Fan Fiction in a Literary Context :: Fan Fiction Essays

Fan Fiction in a Literary Context For most people, John F. Kennedy Jr was a character in a play, a character in a story, just the way Sherlock Holmes was. When he's lost, then people react very emotionally. Constantly rehearsing the details of somebody's life and death shows that people are trying to continue the story. We always try to do that when the story ends before we're prepared for the ending. - Neil Postman, chairman of the department of culture and communication at New York University[1] On the official Anne Rice web site[2] appears the following message: I do not allow fan fiction. The characters are copyrighted. It upsets me terribly to even think about fan fiction with my characters. I advise my readers to write your own original stories with your own characters. It is absolutely essential that you respect my wishes. Until relatively recently in the history of fiction, this would have seemed a very odd message from writer to reader. For a start, the idea that there is some intrinsic virtue in using an "original" character or story would have puzzled most ancient or mediaeval writers. They did do that sometimes, but they plundered the vast resources of myth and history just as happily - indeed there is a mediaeval convention of authorial modesty whereby writers routinely claim that they found the story they are about to tell in some ancient book. Thus Robert Henryson, the fifteenth-century Scottish poet, tells how, one winter night by the fire, he read a book: writtin be worthie Chaucer glorious, Of fair Cresseid and lustie Troilus.[3] And he tells us that when he had finished Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, which ends with Troilus mourning his faithless love but does not say what became of her, he took another book, in which he found ...the fatall destinie Of fair Cresseid This second book, of course, does not exist, though it will: he is about to write it. The Testament of Cresseid is his sequel to Chaucer's poem, using the characters both poets had borrowed from Greek myth and made their own, though neither would have thought to call them "my characters". However individualised by each successive poet who used them, they were still Troilus and Cressida, part of a resource that belonged to all. History is another such resource and Shakespeare, his contemporaries and successors happily plundered classical, English and European history for plots and characters.

Hopes and Dreams

Humans are born with the ability to dream and hope for something better. It is what we do afterwards that determines the outcome. A dream without action is just fantasy. The action is the means to achieve those hopes and dreams. For some people, the belief in our dreams and hopes gets lost through the years. So how do we get back on track and accomplish at least a few of those dreams? The first step is to realize that our dreams are still within reach. It starts with a clear understanding of the difference between what is achievable and what is not.The pathway that leads to our success is filled with small goals that, once accomplished, build our confidence to complete the next one. We possess the ability to establish achievable goals as steppingstones to reach what we hope for. A dream and a goal are two different terms that help in our task. The dream is the final destination and the goal is the path leading to it. One dream can have many goals or directions and strategies that hel p us accomplish it. Each goal is a small step toward the finalization of the dream. We all have dreams. Some are for tomorrow, some are for next week, and some are for years from now.It is within our ability to realize all of them by listening to the heart and completing all the necessary steps. Reality today was a dream or hope sometime in the past. Keep a journal of those things you hope for. Write down the steps or goals needed along to way to achieve each one. Then, every week or every month, review each one to assure that you stay on the correct path to accomplishment. Each review period allows you to make minor adjustments in the goals as life events dictate. We sometimes grow up with preconceived notions that many of these dreams are not considered worthy of any effort to realize them.If a dream is conceived but never believed, it is considered merely a fantasy. Often our lives are restricted to these fleeting fantasies because we don’t have the courage to treat them a s achievable dreams. Change the thought processes in your head so that you are not restricted by perceived impossibilities. Focus instead on the dream and its goals. Give fantasies the chance to turn into a dream by making them an important part of your life. Set the goals needed to fulfill the dream. Dreams are then given attention and can be fully manifested by setting goals.Maintain your focus on the dream instead of the short-term goals to enable fulfillment and satisfaction. While achieving goals offers a sense of satisfaction, this doesn’t provide ongoing motivation. The real power of each goal comes from its connection to the appropriate dream. And, yes, you can have many dreams that are in process all the time. Each of the short-term goals will lead to your objective. Setting smaller, more attainable goals will develop a sense of accomplishment that will ultimately keep you focused on the dream itself. The acronym SMART helps in setting the goals.Simple, Measurable, A chievable, Realistic, Timely. Dreams and hopes live in the heart. They are uniquely you and have the potential to result in who you are gifted to become. Without taking steps to realize those dreams, they are useless. Those people who dream and then set goals to achieve them will experience joy and satisfaction in their lives and a sense of peace in their twilight years. Truly successful people have taken their dreams out of the fantasy and converted them into eventual reality. They have done this by setting realistic goals and constantly reviewing the process to stay on track.

