Archive for November, 2006
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This is a timed essay that I wrote on the elements of humour in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion a couple of weeks ago. My teacher’s paraphrased comments in the bottom of this post.
Discuss the elements of humour within the play
There are many theories about George Bernard Shaw’s intention with Pygmalion, his famous play. Many suggest that the theme is feminism, socialism or the class system dividing the population. However, there is one element that appears throughout the play: humour.
My thesis is taht Shaw has written Pygmalion in an attempt to entertain. This theory is supported by the fact that the play is still being read today, despite the drastic changes in the general population’s views of feminism and socialism.
Still, these elements are present in thep lay. In fact, they play an integral role in the usage of humour: Shaw is consistent in using satire to entertain. Feminism, socialism and the class system are easy victims for this. However, the paly is not completely unserious — the author utilizes satire to draw attention to real issues, such as those previously mentioned.
Although not evident, Shaw’s work is filled with examples of this. The most apparent one is located near the end of the act where Eliza is given her first chance in social life with mrs. Higgins’s friends: Clara, Freddy andmrs. Eynsford Hill. Their dialogue is scattered with sarcasm. The first occurring example is when Eliza is asked how the weather is, and she replies with the day’s weather forecast, perfectly pronounced. Higgins had earlier pointed out that it would be easy to teatch his apprentice how to say the words, but difficult to teach her which words to say.
If Eliza did this mistake consciously, the reader would have thought of it as a tounge-in-cheek insult aimed towards the upper class. Eliza did not; Shaw did. This is why the line is so amusing: he is making fun of the exaggerated “small talk” — the persistend discussion about the wheather and each other’s health. Shaw makes his point clear by including another example of this with Higgins remarking the absurdity in their shallow and narrow dialogues while limiting Eliza to the two very same topics.
More linguistics-related examples occur later in that act, when Freddy offers Eliza to accompany her. “Not bloody likely”, is the answer he gets along with an explanation that she’d rather go by taxi. Mrs. Eynsford Hill is very surprised by Eliza’s vocabulary: she breaks the norms for that kind of meeting. Here, Shaw has utilized satire as a tool for showing that the upper-class seldom is inedependent. Clara, on the other hand, isfascinated when she is told that this is the new “small talk”. Shaw once again uses sarcasm, and with the same purpose as the last time: to convey upon the reader that Clara isn’t independent, either. She only wants to follow the stream.
Anti-feminism, which was publicly accepted as the right way when the play was written, is also attacked by Shaw’s satire. When Eliza andFreddy had revealed their mutual love for each other, they decided to take a taxi home. Freddy had brought no money with himself, and so Eliza offered to pay. This would have been unthinkable contemporarily with the play. This kind of unexpected andstereotype-breaking events is naturally amusing.
From this, you can conclude that Shaw does in fact focus on issues such as women’s rights and political ideologies, though he uses sarcasm as a tool in order to achieve his goals.
In criterion A (response to the question) and B (presentation), I got 7 and 7-8, respectively. I should have treated more examples of humour, such as some related to Alfred Doolittle (Eliza’s father) and Nepommuck (Higgins’s prior student), which would have raised both grades. In criterion C, language, I got 10 with the comment that I should have used the word “satire” instead of “sarcasm” (this was changed in this version). Sarcasm is used more when the intent is to hurt someone’s feelings. The closing paragraph was apparently good, too.
This is my first commentary written for my economics portfolio. It is a commentary on the article Low investment level to keep oil prices rising by Business Day.
The price elasticity of demand (PED) is the relation between the change in the quantity demanded of a good and the change in the price of that good. The PED for oil is very low, since a major increase in price is required for the demand of oil to be significantly, moved. This situation is caused by consumer, such as plastic industries and almost every car-owner, being nigh-dependent on oil. In the same way, the demand will not rise a lot if the price is reduced, because consumers need only meet their own, limited needs. This low PED is partially caused by oil lacking a close substitute. There are of course substitutes to oil – e.g. electricity and synthetic oil – but these substitutes would require a substantial initial investment from the consumers, which is why the oil prices need soar before the demand is affected. Note also that in the long run, the PED for oil is probably higher, since consumers will be able to invest in the one-time cost for adapting to other sources of energy, e.g. electric cars.
