Sympathy for the Devil Essay Example for Free

Sympathy for the Devil Essay The first thing that I noticed when I heard this song is how different it is from almost every other song that I have heard. The instruments used seem odd for The Rolling Stones, and rock songs in general. It starts off with a combination of drums and maracas, sounding like Brazilian samba music. Usually rock music has a 4/4 backbeat with a bass drum, but this song does not contain that attribute. There is no rhythm guitar but instead an electric bass and piano is used. The bass guitar is used to replace the rhythm guitar, lead guitarist Keith Richards also plays it, and so this may explain this. I’m going to start off by discussing the lyrics of the song and what they are about. I noticed that one of the lines â€Å"every cop is a criminal, and all the sinners saints† seems to suggest that the devil isn’t that bad, and that all people have some devil in them. There seems to be confusion of good and evil. The devil is portrayed as â€Å"a man of wealth and taste† and polite as well by greeting using â€Å"let me please introduce myself.† Another line, â€Å"hope you guess my name, but what’s puzzling is the nature of my game† intrigued me. This line is not the songwriter saying that I hope you guess that its me playing the devil, it means that the devil is saying I hope you can recognize me because I may be in disguise and I don’t do evil myself, I trick people into doing it for me. The difference between good and evil is a continuing theme throughout the song. Jesus Christ in mentioned and the devil says that he â€Å"stolen many a mans soul and faith.† The songwriter is not arguing Christian doctrine, he is using the devil as a symbol of how it works in the world and that we need to have our guards up because evil will be disguised and may not appear as obvious to us. This was analyzed from the lines â€Å"I watched with glee, while your kings and queens fought for ten decades for the gods they made.† Now I will discuss the music, the different sections, and how they evolve throughout the song. The track begins with a beat on one drum, and then congas are added as accents to the last beats of the line. Other instruments join in and it sounds like a jungle beat with Jagger howling in the background like a wolf, giving the impression of being in a dark jungle. As the beat continues, piano is introduced with a slow series of chords. This is when Jagger beings by singing: â€Å"please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste.† After the first four lines bass starts and it builds on the drum mix still going on in the background. The bass makes the song sound angry, and the bass doesn’t play a repetitive riff it seems to be improvised or played randomly. The first verse and chorus end with the pianist playing at an even pace, but when the second verse begins he starts playing faster and more frantic. The sound of the instruments matches the lyrics of the song, singing about overthrowing government and the blitzkrieg. At the third verse we can hear background vocals singing at the end of each line. These vocals add an eerie sound to the rhythmic instruments, and Jagger’s voice begins to crack on every word. The fourth verse is a guitar solo by Keith Richards and is not really following the beat. He goes from note to note, sliding his fingers across the strings, producing a noticeable sound and then a note is held for several beats. The guitar represents the character that is portrayed in the lyrics, unpredictable. After the guitar solo we hear the chorus, followed by another verse and the chorus again. All of the instruments are played together now and it all seems to be improvised, with no recognizable rhythm. The guitar and vocals play off each other nicely and then Jagger says: â€Å"can you guess my name?† referring to the devil. Finally the song fades away to an end. When I watched a live video of The Rolling Stones performing this song I noticed how into it the whole crowd was. â€Å"Sympathy For The Devil† is sort of like an anti-war anthem for people. The whole stage was lit up in red with lights and there was fog on the stage as well to add more emotion to the song. In 2003, The Stones released this as a maxi-single, with 4 versions of the song. The original was there, as well as remixes by The Neptunes, Fatboy Slim, and Full Phatt. The industrial band Laibach released an entire album containing different covers of this song. The character and tone of the covers are largely very different from the Stones’ version. In the opening track the lead singer sings/shouts in a very deep bass voice with a thick Slavic accent. One of their covers contains references to the violence at the Altamont raceway. In 1969 a fan was fatally stabbed during a performance of this song and they didn’t play it live for 7 years because of this.

Placebo Effect :: essays research papers

The Placebo Effect   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The activity I chose to write about was on Dr. Walter A. Brown’s article in Scientific American about placebos and their effect on the patients. His article described what a placebo is and if it is ethical for doctors to prescribe this “treatment'; to their patients.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Dr. Brown, who is a psychologist at Brown University, decided to do a study on the effects of a placebo. A placebo is any treatment or drug with no medicinal value that is given to a patient to relieve symptoms of an ailment. His hypothesis in the article focused on if the placebos had any effect on the patients who took them.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  To test his hypothesis, Dr. Brown and his colleagues performed experiments on patients who had depression. To test his idea, he employed what is known as the “double blind technique.'; This type of experimentation involves that neither the doctors nor the patients know if they are receiving the real “stuff'; or simply sugar pills (placebos). Only the experimenters know who gets what. What this supposedly does is that the patient will mentally think that the doctor is giving him/her the real drug and they will soon be feeling better. When in reality, it is themselves, not the medicine, which makes them feel better. These are the findings of Dr. Brown.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In his experiments on the placebos, he found that the placebo can make a person feel better, but it can also have no effect what-so-ever. In his study of the depressed patients, about 50% of the subjects with normal levels of cortisone benefited from the placebo, whereas, only about 35% of the depressed patients benefited from the drug. This led Dr. Brown to realize that there are other factors in treating depression. He found that the persons with short-term depression responded more favorably to the placebo than those with long-term depression.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Other doctors also performed “placebo experiments'; to realize if it really works. One example would be of the experiments led by Edmunds G. Diamond of the University of Kansas Medical Center in the 1950’s. His research involved the surgery to treat angina pectoris. He had a set of 18 patients suffering from this ailment have common surgery to relieve this symptom. In 13 of the patients, the doctors actually performed the operation, however in the other five, all they did was make an incision in the chest and sew it back up.