Italo Calvino’s “Nonexistent Knight” Essay

The central characters introduced in Italo Calvinos novella, The Nonexistent Knight, are curiously diverse, yet each readily identifiable as each are driven or defined by particular quirks. In Agilulf Emo Bertrandin of the Guildivern and of the Others of Corbentraz and Sura, Knight of Selimpia Citeriore and Fez we see order and willpower, in Raimbaut of Roussillon theres passion, in the periwinkle female knight Bradamante is desire and pride, in Torrismund a need to belong, and in Gurdiloo nothing, naught but empty thoughts being filled and then emptied on whim. I find, however, that our narrator (and proclaimed writer of this knightly tale), Sister Theodora, personifies a certain idea of her own, she is wishful thinking and the story she weaves (and claims to have been a part of) is wish fulfilment; I posit that this story of hers is all the end result of a restless imagination at work and she is not Bradamante, Bradamante is Sister Theodoras insert of herself into her story world. Our first order of business is clarifying just what I have in mind when mentioning a self-insert, or anything of the like. There is a trend among the more enthusiastic fans of various media (especially television, books, comics, and video games) to expand the world of whichever specific title about which they are so passionate, usually fleshing out such worlds through acts of writing their own spins on what happened before, during or after the existing story; this is generally dubbed fanfiction and this is where the term self-insert has been coined, though such a device is not exclusive to derivative works, nor is it as recent a phenomenon. Put simply, a self-insert is a character placed within the context of a story that is meant to represent the writer as he or she is or to represent the writer as he or she would like to see himself/herself, something akin to an author surrogate. As Ive written, this technique is hardly a new one, writers as far back as Dante Alighieri have been placing themselves into their stories, but the name for it in terms of wish fulfilment storytelling is rather new. That aside, from the start of the novella, there has been what I had initially thought to be intentional comedic discrepancies by a neutral third person perspective in the manner Charlemagnes military operated. Chapter one introduces the paladins of Charlemagne as the emperor himself reviews the  company in a lax fashion, chapter two sees the invisible knight, Agilulf, directs young Raimbaut to the Superintendency of Duels, Feuds, and Besmirched Honor (a comically bureaucratic system for conducting vengeance) when the boy asks how he should go about avenging his fallen father (14). Further on, when Torrismund announces that the young woman Agilulf had rescued from rape was not a virgin, a peculiar chivalric practice is addressed: to rescue a noble-birthed virgins chastity was immediate access to knighthood, but to rescue a noblewoman whose maidenhood was no longer in tact would only earn an inflated pay (78). Historically, the process of becoming a knight was a long one beginning quite early in youth and required a young man to undergo many stages in his training; he would begin as early as 6 years of age as a page (a waiter or personal servant of a noble) and learn basics in courtesy, polished manners, hunting, weapons, and much more. By fourteen at the earliest, the boy would then become a squire and would be taken under the guidance of (while serving) a knight, and once the squire had honed his skills and learned his lessons well, he would then be dubbed a knight (medieval-life.net). Once the erroneous explanation of knighting is given, however, we already know something integral to the story: in chapter four, the perspective shifts from third person to first as a narrator of sorts reveals herself as Sister Theodora, the writer of this tale, and from there the discrepancies begin to make sense; the tale is written by a cloistered nun, how is she to understand military procedure?Beyond just the absurdities behind some of the happenings in Charlemagnes assembly of paladins, the title character, Agilulf, is an oddity all his own. He is a knight who does not exist in any physical form but is a thought, or rather, he is thought itself and this disembodied voice and willpower occupy a pristine white suit of armor while in service for the emperor. While we cannot truly prove that a thought cannot be a living form of its own walking about the earth unseen, to portray such an idea as possible is quite a fantastical move and as such lends to the fairytale quality of this narrative. So we have in the character of Agilulf, a heavy element of fantasy, from his lack of physical existence to his perfection in all he does. Now we come to a definite head-turner in the tale, the proud and beautiful princess-turned-knight, Bradamante. Bradamantes case isnt one like that of Jeanne dArc where she is a woman secretly and merely playing the role of a man, Bradamante is very openly female and is pined after by the paladins of the order. Her sexual exploits are not secret, nor is her nearly impossible true desire in a man and shes a master in combat and weaponry; all around, Bradamante stands out blatantly as a woman during a medieval time. While orders of female knights were not entirely unheard of, such occurrences were rare. The Order of the Hatchet is the only female order about which a great deal of information is known, and of the few instances when women were permitted knighthood, this order was the only one whose women saw the combat privileges that male knights received. The Order of the Hatchet was formed in Catalonia by the count of Barcelona in recognition of the women who fought in defense of their town while under attack from the Moors. These women received other knightly privileges besides combat, they received tax exemption and also had precedence over men in public gatherings (hereldica.org), though nothing else was heard of this order beyond the original members, so presumably the order died with the original members. Regardless of this miniscule instance of female knights, this order was formed in the 1100s, while Bradamante would have been in the military sometime in between 768 and 814 AD, as this was the time of Charlemagnes rule over the Franks making her existence as a knight in real-world possibilities sketchy at best. It is through the character of Bradamante, however, that my assertion comes together; Sister Theodoras tale is just that, a mere tale and not factual recordings as she had seen it. By the time we have reached the novellas end at chapter twelve, a complicated journey has reached its end as each character (sans Bradamante and Raimbaut) finds their own resolution. Bradamante has captured the attention and heart of young Raimbaut, but does not return the sentiments, rather she travels the land over in a rather desperate attempt to locate the only man who has ever won her difficult-to-please heart, Agilulf. Bradamante disappears for year upon learning of Agilulfs collapse and finding Raimbaut in the vanished knights white armor, and Raimbaut pursues her but what has become of the female  knight? Sister Theodora employs a twist in her tale when she reveals herself to be none other than the proud Bradamante, hiding in the abbey for years in mourning for Agilulf and now desiring the love o f Raimbaut, who she frantically writes is waiting for her outside the convent. It is here that I feel Bradamantes role as Sister Theodoras self-insert comes into full play. Theodora says early in the novella that writing is her penance, now at the end she says this tale that has been her task to write was one she experienced for herself and that she still has had many other adventures for which punishment she was tasked to record. Im certain, however, that the writing punishment for Sister Theodora is along the lines of the philosophy that idle hands are the devils work. No doubt, she has a colourful imagination and is more than likely prone to daydream, and this coupled with the lack of proper military procedure and Theodoras claim as being the talented, fierce, beautiful, and loved princess-come-knight, Bradamante, leaves no doubt in my mind that the story of the Nonexistent Knight told from her narrative was pure fabrication on the good Sisters behalf. Works Cited Calvino, Italo. The Nonexistent Knight. Harcourt Brace. 1962†³Medieval Life.† 2000. 13 Nov. 2007.. Veld, Franà §oise. Women Knights. 21 Oct. 2005. 13 Nov. 2007.

