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l | After a major exposure by media outlets of these classified operations, the government spearheaded a bill that would allow ‘retroactive immunity’ of any private corporations, specifically Verizon and AT&T in this case, that complied or aided the government in illegal activities. This bill was proposed as necessary for our safety, well-being, and privacy; a move so blockheaded that I’m surprised the writers of the speeches that the telecom PR drones were giving didn’t explode in a giant fireball of Irony.
Obviously though, governments aren’t the only culprits. Those responsible for breaching upon our rights as citizens and manipulating information for their own gain come in more flavors than Baskin Robbins ice cream. Corporate fraud has no better figurehead than Enron Corporation, a former American energy corporation based in Houston, Texas. The corporation used offshore entities, with full anonymity, to hide the extent of their annual monetary losses from investors and create the illusion of profitability. Paperwork was smudged and trades were insided, resulting in the executives, as well as those working closely with them, to come out of the entire fiasco able to use hundred-dollar bills as toilet paper, while the stockholders’ investments and the actual business worth plummeted toward the ground faster than George Bush’s approval ratings (zing!).
If all (or any) of this makes you think, “Hey, what does Enron have to do with me?” or, “If I have nothing to hide, why should I be so concerned with my privacy anyway?”, you’re in for a treat. President George Bush signed the Patriot Act into law as a response to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in September of 2001. The U.S.A. Patriot Act, which is actually an acronym that stands for “Uniting and Strengthening America by ProvidingAppropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act”, in a nutshell:
What this basically means is that while you’re at work or school (or anywhere, really) the government can allow an official to enter your home, search and confiscate anything you own, access your library or financial records without your consent, sift through your telephone or internet records, and search your personal information. All of this without a court order, all of this without notice, all of this without cause or reason for suspicion, and all of this without explanation afterward. The 4th amendment of the constitution, a guard against unreasonable searches and seizures, has been rendered obsolete by now.
The Pentagon, within as recently as the past few weeks, was also exposed as manipulating the media in order to brighten its own image over reports of prisoner mistreatment and generally inhuman conditions at its now infamous Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba. The government enlisted CNN military analysts, former U.S. military officials, and hired journalists to spin a web of positive propaganda for them in order to combat Amnesty International’s scathing report about Gitmo, which called the center “the gulag of our times” and detailed years of extreme abuses that had taken place there. | 23 | English | male | Some college | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
l | Since this time it’s been widely accepted worldwide that nothing positive has stemmed from these atrocities, barring a one single exception: the critically acclaimed major motion picture Swing Kids, a charming story of a rebellious group of German teenagers in the 1940s who fight off the pressure to become Hitler Youth by evoking the power and spirit of swing dancing.
When a government terrorizes its own people, who benefits? The government itself does not. In fact, it suffers. With an unhappy citizenry and a climate of control looming over the heads of every man, woman and child within its borders, the only safe refuge becomes their minds. And when this begins, when thought-crime becomes the only crime committable, a revolution is soon to follow. For the government and government organizations in charge of a country, this spells bad news. So, for whom does the advantage lie? The answer is simple: for the people in charge of the government. The people who desire constant and perpetual money, influence, and power are those who benefit from corruption.
A common tactic used to secure themselves as the Never-Ending Leaders of their Frightened Herds of Beaten and Abused People is the nationalization of certain requisite influential and important markets, usually including pharmaceutical companies, oil reserves, real-estate, farmland, and, more recently, internet and telecommunication services. The previous example, the Burmese protests, happened due to backlash from the Burmese people over the government removing fuel subsidies, which caused the price of diesel and petrol to suddenly rise, in some cases as much as 100%.
Why would a government employ such tactics and practices? It’s usually done by a rogue few in order to allow, through the use of bribery, monetary/business influence, resource control, or force, those who are in power to stay in power indefinitely.
These ideals are not exclusive to foreign countries, however. The United States of America has had its share of near-fascism moments, the most famous and far-reaching of which being the Watergate scandal. In 1972, President Nixon and his staff used their influence, power, and resources to cover a massive array of crimes and abuses, which included campaign fraud, political espionage and sabotage, illegal break-ins, improper tax audits, illegal wiretapping on a massive scale, and a secret slush fund laundered in Mexico to pay those who conducted these operations. More recently, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) was exposed to be participating in massive illegal warrantless wiretapping practices, for the purposes of detecting and battling international terrorist threats, specifically those of the al-Qaeda regime, as well as allying itself with such powerful private-sector businesses as AT&T to create a large-scale data-mining operation. AT&T provided the NSA with its customers’ phone and internet records, an act of privacy invasion so appalling that it makes what happened next seem absolutely par-for-the-course. | 23 | English | male | Some college | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
l | Chances are, they’re the same, so the victim will be none the wiser.
Once you’re in, let your imagination run wild. Usernames, passwords, personal emails, bank accounts, PayPal accounts, eBay accounts, Netflix accounts, subscription websites, social networks, all of their digital content is available at your fingertips. You are an E-God, reigning with a binary fist over their Digital Domain.
And from this point, the world wide web is at your beck and call, effortlessly manipulated by even your most spontaneous whim. You’ve become a digital gangster, and your ‘hood’ is controlled via Ethernet. Living in this modern age affords levels of luxury unattainable in previous generations. An LCD screen, glowing ominously in a pitch black room hundreds or thousands of miles away, navigated by a treacherous Internet-captain, could ruin your credit score, leaving you homeless and poor, kicked out the door, jobless and more, divorced, too, I’m sure. You put on your best drawers and go hold up a convenience store, get tackled to the floor, and escape with no dignity left to implore. You should have chosen a jewelry store. Or chosen different passwords for secure accounts, because then maybe you wouldn’t be lying on the floor groping in the dark for discarded apple cores.
The concept of television, to many, is a strange and frightening thing. It conjures images of a Dark Plan to destroy the public’s free will, a tool of enslaving mindless drones for their Capitalist Army, a blemish on the smooth, pearl-white face of Creativity. The fat, greedy television moguls are locked in a constant war against Free Will as a concept and utilization of the wise and aware against their master trickery, with television their greatest weapon. The TV is America’s Little Boy and Personal Freedom is Hiroshima.
This train of thought is absolutely absurd; and those who perpetuate these lies are the harbinger of exactly what they claim to fear and fight. The exact phrase that sparked this retaliation was, “TV ruins kid’s [sic] creativity and makes people lazy.” The belief that being against television is a moral high ground that actively minded people are privy to is an ideal built on lies, and a contradiction of itself.
Television is a medium used for transmitting and receiving information (as is the Internet, and that would be another- longer- controversy altogether). I will accept the opinion that a portion of TV programming is pointless and inane (although the belief that it’s part of a larger conspiracy is brainless), but there’s a lot that isn’t. Asserting that a medium is responsible for how it may be sometimes utilized is preposterous to me; it’s like saying, “I’ll read anything, all books are good.” This is striking the same chord, a blanket statement either damning or praising, based on a conviction that part of one thing represents the whole of another. | 23 | English | male | Some college | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
l |
Hitler is alive in Burma, the sign says.
Ellen Page, star of Juno, stands alone on a street corner with a piece of cardboard held above her head, the unsettling message scribbled with Sharpie onto her sign. Burma, also known as Myanmar, is a Southeastern Asian country ruled by a tyrannical militant junta who came into power in 1962 through the act of a coup d’état. In 2007 a number of street protests occurred, the first public protests in a decade. Led by a large number of Burmese monks, these protests earned the name “The Saffron Revolution”, christened after the color of the robes that the monks wore. After the first few initial uprisings the public at large began taking an interest in the protests, and while at first the Burmese government begrudgingly allowed the monks to engage in peaceful gatherings, soon the violence escalated into what some considered an all-out war between the monks and the military junta, with the military actively invading and ransacking monasteries around the country. Foreign journalists were rounded up and imprisoned on sight, with a Japanese photojournalist named Kenji Nagai killed on September 27th, 2007, simply for being present at a street protest. While the official death toll rests at 13 killed, Colonel Hla Win, who defected from the army some days prior to the official report, is quoted as having said, “Many more people have been killed in recent days than you’ve heard about. The bodies can be counted in several thousand.”
This is nothing new. While these are some of the most recent examples of atrocities taking place in our world, a government’s desire to quash dissent and maintain complete rule over its citizenry has been around for as long as civilization itself. Early Roman emperors declared themselves chosen by the gods to have complete executive ruling over every aspect of their society. Japanese emperors are believed to actually be gods, sent to our world to lead their people to prosperity through the invention of Motorola cell phones and hara-kiri, and our current president, George W. Bush, has weekly conference calls with Ted Haggard, the leader of Stupid People Worldwide, a subsidiary group of the Republic Party.
Some of the most well known examples of these actions are such incidents as the 1989 June 4th protest at Tiananmen Square, where intellectuals, labor activists, and students all gathered to protest the authoritarian rule of the government. The death toll in that particular instance ranges wildly, with official reports from the Chinese government stating 200-300 dead to reports let out by the Chinese Red Cross, declaring between 2,000-3,000 dead. Another is the Rwandan genocide of the 1990s, where Hutu militia groups, aided by the Rwandan government, began a systematic killing of all Tutsis, as well as political moderates, irrespective of their ethnic backgrounds. Hitler’s ‘Third Reich’, a period spanning several years and several countries where anyone of Jewish background was rounded up and killed, is another extreme example. | 23 | English | male | Some college | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
l | There’s a lot of crappy books available, but that doesn’t mean it’s socially responsible to demonize the entire catalog of published literature.* If we go out on a limb to accept that the entire concept of television is directly correlated to its programming, it still doesn’t represent a damnable offense to personal growth.
The response I received when offering this thought was, “So what you’re saying is that when parents use TV as a babysitter instead of letting children play, it does nothing at all to ruin their creativity or their ability to think for themselves? They learn to just listen to what’s told to them instead of figure things out.”
I started, of course, by pointing out that their issue lies with poor parenting, not television watching. Placing blame on the instrument is like blaming knives for stabbing, or electric guitars for bad music. The deeper issue is rooted in their assumption that watching television as a child is responsible for social ills. I find zero evidence in the axiom that TV causes mental impotence, not even a personal anecdote. Growing up, I watched a lot of television shows, and Saturday morning cartoons were a staple of my weekends. I continued to watch television throughout my teen years, and on through high school and into my adult life. From what I can tell, this routine hasn’t affected me negatively in even any imaginable way, and I’d argue that it’s actually influenced me to develop more creative tendencies than I would have otherwise. I write stories and screenplays, DM for my Dungeons and Dragons games, make movies, and even draw (poorly). Those are widely regarded as creative endeavors, and presuming that they’re singularly confined to people who “fight the power” and rally against television viewing is pretentious, and disregards the portion of people who are functional without limiting their media intake.
Presented with this, a reply I got back was, “Possibly… but I think you’ll agree with me when I say that TV has gotten to a point where shows are so mass produced that many have little value at all to them. The only point has become to allow Americans to sit on their ass and veg.”
There are a lot of things wrong in that statement. First let’s start with the issue at hand, and that is the alleged worthlessness of TV. To begin we should separate the concepts of TV and TV shows, because even if TV shows reach toward the lowest common denominator, it’s ludicrous to conclude that TV as an avenue of expression is without value. Many television shows are smart, deal with mature situations, raise questions and present moral dilemmas that are both clever and intellectually stimulating; just as some books or movies are. Disregarding them, or (even further) denying their existence, is remarkably ignorant.
An even larger fallacy of logic is the blind certainty in an abstract, faceless “lazy American.” | 23 | English | male | Some college | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
ii | I wrote down so many of the things in my life that were so difficult to say in that journal; it gave me an outlet for my emotions, rendering my thoughts into words. My interpersonal communication improved as I gained the ability to use metacognitive techniques to improve my work ethic and persevere.
What is so special about PACE is that the entire environment of the school is so uniquely focused on its students. You can’t be just another face in the crowd at PACE—you know everyone’s name, and having a familiar, inviting environment to go to every day is something that I cherished as a teen. For some girls, including myself, it was or is the only stable thing they have in their life. PACE teaches girls to be self-reliant and independent women that are the creators of their destiny. They really help the girls with positive reinforcement, their tireless optimism, and are wonderful role models for girls that may not have many people in their lives that they can look up to. The staff are so down-to-earth, and take great measures to be easily accessible and nonjudgmental. PACE is also unique in that they host practical, educational speakers that address critical topics that are relevant to the students.
The counselors and staff encouraged me to make and set goals. Inspiring young women to plan for the future, to make goals and progress towards reaching them, PACE sets itself apart from every other school. The reward systems they have integrate real-world skills and knowledge that is important for young women to be familiar with—the counselors assist girls in preparing for the work force by helping them apply for college, learning how to make a resume, and preparing them to be a productive member of society after they leave PACE Center. Without their nurturing encouragement and the atmosphere that enabled me to work hard to reach my goals I don’t know how I would have turned out. PACE saved me from becoming another statistic, protected me from myself when I faltered, and acted as the catalyst for the betterment of my life. I am so grateful to have been blessed with their support while I was a student, and continual concern and care for me even after I left PACE Center.
Before PACE, my future looked bleak. I was destined to become my mother. With the tools that I gained at PACE, I forged a future for myself: I could dream again. It took me time to come to terms and gain the responsibility on my own, of course. Without having PACE as a stepping stone between high school and life I would not have made it to college. Though I left PACE eight years ago, it has always been there for me. I remember calling Mr. Michael to ask him questions about how to apply for the University of Florida, and that was just two years ago. | 24 | English | female | Bachelors Degree | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
ii |
From the time we are children most of us are told that there is something out there that is bigger than we are, bigger than we can comprehend. Some of us are sent to Sunday school to learn about it, while others go to Temple, or search within themselves for the answers. Many of us readily accept the religions that have been passed down to us by our parents. However, some of us reject them wholeheartedly, denying that there can be nothing beyond knowing in our own personal egocentric universe. We may adopt one value structure only to later change our minds and value another in its place. Whatever path we choose, we journey to define a part of ourselves through our own unique perspectives of spirituality. We search for a light in the dark to lead us out of the shadows and into the sun.
“A cardinal,” my father said when I asked him what his favorite type of bird was. We sat on the front porch of our house, listening to the rain pound on the tin roof overhead while we smoked our cigarettes together. The gutters brought the rain down, drowning the plants along the edge of the porch. He looked out into the rain, the sort of stare that seems half searching, half remembering. He had grown thinner over the past few months, and his clothes hung listlessly from his body. His hair had lessened, sparser than I remembered it, too. He stared out into the rain still, avoiding eye contact. I felt alone, afraid, and unable to talk to my father about how much I would miss him because talking about it would only make it more real for both of us. I hugged him, sat back down, moved my chair a little closer to his, and joined him in gazing out into the falling rain of the June twilight.
My father passed away in December that year, five days after my twenty-second birthday. The chemo and radiation had not eased my father’s suffering, but kept him alive a few more months past the doctors’ projections; what the value was when he merely suffered longer I could not define. What kind of God would do this, I thought to myself. Alone in the night, I said no prayers. If God existed, I thought, he had stopped listening to me long ago.
I had not wanted to watch him pass from this life into another one. So I had not. I could not watch the life that created me while it ended. I wanted to remember my father by how he lived and not how he died. Besides, I knew my father better than they did, better than his family did, and knew Dad would not wish for his only child to be a spectator at his death. I curled up in a ball in my bed for three days and waited for the news.
No one even called me. | 24 | English | female | Bachelors Degree | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
ii | Also, sexism against women was not as severe as racism against the Native American and Black population, nor was it met with such a violent protest as many Blacks suffered.
I believe that women have prospered more so than African and Native Americans, and that Native Americans have also prospered the least. I feel that there is a direct correlation between time spent in the education system, or decades spent in an equal educational system, to how far each minority has come in their achievements. Women were first granted the right to higher education, and many social activists came forth for women’s rights that started the domino effect of more women in social activism roles (such as Willard’s perpetual influence). Likewise, African Americans were next given better opportunities for education, as the desegregation of Black Americans happened at about the time that Native American boarding schools were just ending. Native Americans had to take time to recover from their injustices, and as their numbers had dwindled from millions to hundreds of thousands, they did not make up the same percentage of the population as the Black community did, hence their plight received less attention.
