The key features of situation ethics Essay Example for Free

The key features of situation ethics Essay Examine the key features of situation ethics. Then outline the main weaknesses of situation ethics. How far do these lead to a rejection of the theory? Despite the view of Kant, and many Christian people, that it is not ethical to only act after assessing the implications of a moral action, since the 1960s a view that situation ethics is an effective way to judge an action and its consequences has emerged in the secular community. However, it is also necessary to acknowledge the Christian ethos in order to fully make a decision on the ethical viability of something in such an ephemeral world. Situation ethics is a theory most commonly associated with the work of Joseph Fletcher, an American professor and one of the key pioneers in bioethics, and J.A.T. Robinson, a New Testament scholar, author and a former Anglican bishop of Woolwich. Fletcher wrote a book called Situation Ethics, which was published in 1966, a time when the ephemeral nature of the country was highly accentuated by political matters; Women were more commonly going to work, following the suffrage movement before the war and their valued contribution to the war effort during it, President John F. Kennedy of the United States had been assassinated and there was a large amount of shock and horror surrounding the brutal Vietnam war. Furthermore, Martin Luther King had left his legacy at this time, even though it would be many years before the divisive pre-civil rights attitudes and laws were truly shaken off, and the sexual revolution that occurred in the 1960s, where the invention of the pill came about, and sexual promiscuity was finally accepted. Also, the emergence of the teenager, a concept that had not been acknowledge before as a type of person with his or her own music, fashion and politics, the consequential growing power of the student movement and the rebellious spirit of the rock and roll culture that went hand in hand with the aforementioned new young adults power, when combined with the other reasons mentioned above, all meant that the scene was set for a radical shift in the social power base. The church, in particular, did not see this impending shift in power as an appealing prospect. The British Council of Churches in 1964 appointed a Working Party that set out to Prepare a Statement of the Christian case for abstinence from sexual intercourse before marriage and faithfulness within marriageand to suggest means whereby the Christian position may be effectively presented to the various sections of the community. They wanted to convey a sane and responsible attitude towards love and marriage in the face of the misleading suggestions conveyed by much popular literature, entertainment and advertising. They also observed that a widespread feeling, especially among Christian people, that recent years have witnessed a general lowering of moral standards, and that this is particularly evident in the realm of sexual behaviour. The Church put much emphasis on a report called The Sexual Behaviour of Young People by Michael Schofield, saying that they wanted to reassess where Christian moral truth lay. The report was conducted in 1965, and concluded that in the 1960s young people were exposed to these factors; greater independence; more money in their pockets and purses; the weakening of family bonds and religious influences; the development of earlier maturity physically, emotionally and mentally; the impact of modern books, television, periodicals. 1963 saw the publication of an extremely controversial book that threw the Church into disarray and disagreement. J.A.T. Robinsons Honest to God is a theological text in which the author challenges the traditional view that God is watching over the world as a supreme power in a three-storied universe, instead suggesting, in conjunction with Paul Tillich, a German-American theologian and Christian existentialist philosopher, that God should be understood as the ground of our being as opposed to a deux ex machine, a phenomenon that cannot be explained, which influences and interferes with the world while remaining detached from it. This book was also in support of the new morality outlined in Joseph Fletchers article The New Look at Christian Ethics published in the Harvard Divinity Bulletin before the more famous Situation Ethics book. Fletcher had written in this that Christian ethics is not a scheme of codified conduct. It is a purposive effort to relate love to a world of relativities through a casuistry obedient to love. In other words, the new Christian morality for man come of age, a phrase coined from Dietrich Bonheoffer, was not based on law, or rather, perhaps, on one law only: the law of love. To illustrate their beliefs on new morality over old, both Fletcher and Robinson cited the examples of Jesus and the Pharisees, which were meant to exemplify new morality and old morality respectively. Whilst the Pharisees elaborated the Torah to accommodate every possible situation, the example of Jesus say You who are not guilty of sin may cast the first stone in John 