Organization of relationships Essay

Functionalism Functionalism is perhaps the oldest, and still dominant theoretical perspective in sociology. This paradigm is based upon two related emphases: application of the scientific method to the objective social world, and use of analogy between the individual organism and society. The perspective was developed by Emile Durkheim, and expanded by Talcott Parsons in the 1950s. The perspective assumes: 1) that the application of the scientific method extends to the social world, 2) values provide general guidelines for behavior in terms of roles and norms, 3) institutions are generally composed of interrelated roles and norms, and 4) the society is a functioning organism composed of functioning institutions. Functionalists perceive the social world as objectively real – observable with methods such as surveys and interviews. Rules and regulations assist in the organization of relationships between members of the social body. These institutions of society such as the family, religion, the political system, even the economy are interwoven. They function congruent to social needs and aspirations. They are directed to the attainment of social objectives. Functionalism has the following assumptions: 1) the interrelatedness of institutions, roles, and norms is congruent with social needs; 2) social need is not necessarily physiological in orientation (it can be in the form of status acquisition); 3) gradual change is the main motor of social change (abrupt change is seen as something unnecessary and leading to social dislocation of actors); 4) objectivity is the primary qualification of social research (functionalism, later structural functionalism is highly correlated with the empiricist approach to social research); 5) the social world is generally governed by social actors. Functionalism addresses the following issues: 1) the evolution of roles and norms in a particular social setting, 2) the development of interrelated institutions, 3) the efficacy of long-term change, 4) the cohesive functioning entity, and 5) the importance of role-making and empiricist research. From the five sociological paradigms discussed, conflict theory seemed to be the least useful because: 1) It fails to answer the evolution of roles and norms in the society (it views morality as something created by power politics); 2) While it explains the efficacy of short term (abrupt) change, it fails to fully substantiate the saliency of long-term (gradual) social change; 3) It saw conflict as the only effective means of altering social arrangements, roles, and norms of the society – here, conflict is seen as a positive force of social change (the word ‘positive’ here is morally neutral).