The fact that Black education grew towards equality more quickly, and that Native American education was stunted by the damage the boarding schools had on their populace (like alcohol and drug abuse from the trauma they had suffered) meant that Native Americans have still prospered less than African Americans have to this day. In time, and through continued activism and equitable actions, hopefully America will become a place where White men, women, Native Americans, African Americans, and all people from divergent backgrounds will truly be able to take advantage of equal opportunity in education by overcoming the remaining obstacles lost time has caused.
I attended PACE ten years ago. I came to PACE because I was having difficulty concentrating on my work in public schools. My home life was overwhelming. My mother is an alcoholic who has not held a job since before I was born. I can remember coming home from school as a child and opening up the refrigerator to find it full of beer, a sign that the child support checks had come. She often dumped my younger sister, Rachel, and me off at our grandmother’s house for days on end to be fed and watched while she drank. My elderly grandmother cared for us instead of my mother. When my grandmother passed away in my sixth grade year, I was devastated. I felt like I’d lost my parent. My support system instantly collapsed. My mother ran amuck with the inheritance money, delving further into alcohol and other drugs. When the money ran out, the electricity and telephone were shut off for weeks before she conned another boyfriend of hers to pay our bills. I had been blessed with good influences in my life, like my late father who lived in Newberry and also my aunt and uncle in Ohio, but my mother manipulated me into ignoring and turning away from them in order to conceal the severity of her addiction and neglect. | 24 | English | female | Bachelors Degree | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
ii | He does not feel entirely powerless, as he accepts the challenges that face him and realizes that he will be able to overcome these obstacles with the help of his son and niece, should he need to rely on others.
All in all, Mr. D.W. seems to face his life with dignity, grace, and perseverance mixed in with a randy attitude and rebellious, witty humor. I am very happy that I had the opportunity and time to sit down and enjoy the company of my patient, and to learn more about someone who has led such an interesting life. I really connected with D.W. and felt that we communicated very well. I hope that our talk helped D.W. to reflect upon his positive attitude, great stories, and ability to continue to lead a promising life.
In the documentary we learned how the defamation of a people or a culture can be harrowing to their progress in society. Through mental demoralization and stifled equality the Black populace suffered left a long-lasting impact on the welfare of these people decades after the unfair treatment was remedied. We learned that the progress Black Americans made was not luck; it was calculated and thought out, planned for throughout a long period of time. The actions they took to stand up for themselves and take a stand for their rights were not by just Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., but by many individuals united for a cause they believed in. Additionally, we’ve learned that it is important to work with already established groups and institutions in an effort to further advance your activist efforts. It is important to not get discouraged if things don’t automatically change. Rather it is something that could take a long time and dedicated persistence. In order to accomplish radical change within a society we must understand it takes planning and patience in order to achieve the results sought.
Moreover, in our present-day local society it is clear that the issues of homelessness has become a serious problem. Homelessness is a looming problem in Gainesville, especially in downtown Gainesville. St. Francis House only has so many beds, and gaining residency there is highly competitive and nearly impossible for the many applicants, as only thirty-five homeless individuals can have residency there at a given time. Currently, this situation is getting so bad that you can’t walk through downtown Gainesville without seeing someone that appears to be homeless or in abject poverty. In order to help these people as well as keep our streets safe it is essential that we create a place for them to go.
The action for need is great. Our homeless population in Gainesville has fluctuated between 1,000 to 2,000 people for years. If we were able to help even half of them then that could make a significant impact of the lives of hundreds of people. | 24 | English | female | Bachelors Degree | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
ii |
In public school, I felt as if I were a complete outcast, alone and unable to reach out to anyone around me; others made fun of me because I was poor, because I didn’t dress right, because I was different from them. I became cynical towards the world, and found myself completely apathetic toward schoolwork, having friends, and making goals for myself. I began to drink and smoke cigarettes at the age of thirteen, turning to alcohol as my mother before me, as I believed it was my only option to ameliorate the hopelessness of my dire situation. Even though I had been a bright, gifted student in elementary school, as my grades slipped I lost confidence in myself. When I went to PACE, at first I was skeptical; I couldn’t see how the school could help me, but instead worried I would become even more of a social pariah.
However, after a few months at PACE my natural outgoing self reappeared. I was able to confide in Mr. Michael, my counselor, about what was troubling me at home and my feelings. He always received my conversations in a positive, supportive manner, listening to what I said. For the first time I could remember, I actually had a voice. As we talked more and more, he helped me work through some of my problems and issues. I credit him as one of the biggest influences of my renewed interest in myself and in my schooling. I also grew more comfortable talking with my teachers. One teacher, Ms. Courtney, had such a funny and off-beat personality and was well-liked by many students. Ms. Courtney was a positive role model, and she showed me that I could be an individual, unique person and still be likable. The entire staff at PACE seeks to make compassion one of their utmost concerns; you just do not get that kind of an environment anywhere else. After a while I truly began to think of some of my teachers and mentors as extended family in a way; they cared about my triumphs, believed in my dreams, and gave me unconditional love and acceptance. They gave me what I didn’t have at home: someone to look up to.
Concentrating on my schoolwork was again possible because I didn’t feel like I was in a hostile environment as I had experienced in public school. I even made friends at PACE with a few of the girls. I found some like-minded individuals that did not judge me, but instead accepted me for who I was. I believe that the PACE environment helps to foster a feeling of sisterhood between young women, a feeling of belonging.
PACE tries to incorporate a sense of togetherness into their daily activities; for example, Spirited Girls, a class that PACE offered which resembled a life management skills class, gave you a journal to write down your thoughts and feelings in and the opportunity to share your entry with the rest of the class or teacher if you chose to do so. | 24 | English | female | Bachelors Degree | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
ii |
I remember the night Marta was admitted to the rehabilitation facility. She came in screaming like tires on pavement. She yelled that she didn’t belong, that they had her by mistake, and that she needed to go home. The nurses put her into my room, haphazardly heaving her onto the bed adjacent to my own despite her flailing protest. She convulsed on the pale green mattress, throwing her fists like battering rams against it. She wouldn’t stop shrieking.
I wondered why she would be acting this way. My question was answered when I later overheard the doctors discussing her condition. Apparently, she’d been at a party shortly before arriving at the rehabilitation facility.
“It’s drugs,” the doctors said.
I couldn’t sleep. The moment Marta would quiet long enough for me to think she had fallen asleep the shrill cries would begin again. At one point, she rose silently from her bed and began looking around the room as though she was a sleuth and the room was a puzzle. She quietly went into the bathroom connected to the corner of our room.
“How do I get to the other side?” she said, repeating the words like a mantra, with a gradually increasing volume until she was shouting it loudly enough for the nurses down the hall to come in and end her tantrum.
“Here, these will help you, honey,” the nurse said to Marta, handing her a little cup of pills. Marta shortly passed out for the night.
For the next week, Marta walked around like an invalid; her eyes gazed blankly at whatever they fell upon. Her whole appearance was a mess, from her purplish dyed hair chopped in a myriad of lengths to her slack jaw expressions. The first few days, she didn’t speak except in gibberish. When she finally regained the ability of spoken English, she spoke in riddles.
“Jess, they hate me and keep me here to haunt me,” she said to me of the doctors. “They’re just faceless, featureless white zombies in white coats whose white teeth chatter white lies. You can see it in their silver smile, Jess, can’t you?” At one point, she told me the doctor’s eyes were scalpels trying to dissect her.
“I know, Marta,” I said, trying to calm her. She shook in fear. “But they’re here to help you, okay? I am too.”
Her eyes were no longer hollow and bottomless but icy and vindictive. They softened only when her father came to visit her on family visitation days. He would smile in her company. But when he turned to leave, I could see tears well up in his deep blue eyes.
I was in here because I’d gotten in a fight with my parents over drinking out of their liquor cabinet. My parents thought it would teach me a lesson, I suppose. But Marta was here for an entirely different reason. She told me one morning at breakfast that they wanted to send her to a long-term residential facility.
| 24 | English | female | Bachelors Degree | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
ii |
Snow White is another classic Disney princess that undergoes the same defeating stereotypes assigned to women in children’s films. When her wicked stepmother finds out that the mirror on the wall proclaims the young princess, Snow White, to be fairer than she, the stepmother sends Snow White into the woods with a hunter to be murdered. The hunter takes pity on Snow White, and allows her to go free. To convince the evil queen that he has carried out his mission he brings back the heart of an animal to appease the wicked queen.
When Snow White stumbles upon a little cottage she makes herself at home there, and eventually falls asleep. However, when the inhabitants come home they find her, and are alarmed until they realize she can cook and clean. So they take her in, half out of pity and half out of wanting a housekeeper. Snow White now has found her purpose in life: housework. This perpetuates the stereotype of a woman’s purpose as a household workhorse.
Snow White’s wicked stepmother finds out she is still alive because her enchanted mirror reveals Snow White is still the fairest in the land. The evil queen goes out in disguise and feeds her a poisoned apple, causing her to go into a comatose state. Snow White has become Eve, punished for her sins of being lead astray and eating the apple, the forbidden fruit. What can cure this sin, and make right this trespass that the girl’s curiosity has sentenced her to? Of course, a kiss from her true love.
Snow White’s good looks land her an admirer, a prince, and none other than Prince Charming, of course. After seasons pass and Snow White sits in her glass coffin the prince comes along and, believing her dead, kisses her. This kiss from the prince awakens her, and they all live happily ever after.
The princess Snow White, then, can only be saved from her curiosity’s repercussions by a man. She is helpless until the prince comes to unknowingly save her, just as she was helpless and homeless until the dwarves decided to take her in. The mother figure, like most every mentioned mother figure in Disney princess tales, is malevolent, cruel, and jealous of the daughter so much that she does everything in her power to make her life miserable or bring her to destruction. So, by contrast, the only good woman is a naïve one, one that needs saving, as the ones that don’t need saving have the power and are usually up to no good and not as attractive as their congenial, young counterparts.
In short, Snow White depends on men (the hunter, the dwarves, the prince) to save her, is a good person because she is fair and does housework, and is antagonized by a woman in power (because women who have power often seek to abuse it) until her prince can come to her rescue because she is incapable of saving herself.
| 24 | English | female | Bachelors Degree | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
ii | The news came from my mother, who had received a call from an aunt. I doubled over when I heard it. The news may have been ten months coming but it was still something too difficult to truly feel. No one sent a letter of condolence, except for my gay Uncle Frank, whom everyone in my father’s religiously fundamental family believed needed medication in order to overcome his homosexuality. Burdened with pain and grief, I failed to understand why his entire family, of five dozen strong, had decided to excommunicate me. His family should have been my family, too. I could not understand what made them treat me so poorly. There was no funeral for him, or if there was I had not been invited.
Months passed slowly. I had little memory of when winter had turned into spring, but before I came to full consciousness summer had arrived. July had come, his birth month. On his birthday, I found strength to pull myself out of bed and wander to the back porch deck, fumbling with a lighter in the dark to light my cigarette. The dawn began to break through the night, the sky becoming a dark gray as it transitioned slowly to lighter hues to finally give way to light blue. I stood for an hour or more, contemplating the plants and trees, the birds and their songs, the dew on the wooden hand railing at my waist, the shades of the changing sky. “Happy birthday, Daddy. I miss you.” I whispered as I looked skyward.
I flicked my cigarette butt into the grass and turned to go inside, but a small noise made me pause. I turned around to find a cardinal perched on the railing where my hands had been moments before. A brilliant red cardinal stared at me with half realizing, half knowing eyes. Though only about six feet from me he did not appear scared, but inquisitive, cocking his head to the side, then to the other, seeming to nod to some silent conversation between us. I moved to light another cigarette, and the undeterred cardinal continued to quietly observe me. We locked eyes for quite some time, feeling comfort in the company of each other, feeling unafraid of each other. At some point, I noticed my forgotten cigarette had become an ember burning into the filter. Discarding it, I turned back. The bird had gone.
It was morning now, the sun evidenced, as streams of light reached through the treetops. No longer did the dark hang overhead. I didn’t feel like I was on the porch in the rain anymore, searching for answers to questions in the night. No longer did I believe myself alone. It had been a long night, I thought, and it had taken me even longer to wake up. I finally accepted there had to be something bigger than me out there, even if I didn’t quite know how to define it. | 24 | English | female | Bachelors Degree | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
ii | Many people who are homeless can sustain themselves thanks to charities that give free meals and food stamps, but often they lack the infrastructure to assist them in changing their position. Our interview with Eric, a man who was once homeless in Gainesville, made us aware that the homeless cannot get jobs unless they have a place to shower, sleep, and people to assist them in finding work, as some of them may have criminal records that make it harder for them to find employment. By also offering these people counseling and medical services we help to ease their mental stress level so that they feel more inclined to make choices that benefit themselves we help to remedy the issue of homelessness instead of merely helping the homeless to subsist without a way out of their predicament.
Therefore, we aim to work with one another as well as other institutions in an effort to establish a homeless shelter in the area of downtown Gainesville near the abandoned AGH hospital. Currently efforts are being made to develop the vacant lot into a commercial property. Instead, we propose that to alleviate some of the weight of the homeless plight that turning the lot into a homeless shelter would be beneficial for the community. This is an ideal location for recovering homeless to live because it is near many local businesses and has consistent bus routes for transportation.
We believe that we can be successful in executing our plan if we appeal to churches and other institutions of goodwill nature, downtown business owners, and the city council. Also, asking the University of Florida to make a contribution would be possible, as it would make the University of Florida look like a concerned institution within the community. If anything, UF could possibly allow internships at the medical facility within the proposed old AGH shelter. Downtown business owners are likely to be our allies in this cause because they experience the increasing numbers of homeless people on a daily basis. Additionally, churches are likely to support our proposal because the reasoning behind it stems purely from wanting to do good for people and our society. As far as the city council, we will need to approach them with this idea in order to put this plan into effect as they have a say over land and property issues.
Contacting these organizations in person would be the best way to get our point across. We hope that by showing dedication others will be inspired to unite for the cause. A public service announcement on the local Gainesville public service channel may help to spread the word, along with contacting the Alligator newspaper to speak to someone about doing an article on our proposed action, or attending a city council meeting where we can voice our opinions and ideas.
Getting the backing of just a few of the aforementioned parties would help us greatly because we would be able to develop our idea further. | 24 | English | female | Bachelors Degree | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
ii | The numbers of women going to institutions of higher learning were still pretty small, but by the end of the nineteenth century women’s literacy matched if not outnumbered the literacy rates of their White male counterparts. Around the turn of the twentieth century, women began attending higher institutions of learning that would prepare them to be a part of the ever-expanding job market that was growing in the United States.
African Americans also had to face their own trials and tribulations to be able to have an education equal to that of their White male (or female) counterparts. It seemed that just as women were making so much progress for their educational opportunities that the fight for Black education had just begun. The ways that Black Americans were taught before slavery ended were basically through stories passed from generation to generation. In the Northern United States, free schools started by the Manumission Society allowed some Blacks educational opportunities.
In the nineteenth century, Black leaders such as W. E. B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington asserted differing points on Black education, but both said that progress for African Americans would be gained through education. During Reconstruction, for the first time in a long time Blacks in America were allowed to be literate. Sadly, it seems that their instruction was more geared toward industrial education, as much of their schooling had to be palatable to the White community that did not wish the African American community to be able to rise above them. The schools that Black students attended received only a small fraction of what comparative White children were allotted for a school budget. Segregation from the White students meant that Blacks also had to attend schools meant for Blacks and other minorities. Rights that they had been given were also regressed upon; when the North withdrew armed support for Reconstruction efforts in the South, most Black Americans also had their freedom withdrawn due to racist viewpoints and violent acts against Blacks that wished to exercise their newly bestowed rights. In the North, however, a small percentage of Blacks were privy to better conditions, especially during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Native Americans were dehumanized, stripped of their individuality, and taught to adhere to Christianity and Puritan morals during the onset of their “White” education, beginning in the seventeenth century and even as late as the twenty-first century. The first education Native Americans received was through missionary trips by European settlers and the invention of “prayer towns”, which were small communities where Native Americans were taken to learn about Christianity and to slowly adopt the new, White way of life. These communities were segregated from White communities, but often near them. When America’s populace began to grow, Native Americans were forced from their land and pushed further and further west in order to make room for White Americans to settle. This disadvantaged position may have also led to the biases that caused the Native Americans to suffer third-rate treatment during that time and afterward.
| 24 | English | female | Bachelors Degree | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
ii | The first Native American boarding school prototype was actually in a prison in St. Augustine run by a man named Pratt. Pratt believed that he could take Native American prisoners and teach them to be more cultured, at least to White, Anglo-Saxon standards. This new schooling form would come to replace the Native American way of schooling that was traditionally learning from your elders within your tribe through experience and the passing down of the Native American culture from generation to generation. However, these new schools created a huge barrier between Native American generations, as the newer generations sometimes forgot their native tongue, and could no longer communicate with their elder racial peers. The process of the Native American boarding school was to strip the “native” out of the Native American, in effect taking away his culture and replacing it with the acceptable “White” culture. This happened as a slow process, that only amassed severity through time, and led up until as late as the 1960s. By taking the “native” out of the “Native American”, Pratt and others like him believed that they could change the so-called “hostile” nature of the indigenous people.
