Roman Aqueducts An Engineering Brilliance essays

Roman Aqueducts An Engineering Brilliance essays Roman Aqueducts: An Engineering Brilliance Transportation of water is a very important obstacle the world has taken on. Water is a necessity to live; therefore control of water in and out of towns has been going on for thousands of years. Many different ways of moving water from one spot to another have been tried over the years. One example is the building of dams, not only to generate electricity, but also to create an abundance of water that can be transported to farmers to water their crops. The water from the dam is sent through underground conduits, aqueducts, to its final destination. Aqueducts were used by Greeks, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians and Egyptians for water transportation. These early civilizations provided the vision for the Roman Empire to perfect the use of the aqueduct. In 97 AD, Sextus Julius Frontinus, the city official in charge of the water supply, is recorded as saying: I ask you! Just compare this vast array of indispensable structures carrying so much water with the idle Pyramids or the world-famous but useless monuments of the Greeks." ( ) In 97 AD, 300 gallons of water per person a day flowed into Rome through nine aqueducts. The Romans had succeeded in their vision of an aqueduct system supplying Rome with water. Many people, including Frontinus, thought that the Roman aqueduct system was the greatest invention in the world because of what it brought to the people of Rome. In the early days of Rome, the water supply came from the River Tiber. The Tiber, however is a very muddy river, and Romes sewer system also contaminated it. By the 4th century the Roman population was growing rapidly and Rome urgently needed an alternate water supply. In 312 BC the Roman Senate ordered Adile Appius Claudius to find a new source of water for the city. Claudius undertook the mission and started construction of the first aqueduct into Rome (Carr). Aqua Appia was successfully comple...

Cross Cultural Communication Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 1

Cross Cultural Communication - Essay Example The major features of high context and low context cultures can be understood through critical elements such as association, interaction, territoriality, temporality, learning, through patterns and social perspectives (Hofstede, 2001; Hall, 1976). 1. Knowledge is generally embedded in the current situation. Things are synthesized and connected as well as global. For information, multiple sources are used. Thinking is from general to precise or specific. 1. Reality is compartmentalized and fragmented. One particular information source is used for developing knowledge. Thinking is generally inductive and proceeds to general ideas from specific issues. More focus is given on details (Chaney, 2005). Japan is a model example of a high context culture. Japan and China are considered as model examples of this culture. In Japan and China a major part of the communication is implicit and internalized. For instance, they speak very less words in a conversation and convey more through facial expressions (Richardson and Smith, 2007). Low context messages are very difficult to understand without having backed with proper background information. According to hall, in Japan and China communication style, much of the meaning depends on physical context such as voice tone, facial expressions and gestures. As a result, the verbal message is itself very less. For instance, a Japanese executive visiting a low context culture such as US will face problems with their extremely direct approach (Hendon, Hendon and Herbig, 1999). Individuals prefer interacting and conveying their message through indirect communication and body language. The major reason behind this can be attributed to their object ive of preserving and strengthening relationships by ensuring harmony and saving face. The culture of Japan and China is influenced by a well-structured hierarchy in society, strong norms of behaviour as well as closeness in human

Employee Relations Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Employee Relations - Case Study Example On May 15, he assured Monica that everything would be taken care of as planned. Carl pulled out the paperwork needed for the orientation plans after Memorial Day, which would place this time frame around the beginning of June. His goal at this point in time was to get everything finalized for the orientation that would be coming up in approximately two weeks. What he found was a big mess. Some of the applications were incomplete. Some of the new hires did not have the required transcripts on file. Not a single one of them had gone to have a drug screen, and those were mandatory. Furthermore, he could only find three orientation manuals and all of them had pages missing. The frustration did not end there. When he went to check on the room that would be used to train the new hires during the actual orientation, he found out that it was not even going to be available for use on that day. In fact, it had already been booked for the entire month of June for other company business. All of this turmoil left Carl very frustrated and having no idea where to turn next. Although each of these individual problems is significant, the real issue boils down to a couple of deeper problems: miscommunication and poor preparation. Most of this falls on the shoulders of Carl since he agreed to take responsibility for the orientation, but it could have possibly been prevented had other individuals in the company, such as Monica or Carl's supervisor, checked in on his progress and found that he was putting off some vital actions until it was virtually too late to correct them, at least in a quick and efficient manner. According to Anonymous Employee (2008, pg. 1), "Poor communication leads to inadequate workplaces. As in any relationship, communication is key to a strong business relationship. This can be the relationship between business and customer, or, equally as important, the internal relationships among different employees within the company. Communication can be improved in virtually every workplace, no matter the industry or size. After all, it is the only way for information to effectively spread throughout the business so that everybody can be informed to the degree that they required to properly achieve their goals." In addition, Anonymous Employee (2008, pg. 1) claims that, "Among the most trying elements of poor communication in today's workplace is a lack of information for the proper accomplishment of the tasks necessary within the business. Even in today's information overload society, employees often lack the information they need to do their jobs. They may have the data that they require

