Humans are a Cancer of the Earth
Earth has undeniably suffered a rapid deterioration in health over the past few centuries. The symptoms of her illness, including global warming, water pollution, and deforestation, are ever-increasing and cannot be ignored. Dr. William Hern believes he has discovered the culprit behind this malady: Homo ecophagus, a newly-coined label for the present day humans that are devouring the environment in cancer-like fashion (Dr. William Hern, p. 8). His diagnosis involves drawing parallels between a malignant neoplasm and humans. My immediate reaction after reading this thesis was to reject a proposal that so debased the human race and exacted such a harsh blow to every human's ego. Upon further consideration, however, Hern's reasoning becomes less blatantly offensive and more plausible. Although his argument and its correlating implications contain some contradictions, his overall points appear regrettably compelling and difficult to refute.
By medical definition, a malignant neoplasm is diagnosed on the basis of four main qualities: unrestrained growth, consumption of surrounding tissues, spreading to satellite regions and de-differentiation of cells. According to Dr. Hern, the human population reflects each of these characteristics in some way. He anchors his argument by systematically linking each of these four cancer indicators to the effect of humans on their environment. A summary of his points include the following:
1) Unrestrained Growth:
Over the past two thousand years, the entire human population has displayed J-shaped growth, a model that demonstrates no leveling of growth rate in the proximate future (Southwick, 159). Through estimates of agricultural and energy resource cons...
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...ntel's argument against the invincibility of the tech fix is thus more persuasive than Hern's perspective on the matter.
This weakness in Hern's argument, however, does not rob his argument of its validity. The value of Hern's thesis lies in its capacity to clarify an otherwise vague concept - the scope of human damage to Earth - to the identifiable destructive properties of cancer. If nothing else, such a stinging view of human beings serves as a sharp warning, a red flag to call our attention to our destructive methods.
REFERENCES:
Hern, Dr. Warren. "Why Are There So Many of Us?" http://www.drhern.com/fulltext/why/paper.html
Southwick, Charles H., Ch. 15 from "Global Ecology in Human Perspective" Oxford Univ. Press, 1996, pp. 159-182.
Pimentel, David. "Impact of Population Growth on Food Supplies and Environment." http://www.dieoff.org/page57.htm
In “Bring Back Flogging”, Jeff Jacoby argues why the current criminal justice system in America is not effective or successful. As a solution, he suggests that America should bring back the old fashioned form of punishment once used by the puritans, flogging, as an alternative to imprisonment (198). This article originally appeared in the op-ed section of the Boston Globe newspaper. Therefore, the primary audience of this article is people who want to read arguments about controversial topics and have probably read some of his other articles. His argument that the current criminal justice system is not working is extremely convincing. He appeals to pathos and uses statistics to prove that thesis and to persuade the audience.
During seventeenth century flogging was a popular punishment for convicted people among Boston's Puritans. Fortunately, those times have passed and brutal and inhuman flogging was replaced by imprisonment. Columnist for the Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby in his essay "Bring back flogging" asserts that flogging is superior to imprisonment and advocates flogging as an excellent means of punishment. He is convinced that flogging of offenders after their first conviction can prevent them from going into professional criminal career and has more educational value than imprisonment. He also argues that being imprisoned is more dangerous than being whipped, because the risk of being beaten, raped, or murdered in prison is terrifying high. Unfortunately, Jeff Jacoby made some faulty assumptions and his article "Bring back flogging" is filled with misconceptions.
Flogging…What is it? What purpose does it serve? For those of us who have never heard of flogging, flogging refers to “beating with a whip or strap or rope as a form of punishment” (“Flogging” 1). Throughout the 1600s, flogging was utilized by “Boston’s Puritan Forefathers” (Jacoby 1) as a method of corporal punishment for various crimes. Progressing forward, Jeff Jacoby, columnist for The Boston Globe, provides readers with his view of “Boston’s Forefathers’” system of punishment in his essay, “Bring Back Flogging.” Within the contents of his work, Jacoby describes how flogging was utilized as punishment in its day. One such example he utilizes involves a woman who pleaded guilty to committing adultery. He writes that her punishment was “fifteen stripes severally to be laid on upon her naked back at the Common Whipping post” (Jacoby 1). In his piece, Jacoby argues for the revival of flogging and Puritan style punishment in the United States. As well as this, the author illustrates how imprisonment has become society’s general form of punishment and has now become outdated. Jacoby proposes that in order to cut costs and prevent future crime within first time offenders the turn to flogging must be taken. Jacoby’s logic to his argument is that since crime rates are rising, keeping prisoners locked up is expensive, and “the penal system is choked to bursting” (Jacoby 1), prisons should be done away with and flogging should take the reins as the new form of corporal punishment. Bearing in mind the above, Jacoby’s argument on bringing back flogging is unconvincing for the reason that his assumptions are incoherent and flogging itself is inhumane and could prove to be ineffective.
Humans can not be the only thing that is hurting the Earth. When you really think about it, Earth goes through a lot of natural disasters, which cannot be controlled. According to an activist, Tim Haering, “Tsunamis, floods, volcanoes, earthquakes, tornadoes, wildfires, disease nature kills more than we kill each other.” Earth throws in all of these natural ...
