Construction Contracts Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Construction Contracts - Essay Example One very important change is that the nomination for sub-contractors has been discarded. This will mean that the whole project will be the sole responsibility of the contractor. Hence, it will not matter if certain segments of the undertaking are passed on to other outside parties or agencies. Also, there will be minimal arguments to expect in the interpretation of the contract because the new JCT2005 is written in plain simple English and the major parts are segregated from one another in sections. Actually, the vital components and characteristics of the contents are retained except that the presentation has become less complicated or complex. Furthermore, certain terminologies have to be renamed to suit the real spirit intended by the parties. If there is a mutual agreement to have an overseer for the works, the title is now called Architect/Contract Administrator instead of just an Architect. Extension of Time is now termed Adjustment to the Completion Date. In case of a decision to suspend payment, the notice of withholding can only be done by the employer or the client. It can no longer be a part of the job of the Architect/Contract Administrator. ...In case of dispute, the covenanted remedy is now litigation instead of arbitration. As a matter of course, however, the parties are still free to resort to arbitration if they opt to thresh out their differences through the more expedient and convenient alternative method of patching up things. Still, there is a provision recommending for mediation in case of controversies. In the event that one party becomes insolvent, the other has to serve the appropriate notice of termination. Electronic mailing is now allowed as a medium of service of notices and other items for correspondence. The provision for the employer's own design team is still the same in JCT2005. However, a design option for the contractor is also provided for. On insurance pre-requisites, the contractor has become obliged to put up a profession al indemnity insurance, an agreement feature not included in the 1998 version. The right of the employer to liquidated damages reduction is set forth in the adjustment of the time for completion while the terms for relevant events are made more burdensome to the contractor who is to shoulder consequential costs brought about by materials and labour shortages resultant of industrial unrests like strikes. In such cases and similar instances, the Architect/Contract Administrator is under obligation to explain any adjustment to the completion date. In order to eradicate confusions regarding notices in the payment aspect of the covenant, the contractor under JCT2005 has the right to be paid according to the sum due considering the progress of performance even if he stated another amount in his application to collect and the employer withholds a certain portion.  

Effects of Aerobic Exercise on Heart Rate Essay Example for Free

Effects of Aerobic Exercise on Heart Rate Essay Introduction: Our bodies need to be in balance in order to function properly, and there are many ways the body maintains balance, or homeostasis. Homeostasis is the maintenance of nearly constant conditions in the internal environment. Our normal heart rate is an example of our body in homeostasis and any sort of change, or stimulus, can alter it. Exercise, adrenaline in the blood, and a low blood pH are all stimuli that increase the heart rate. Exercise, for example, stimulates stretch receptors in the muscles. These receptors then send a signal to a part of the brain called the medulla oblongata that receives the sensory input. It then in turn sends nerve impulses to the sinoatrial node in the heart. This node generates an impulse and initiates contraction of the heart at a quicker pace. Thus, the heart beats faster, which equals an increased heart rate. This is an example of a homeostasis imbalance. The heart reaches homeostasis again when exercise ceases and the heart rate drops down to its basal rate, or its rate at rest. This whole process is an example of a negative feedback cycle: a stimulus (increased heart rate) sends receptors to the control center (medulla oblongata), which then sends effectors (impulses by the vagus nerve, or the efferent pathway) to the heart to slow the heart contractions, thus reducing the heart rate and bringing it back to its basal rate. In our experiment we studied heart rate before and after a brief exercise session. Our hypothesis is exercise will increase the heart rate, and a negative feedback mechanism will occur to restore the heart rate back to its normal basal rate. Materials: Stop watch, metronome, stairs Methods: †¢Eight subjects took their own resting, or basal, heart rate for 15 seconds while standing up. Some subjects chose to take their heart rate at their carotid artery, and some took their pulse using their radial artery. This number was multiplied by 4 to get beats per minute. This is how all heart rate measurements were taken throughout the experiment. †¢Subjects did exercise session. They walked down 57 stairs and then back up those same 57 stairs for a total of 104 stair steps. This was done at a pace of 85 beats per minute. The whole session took 1 minute 45 seconds. †¢Subjects immediately took their heart rate after they completed the exercise. †¢After 