Where our food is grown Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Where our food is grown - Essay Example There are many types of farm produce that are gotten from the markets or even the local grocery stores,these farm produce are either fresh fruits or vegetables.Vegetables and fresh fruits should always take up the largest part of healthy foods in a grocery list as they have vitamins,antioxidants, minerals and most of all they are generally low in calories. Some of these produce items include; Fresh vegetables & fruits Place of origin Potatoes Place of origin is south of Peru and the northeast of Bolivia. Peppers South central Bolivia. Peas Originates either from Northern India, Burma & N. Thailand. Lettuce Originates from lactuca serriolla found in the Mediterranean, Europe and Near East (Persia). Broccoli Northern European coast. Kales Greece Bananas Southeast Asia Grapes Germany Tomato Peru Apple Caucasus mountains of Asia Pears Europe Pineapple Paraguay Cabbages Serbia Table 1: Types of farm produces identified in the market In the United States, although many types of farm produc e are found, as they are great farmers and they produce a lot, there is still evidence of an unsatisfied demand. Even with the organic farming option, (the agricultural production system that is used mainly for the production or produce of fiber and food), the demand for fresh vegetables and fruits exceeds the supply, hence the dependence on imported food stuff (see table 1). All agricultural products (examples include: grains, fibers and flowers), are generally produced organically in the US but still more is imported from outside the US. Some of the farm produce that are found in the United States include: rice (produced for over 300 years and has three different types and they include: javanica, indica and japonica), oat (also known as Avena sativa), wheat (Triticum aestivum), oranges and tangerines. Others include: grapefruit, soybean, lemons, watermelons, bananas, limes, peanut, apples, sorghum, cotton, hay, strawberries, mangoes, peaches, plums, nectarines and corn (grain) (Ha ggett, 154). Produce that are traded by the united states to other countries The United States trade various produce with other countries; some of these products include: rice, wheat, grains, cotton, barley, tobacco, corn and soybean with the main export being cereal products. Importance of trade between states Interstate trade allows traders to interact more without barriers while ensuring that shortages in one state are met by the surplus in another state. It leads to controlled prices and because of the buffer it creates through the variety of products it avails in the markets to meet the demand in those markets. Other than meeting the demand, the trade will increase revenue collection in source countries which in itself motivates the suppliers to produce more for the export market. Since it is very hard for countries to depend on their own produce and services alone, interstate trade exploits the variety in human, natural, capital resources and extremely different techniques in other states thus making them equally capable of availing a variety of goods on demand by the local populace. Importance of global food trade Global food trade is important as countries do not generally have the major resources more so the capacity to generate the good amount of food that is needed by the citizens in a given country. Products cannot be produced everywhere as climate changes do differ between different countries and areas of states hence without the global food trade many countries will be deprived of various goods as they cannot produce them (without the global food trade people will just get the food indigenous that are available in their countries only). U.S. survival without global food trade The fact that the United States produces most food surplus does not mean that it can survive without the global food trade. The United States would not survive without the global food trade as it mostly depends on the money produced through the trade. It needs to trade with other count

Macroeconomics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Macroeconomics - Essay Example The level of GDP increased from trough to peak by around 10.2 percent between the year 1981 and 1988, which states that the recovery was strong after the recession. Also after the 1990’s recession there was a sharp increase in GDP growth level. However it is evident that there is a long recovery period after the 2008 global financial crises of UK’s economy. When compared the recovery from all recession periods, it is evident from Figure 2 from the case that recovery from 2008 recession has been protracted and has the deepest fall in GDP growth levels in the year of 2008 recession. The period of Great Moderation that lasted from 1993 to 2007 was faced with smooth growth, low unemployment and low inflation. During this period economy grew to around 5 percent until it was faced with recession in 2008. There are a number of factors that can be attributed to a fall in UK’s saving ratio between 1993 and 2008.It is visible from figure 15 from the case that saving ratio fell to lowest 1.7 percent by the end of 2007.The graph also denotes fall in saving ratio over the years 1993 to 