The Use of Coal as an Energy Source in the United States Essay examples

Energy from Coal: The Nation’s Dirty Secret Abstract While technology has led the world into such an advanced setting with intelligent machinery and automated devices, coal has remained a loyal contributor of the energy needed by these various types of equipment to function properly. Almost half of the electricity in the United States is produced in coal plants where coal is burnt to produce this energy [1]. Both beneficial and detrimental factors come with this alternative source of energy, known by the world for centuries. Background Information Even with the quantity of fossil fuels dwindling due to human consumption, coal has remained one of the cheapest, reliable sources of electricity, natural gas, diesel fuel, and steel production. It is one of the main sources of energy for the United States particularly because one-quarter of the world’s coal reserves are found there [2]. Typically, coal mines are found throughout many different regions of the United States, depending on what type of coal is being mined. The types of coal used in the industry are anthracite, bituminous, sub-bituminous, and lignite [3]. Anthracite is the hardest of the four because it contains the most carbon and the least ash and moisture. It is used as a heating fuel for homes since it burns slowly over a lengthy period of time. Bituminous is medium-hard in comparison to the others and is the most common type of coal found in the United States. It generates electricity and produces coke, used to make steel. Sub-bituminous is medium-soft, meaning that it contains a lot of moisture. This type of coal is used mainly in producing steam for electricity generation for the industry. Lastly, there is lignite, the softest of the four. It contains the m... ...R.H. Fossil Fuels and Their Utilization. 26 Nov 1996. World of Chemistry. 28 July 2008. . 6. Unknown. Eco-Logical. Unknown. Grinning Planet. 27 July 2008. . 7. Unknown. BTU Conversion Liquefaction – Peabody Energy. Unknown. Peabody. 27 July 2008. . 8. Macintyre, Stacy. Coal Energy. Feb 2007. Energy Kid’s Page. 20 July 2008. . 9. Trimble, Tyghe. Clean Coal: How to Make Rock into Biofuel. 21 June 2007. Popular Mechanics. 21 July 2008. . 10. Unknown. Energy Production. 2008. HowStuffWorks. 26 July 2008. .

Dickens Presentation of Female Characters in Great Expectations Essay

Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations was first serialised in 1861 in the journal ‘All Around the World’ during the Victorian period. During this time women were almost regarded as second class, even though the reigning queen had been on the throne for fourteen years. On the contrary, the Queen herself was quite masculine thinking it quite ‘improper’ that women should have the same rights as men. No women could vote, all major decisions were made by men and there were no important female political figures except for the queen herself, who was opposed to ‘votes for women’. Women were beginning to show signs of demand equality. Dickens created a lot of public awareness in his writings about the condition England was in. He liked to give the message ‘If men would behave decently the world would be decent’. He became very interested in socialist ideas from a young age and wrote novels for several years, including a novel based on his own life and the troubles he had. Great Expectations tells the story of orphan Pip, living with his bitter, older sister. Throughout the novel he encounters an escaped convict only then to be summoned by the wicked and cold Miss Havisham and her beautiful niece Estella. On top of this he is suddenly endowed with the generosity of a mysterious benefactor. Dickens uses physical appearance to convey his female characteristics. It was traditionally thought at the time, if a woman and ’round and curvy’ then she was a very warm person but if she was bony and skinny she would be an unpleasant and not very nice woman. There are several examples of this throughout the novel. He wanted to show what a horrible woman Mrs Joe Gargery was. So he described her as being: â€Å"not a good looking woman† and â€Å"tall and bony†. Both of these don’t make her sound particularly