Some of the similarities these groups shared was their need to not threaten the place of the White male’s patriarchal society by becoming overly educated. In order to do so, Blacks and women had to slowly gain educational opportunities step by step, little by little, and make it appear to the White male leaders that it would be advantageous for the male leaders to allow the schooling of the minorities. This was often argued for because through training the minorities could be of assistance and value to the White male’s societal vision by being either workers, mothers, or by filling new job positions.
More similarities announce themselves under the repression that all the minority groups faced at the onset of their educational opportunities: women, Native Americans, and African Americans all started being educated with less equality and equitable goals than that of their White male counterparts. The education for these minority groups had to strive over time to equal the opportunities and financial support that was much more easily granted to the White male group.
Some differences are that though women were not as highly literate as men in the eighteenth century, at least it was not illegal for women to be literate as it was for Blacks until after the Civil War ended. This disparity caused the African American to have to play catch up in order to get to the same stance educationally once opportunities presented themselves for the advancement of African Americans through education. Also, whereas women were taught with White males in the same classes (at least in the lower educational grades) Blacks were not to be taught along with White students, and Blacks and Native Americans faced segregation of education that women did not have to contend with on such an extreme level. | 24 | English | female | Bachelors Degree | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
ii | Because money was tight, D.W. had a rough childhood but said that good family values were an important thing that his mother focused on.
When asked about how his step-father and he got along, D.W. gave a long, stern look that said everything, and asked, “Does that answer your question?” His brother and he had a long-standing “Civil War”, as D.W. put it, which equated to a non-stop sibling rivalry. D.W. told me a story about how he always did so well in school, and his brother, being a few years younger, attempted to copy one of his papers from a few years ago as the younger brother was assigned the same assignment by the brother’s teacher. Unfortunately for the brother, D.W.’s assignment had been kept as an example that she handed out to the class on what a good essay looked like, and his brother got caught.
D.W. expressed that when he turned 18 he really wanted to get out of his hometown and do something with his life, so shortly after his birthday he joined the United States Air Force. Within in a very short while, D.W. was fighting the Vietnam War to protect the freedoms of his country. In Vietnam, he worked as a sniper. He said that he really enjoyed the work, and that it was an exhilarating experience. However, he came down with a terrible case of pneumonia at one point, because he had to sleep outside underneath only a tarp to shield him from the harsh environmental conditions of the hostile land. After getting pneumonia, he decided it would be better if he would live in town. He rented a room for $15.00 a week with a mama-san, which contained a warm bed and “a girl to keep it warmer”, as D.W. stated.
He fought in Vietnam for 3 years, reenlisting 3 times, until one day he had in his sights General Giap and another high ranking Vietnamese official, and was told that if he took the shot he would spend the rest of his days in military prison. He decided that if that was how the war was going to be fought, that brave men would continue to die though there could be a quicker ending to the war, that he would have no part in this travesty. When his time came to reenlist, D.W. declined and came home to America.
In what he described as one of his most favorite and memorable experiences, he stashed approximately sixty guns and a huge assortment of ammunition and other war accessories in several trunks of his possession with false bottoms to conceal his smuggled goods. Once D.W. got back to the states he sold the guns and weaponry. With the money he earned from the sales D.W. bought himself a brand new Indian Motorcycle and a brand new Harley Davidson Motorcycle. | 24 | English | female | Bachelors Degree | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
ii | We may have to wait and be patient, but we hope that as people become more aware of the situation that they feel more compelled to join the effort.
While White males attributed to much of the educated class during the colonization and into the beginning of the nineteenth century, during the nineteenth century marked changes in the education of White females began to take place. Because of increased opportunities for women education became something that was not just directed at the White male populace. Over time, African Americans and Native Americans faced scrutinizes and triumphs in their opportunities for an education, also. Each different minority group made failed attempts and also splendid triumphs in their fight to ascertain rights to an equal educational experience. Throughout American history, each group has attained a different outcome, shared similarities, had differences in their own unique struggle.
Women traditionally were not as literate as men in the eighteenth century. In the liberal environment after the Revolution, women were more so given the opportunity not only to teach dame schools, but female children could attend dame schools just as little boys could. Still, more men were literate than women. Women were mostly excluded from traditional education before the nineteenth century, especially institutions of higher learning. Women were gradually enrolling in common schools in higher numbers, but it still seemed that the quality of their education paled in comparison to that of their White male counterparts.
During the beginning of the nineteenth century, though, a representative of women’s education emerged. Emma Willard founded an academy for girls that would become responsible for giving us some of the brightest female minds of the time that went on to become social activists, business leaders, and academy founders or teachers. Emma Willard also wrote an essay on female education, and how it was important for women to receive training in order to make positive contributions to society and in order to rear their children best. By doing so under the premise of training women to be good mothers and wives, women were allowed to gain intellectual muscle in a way that would make men worried about them upsetting the patriarchal order of society.
After her example, many other women began to start schools for women, a domino effect that would lead eventually to a broadening of educational opportunity for women throughout the United States. Horace Mann supported giving roles of teaching to women, which then led to more women attending higher institutions of learning in order to prepare for being educators, something that would have never led to higher education for women in the eighteenth-century. At first, though, the opportunity was more so taken advantage of by women from upper-class families, as lower socioeconomic class women did not always have the opportunity to go to school or continue with their schooling as much women from wealthier backgrounds. | 24 | English | female | Bachelors Degree | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
ii | I don’t know what it was called, but underneath the wound was what appeared to be new, fresh skin. It was the weirdest thing; I was so intrigued by this discovery. Anyway, we cut the new sponge to fit the wound and placed it on top of the wound. Then the doctor placed the special VAC film over the top of the wound and hooked it up to suction, packing the sponge securely into the wound in this method. After that the lift team came in and assisted the patient into a weird contraption of bed/lift equipment/chair, and put it into the chair position for the patient to sit in.
At 10:00, we hooked up a PCA on Mr. S.C. filled with Dilaudid and had a good conversation about Oktoberfest. Afterwards, his girlfriend showed up and told me all about how he fell out of the tree. After a little while, Mr. S.C. needed to have a bowel movement and did not want to go in the bed. This is when I realized how difficult it would be to move the patient with three lines attached and running, an arterial line attached, and continuous pulse oximetry. It required three people to do it when normally I could have handled a non-ICU patient by myself. After that, it was pretty much business as usual. The nurse gave meds and I observed her routine closely, which consisted of a lot of charting and medication administration. During this time, the nurse and I discussed her definition of the role of a critical care nurse. She described it as “flying by the seat of your pants” and “getting the work done”. She said that she loved being an ICU nurse because of how exciting it is to her and how there is never a dull moment.
The nurse and I also discussed the death of a girl she had had as a patient the week before. She was only eighteen and had been involved in a motor vehicle accident. One legal and ethical issue concerning the patient was the decision of the family to remove the young woman from life support and donate her organs. This decision was a heavy one, one that was not taken lightly and one that has permanent repercussions on the family, the nurses involved, and the patient. The nurse told me that sometimes it isn’t always clear what the right decision is, that emotions sometimes can cloud your feelings, but that you have to check your emotions for the betterment of the patient and the patient’s family in order to assist them to the best of your ability.
Today I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. D.W., who was born in Jacksonville, Florida in the year 1948. Mr. D.W. is a white male, who grew up with his mother, a step-father, and his younger brother. His parents were working class citizens who labored very hard in order to provide for their family. | 24 | English | female | Bachelors Degree | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
ii | Though I could not put it into words, I felt a peace that I had longed for envelop me. The light is sometimes much harder to see in the dark when looking with your eyes closed, but mine were open now. I understood then what I should have known all along: if I could not see him he could still see me.
My day began at my arrival to 4 West, not sure as to what it was I was supposed to do. I was sent to the lounge by a nurse, and waited to attend a nurse’s meeting. Lana was the nurse I was assigned to, and together she and I went to report. The off-going nurse reported to Lana about the two patients that Lana had been assigned. The off-going nurse gave the most detailed report I had ever heard in my time as a nursing student. I learned an interesting fact, which was that azithromycin, is actually required before endoscopy and not due to its antibacterial properties but for other numerous reasons.
At 7:45, we assessed the first patient, Mr. M.A. He had a massive abdominal wound on his right side spanning his upper and lower quadrants. A VAC was hooked up to the wound to assist with healing, along with 3 JP drains that were hooked up to drain sero-sanguineous fluids. We emptied those, which contained about 40ml of fluid, and then we performed a thorough head-to-toe assessment. Three lines were running: one was IV insulin (I had never seen it ran at a basal rate), one was Fentanyl, and one was normal saline.
Afterward, we went on to the next patient, Mr. S.C. The patient was 67 years old, and had suffered a heart attack which then caused him to fall eighteen feet out of a tree house. (c) pathophys We did a thorough head-to-toe assessment of Mr. S.C.: he had a long wound on the right side of his back, which spanned about twelve or thirteen inches. However, his main problem was an interior bleed which was at the current time did not have a known cause, but was suspected to be in his upper GI. Some stressors that my client had from being in the critical care environment were lack of privacy, lack of sleep, and he had not eaten anything by mouth in four weeks.
At 9:00 Mr. M.A. was scheduled to have a wound change. I got to assist with the wound change. The doctor set up his sterile field and began to cut away the old dressing. This was my first experience with the wound VAC. While I had seen it hooked up in lab, I had never seen it actually used, which was quite different from in lab! The doctor removed the black sponge and white sponge from the wound itself and I assisted with opening new, sterile sponges. The wound was beefy red. | 24 | English | female | Bachelors Degree | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
ii | The rest of the money was spent on “Wine, women, and song,” said D.W. He did mention that he was sad he’d wasted a vast majority of the large sum of money he made, but said he didn’t fully regret blowing the cash as he had a great time doing it.
After he left the military, D.W. held a multitude of different jobs, some of which included: roofing, farming, trucking, and landscaping. Around the age of 40, after bouncing from job to job, and after losing his license permanently due to his excessive DUIs, D.W. decided he wanted to go to college. He eventually graduated with a 4.0 GPA and received a Bachelor’s degree in divinity. He worked with his local Southern Baptist church running a Sunday school program and helping out the church as a jack of all trades. He said that he found the work to be very rewarding, and happily embraced his new way of life. During this time he was raising his son, who now lives across from him and his niece lives on the other side of him. So, he said “I’ve got a bunch of people real close to help me out now that I’m getting older.”
I do not believe that Mr. D.W. exhibits the qualifications for the nursing diagnosis of diversional activity deficiency. Because some of the key symptoms, such as hostility, crying, lack of interest in eating, and being withdrawn, are not symptoms D.W. exhibits it is highly unlikely that he has diversional activity deficiency. When asked about activities he enjoys doing at home, he stated that he lives out in the woods and likes to go out by the lake and fish or watch birds. He does state that the wheelchair my hamper this, but says that his niece and son will be able to assist him.
Mr. D.W. does not have many visible symptoms of hopelessness, either. Even though Mr. D.W. has a “do-not-resuscitate” order it is not due to his deteriorating physiological condition. He states that he has lived a full life and is happy that he has gotten to live this long in the state of health that he has. He also is very excited about and looking forward to accomplishing his physical therapy goals in the future, which shows that he is hopeful concerning his recovery and has a positive life attitude.
Powerlessness is not something that D.W. is struggling with, as he believes he can accomplish his physical therapy tasks and overcome the hurdles that he must go through in order to be healthy and maintain a good life. Two signs of powerlessness that D.W. does not display are frustration over inability to accomplish previous tasks and actions and hesitation to express inner feelings. In fact, Mr. D.W. is a very open, honest person who enjoys sharing his feelings, memories, and thoughts. | 24 | English | female | Bachelors Degree | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
r | “‘And do you, Mariam jan, accept this man as your husband?’ Mariam stayed quiet. Throats were cleared….’Yes,’ she said shakily.” Even though Mariam is scared and does not want to marry Rasheed, she finds it in her to say yes when asked, pulling her strength from inside.
“‘Well, then, as of tomorrow morning I expect you to start behaving like a wife. Fahmidi? Is that understood?’ Mariam’s teeth began to chatter. ‘I need an answer.’ ‘Yes.’” While Mariam is still scared of everything and hasn’t gotten used to her new life, she still agrees to keep going. Rasheed is being impatient with her but she still decides to start acting how she’s expected to.
“That night, as most nights, Laila set the dinner table for two only. Mammy said she wasn’t hungry. On those nights that she was she made a point of taking a plate up to her room before Babi even came home. She was usually asleep or laying awake in bed by the time Laila and Babi sat down to eat.” Laila has, in essence, been raised without a mother. At this point she’s learned how to care for herself and be the female figure of the house. Knowing that your own mother in particular doesn’t care about you is a very heart wrenching thing, but Laila does perfectly fine regardless.
“She turned to Jalil again. ‘Tell them. Tell them you won’t let them do this.’ ‘Actually, your father has already given Rasheed his answer,’ Afsoon said. ‘Rasheed is here, in Herat; he has come all the way from Abul. The nikka will be here tomorrow morning and then there is a bus leaving for Kabul at noon.’” Jalil giving Mariam away without her consent or well being in mind is an incredibly evil idea to American society because here, no one can make anyone marry anyone else. Rasheed turning out to be a horrible man just adds to the injustice of Jalil’s decision.
“Mariam began shivering. His hand crept lower still, lower, his fingernails catching in the cotton of her blouse. ‘I can’t,’ she croaked…His hand was on her right breast now, squeezing it hard through the blouse, and she could hear him breathing deeply through the nose.” Though Rasheed and Mariam are married, this is still rape. Mariam is terrified of Rasheed, but he doesn’t care and he keeps going until he’s satisfied. Rape is a hellish thing as it steals lives from people. That’s why this is so evil.
“Mariam struggled against him, mumbling, but he kept pushing the pebbles in, his upper lip curled in a sneer. ‘Now chew,’ he said. Through the mouthful of grit and pebbles, Mariam mumbled a plea. Tears were leaking out of the corners of her eyes. ‘CHEW!’ he bellowed…Mariam chewed. Something in the back of her mouth cracked. ‘Good,’ Rasheed said. His cheeks were quivering. ‘Now you know what your rice tastes like. | 17 | English | female | Some college | null | N,N,N,N,N |
r | Now you know what you’ve given me in this marriage. Bad food, and nothing else.’” This act of utter abuse is almost horrifying. Being forced to eat rocks off of the definitely unsanitary road and then breaking teeth from the hardness of the rocks is amazingly cruel and certainly an evil act, if not worse than evil.
“Then Laila struck the wall. Crashed to the ground. On her face and arms, a shower of dirt and pebbles and glass. The last thing she was aware of was seeing something thud to the ground nearby. A bloody chunk of something. On it, the tip of a red bridge poking through thick fog.” This is from Laila’s house and family being blown up. I chose it to show that the war going on in Afghanistan at the time, where the two sides where ruthlessly blowing everyone up, was a horribly evil thing. So many lives of loved ones like this were lost for absolutely nothing.
“Mariam sat up and rubbed her eyes. Her back and neck were sore. ‘I’m going to wait for him.’” This quote shows loyalty as well as strength. Mariam sits outside Jalil’s house all night, waiting for him because she wants to live with him. She’s loyal and devoted to showing it.
“The next morning, Mullah Faizullah came to visit her. When she saw her friend at the door, his white beard and his amiable, toothless smile, Mariam felt tears stinging the corners of her eyes again.” Mullah Faizullah is a constant in Mariam’s life. He’s been there and he’s stayed there since she was born. By supporting her, he shows his loyalty and devotion.
“‘You go, then. Take your daughter and run away. Send me a postcard. But peace is coming, and I, for one, am going to wait for it.’” Mariam’s mother shows loyalty and devotion to her sons by refusing to leave Afghanistan, even when the fighting gets horrendous.