1 minute of completing the exercise, subjects measured their heart rate again. This was done at 1 minute intervals for a total of 5 heart rate measurements after completing the exercise. †¢All together, subjects took 6 heart rate measurements: 1 before the exercise, and then 5 after the exercise. Data/Results: See attached graph and table. Conclusion/Discussion: The data shows that heart rate increases during and after exercise and begins to drop back down close to the basal rate after rest. The heart progressively decreases after each minute of rest. Our results show a negative feedback mechanism was used to control the heart rate after exercise. The increased heart rate stimulated the medulla oblongata which sent impulses to the sinoatrial node of the heart to slow down contractions and decrease the heart rate. Different subjects had differences in the time it took for their heart rate to drop after the exercise, but heart rate decreased nonetheless. Overall, our hypothesis was shown to be correct from the experiment. We chose the heart rate as our variable because it is easy to measure and gives clear results. We predicted that the heart would increase after a brief exercise session, and our results matched that prediction. As for other experiments, we could perform different activities or tasks and measure our hear t rate after those. We could even hold a serious/heated discussion and see if heart rate is affected in an intense conversation. There are many different things you could do to test heart rate, as exercise is just one example. Data: Each subject and their heart rate at certain time interval: SubjectBefore exercise0 minutes rest1 min. rest2 min. rest3 min. rest4 min. rest 1100 BPM120 BPM104 BPM104 BPM104 BPM104 BPM 2120160156156152148 37210076807672 47212080727272 596136124120100100 66812072727680 76011664646464 86816084888084 Summary statement: Heart rate increases during and after exercise and begins to drop back down close to the basal rate after rest. Citations Heart Rate Regulation in Humans. (2010, January 23). The Student Room. Retrieved August 24, 2013, from http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php%3Ft%3D1059551%26page%3D45q=esrc=sei=EEIuUtiHKMKUiQL86YDQDQusg=AFQjCNGj9jN4mV3pDlB7dF1yuUm0gn81gA

European Sovereign Debt Crisis Economics Essay

European Sovereign Debt Crisis Economics Essay The topic of the coursework focuses on the European sovereign debt crisis. We mainly explain how the latest European debt crisis emerged and the reasons that caused the worlds economy to enter into a recession. Another important issue is the impact of the crisis on the markets especially on the bonds markets and other such as commodities, equities, Forex and gold. Furthermore, we explain the lessons to the Eurozone from other countries that defaulted such as Argentina and Russia. What is more, we try to evaluate the effectiveness of the policies and measures taken by the financial institutions and the policy markets. Finally, we discuss the possible effects of the crisis to the financial landscape the lessons to be taken and the trends that may emerge from this turmoil. European Sovereign Debt Crisis: Reasons and Causes There is a prevalent agreement that the fundamental cause of the European sovereign debt crisis was the combination of a credit boom and a housing bubble affecting firstly US and consequently the Eurozone. Easy credit conditions during the 2002-2008 period encouraged high-risk lending and borrowing practices. This extremely situation has happened even though in 1992, members of the European Union signed the Maastricht Treaty that guarantee only the public sector can produce permanent deficits. It assumed that financial markets would always correct their own excesses. Next figure shows how home mortgages had risen during the period 2004 and 2007, collapsing all the banks due to lack of liquidity as people were not able to pay their mortgages back. https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH1am7zIIIfDy9UXmg6_wWrJ6h6KJfzXaJlbC0hy6EjYPc2cHR-3WV26UY1J2yFTOHHyfS0fAN8UmRO3kvL-dz_mSB1YtlGulC6Iye5dvTkbHVdxpkZ_PuBPctkjtHM_3H_c57OkJquKEd/+outstanding+mortgage+credit+1990-2008.jpg There are several important factors implies in the European sovereign debt crisis; some countries have been in trouble to pay the debts that they have built up in recent decades. Five of the regions countries Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, and Spain have failed to generate enough economic growth to make their ability to pay back bondholders the guarantee it was intended to be. Although these five were seen as being the countries in immediate danger of a possible default, the crisis has consequences that extend beyond their borders to the world as a whole. In fact, the head of the Bank of England referred to it as the most serious financial crisis at least since the 1930s, if not ever. Moreover, resulted from a combination of multiple factors European sovereign debt crisis have been affected by: the global financial crisis between 2006-2011; international trade imbalances which are the difference between the monetary value of export  and  imports of output in an economy over a certain period; real-state bubbles  that have since burst; the global recession between 2008-2012; approaches used by nations to guarantee troubled banking industries and private bondholders, assuming private debt weight or socializing . In general, the crisis is presented as the result of arrears in debt of some European Union countries. It is alleged that his debts reached a level that cannot be repaid or refinanced. However, this statement does not hold if we look in detail. Thus, the European Unions debt (about 80% of its GDP) is significantly below in Japan (220%) or the U.S. (100%). US debt increased significantly over the past five years, from less than 60% to over 100%. Still, U.S. is able to finance its debt due to China ´s help. Impacts on the bond markets and other markets The European sovereign debt crisis had a great impact on markets and several implications. The impacts of the debt crisis were so deep to the worlds economy that we can still observe them today especially at the Eurozones countries such as Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland and Portugal. High volatility of the euro markets has been a significant factor during the crisis period. Those high levels of volatility can lead to high interest rates of borrowing for the countries with debts and as a consequence to high bond yield spreads. http://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0176268010000509-gr1.jpg Fig.  2.  Bond yield spreads for EU-15 central governments, January 1991-May 2009. As we can see in figure 2 the bond yield spreads for the EU-15 central governments during May 1991 till October 2006 were low, whereas the bond yield spreads during October 2006 and May 2009 were extremely high. Government bonds are historically considered as the safest investment. After the crisis, investors starting to lose their confidence in the stock market and as a result they stop investing on it. Consequently, investors turned to government bonds and this led to a rise in the demand of bonds. Therefore, Central Banks tried to increase their holding of government bonds. Because of the increased demand, the price of the bonds has been raised. Source, Bloomberg : Euro Index from 2001-2012 The above graph shows the historical price graph of the European government bonds 7-10 years of maturity. The graph shows that the price of the government bonds gone very high from 2001 till 2012 and it is still rising. Source, Bloomberg : Bond Indices for US government 7-10 year, Bloomberg Finance L.P. The above graph shows the US 7-10 years of maturity price of the government bonds from 2001 till 2012. Again, because of the correlation of the European economy and the US economy the sovereign debt crisis has led the bond prices to high levels. What is more, if we observe the graph we can clearly notice that during 2008 and 2012 there is high volatility which indicates the high demand for government bonds during that period. The stock market is different to the bond market. During credit instability the price of the shares of the firms will decrease. Furthermore, when economies enter into recession the expected profit of the firms is going to be lower thus the firms are going to pay less dividend. Therefore, investors will lose their interest in the equity market and they will eventually turn to other markets such as bond markets. The following graphs drawn from Bloomberg are showing the price levels for SP 500, EURO STOXX and NIKKEI 225 for the period of 2000 till 2012. As we observe there is high volatility to all three equity markets. Furthermore, the low and high prices of the Euro equity index and the Japanese equity index are quite high whereas the prices of the US equity index are low. During January of 2008 the prices fall down for the EURO STOXX and the NIKKEI 225 and the SP 500 experienced great loses during November of 2008. The SP 500s prices went up on March of 2009 whereas the EURO STOXXs a nd the NIKKEIs 225 prices remained low. Source, Bloomberg : EURO STOXX INDEX from 31/10/2000 29/10/2012 Source, Bloomberg : SP 500 INDEX from 31/10/2000 29/10/2012 Source, Bloomberg : NIKKEI 225 from 31/10/2000 29/10/2012 During the sovereign debt crisis the worlds economy collapsed. There were many implications in all type of markets such as the derivatives, commodities, foreign exchange market and of course implications in the gold prices and the oil prices. After the housing bubble, the commodity market entered its own bubble. From 2007 till summer of 2008 oil prices went very high and then plunged to very low price by the end of 2008. Oil though was not the only commodity to experience swings in the prices. Table 1 illustrates the declines for some of the commodities during 2008 compared to the declines during 1970 2007. Table 1. The commodity bubble, Source: World Economic Outlook Crisis and Recovery Sovereign Default and lessons from defaulted countries A sovereign default occurs when a government refuses or fails to repay its financial obligations (debts). Countries that have been sovereign defaulted can escape liability without being legal penalized since they are not subject to bankruptcy laws. However, a sovereign default will cause difficulties for the defaulted government to borrow funds again since it will be too expensive and because of the low credit ability. The main cause of a sovereign default is the inability of a government to repay the loans interest rate. If the national income growth is less than the annual payable interest rate then the probability of default is very high. This situation commonly arises when government expenditure such as salaries, pensions, rents, supplies