attractive and she is a very cruel person to Pip and Joe Gargery. Miss Havisham is shown in the same light, â€Å"Miss Havisham’s grey hair was all adrift upon the ground, among the other bridal wrecks, and was a miserable sight to see†. She is always dressed in her old wedding dress and her skin is very pale. Therefore almost giving us the impression, she is a ghost and she died years ago, making her seem like a very peculiar woman. There are many gothic images of Miss Havisham throughout the novel, because Gothic imagery was very popular at the time. She is twisted and evil and this is reflected in her attire and in her home, Satis house. The Clocks in Satis house reflect Miss Havsiham because just like clocks, she has stopped moving on with her life, she is also decaying, physically and mentally, just as the house is. She is only wearing one shoe and hasn’t changed her clothes in years. A Victorian reader would think upon first seeing a woman like her, that was crazy or evil and in this case, she is both. We see everything through Pip therefore we relate to him and feel what he does. So, even if Estella is horrible to Pip we can still forgive her because Pip does. Estella, in contrast â€Å"seemed more beautiful than she had ever seemed yet†, therefore in the eyes of a Victorian reader making her a warm and caring woman. This is ironic because she is the complete opposite. She can not express her emotions and has been brought up not to express love. But because the book is in a first person perspective the reader can relate to her beauty and because Pip still likes her, inevitably so does the reader. We see everything through Pip therefore we relate to him and feel what he does. So, even if Estella is horrible to Pip we can still forgive her because Pip does. Mrs Joe Gargery is very cruel to Pip until she is attacked. â€Å"It’s hard enough to be a blacksmith’s wife without being a mother†- she is resentful of having spent her life looking after Pip and being married to Joe. Mrs Joe Gargery is a very cruel and horrible old woman and the reader’s feelings towards her are only strengthened by the fact that she is not very attractive. Estella can be just as cruel to Pip as Mrs Joe Gargery is at times. When she says â€Å"you wait here boy† and â€Å"you ridiculous boy, will you never take warning? † it tells the reader she thinks a lot of herself and she is very proud. Again because she is pretty and the fact that, it is not her fault that she is this way, she is forgiven by the reader and Pip, because he is in love with her. In Mrs Joe Gargery’s opinion she has spent too many years raising Pip. She spends all her time being spiteful to Pip and will not be kinder, whatever the scenario. Pip would often recall scenes such as this one, ‘My sister made at dive at me and fished me up by the hair’. She strongly resented him and would take every opportunity possible to show it. She treats her husband Joe in the same way, although at heart Joe is an honest man and good man, he isn’t very bright and Pip always thinks of him as a ‘larger species of child’. Mrs Joe Gargery will, on the other hand, treat him like one Dickens makes the reader like Joe because Pip is very fond of him. This only increases the reader’s dislike for Mrs Joe Gargery. It is only until her encounter with Orlick that she becomes a completely different person, becoming much more patient. It is only because of an event such as this, she is like this, not because of her own will. It’s the male character Orlick who changed Mrs Joe Gargery into some more acceptable to the reader. Dickens created this event to show the reader that men still have authority over women. Miss Havisham died a very twisted, old and bitter woman. She was malicious and she poured all her dark, evil emotions into Estella. She once loved her husband-to-be very much. She had a lot of passion in her heart but that was destroyed when he left her standing at the altar. ‘I’ll tell you what real love is†¦.. giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter’. Once again it has been a man that has changed one of the female leads into a person of hatred. She had an accident many years later and was left in such a state of shock she never fully recovered.