The Silver Linings Playbook Chapter 11

Filled with Molten Lava The picture I have of Nikki is a head shot, and I wish I had told her how much I liked it. She paid a professional photographer to take the photo, and she actually had her hair and makeup done at the local salon before going to the shoot; plus she also went to the tanning booths the week before the picture was taken, since my birthday is in late December and the picture was my twenty-eighth-birthday present. Nikki's head is turned so you see more of her left cheek than you do her right, which is outlined by her strawberry blond curly hair. You can see her left ear, and she is wearing the dangling diamond earrings I gave her for our first wedding anniversary. She had gone to the tanning booths just to bring out the freckles on her nose, which I love and miss every winter. You can see the little freckles clearly in the shot, and Nikki said this was the main idea and she even told the photographer to make the freckles the focal point because I love her seasonal freckles best. Her face is sort of like an upside-down triangle, as her chin is sort of pointy. Her nose is like the nose of a lioness, long and regal-looking, and her eyes are the color of grass. In the picture she is making that pouting face I love – not quite a smile, not quite a smirk – and her lips are so glossy that I can't resist kissing the picture every time I look at it. So I kiss the picture again, feeling the cold flatness of the glass, leaving a kiss-shaped smudge, which I wipe away with my shirt. â€Å"God, I miss you so much, Nikki,† I say, but the picture is silent, like always. â€Å"I'm sorry that I did not originally like this picture, because you would not believe how much I like it now. I know that I told you this was not such a great present, back before I started practicing being kind rather than right. Yes, I had specifically asked for a new barbecue, but I'm glad that I have the picture now, because it helped me get through all that time in the bad place and made me want to be a better person, and I'm changed now, so I not only realize but appreciate that you put a lot of thought and effort into this present. It's the only likeness I have of you since some bad person stole all the pictures of us that were in my mother's house – because the pictures were in expensive frames, and – â€Å" Suddenly, for some reason, I remember that there's a video of our wedding, and in this video Nikki is walking and dancing and speaking, and there's even this one part where Nikki talks directly into the camera as if she were talking to me, and she says, â€Å"I love you, Pat Peoples, you sexy stud muffin,† which made me laugh so hard the first time we watched the video with her parents. I knock on my parents' bedroom door, and then I knock again. â€Å"Pat?† my mom says. â€Å"I have to work in the morning, you know?† my father says, but I ignore him. â€Å"Mom?† I say to the door. â€Å"What is it?† â€Å"Where's my wedding video?† There is a silence. â€Å"You remember my wedding video, right?† Still, she does not say anything. â€Å"Is it in the cardboard box in the family-room closet with all the other videos?† Through the door I hear her and my father whispering, and then my mother says, â€Å"I think we gave you our copy of the video, honey. It must be in your old house. Sorry.† â€Å"What? No, it's downstairs in the family-room closet. Never mind, I'll find it myself. Good night,† I say, but when I get to the family-room closet and go through the box of videos, it's not there. I turn around and see that my mother has followed me down into the family room. She is in her nightgown. She is biting her nails. â€Å"Where is it?† â€Å"We gave it to – â€Å" â€Å"Don't lie to me!† â€Å"We must have misplaced it, but it's sure to turn up sooner or later.† â€Å"Misplaced it? It's irreplaceable!† It's just a videocassette, but I can't help feeling angry, which I realize is one of my problems. â€Å"How could you lose it when you know how important it is to me? How?† â€Å"Calm down, Pat.† My mother raises her palms so they are both in front of her chest and then takes a careful step toward me, as if she is trying to sneak up on a rabid dog. â€Å"Relax, Pat. Just relax.† But I can feel myself getting more and more angry, so before I say or do anything dumb, I remember that I am close to being sent back to the bad place, where Nikki will never find me. I storm past my mother, go down into the basement, and do five hundred sit-ups on the Stomach Master 6000. When I finish, I am still angry, so I ride the stationary bike for forty-five minutes and then do shots of water until I feel hydrated enough to attempt five hundred push-ups. Only when my pecs feel like they are filled with molten lava do I deem myself calm enough to sleep. When I go upstairs, all is quiet and no light is leaking out from under my parents' bedroom door, so I grab my framed picture of Nikki, take her upstairs to the attic, turn off the ventilation fan, slip into my sleeping bag, set up Nikki next to my head, kiss her good night – and then begin to sweat away some more pounds. I haven't been up in the attic since the last time Kenny G visited me. I am afraid he will come back, but I also feel sort of fat. I close my eyes, hum a single note, silently count to ten over and over again, and the next morning I wake up unscathed.

Global Health Disparities Free Essay Example, 3000 words

Health officials, as well as relevant Civil Society Organizations (CSO s), are at the center of providing social empowerment especially in fragile states that have an arrested development (Commins, 2010). In that light, Health officials can come up with processes that contribute to social mobilization, finance mechanisms that boost community participation as well as devise various strategies pertaining in law, communication, the organization itself as well as in media that make it accountable for actions partaken by them. On the other hand, the civil society can offer liaison with the relevant leaders nationally or internationally in a bid to enhance political support for social action. CSO s can also ensure that they wipe out inequalities in health care and they also offer oversight to Health systems. CSO s are also tasked with the creation of capacity for societies so that they can be able to take part in the rather bureaucratic processes in health care. Creation of universal co verage is yet the other element of strengthening Health systems (Save the Children, 2012). Therefore, there should be the mobilization of more resources so as to fund health services through taxation and ensuring that corruption in handling such finances is eliminated. In a bid to achieve a universal coverage, user fees ought to be minimized to ensure that services are cost-effective. We will write a custom essay sample on Global Health Disparities or any topic specifically for you Only $17.96 $11.86/page