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When Joan Didion first visited the Hoover Dam in 1967, she saw something beyond just a dam. She saw “ a dynamo finally free of man, splendid at last in its absolute isolation”(Didion, 10), where the ability of machinery to run on its own intrigued her. The dam was shrouded by a mysterious aura with “its pristine concave face gleaming white against the harsh rusts and taupes and mauves “(Didion, 9) of the distant canyon it laid amongst. Didion, in her essay “ At the Dam,” explored her fascination by Hoover Dam and what the dam meant to her. Didion’s contemplation about the dam brought her back to the early Thirties. The dam “retains the ambience of a model city, a new town…”(Didion, 9); a monument that encapsulated the ambience of the city that once was, years ago. As she followed a guided tour around the dam, she saw something “ so alien, so complete and so beautiful unto itself”(Didion, 10), something that could tell stories on its own. She marveled at how this creation could withstand the test of time, and continues to exist in “ a world where no …show more content…
People are able to reflect and innovate. We are made to be forward-looking, to predict possible drawbacks and concerns. We are able to make connections and link ideas together. All these in which, computers would not be able to comprehend and perform. They ultimately “lack self-awareness and the ability to extrapolate based on available
Didion paints uneasy and somber images when describing the Santa Ana winds. “There is something uneasy in the Los Angeles air… some unnatural stillness, some tension,” starts the essay off with the image of Los Angeles people in a sense of stillness or tense. She further adds, “Blowing up sandstorms out along Route 66… we will see smoke back in the canyons, and hear sirens in the night,” propagating the uneasy and stark image of Los Angeles. “The baby frets. The maid sulks,” she adds, giving a depressing view into the effects of the Santa Ana winds on people. Didion, in an attempt to show the craziness associated with the Santa Ana winds, points out the Indians who throw themselves into the sea when bad winds came. At any rate, Didion attempts to show the negative effects of the Santa Ana winds through images of stillness, uneasiness, and sobriety.
Joan Didion’s description of various experiences with the Santa Ana winds conveys her message through various rhetorical strategies. Early in the essay the feeling of worry and anxiety is introduced by the use of words such as “uneasy” , “unnatural stillness” , and “tension”. Because the emotion is described early on the audience can grasp this feeling those who live and Santa Ana are experiencing. This feeling causes people to act abnormal, even when they have no awareness it is coming. Additionally the suspenseful emotion continues through the use of imagery, to convey the unusual effect the winds have on the atmosphere. Didion describes the sky, having a “yellow cast” and screaming peacocks in “the olive trees… by the eerie absence of surf”.
The one feature common to the Hoover Dam, The Mississippi river and the three gorges dam is that they all tried to control nature’s swings, specifically in the form of flooding. Before the Hoover dam was built, the Colorado river “used to flood spectacularly…but after 1900 the Colorado provoked a vehement response” (Pg 177). The response was simple, but large. The U.S. built several large dams, including the Hoover dam, on the Colorado to decrease its flooding and increase power and irrigation. Unfortunately, just as human control of the Colorado’s flooding increased, its organisms and habitats were detrimentally influenced, and the water became more and more salinated.
The negative aspects of Glen Canyon Dam greatly exceed the positive aspects. The dam’s hydroelectric power supply is only three percent of the total power used by the six states that are served by the facility. There is a surplus of power on the Colorado Plateau and with more and more power-plants being created in the western hemisphere, Glen Canyon Dam’s power is not needed (Living Rivers: What about the hydroelectric loss). Although the ‘lake’ contains twenty seven million acre feet of water, one and a half million acre feet of water are lost yearly due to evaporation and seepage into the sandstone banks surrounding the ‘lake’ (Living Rivers: What about the water supply?). The loss of that much “water represents millions, even billions of dollars” (Farmer 183). If the government were to employ more water efficient irrigation practices, as much as five million acre feet of water per year could be saved.
Joan Didion, the author of On Self Respect, claims that self-respect demonstrates a display once called character; she also argues that the ability to sleep well at night depends on self-respect. Namely, one who realizes that the choices and the actions he/she had made have brought his/her today, has self-respect. Considering Didion’s arguments and personal, real-life examples, self-respect must have at least some influences on physical behaviors.
This Paper will describe and analyze three articles pertaining to the ongoing debate for and against Glen Canyon Dam. Two of these articles were found in the 1999 edition of A Sense of Place, and the third was downloaded off a site on the Internet (http://www.glencanyon.net/club.htm). These articles wi...
The Hoover Dam is a modern marvel and a testament to American ingenuity. At over six million six hundred thousand tons and jetting seven hundred sixty feet from the canyon floor, six hundred sixty feet across the bottom and, one thousand two hundred forty four feet across the top, the structure is awe inspiring even to a modern audience. Three quarters of a century since its completion it still stands as a symbol of one of the greatest construction projects of the ages. The need for a dam to block the Colorado River was not a new idea when construction began in 1931, but had been mulled around since the dawn of the century. Flooding due to runoff from the Rocky Mountains had devastated crops, and a need for hydroelectric power increased the need for a dam. In 1922 Black Valley was chosen as the spot for the dam’s construction. No one construction company was large enough to take on the project alone, so a group of companies formed a joint venture in order to bid the job. The Six Companies Inc. made up of Morrison-Knudson, the J.F. Shea Company of Portland, MacDonald & Kahn Ltd, Pacific Bridge Company of Portland, Henry J. Kaiser, Bechtel Company of San Francisco were awarded the winning bid for the dam at forty eight million eight hundred ninety thousand nine hundred fifty five dollars. The construction management team had a Herculean task in building this behemoth and faced many problems in its construction. A few of the major issues posed to the team were diverting the Colorado River, provisioning the men and material to get the job done, and the actual construction of the Hoover Dam. The heights involved with project led to many safety obstacles that had to be overcame.