Heinrich Himmler, Nazi SS Head Oversaw the Holocaust

Heinrich Himmler was a key figure in the Nazi party and leader of the feared SS. He was also responsible for turning the racist and anti-Semitic ideology of the Nazi movement into a shockingly efficient killing machine. Himmlers fanatical devotion to Hitler, as well as his fascination with the pseudoscience that fortified Nazi beliefs, made him one of the main architects of the Holocaust. The unlikely rise of Himmler from an unimpressive clerk-like figure running a small farm to one of the most powerful men on earth was attributed to his penchant for organization. Upon his suicide, soon after hed been captured and the Nazi regime had crumbled, the New York Times noted that Himmler had â€Å"raised wholesale slaughter to a science.† Fast Facts: Heinrich Himmler Known For: As head of the Nazi SS elite troops, he terrorized much of Europe and masterminded the HolocaustBorn: October 7, 1900 in Munich, BavariaDied: May 23, 1945 in Luneberg, Germany (committed suicide after being captured)Spouse: Margarete Concerzowo, known as MargaChildren: Gundrun Himmler, born 1929 Early Life Heinrich Himmler was born in Munich, Bavaria, on October 7, 1900. His father, Gebhard Himmler, was a schoolmaster. Early in his career, Himmler’s father had been appointed the tutor of Prince Heinrich of Bavaria, and Himmler was named in honor of the prince. Growing up in a middle-class family with an older and younger brother, Himmler developed a great sense of pride in German traditions. When his older brother joined the military in World War I, he wrote in his diary that he wished he was old enough to enlist. He did eventually join the German army and received training, but the war ended before he saw action. Following the war, Himmler studied agriculture and seemed destined to be a farmer. Like other young and angry Germans, he responded to his country’s defeat and perceived humiliation by the Allied powers by becoming interested in nationalist political movements. He officially joined the small Nazi Party in August 1923. He was involved in a minor role, manning a barricade and holding a Nazi banner in the Munich beer hall putsch that November. After the failed takeover attempt, he escaped prosecution and avoided prison, unlike Hitler and other participants. Rise to Power As the Nazi Party grew, Himmler became a key figure. In 1925, Himmler joined the SS (Schutzstaffel, the Nazi paramilitary organization), which had originally been a thuggish group of bodyguards tasked with protecting Hitler at public gatherings. As the second-in-command at the SS, Himmler dealt with fairly mundane tasks such as increasing party membership, collecting dues, and canvassing for advertisements for the party’s newspaper. In 1927 Himmler met his future wife, Margarete Concerzowo, known as Marga. They married in July 1928, and with Marga’s money they bought a small farm about ten miles outside Munich. They kept hens and grew some produce, and proceeds from the farm augmented Himmler’s salary from the Nazi Party. At some point, Hitler recognized Himmler’s fanatical loyalty and talent for organization, and in January 1929 he appointed him Reichsfuhrer SS, essentially making him the head of the organization. Himmler had a grand vision for the SS. He saw the black-uniformed troops as elite soldiers for Hitler, modern-day knights in service to the Nazi movement. As Hitler moved to seize power in Germany in the early 1930s, Himmler made plans to increase the size and power of the SS as well as its racial composition. In 1932 he issued a marriage code for the SS. Based on the concept of Blut und Boden (blood and soil in English) expounded by Nazi theorist Richard Walter Darre, the code stressed the racial purity of SS members. By Himmler’s orders, prospective members of the elite group had to prove they were of pure Nordic stock. Potential wives of SS members had to submit to physical examinations and prove they were free of Jewish or Slavic ancestry. Himmler became fixated on the idea of selective breeding. Heinrich Himmler, left, and Adolf Hitler review SS troops. Getty Images   Building the SS Himmler accelerated SS recruiting, and by 1932 the organization had grown to more than 50,000 men. Within a few years, the SS grew to more than 200,000 and became a formidable presence in German life. A major boost to Himmler’s plans came when he happened to meet a young German who had been forced out of the German navy. Reinhard Heydrich had family connections which led him to Himmler, and Himmler, believing Heydrich had intelligence experience, hired him to perform a particular mission: build a spy network within Germany. Heydrich had not actually worked in military intelligence, but he was a fast learner and before long he had an efficient network of spies and informers. An early sign of what was coming occurred in 1933 when Himmler and Heydrich opened the first concentration camp. The Dachau camp was created to hold political dissidents and it served as a warning to anyone who opposed the Nazi regime. Throughout the 1930s Himmler acquired more power. In 1934 he participated in the notorious Night of the Long Knives, the purge of the leadership of the SA, the Nazi stormtroopers, an organization which rivaled the SS. Having won the power struggle with the SA, Himmler became known as a major figure in the Nazi leadership. In 1936, the New York Times published a front-page article noting that Himmler had become the head of all â€Å"Reich Police.