David Pajcin Insider Trading Scandal

Ethical Scandal Analysis of: David Pajcin and Eugene Plotkin Insider Trading Case Presented In Partial Fulfillments of the Course Requirements for FIN 4615 International Banking Prepared for: Marcos A. Kerbel Adjunct Professor Department of Finance Florida International University Miami, Florida Prepared by: David Kevin Vargas 2899406 (954) 443-4973 November 24, 2009 [pic] | |Academic Honesty Policy | |Individual Assignment Cover Page | |Submitted to: | |   | |   Prof. Marcos A. Kerbel | | | | |Submitted by: | |   | |   David Kevin Vargas | | | |Your Phone Number: | |   | |(954) 443-4973 | | | |Your e-mail: | |   | |   [email  protected] du | | | |Date of Submission: | |   | |November 24, 2009 | | | |Title of Assignment: | |   | |   Ethical Scandal Analysis | | | |CERTIFICATION OF AUTHORSHIP: I certify that I am the author of this paper and that any assistance I received in its preparation is fully acknowledged| |and disclosed in the paper. I have also cited any sources from which I used data, ideas or words; either quoted directly or paraphrased I also | |certify that this paper was prepared by me specifically for this course. | | | |Signature | |____________________________________________________ | Ethical Scandal Paper David Pajcin and Eugene Plotkin Case What is the case about? This case is about two men, who along with many friends and relatives, elaborated intricate insider trading schemes. Their plans involved forklift operators at a Business Week printing plant, a mole at Merrill Lynch & Co. , a grand juror in a fraudulent accounting trial against Bristol-Myers Squibb, and several brokerage accounts in New York, California and Croatia. The duo and their friends would end up reaping profits of close to $7 million during the short time their operations were active. The group’s own mistakes and greed drove them overboard and the long-reaching arm of the law finally caught up with them ending their plans and ambitions. Who was involved? David Pajcin He was one of the masterminds behind the insider trading schemes. He was born in Clifton, N. J. o Croatian immigrants. He went to school in Jersey City and later attended Notre Dame University. He majored in economics and graduated cum laude. With an impressive academic history, Pajcin got a job at the commodities group at Goldman Sachs after he got out of university in 2000. However, he did not stay long. He left after five and a half months. Pajcin said he did not want to be stuck working on the trading floors like everyone else. He took a series of similar jobs in smaller firms in New York but he never stayed in one of them for more than a couple of months. Finally, in 2003, he stopped looking for jobs and started working for himself. Eugene Plotkin He was the other half of the operation and close friend of David Pajcin. Born in Russia, Plotkin moved to California and lived outside San Francisco as a child. He then went to the California Institute of Technology but transferred to Harvard after one year. Plotkin studied economics there and graduated in 2000. He went on to Goldman Sachs where he started working as a fixed-income research analyst before being promoted to associate. That is where he met his future partner-in-crime (Pajcin) and where he stayed working at until his arrest in 2006. At that time he had a six figure salary in one of the most prestigious companies in Wall Street, a good place to be by anyone’s standards. Stanislav Shpigelman A secondary character, Shpigelman was a 23 year-old University of New York graduate. He and Plotkin had met at a college recruiting drive where Goldman Sachs had sent Plotkin to. The two kept in touch and one day met at Spa 88 in New York where they struck a deal and started working together on an insider trading scheme. Shpigelman provided Pajcin and Plotkin with inside information about possible mergers and acquisitions his company, Merrill Lynch & Co. , was working on. The biggest tip he gave involved the acquisition of Reebok International by Germany’s Adidas, in which Pajcin and his group made $6 million. Sonja Anticevic She is a retired underwear seamstress, who lives in Croatia, she also happens to be David Pajcin’s aunt. Anticevic came into the scheme when she let her nephew use an account under her name to make his trades. Monika Vujovic She was an exotic dancer who worked in New York’s finest gentlemen’s clubs; she was also David Pajcin’s girlfriend. She became involved by letting her boyfriend use her accounts to make investments. Vujovic additionally tried to help Pajcin by getting important information from investment bankers who she danced for. That scheme never worked though. Jason Smith He was an old high school friend of David Pajcin and worked as a U. S. postal worker in New Jersey. Smith had been selected to be a part of a federal grand jury in Newark that was hearing a case about possible fraudulent accounting practices at Bristol-Myers Squibb. Pajcin got information from Smith about the possible outcomes of the case and started trading based on those tips. No profits were made from Smith’s information though. Nickolaus Shuster He was a 23 year-old New Jersey native whom David Pajcin recruited in New York to get information on stocks mentioned in Business Week’s column ‘Inside Wall Street’. He went to Wisconsin to get a job at the plant where the magazine was printed. Pajcin would pay him between $200 and $500 for each Business Week issue he stole. Juan Renteria Jr. He was the second man to be hired to get information from the Business Week printing plant. Nickolaus Shuster was fired for unknown reasons so Renteria was sent to replace him in mid 2005. In total, Pajcin and his group made 48 trades and $280,000 in gains using the information received from the Wisconsin plant. Scott Black The S. E. C. senior trial counsel who interrogated David Pajcin about the trades he made and the connection between the Business Week articles and his decision to buy certain stocks. Black spent more than 8 hours talking with Pajcin before his arrest and uncovered damning information he would later use against Pajcin to convince him to cooperate with the authorities. David Markowitz He was the Securities Exchange Commission (S. E. C. ) lawyer in charge of prosecuting David Pajcin and his accomplices. He led the investigation after the Market Surveillance Unit at the S. E. C. caught strange patterns and high volume of options trading the day before the Adidas-Reebok deal would