2001 A Space Odyssey :: essays research papers

You are hurtling across the abyss of space on an expedition to unexplored planets. Your only companion is a fellow astronaut: the three hibernauts who like in a deep freeze sleep will not be awakened until their skills are needed. An essential member of your crew is Hal, the electronic, almost-human brain that ceaselessly guides your course. For months your atom powered craft “Discover'; has been carrying you away from earth at a hundred thousand miles an hour. You are now farther from home than any man in history. Your living quarters within 400-foot-long space craft is a centrifugal drum equipped with an electronic library of literature and music. Here you relax, eat, exercise, sleep, and chat with Hal, the conversational computer who never forgets anything – not even your birthday. Your mission is of such importance that it has been surrounded by the deepest official secrecy. You are probing a fantastic frontier, following a trial that has led to the outer edges of the solar system. You are searching the stars for evidence that man is not alone. On Earth-colonized moon, deep in the crater Tycho, a discovery has been made that has shattered the human concept of the universe. You are journeying toward something. You do not know what it is. You only know that it has been waiting for man to find it for three million years. All of a sudden, in the middle of your mission Hal, the super smart computer, takes over the controls of the ship, and the astronauts try to disconnect it from the controls. It must be intensely frustrating for Hal to communicate with human beings. Hal’s whole being is built around the ability to communicate at electrical energy speeds. There is never a moment when Hal is not observing the aspects of Discovery. We might think of Has checking a distant sensor reading as composing a request, identifying a location, transmitting the request, and receiving and processing the response. For Hal, though, it is a action that takes no effort and occurs instantaneously. What is more, the response can always be relied upon to be accurate. The fact that million of such operations occur every second is normal for Hal (instantaneous for Hal means something quite different from what it means to Dave or Frank, the two astronauts aboard Discovery, a remark that has some significance for what fo llows a little later).

Religion as a Synonym of Ignorance Essay

Is the church as solid and strong as it seems? In â€Å"The Very Old Man with Enormous Wings†, Garcia Marquez uses magical realism to challenge religious beliefs; hence, proving religion is not what is seems. To begin with, when the old man with enormous wings lands in Elisenda and Pelayo’s courtyard and after concluding that the man must be someone who survived a shipwreck they call their neighbor to see him. Their neighbor proclaims right away that he must be an angel. Her reaction to the man with wings is purely influenced by faith. She blindly assumes things based on what she has been taught her whole life: â€Å"He’s an angel,† she told them. â€Å"He must have been coming for the child, but the poor fellow is so old that the rain knocked him down. † (Garcia Marquez 1) This shows how religion influences the interpretation of various events; hence, limiting them to find a deeper or more meaningful significance to any situation. Pelayo’s reaction is guided by fear and insecurity, which somehow is portrayed in the story to symbolize that the Church institution, generates fear instead of preaching God’s word. How Garcia Marquez describes the angel is a critique to the Church due to the fact that it is described as a ragpicker in a pitiful condition and extremely old. Pelayo judges the angel on his appearance. Wasn’t the angel supposed to look all white, attractive and divine such as church says? If he was this way, then Pelayo would most likely honor and respect him rather than treat him like an animal; this doesn’t only ruin the idea the Church has about an angel, but also results very disappointing, meaning that after all, religion results to be a disappointment. Garcia Marquez clearly describes how Colombian society is, and how ignorant they are due to religion. The town expresses hope and expectations are the angel’s visit. Many had big dreams and had relied on this angel to put an end to all their problems as if he was sent down from God. These expectations however are not rational; they are based on their beliefs and the emotions that this angel had generated. Humans in general are always looking for the easy way out and the simplest way to put their problems to an end. This angel served as the answer they had all hoped for; likewise, religion does this in a daily basis. Religious people rely the blame on God for what happens around them, whether its good or bad, it is the easiest way to justify life’s actions limiting human’s chance of thinking for themselves; therefore, they are ignorant. As we go further, critiques towards religion and ignorance continue. One of the strongest is probably when Father Gonzaga, gives his verdict about if the visitor was an angel or not. He tells people the Old Man is not an angel in view of his appearance, and when he tries to communicate with him in Latin he gets no response; that being the case, ignorance takes over again and people believe churchmen simply because of the position they have in society. Catholics often believe the Church knows everything about life, and so they must believe everything they say as if they could not think for themselves. Father Gonzaga felt somehow threatened by the angel’s presence because he could no longer be in the position he was and the angel would be seen as superior to him due to his divinity. â€Å"The parish priest had his first suspicion of an imposter when he saw that he did not understand the language of God or know how to greet His ministers. † (Garcia Marquez 2). He takes advantage of the situation when the Old Man does not answer in the language of jesus, ridiculing him and making himself look once again closer to God rather than the Old man. In addition, the final conclusion about that the old man is a norwegian sailor once again ridicules the Church showing such absurd assumptions; nevertheless, he dares to create comparisons to argument his final word about the impostor the angel was, â€Å"He argued that if wings were not the essential element in determining the difference between a hawk and an airplane, they were even less so in the recognition of angels. † (Garcia Marquez 2). Furthermore, taking the whole Church as a character compared with the angel himself we can see the contrast of true religion and the human representation of it. Meaning that the angel symbolizes religion itself, and the church represents the institution that has corrupted this divine word. Church manipulates everything to be more powerful. In contrast, the angel is extremely patient, he isn’t affected by what people were doing to him and through magical realism, Garcia Marquez manages to create a situation in which church and humans can be looked upon ridiculously because the angel uses all of the things against him to grow strong and flee; wherefore, religion is a bigger authority and more valuable than church as an institution. To conclude, throughout the whole story we can witness how Garcia Marquez uses magical realism fusing the reality of Colombian society and the divinity and fiction of an angel. He generates a critique towards religion stating that religion acts as a blindfold and limits humans to think beyond what they are taught to believe in; hence, we can understand that religion in the story can perfectly fit as a synonym for ignorance.