If there is one thing to be said for Joan Didion, it is that she is by no means a conventional author. Using a combination of descriptive evidence, well placed commentary, an eloquent combination of Logos and Pathos, and a dynamic tone, Didion forms a very unique structure within her essays, which she uses to persuade her audience on a given subject.
Dams continued to take over our nation’s rivers. After seven years of protests from environmental activists, I found on Wikipedia that Congress still gave the go ahead to flood Yosemite’s National Park in 1913. Then during the great depression, America started its two biggest projects, The Hoover Dam and The Grand Coulee Dam. According to John Harrison in “Grand Coulee Dam: History and Purpose”, both these dams created thousands of jobs and were thought of as national treasures. World War II created a huge demand for hydropower for building plans, ships, and bombs I found out from the article “History of Hydropower Development”. If it flowed it was dammed. At one point half of America was being powered by hydropower. Our country was becoming more and more dependent on electricity and technology struggled to keep up. Finally president Nixon passed the endangered species act. The Endangered Species Act Overview explains that this act protects animals that are affected by economic development. If any dam is at fault for endangering a species they are accountable by
McCullough presents a meticulously researched, detailed account of the Johnstown Flood of May 31st 1889, which provides arguments for why the disaster was both “the work of man” and “a visitation of providence”. However, it is apparent that McCullough believes that man was more responsible than nature/god for the extent of the catastrophe. In McCullough’s opinion, the storm that caused the flood was no more than the inevitable stimulus of the disaster, whereas the deferred maintenance and poor repairs on the dam were the primary reason that Johnstown was devastated in 1889. McCullough exposes the failed duties of Benjamin Ruff and other members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, whilst simultaneously questioning the responsibility of the Johnstown folk who were concerned about the safety of the dam but complacently trusted the wealthy, powerful club members to fulfil their responsibilities. McCullough clearly explains the debate that took place immediately after the flood, on what or whom was to blame for the disaster, by explaining the views of the press, the townspeople and the lawsuits that were filed. McCullough’s view is evident from the sub-title of his book. By placing the word “natural” within quotation marks, McCullough immediately suggests that the flood was unusual to any other, and implies that mankind has displaced its blame onto nature.
Computers are not able to think outside of the box to generate a solution to a failure in their job. Programs are written to tell technology what to do and when. Computers run through the program and follow the orders that they are given. Computers do not stray away from their jobs, or change their own programming to be more efficient. In Ray Bradbury’s The Veldt, the children have to come up with the ideas for their nursery, the nursery does not come up with ideas of its own. Bradbury says, “….” Technology is also not able to combine different ideas together. They cannot take multiple programs and fuse them together, a person has to manually do this. A human has to think of the ideas first in order to made a computer run smoother or
...ers. "Finally, just as computers shape our world, so our own dreams and desires influence technological change. Where will our dreams and desires drive the technology of the future?" (241). Eventually, we need to be able to 'read the world,' (239). Computers will continue to impact our ways of life. People have begun to experience more leisure and less hard labor because of computer-related technologies. Perhaps in the future, these luxuries will be extended to the poor, and human rights and equality issues will be improved. As people become more connected, they will hopefully become more aware.
...on, adaptation, and planning for the future. The computer is unable to win because it cannot think like a human, and that is why we humans are smarter than computers to this day (The Daily Galaxy 1-3).
Even in our everyday life we can see how past knowledge helps to improve the future's outcome. Whether it is improvement of policies, electronics or automobiles improvement is always occurring. The computer is one such item which has come a long way. It would taking up entire rooms, run very slowly, and create tremendous amounts of heat. As improvement began they became smaller, faster and more energy efficient. Today they are very small, and run at tremendously high speeds while producing very little heat. Each improvement in the computers history could not have been made without knowledge of its predecessor's blueprints. Without this knowledge improvement would be impossible, always building the same exact computers with the same problems and never realizing it could have been built in a different way perhaps with better materials or a different more efficient computer language.
In the past few decades we have seen how computers are becoming more and more advance, challenging the abilities of the human brain. We have seen computers doing complex assignments like launching of a rocket or analysis from outer space. But the human brain is responsible for, thought, feelings, creativity, and other qualities that make us humans. So the brain has to be more complex and more complete than any computer. Besides if the brain created the computer, the computer cannot be better than the brain. There are many differences between the human brain and the computer, for example, the capacity to learn new things. Even the most advance computer can never learn like a human does. While we might be able to install new information onto a computer it can never learn new material by itself. Also computers are limited to what they “learn”, depending on the memory left or space in the hard disk not like the human brain which is constantly learning everyday. Computers can neither make judgments on what they are “learning” or disagree with the new material. They must accept into their memory what it’s being programmed onto them. Besides everything that is found in a computer is based on what the human brain has acquired though experience.