2008. Interest rate in the UK’s economy was low from 1993 that further fell to 3 % in 2003 as seen from figure 12 from the case. This meant that credit was easily available to borrowers at a cheaper cost and savers were not ready to delay consumption and instead save for lower return on savings. Low interest rates and low inflation acted as a disincentive to save. At same time housing prices were rising, which leads to wealth affect and people were ready to borrow and spend more. This wealth effect made people more confident to spend as they knew that value of their property was rising. This is could be seen in figure 13 where there is a sharp rise in average UK housing prices from 1993 to 2007, more than tripling over the 15 year period (Tejvan, 2008). Easily available credit during this period had encouraged more

Plant Growing Lamp Presentation Essay Example for Free

Plant Growing Lamp Presentation Essay Good morning, everybody. Thank you for coming to my short presentation today. Let me introduce myself first. I’m Chris Wong, a medical assistant of Willis Health Centre. I’m very glad today to present to you our team’s proposed product, Dino, a plant growing lamp. My presentation will be covered into three parts. I’ll, first of all, introduce to you the background information about our environment. Next, I’ll explain our proposed product, Dino. Finally, I’ll outline some problems that our team concerned about. Afterwards, there will be a question and answer session. Right, let me start with the background about our environment. In fewer years, do you feel the weather is unexpected? Do you think this is terrible? Do you know why? Let me talk you. Nowadays, human do lots of things to damage our environment is caused the bigger problem, global warming. That why the weather is unexpected. They use lots to things to release the greenhouse gas. It is global issue because the effects are very important. That why we developed this plant growing lamp. Fine, I’ll now explain our proposed Dino. To start with, let’s look at the aesthetic value. This lamp can come with different pattern and color. Most important is it will have some seed inside the lamp. You can choose the pattern and color to match your home design and your home will be more modern. After the plant grows up, it also can offer fresh air. You will have a wonderful environment in the house because it can be a pretty decoration. Now, let’s turn to the user’s needs. The lamp has deep penetrating infrared light. Do you feel tired after a whole working? It can help you to relief pain and stimulate blood circulation. You feel more relax after using Dino. It really can bring you a health benefits. So much for the user’s need and the aesthetic. Let’s now look at the benefits for our company image. As you know, our company directions are focusing on health and environment. I think the health benefits of the user are already to promote our images. For the environment, the lamp is using a bio-degradable material. It is less damaged to our environment and it is very eco-friendly since Dino is also using the recyclable material.

Diet and Nutrition Case Study

Diet and Nutrition Case Study Warda Abdulkadir Ahmed Diet and Digestion TAQ 1) 3 day meal plan for pregnant mother This meal plan for an expectant mother was designed as firstly the calorie intake required daily is increased to supply the placenta and growing baby the required energy to grow healthily. An estimated 300 more calories in the second and third trimesters. I have chosen foods high in iron and folic acid as these are needed in abundance by both mother and baby. A pregnant woman needs 60mg of protein and 1200mg of calcium I have sought to incorporate this through lean servings of meat and fish daily as well as porridge oats with milk. Three day meal plan for elderly male patient Nutrition is an important determinant of health in an elderly person. I chose this meal plan as the meals are low in fat, refined sugar and sodium, and high in essential nutrients such as fibre, vitamins and minerals. Following this meal plan helps the individual avoid gout, stroke, high blood pressure, heart disease arthritis, cancer, respiratory disorders, and difficulty in passing stools, obesity and type 2 diabetes. One major concern in an elderly person is obtaining sufficient fluid intake. 3 day meal plan for Teenage Athlete Case in point average height and weight of 17 year old male to be 5’10 and 10 stones/63 kg – This body mass index falls in the 50th percentile of the mean average Taking into account average male calorific requirement (2500 calories), this is to be exceeded by around 35 – 65 % based on exceeded average energy expenditure for athletic performance/training as well as a general faster metabolic rate for a teenage male opposed to a mature male. The meal plan incorporates 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day and a higher than average protein content mostly made up of chicken and fish and only one portion of red meat as to reach the protein threshold from a higher proportion of red meat is deemed generally as unhealthy, causing over a long period higher blood pressure and increased risk of stomach and bowel cancer. Due to the athletic activities to be undertaken there is an emphasis on consuming