Improve Your Fitness With A Heart Rate Monitor - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 2 Words: 529 Downloads: 4 Date added: 2019/05/15 Category Sports Essay Level High school Tags: Fitness Essay Did you like this example? For anyone trying to improve their fitness levels there are many options to help you with your training progress. One such option is the use of a heart rate monitor for your individual training sessions. In recent years, the cost of such monitors has been drastically reduced due to advantages in technology, meaning that even for an amateur with a limited budget this typeof training is now available. A heart monitor for athletes essentially is comprised of a chest strap that makes very accurate measurements of your heart rate while you are in a training sessions. This sensor then sends that data to a watch through wireless technology, where it is displayed to the athlete. At any given time you can check how hard your heart is working to keep blood and oxygen circulating to your muscles. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Improve Your Fitness With A Heart Rate Monitor" essay for you Create order Heart rate training is very different to other training methods like speed training. In the latter, a runner, swimmer or cyclist will aim to cover a certain distance within a specific amount of time. The target time is gradually reduced over time resulting in the body gradually adapting to higher levels of exertion and thereby improving fitness levels. With heart rate based training you set yourself a target heart rate for a training session and make sure that you do not go above or below it during the session. The great advantage in this type of training is that you progress at a very consistent pace. Speed training on the other hand results in athletes constantly adjusting their pace to make sure they finish in exactly the right time, resulting in varying levels of training intensity. By setting a certain heart rate for a specific route you will over time be able to run, cycle or swim faster while staying at the same heart rate. This is exactly how your fitness levels can be measurably improved, giving you a direct feedback loop. Before you dive into heart rate training you first need figure out you personal maximum heart rate. One way to do this is by using online calculator that take into account your age and gender. This, however, can be quite inaccurate and not give you optimum results. The best way to get an accurate maximum heart rate is to have this clinically tested, but this will cost you some money. Alternatively, you can use your heart rate monitor to measure your pulse while you do a few sprints where you try to go as fast as you can. With several such tests you will end up with a measurement of how high your heart rate went at full power. Once you have your actual maximum heart rate measurement you can then use it to program you heart monitor and give you a set of heart rate training zones. At the low end your training will specifically target weight loss. In the midrange you will be targeting overall fitness improvement, while at the high end you will be targeting the buildup of muscles. As you can see there is great flexibility within heart rate based training and with a simple monitoring device you can get started with any type of training.