hit the airwaves. When and where did it happen? The insider trading ring conducted their operations between the autumns of 2004 and 2005. In that short period of time Pajcin and Plotkin had devised about 4 schemes that would help them make huge profits in the short term. The main operations where done in New York where the two masterminds lived. However the people involved could be found as close as California and as far as Croatia. Eugene Plotkin’s father (Mikhail Plotkin) who traded on inside information provided by his son was in California. The plant where Business Week was printed was in Wisconsin. The case from which Pajcin got tips from one of the jurors was being heard in New Jersey. The account Pajcin used to trade under his aunt’s name was in Croatia. It was definitely a widespread ring of participants. Pajcin and his partner also had other accounts opened in Austria, Denmark and Germany according to S. E. C complaints. Why did it happen? Both David Pajcin and Eugene Plotkin were very bright and had promising careers in Wall Street. It was the temptation to make grand amounts of money that lured them into the wrong path. They thought they could deal on inside information and not be caught because they were using other people’s names to trade with. In the end their own greed is what called the attention of the government and what brought their operations down. The lack of supervision at the Wisconsin printing plant and at the brokerage companies where the accounts were opened also contributed to this scandal occurring. How can it have been avoided? The main driver for the actions taken by the masterminds was internal. Their will to become rich overnight pushed them into breaking the law. Nobody could have curtailed their desire to make more money at all costs, but the steps they took to make their ill-gotten profits could have likely been spotted and taken care of before they started generating so much money. Having better surveillance at the printing plant where Business Week was being made would have forestalled Shuster and Renteria from stealing copies to later relay the information in them to Pajcin and Plotkin. Knowing that the stocks mentioned in the column ‘Inside Wall Street’ were usually moved by either a good or bad review from the column’s author should have led the managers of that plant to enforce higher levels of surveillance. The brokerage firms where Pajcin and Plotkin had their accounts could have also been more meticulous about their surveillance. It was reported in July 2005 that a customer service representative from Ameritrade got a peculiar call asking to change the restrictions on an account. The account belonged to Monika Vujovic but it was David Pajcin on the other side of the line. The Ameritrade representative recalled there was something odd about that call but unfortunately the account in question went on without being investigated or much less frozen. The company should have at least taken steps to verify the identity of the true owner of the account after getting a call like that. Other ways that might have prevented, or helped prevent, the large-scale insider trading frauds would have been detecting the leak of information from Merrill Lynch (through Stanislav Shpigelman) earlier as well as the leak coming from Jason Smith, the juror in the Bristol-Myers Squibb case. What was the outcome? After the initial S. E. C. complaints against Sonja Anticevic, it was soon clear that the authorities were going to go after David Pajcin. So he fled to the Dominican Republic immediately to avoid getting caught. But even though the S. E. C. did not have the authority to keep him from leaving the country, they did have the authority to freeze his bank accounts. It was not long before Pajcin found himself in need of cash. The prosecutors sent Pajcin an e-mail where they told him the only way to get his money back was by going back to New York to give a deposition. The greed was strong enough in Pajcin to make him go back to the United States. Once there he was interrogated by Scott Black and later arrested for insider trading. He was quickly convinced to cooperate with the authorities to crack down on the remaining ring members. David Pajcin then started working with the S. E. C. to close all the gaps in the case. In the end six people were sentenced on January 2008. The men sentenced were; Jason Smith, Nickolaus Shuster, Juan Renteria Jr. Stanislav Shpigelman, Eugene Plotkin and David Pajcin. For sharing information about upcoming mergers, Shpigelman got 3 years in prison. For insider trading and conspiracy, Eugene Plotkin got 5 years in prison. Pajcin on the other hand, was sentenced to 2 years in prison because of his cooperation but was released the day of the sentencing because by 2008 he had already served 2 years while working with the S. E. C. Civil suits were presented against six other people who were involved in the scheme, including Monika Vujovic and Sonja Anticevic. The case looked closed until November 2008, when it was reported David Pajcin had violated the terms of his 3-year supervised release. Nobody knew where e was, it was presumed he was out of the country, but it was clear he was now going to face additional jail time for failing to report to his probation officer. What can be learned from it? Clearly the lessons from this scandal are the same everyone should have already known from past insider trading scandals. Even though the gains made by this group were not tremendously big, the law and regulators went after it with all the resources available to them. It should be noted that even the smartest and brightest graduates from the best schools in the country can be corrupt. Their careers, trainin g and hard work was so easily thrown away because of a major lapse in judgment. David Pajcin and Eugene Plotkin, as well as those who helped them, are clear examples of the effects of greed on young impressionable minds. ——————————— 0 ——————————— References Anderson, Jenny and Michael J. De La Merced. â€Å"An Insider-Trading Case With a B-Movie Plot. † New York Times. 30 April 2006. 08 November 2009. Gimbel, Barney. â€Å"Partners in Crime. † Fortune. 04 October 2006. 12 November 2009. Glovin, David. â€Å"Ex-Goldman Analyst May Have Fled After Cooperating. † Bloomberg. 04 November 2008. 30 October 2009. â€Å"Where is Fugitive David Pajcin?. † Securities Docket. 13 March 2009. 30 October 2009. â€Å"A Scam Exposed: Strippers and Insider Trading. † American Greed. Video. CNBC, 2009.