are much higher than the tax revenues while any internal borrowing fails to take place and issuing bills is for various reasons impossible. Economic history is full of cases of bankruptcies. From 1824 to 2009 we had at least 286 formal bankruptcies of 110 states. The most recent cases however were the bankruptcy of Argentina and Russia. Till 1997 Russia managed to improve its financial stability by reducing the inflation rate to 11% comparing to the enormous rate of inflation the previous years and by depreciating its exchange rate. However, problems emerged because of two major crises. The first was the Asian financial crisis, which started in 1997, and the subsequent reduce of demand for oil and metals. What is more, the reduction in demand for goods caused a fall in prices, leading countries who were directly dependent on the export of raw materials to deficits. Oil, natural gas, metals and timber accounted for more than 80% of Russian exports, making Russia highly vulnerable to any changes in international prices. In addition, oil was an important source of tax revenue. Thus, Russian government started to have diffic ulties with its financial obligations and defaulted in 1998. Source, Bloomberg Russia Real GDP by Expenditure As we can see from the graph Russia managed to recover in a decade. Although Russia defaulted in 1998 the results were not catastrophic for the government. On the contrary, Russias economic growth was fast and oil prices went high leading to high profitability. The most recent bankruptcy though occurred in 2002 in Argentina. The economic crisis in Argentina lasted from 1998 to 2002 with the following main points: there was a strong recession from 1998 to 1999 and the financial system collapsed during 2001 and 2002 which was basically the consequence of the recession. During that period of time Argentinas GDP fell by 21% with disastrous results for the citizens. Furthermore, the percentage of poverty reached 57% while unemployment exceeded 23%. Source, Bloomberg Argentinas Annual Real GDP growth Another important factor of that led Argentina to bankruptcy was its currency. During 1991 there was high inflation so the government decided to change the currency and linked it to the dollar (actually they adopted the US dollar instead of their own currency) in order to reduce inflation. Although the new currency reduced inflation for a while the consequences were disastrous. The product prices in the country become more expensive in international markets, which led to the reduction of competitiveness, lower exports and a negative trade balance. Argentinas case is interesting because there are a lot of similarities with the Eurozone countries. The first lesson is that by decreasing the nominal expenditures or by increasing taxes during a recession in order to decrease fiscal deficit reductions will make things worse. The second lesson is that deflation is not going to provide positive results in correcting an overvalued currency especially in a country with large public sector and powerful unions. What is more, by choosing to link their currency to dollar, problems with balance sheets will be significant. Policies and measures Regarding the measures and policies taken by Financial Institutions and Policy Makers, let ´s start with the ones that have been taken by Financial Institutions; we know that our rate of 1 per cent is the lowest since 1999, when the euro began, and this is a result of quickly regressing inflationary pressures since 2008. This step follows the primary objective of European Central Bank, which is to keep price stability in the Eurozone in the medium level. In addition to reduce the interest rate, they have taken a number of measures to support the perfect role of the euro area interbank market. Those measures have helped the progress credit to enterprises and households Those non-standard measures are known as intensify credit support. They mainly focus on commercial banks, because they are the main source of funding for households and businesses in the euro area. To contrast with the US: in the euro area about 70% of the funding of corporations and households comes from banks; the equivalent share for the US is around 25%. So a well-functioning money market is essential for Europes commercial banks and also for the ECB as the transmission of monetary policy to the economy starts here. Those measures are: the complete accommodation of banks liquidity requests at fixed interest rates; the extend of the maturities of the refinancing operations, up to 1 year; the provision of liquidity in foreign currencies; Outright purchases of euro-denominated covered bonds issued in the euro area. This last one has an important function because bond market is traditionally an important way for funding banks in the euro area. This market has been heavily suffered from the financial crisis. They have put an important amount of money 60Billion Euro to support market functioning but it is not so large to dominate market developments. Still, compared with bond purchase programmes in some other major countries, the amount spent by the European Central Bank in the context of its covered bond programme is fairly modest. However, this is a result that the primary role of the ECB is to act as an agent for this market, not as a market maker. To sum up, looking at the effectiveness of measures of improve credit support, we consider