The price elasticity of supply (PES) measures the responsiveness in the supplied quantity of a good to the change in its price. Just as the demand for oil, the supply is very inelastic. This is because the main factor of the price elasticity of supply for a good is the close substitutes which the producer can produce instead of the initial good. When it comes to oil, there are no substitutes: the oil platforms cannot be changed to drill for milk instead. The only way for producers to change their production according to price is to expand or diminish production. If more oil platforms and drills are built and maintained, more oil will be extracted, which increases the supply. This way of increasing supply, however, does only have any effect in the long run, since building more platforms takes time.
The article states that the demand for oil is increasing rapidly, and that we will probably not see an investment in oil fields of the size required. First, this is yet another proof that the PES for oil is low: as demand increases, supply does not increase much. Second, this will entail a big increase in the oil prices. Because the demand is greater than the supply is, there is a shortage of oil. Shortage will lead to an increase in price, since the producers do not lose anything in doing so, as they would have done if there was an equilibrium in the market. Thus, the equilibrium is re-instated – however, it is so on a higher price than before.
In the article, it is also stated that countries with oil reserves which are being used by other countries are actively seeking to get more out of the affair. The barrier of entry for the oil market is high due to the required technology, which means that those countries are unlikely to start extracting their oil by themselves. Thus, they will probably demand an even larger amount of money from the countries which are already extracting their oil. If this happens, the companies extracting the oil will find less gain in doing so, which means that supply will sink even more. With the supply sinking, the prices will rise even more.
Introduction
The aim of this investigation is to find the molar mass of magnesium by making magnesium and hydrochloric acid react and then apply the ideal gas equation.
The independent variable of this experiment is the amount used of each substance. However, these were not not be varied. The dependent variable is the amount of hydrogen gas which is formed. The controlled variables are the pressure and temperature in the room, and the width (and thereby weight) of the magnesium ribbon.
Materials and Methods
Materials used:
- Magnesium (Mg) ribbon
- Hydrochloric acid (HCl), 35% concentrated
- Copper (Cu) wire
- Eudiometer
- Thermometer
- Barometer
- Measuring cylinder (2000 cm3)
Method:
- 50 mm of the Mg ribbon was weighed.
- 10 cm3 of HCl was poured into the eudiometer.
- The rest of the eudiometer was filled with water.
- The Mg ribbon was wrapped around the Cu wire and hung in the eudiometer cork.
- The measuring cylinder was filled with water.
- The eudiometer was put upside-down in the measuring cylinder.
- After the reaction between HCl and Mg was complete, the eudiometer was allowed to cool down to reach room temperature.
- The eudiometer was arranged so that the gas inside had the same pressure as the air pressure outside the room.
- The molar mass of magnesium was calculated using
In order to ensure that the investigation resulted in valid results, the experiment was conducted four times.
Results
These were the measured values:
| Table 1: Controlled Variables |
| Variable |
Value |
| Pressure of the room |
100.3 * 103 Pa |
| Temperature of the room |
292.65 K |
| Weight of the magnesium ribbon |
0.06 g |
| Table 2: Dependent Variables |
| Iteration |
Volume of H2 [ml] |
| 1 |
65 |
| 2 |
64 |
| 3 |
68 |
| 4 |
62 |
The mean volume is then 64.75 ml.
The ideal gas equation will be used to calculate the number of moles:
n = (PV)/(RT)
n = (9.81 * 64.75) / (8.31 * 293 ) = 2.61
Thus, we have 2.61 moles of H2. The reaction carried out should be:
Mg + 2HCl => MgCl2 + H2
For every mole of Mg, we will have one mole of H2. Therefore, we know that we will also have 2.61 moles of Mg. This is the formula for molar mass:
M = m/n = 64.75 / 2.61 = 24.8
The molar mass of magnesium must then be 24.8 g.