“‘It’s my father I can’t leave,’ Laila said. ‘I’m all he has left. His heart couldn’t take it either.’” When Laila denies the biggest desire her heart has ever had so that her father could be happier, she shows an amazing amount of loyalty and devotion.
“‘You’re a clumsy little harami. This is my reward for everything I’ve endured. An heirloom-breaking, clumsy little harami.’” Because Jalil didn’t marry Nana, Mariam has been dubbed a fatherless child. Her life is filled with this discrimination, as she is scorned for it by the people that know.
“‘Actually, your father has already given Rasheed his answer,’” When Jalil gives Mariam away without her consent, it shows how women, and especially women who aren’t 18 yet, are thoroughly discriminated against. They don’t really have the right to even choose their own husband.
“Mariam began shivering. His hand crept lower still, lower, his fingernails catching in the cotton of her blouse. | 17 | English | female | Some college | null | N,N,N,N,N |
r | At this point in time, girls were allowed to choose their own husbands rather than have parents assign them. By her finding love, it shows extreme hope because she’ll be able to have a really happy life.
Plasmids, enzymes, and gel electrophoresis were all things used in this project. The purpose was to use all of the knowledge I have learned in a biotech class to identify an unknown plasmid which was named “antimony”. It was important that I could identify the plasmid so that I could prove that I know what I’m doing in a laboratory and so that I can also demonstrate that I know how to identify a plasmid. A plasmid is a circular piece of DNA that comes from bacteria. It can transport and copy itself. Scientists like to use them to take a desirable trait from one bacterium and put it in another. Restriction enzymes cut the plasmid in certain locations which can be very useful to scientists. Forensic scientists can use restriction enzymes to identify a killer by comparing DNA sizes and other scientists can see where DNA fragments are positioned. Gel electrophoresis separates DNA based on the size of it or the number of base pairs. DNA is put in wells in an agarose gel which has been placed in an electrode chamber with the wells on the negative end of the chamber. Since DNA is negative, when the chamber is turned on the DNA moves toward the positive side of the gel. To do so, it has to move through small pores in the gel and the smaller sizes move fastest, so the DNA ends up separated based on size. I used restriction enzymes to cut the plasmid and then used gel electrophoresis to separate the DNA. I then compared the results with predicted results of all 4 potential plasmids to discover which was mine.
The first thing done to begin was to decide how many digests were to be run. It was decided that 4 digests would take place. The first would be no digest at all, the second would use BglI (made by NEB), the third would use HindIII (also made by NEB) and the fourth would be a mixture of both BglI and HindIII. Using micropipettes, 11.5 µL of antimony, which was at 0.2 µg/ 11.5 µg concentration (this was given to me by my instructor), and 1.5 µL of NEBuffer 2 (obtained from NEB) were added to 4 appropriately labeled PCR tubes. In the tubes labeled BglI and B+H, 1 µL of BglI was transferred into each. HindIII was added to the B+H tube as well and was also placed in the HindIII tube. After that, dH2O was added to each tube to bring up their levels to exactly 15 µg. In the fourth tube, labeled C, only the DNA, NEBuffer2 and dH2O were added because this one was the control tube. | 17 | English | female | Some college | null | N,N,N,N,N |
r |
The mother and daughter cried, but when the daughter’s tears fell on her father, the woods turned green and plants sprung up everywhere. Then vines appeared and hovered over the father. They sprinkled a sparkling powder on him, and he took in a short breath, awakening from his death!
But instead of being happy, he cried out in pain, “No! The evil fairy has killed you both as well!” He began to sob, but the daughter stopped him wither her first spoken words. “Father, Mother and I are not dead. I’ve saved you. You, Mother, and I are all alive.” The mother and father looked at their child with large eyes, and then let out a cry of surprise. They took her in their arms and held her.
“I think we should call my new creation a forest.” Her parents looked around the surroundings that were once dead but were now teaming with life.
“That seems suitable. Therefore, your name shall be Forest as well,” her mother told her.
The leaves rustled with approval and Forest giggled. “They’re happy,” she explained. The leaves rustled again. “What? But I cannot leave my parents!” she cried out. They rustled again and Forest replied, “I guess I must then. I agree to go as long as I may have visitors and I may show myself when I wish.” Then she turned to her parents and explained. “They have asked me to stay with them as I am their creator and I have agreed. But you may visit anytime you wish.”
At first Forest’s parents objected, but then they agreed after some persuading. They said goodbye and as Forest’s parents were leaving, the vines picked her up and lifted her to the tops of the trees. They placed a beautiful crown woven out of twigs and leaves to symbolize that she was the princess of the forest.
She continued to grow up, becoming more and more beautiful by day. Her parents visited daily too, noting every difference on their little girl. People wandered into the forest and got lost or just needed to be talked with and Forest would help them.
One day she found a handsome young man crying. She called out to him, “Sir, pray tell why you are so miserable.” His crying stopped and he looked up hopeful, but then, obviously disappointed, put his head in his hands.
“Fair sounding maiden, I am in such a sad state for my parents wish me to be wed. I have only seen princesses with beauty, yet none of them have a personality. I will only marry such a girl as to posses her own spirit, but my parents wish a different fate for me. They went on a search and found a princess. They ordered me to wed her the next day. But alas, they had found the worst of them all – Princess Centara. A decision was thrust upon me, and so I decided to run away. | 17 | English | female | Some college | null | N,N,N,N,N |
r |
I approach a corner in the hallway as the door to a classroom in front of me opens and a girl steps out. She is wearing a form fitting black shirt with comfortable yet tight dark jeans and black tennis shoes, showing off her great figure amazingly. Her long, dark brown hair is very obviously natural and trails behind her gracefully. Her eyes are deep and brown. I feel the dark hole in my soul suddenly fill as I see her look at me with a disapproving scowl and a cocked eyebrow; she has the look of perfection. I have never seen her before. Her slender, pink lips move as she says, “Cute,” and walks past me. I stare after her, one word coming to my lips in an almost whisper: “Beautiful…”
Once, long ago, there was a beautiful newborn baby girl. Everyone who looked at her knew what she was destined for – marriage to a handsome prince, and a maturation into an amazingly beautiful queen, Her mother and father loved her as much as any parents possibly could, and they took great care of her, Regardless of this, they could not decide on a name for her, so they called their daughter their little darling.
As she grew, she never learned to talk. Her parents never worried though, for they knew this should not be a problem. Their sweet daughter continued to grow with no other problems.
But one day when she was four, her parents allowed her to play in their backyard unattended. She wandered off into the dead woods beyond the backyard. The woods were a thing of fear for there were no good things in the woods, and many evil beings lived there.
Her parents came out only moments after she had wandered off to look for their little darling, only to discover that she was gone. They immediately ran into the woods to find her.
When they saw her they gasped for an evil fairy was about to cast a spell on her. They knew better to interfere though, as the consequences were great. The girl’s parents stayed quiet and waiting while the fairy chanted:
And with that she let out a loud and horribly evil cackle, and pointed her wand at the little girl. Yet, her father could not stand to have a spell cast on his little girl. He jumped in front of his daughter just before the best was cast while yelling, “NO!!!”
The fairy was startled and the spell changed. The father’s attempt to shield his daughter was good, but he did not cover her completely, and the spell him them both. It did not seem to affect the daughter, but the father began to spasm and then died.
The mother and daughter were overtaken with sadness, but the fairy was enraged. “Ha!” she yelled, “now you shall all suffer!’ Then she vanished in a puff of coal black smoke.
| 17 | English | female | Some college | null | N,N,N,N,N |
r | When I joined him, I shut the door quietly behind me and walked to the white plastic railing at the end of the balcony. We stood in silence for a bit and I took in the scene. The moon was shining brilliantly, as if the sun was within feet of its surface. Each star wished to boast their sparkles and twinkled with an energy not often found most days. A few stray clouds floated across the sky, so slowly that it could be debated whether they truly moved or not. I looked at his face, illuminated by the sky’s light, and saw that he was watching me. We began to talk – about anything and about everything as we usually do. Yet, this time the conversation led to dating. My memory eludes me as to what brought on my words, but I finally exclaimed, “And you couldn’t possibly like me. I mean, that would be crazy!”
He looked at me with an expression that conveyed disbelief, and the laugh he has when annoyed with someone escaped his throat. It took me a moment to respond before I choked out with a voice that almost cracked, “You do?!” He did the laugh again, bobbed his head, and said, “Yeah…!” as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Blood ran to my cheeks as I took in this newfound knowledge. He liked me. He, who I once thought I would never even want to be with, liked me. I considered my feelings for him. For the past few days I had been in a debate whether to like him or not. My thoughts turned to wondering, “Could I really like him back?” and my heart answered almost immediately, “Yes.”
When I went to school the next morning, the previous night was all that I could think about. I asked my friends about him, revealing the knowledge I had so recently learned. They all acted the same way that he had, like they had known it as long as they had known that the sun lived outside of the earth. It made me laugh to think that it could be so obvious, and yet I was still trying to decide whether it was true or not.
After school I went to his house. We sat on the couch in his bed room and talked. Something came over me, caused me to behave in ways that could hint that I may be drunk. I was completely not myself, and flirted more than verbally as I normally did but also physically. I didn’t even know that I knew how to flirt physically. Within an hour we were cuddling, and I could feel his heart beating so strongly and quickly within his chest. All we did was talk, and that’s all we needed to do. At some point I had asked him a question and he responded, “Why not?” It became the theme for the rest of the time, being used to answer many more quandaries. | 17 | English | female | Some college | null | N,N,N,N,N |
r | Each tube was then flicked and spun in a microcentrifuge to mix the ingredients and bring them all together at the base of the tube. Next, the tubes were incubated at 37°C for 1 hour. While the tubes were incubating, 0.5 g of agarose were added to 50 mL of TAE buffer, which is a 1% mixture, to create an agarose gel. The solution was then microwaved to dissolve the agarose, placed in ice briefly to cool down, and then poured into the gel tray where it would solidify and take its shape. A 10 well comb was placed at one end to create 10 wells when the gel was done. When the digest tubes were done incubating, 7 µL of a mixture of 6x loading dye and SYBR green were added to each tube. They were mixed by pipetting up and down. TAE buffer was poured into the electrode chamber where the gel was. 11 µL of each mixture was then loaded into a well in this order: Ladder (1 KB Perfect made by Novagen), C, BglI, HindIII, B+H. The wells were next to the negative electrode so that the DNA would be
pulled towards the positive. The electrode chamber was turned to 140 volts and ran for 45 minutes. When it was done, the gel was taken to a UV machine where it could be properly viewed and an attached printer printed a picture of the gel. The lane that the ladder was in was compared to a set standard for that ladder to tell me the number of base pairs each dash of DNA had. These were previously predicted using a website that does virtual electrophoresis experiments called http://tools.neb.com/NEBcutter2/.
The gel (fig 1) turned out well. Each band of antimony is strong and it is easy to tell how many base pairs each one has. A standard curve was done (fig 2) to test the data. The drawn line fits moderately well with the data but it does not have great accuracy. Fig 8 gives some more information as to how the digests look and where the enzymes cut the plasmids. In order to make the final decision as to which plasmid antimony is, the predicted digests must be compared with the actual one (figs 3-7). By looking at figure 3, it can be seen that BglI and HindIII only cut the plasmid once, making figures 5, 6, and 7 not possible options to be antimony. Also, figure 1 shows that the plasmid only has around 3.3 Kbp which makes only pET17-b a logical selection for the identity of my plasmid. A final piece of evidence is that figures 3 and 4 are identical, which proves that the true identity of antimony is pET17-B.
I saw that he had left the balcony door open just a crack and knew that was where he would be. | 17 | English | female | Some college | null | N,N,N,N,N |
r | ‘I can’t,’ she croaked…His hand was on her right breast now, squeezing it hard through the blouse, and she could hear him breathing deeply through the nose.” This quote doubles for discrimination because Mariam isn’t listened to. Even though she protests against Rasheed’s advances, he ignores her and doesn’t care. He just keeps going, showing that he has no value for a woman’s opinion.
“They had Eid visitors at the house. They were all men, friends of Rasheed’s. When a knock came, Mariam knew to go upstairs to her room and close the door. She stayed there, as the men sipped tea downstairs with Rasheed, smoked, chatted. Rasheed had told Mariam that she was not to come down until the visitors had left.” Mariam isn’t even allowed to be in the presence of house guests when they come over. It’s simply because she’s a female and Rasheed wants to limit her.
“One day soon, Mariam decided, she would tell Jalil these things. And when he heard, when he saw how much she missed him when he was gone, he would surely take her with him. He would bring her to Herat, to live in his house, just like his other children.” Mariam is dreaming the way a child does. Children are always beacons of hope and dreams – that things can get better. When Mariam makes plans to go and see Jalil and be accepted by him, she’s filling the reader with hope for a better future for her too.
“And she felt for the first time a kinship with her husband. She told herself that they would make good companions after all.” Mariam is seeing things in a positive light, even though she just found porn and a gun in Rasheed’s dresser. She feels like they’ll be able to get along well and this shows a great amount of hope.
“‘I’m going to be a mother,’ she said. Then she was laughing to herself, and saying it over and over, relishing the words. When Mariam thought of this baby, her heart swelled inside of her. It swelled and swelled until all the loss, all the grief, all the loneliness and self-abasement of her life washed away. This was why God had brought her here, all the way across the country. She knew this now.”Mariam is giddy with the knowledge of her baby. She’s getting incredibly excited about being a mother. She thinks about her life and decides that child-bearing is her purpose. This shows hope because she’s found a very special meaning to her life.
“‘He’s going to ask for my hand, Laila! Maybe as early as this summer. Can you believe it? I swear I can’t stop thinking about him.’” Giti finds a boy that she has a huge crush on and he decides that he wants to marry her. | 17 | English | female | Some college | null | N,N,N,N,N |
r | She had been wearing heels, and they only made the fall worse as they first caused the woman to twist her ankle, then fracture her leg. It was a small fracture, but still painful and definitely worrisome. The daughter waited while they treated her mother, now more at peace. As she waited, she got bored so she began wandering the hallways of the hospital. The rooms to each side of her seemed to be beckoning her presence and she followed them, feeling that inner need act up even more so than usual. After a few halls, she had gained a quicker walk and then she suddenly slowed down, and looked into the room she was approaching. Her eyes fell on a boy just about her age, looking back at her. She stopped short and her mouth fell to a gentle gape as she felt an immediate spark and pull inside her. It was like a jolt of electricity had just run through her veins. The boy appeared to have felt the same. She wanted to go to him, right then, right there. But then the boy slowly closed his eyes and lay back on his pillow. That's when she noticed the nurse to the side of him, pulling a syringe out of his fluid IV. It was time for his nap. The girl continued on.
She couldn't get this boy out of her mind now. This was the first time she had felt attraction, and it was so immensely strong. She wanted to go back to his room but she knew it would be a few hours until he woke up. Her mother was now ready to go, but in a shot of inspiration, the girl ran back to the room and looked at its number. 786. She committed it to memory and then quickly left with one last look at the sleeping wonder.
The next day, she couldn't resist but return to that hospital and that mysterious boy. She went to the visitor’s desk and asked if she could see him. "Sorry, Hun, but he's out. Can't take visitors for a while." The woman's voice hit a sad note at the end. "Could you tell me why he's in here?" The lady looked at her for a second and then decided to answer. "He's got heart issues. Needs a new one." The reality hit the girl and she felt sad, almost traumatized. She thanked the woman and left. If the strange boy was stuck in her head before, now he was really lodged in there.
The night passed and the girl went out for a drive the next day. She needed to get out and moved. She felt as if she had to. She was a good driver, one that cops wished more people would be like. The driver approaching her car was not. She heard sirens near by and pulled over just in case it was needed. | 17 | English | female | Some college | null | N,N,N,N,N |
r | I peruse my closet, viewing my cornucopia of choices – black or black. I grab a pair of jeans and a shirt at random and throw them on. I spot the hair brush, then pick it up and run it quickly through my moderately long hair. As I pass the mirror in the hall way, I stop and look myself over. I happened to pick a fancy shirt for the day. “Nice.”
After finishing my preparations for the day, I finally decide that it is time to leave for my boring walk to school. The sun is now up, just rising over the mountains, and it lights the world. Sadly, it can’t reach the black hole in my soul. Birds are chirping and cats are hunting. Somewhere down the street I can hear a dog barking. The long grass near the sidewalk I am traveling on moves and I pause to look over at it. A rabbit pops out and freezes, its pink nose twitching with caution. I scrutinize the rabbit and its fluffiness. Its large black eyes look up at me, deep and begging to be loved. “Cute.” I begin walking on, wondering if a cat would eat the rabbit.