a positive impact on money market conditions and over the market. The large injection of liquidity into the money market led to a decrease in money market interest rates at the very short end, to levels close to the ECBs deposit rate of 0.25%. On the other hand if we have a look to Policy makers, those measures have been consisted to support the financial system and measures to reduce the effects of the financial crisis on the rest of the economy. After the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, most European governments speedily adopted measures to support the financial system in a coordinated action. These included increasing deposit insurance ceilings, guarantees for bank liabilities and bank recapitalisations We believe that the effectiveness of the support measures is positive. The measures were needed for avoiding a further growth of the crisis at the end of 2008. In addition there is an initial evidence that government support measures have been effective in reducing banks default risk, however may be necessary more money, especially in Spain and Greece. Here it seems that capital injections have been effective as well as debt guarantees and asset purchases. Overall, the government response has been effective. But it has negatives points as well; according to the European Commissions, the euro area deficit will increase to 6.5 percent of GDP in 2010 with the debt increasing to 84 percent of GDP, from 69% in 2008. Financial landscape, lessons and trends The last crisis is going to have a major impact on the financial landscape. The lower capital availability will surely change the investors emphasis on private equity and as a consequence the cost of borrowing for companies will be higher. Banks and governments will now have to take under consideration the lessons from the crisis in order to improve their regulations and management policies. A number of banks and other financial institutions had to change their structure due to high risk involved and the low liquidity because of the financial crisis. What is more, governments forced to change their regulations concerning banks and other financial institutions and more limits have been imposed. Furthermore, governments now own significant number of stakes of financial institutions due to efforts to control them. Changes in mergers and acquisitions also occurred with an emphasis in leveraged buyouts. As the debt of the consumers became higher and corporate balance shits focused on debt rather than equities. Apart from that investments will decrease because of the high capital costs and as a result GDP growth will decrease. We have learnt several lessons that might be taken the future. We summarise them in 5. That the euro area did not create an institutional (lacked) framework to correct and identify macroeconomic imbalances. Few countries in euro area have experienced strong nominal divergence mainly caused by unit labour cost increases and excessive credit growth; leading to declining competitiveness. During this time, large current account imbalances reflected a build-up of private and public sector debt, building external vulnerabilities that were exposed when the crisis broke. Establishing a permanent framework for surveillance of such imbalances will be necessary for the future. SGP, Stability and Growth Pact, did not help to fiscal policies consistent with membership of a single currency. In an economic and monetary union, fiscal policies must be consistent with rates of sustainable growth and price stability. Instead, despite during economic growth, 1999 and 2008, fiscal policies were largely pro-cyclical: Few countries kept a budgetary position in structural balance and many got deficits. A more effective SGP will be required for  all   euro area. The absence of appropriate frameworks for policy co-ordination in areas essential for competitiveness and sustainable growth. Lets take this example, a number of euro area countries internalised the fallacy that temporarily elevated national productivity and inflation rates warranted persistent wages increases out of line with the euro area as a whole. A better policy co-ordination is currently needed to reinforce the euro area in national economic policymaking Financial supervision in the Europe was lagging behind financial integration. The result was that a large build-up of systemic risk in the financial sector went largely unnoticed risk which in many cases was ultimately transferred to the balance sheet of the sovereign. A supervision regime commensurate with the reality of financial integration in the euro area is therefore needed. Sovereign debt challenges in individual euro area countries can undermine the stability of the euro area as a whole. Since member countries do not control their currency, they are vulnerable to liquidity episodes. Creditors assessment can change e.g. by effect of contagion, even when fundamentals would not justify itThat is the meanly reason why, a permanent crisis management framework is necessery for the euro area. There are several trends that might emerge from the European Debt Crisis. First of all the welfare state has been affected for this turmoil, millions of people have lost their jobs and governments have reduced money in main sectors as education, health care, culture,etc. due to lack of liquidity and in many countries those main factors will never be again free for everybody..