Air Pollution Short Essay Essay Example for Free

Air Pollution Short Essay Essay There are several disadvantages of living in urban areas The first drawback is the high cost of living. Urban citizens have to spend a lot of their income paying their bills of electricity, water and other basic services. Secondly is traffic congestion which is a serious problem. During rush hour, vehicles get stuck in a traffic jam, this makes most road users feel uncomfortable and time-consuming. The latter point is air pollution actually the addition of any harmful substances to the atmosphere. The more vehicles move in the road, the more air pollution These substances include various gases and tiny particles that may be harmful to human health and the environment. The greenhouse effect keeps a portion of the heat received from the sun which leave the atmosphere and go back into space. If you are at ground level, the ultraviolet rays from the sun become a very powerful pollutant, in other words it makes damage not only to humans but also plants and animals are affected, too. Increases in air pollution have been linked to breakdowns in lung function and increases in heart attacks. The most vulnerable people that are harmed are people with asthma and other lung or heart disease because their problems will increase faster than other kind of problem.What is Air Pollution? Air pollution is actually the addition of any harmful substances to the atmosphere, which causes the damaging of the environment, human health and the quality of life. With the development in industry, came along the increase in air pollution, which occurs inside homes, schools, offices even in the countryside. Consequently there has been an increase in the death rates resulting from various diseases caused by air pollution varying from breathing problem to lung cancer. Air pollution does not only affect people but it also damages the whole ecological system in which plants and animals are harmed as well. Air pollution has reached such a critical stage where it affects the earths atmosphere as it lets in more harmful radiation from the sun. Consequently, our polluted atmosphere is becoming a bet ter insulator, thus, preventing heat from escaping back into space. That is why there is a global rise in temperature which scientists refer to as global warming. As a result of this rise in temperature the world food supply and sea level will be affected, also there is the probability of increase in the tropical disease. Sources of Air Pollution I_ Human sources: If we try to investigate the major sour