fluids and an excess and varied selection of carbohydrates is consumed daily. The diet is low in saturated fat and sugar TAQ 2) Type 2 diabetes can result from an inadequate diet, an inadequate diet can be defined as a deficiency, and a deficiency can be too great or too little of one specific food group in a healthy diet. Too much sugar in a person’s diet is a major factor in contributing to the development of type 2 diabetes. Specifically sucrose, sucrose and sugar are not actually required by the body so their consumption can be deemed as a deficiency in itself. Furthermore the excess consumption of sugar can lead to an increase in weight and obesity which in turn increases the likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes. Higher than normal blood glucose levels cumulatively over a long period leads to insulin resistance. Atherosclerosis, the clogging of the arteries can be a secondary effect of having type 2 diabetes but in most cases is caused by too high a fat content in one’s diet, more specifically consuming too much saturated fat often found in processed foods and a lack of unsaturated fats with high density lipids and beneficial cholesterol lowering effect on the body. A diet with a frequency of fruit and vegetables has a negating effect as well as oily fish, nuts and seeds, sunflower and seed oils. Rickets is usually caused by a lack of vitamin D and/or calcium. Physiologically most of our vitamin D comes from sunlight not our food and the process of calcium absorption is very dependent on vitamin D levels in the body. However we do garner some vitamin D from food. Eggs, oily fish and cereals are all good sources of vitamin D and deficiencies in these food types regardless of UV exposure could contribute to the onset of rickets. Milk and other dairy products have the highest calcium content and a lack of dairy as well as green vegetables such as broccoli and cabbage can have a detrimental effect on calcium uptake in the body. TAQ 3) Digestion is necessary as it breaks down the size of food to make digestion a more efficient process food is broken down into smaller constituent parts so the surface area for the active sites for enzymes to occur increases. Proteins are broken down into peptides, which are then broken down into single amino acids that allow absorption into the bloodstream through the small intestine. Absorption occurs when the food enters the body as the food molecules pass through a layer of cells and into the bodies’ tissues. This occurs in the small intestine which has many villi that are specialised for absorption. Assimilation occurs when the food molecules becomes part of the bodies tissue. b) TAQ 5) The digestive tract, consisting of the stomach, small and large intestines. The stomach is made of three layers of smooth muscle fibres, an outer layer of longitudinal fibres middle layer of circular fibres and an inner layer of oblique muscle fibres. This arrangement allows for the churning effect of gastric activity. When the stomach is empty the mucous membrane lining is thrown into folds or rugae when the stomach has contents these folds are ironed out.Numerous gastric glands are situated below the surface in the mucuous membrane. The small intestine also has layers,the peritoneum is a double layer and connects the jejunum and ileum to the abdominal wall.The attatchment is short and fan shaped,large blood vessels and nerves pass between the two layers.Their is also a mucousa present here it contains villi and microvill it has a large surface area and many folds.Their are circular folds which act to mix chyme,the villi in this mucousal layer contibute to final stages of digestion.There are also lymph nodes within the mucousa which release defense cells against ingested antigens. The large intestine also has a mucosa ; made of simple columnar epithelial tissue. The mucosa is smooth, unlike the small intestine lacks villi however it does have a large number of mucous glands secreting mucus into the hollow lumen as to lubricate the surface of the large intestine and protect it from rough food particles. Surrounding the mucosa is a layer of blood vessels, nerves and connective tissue, the submucosa, which is there to support the other layers of the large intestine. The muscularis layer surrounds the submucosa and contains many layers of visceral muscle cells that contract and move the large intestine. Finally, the serosa forms the outermost layer. The serosa is a thin layer of simple squamous epithelial tissue that secretes watery serous fluid to lubricate the surface of the large intestine. protecting it from friction between abdominal organs and the surrounding muscles and bones of the lower torso. References Gerard J. Tortola, Mark Nielsen Principles of Human Anatomy, 13th Edition December 2013 2014 http://www.valuepenguin.com/nutrition. Last accessed 10/03/2015 John Evans, Alison Lansley and Michael J. Sanderson, (2006), Biology A level Richard Parsons (2010) AS/A2 Level Biology AQA Complete Revision Practice Smith, A. (2012). Get instant biology help. Available: http://www.tutorvista.com/biology/ Last accessed 05/03/2015 Waugh, Anne and Grant, Allison (2006) Ross and Wilson: Anatomy and physiology in health and illness. (10th edition). Churchill Livingstone, Edinburgh.