As I continue on, I pass a park. A small stream runs through it, making little trickling noises. The sun happens to be right behind some trees, causing the park to look like it is sparkling. It is the perfect picture of peace, the one people dream of meeting their lovers in. “Pretty.” I continue on my walk.
It was quiet now, no animals making their noises. The mountains are highlighted and green. They seem to be oozing with life. The wind picks up and I catch the slight movement of the large trees. It makes me wonder what it would be like to be up there in the tops of the trees, seeing this completely different place. The trees would be swaying eerily, yet also calmingly. Anyone else would think of the scene and gape at what they’d call “gorgeous.” I merely think, “Fun.”
I reach the school and pull the front door open. My ears are once again filled with annoying noises. This time though, there is no OFF button for it. The chatter fills the halls, coming from brightly dressed students talking animatedly about the previous day. I think that I am going to go blind, but my vision remains working the way it normally does. I ignore the people and they ignore me as I walk to a quieter hall. “Peaceful.”
I pass a display a few girls are gawking at. It has fancy dresses and pictures of men and women dancing gracefully. They’re absorbed in their thoughts, occasionally murmuring things like, “Handsome…” and “Extravagant…” I ignore them too, though I admit the idea of dancing well with another person in an old and formal way could be fun. I mutter my own word – “Pleasant.” | 17 | English | female | Some college | null | N,N,N,N,N |
r |
She had always felt like she needed something. It was this desire that refused to be fulfilled. It started when she was about 14, just getting into a teenage life. And it was still there 3 years later, at the age of 17. By now, she had determined she wanted someone rather than thing. Yet, she had felt no interest in any boys. Some had been attracted to her, gone through the awkward attempts to woo the un-woo-able, but no one appealed to her. She questioned herself often with this strange notion, trying to think of what it was that could possibly cause such a strange thing to happen with a teenage girl. The few years of contemplation had brought up theories, but nothing good enough for her to really speculate on. So she lived life, continually questioning her desires.
A day at home was usually a peaceful thing. Her parents were good and calm people. They never argued with each other and oddly enough, arguments with their daughter were very seldom. The only thing they ever argued about was her asserting her independence and free personality. She was the daughter of a very calm couple, but she definitely countered their energies with her extensive and fun personality which made her very like-able in combination with the fact she was a nice person.
Today, though, was not a calm day. As she walked from room to room, attempting to find some new inspiration for her own her, she heard a short scream from the kitchen, the sound of her mother's beautiful voice. She ran into the room, starting to panic as she frantically questioned, "Mom?! Mom, what's wrong?!" She saw her mother lying on the ground, appearing to be in pain as she continually kept saying "Ow" in short breaths. The mother's daughter ran to her side and put a hand on her to attempt assistance. "Ouch ... swee - ty, I ... need you to take me to - the hospital." The words were rushed and squeezed and her daughter could tell she was in immense pain. "Okay Mom, just tell me where I can pick you up." Her mother directed her hands and at this moment, the hero of the house was very grateful she had taken classes to strengthen herself. She carried her mother to the car, set her in the back lying down, and drove.
A visit to the hospital brought scents of disinfectant and sickness, laced with fear. But she wasn't sensing that, as her mind was too occupied with helping her mother. She carried the injured woman in quickly and started calling for help from the doctors. A few worried faces gathered around and someone quickly pulled up a rolling bed and laid her mother down on it. They took her to be immediately looked at, and her daughter was left to sit in worry.
Her mother had fallen off of a stepping stool while attempting to grab a vase from the highest cabinet they had. | 17 | English | female | Some college | null | N,N,N,N,N |
r | Hours had passed and it came time for me to go when he caught me by surprise. His arms wrapped around me and he begged, his voice sounding as if it were filled with tears, “Kyrie, please don’t leave me.” The request almost broke my heart, and I most certainly did not want to leave, but I had a home and parents to get to. It wasn’t possible for me to stay. I tried to comfort him and he accepted that I needed to go. When we stood, his arms again pulled me into a tight hug. The hug swept me away into a land of energy and lusciousness. The feeling of his arms, his neck, his cheek against mine stole all thoughts away from my mind. I sensed confliction in him and decided to tease him more by using his words against him. Out of my lips came our phrase, “Why not?” and he kept muttering it under his breath, as if trying to get himself to make a hard decision. I brushed my cheek against his, feeling the wonderful softness that I hadn’t known existed. My cheek wandered across his face, just feeling, a countless number of times. Then it froze, our noses hovering near each other. Energy surged around us as his and my emotions mixed in the room. I began using my nose to feel the shape of his face, and then suddenly I realized the kiss.
This was one of the fairy tale kisses that seemed to last forever, except it was so much different. It sent tingles, little jolts of energy running beneath my skin, all throughout my body. My heart jumped erratically at the surprise and my mind tried to make sense of things. When we had pulled away, it had been such a short kiss, but within that short kiss I had gleaned many things about him and about myself as well. I had kissed others before him but I had thought something was wrong with me because I had never felt anything. It was like I wasn’t truly kissing them. This kiss was so much different and I finally understood the spark. And such a wonderful spark it was. When we had pulled away, we were breathless and shocked. We sat down, too fuzzy to trust standing, and took in the entire situation. Then he was amazingly happy, more so than I’d ever seen him before. I felt so glad to make him that happy.
The next day he asked me to become his girlfriend. I believe it’s obvious as to whether I said yes or no.
I wake to a dark morning, an annoying noise filling my ears. My eyes scan over the room until they find the alarm clock which displays 5:30 AM. “Oh joy,” I say sarcastically as I force myself up and walk over to the alarm, finally ending the noise by pushing the OFF button.
| 17 | English | female | Some college | null | N,N,N,N,N |
r | The sound got closer to her car and she began to feel more glad she had decided to pull over. It sounded like a chase. It was. The car they were chasing shot out of a turn behind her and swerving the car around the street, tried to miss her. He was going to fast. She didn't even see him. His car hit her back side and launched her car into a light pole. All she saw was the glint of something shiny, and then life went black.
The man driving the other vehicle was being chased by the cops, a true criminal. He didn't get away because the impact had killed him. One less bad guy off the street. But his idiotic mistake had also caused there to be one less good person on the street too, because the girl could not live through that crash. Perhaps it happened because he had only cared about missing her vehicle to avoid being slowed. Perhaps it was just a cruel act of life. Or perhaps there was a deeper meaning.
The girl's body was dragged out from the car, and at that moment she was still alive, but in a comatose state. They rushed her to that very hospital where her mother had been treated, and where her magic boy resided. The doctors knew she wouldn't make it much longer. They also knew her heart could be saved. They talked to her mother and father, both with tear stained eyes, and asked if they were willing to use their daughter to save someone else. They looked at their daughter's beaten body and decided that that would be what she would want. They brought the girl into the operating room, and that boy happened to be in the very next one. As they took out her heart, her spirit went with it in a dream like state. They brought it to its new occupant and the last thing that the girl experienced was the feeling of that mystery boy, his wonderful face, and the voice she knew to be his by some instinct saying "soul mate". She passed on into the unknown in peace. She had found what she needed. And she just saved his life. Normally a spirit would stick around until it was satisfied, but she was already satisfied. Her soul mate still managed to get have her heart.
The boy was unconscious, yes, but that didn't stop him from seeing the girl's beautiful face, feeling her absolute presence, and hearing her wondrous voice saying "soul mate".
When he opened his eyes and felt his new, pure heart, the first thing he did was cry.
“Mariam sat up and rubbed her eyes. Her back and neck were sore. ‘I’m going to wait for him.’” This shows the strength of women because even though Miriam is experiencing pain for waiting for her father, she’s so determined that her wishes overcome the pain and she can last through it.
| 17 | English | female | Some college | null | N,N,N,N,N |
r | Yet as I was running, they caught sight of me and yelled out, ‘If you do not marry Princess Centara tomorrow, you shall not be a part of this family!’ I kept running though, and now I am without my loved ones. I am forever to be miserable. I cannot even see thy fair maiden, but just hear thy beautiful voice.
The leaves liked this man and thought him suitable for Forest, so they said, “Forest, we will be fine. You obviously like this prince and he is perfect for you. You should leave us and marry him.”
“No,” Forest objected. “I have made a promise that I intend to keep. I shall stay. I cannot leave you. I am faithful to you.”
“Forest, do not be so foolish. You created us. WE are loyal to YOU. You come first, along with your happiness. You should wed this man.”
Forest finally agreed and walked from the bushes to reveal herself.
“What is thy name?” Forest asked the man. He looked up and was overtaken with joy. He instantly fell in love with Forest.
“Jalden. May I ask thy fair maiden’s name?”
“My name is Forest,” she told him with a smile. “May I ask of your name?”
“Fair Forest, I am of 18 years of age, but if I was 20 and thou were 80, I would not care. I wish to marry you.”
“Well, age is of no issue, for I am 17. I was just inquisitive,” she replied. And with that, they talked for days. Forest told her story first, and then Jalden told his.
He was born in the kingdom of Carpathia as an only child. His parents were king and queen, but were eager for Jalden to wed so that they could retire. HE was not going to marry just anyone, though. He wanted the right girl for him – someone who expressed herself normally. And, he added, he had just found her.
They remained in the forest and even had their wedding there. They used Carpith leaves to write on with ink made out of Caris berries. Every one of their friends and Forest’s family came to the wedding and they were all pleased to see Forest and Jalden married. They couple were happy and even after the wedding remained in the forest so that Forest could keep her promise to the leaves.
But one day Jalden’s parents tried to force Jalden and Forest to move to Carpathia so that they could finally retire. They both refused, having a feeling that something bad would occur if they left. But Jalden’s parents were cruel and they ordered their soldiers to bring Jalden and Forest out of the forest.
But the second Forest left, the forest burst into flames! That was the effect of the evil fairy’s spell. Forest was shocked and surprised. She couldn’t allow the forest to die. She ran toward it, Jalden grabbing for her but missing because the soldiers held him back.
| 17 | English | female | Some college | null | N,N,N,N,N |
cc | I found that my favorite element, however, belonged to the tile on the right: here, I was beginning to wonder if those semi-circular shapes which already began to overlap could extend across the entire composition when shapes were placed side by side. Therefore, that became my next task.
In this tiling, I tiled the circular shapes in honeycomb-like hexagons to allow them to tessellate exactly and without gaps. I then brought the semi-circular shapes to completion and linked them like rings across the composition. Thus, the full work has a large number of focal points, from the individual circular tiles, to the bold hexagonal shape in the background, to the rings that advance off the plane. Here, I feel that there are many patterns sharing the same space, inviting the audience to explore each in depth. While it is very complicated, the piece does not overwhelm the viewer, especially when enlarged, and thus signals the Muslim mosque wall art that were this piece’s inspiration.
Once I had completed my final pattern, I felt that I had finally and fully understood the beauty, art, and intense critical thinking and planning that comprised these Islamic geometric patterns. I began to explore alternate options, opening doors to an infinite number of possibilities: each mathematically perfect, each in keeping with style and tradition because of such simple fundamental building blocks. For such an old and traditional style, these patterns can inspire modern artists as they have influenced my own work as a growing designer.
The ancient Egyptian civilization was one in which all life was respected and celebrated; magic and art combined to make their beliefs in life after death a reality. Their religion, language, and art all shed some light on their culture, a way of life that unfortunately is not fully understood today. The one constant, however, is their great zeal for life and the careful precautions they took through mummification and burial rituals to ensure that such life would continue for all of eternity. One such element of the ritual was the use of canopic jars: Egyptian canopic jars are, in their most basic sense, containers for a mummified person’s organs. Over time, they have evolved from simple carved holes in the walls of tombs into beautiful works of freestanding art, grouped together in equally intricate chests. The materials used became more permanent and beautiful as wood was replaced with stone, and the lids of vessels from flat-tops to elegant gods’ heads. Eventually, though, their functionality was unnecessary and they became truly symbolically magic; that alone fulfilled the purpose of continuing life for the dead. Ultimately, these jars bridged the realms of the living, the dead, and the gods.
According to findings, it is possible that the very first burial involving canopic installations was as early as the 2nd dynasty; however, this is not currently proven, and the first confirmed case is with the reign of Snefru in the 4th dynasty (Ellison). | 22 | English | male | Bachelor's | Web/Graphic Designer | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
cc | The use of wild, exotic cats in The Dream is the artist’s way to show his desire to be set apart from the artists of his past, and the artists of his time, though he did mimic many academic and avant-garde techniques in gaining his recognition. Ultimately, however, it can easily be argued that the cats here reflect “Rousseau’s determination to be seen as a painter of significance… [His] jungle cats, governed solely by nature and instinct, are avatars of Rousseau’s aspiration” (“Sublime and Feral”).
In the grass of The Dream there is a cylindrical orange steak that appears to be a snake or serpent creature. It is barely indistinguishable as such when viewing the painting because it is so hidden, yet its slithering nature implies that it is supposed to be a snake. If one studies an earlier work by Rousseau, The Snake Charmer, in comparison with The Dream, the handling and technique of these animals is similar.
Sections of the painting are visibly overworked (Cooper 160), suggesting that he sought the perfection worthy of having his work displayed in a gallery. At the same time, however, this also reminds the audience that Rousseau failed in his quest for ultimate technical prowess due to a lack of formal training. While his internal struggle compelled him to keep reworking sections of The Dream, he ultimately failed
Regardless of one’s opinion on Rousseau as an artist or the quality of his work, then or present-day, one thing is clear: “The Dream has the absolute sincerity of an art which is the constant creation and enterprise of a man’s whole being – a man passionately devoted to his art, finding in painting a refuge from the drab mediocrity of his pitiful existence and a means of satisfying his dreams…” (Dorival 18).
Design is perhaps one of the most powerful tools of persuasion and expression in today’s world: through use of the written word, vivid imagery, composition and style, design is able to move audiences of all demographics in various ways. From its earliest forms as instructions on cave walls to religious books, design has sought to be the elegant solution to communication breakdowns. Because of its inherent abilities to affect its audience, it is thus logical that the website designs of today and the future will utilize certain elements of previous forms of design to be as successful as possible.
Its success, however, is dependant highly on the variable of profit. If a website’s purpose is to generate revenue, then the site will be highly dynamic and personalized. Conversely, if attracting consumers to make money is not the site’s primary function, then a radically different approach will be taken, a minimalistic style that will attract users with its simplicity and ease of use. In other words, form follows function.
This fork in the road of design towards two very different end results is growing more apparent each day and is most certainly not an overnight phenomenon. | 22 | English | male | Bachelor's | Web/Graphic Designer | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
cc | The next logical step for this exercise was to determine ways that these individual circles could work together to be a finished tiling. Because circles cannot sit next to one another and tile exactly, I explored various ways to make each tile fit in a cohesive manner.
As finished works, I believed that the symmetry within each circular piece, and as a whole, was evident, and I was pleased with the various alternatives developed.
From there, I began working on other tiles from scratch, trying not to repeat the same exact beginning steps of construction in the hopes that radically different pieces would emerge. Eventually, that was exactly what I saw:
In many ways, this piece struck me as one of my more complex ones in terms of design and movement, though it is arguably much weaker in other areas. Here, I used color to create multiple paths that the viewer’s eye could travel along: vertical zig-zags, horizontal bars, 45 angles, along the circles by following the stars. The color also created the illusion of depth and overlap. Here, I mixed the blues and tans so that when pieces visually seemed to overlap, they shared a mid-tone of the two colors. Thus, a sense of ambiguity emerges, and the viewer may be unsure as to what element is on top of another. I believe that this piece does embody Islamic art well, as the symmetry is rotational (something these Muslim artists did as frequently in addition to translation and reflection transformations) and the geometry is extremely based on straight lines only (with the minor exception of small circles). In general, the circles could serve as part of the design but were usually erased after the construction of the model was complete.
Then I returned back to sketches, focusing energy on how shapes can be created that tessellate naturally, strengthening the tile and making the piece seem stronger and more unified. I was very interested in the options that I developed, but the above two sketches remained simply that: I did not feel that the angular triangles and pointy polygons were as traditionally Islamic in nature.
Thus, I began a new and final sketch. I hoped to use the ideas and skills I had previously learned to make this piece geometrically correct and visually appealing.
