Randomness

During the 1950’s and on through the 1970’s, America was in a “conflict” with the North Vietnamese communists and southern Viet Cong. To the American public this war was unnecessary and meant having to ship their sons off to risk losing their lives. In response, many song writers wrote songs about the worthlessness and repercussions of warfare; for example, Edwin Starr and his song “War”. In his song, Starr’s lyrics often coincide with themes from Tim O’Brien’s book, The Things They Carried.…

INITIAL THOUGHTS: A deck is shuffled by several audience members, then handed back to the magician whereupon he sticks all the cards down the front of his pants. After a bunch of pelvic thrusts, Elvis style gyrations, and a handful of moves like Jagger, the magician stops and stands in place. While smiling, he announces that without the aid of his hands, he has successfully separated the entire deck, reds from blacks. To prove it, the magician begins shaking his right pant leg. All the black…

century” where “black men were lynched for crimes real and imagined” (Biss 539). American history ultimately rationalizes Rankine and her friend’s fears for their children. According to her, every African American faces the natural fears of facing “the randomness of life” and the “institutional racism [that] works in…

end, readers already know how the story is going to end. As shown in Romeo and Juliet, Oedipus Rex, as well as Titanic, there is an appeal in knowing the fate of the characters. For readers and movie watchers alike, being able to see how choice, randomness, as well as perhaps fate, directly affect the outcome of the story is oftentimes more dramatic and powerful than just reading/watching to see how the story plays out. In the instance of In the Time of the Butterflies, by Julia Alvarez, the…

Tom Toles appropriately uses various techniques to use his illustration to spearhead a worldwide criticization of the Nobel Committee. Initially, as observable, he uses appeal to authority to simulate a nearly identical situation. Here, the sprinter, showcasing then President Barack Obama, receives the gold medal before the beginning of the race by a person who portrays the Nobel Committee. As observable, he carefully satirizes the biasness of the Committee in deciding the winner. According to…

In his eyes, an apple dropping from a tree and ultimately landing on the ground must have a definitive explanation. The sometimes-accepted element of randomness in this world was not an acceptable explanation of things falling. Newton determined that because Earth is not the center of the universe, there must be some sort of force between the earth and any object that falls to it. When Newton observed the…

The intentionality of Plato’s pedagogy is emphasized in nearly every aspect of The Republic concerning education. Intentionality in the educational approach is the best way to be able to accurately predict the “finished product,” if you will. J. Pfeifer and S. Sarkar define something that has intentionality as something that is about, directed on, or represents something else. Just as the conduction of an experiment governed by the concepts outlined in the scientific method attempts to limit the…

If a person commits murder because of traumatic experiences that occurred during their childhood, are they guilty or innocent? Are their actions determined by the past, or are those choices freely made? Free will has been a debated subject for a very longtime. Many philosophers have tried tackling this issue with no success to finding the existential answer. Free will is defined as the ability to make your own decisions throughout life. The opposing belief is that everything is determined and…

“Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature,” Eric Hoffer. Yes this may be random, but so is life. You can still learn from random things in life. These topics are just that random but you can always learn something. "Dessert began from the French word desservir, signifying "to clear the table." In the United States, Canada, and Australia the last meal is called dessert, In the United Kingdom the last meal is called "pudding". “Sweets were fed to the gods in…

Although both account for free actions beings those in which were chosen from an array of choices that also could have been made, there is a subtle distinction between the two. The former suggests that some actions are not determined but rather due to randomness or chance and the latter suggests that those actions which are not determined are the result of free will (Chaffee 161). William James' modest perspective of libertarianism claims that because people seek to better themselves and the…