Earth
Essays

Chief Seattle and the Tragedy of the Commons:

¶ … Faustus' Acceptance to Eternal Damnation

World War II – the Eastern Front History is often the story of one person's flaws afflicting whole populations. This truism was never truer than in World War II. A man obsessed with a messianic delusion fed off his personal foibles, rising to great power over a revitalized nation but then causing himself and that nation to crash in utter defeat. The greatest invasion on Earth was devised but ultimately doomed by this man: Hitler's prejudice, paranoia, and perplexity defeated the invasion of Russia, known as Barbarossa. Hitler's rabid prejudice against all non-Aryan people, including the people of Russia, was intense and costly. Deeming these people Untermenschen, or subhuman, Hitler simultaneously planned to oppress and exploit these "inferior" people while clearly underestimating their abilities to endure and ultimately defeat him. Hitler's paranoia was also a major factor in the failure of Barbarossa, for his distrust of his own generals led him to ignore their advice and experience, crippling Germany's military future through his unrealistic plan to defeat Russia in merely 4 weeks. Finally, once Hitler's forces were in Russia and initially victorious, Hitler was perplexed as to where exactly those forces should next be sent to completely conquer Russia. In a fatal display of hubris and thoughtlessness, Hitler split his forces, sending them north and south. This split resulted in the overextension of his forces and delays that pushed the invasion into the devastating Russian Winter. Spread thin and inadequately prepared for fighting through the extreme cold and snow of Russia, German forces suffered their greatest casualties and ultimately endured the failure of their massive invasion. As all consulted sources agree, German forces never recovered from the failure of Barbarossa. The concentration of German forces on this Eastern Front due to Hitler's obsession with conquering Russia caused the Germans to all but abandon the Battle of Britain, thus saving Britain from certain defeat. Furthermore, the defeat contributed to the mutual distrust between Hitler and his generals, crippling Germany's ability to effectively fight the War. Finally, the failure of Barbarossa weakened the Third Reich in aspects from which it never recovered, turning Germany's focus to the immense Eastern Front, overextending German forces and inflicting huge casualties on the Germans. Consequently, it can be reasonably concluded that Hitler's personal flaws directly resulted in the failure of Barbarossa and Germany's loss in World War II.

¶ … Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Specifically, it will examine Hawthorne's use of symbolism in the book. "The Scarlet Letter" is an important work of fiction because it relates how people lived in Puritan…

¶ … Jonathan Edwards' "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" and Benjamin Franklin's "Advice to a Young Tradesman."

This paper provides a comparison of natural versus anthropogenic climate changes including specific examples of each. The paper assumes a position as to whether or not global warming is taking place and assesses two current mitigation strategies for global warming. Finally, a discussion concerning the effectiveness of this mitigation strategy, as well as its potential costs and policy implications is followed by a summary of the research in the conclusion.

¶ … Fiction vs. Nonfiction, but both with an agenda -- the "Niebelungenleid" and the History of the Florentine People

Thoreau's appeal to adolescence and the remnants of it that are sustained in young adulthood is inarguable. The revolutionaries of the 1960s would find in Thoreau's writings the clarity of vision and thought to recognize structural violence—though they would not yet know well that term. Thoreau repeatedly observed the manner in which private property can enslave people and pit them against one another. For those who seek a personal peace, Thoreau cautioned against accepting the media's version of the news and the truth as a substitution for the solidity of private reality. "Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous…Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance... till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality..." Those who desire to come to the hard bottom and work with reality are often seen to choose a simplified lifestyle. Those who give themselves over to religious lives of service—of those extraordinary individuals like Dr. Paul Farmer—readily testify that they achieve a measure of peace that a life in pursuit of material wealth could not match.

This is a three page paper about world literature. It focuses on frame narrative, and discusses why frame narrative is used. Frame narrative serves a number of different literary functions including providing continuity and structure to the text, and offering historical and cultural context. The stories focused on include Ovid' s Metamorphoses, Ovid, Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron, and the authors of One Thousand and One Nights

Crusades refer to a series of wars waged by Western European Christians to recapture the Holy Land from the Muslims from the end of the 11th century to the late 13th century. Later on, the term "Crusades" was broadened…