in bringing out behaviors of such crime victims in a survey. The main motivation in justifying the use of surveys in qualitative research in the study above is that such an approach will enable the researchers to develop various explanations of both social and cultural phenomena as would be observed from the data set co llected (Zakaria, 2004). Such a survey would lead to a naturalistic way of exploring the data in a qualitative –descriptive approach, an approach which is ideal in understanding and interpreting data collected and observed in the best objective way possible (DeLyser, 2008). Through such research methodology, the aims of the research which are investigating the effects of question ordering in surveys for crime victims will be effectively realized. Wilmot (2009) explains that in qualitative research, the use of non-probability approach is critical and a researcher has to have a complete sample with no statistical representative. Therefore, the best approach in such a survey would be to use purposive sampling. The characteristic of individuals have to be reflected in the selection process to reflect both diversity and breadth of any sample population. Consequently, the researchers settled on carrying out the research in a university due to the high prevalence of victimization in universities, high rates of campus crimes, and growing concerns as a result of the high crime rates among parents (Jenning et al, 2007). Though such a sample could be considered to limit the generalization of such findings, the researchers explained that the university in which the research was carried out comprises of diverse student population with a random sample of student populatio