8:2-11, after a woman who had been caught in adultery was sentenced to stoning. This is an example of Jesus demonstrating love, passion and integrity and showing the weakness of using absolute laws as a meaning of judging individual moral cases. Fletcher further observed that Bultmann [A German theologian] was correct is saying that Jesus had no ethics if we accept, as I do not, that his definition of ethics was a system of values and rules intelligible for all men. This gives the implication that a system of moral codes is unnecessary. Both Fletcher and Robinson acknowledged that the shift from a supranaturalist view of ethics to a situationalist or existentialist view of ethics would not be universally popular. This was shown as early as 1956 when the Pope Pius XII anticipated this, and consequentially banned the view from all seminaries. Protestants, however, were equally suspicious, as they realised it meant that nothing can be labelled as universally good or bad. However, Robinson argued the only way to deal with situations was situationally, not prescriptively. He said Whatever the pointers of the law to the demands of love, there can for the Christian be no packaged moral judgements for persons are more important even than standards. Robinson argued that a situationalist view should be applied to divorce law. Questioning the conservative view that marriage created a supernatural, unbreakable bond between two people, he argues that the metaphysical bond that binds two people in marriage can be broken through divorce depending on the situation surrounding it. In the book Honest To God, Robinson wrote It is not a question of Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder: no man could if he tried. For marriage is not merely indissoluble: it is indelible. He believed that it was potentially damaging and out-dating to believe that divorce was an impossibility. He thought it was time for humans to seek liberty from such supernaturalism thinking, and be ready to leave behind the restrictions of the old moral law if love was best served by so doing. Fletcher and Robinson identified agape love, a term used to distinguish the different types of love known as agape, philia, storge and eros, as the only intrinsically good thing, and it was defined by William Barclay as unconquerable good will; it is the determination to seek the other mans highest good, no matter what he does to you. Insult, injury, indifference it does not matter; nothing but good will. It has been defined as purpose, not passion. It is an attitude to the other person. This kind of love is highly demanding or, as Barclay suggested, a highly intelligent thing. It is not random, fatalistic, romantic love that cannot be demanded. Rather, agape love is required of one human being to another, and demands that the whole personality be involved in a deliberate directing the will, heart and mind. To employ agape, it is conceivable that laws must be put aside, although this may leave many legalists and supernaturalisms without a reliable foundation on which to maintain their position of moral superiority. Fletcher wrote If the emotional and spiritual welfare of both parents and children in a particular family can be served best by a divorce, wrong and cheapjack as divorce commonly is, then love requires it. Joseph Fletcher identified three approaches to morality: Legalism, a conservative, rule-based morality like that of the Pharisees, or as Fletcher said, a morality in which Solutions are preset, and you can look them up in a book a Bible or a confessors manual; Antinomianism, the polar opposite of legalism which means that no rules or maxims can be applied to a moral situation; and situationism, a midway decision between the other two positions, or, as stated in Situation Ethics, The situationist enters into every decision-masking situation fully armed with the ethical maxims of his community and its heritage, and he treats them with respect Just the same he is prepared in any situation to compromise them or set them aside in the situation if love seems better served by doing so. Fletcher developed his theory by drawing on a wide range of cases that could not be resolved by applying fixed rules and principles; for instance, the famous case of Mrs Bergmeier who deliberately asked a Russian prison camp guard to make her pregnant so she could be released to return to her family in Germany. Furthermore, Fletcher even developed four presuppositions of situation ethics: Pragmatism, which demands that a proposed course of action should work, and that its success or failure should be judged according to the principle; Relativism, which rejects such absolutes as never, always, perfect, and complete; Positivism, a concept which recognizes that love is the most important criterion of all; and finally personalism, a concept which demands that people should be put first. He then went on, developing his opinion on how agape love should be understood conceptually, and how it should be applied as a theory in situation ethics. He said that not only is love always good, but that it was the only norm, appealing to Jesuss teaching in Mark 12:33 that