Today there are many different theories concerning cancer and the causes of it. There are constantly new experiments being done on animals for the testing of different products to see if they may possibly cause cancer. These experiments often use rats and a very high dosage of a substance. Many of these results do not really apply to humans because of all the differences in the circumstances. When the media gets a hold of the results of these experiments, they often blow them out of proportion and scare people because they don’t quite tell the whole story.
There are many instances where I have found this happening. The most obvious incidents appear in watching the news or reading the paper. The media is always talking about something new to stay away from. Recently there was a health scare concerning laxatives. The FDA came out with reports that a main ingredient in laxatives causes cancer in rats. ACSH strongly disagrees with this argument and states that there have been no cases linking phenolphthalein, th…
Comparing the Gettysburg Address and Ginsberg’s America
Comparing the Gettysburg Address and Ginsberg’s America
Many writers have considered the identity of America. Two remarkable writers of two different time periods have shouldered this. They created two important works. The first, Abraham Lincoln; a great leader in the midst of an incredible time of change and confusion, delivered the Gettysburg Address to an assembly that came to him saddened and horrified by the trials of war. These same people left, changed, that day from the cemetery. The other, Allen Ginsberg, wrote the poem “America” for a generation of people caught between World War II and the Cold War. The comparison between these two works is important for learning the identity of all Americans.
The histories of America were used to attest to each work’s ideas. Abraham Lincoln examined the founding father’s works for democracy. He also wrote about the soldiers in the Battle of Gettysburg and their fight. These were the ones, as Lincoln said in the address, who “here gave their lives that the nation might live”. When Allen Ginsberg wrote “America”, he was speaking to people who had seemed to have lost all good intentions for America. “He had mulled over a way to write a long prophetic poem that addressed what he perceived to be the spiritual and cultural decline of America” (Schumacher 218). Historical events Ginsberg cited directly reflect the society which influenced him. They also show the bitter twist the speech’s words “here gave their lives that the nation might live” to those Americans involved in these events. Sacco and Vanzetti, whom Ginsberg mentioned powerfully in the poem, are good examples of this. Sacco and Vanzetti were tried and convicted for killing two men and stealing 15,000 dollars…
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