Topic Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Topic - Essay Example Also this contemplation may beget money; but it necessarily may consume one’s money and time for its own sake. Contemplations or actions in marginal places like â€Å"blue sky research zone† (Frazier 54), etc may be either fruitful or fruitless. Arguing for the importance of free, unstructured and unscheduled time in producing something great, Frazier says, â€Å"Every purpose-filled activity we pursue in the woods as just fooling around† (Frazier 54). Here, Frazier uses the term, â€Å"fooling around†, to refer to unscheduled and unstructured time of thinking. Indeed, Frazier, with the ‘child’ metaphor in his essay, wants to remind his readers that hobnobbing in the woods teaches a child along the path of his growth to search for something precious in the woods. It necessarily tells the readers that the benefit of thinking in free and unstructured time may beget something valuable for the thinker. In terms of the importance of thinking in fre e and unstructured time, Nicholas Carr’s opinion also concurs with that of Frazier. In order to convince his readers, he portrays two pictures side by side. One is the picture of Nathaniel Hawthorne sitting in the â€Å"green seclusion of Sleepy Hollow and lost himself in contemplation† (Carr 76). ... In contrast to this great writer’s prominence, the city dwellers who remain engaged in their daily scheduled activities pass their lives unnoticed. Referring to some research papers, he further says that a person’s cognitive ability and performance such reasoning, perceiving, memorizing, etc increase significantly by his contemplation in free and unstructured time. People, who spend their time in a secluded park or near natural scenery, enjoy these enhanced mental abilities in contrast to those who live amid the dins and bustles of the busiest street of a city. In this regard, he quotes the researchers, â€Å"simple and brief interactions with nature can produce marked increases in cognitive control† (Carr 77). In fact, Carr tells much about the dangers of not having much free and uncontrolled time in which to think than Frazier does. He warns his readers that the endless and mesmerizing stimulations of the Net as well as of the city can be both â€Å"invigorati ng and inspiring† and â€Å"exhausting and distracting†. (Carr 77) The danger of these mesmerizing stimulations is that â€Å"they can easily†¦overwhelm the quieter mode of thought† (Carr 77). Referring to Antonio Damasio’s research, Carr infers that the free and unstructured time is necessary for the â€Å"quieter mode of thought† which itself leads the thinker to feel humanly qualities such as compassion, love, sympathy and other emotions. Even moral decision requires a man’s contemplation in free time, as Carr quotes, â€Å"For some kinds of thoughts, especially moral decision-making about other people’s social and psychological situations, we need to allow for adequate time and reflection† (Carr

Discuss the need (if any) for international environmental restriction Essay

Discuss the need (if any) for international environmental restriction and the constraints that international agreements are subject to. Use the cases of the Mo - Essay Example It can be argued that if environmental concerns are brought out of their current green image and established with economic rules, the will to enforce them and the ability to accept them could be far greater than it is at the present moment. Undoubtedly, human beings have polluted and exploited the planet that we live on and while the effects of the pollution caused by human activity can be disastrous, it might not be recognized as such until it starts to affect the urban centers of the world that we live in (VonAncken, 2006). Of course there have been successful international agreements on what steps must be taken to prevent an all out attack on the environment and measures such as the Montreal Protocol have certainly met with a lot of success (Kruger, 1999). However, a lot remains to be done in a world where countries such as the United States and Australia have not fully agreed to the more advanced Kyoto Protocol. It would be useless to deny the facts as they stand since global warming and environmental degradation is a harsh reality. According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) global temperatures have risen by 0.6 Â ± 0.2 Co in the last century. Most importantly, the cause for this rise is attributed to human activity (IPCC, 2001). However, there are those who contest the reason behind these facts and suggest that the global rise in temperatures is a natural phenomenon. At the same time, there are many who make dire predictions about the coming climatic changes. Global climate change has quickly become one of the most hotly contested issues in terms of science as well as politics. However, it is also becoming a topic for debate in terms of economics and international law where it may take center stage when new agreements are formed between nations as to how they control what they do to hurt or help