the most important commandment is to love God and love your neighbour. Hr also said that love and justice are the same, and love is justice distributed, that love is not liking and always wills the neighbours good and that situation ethics is a teleological theory that identifies the ends or the outcome of the actions as the means of assessing its moral worth. Finally, he said that because there is no way of knowing in advance whether something is right or wrong because every situation is different, the situationist must be prepared to make every moral decision afresh. Some believers believe that morality consists of obeying the commands of God as directly revealed by him through scripture and the Church. They believe that what is morally good and what is morally bad is pre-determined by what God has said through scripture and other means, and that to contradict the views of God is to be immoral and bad. This view was backed up by Kant in his deontological approach to ethics, as he said that moral rules are good in themselves and should be obeyed irrespective of the consequences. Professor Gordon Dunstan also agreed with this, saying It is possible, though not easy, to forgive Professor [Joseph] Fletcher for writing this book, for he is a generous and loveable man. It is harder to forgive the SCM Press for publishing it. In contrast to Fletcher, William Barclay adopted a conservative view on Christian ethics, challenging the so named new morality of Fletcher on several grounds. He argued that it is highly improbable for someone to be presented with the extreme circumstances presented by Fletcher, so it is not reasonable to base the principle of situation ethics on these such matters. He wrote in Ethics in a Permissive Society, It is much easier to agree that extraordinary situations need extraordinary measures than to think that there are no laws for ordinary everyday life. He also suggests that Fletcher overestimates the value of being free from rules and the constant decision-making processes that this forces humans into. If it were the case that agape could always be fairly and accurately dealt out, then laws would be redundant. As it is, there are no such guarantees, and so a degree of law is necessary for human survival. Barclay believes that law is essential for a variety of reasons: because it clarifies experience; because it is the means by which society determines what a reasonable life is; because it defines crime; because it has a deterrent value, and because it protects society. He also says that Fletcher was unrealistic in his observation on how truly free humans are to make decisions and judge the moral worth of something when not shackled by any laws. Barclay particularly emphasises that law ensures that humans do not make an artificial distinction between public and private morality, and was quoted as saying A man can live his own life, but when he begins deliberately to alter the lives of others, then a real problem arises, on which we cannot simply turn out backs, and in which there is a place for law as the encourager of morality. In summary, Barclay criticised Fletcher for his miscalculated optimism about the ability of humans to be morally good while remaining free of personal prefere nce and consequential bias. How can we arbitrate a case in which two people reach different conclusions about an action, yet both claim to be acting in the interests of love? In the same year that the scandalous Honest to God by J. A. T. Robinson came into publication, Susan Howatch composed a novel named Scandalous Risks in which a number of characters face moral dilemmas, and attempt to examine each of these while conceptually following situation ethics. In one scene we see a character called Venetia seeking the help of another called Father Darrow in an attempt to understand the way in which her romantic friend rationalises and conducts their relationship along the lines of situation ethics. The, so to speak, moral, of this story is that situation ethics is idealistic and cannot work, despite its obvious theoretical benefits. Rarely do our real-life situations conform to the neat solutions that would apparently be available to us if we applied the principles of ethical theory. An overall conclusion must be drawn from both parts a) and b) of this essay collectively. It seems that the argument is relatively balanced debating the validity of Robinsons and Fletchers approach to moral-decision making. It is commonplace to strive for the freedom to make choices situationally, whether or not it be within the framework of agape, although this is constrained by not only the law, but also by the moral judgment of others. In this age, when we might suppose that secularism and liberalism would have a stronger hold on religions than previously, organizations such as Silver Ring Thing and True Love Waits are encouraging young people to take a vow of celibacy, which infers a return to traditional sexual ethics. Perhaps, instead of offering a realistic answer to morally-challenging situations, situation ethics offers a tantalising alternative to structured and relatively inflexible law-based morality.