I let myself make these sketches extremely complex so that as I explored various alternatives for the sketch, I could erase certain lines for one tile and keep certain lines for another. I quickly found myself with almost ten workable variations of colored tiles and narrowed my options down to my strongest, most successful executions.
While the color palettes and structural geometric foundations are exactly the same, these shapes are clearly different. Lines that advance in one shape recede in the other. Colors that traditionally fall back into the background are forced forward in the variation on the left, or are allowed to retreat from the viewer in the one on the right. | 22 | English | male | Bachelor's | Web/Graphic Designer | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
cc | When the shape of coffins themselves was altered sometime in the 17th dynasty from their traditional rectangular shape to the form of the human body, the jars remained linked in design by also changing. (“Canopic,” Internet) Though still cylindrical, they became narrower at the base than at the top, creating the illusion of shoulders just below the god-headed lids.
With the exception of the stone used prior, in the 18th dynasty, it is clear what colors were used most frequently with the canopic equipment. Evidence suggests that the chests were painted entirely white with gold and black painted accents. (“Canopic,” Internet) These colors would have held great significance to the Egyptians. The color white suggests purity and rebirth, and also directly references the white of linen used as wrappings in the mummification process. The color black was the symbol of fertility for the Egyptians, as the Black Land of Egypt was used only for planting and harvesting. Finally, the color gold, much like it does to modern societies, shows elegance, richness, and splendor. Combined, these three colors allude to many key characteristics the deceased would certainly want for the afterlife.
Another key turning point for the evolution of canopic jars comes with the New Kingdom; during this era, it is evident that there is a distinct difference between canopic equipment intended for the wealthy and for the poor. (Ellison) Royal equipment is especially ornate and elaborate, often with relief statues carved into the stone outer chest depicting the goddesses: a literal interpretation of them extending their protection around the sons of Horus and, ultimately, the mummified organs. The chests are also architecturally superior to their common folk counterparts in that they have decoratively ridged, angled lids. Additionally, the lid was often slanted upwards, with additional hand-painted imagery of a hawk, most likely the sun god Ra, upon it. The angle of the lid is reminiscent of a ray of sunlight, which when combined with the depiction of Ra, signal magical properties of the sun, ultimately providing the life for everything from plantlife to animals and to the Egyptians themselves.
Briefly, only during the reign of King Akhenaten, an extremely notable change occurs. Also known as the Heretic King, Akenaten believed in a monotheistic religion and tried to enforce this new religion upon his people. (“Canopic,” Internet) Instead of imagery depicting the gods and goddesses, the jars only reference the names and titles of the king and the god Aten. His probable son, Tutankhamun, seems to reverse his father’s revisions to their religion, as his chest and jars follow the traditional style. It is significant that Tutankhamun is quick to decree this style change back to how the jars appeared, as it shows a modern audience just how important their long withstanding religion was: even a great and mighty pharaoh was utterly unable to force new ideas upon the civilization, and his own son did not support Akenaten’s idea. | 22 | English | male | Bachelor's | Web/Graphic Designer | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
cc | The aforementioned trends are broad enough, and for the most part logical enough, that they apply to a very large number of websites today. When one analyzes sites more closely, however, it becomes apparent that there already is a growing split in design between sites whose purpose is to generate revenue, also known as e-commerce sites, and sites whose primary goal is not to create profit. One can see that with financial success as the underlying motive behind a site, entirely different design risks are taken. Without the burden to please a business as one’s client, sites that are not driven by profit allow a designer more freedom to experiment artistically, and therefore other choices can be made.
To better understand and witness this divide as it appears now on the Internet, one can view two extremely popular websites: Amazon.com and Google.com. Both of these web giants have beautifully designed pages, but it is obvious to any viewer that they differ greatly in terms of the amount and type of content, placement, and navigation.
According to Steven Bradley, author of the article “Does Form Follow Function?” there are two ways to interpret the phrase form follows function: “descriptive – beauty results from the purity of function – and prescriptive – aesthetic considerations in design should be secondary to functional considerations” (Web). Therefore, it is plausible that both Amazon and Google are beautiful and successful because they each follow their function effectively. Examining both of these sites separately will further illustrate the idea of “form follows function,” that every site on the Internet today and in the future will be developed with an end goal in mind, and for the needs of the user as well, who ultimately completes that objective.
As a graphic design Honors student with a minor degree in art history, I was extremely excited to learn about Islamic geometric patterns, particularly in the history of the works, the mathematical principles behind them, and the actual execution of the art. In all my time at name of university, I had never before been exposed to Middle Eastern art in any formal classes, and had not taken a class focused on geometry. Thus, I spent the semester working closely with mathematics professor name of professor to discover the subject matter on my own and in ways that interested me.
As I began my work, I realized that before I could fully understand the thought process behind the tiled patterns, I must first research and appreciate the cultural and religious relationships to the art. I wanted to ensure that this undertaking was one fully explored in terms of math, history, and artistic execution.
Upon researching various scholarly journals and articles, I discovered that virtually every component of Islamic tile works was directly related to religious and cultural doctrine, often reflecting spirituality through the mathematical perfection of geometry or organic shapes reminiscent of the natural world. The 13th-15th century, for example, saw the “abundance of tiled, wooden and stucco geometric patterns. | 22 | English | male | Bachelor's | Web/Graphic Designer | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
cc | Green has been shown to help increase reading speed and comprehension because it is the easiest color for the human eye to process; it helps make small areas to appear much more spacious as well (Kuchinsky). Orange is the best color to draw attention to something, but it also makes objects appear less expensive or sophisticated (Kuchinsky). Brown is the most reassuring color on the human psyche, and as such is seen as solid and reliable. (Kuchinsky) If purple is used in excess, the color can dampen the desire to purchase something as it creates a feeling of cheapness, but when used appropriately, it can create feelings of luxury, sophistication, and even enlightenment (Kuchinsky). When designers use these colors with one another in a design, they have the ability to strengthen their messages on their audience in ways other elements simply cannot.
The composition of websites is also changing in modern times, and at the present, there is a strong tendency to arrange pages into a grid. In the article Future Web Trends, web design expert Craig Grannell comments, “Grid-oriented pages tend to provide a pleasing vertical (and sometimes horizontal) rhythm that makes reading text and navigating a page more pleasurable and easier… An advantage of using a grid is that some questions are answered for you during the layout phase, regarding things like element dimensions” (Web). As he maintains, grids allow designers a starting point in deciding which elements are most important and which are least, and give them an organized way to relay that information to the user through size and location on the page.
And with such an organized structure, designers also gravitate towards lots of negative, or empty, web space on their pages. This urge to approach the user in a direct, simple way has also lead to the death of a somewhat recent trend that many designers now reflect on with ambivalence. In an interview, Dr. Jacob Nielson states, “We have almost succeeded in eradicating annoying splash pages and Flash [introductions]. There are also not nearly as many bloated designs as there used to be. These are great advances from a design perspective” (Web).
It would appear that designers today are following the most important trend of all, which is forcing the design as a whole, regardless of its purpose or amount of content, to be as simplistic and comfortable to use as possible: as Robert Hoekman, Jr. asserts in Designing the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Application Design, one should hope to create an “obvious interface” which is “focused on what’s most important and leaves out the things that are simply ‘nice to have’” (60). By selecting only the most important elements – crucial, concise writing paired with an intuitive, simple navigation and clear imagery – the user is left with a positive notion about the site and the site itself stands the best chance at retaining an audience long enough to express its idea.
| 22 | English | male | Bachelor's | Web/Graphic Designer | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
cc | In his early career, Rousseau struggled to find the acceptance he longed for as an artist in the modern era. According to The Banquet Years: The Origins of Avant-Garde in France, Rousseau’s first public opening of his work took place in 1885, in which two of his paintings were slashed with knives by spectators and later thrown away by gallery curators. As author Roger Shattuck comments, “the first year Rousseau sacrificed everything to start a new life as an artist, he met with public abuse of his paintings” (49). While this moment certainly upset the new artist, who cut out newspaper clippings of the incident from local newspapers and pasted them into a private diary, it reinforced the internal struggle of finding his own style as a modern painter and conforming to standards that would win him recognition and acceptance from spectators and peers. More importantly, however, it too taught him perseverance, even as one journalist remarked in 1891 that “Monsieur Rousseau paints with his feet with his eyes closed” (Shattuck 52).
Compositionally, The Dream reflects Rousseau’s internal artistic struggle more than any other work during his career. Many of his jungle paintings arguably contain elements worthy of evaluation in this perspective, yet this final work by the aging artist shows that, whether through imitation or through his own style, he was extremely determined to find acceptance.
Immediately the viewer is overwhelmed by an extremely crowded scene in a jungle, full of vividly-depicted animals, vibrant flowers, hundreds of individually painted leaves, and the surreal interjection of formal and classical society through the woman on the couch. These artistic choices reflect the life of a man who seems to long for such a natural paradise: Rousseau claimed many times in his life that he had traveled to Mexico and from there he was inspired to paint these Primitivist works, yet many critics of his time did remark that his virgin forests with their opulent plant life evoke the greenhouses of the Acclimatization Gardens rather than Mexican flora…” (Dorival 17).
While Rousseau may have longed to leave France and explore the very jungles he depicted in his paintings, perhaps the use of this Primitivist imagery in his art stems more prominently from what was popular among colleagues and collectors in his time period. According to art historian Bernard Dorival, there was “this deep-felt need to return to a natural world of virginal quality [in this time period]… that inspired in the successive generations to be raw and direct, naïve, more authentic in the mania of primitive art” (12).
The most intriguing shift in Rousseau’s work leading up to this work “grew as much out of the circumstances of his unorthodox career as out of any aesthetic conviction. The jungle scenes became popular when they were exhibited and sold better than his other works. His own need and a ready market impelled him to repeat tropical subjects to the verge of mechanical reproduction” (Shattuck 84). | 22 | English | male | Bachelor's | Web/Graphic Designer | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
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A few decades before the Surrealist artists began painting their dreamlike works, the artist Henri Rousseau was carefully crafting his own dreams, literally and figuratively. The Dream, a 1910 painting by the famous Post-Impressionist artist, represents not only a woman in awe at the wonders of the land she visits within a dream, but also Rousseau’s own personal dreams and goals as a painter. Since beginning his work, he dreamed of recognition, acceptance, and praise by other artists and art lovers, and found that he was faced with a difficult internal dilemma to achieve this aspiration. The Dream is Henri Rousseau’s work that best reflects his career-long internal struggle: to either conform to or mimic certain styles of painting in order to be accepted by the critical art world he so adored, or to allow himself to be creatively independent and unique, leaving his own path as he went.
Before one can analyze The Dream through this perspective, one must first be somewhat familiar with Rousseau’s biographical story. Henri Rousseau was born on May 21, 1844, in the town of Laval in northwest France. His father was a tinsmith and hardware dealer who “enjoyed bourgeois prosperity” (Shattuck 47). Growing up, he received no formal training in the arts; instead, he was employed until the age of forty working for France as a gabelou, or employee of the municipal toll service, although he received the misnomer sobriquet of douanier, a customs inspector (Shattuck 46). The death of his first wife, Clémence, which followed the deaths of eight infant children, left Rousseau with only one child, a daughter named Julia, and immense grief (Shattuck 49). He therefore hoped to take refuge in a new life and pursued painting to offer him comfort and fresh beginnings. Unlike contemporary colleagues of Rousseau who sentimentalize and romanticize the peasant in painting, he is essentially a folk painter and has the hopes and dreams of the average member of his class.
Rousseau’s obsession with being accepted by the art world is somewhat understandable when evaluated in context: as discussed, he was not only uneducated in the ways of formal painting and began his career at a much older age, but he was producing works at the same time as many other talented and better-known modern artists. Though working for many years already, Rousseau did not begin to receive proper recognition for his art until around the same time that Matisse had begun crafting a reputation as an artist. In the book Modern French Painters, author Jan Gordon asserts that the two, while technically competitors in the art arena, were different not only in style and subject matter but also their reasons for painting in the first place: “Matisse was a painter who conceived a terror of painting in a trite way, while Rousseau’s desire was to paint a picture so conventional that he would be admitted to the Artiste Français” (92).
| 22 | English | male | Bachelor's | Web/Graphic Designer | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
cc | In this way, perhaps his shift to pursue jungle scenes as in The Dream was because he discovered a niche market eager to purchase or praise his work: for the first time, this decision to switch to jungle-scene painting earned him the satisfaction of acceptance as an artist.
The destruction of perspective, or perhaps the creation of a perspective which is flattened and collage-like in nature, was arguably more than a stylistic decision by Rousseau in The Dream. By incorporating his figures of animals, people, and exotic plantlife in a flat world where each subject occupies individual planes, Rousseau was again trying to mimic traditionally accepted and appreciated artworks. This style is unique to his genius, yet reminds the audience of “famous frescoes in the Palace of the Popes in Avignon” (Dorival 18). Even as the artist was trying to give attention to every element of the work by placing each on individual planes in the composition, he was also referencing frescos, known for their flatness and appreciated for their technical quality.
Additionally, the size of the composition is extremely large, measuring 6' 8 1/2" in height and 9' 9 1/2" in width. The majority of Rousseau’s work is not nearly as grand in size. Prior to the spread of modernity in European art, such a large scale was reserved for subject matter of great importance, such as royalty or religious figures. Artists, striving to abandon academic techniques and conventional styles, rebelled by choosing this large scale or to make a statement about the working class. Perhaps Rousseau was following suit by depicting a simple female nude in the jungle, lacking in traditional importance. However, since Rousseau’s dream was to be revered as a great artist of his time, he may have simply been copying the choices of other artists to gain a sense of belonging.
The attention to detail within The Dream is another interesting window into Rousseau’s struggle, especially for a painting so large. He depicts his imagery extremely realistically, albeit with his own stylized flair.
The woman, a central focal point to The Dream, reclines in a classic fashion upon an elegant couch. Her calm expression and relaxed pose is reminiscent to countless works of art featuring naked women at rest that may have influenced Rousseau. Thus, many might think that he merely includes the woman to conform to his interpretations of what others would appreciate or makes art revered. On the other end of the spectrum, some might simply think that the inclusion of the woman in a jungle reflects his other mentality: the need to include his own unique approach to become respected by the art community. If one were to study further, however, a different interpretation comes forward.
The resemblances between The Dream and Felix Vallotton’s painting, Models at Rest, is extremely striking at first glance and upon further evaluation: in both, a nude woman reclines comfortably on a plush piece of furniture with body turned and exposed towards the audience while facing in profile. | 22 | English | male | Bachelor's | Web/Graphic Designer | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
cc | Both women’s legs are crossed at the ankle with their weight supported on their right arm, tucked underneath. One can easily argue that this mimicry is no coincidence. Rousseau had become so familiar with rejection and ridicule by 1910, and Vallotton was “one of the first to write a favorable article on Rousseau” around this time (MoMA 251). Therefore, Rousseau would surely have noticed the work of a colleague who wished him well in the recent past and was influenced to perhaps pay tribute and thanks through painting. If this was truly Rousseau’s intention, consciously or not, this fact becomes a compelling piece of evidence showing how desperately Rousseau craved acceptance and praise for his work. As mentioned previously, he would go to any length to ensure that other artists and writers commended his work, and would also reward those who did in his own way of giving thanks. The woman in The Dream may thus very well be a subtle nod towards a man who commended his previous work.
The other figure present in the work, a native who faces the viewer while playing a musical instrument, also reveals much about the artist’s struggle. Painted in almost pure black and wearing a traditional and colorful piece of clothing, he is almost not visible at first glance against the dark jungle background. The native locks eyes with the viewer, not at the woman or the animals, indicating that Rousseau was aware of the viewer while painting the work. One lion that looks towards the couch creeps calmly from behind the man while the second lion, also facing the viewer, waits low in the grass in front of the musician.
If the man were to be removed from this painting and taken out of context, the uneducated viewer could easily mistake this section of The Dream to be the work of Paul Gauguin, the Primitivist Post-Impressionism painter producing art only fifteen or so years earlier. The depiction of the man is overwhelmingly racist in a modern perspective, but even in the early 1900s as well. Throughout art history, Primitivism has been defined and classified as a “highly fluid phenomenon that, all in all, can be understood as an aesthetically spiritual, aristocratic, and escapist reaction against contemporary striving for scientifically defined facts and a scientifically produced optical truth” (Levitine 132).