Babettes Feast Essay -- essays papers

Babettes Feast I believe that everything happens for a reason. Happen, and happen at certain times for a reason also. The movie, Babette’s Feast, helped confirm my beliefs. This movie started out focused on Martina and Phillipa with their father, the pastor. The movie quickly shows his silent dominance over his two daughters. He keeps them under his wings until the day he dies, and then even after that they continue to live in his shadow. Everything he preached is believed and followed by them and members of their community. The father taught them that â€Å"the only thing which we may take with us from our life on earth are those things which we have given away.† Because of their father, the two devoted their lives to carrying on his preaching and his kindness towards the other followers. So instead of marrying, they decided to devote their lives to God and to their late father. By doing this they would take away from earth exactly what they gave while on earth. Their dedication to their father and the church made them underestimate the power of love and marriage. It’s not like these women did not have chances to marry, or take different courses in their lives. Martina was extremely beautiful and caught the eye of every young man, but the sternness of her father, and her own aloofness kept them from pursuing her. A prime example would be, Lorens Loewenhielm, the officer who met her via his rich older aunt. Martina was very interested in him, but never gave him any encouragement. Phillipa was blessed with â€Å"the voice of an angel,† while singing in church she caught the eye/ear of world renowned French tenor Achille Papin. Not only does he fall in love with her, he wanted to make her into a star in France. Yet again, a suitor is rebuffed by the daughters. In both cases the daughters did not openly reject their suitors, instead they were aloof and acted uninterested. In the case of Phillipa she asked her father to inform Papin that she no longer wanted to take music lessons from him. There is no clear reason why they turned down all their suitors. Though there are many possible reasons. The girls may not have found the men attractive and suitable to settle down with, maybe they just weren’t interested in men, perhaps their true calling was God and helping others, though it could possibly be because their father had told them never to marry. He ... ...a seductive love affair that no one who tasted the food was immune to its powers. They all became part of the food. There was so much power in the food it healed rifts in the community that had been there for years. Though it may have seemed random that Babette showed up on the sisters doorstep on a stormy night, armed with a letter from Phillipa’s old beau. It really wasn’t, Babette was a necessary part of their lives. Because everything happens for a reason, Babette came to live with the sisters for a reason. During the time Babette came to Jutland the community was in shambles. After the loss of the pastor faith had begun to dwindle. Though Babette was often a silent attribute she in fact was very powerful in all their lives. She may not have verbally preached to the community, but her food had a message that connected them all. Babette came to Jutland to escape from the war in France. but her presence was much more important than just a housemaid, she also helped the sisters with their charity work. More importantly, she came there to help reunite the community. That was her role in life. To create beautiful meals, and help that poor community in rural Denmark.