Global Tales - Stories From Many Cultures :: essays research papers

Compare and contrast the two stories by R.K. Narayan. Which story do you prefer and why? In all the stories and authors featured in "Global Tales", R.K. Narayan is the most respected and well-known author. From the short description of him at the end of the book, he created a space for himself called "Malgudi" and developed his own characters, like a puppet master making his own puppets from cloth and giving them life when he does the show. His stories are universal, probably because the themes and characters of the stories are easy to identify with. He should be ninety-seven this year (year 2000). From what I know, his other books include " Malgudi Days", where " An Astrologer’s Day" is taken from. Narayan is a very observant man, sharp and sarcastic at the same time. His sarcasm become humour and it is not very obvious sometimes. We have to read between the lines to catch the joke. He is very descriptive in his writing and his world comes alive with the mood through the informative and colourful description, the characteristics and the internal thinkings of the characters, the suspense and the dialogues used. I especially admire the way he brings the story to a close, not too dramatic, yet satisfactory. Some writers often leave an unfinished ending where it is up to the reader to decide, treating this as their style and adding a sense of mystery to the story. However, these are sometimes the most horrible kind of ending, not only irritating, but also annoying. The ending is the element that wraps up the whole story, yet the writer left it out, like a jigsaw piece went missing. It is not a complete piece of writing. Lastly, I find R.K. Narayan to be naughty at times, from the w ay he phrased his sentence, and the sarcasm, but we like it. In " An Astrologer’s Day", an astrologer meets a stranger and tells his fortune. Surprisingly, the "fake" astrologer managed to tell what was true for the stranger. Then, it is only when the astrologer reveals his secret, did we know how his "magic" worked. We are brought into the world of the streets of India where there is little lighting but "a bewildering cris-cross of light rays and moving shadows". The in-depth description gives us the setting, which can be seen in our minds. Not

Bite Me: A Love Story Chapter 24

24. A Love Story? JODY It wasn't the first time she'd crept out of a guy's apartment in the middle of the night with her shoes in her hand, but it was the first time where the decision had been because she didn't want to kill the guy. He was so little, so frail, so lonely. She had taken people before who had the black ring in their life aura like Okata's, and they had thanked her. It had been mercy, relief, the end of pain, yet she couldn't make herself do it. She'd left him there, not to die alone, although he probably would, and not because he had been so kind to her, saving her, which he had, but because the prints weren't finished. He was a strange little man, a hermit and a swordsman, and he carried some great pain in him, but above all that, he was an artist, and she couldn't bear to stop that. So she'd left. Now she was back. He sheathed his sword and tried to lift her to her feet. Her limbs still felt like they were on fire, and she could move only her right arm on her own. She nodded toward Bella's pellet weapon. â€Å"Give it to me, Okata.† She made a grasping motion. He leaned her in a sitting position against the wrought-iron railing that surrounded the steps to his apartment, then retrieved the weapon and fit it into her hand. Then he held the barrel firmly and said something stern in Japanese. â€Å"No, I'm not going to off myself,† she said, and she smiled. He let go of the barrel of the gun and she sprayed Bella's corpse with pellets until the gun stopped firing, then she threw the gun over the rail and motioned for Okata to help her into his apartment. Bella's body was nothing more than slimy chunks of meat by the time Okata got her through the door. In the morning, when the sun hit it, there would be only a charred stain on the sidewalk with burned gobs of plastic that had been a Kevlar suit, shoes, and sunglasses. Okata helped her to the shower, where he rinsed out her wounds, then dried her off and retrieved the last bit of the pig's blood, which he'd kept in the refrigerator. Jody felt a horrible twinge of guilt. He'd been waiting for her, probably had been outside looking for her when Bella had chased her around the corner. After she drank the blood, and her legs had healed enough to hold her weight, she went to his workbench and turned on the light. The last print was there. Not finished, but two of the woodblocks had been finished, the black and the red. There she was, in the shower, her red hair streaming behind her in the water, black bits of ash puddling at her feet. Okata was beside her, looking at the print critically, as if there was something he might have to fix at any second. She bent down and looked back from the angle of the print into his face. â€Å"Hey,† she said. â€Å"Thank you.