Loves Faults :: Essays Papers

Loves Faults The novel, Mother Tongue, is a great example of the misuse of love today. The author, Demetria Martinez, tells the tale of a woman that falls in love with a Salvadoreà ±o refugee. Josà © Luis is a soldier in the Salvadorian army that flees to the United States where he begins a love affair with a young woman, Mary. From my prospective, the emotions they shared were not of love, but rather emotions that arose from false pretenses. Like so many relation-ships in our society today, the word love is taken for granted. Relationships are embarked upon without consideration of the repercussions. Divorce rates are a great example how relationships are not being started for the right reasons. Love is abused because of humans' innate desire to love, uncontrollable feeling to search for it, and be loved despite their failure to develop the necessary foundations for true love. The yearning for affection is one of life's greatest mysteries. This longing has led to many misconceptions of love. The greatest factor in the delusion of love is lust; often the emotions that arise from eroticism are mistaken for the true euphoric experience that is true love. Another factor that contributes to false love is loneliness, which is a feeling that all people know and avoid tremendously. As in Mary's case, her judgement was clouded by her misinterpretation of what she believed to be love. Mary was unable to realize that what appeared to be love was not truly love, " I courted disaster, set out to love a man I knew full well would go away." (Pg. 27) The combination of lust, loneliness, and Mary's undying need for love that created a rude awakening for her. Mankind's intense yearning for love leads him to what seems to be an unending search for it. Man spends too much time searching for love; but not fully understanding its purpose. Love is a gift from one person to another, and thus it has the ability to posses many different meanings. Often, in search of love people fall into the trap of trying to alter love to suit personal fantasies of what it should be. Frequently spending their time convincing themselves of what they can change about the other, instead of how they can work to accept them. "I was one of those women whose fate is to take a war out of a man, or at least imagine she is doing so.

Sexual Identity in the Arab World

The ways in which regimes of law, cultural identity and state governance shape understandings of Muslim or Arab sexualities are many. In his article â€Å"Re-Orienting Desire: The Gay International and the Arab World† Joseph Massad outlines some of these regimes. Massad argues that western orientalists and colonialists altered the way Muslims viewed their own sexuality by bringing into consciousness the idea of gay rights and thus homosexuality where it did not previously exist. Because of this, Massad argues that the western influence completely transformed how Muslims understood their own sexuality.In the beginning of his article Massad points out how Arab and Iranian men would engage in both gay and heterosexual practices while simultaneously rejecting the ‘Western identity’ of gayness. While this opposes the idea of Western homosexuality it reflects an Arab understanding of sexuality as being fluid and not tightly restrained by identifying as either ‘gay ’ or ‘straight. ’ This changed over time as Western influence became more prevalent in the Arab world through culture exchange.Massad refers to this cultural exchange by introducing the Gay International, a sort of missionary group who aims to ‘stabilize’ the sexual instability found within Arab societies. In other words, the Gay International aims to promote its views on sexuality and liberate Arabs into the Western world of homosexuality. This highlights how sexual identities can be created and can travel between societies through the work of individual groups. The Gay International succeeded in creating and dividing Arabs into two new forms of identity -both homo and hero sexuality, where previously these were unfamiliar concepts.As opposed to Western societies, Massad notes how the Arabic language only recently adopted words for homosexuality and heterosexuality. Further, the word for sexual deviance was only coined in the mid 19050 and is unders tood to refer to the Western concept of homosexuality. These examples of language show how Western concepts shape Muslim understandings of sexuality by introducing certain terms that reflect Western born concepts. By forcing Muslims to identify as homosexuals this placed them into a social group that could be targeted by police and government agencies.As noted in the article, police were able to target men â€Å"who identify as ‘gay’ on a personal level and who seek to use this identity as a group identification†¦ † The labeling of Arab men as homosexuals made them vulnerable to police attacks against this ‘socially deviant’ behavior. As a result of the introduction of Western cultural concepts of sexuality, Arab men were subsequently subject to repression by state government forces. Police targeting is not the only form of a state government’s control over sexual identity.Because homosexuality in the Arab world was transformed from a pra ctice into an identity this made it also subject to antihomosexual laws. The Western concepts of sexuality have thus created a new cultural identity that is regulated by law and enforced by state governments in the Arab world. Nadine Naber’s paper entitled â€Å"Arab American Femininities: Beyond Arab Virgin/American(ized) Whore† highlights the conflicting identities of homo and heterosexuality while also showing how individuals deal with and combat socially constructed norms in an Arab context.Nadine analyzes ideas about virginity and homosexuality by interviewing young women who grew up surrounded by these issues. One of Nadine’s interviewees, Lulu, a gay Arab woman, describes how the connotation of homosexuality as being a Western concept was so engrained in her upbringing that she felt