Gender in Society as portrayed in Mary Wollstonecrafts A Vindication o

In this essay I am going to show you how things like education, job and relationship between men and women have changed and things like support are still the same since Mary Wollstonecraft and D. H. Lawrence write about them. In the essay 'A Vindication of the Right of Woman' by Mary Wollstonecraft, the author urges women to reject their conventional image of weakness. Mary Wollstonecraft uses her style of diction to convince the reader of her ideas. D. H. Lawrence, in his essay, 'Give Her a Pattern' sketches some of the patterns imposed on women by men from eighteen to 21st century. Wollstonecraft and Lawrence, they both write about the positions of men and women in society in their respective times. Wollstonecraft writes in Victorian Age and Lawrence writes in late eighteenth, early ninetieth century. But if these two writers could rise from the dead and go to see a movie or watch a television show today, they would definitely see evidence that some of their ideas about society ha ve changed such as career options, while few others such as the idea of ?the woman behind man? have remained the same. According to Lawrence, women are trying to live up to men?s expectations of what a woman is. He writes that, the eternal secret ideal of men [is] the prostitute? (D. H. Lawrence 182). The author could see his thoughts reflected in the movie ?Pretty Woman?. In this film, he can see how a man treats a woman by buying her nice clothes and doing things for her all the time. But actually it?s not for her, it is for his own pleasure. This ?gifts? and actions satisfy his needs to be with a woman that is not going to fall in love with him. Lawrence can see all of his ideas about the modern man who doesn?t know what he wants a... ...he world. This show is all about how single women can be high in society without men. They have good jobs and a lot of money. There are lots of women like them in this modern society. If she watched that television show, she will realize that women are capable of living without men. Our generation has been changed in different ways, but there are still some things that do not change over time. Those things are the same as Wollstonecraft and Lawrence thoughts. Some of them like career options, which includes job and education have changed a lot more and probably will keep changing in the future, too. They are changing in good way and in a way woman can be proud and live equal to men. I believe that those things staying the same, such as what the men expect the woman to be and to produce the best ideal of her, may remain in this order many centuries after this one.

Cyberpunk and Science Fiction Essay

Cyberpunk and Science Fiction in the Information Age Cyberpunk science fiction is considered to be the â€Å"literary manifestation of postmodernism† (Elements149). According to McHale, as a sub-genre of science fiction, cyberpunk stands as the product of the convergence between â€Å"science fiction poetics and postmodernist poetics† (Elements 149). In Constructing Postmodernism, McHale states â€Å"cyberpunk†¦as science fiction derives certain of its elements from postmodern mainstream fiction which itself has†¦already been ‘science-fictionized’ to some greater or lesser degree† (229). The correlation of cyberpunk and postmodernism however is not limited to the existence of cyberpunk as a coagulation of the different factors within science fiction tales. Postmodernism, as a school of thought and as a movement in the different arts, may be characterized by its â€Å"incredulity toward metanarratives† (Lyotard xxiv). Metanarratives refer to the â€Å"‘grand narratives’ or stories that go to legitimize particular practices† (Warren and Warren 78). In the same manner that postmodernism debunks the idea of grand narratives, cyberpunk debunks such grand narratives by placing emphasis on the construction of a separate individual reality within the sphere of cyberspace. Works considered as a part of the sub-genre of cyberpunk are named as such due to their focus on â€Å"technological revolution and its social and psychological implications†¦on online publication† (Stierstorfer 109). The correlation between cyberpunk and postmodernism may thereby be traced to the existence of various worlds within cyberspace presented within cyberpunk texts. It is important to note that the importance of cyberspace is attributed to the space that it provides the individual user for the creation of fictional production. Cyberspace, within these works, stand as a space which is in continuous creation. The creation is determined by each individual and hence it provides the individual with both the freedom and the power to create and determine the worlds created by other individuals within the cyberspace. Within the aforementioned context, reality stands as an individual construction determined by a set of rules for how such a creation may occur. These rules however are not moral rules but merely substantive rules. In a sense, one may thereby state that ‘reality’ within these texts is in continuous flux since what is ‘real’ is determined by one’s point of view, one’s perspective of the