† â€Å"Okay,† he said. â€Å"Sorry,† she said. FOO DOG Abby lay on the futon in the loft's great room. The empty rat cages were stacked in the corner of the room and Foo had unscrewed one of the plywood panels over the windows to let some light in. He'd been monitoring Abby's vital signs since six in the morning. At least she had vital signs. She hadn't even started with those. At noon, she opened her eyes. â€Å"Foo, you dick, I'm mortal.† â€Å"You're okay!† He threw his arms around her. She pushed him away. â€Å"Where's Tommy? Where's the Countess?† â€Å"Tommy's in the bedroom. I don't know where Jody is.† â€Å"She didn't call?† â€Å"No.† â€Å"Fucksocks! Did you turn Tommy back, too?† â€Å"No. I started making his serum, but he didn't want to do anything until they take care of the other vampire. We need to, though, Abby. He won't live much longer if we don't.† â€Å"I know. The pirate Rasta guy on the black ship told us. Other vampire? Only one?† â€Å"Rivera called while you were unconscious. The Animals took one of them down at the Safeway.† â€Å"Did you tell him to stay off the black ship?† â€Å"Tommy did.† â€Å"What about Chet?† â€Å"I don't know.† â€Å"He could be-Hey, where's my tail?† â€Å"It sort of fell off when you turned back to human.† â€Å"Did you save it?† â€Å"Well, no. I left it on the coffee table and when the sun came up, well, it sort of burned up.† â€Å"You burned up my tail? That was a part of me.† â€Å"It was a disgusting part of you.† â€Å"You're such a racist, Foo. I'm glad we broke up.† â€Å"We did?† â€Å"We were going to, weren't we? Wasn't that what you wanted to talk about? About how I'm way too complex and mysterious for you and you need to return to your traditional science-nerd values and live in the Sunset with your parents, instead of the awesome love lair with your goddess-like vampire girlfriend, who will never do you again, even when you beg, even out of pity, no matter how fly your sexy manga hair is? Isn't that what you were going to say?† â€Å"Not in so many words. I'm going to move to Berkeley. It's hard, Abby-â€Å" â€Å"Well, save your breath, s'il vous pla;t, I'm over you. I will not be further abused by your toady banalities and whatnot.† â€Å"Your mom called. She wants you to come home.† â€Å"Yeah, that's going to happen. Oh, what's this, monkeys flying out of my tailless butt?† â€Å"She said they sent your report card. You passed Mr. Snavely's biology class.† â€Å"I did?† â€Å"She said she almost fainted. Jared said it was your extra-credit project that did it. Why didn't you tell me you took one of the rats to school with you?† â€Å"Well, I didn't think it worked out that well. I mean, the rat was already vamped, so when I took him out of the shoe box, he just looked kind of dead. And Mr. Snavely was all, â€Å"‘Oh, that's lovely, Allison, a dead rat.'† But it was sunny in biology lab, and all of a sudden my rat just spontaneously combusts, and I'm all, ‘Check it, bitches, spontaneous rodent combustion, it's the wave of the future.'† â€Å"Well, because he couldn't figure out how you did it, he passed you.† â€Å"I am the dark mistress of Biology One-oh-two. Fear me. Rawr!† she said. Then she kissed him hard, but not as hard as she had when she was a vampire, which was a relief, but then she pushed him away and slapped him. â€Å"Ouch. I didn't think you were a slut.† â€Å"I know, that's was our bittersweet break-up kiss. I will go grieve now until Lord Flood awakes and we resume the search for the Countess. I'm starving. Do you want to go get a sammy and a Starbucks? I have like ten grand in my messenger.† THE LOVE LAIR He awoke at sundown with her face in his mind's eye and panic running up his spine. He bolted out of the bedroom into the great room, where Abby was hanging up the phone. â€Å"That was the Countess,† Abby said. â€Å"She's okay. She'll be here in a few minutes.† â€Å"And you're okay? You're alive. You have heat.† He could see the heat coming off her and the healthy life aura around her. â€Å"Yeah, thanks. Foo destroyed my tail.† She turned and looked to the kitchen. â€Å"The traitorous racist heartbreaking fucktard!† â€Å"Little harsh,† Tommy said. â€Å"He saved your life.† â€Å"Heartbroken. Grieving. Inconsolable. Tail's gone. Going to have to get totally repierced and tattooed.† â€Å"But you showered and your eye makeup isn't all racoony anymore.† â€Å"Thanks. I like the blood splatters on your pants.† â€Å"Hi,† said Foo Dog from the kitchen, where he was filling a syringe with what looked like blood. â€Å"I have your serum ready, whenever you're ready.† â€Å"I'm not ready.† â€Å"You have to, you know.† The doorbell buzzed. Tommy keyed the intercom. â€Å"It's me,† Jody said. He buzzed her in and she was at the top of the steps in an instant, then kissing him. He pushed her back and looked at her clothes, shredded at the elbows and knees, stained with blood. â€Å"What happened to you? Where were you?