† By the end of the 1930s the SS had become the dominant force within the Nazi Party. And Himmler as head of not only the SS but the Gestapo, the secret police, was established as the most powerful figure in Germany after Hitler. Heinrich Himmler inspecting a camp holding Russian prisoners of war. Getty Images Directing the Holocaust Himmler’s main historical significance was for the role he played in the Holocaust, the Nazi’s systematic slaughter of millions of European Jews. From his early youth Himmler had been an ardent anti-Semite, and he eagerly used his great power to persecute the Jews in Germany. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, militarized units of the SS were part of the invasion force. Under Himmler’s direction, SS troops were tasked with removing undesirable populations, which generally meant Jews, from areas conquered by German troops. SS units called Einsatzgruppen rounded up Jews and killed them in massacres across Poland. When the German forces attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, SS units followed to conduct racial cleansing at a vast level. Himmler’s work at eliminating Jews in Europe moved quickly. By late 1941 large-scale massacres by SS troops had occurred. At the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, Heydrich laid out SS plans to come up with a Final Solution for Jews in Europe. This plan for mass murder was followed by Himmler after Heydrich was assassinated by partisans months later. Himmler directed the mass murder of millions and paid close attention to what was happening in the concentration camps. It is known that he visited the death camp at Auschwitz on two occasions. At times he issued detailed orders about how the camps should be run, even explaining in detail how much food prisoners should be given. He also authorized the gruesome medical experiments conducted by Nazi doctors who used concentration camp prisoners as subjects. As part of the Nazi campaigns in Eastern Europe, many Jews were forced to live in ghettos, where they were isolated in overcrowded and brutal conditions. Himmler took a great interest in the Warsaw Ghetto, and when the Jews rose up in a rebellion in the spring of 1943, he gave orders to conduct a brutal campaign that amounted to extermination of the residents. As World War II expanded and the Germans began to suffer defeats, Himmler made plans to create SS guerrilla units which would conduct warfare against the Allies in the event Germany was forced to surrender. In 1944 he was put in the field at one point to command troops, but as he had no real military experience, he was ineffective. Hitler called him back to Berlin to command troops positioned there. Downfall In early 1945, when it became evident that Germany would lose the war, Himmler tried to reach out to the Americans to make a peace deal. He hoped to evade prosecution as a war criminal. The American commander in Europe, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, refused to consider Himmler’s peace offer and declared him a war criminal. Hitler was enraged by the betrayal and stripped Himmler of his power. As Germany was collapsing, Himmler sought to escape. He shaved his distinctive mustache, dressed in civilian clothes, and tried to blend in with the refugees traveling on the roads. Himmler was stopped at a checkpoint manned by British soldiers and he was able to produce fake identity papers. However, he aroused the suspicion of the British, who took him into custody and turned him over to intelligence officers. When questioned, Himmler admitted his real identity. While being searched on the night of May 23, 1945, Himmler managed to put a vial of poison in his mouth and bite down on it. He died minutes later. A dispatch by the Reuters News Service published in the New York Times on May 25, 1945 was headlined Himmler Outsmarted Himself. The story noted that Himmler, who had created a system of Germans often having to show identity papers to members of the Gestapo, would have had a set of fake identity papers created for himself. But in the chaos of the war’s end, few refugees on the roads still had their papers. Himmler’s pristine set of papers was what drew attention at the checkpoint. Had he simply claimed he was a refugee trying to walk home and had lost his papers, the British soldiers at the bridge might have waved him along. Sources: Heinrich Himmler. Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed., vol. 7, Gale, 2004, pp. 398-399. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Reshef, Yehudacxv, and Peter Longreich. Himmler, Heinrich °. Encyclopaedia Judaica, edited by Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, 2nd ed., vol. 9, Macmillan Reference USA, 2007, pp. 121-122. Gale Virtual Reference Library.Himmler, Heinrich. Learning About the Holocaust: A Students Guide, edited by Ronald M. Smelser, vol. 2, Macmillan Reference USA, 2001, pp. 89-91. Gale Virtual Reference Library.SS (Schutzstaffel). Europe Since 1914: Encyclopedia of the Age of War and Reconstruction, edited by John Merriman and Jay Winter, vol. 4, Charles Scribners Sons, 2006, pp. 2434-2438. Gale Virtual Reference Library.