world. The act of reading these texts are in a sense determined by the sequence in which these texts are presented however within the context of the assumptions of reality within the text it is possible to imagine a space wherein all acts do not merely interact or collide but occur at the same time since cyberspace is a boundless space and such is the world presented by the texts within the genre of cyberpunk fiction. In line with this, what follows is a discussion of William Gibson’s Neuromancer and Spook Country and Stanislaw Lem’s Imaginary Magnitudes. Online communication creates a space of social contact out of intertextual materials that may end up relying on the very conventional social narratives that many participants hope to escape. These hidden conventional structures within social interaction are the subject of the novel that gave us the term ‘cyberspace’ that being William Gibson’s Neuromancer. A discussion of Gibson’s novel not only provides a glimpse of the very different understanding of identity that results from this intertextuality but also suggests how best to negotiate these narratives. At the most general level Neuromancer is the story of Case’s quest to be re-integrated with cyberspace and the information that it possesses. The story opens with Case’s nervous system intentionally harmed in subtle ways by a past employer so that he is unable to access cyberspace and perform his past role as a ‘cowboy’ who infiltrates computer networks and steals information. Case is mysteriously offered surgery to repair his system if he participates in a complicated scheme to free an artificial intelligence named Wintermute from the limitations placed on it by its creator. Gibson describes Case’s experience of cyberspace in terms of the pleasure of reintegration. The experience is described in the following manner. Found the ridged face of the power stud. And in the bloodlit dark behind his eyes, silver phosphenes boiling in from the edge of space, hypnagogic images jerking past like film compiled from random frames. Symbols, figures, faces, a blurred, fragmented mandala of visual information. Please, he prayed, now†¦Expanding- And flowed, flowering for him, fluid neon origami trick, the unfolding of his distanceless home, his country, transparent 3D chessboard extending to infinity†¦And somewhere he was laughing, in a white-painted loft, distant fingers caressing the deck, tears of release streaking his face. (Neuromancer 52) In the aforementioned passage, Case’s movement into cyberspace is a kind of homecoming that brings him back into contact with a network of human information. Given the lyrical tone of this passage, it is not surprising that interpreters of Neuromancer have concluded that the connection to networks of human information that Case pursues is a uniformly positive thing. Cyberspace subculture frequently takes the disembodied integration into electronic information systems quite literally as a next stage in human evolution. Rather than asserting the value of social integration for its own sake, this story treats such connections as merely showing the protection and evolution of individuals. The links between individuals are similarly ambivalent in Neuromancer. Probably the novel’s clearest statement of the ambivalence of social connection comes late in the novel when Case reflects on his involvement with unseen ‘bosses’. Case has been hired by the mysterious Armitage, who turns out to work for Wintermute. As Case realizes the degree to which Armitage is a puppet or even a construction of Wintermute, he reflects on his involvement with larger political and social powers. It goes in the following manner, Case had always taken it for granted that the real bosses, the kingpins in a given industry, would be more and less than people†¦He’d always imagined it as a gradual and willing accommodation of the machine, the system, the parent organism. It was the root of street cool, too, the knowing posture that implied connection, invisible lines up to hidden levels of influence. (Neuromancer 203) Case’s reflections about the nature of social connection suggest both its positive and negative qualities from the perspective of the individual. Positively, these connections position the individual as a kind of parasite within the ‘parent organism’, sheltering the individual who may not share the goals of the larger system to which he or she belongs. Within this context, one might perceive individuals as pieces of a larger puzzle whose form is partially known but whose image is only available through the different vantage points available to different individuals. Such vantage points however are only accessible or can only be known to one individual unless it is penetrated and in a sense controlled by another one. Knowledge within this space is thereby continually in flux as a result of the power struggles of the entities within it. Imagining people as ‘assemblages’ whose subjectivity is constructed from sources of which they are rarely aware and whose elements do not necessarily cohere certainly seems unappealing at first glimpse since it works against traditional ideas of self-consciousness and personal coherence. However, Neuromancer