† â€Å"One of the old vampires? She ambushed me on a roof across from the black ship. That weapon they have did this. It's horrible. We can't let them get near us with that thing.† â€Å"How did you get away?† â€Å"I was hiding at the bottom of a pool, trying to figure out what to do, when Chet jumped her. I got out of there while Chet was dry-humping her.† â€Å"Yeah. Go Chet!† said Abby. â€Å"Abby!† Jody ran to Abby and hugged her, kissed her on the forehead. â€Å"I was so worried about you. You're alive. Really alive.† â€Å"Yeah. Foo changed me back. I want to be nosferatu again.† They all turned to face Foo, who was still in the kitchen. â€Å"Can't do it, Abs. You won't survive a second time. I tried it on the rats. You're only human.† â€Å"Doomed,† Abby said. â€Å"Jody,† Tommy said, â€Å"what about the vampire who attacked you?† â€Å"Gone. Destroyed. Someone rescued me just before she killed me. So there's only one left, right?† â€Å"They're all gone,† Tommy said. â€Å"Rivera called. The Animals got the other one. There's only Elijah on the black ship.† Jody put her hand to his face. â€Å"Tommy, we have to talk.† â€Å"I know,† he said. Foo Dog said, â€Å"Jody, I have no way of knowing when Tommy might, uh, expire. He could go faster than Abby was going.† â€Å"Come with me.† Jody took Tommy's hand and led him into the bedroom. â€Å"I've got to show you something. You two, do not come into this room, do you hear me?† TOMMY AND JODY â€Å"We can't make crazy monkey love now, Jody. They'll hear us, and we usually end up breaking all the furniture.† â€Å"You learned how to go to mist, when you were with Chet. You said you learned?† â€Å"Yeah, that's how I got these clothes. They're stupid, aren't they?† â€Å"Tommy, the vampire, the old one, her name was Bella, she told me something. Kiss me. Kiss me and go to mist. Don't think about it, don't stop, just melt into the kiss.† She kissed him and felt him as he faded from solid, and followed him exactly, until they were a single entity, sharing every secret, every fear, every victory, everything, the very essence of who they were, wrapping around each other, winding through each other as each lived the other's history, as every experience they had, they had together, with comfort and joy, with abandon and passion, without words or boundaries, and as often happens to two in love, time lost all meaning, and they might have stayed there, like that, forever. When they finally fell out of it they were naked, on the bed, giggling like insane children. â€Å"Wow,† Tommy said first. â€Å"Yeah,† she said. â€Å"So, Okata saved you?† â€Å"Yeah, he needed to save someone. He had always needed to save someone.† â€Å"I know. I'm okay with it, you know?† â€Å"Yeah, I know,† she said. â€Å"I can't do it, Jody. It's amazing, and I adore you, but I can't do it.† â€Å"I know,† she said, because she did. â€Å"This is me now, Tommy. I like this, I like the night, I like the power. I like not being afraid. I was never anything until I was this. I love being this.† â€Å"I know,† he said. He knew that she had always been cute, but not beautiful. Always a little dissatisfied with who she was, worried about what men, or her mother, or anyone thought of her. But she was beautiful now. Strong. She was exactly what she wanted to be. He said, â€Å"I need the words, Jody. It's who I am.† â€Å"I know.† â€Å"I'm not a vampire. I'm a writer. I came here to be a writer. I want to use gelatinous in a sentence. And not just once, but over and over. On the roof, under the moon, in an elevator, on the washing machine, and when I'm exhausted, I want to lay in my own gelatinous sweat and use gelatinous in a sentence until I pass out.† Jody said, â€Å"I don't think gelatinous means what you think it means.† â€Å"It doesn't matter. It's what I need to do. I need to write something. I need to write my little Holocaust girl story.† â€Å"I thought it was a little girl growing up in the segregated South.† â€Å"Yeah, whatever. It's important.† â€Å"You know I know this already, right?† â€Å"I know, but that's what I'm saying, I need the words. I love you, but I need the words.† â€Å"I know,† she said. â€Å"Let's go let Foo change you back into a word guy.† â€Å"And you're going to go away?† â€Å"I have to.† â€Å"I know,† he said. â€Å"You know, I think that merging might have ruined me.† â€Å"Why?† â€Å"Because you're lying there completely naked and I don't want to sex you up.† â€Å"Really?† â€Å"Let me think about it. No, false alarm, I'm okay.† â€Å"C'mere, writer boy. Let's break some furniture.† THE RAVEN â€Å"Praise Jah's sweet love for given us a fired-haired snowy biscuit,† Kona said. â€Å"Welcome, me sweet deadie sistah. Welcome aboard.† â€Å"Mistress,† Jody said. â€Å"Sweet deadie mistress.† â€Å"Troot, mistress. Welcome aboard.† The ship was a wonder of technology and luxury. Kona had lent Foo Dog his security bracelet and Foo had gone aboard and reset the security so the ship didn't kill anyone who set foot on board, then he and Kona had walked her through the ship showing her the thousand different ways it had been set to kill a person. It was an elegant, redundant death trap. â€Å"You'll want to turn the systems back on,† Foo had said. â€Å"There's a reason they had this kind of security.