Yang, M. (2011). A current global view of environmental and occupational cancers. Journal Of Environmental Science And Health. Part C, Environmental Carcinogenesis & Ecotoxicology Reviews, 29(3), 223-249. doi:10.1080/10590501.2011.601848
Cancer has become the one of the most feared things for human beings. The various type of cancer have been discovered and there are still a lot of it that undiscoverable. Cancer is a complex disease that have a group of disease. The cancer itself cannot be describe by words. The causes of this cancer is still not being able to be discovered fully. There are only minor factor that can lead to this disease. The carcinogens are believed to be one of the causes that lead to cancer such as asbestos, radon gas, tobacco, PVC and much more from our chemical industries. The environment especially near to the industrial that produce chemical waste can be one of the causes lead to cancer. Cancer also have relation with our age, lifestyle, and diet and also can be genetically inherited. It is believed that older people have higher tendency to get cancer than younger people. Our lifestyle and diet also plays a role causing a cancer by our daily life routine. Smoking tobacco and eating unconsciously (still in research) can also increase the possibility to get cancer especially lung cancer that cause by smoking tobacco. There are several cases, cancer were inherited from their parents. Various type of viruses such as HIV, HPV, EBV and many more virus has a high capabilities to increase the chance a patient to get a cancer because these viruses lower their body immunity to disease.
Epidemiologists had identified many important causes of cancer by the early of 1980s. Many types of cancer vary in incidence by more than an order of magnitude between different populations and every type is rare in some part of the world. Many specific causes cancer are now known, the most common are by smoking, obesity and a few oncogenic viruses, but a large proportion of global variation for common cancers such as breast, prostate, colon and rectum remains unexplained (Peto J. , 2001). According to Richard Doll and Richard Peto, pollution accounts for 2% of all cancer cases and geophysical factors account for another 3% while 80% to 90% of cancers are caused by “environmental factors”. Environmental factors are the non-genetic factors which are smoking, diet, occupational exposure to chemicals and geophysical factors (naturally occurring radiation, man-made radiation, medical drugs and radiation and pollution.
Ancient Greek religion was a polytheistic religion that believed in many gods and goddesses. To Greeks, these gods and goddesses would be able to control everything. Each god or goddess had his or her own distinct personality and territory. “Greek myths explained the origins of the gods and their individual relations with mankind” (Hemingway). Unlike current religions, like Christianity and Judaism, Greek gods were not known for being moral or being truly good or evil. Many of the Greek gods and goddesses were disorganized and self-contradicting. Although this was apparent to the Greeks, the Greeks believed that their religion was to brighten their own lives, rather than give them godlike guidance. The best example of a self-contradicting Greek god is Zeus – father of all gods and humans (Cunningham and Reich 32-33).
First, even though Black & Decker has a good brand perception in general, are considered to be among the powerful brand names in the world and considered to have the highest quality product in the industry, they were perceived badly by the tradesmen segment. Some trade people viewed all Black & Decker as for use at home rather than on the job. The tradesmen considers Makita to have a good baseline options in all majors categories, hence being their firs option and others brands as having particular product strengths. Thus, the customers in this segments were not identifying themselves to the products that Black & Decker proposes to them.
Panno, J. (2005). Cancer: The Role of Genes, Lifestyle, and Environment. Facts on File Science Library: The New Biology. Facts On File.
Sophocles tried to illustrate that great men should love life, art, and philosophy of Greece. Many citizens thought that philosophers and playwrights were intelligent men that demonstrated the true nature of Greek society. Ancient Greeks looked for guidance by asking and searching for a prophet or oracle that would tell them of their fate or future treasures and failures. Civilizations in ancient Greece believed that if they worshiped or praised the great gods that lived on Mount Olympus they would prosper and live happily in their society and life. Ancient civilizations believed that the gods created their destiny based on the way they treated them. Greeks believed that their traditions and values were superior to all other religions and civilizations.
The concepts of the gods and fate were created to explain things. In Ancient Greece there was a lot that was not understood; science was in its infancy and everything that happened could be explained by the will of the gods or fate. The gods were the height of power; they supposedly existed since the beginning of time. They were immortal, omnipresent and omnipotent. However, the different gods had different personalities. In this sense they were anthropomorphic. Having such mastery of the world would enable them to control man's behavior, as is shown in King Oedipus.
In conclusion, through the remained literatures of the ancient Greeks, one can see that the Greeks believed that they were created to glorify their gods and that the exchange between human beings and gods are obvious. Hence, one should please the gods to be blessed.
Punishing the unlawful, undesirable and deviant members of society is an aspect of criminal justice that has experienced a variety of transformations throughout history. Although the concept of retribution has remained a constant (the idea that the law breaker must somehow pay his/her debt to society), the methods used to enforce and achieve that retribution has changed a great deal. The growth and development of society along with an underlying, perpetual fear of crime are heavily linked to the use of vastly different forms of punishment that have ranged from public executions, forced labor, penal welfarism and popular punitivism over the course of only a few hundred years.
Panno, Joseph. Cancer: The Role of Genes, Lifestyle, and Environment. New York: Facts On File, 2005. Print.