also suggests that much more dangerous than this disunified subjectivity is the attempt to deny multiplicity and to hide behind some apparent unity. Precisely this tension between unity and incoherence is at issue. One might state that cyberdiscourse enables individuals to raise their consciousness about their own identity however it is also possible to state that it is nothing more than an intertextual concoction of mass media cliches and stereotypes. Gibson’s other novel Spook Country also raises these issues. Spook Country stands as a continuation of Pattern Recognition. As opposed to the futuristic setting of Neuromancer, the later novel is set within the current century. It presents the story of a former rock singer named Hollis Henry who turned into a freelancer researching about locative art for Node magazine. In the process of the research, Hollis discovers that locative art is an art form that combines virtual reality with GPRS technology. As a result of this combination, an individual is able to replicate the events occurring within a particular place thereby allowing the spectator of the artwork to participate within a different reality. This is evident in the following passage from Spook Country. As Hollis and Chombo discuss locative art, they specify the experience that one may achieve in it. They state We’re all doing VR, every time we look at a screen. We have been for decades now†¦VR was an even more specific way we had of telling us where we were going. Without scaring us too much, right? The locative, though, lots of us are already doing it. But you can’t just do the locative with your nervous system. One day, you will. We’ll have internalized the interface. It’ll have evolved to the point where we forget about it. Then you’ll just walk down the street†¦ (Spook 65). In the aforementioned excerpt, one sees the tension between unity and coherence not only in the definition and specification of reality as a result of technological innovations but also the tension that it creates in the process of determining individual identity. This tension is apparent if one considers that an individual’s conception of the ‘self’ is partially dependent upon his surrounding environment. Within the virtual space of locative art, one may thereby create and in a sense develop one’s own space separate but at the same time placed within the sphere of immediate reality. The tension brought about by the existence of the various possibilities of reality within these cyberpunk texts is also evident in Stanislaw Lem’s Imaginary Magnitude. Lem’s Imaginary Magnitude is composed of different introductions and prefaces to non-existent books. The various texts serve satirize the current trends and movements within literature and the other arts. An example of this is evident in the following passage. He states, In an extreme instance, in which there is a Propervirt of less than 0. 9%, the TEXT OF THE PRESENT PROSPECTUS may likewise undergo an ABRUPT change. If, while you are reading these sentences, the words begin to jump about, and the letters quiver and blur, please interrupt your reading for ten or twenty seconds to wipe your glasses, adjust your clothing, or the like, and then start reading AGAIN from the beginning, and NOT JUST from the place where your reading was interrupted, since such a TRANSFORMATION indicates that a correction of DEFICIENCIES is now taking place. (Lem 86) The aforementioned passage may be seen as alluding to a period in the future when it is possible for human beings to directly interact with their reading material. In another context, one might also see it as a parody of the impositions regarding the proper position and manner that individuals ought to read texts. Either way, the book in itself as well as its content of imaginary texts presents the reader with yet another conception of reality that allows the fluidity of experience. Within the aforementioned contexts, one considers how one is to understand the concept of reality, self, and knowledge within the context of cyberpunk science fiction. Within this genre, one sees reality, the self, and knowledge in itself as continuously in flux. Within a text which creates worlds determined by intertextuality, the process of reading the text becomes an act of recognizing the interrelation of its parts to the extent that one is willing to recognize that the events within it and in a sense the realities within it may all occur within the same time and space. Works Cited Gibson, William. Neuromancer. Np: Ace Books,1984. ___. Spook Country. Np: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2007. Lem, Stanislaw. Imaginary Magnitudes. Michigan: U of Michigan, 1984. Lyotard, Jean Francois. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minnesota: U of Minnesota P, 1984. McHale, Brian. Constructing Postmodernism. London: Routledge, 1992. ___. â€Å"Elements of a Poetics of Cyberpunk. † Critique 33. 3 (Spring 1992): 149-75. Warren, William and Bill Warren. Philosophical Dimensions of Personal Construct Psychology. London: Routledge, 1998. Stierstorfer, Klaus. Beyond Postmodernism: Reassessments in Literature, Theory, and Culture. Np: Walter de Gruvter, 2003.