† Jody said good-bye and led him off the ship. Now that she had one of his UV lasers in one hand and a number of vacuum blood vials in the other she followed the ersatz Rastaman down to the deepest chamber of the ship, where Foo had not gone. They approached a wide, white, waterproof hatch with a small porthole and a heavy stainless-steel wheel securing it. Kona hit a light switch. â€Å"That make just a wee UV, mistress. Make dat dogheart bastid turn solid so he can't sneak out.† Jody looked in the port and a face hit it with a snarl, leaving bloody spit on the thick glass. â€Å"Well, hello, pumpkin. How have you been?† The vampire snarled. It was Elijah, the old vampire who had turned her, turned them all, really, if the legend was true. But he looked like a wild animal now, naked, his fangs bared, snarling at the tiny window. â€Å"Can he hear me?† Jody asked. â€Å"Oh yeah, he hear. You got to tell him to go to the back of da room, ma. I'n'I can lock him back there with the second door. Like an airlock. Dat's how we feed dat old buggah.† â€Å"Go to the back of the room, Elijah. I have something I need you to do.† The vampire snarled at her. â€Å"Okey dokey,† she said, and she put on her sunglasses, placed Foo's laser against the glass, and promptly blasted Elijah's right ear into ash. He roared at her. â€Å"Oh, I know that had to hurt. Hear that high whining sound, Elijah. That's the laser recharging. Takes about a minute. When it's done I'm going to burn off your willie unless you get your ancient ass to the back of the cell.† She smiled. â€Å"Shoots, brah, she a cold heart bitch don't you know. You outta-shoulda do what she say, yeah?† The old vampire backed through the inside door, snarling, and Kona worked the switch, sealing it. Then he opened the heavy outer hatch. Jody placed the vacuum vials in the chamber, then said, â€Å"Okay, Elijah, I need you to fill these with that sweet, first-generation vampire blood.† They sealed the outer hatch, and Elijah snarled and resisted, but after having his other ear burned off, relented. Twenty minutes later Jody was holding the four vials of Elijah's blood and Elijah was lapping two quarts of tuna blood out of a stainless-steel bowl. â€Å"He be all right,† Kona said. â€Å"Dem ear heal up in minutes and he be back in the mystic fo' weeks.† â€Å"And how long to get the rest of the art supplies onto the Raven?† she asked. â€Å"It's all on board, mistress.† â€Å"Then cast off, Cap'n.† â€Å"Aye, aye, mistress.† Jody turned to Okata, who had stood silently, his eyes wide, watching the whole scene. â€Å"These are for you,† she said, holding out the vials. â€Å"I'll help you. I hope you like night scenes. You're going to have a lot of prints to make. But you'll have time.† â€Å"Okay,† said the swordsman, with a smile.

Compare and Contrast Essay of Two Neighborhood - 704 Words

Patricia Brown Ellen Beckford English 1101 13 February 2013 Two Neighborhoods The convenience of living in an urban or suburban neighborhood can be appealing to many people. Choosing between areas can sometimes be overwhelming for some individual. People are not only concerned about the safety of a community, but they are also concerned about the environment. Although some neighborhoods might look attractive, people should consider the expense that comes with it, and how commuting will affect them in the long run. Nevertheless, both neighborhoods have their specific advantages and disadvantages. When choosing between an urban or suburban neighborhood, it is important for people to research the community, the expense, and convenience†¦show more content†¦Another key point is commuting. People who live in the urban community have better access to public transportation. Citizens can easily get around by walking, taking a bus, and riding the train at a lower cost. In contrast, owning a home in suburb can be costly for many people. Not only do people have to keep up with their mortgages, but they sometimes have to pay a yard maintenance fee and their Home Owners Association (HOA) dues for the up-keeping of the neighborhood which can be very costly. Besides the home cost, people who live in suburban neighborhoods do have the convenience of traveling in the comfort of their own vehicle, and they do not deal with the concerns of public transportation. However, they still have to deal with the cost for long commuting and the wear and tear of the vehicle. Living in the inner-city and suburban neighborhood can be challenging and beneficial for some individuals, especially for career opportunity. Many people who live in the urban communities have a better advantage in finding a job of their choice. Most corporations are located in the inner-city which makes it easier for people to find a job. 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