Emiliano Zapata Essay -- essays research papers

Emiliano Zapata, born on August 8, 1879, in the village of Anenecuilco, Morelos (Mexico), Emiliano Zapata was of mestizo heritage and the son of a peasant medier, (a sharecropper or owner of a small plot of land). From the age of eighteen, after the death of his father, he had to support his mother and three sisters and managed to do so very successfully. The little farm prospered enough to allow Zapata to augment the already respectable status he had in his native village. In September of 1909, the residents of Anenecuilco elected Emiliano Zapata president of the village's "defense committee," an age-old group charged with defending the community's interests. In this position, it was Zapata's duty to represent his village's rights before the president-dictator of Mexico, Porfirio Dà ­az, and the governor of Morelos, Pablo Escandà ³n. During the 1880s, Mexico had experienced a boom in sugar cane production, a development that led to the acquisition of more and more land by the hacienderos or plantation owners. Their plantations grew while whole villages disappeared and more and more medieros and other peasants lost their livelihoods or were forced to work on the haciendas. It was under these conditions that a plantation called El Hospital neighboring Zapata's village began encroaching more and more upon the small farmers' lands. This was the first conflict in which Emiliano Zapata established his reputation as a fighter and leader. He led various peaceful occupations and re-divisions of land, increasing his status and his fame to give him regional recognition. In 1910, Francisco Madero, a son of wealthy plantation owners, instigated a revolution against the government of president Dà ­az. Even though most of his motives were political (institute effective suffrage and disallow reelections of presidents), Madero's revolutionary plan included provisions for returning seized lands to peasant farmers. The latter became a rallying cry for the peasantry and Zapata began organizing locals into revolutionary bands, riding from village to village, tearing down hacienda fences and opposing the landed elite's encroachment into their villages. On November 18, the federal government began rounding up Maderistas (the followers of Francisco Madero), and only forty-eight hours later, the first shots of the Mexican Revolution were fired. While the government was confide... ...Morelos seemed at a permanent stalemate. Carranza knew that he could never fully take Mexico while Zapata was still alive and in charge of his army. To rid himself of his enemy, Carranza devised a trap. A letter had been intercepted in which Zapata invited a colonel of the Mexican army who had shown leanings toward his cause to meet and join forces. This colonel, Jesà ºs Guajardo, under the threat of being executed as a traitor, pretended to agree to meet Zapata and defect to his side. On Thursday, April 10, 1919, Zapata walked into Carranza's trap as he met with Guajardo in the town of Chinameca. There, at 2:10 PM, Zapata was shot and killed by federal soldiers, and as the man Zapata hit the ground, dead instantly, the legend of Zapata reached its climax. Carranza did not achieve his goal by killing Zapata. On the contrary, in May of 1920, à lvaro Obregà ³n, one of Zapata's right-hand men, entered the capital with a large fighting force of Zapatistas, and after Carranza had fled, formed the seventy-third government in Mexico's history of independence. In this government, the Zapatistas played an important role, especially in the Department of Agriculture. Mexico was finally at peace.

Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 Misinterpreted Essay

Reading Fahrenheit 451 one can only wonder on somewhat naà ¯ve, but nevertheless terrible prophecy of the dark future to come, brought on us by Ray Bradbury. Often seen as a work of fiction or anti-utopia, in fact this is just a social horror story, if such a genre can be invented for its description. The technologies depicted in Fahrenheit are rather primitive compared to modern times. Sure, Bradbury had extrapolated the TV screens of 50’s and predicted the invention of giant TV walls, with â€Å"presence effect† that allows the viewer to feel himself in the center of action. Bradbury had expressed the fears that TV means death of media of a previous generation, being the books. But, as McLuhan stated, the technologies of past ages don’t die so easily, â€Å"The dominant technologies of one age become the games and pastimes of a later age† (McLuhan, p99). As fears that cinema would mean the death of theatre had proved themselves to be incorrect, thus a larger-scale fear that TV means the end of books had proved itself to be false too. On the other hand, Bradbury hadn’t predicted the invention of a new media which would outscore the TV as much as TV outscores the books: the Internet. The TV had no chance to progress into totally-enveloping media reality depicted in the book, losing the race to more modern media. While Bradbury’s technology prediction hadn’t been correct, his social predictions had proved to be uncannily true, if somewhat optimistic. The all-world media programming is here, broadcasted by orbiting satellites, â€Å"turns the globe into a repertory theater to be programmed† (McLuhan, p9). And the news brought to us by every source – from TV to Internet and even to Radio – are apt to be manipulated simultaneously, as was shown brilliantly in â€Å"Wag the Dog†. The censorship depicted by Bradbury isn’t here; instead, we have a total media coverage that produces fake events undistinguishable from real. People do not need to follow instructions told to them on TV; instead, we follow the views and ideas presented to us daily. The Electric Dog doesn’t roam the streets: the society is our Electric Dog that doesn’t kill nonconformists in real sense but effectively blocks ‘them’ from ‘us’. What brings salvation and hope in Bradbury’s world after the holocaust are Bible words. It doesn’t mean that he relies on religion to carry us through the new Dark Ages – rather, he tells us about our inner faith, which isn’t expressed but felt and understood. But as no holocaust had happened yet, only those who really feels in need seek salvation, others are content with what they’ve got. Bradbury’s views on government in Fahrenheit border with clear accusations of fascism, the burning of books being the most obvious historical reference. But fascism in US had became such a popular scare since the end of WWII that we don’t fear it as much anymore. After all, if government would ever decide to apply a ‘stricter’ views to economics like Roosevelt’s New Deal in 30’s, (which is quite possible now because of economics crisis), most voices would be raised in its defense rather than in its critics. People feel the government to be controlled by them, not the other way round. In Fahrenheit society education of youth program them to see their world as unquestionably right, defies critical thinking and praises the conformity instead. This is not only an exaggerated, but also a distorted picture of modern education, depicted just to scare us even more, to create a sense of further isolation of Guy Montag from the world. Bradbury doesn’t give much attention to the youth; this is sensible, for what he longs for is the past. Fahrenheit’s ending can be seen as a longing for â€Å"Golden Age†, the times that never were real but always in our eyes seem to be brighter than today. It is a hymn to nostalgia. But one cannot contemplate his past too long – he must consider the future. We should look ahead and be brave, no matter what dangers are waiting for us there. Works Cited Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. Published by Del Rey Books, Random House Publishing Group, 1953, renewed 1981. McLuhan, Marshall, From Clichà © to Archetype, Published by Viking Adult, 1970. Wag the Dog, by Barry Levinson, 1997 (the movie).