The two lions within the painting too hold much significance in reflecting Rousseau’s aspirations of greatness. Many works prior to The Dream also contain jungle cats, but here they are depicted with a certain calm belonging to the composition; the first gazes at the woman nonchalantly and the second stares at the viewer intently yet without viciousness. Both evoke a sense of mystery, and while they are situated near one another, they appear to be lone creatures. Essentially, this may be Rousseau’s way to represent himself in the painting. As an artist, he was part of the art community by association, as these lions are companions by association as well, yet he never truly belonged in the way in which he desired. | 22 | English | male | Bachelor's | Web/Graphic Designer | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
cc | It would appear that the design choices these artists are making now will illustrate what we can expect for the future, both in what trends will continue for the future and what will be replaced or altered.
Because the sheer number of websites on the Internet today is so large, one could argue that the process of categorizing them into specific groups to analyze design trends might be a daunting if not impossible task. If one breaks their elements down into the basics, however, concrete modern styles emerge.
Perhaps the most important element of any website is its text: without the written word to deliver information to the user, most websites are rendered without function and nothing more than works of art. The text found on most websites today tends to share certain characteristics. According to the article “Future Web Design Trends” by Computer Arts, “we’re noticing a lot of sites designed with bigger typefaces, and many that utilize unusual fonts” (Web). Building on this idea, the idea of matching a typeface’s perceived identity with an idea is also becoming more apparent, as Usability for the Web: Designing Websites That Work states: “if your client is looking for a highly professional but somewhat modern look, you’ll want to use a typeface that supports that feel. Thus, you wouldn’t use an old gothic type, but rather something elegant and formal, such as [a serif font]” (Brinck 310-11). As previously mentioned, because the written information on the Internet is so important, sites today are trying to make it stand out from the competition through use of larger, bolder, unique faces. Unfortunately, even the best designed type cannot mask imperfections with writing: Dr. Jacob Nielson laments in an interview with Digital Web Magazine, “[It is] very rare to see writing that's to the point and focuses on answering customers' questions without smothering the info in marketese” (Web). Jonathan Price, author of Hot Text: Web Writing That Works, claims that appearance is just as important as the tone and message word choice can relay.
For the most part, this trend seems to suggest that it is most important to speak to your audience in a very human, compassionate way, or one risks losing users by being too robotic, too general, too routine. As Price warns, “you must give some real value when you customize and personalize your content, or they will rebel, clicking away from the page, or deleting your e-mail in disgust” (16). Some studies suggest that word choice and descriptive language may be extremely persuasive on a person’s interpretation of an idea: in a study on color theory and high-intensity language versus low-intensity language, participants seemed to respond so acutely to the differences in word choice – adjectives like “drastic, severe, and excruciating” for one group and no strong descriptors in the other – that elements like varying colors played virtually no role (Bankhead).
| 22 | English | male | Bachelor's | Web/Graphic Designer | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
cc | By 1995, the National Science Foundation started charging fees to register domains, excluding only educational and governmental websites (Moschovitis 39). Because of the ability of anyone to buy an address, this event marks the rapid expansion and commercialization of the Internet. Advertisers quickly embraced this idea, purchasing space for advertisements on pages to try to attract their target audiences through yet another medium. The general public, on the other hand, was also investing money into the web by signing up accounts with service providers such as American On-line. By 1999, Wi-Fi was introduced, spelling out increased accessibility to the Internet and an even greater number of people utilizing it (Moschovitis 54).
Following these landmark events, the innovations of the Internet rapidly followed to help it evolve into the portal we know it as today. Broadband and DSL access, faster loading times, enhanced Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) all help to both allow the user to view sites while making the experience more memorable and beautiful.
But in order to achieve the aesthetically pleasing look that many pages have today, one must acknowledge the somewhat embarrassing design of the earliest websites.
Design was highly limited in the early 1990s in many ways. Because the average user’s computer display was often somewhat crude and incapable of displaying high-resolution images, a wide breadth of colors, or certain sizes of web elements, designers tended to stay conservative: more often than not, sites had characteristic white backgrounds, blue underlined hyperlinks, fairly large-set black Times New Roman text, and very few static images. The elements were usually stacked one on top of the other in an extreme vertical fashion, which caused text to scroll very far across the page, sometimes entire screen spans from right to left. Furthermore, because designers had little control or knowledge of what fonts their audiences’ computers had loaded in the system, they were limited to a small handful of “safe” fonts, such as Times New Roman or Arial. It was thus an era of design to the lowest common denominator.
As the years progressed, each change to how HTML was interpreted or what certain browsers could handle allowed for increased artistic freedom. Through multimedia and JavaScript, designers were able to create dynamic, albeit limited, content to engage the user through pop-ups, menus, navigation, animations, and sound bytes. The trend that now emerged, however, was just as unappetizing as its predecessor: pages became so busy with irrelevant content that browsing the site could become a chore. Colors often clashed or caused type to be unreadable on tiled, patterned backgrounds. This era could seem to the nostalgic designer as a time where artists were doing everything the web would allow, not because they thought the end result was necessarily beautiful, but because they could, and the experimentation itself seemed to suggest sophistication.
Those capabilities were very important as they helped pave the way for the future. | 22 | English | male | Bachelor's | Web/Graphic Designer | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
cc | In terms of usability, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has found that the way type is arranged is also important, depending on the nature of the content: “longer line lengths usually will elicit faster reading speed, but users tend to prefer shorter line lengths” (44). Therefore, one can pull up a handful of popular sites today and see almost all use short line lengths in paragraphs, especially news sites where information must be viewed and understood quickly.
As the old adage goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. On the Web, this is especially true: the size, location, and imagery within a graphic on a page all help shape a user’s ideas about the rest of the content, especially when the graphic is a photograph of or relating to a potential product or service. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services performed various studies to help determine the effects of photographs on the Internet, and found that “having a labeled photograph on the website was perceived as more trustworthy than having a photograph with no label” (157). In spite of this, the same study found that users preferred to have a photograph with no label over no photograph at all. In another study, however, findings suggested that photographs should not be used to increase the trustworthiness of a site, and that the presence of a photo did not affect the trust for the site as a whole, nor the user’s preferences for a site (157). Trends on today’s sites show that they agree with the government’s findings: most images are clearly labeled or distinctly affiliated with content, or have “alt tags,” or imbedded information explaining what the photograph is of or its relevance, to help users, especially those with visual impairments, understand and interpret the graphic art. Clearly explained or understood imagery aids in helping avoid what Amber Calo, senior manager of Creative Intelligence at Corbis, calls “information overload.”
Appealing to the visitor through evident cues is important, but so is using a psychological approach to better engage the audience member without him being aware: a website’s color palette is an effective way to create a mood or spread a message before the user knows exactly what that is. In The Psychological Effects of Color, Charlotte Kuchinsky explains that different colors affect human perception in a variety of ways, but certain ideas are universally accepted theories of color. She claims that red can help stimulate someone to purchase something, perhaps impulsively, but also evokes negative emotions such as anger or violence. (Kuchinsky) White denotes simplicity and precision, and while black symbolizes sophistication, elegance, and even mystery, it can also create fear or a sense of death if used in excess; a middle-tone gray is seen as intelligent and serious. (Kuchinsky) Blue is the most well-liked color by the widest range of people because viewing it creates the production of tranquilizing hormones in the brain, and therefore feelings of trust, stability, and sincerity arise (Kuchinsky).
| 22 | English | male | Bachelor's | Web/Graphic Designer | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
cc | Regardless of what type of granite they used, the Egyptians knew the various flecks of color would too illustrate all of the facets of life.
During the First Intermediate Period of Egyptian history, the lids of canopic jars are changed from the traditional flat tops to sculpted forms of human heads. (Ellison) Additionally, it is during this time period that hieroglyphics adorn the jars, listing not only the name and title of the deceased, but spells and text regarding life also ran around the jar in bands of writing. (Ellison) Design is also enhanced as care is taken to visually connect the canopic jars to the coffin visually, either through color scheme, writing, drawings, or materials. In this sense, the magic would only be strengthened in adding text as well as connecting jars to the sarcophagus: the spells ensured additional support, and since the sarcophagus contains the body and the jars contain the respective organs, it is only logical to link the two through design to verify that they all can never be separated in the afterlife.
By the end of the Middle Kingdom, it would appear that the Egyptians had created a standard of canopic jars from which is does not deviate much for some time. (Ellison) These jars were held in an outer stone chest made of the same stone as the sarcophagus, and the inner wooden chest, divided into four sections, represented the inner coffin. In turn, these four compartments held four jars which each had certain characterized properties. All four jars were adorned with lids with the four sons of Horus: Hapy, the baboon-headed god, guarded the lungs; the human-headed Imsety was the guardian of the liver; Duamutef watched over the stomach and upper intestines and was depicted as a jackal; the falcon-headed Qebehsenuf protected the lower intestines. Within the wooden chest, four goddesses would be invoked through text, each called to protect the son of Horus to whom she was associated. (Ellison)
The magic here is truly strengthened through the idea of dichotomy, or when two seemingly opposing things are represented together. In these canopic jars, the male gods atop the jars, who serve to protect the vital organs, are additionally protected themselves by female counterparts. Also, since the gender roles are established in this way where the female deities offer the final level of preservation and defense, life is once again reiterated: Egyptian women were at a higher status than that of most ancient civilizations because of their ability to bear new life. Again, the idea of new life, the afterlife, is strengthened through magical characteristics. Additionally, the depiction of the sons of Horus and the written references to the females through hieroglyphs are components of art that create a level of realism: to these Egyptians, the gods were quite literally present in each and every canopic jar, readily available to serve the organs they were ordained to protect.
| 22 | English | male | Bachelor's | Web/Graphic Designer | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
cc | In order to truly appreciate the trends, one must understand the roots of the Internet and certain elements of contemporary design as an art form. From then, one can break down each design element common to all pages, and predict the future of website design in its smallest pieces and in its entirety.
In a world of rapidly changing design trends and fads, the future of web design will eventually be one of two extremes, based on the site’s functionality. If the site’s purpose is to generate revenue, the page will be extremely busy, full of content and advertisements geared to persuade the user on a personal level (ex: Amazon.com). If the site provides a service or is not designed to generate revenue, the exact opposite will take place: it will be a very minimalist website, with strict focus on its usability and simplicity through functionality (ex: Google.com). Naturally, one can argue that these two options are not necessarily the only possibilities of the future of design on the Internet. Despite room for variation, the research presented will include many apparent trends and observations that will support the claim of a clear demarcation between just these two utterly different styles of design.
First I will present and examine the brief history of the Internet, from its origins to its evolution as a mainstream part of daily life. Next, I will evaluate website design practices, past and present, explaining in my own words and through excerpts from experts what each element is and why it was designed a certain way. Comparisons will then be drawn between current online corporate websites or non-for-profit sites (which are non-revenue in purpose) versus e-commerce pages (which generate a broad range of revenue). The ways in which design is currently used from the main page content through the elements of composition, color, typography, and writing styles will be explained. Through the use of statistics, trends, interviews and surveys, I plan to draw correlations and predict the future of web design from an aesthetic perspective.
While it is certainly up to debate and merely a prediction, the conclusion of this research is that only two options exist for web design in the coming years: dynamic, content-driven, perhaps distracting websites, or streamlined, simple, user-friendly websites. The determining factor is simply its function: does the site need to generate profit?
When the Internet was first created, it was part of a government initiative around the time of Sputnik: as explained in History of the Internet: A Chronology, tensions were high in the 1950s, and American military hoped to develop a piece of technology able to help them communicate internally in a manner that was quick, efficient, and secret (Moschovitis 35).
It did not take long for experts to realize the great power that the Internet held for the average citizen in terms of accessing information and sharing content, and by 1992, the World Wide Web was released to the public.
| 22 | English | male | Bachelor's | Web/Graphic Designer | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
cc | Some or these contained vegetal motifs and some frame inscriptions on a ground of vegetation, but the main impression is of almost dizzying geometric pattern on every surface. With just straight lines, circles, and a basic understanding of spatial relationships between the shapes, these artists were able to create incredibly complex geometric patterns.
Furthermore, color played a large and significant role in their work. Most revered to their art is the color green, which is seen by Muslims as the sacred hue of the religion because it symbolizes the life and prosperity that only the afterlife can bring. Like in many cultures and religious, white and black are important in that they signify purity and mourning, respectively; very often will geometric patterns and tiles incorporate the color white to cue feelings of spirituality and purity. Blue is also equally important as it symbolizes protection and prosperity and is thus often used on the artworks that adorn mosques around the world. While red is commonly seen as an important color for Islam, it is not as commonly found on the works and is more frequently associated with their flag and crest.
With knowledge of these traits of structure and color, I thus began drafting my own patterns.
Every compositional sketch that I rendered on the computer was comprised of merely circles and straight lines. Although the program I was using, Adobe Illustrator, allows for other shapes to be easily made, I did not want to stray from the design aesthetic of the work or not challenge myself to explore the geometry and its construction most thoroughly. I thus saved each step as I went along so that I could look back upon past steps to not only understand the work in progress, but also repeat actions indefinitely, producing an infinite number of possible final products.
When I was happy with the shapes and patterns I had within my sketch, I then erased any unnecessary lines and began the task of coloring them. While I wanted to hold true to Islamic conventions, I also wanted to utilize color as a device that can completely change the appearance of a flat and outlined shape. For example, color theory dictates that warm tones (reds, oranges, yellows) appear to move forward on the plane towards the human eye, whereas cool tones (blues, greens, purples) tend to recede away from the eye into a compositional background. By playing with this knowledge, complimentary colors, and negative space (areas untouched by color), I began to color my Islamic patterns.
I was extremely interested in exploring how a simple rotation (90 clockwise) and color palettes that varied in hue, saturation and placement could completely change one’s impression of the work. In this case, the above tiles could be two completely different tiles at first glance. After this first exercise, I also decided as an artist to leave thin white or off-white outlines in place to not only help the viewer’s eye differentiate between fields of color, but also allude to the grout that would hold such small fragments together into beautiful works of art.
| 22 | English | male | Bachelor's | Web/Graphic Designer | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
cc | Within his tomb as well as others of the time period there are “niches that, in size and position, correspond to later canopic usage.” (Ellison) It is interesting to note, however, that King Snefru’s wife, Hetepheres, had been buried with an actual chest that almost certainly contained some of her internal organs in four separate compartments (Ellison). Her chest was simple, carved from calcite, whereas his compartments were carved directly within his tomb’s wall; they may have held wooden boxes which contained the actual organs, or containers made of clay and lost through antiquity.
It would be logical either way to claim that both Snefru’s and Heterpheres’ canopic equipment fulfilled the Egyptian’s magical needs. Since they believed that the human body must be extremely well-preserved for the afterlife and therefore mummified the body through a time-intensive, careful ritual, it would only be logical that the organs, upon their removal and being wrapped, would need a secure resting place as well. Calcite was strong enough to last indefinitely, and although wooden boxes may not have been a permanent structure for the pharaoh, the carved stone niches in which they may have rested would offer stability and permanence. Perhaps during this time period, just as we see with their art in the future of their civilization, merely indicating in the floor of the tomb where the organs would remain for all of eternity was enough to maintain the magical, religious beliefs when the box deteriorated.
It is not until the 6th dynasty that the emergence of granite and other durable stone canopic jars begins. (Ellison) Building off of the previous tradition, small pits were carved into the floor of the tomb and the jars placed within the niches. (Ellison) The jars were still extremely rudimentary, consisting of streamlined bodies and a flat or slightly domed lid. The location of the jars in relation to their owner, however, shifted to the “southeast foot of the sarcophagus.” (Ellison) There is no proven significance of why this location might have been chosen; one could argue that artisans arbitrarily placed the jars nearby the mummy, but based on the deliberate, subtle reasons for much of Egyptian art and religion, this reader believes it may have to do with something greater. Perhaps they chose this direction as an allusion to the sun, which rises in the lower east before ascending westward to the center of the day sky. If this is the case, then like the sun rises and sets each day, placing the jars in that specific area would ensure that life would continue cyclically for the dead.
Furthermore, it is significant to note the magical properties inherent in the use of granite: not only would it be prized for its strength, but its vivid colors would be both aesthetically pleasing and symbolic of the colors of life: blues representing the Nile, yellows and blacks representing the night sky, red and black as the colors of the nation. | 22 | English | male | Bachelor's | Web/Graphic Designer | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
cc | Advertisers took advantage of the advanced coding capabilities to direct their products or services towards online audiences in a much more direct way. Though pop-up windows, movie clips that start automatically, or interactive banner advertisements, businesses consistently used website design as the tool to communicate their messages. As the Internet allows for new features, businesses quickly adapt: for example, now advertisers are able to force viewers to watch brief commercials on portals such as YouTube before the actual video will play. Similarly, some websites will not allow one to see the page until they answer a quiz with questions based on a preceding advertisement.