Conclusion
From this, we can conclude that the average magnesium atom has 24.8 protons. According to Wikipedia, the molar mass of magnesium is 24.3 g, which is close to our result.
Evaluation
This investigation could have been performed better in an environment where we could control the pressure more accurately, such as in a pressure chamber.
Is Google leaking referer HTTP fields? I just saw this line in Timblog’s referer log:
https://www.google.com/evaluation/search/rating/task-edit?task=43299718
Trying to access the page was fruitless, and so was trying to access https://www.google.com/evaluation/search/rating/ and https://www.google.com/evaluation/search/: both resulted in a simple page saying nothing but “Not Found Error 404″. I tried yet another level down — https://www.google.com/evaluation/ gave me a 403 forbidden error:
Forbidden
The user XXXXXX@XXXX.XX is not a member of EWOQ. Please contact the ratingprojects@google.com for access.
My Google account’s email address was there. I’ve got no idea about what this is. At least that Google worker (?) was using Firefox.
If you administer a MediaWiki Wiki, you’ve probably come across wiki spam. There is a quite simple way of fixing this. Just edit the file LocalSettings.php in the root directory and add the following line at the bottom (or anywhere else):
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit'] = false;
This will remove the edit-permissions from users who have not yet logged in. If a guest tries to edit, they will be prompted to log in. Since you would no longer be able to edit using only your IP address as a signature, adding the following line might be desired too:
$wgShowIPinHeader = false;
Doing so removes the IP address from the header for non-logged-in users (logged-in users wouldn’t see it anyway). Happy wikiing.
This is a short story about the shooting scene in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, where Okonkwo accidentally fires his gun and kills a young man in the tribe, but in a modern setting.
The crowd suddenly went quiet, and a fizzle was heard throughout the silent field. A dangerous rocket plunged towards the dark night-sky, and a sudden boom was followed by a glowing rain falling over the mesmerized spectators. A few shattered shouts of amazement could be heard. Everyone tensely watched the falling sparks fade away to the dark void, awaiting what everyone knew would follow. After a short moment of complete silence, the sky exploded in the colours of the rainbow, and shouts drowned the whole field.
Okonkwo, too, intoxicated by the ardent starfalls. This year, he had brought his own rockets. As he watched the fireworks with awe and a bit of jealousy, he assembled the set. Just as another missile flew skywards, Okonkwo lit the fuse. While he rose to step back, he stumbled over the leg of another, as ferocious celebrator.
His eyes caught a glimpse of fire. He fumbled with the explosive rocket. The fizzling sound rose for a moment, and a red bolt burnt through the wild crowd. A piercing screech halted the slightest movement. Okonkwo sat with the scorched rod from his firework in his hands. In front of him lay a child. Dead.
I tried to register on a phpBB forum (ore.mine.gov), and got this CAPTCHA:
“What letter is on Mt. Zion?”
I don’t know! It isn’t random, either. I guess I’m not supposed to register.
I just got spam with this subject line:
sorry about last {%rot:night|week|month%}
The body text was the usual, randomized one. I like the rot (rotate?) part in the subject line.
It occurs to me now that it might just as well have been a deliberate mistake, just to catch peopl’e attention. Damn, they tricked me.
A sudden flame in driest hearts
Spreads fatal sparks
Your soul ignited too
A mortal gloss to suffocate
My acid tears
My earthly bounds unleashed
The beating drums of distant worlds
Shall never quench
Our burning dreams
I’m trying to get the Gamboy Advance emulator VisualBoyAdvance to work on my x86_64 Fedora Core 4 box. I donwloaded the binarym but when I ran it I got this:
adamant VisualBoyAdvance # ./VisualBoyAdvance
./VisualBoyAdvance: error while loading shared libraries: libSDL-1.2.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Just run yum install SDL to solve it.
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