United States as expansionist country Essay Example for Free

United States as expansionist country Essay The United States has been an expansionist country since the pilgrims landed. Until the US established them selves as a definite world power, they had shown themselves to be a very expansionist country. The imperialism of the 1900s may have departed from past actions in terms of size and ambition, but the fundamental reasons and drive for expansion remained the same throughout much of America’s history. Past expansion of the US includes the Manifest Destiny-driven push to the West coast, the annexation of Texas, and the purchase of Alaska. Around the close of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, the United States was an expansionism; such events include the Spanish-American War and the annexation of Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. The Spanish-American war was fought in Cuba and the Philippines and was the result of American intervention in the ongoing Cuban War of Independence. The U.S. joined because of the Spanish’s treatment of the Cubans and they blamed Spain for the sinking of the USS Maine. The war only lasted for ten weeks; however, the U.S. gained Hawaii as the fiftieth state and received Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines as territories. At the time, the U.S. was very jingoistic and thought they could just take what they wanted (B). This idea is what led to expanding outside of the continental U.S. The U.S. gained Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines as a result of the Treaty of Paris in 1898. The U.S. also gained temporary control of Cuba, which somewhat still exists today with Guantanamo Bay. The U.S. definitely received the favorable end of the deal. The Kingdom of Hawaii was sovereign from 1810 until 1893 when resident American businessmen overthrew the monarchy. Hawaii was annexed by the U.S. but did not become a state until 1959. The United States’ began expanding ever since the original thirteen colonies. Every country desires additional land for resources and economic reasons. After the United States had established itself as a world power, its expansionism did not stop there, the US then set its sights on the countries it sought, in particular the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, and Hawaii. Not to mention that the other world powers were not picking and choosing what they wanted as well, Britain and Japan were claiming all the weak territories they could on the other side of the world (A). America has also always been very interested in its own economy and making sure that no European countries such as Germany and Britain could dominate economically (C).

The role of Women in Greece :: essays research papers

Greek women, as depicted as in their history and literature, endure many hardships and struggle to establish a meaningful status in their society. In the Odyssey, Penelope’s only role in the epic is to support Odysseus and remain loyal to him. She is at home and struggles to keep her family intact while Odysseus is away trying to return to his native land. The cultural role of women is depicted as being supportive of man and nothing more. Yet what women in ancient Greece did long ago was by far more impressive than what men did. Unfortunately though, they were still placed at a level that was below man because he is depicted as being the root of the family. This fact not only holds true for The Odyssey but in the ancient Greek way of life, too. For example, women did not have such a meaningful role in Greek drama as the men did. The parts of women would be played by men in the majority of the plays. The reason this took place was because all of the playwrights were men. There were cases in which women were used in plays but they were used solely as models. Nonetheless, all of the types of women that lived in ancient Greece were depicted in all of the playwrights. The women in these plays were depicted by the role of a sinner, saint, poetess, coward, heroine, and many more. This was purposefully done in an attempt to make the audience relate to a certain character. In doing so, they could imagine that they were indeed a part of the play to some extent. As a result, these characters have significant religious meanings and serve as a form of inspiration to other women. This would mainly apply to those women who were in attendance. This would include women of all classes that simply wanted to watch a play.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Their limitations amongst society can also be noticed by the amount of education that they are entitled to. Plato’s Republic mentions how the role of women is determined by the status of their spouse. For instance, if a woman were to be the wife of a guard, then she would be expected to live at the level of that status, too. She is expected to be able to contribute to society a great deal more rather than stay at home and take care of her children and household.

Origin of the Internet Essay

The Internet as we know it originates from government-funded research into networking technologies with strategic applications. Journalist and erstwhile Internet historian David Hudson (14-16) observes that the ARPANET or Advanced Research Projects Agency Network formed the technical backbone of what would become the Internet. The ARPANET was a communications network in which each node had equal network privileges. The rationale behind this decentralized architecture was that regardless of which node on the network would be destroyed, the network’s functionality would not be compromised. This is perhaps what distinguishes the Internet most from other communications technologies, and is possible due to the development of packet switching and TCP/IP which enabled data to be sent discontinuously to circumvent the need for a dedicated data stream. However, it was not until the ARPANET was interlinked with the NSFNet in the mid-70s that the term â€Å"Internet† began to attain increasing currency among network professionals. Furthermore, the increasing adoption by other nations as well as universities and research institutions of TCP/IP permitted the expansion of the ARPANET’s fundamental architecture, effectively increasing the geographical coverage of the emerging network. (National Science Foundation 10-12) What truly permitted the Internet to integrate itself into the lives of individuals beyond government and research was the rise of several applications and protocols that increased its ‘extracurricular’ potential, most notably hypertext. Hypertext within a computer networking context was developed by CERN’s Tim Berners-Lee but was made ubiquitous by Marc Andreessen’s Mosaic browser, which was the first web browser to gain mass acceptance. Since then, the Web has become the popular face of the Internet. Works Cited Hudson, David. Rewired. Indianapolis, Indiana: MacMillan Technical Publishing, 1997. Aboba, Bernard. The Online User’s Encyclopedia: Bulletin Boards and Beyond. Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Professional, 1994. National Science Foundation. America’s Investment in the Future, The Internet: Changing the Way We Communicate. Retrieved October 30, 2008 from: http://www. nsf. gov/about/history/nsf0050/pdf/internet. pdf