she could not be gay and Arab at the same time as they were such opposing identities. In Lulu’s case, she was able to resist the exorcising identity of being gay in an Arab family by seeking support from queer Arab groups.She was able to form a family with other socially ostracized women who were also shunned by the Arab belief that homosexuality is a Western born and promoted idea. By choosing these women as her ‘family’ Lulu is able to resist the patriarchal and heterosexual ideals of Arab culture. Lulu insists that ‘queer Arabs exist’ which is in itself an act of resistance against homophobic Arab understandings of sexuality. Because many Arabs view homosexuality as being created by Western culture they are able to sustain their cultural views on exuality by blaming gay identifying Arabs as being Americanized. This is one way Arabs are able to resist the Western binary form of identity as either a hetero or a homo sexual. Gay Arabs are simply non existent without American influence. In terms of the gay individuals themselves, they must also choose to resist or assimilate -or a combination of the two- into Western ideas of sexuality in order to understand their own sexual identity. In Lulu’s case, she chooses to resist the ‘normal’ path of an Arab women -who is to remain a virgin until she is married off- by openly identifying as gay.In the eyes of her parents she has chosen sex over her family and thus rejected her Arab family and culture. In her family’s view there is no way to combine a gay identity with the socially constructed views on sexuality found in Arab culture. Lulu rebels from her family’s views on Arab sexuality by embracing the identity of a gay Arab woman. Not only does Lulu rebel by identifying as gay but by doing this she simultaneously rejects the ‘virgin until married’ ideal bound to the heterosexual norm of Arab identity.While Massad’s work identifies the structures behind the creation of sexual identities and how these travel beyond state lines, Nadine’s paper shows how these constructed sexual identities affect ind ividual’s understandings of their own identities in their every day lives. Nadine’s paper gives a personal face to sexual identity issues, showing how the cultural understandings of sexual identity laid out in Massad’s article effect those who are marginalized by the very dialogue that is used to define them.

War for the greater good

Through a course of history war has been a fact of life as we know it. It has caused destruction, and cost many lives. So how is it the greater good? For some, it's the resources that are used in the result of victory or â€Å"victor goes the spoils† others my say. From diamonds to oil, resources have been one of the main reasons for war. Other people may see war a way out or freedom, such as slaves Joining the army to fght in the war in exchange of being given their freedom. The cost of freedom impacted the slave trade of the 17th century causing massive numbers of recruits in earch of independent lively hood.Political power has also played a part in war, for advantages in geographical location and in search of collaboration to strength forces. The romans use this strategy throughout ancient history as they conquered many lands and use the losing army as a part of their own war. The effects toward pride also consider a greater good. One of the greatest wars in 1800's where th e U. S. embraced Great Britain in combat during the Treaty of Ghent on February 17, 181 5 where the beginning of national pride that struck the nation. Others may disagree of the phrase â€Å"greater good† as it may be looked as an insult o them.The men and women of the armed forces who have paid a strong price by trading in their families, lively hood, and their lives for mere combat. The Walter Reed National Military Medical Center has treated hundreds and thousands of soldiers measuring from minor to grave injuries. Many of those injuries in result of amputations, a fatal pay out for the so-called greater good. Many times the question had been asked; was it worth it? The women and children from the other side of war have suffered greatly as well. In the ancient times some of these women and children where either killed, rape or put into slavery.If young boys showed promise, they would train the young futures soldiers conquering army standards. Religions have shown great re ason for wars as holy grounds where fought upon for centuries. Even until this day religion views throughout the world have been the powder keg as turmoil ignited the spark. Some extremist believe they are chosen for a purpose and the ones against them are to perish by their higher power. In the war of Bosnia & Herzegovina, war crimes where commit but where look upon as blessings among some priest. The non-believers where also slaughtered as the lack of faith conflict ith the views of religion.Whether its religion, resources, or freedom, war will always play a part of life. We as a society will make this possible as greed and corruption lurk in minds of the tyrant leaders and dictators. We must realize survival serves its purpose to those who are willing take and conquer. We also have war within ourselves. Inner demons we must battle to maintain peace. Until then, the truth on whether the greater good of war as sufficient will only main a mystery. We must also be responsible to have a balance of in our lives and free our minds of hate. Well balanced sanity is the key to peace.While we may think the world issues as a heavy load, trying solved them through war may create problems in the long run. In conclusion that's everyone must make commitments tor the better ways ot lite in order to coexist. No excuses for radical groups who project images of inconsideration. In order to succeed in as a peace world, one should make sure they carefully cherish and value freedom and use your time deflect conflict. One of the most important aspects of personal responsibility is increasing your self-awareness nd knowing what stands in the way of for success with negativity.