Discussion Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 30

Discussion - Coursework Example Through this technique, our company are able to identify costs which are not necessary or not justifiable and enables our company to do something about this thereby improving our financial by reducing unwanted cost. For example, one department cost a lot to operate so our company decided just to outsource the operation because it is cheaper to do so. Our company’s financial statements are able to identify profit centers and helps our top managers to direct the company’s resources to maintain and bolster our revenue. Thus, in developing cash budgets and capital expenditures, the resources that the company I work for allocates is justifiable with the value and revenue it generates for the organization. In sum, the techniques in managerial accounting enables the decision makers in my company to reduce cost by identifying operations and activities whose cost are unjustifiable thereby making our operations more efficient. It also helps our decision makers where to allocate our resources where it could generate the utmost value and revenue for the

Energy Resource Plan Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Energy Resource Plan - Essay Example This fact makes public discourse on the subject all the more important. As a rule, renewable energy sources have many advantages over non-renewable ones. For example, a very widely used energy resources is petroleum. Given the scarcity of this resource, not only is it economically unviable in the long term, but highly malefic to environmental health. The carbon monoxide emissions from automobiles that run on refined petroleum pose serious health consequents to life on earth. On the other hand, tapping energy inherent in natural phenomena is a more prudent way of energy consumption. For example, hydro-electric power generation, wind-mill based energy creation, energy derived from bio-mass, etc. are not only less harsh on the environment, but are sustainable in the long term too. There are many ways in which each of us can help conserve energy. A simple example would be car-pooling and using public transportation for most commuting purposes. This would cut down on the amount of energy consumed by the community. Secondly, significant reduction in energy consumption could be achieved by adopting scientific approaches to building houses, especially in regard to heating and cooling systems. Also, all energy run appliances in the house like the air-conditioners, washing machines, refrigerators, etc., can all be made more energy efficient by applying a few basic conservation principles. In light of growing concerns regarding depletion of energy resources and their negative impact on environment and health, the government’s role has become a very important one. Unless strict regulations are imposed on industries and other commercial enterprises, this trend cannot be stopped let alone reversed. Governments can set up dedicated agencies to study industry trends so that regulations can be imposed at an early stage. Government can fund independent/industry research units to come