Urban Slums How and Why They Form

Urban slums are settlements, neighborhoods, or city regions that cannot provide the basic living conditions necessary for its inhabitants, or slum dwellers, to live in a safe and healthy environment. The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) defines a slum settlement as a household that cannot provide one of the following basic living characteristics: Durable housing of a permanent nature that protects against extreme climate conditions.Sufficient living space, which means no more than three people sharing the same room.Easy access to safe water in sufficient amounts at an affordable price.Access to adequate sanitation in the form of a private or public toilet shared by a reasonable number of people.Security of tenure that prevents forced evictions. The inaccessibility to one, or more, of the above basic living conditions results in a slum lifestyle modeled by several characteristics. Poor housing units are vulnerable to natural disaster and destruction because affordable building materials cannot withstand earthquakes, landslides, excessive wind, or heavy rainstorms. Slum-dwellers are at greater risk of disaster because of their vulnerability to Mother Nature. Slums compounded the severity of the Haiti Earthquake of 2010. Dense and overcrowded living quarters creates a breeding ground for transmittable diseases, which can lead to the rise of an epidemic. Slum-dwellers that do not have access to clean and affordable drinking water are at risk of waterborne diseases and malnutrition, especially amongst children. The same is to be said for slums with no access to adequate sanitation, such as plumbing and garbage disposal. Poor slum dwellers commonly suffer from unemployment, illiteracy, drug addiction, and low mortality rates of both adults and children as a result of not supporting one, or all, of UN-HABITATs basic living conditions. Formation of Slum Living Many speculate that a majority of slum formation is due to rapid urbanization within a developing country. This theory has significance because a population boom, associated with urbanization, creates a greater demand for housing than the urbanized area can offer or supply. This population boom often consists of rural inhabitants who migrate to urban areas where jobs are plentiful and where wages are stabilized. However, the issue is exacerbated by the lack of federal and city-government guidance, control, and organization. Dharavi Slum: Mumbai, India Dharavi is a slum ward located in the suburbs of Indias most populated city of Mumbai. Unlike many urban slums, residents are typically employed and work for extremely small wages in the recycling industry that Dharavi is known for. However, despite a surprising rate of employment, tenement conditions are among the worst of slum living. Residents have limited access to working toilets and therefore they resort to relieving themselves in the nearby river. Unfortunately, the nearby river also serves as a source of drinking water, which is a scarce commodity in Dharavi. Thousands of Dharavi residents fall ill with new cases of cholera, dysentery, and tuberculosis each day due to the consumption of local water sources. In addition, Dharavi is also one of the more disaster-prone slums in the world because of their location to impacts of monsoon rains, tropical cyclones, and subsequent flooding. Kibera Slum: Nairobi, Kenya Nearly 200,000 residents live in the slum of Kibera in Nairobi which makes it one of the largest slums in Africa. The conventional slum settlements in Kibera are fragile and exposed to natures fury because they are largely constructed with mud walls, dirt or concrete floors, and recycled tin rooftops. It is estimated that 20% of these homes have electricity, however, municipal work is underway to provide electricity to more homes and to city streets. These slum upgrades have become a model for redevelopment efforts in slums throughout the world. Unfortunately, the redevelopment efforts of Kiberas housing stock have been slowed due to the density of the settlements and to the lands steep topography. Water shortages remain to be Kiberas most crucial issue today. The shortage has turned water into a profitable commodity for the wealthy Nairobians that have forced the slum dwellers to pay large sums of their daily income for drinkable water. Although the World Bank and other charitable organizations have established water pipelines to relieve the shortage, competitors in the market are purposefully destroying them to regain their position on the slum-dwelling consumers. The Kenyan government does not regulate such actions in Kibera because they do not recognize the slum as a formal settlement. Rocinha Favela: Rio De Janeiro, Brazil A favela is a Brazilian term used for slum or shantytown. The Rochinha favela, in Rio De Janeiro, is the largest favela in Brazil and one of the more developed slums in the world. Rocinha is home to about 70,000 residents whose homes are built on a steep mountain slopes prone to landslides and flooding. Most houses have proper sanitation, some have access to electricity, and newer homes are often constructed entirely from concrete. Nevertheless, older homes are more common and constructed from fragile, recycled metals that are not secured to a permanent foundation. Despite these characteristics, Rocinha is most notorious for its crime and drug trafficking. Reference UN-HABITAT. UN-HABITAT. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Sept. 2012. http://www.unhabitat.org/pmss/listItemDetails.aspx?publicationID2917