A Brief History of the Selfie

Selfie is the slang term for self-portrait, a photograph you take of yourself, usually taken using a mirror or with a camera held at arms length. The act of taking and sharing selfies has become widely popular due to digital cameras, the internet, the ubiquity of social media platforms like Facebook and, of course, because of peoples endless fascination with their own image. The word selfie was even chosen as the Word of the Year in 2013 by the Oxford English Dictionary, which has the following entry for the word: A photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website. History of the Self Portrait So who took the first selfie? In discussing the invention of the first selfie, we have to first pay homage to the film camera and the early history of photography. In photography, self-portraits were taking place long before the invention of Facebook and smartphones. One example is American photographer Robert Cornelius, who took a self portrait daguerreotype (first practical process of photography) of himself in 1839. The image is also considered one of the earliest photographs of a person. In 1914, 13-year-old Russian Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna took a self-portrait using a Kodak Brownie box camera (invented in 1900) and sent the photograph to a friend with the following note I took this picture of myself looking at the mirror. It was very hard as my hands were trembling. Nikolaevna appears to have been the first teenager to take a selfie. So Who Invented the First Selfie?   Australia has laid claim to inventing the modern-day selfie. In September 2001, a group of Australians created a website and uploaded the first digital self-portraits onto the internet. On September 13, 2002, the first recorded published use of the term selfie to describe a self-portrait photograph occurred on the Australian internet forum (ABC Online). The anonymous poster wrote the following, along with posting a selfie of himself: Um, drunk at a mates 21st, I tripped over and landed lip first (with front teeth coming a very close second) on a set of steps. I had a hole about 1cm long right through my bottom lip. And sorry about the focus, it was a selfie. A Hollywood cameraman named Lester Wisbrod claims he is the first person to take celebrity selfies, (a self-taken photo of himself and a celebrity) and has been doing so since 1981. Medical authorities have begun to associate the taking of too many selfies as a potentially unhealthy sign of mental health issues. Take the case of 19-year-old Danny Bowman, who attempted suicide after failing to take what he considered the perfect selfie. Bowman was spending most of his waking hours taking hundreds of selfies every day, losing weight and dropping out of school in the process. Becoming obsessed with taking selfies is often a sign of body dysmorphic disorder, an anxiety disorder about personal appearance. Danny Bowman was diagnosed with this condition. Source Pearlman, Jonathan. Australian man invented the selfie after drunken night out. The Telegraph, November 19, 2013, Sydney, Austalia. Selfie named by Oxford Dictionaries as word of 2013. BBC News, November 19, 2013. Shontell, Alyson. This Photo From 1900 Might Be The Oldest Selfie Ever Taken (And It Wasn’t Easy To Pull Off). October 28, 2013.