This idea illustrates the symbiotic relationship between commercial web design and businesses. In order to advertise their product or service to generate revenue, they must use design wisely to reach their goals; sometimes they may call for designers to change the composition of the site as a whole, however, to accommodate the message.
Thus, the design of commercial websites today is evidently different from that of non-revenue generating pages, thanks to the evolution of web capabilities and the drive of companies to create profit any way they can.
But before one can evaluate these choices for both genres of websites, let us attempt to succinctly understand one possible definition of design. In “Graphic Design: Fine Art of Social Science?” author Jorge Frascara claims, “graphic design is the activity that organizes visual communication in society” (28). It may then be fitting to see graphic design as an elegant solution to complex problems: it can be the box that packages information and presents it to an audience, or the unending process that unifies ideas and offers them for critique and review by the user. In fact, designer Quentin Newark agrees with this notion, calling design as a whole a “servant of its content.” He states that design is “typefaces, images, and the arrangement of these: it is nothing without a content to articulate” (20). Though this is true, Frascara takes that definition one step further: “the solution to a client’s needs is not the production of visual communication; it is the modification of people’s attitudes or abilities in one way or another. This modification can be a change…, a reinforcement…, or a facilitation…” (31). This concept pushes the reader to dive further into the backbone of design. According to Frascara, graphic design does in fact offer solutions and satisfy needs, but it also renders change. Without that change or inspiration on another human, graphic design is not truly design, but purely art.
For the realm of all websites, this holds a large deal of truth. Unless one is able to keep one’s audience attracted to a site long enough to fulfill the goal, be it actively selling an item or passively offering information, then the website as a whole is useless. The trends of today’s World Wide Web showcase that designers are fighting more than ever to stand out from the crowd of ineffective design and explore options that work and content that does not. | 22 | English | male | Bachelor's | Web/Graphic Designer | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
ww | As the baby suddenly discovers the ability to move around, the protagonist bestows a new name on his brother: Doodle. After all, nobody would expect much from a child with a name such as that. He says that it “…was probably the kindest thing I ever did for him.” He is being protective. He is telling the world that Doodle cannot live up to their expectations, and not to hate him for it. In a way, he is trying to console himself. When he begins to take care of his newly mobile
brother, he notes that Doodle was a burden in many ways. Trying desperately to dissuade his brother from accompanying him out of the house, he is still unsuccessful. Finally he admits defeat. “Doodle was my brother, and he was going to cling to me forever, no matter what I did.” Indeed, that simple statement forms the basis of the rest of the story. When the protagonist succeeds in teaching Doodle to walk, at the celebration, he begins to cry. He knows that he didn’t do it for Doodle; he did it for selfish pride. However, convinced of his teaching prowess, he sets out to teach Doodle all of the necessary physical skills that he will need as a boy. At the end of the training period, though, Doodle has failed. He did not meet the impossible expectations set for him by his brother. This not only shatters the protagonist’s delusions of grandeur, but ignites a furious, embarrassed spark within him. As they walk back from the last failed training session in silence, he poses the question, “…what are the words that can solder cracked pride?” As the anger and disappointment mount, the protagonist leaves Doodle farther and farther behind. As Doodle struggles to keep up, the protagonist unleashes his pent up feelings of anger, leaving Doodle completely behind in the rain. When he returns for his brother, racked with guilt, he finds only a huddled corpse underneath the nightshade bush. Sobbing, he protects his brother from the storm with his own body, finally seeing his own actions in full for the first time. The theme is clearly evident in all of the examples of the protagonist’s attempts to teach Doodle. He is so hasty to change Doodle that he doesn’t stop and think about how his actions make him appear to others.
Doodle is a weak, spacey character who nevertheless forms the basis of the entire conflict. Born with a defective heart, he wasn’t even expected to live. His brother’s
selfish determination, however inadvertently, changed Doodle for the better. At first, his name is William Armstrong, which the protagonist notes “…sounds good only on a tombstone.” From the beginning, nobody expected anything of Doodle. For many children, that would have turned them into lazy, selfish brats. Not so with Doodle; in fact he is even more loving and kind than any regular child. He accepts the world as it is, seeking nothing from it. | 16 | English | male | High School | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
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I was expecting my day to be fairly average when I woke up. Tuesdays are a dime a dozen; nothing special before or after the work day. So I slapped my alarm off like normal, yawned, and sort of fell out of bed. I pulled myself to the shower, enjoying the rush of heat on my tired face. Steam sneaked out through the cracks under the door like a couple of angry snakes. Maybe that wasn't the best thing to be thinking about in the shower.
After I dried off and threw on my new shirt, I went down the hall, looking for breakfast. Pancakes, sizzling on the griddle, and Mattie standing there waiting for me. She looked good even in sweats and a T-shirt, her hair all messed. Her dark eyes, like chocolate chips, were warm and inviting, like those pancakes. I leaned down, way down, and kissed her. She pulled away after a minute or two and handed me a plate with a playful smile.
"Don't get too excited," she cooed.
I snorted. Yeah, that was definitely not gonna happen with a hot girl in my kitchen. Had it been a weekend I might have enjoyed myself a little longer, but I had to keep putting pancakes on the table. So I scooted over to the table and wolfed them down. She just stood there, watching, still smiling that little smile I loved. I finished up the syrupy goodness and tossed my plate in the sink with a little more bravado than was necessary. I gathered her up in my arms and kissed her again, then set her down and grabbed my tie. I waved goodbye as I trotted to the car, the dawn sun warming my face.
Let's get one thing clear: I like to drive fast. I like to drive way faster than I should. Like, ninety clicks in a thirty zone fast. Thankfully, the first few miles from my house are pretty deserted, and I have a pretty free run to zoom all the way to the main thoroughfare. This morning, though, I drove slow. For me, I mean. I was easily twenty over the speed limit. But I was thinking about things. About how much I didn't want to go to work that day, about how much I didn't want to go back ever, about how much I really really hated Linda, my supervisor. I wanted to make sure Mattie and I could live together comfortably, and, frankly, I wasn't going to be able to do that with my current job, or hers. I needed to move up. By the time I'd hit the morning jam, I'd already almost made up my mind. I wasn't going to grind out one more day in this job. I was going to march right up to Linda and make her take it. I got out smiling. I got out ready. I got out prepared for the future.
| 16 | English | male | High School | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
ww | He also states that “blood sometimes bears the seed of our destruction”, which is foreshadowing. He is subtly letting the reader know that Doodle’s condition will be his destruction, with his own body eventually turning against him and destroying him. The description of the setting is magnificent. Not only does the narrator describe his native countryside with vivid imagery, it is clear that he is very knowledgeable about the land itself, and that he has a great love for it. From the first paragraph, which describes the garden in complete detail, right down to the names and colors of the plants within it,
2to the very last description of the pounding rain, the point of view is what made these images come to life. The combination of feelings and images gives the reader a unique view. Although the viewpoint is that of the older brother, using the combination of reminiscing done by the narrator, the subtle hints implied in his narration, and the setting, one can see all of the protagonist’s actions, normally reserved for only him, laid bare for all to see.
After all of those examples, it is impossible for one to not see clearly the bond between these brothers. They love, they disagree, and they have their own streaks of cruelty within them. Even so, they cannot deny or change the fact that they are brothers. The immutable link between them is ubiquitous in the story; sometimes as a good thing, sometimes as a bad thing. It is the singular driving force behind the theme of self-realization. Through the characterization of the protagonist, Doodle, and through the point of view of the narrator, all of the facets of the theme are thoroughly explored. The self-importance of the protagonist, the naïve selflessness of Doodle, and their dynamic contrast; all culminate in one final, raw outpouring of emotion. Seeing the results of your actions for yourself is like taking a long, hard look in the mirror, leaving nothing untouched. It strips away any contrived appearances; only the truth remains. And sometimes, the truth isn’t always as clean cut as we would like it to be.
College is an essential part of any child’s education. It marks the transition from sheltered, looked-after student, to a fledgling adult, ready to make their own decisions in the world. In college, there are no parents to guide their child, and to most this is a rude awakening to the ways of the world. However, college is not all about responsibility. It is also about reaching the pinnacle of academic achievement, the final stage of one’s journey through learning. It is also a time for the child to enjoy their newfound freedom. It is a time to meet new people, go new places, and to learn all of the new skills that they will require to become a fully functioning, useful member of society. | 16 | English | male | High School | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
ww | It is relatively simple to assign an arbitrary real number value to a complex program, which makes binary strings easy to adapt to genetic algorithms.
Genetic algorithms work with a predefined search space to evolve the most efficient solution for problems that would take far too long to compute by hand. In terms of conserving computer resources, genetic algorithms are an invaluable tool that can be used in a variety of environments. One of the major fields that utilizes these algorithms is biology, specifically the study of foraging behavior.
Foraging theory is a branch of ecology that studies animals’ optimal search strategies for habitats and food. Theoretically, the higher the total energy payoff from a successful forage, the more likely an animal is to select that strategy. Other factors include probability of predation and energy expenditure from the animal. Foraging can be modeled by several mathematic equations, but there are no truly universal models. Instead, some of the more efficient techniques for predicting foraging behavior are dynamic models. Dynamic biological models can be adapted to any scenario involving foraging in a number of habitats. They include variables such as risk of predation, probable energy of food items, availability of food items, and total energy expenditure on the animal’s part.
A direct sub-topic of foraging is predation. Predation is the act of one organism consuming another, usually by hunting and killing. Predation can take place as an individual or in a group. The project aimed to simulate predation in a simpler sense. Flores, Vallessa, and Weitzenfield defined several parameters for successful hunting in packs of robotic wolves; functions introduced in the programming of the pack included wandering, stalking and attacking prey, and evading predators. Also taken into account were several applications of game theory. A specific branch of game theory, the pursuit-evasion game, assumes one seeker and one prey. The seeker attempts to locate the prey in the shortest time, while the prey attempts to maximize the time that it is free. The equations derived by Furui et al. were used to help determine the optimal foraging and hunting models for each organism.
The programming language selected for the project was C++, which is an object-oriented, assembly level programming language that has a wide variety of applications in practical programming. There are several specific functions that allow for a very accurate representation of genetic algorithms in C++. A genetic algorithm will have pseudo-code that looks similar to this, adapted from McPhee, Langdon, and Poli. The engineering goal for this experiment was to create a stable, efficient program that effectively simulated dynamic biological systems. By creating original algorithms, it was hoped that this project could be used as a stepping stone for more advanced concepts, such as neural networking, in future research. In combining genetic algorithms with dynamic biological models, as well as biological game theory, the following problem was formulated: to program a simulation in which a randomly generated population of virtual organisms would be exposed to a set of environments, from which they would obtain food. | 16 | English | male | High School | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
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The completed program performed in accordance with the expected results. After multiple generations, anims did grow to be more adapted to their environments in terms of utilizing movement efficiently, hunting other anims, and selecting a safe environment. Growth was measured in terms of increased overall energy after runs, as well as in terms of the average death rate. It was found that all species developed predatory habits at roughly the same rate, which prevented any one species from becoming a dominant force. An unexpected result was the increased number of generations needed to increase the net energy gain for a species significantly; sometimes, over 1000 generations were required. However, the program performed as predicted, with no noticeable glitches or malfunctions in the coding.
The purpose of this research project was to determine the viability of genetic algorithms in simulating the foraging theory of animals in dynamic biological systems. It was predicted that the use of genetic algorithms would significantly impact the growth rate of the skills of the simulated creatures. Overall, the creatures displayed a high level of learning and evolution throughout the program’s runs.
The screenshot given exhibits the growth of the anims (measured in energy gain) after a 250-generation run.
These results are similar to the results achieved by Mat Buckland’s genetic algorithm for solving simple math problems. Since this project utilized similar techniques to that program, it is easy to draw parallels between the two and concur that they both reached a common goal using the same basic functionality. Moving away from the strictly programming aspect, one can compare the biological situations in the projects conducted by Clark, Houston, Mangel, and McNamara. In “Towards a Unified Foraging Theory”, Clark and Mangel define a series of variables that can be used in simulating the foraging techniques of a unique organism. The program utilized a similar set of variables that dealt with things such as energy, food, predators, and movement. In the section of the paper dealing with patch selection (a parallel to the environment selection of the program), it is surmised that the forager will adopt slightly more hazardous strategies as its energy level drops. However, this effect, as well as similar predictions made by the UFT, are not present within the program. In “Dynamic models in behavioural and evolutionary ecology”, Clark et al. describe multiple scenarios that can be applied to the theory of dynamic models. Several of them, such as the dawn chorus and the clutch size in insects, have no relation to the program. Others, such as the small birds in winter scenario, are directly related. The birds are given a choice; forage or find a mate. There is an arbitrary energy reward for succeeding at either of these tasks, but the key is selecting the combination with the highest payoff. Like the hunt vs. scavenge selection in the program, the anims eventually opted for predation in order to get more energy overall. | 16 | English | male | High School | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
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There is a bond between brothers; an unbreakable, irrevocable bond. Within that bond lie many emotions: love, pride, jealousy, and cruelty, just to name a few. Brothers understand one another, far more than anyone else with that kind of bond, and they can only see themselves when looking at their brother. It is when a situation is at its most dire when the true nature of this bond shines through, be it good or evil. When these emotions become clear, they carry with them great a cost. Part of understanding the emotions born of this fraternal link is dealing with the consequences that they bring. When one can look a brother in the eye and see within that person their own reflection, they see themselves not as others see them, but as they truly are. In their actions and the consequences of those actions is where their true character lies. In “The Scarlet Ibis”, two brothers explore this theme, and all of the raging emotions that accompany it. Throughout a lush, vividly described landscape, these two boys set out on a futile journey. Bitter disappointment clashes with intense pride in the climactic scene, and only one brother escapes with his life. The theme is expressed through direct characterization of the protagonist, Doodle, and their interactions with each other, as well as through the narrator’s point of view, which communicates the complex feelings experienced by the protagonist and his view of the world around him, both of which are heavy influences on his actions.
The protagonist’s actions can all be summed up by one key emotion: pride. From the time he and his little brother, Doodle, first go out together, to their final, fateful excursion, the protagonist feels resentment towards Doodle. He had wanted a brother whom he could teach all of his worldly skills, like “…holding my breath, running, jumping, or climbing the vines in Old Woman Swamp…” He wanted a brother who could fill the role of “…someone to race to Horsehead Landing…and someone to perch with in the top fork of the great pine behind the barn…” Obviously these things are impossible, given Doodle’s condition. Doodle was born with an extremely weak heart, making in unlikely he would even survive. Even then, it was nearly impossible that he would ever participate in vigorous physical activity. What a blow to the young protagonist, his head filled with wild fantasies, to have all of those dreams crushed in an instant. In fact, he is even shown to bear some anger towards the small child, as he recalls beginning to contemplate killing him by suffocating him with a pillow. What kind of child would have the presence of mind to consider infanticide? However, his heart melts when the small child smiles at him. Such a simple act gave the protagonist such hope! This shows that his conviction probably was not very strong. In the back of his mind, he had an instinctive love for his brother. | 16 | English | male | High School | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
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It’s a Saturday evening. Everybody at school is still buzzing about the exciting win that the football team had over their rivals last night. As people prepare to head out for their Saturday dates and parties, eighty people are slipping into uniforms, about to head out onto a different field of competition. While the rest of the students relax, the marching band prepares to play its first show of the marching season. Wait…is there something wrong with this picture?
Starting in mid-July, the band has to learn both their drill (the marching steps for the show) and the show music. By the beginning of September, the band has to be able to perform both the drill and the music flawlessly and simultaneously. However, on top of the actual marching band, all band members are required to be in the band class, which adds on extra musical practice. Can a member of the football or basketball team claim that they have homework for their sport? I think not.
Others claim that band is more of a musical pursuit than an athletic one. Indeed, the core of the band’s performance is music-based. Most of the score percentage comes from playing technique and music quality, and people argue that it is not an athletics centric activity, thus not qualifying it to be a sport.
Marching band requires skill in the form of musical ability. In high school levels, students are required to learn, play, and memorize pieces that are nearly three pages in length. At competitive levels, marchers can be required to memorize more than six pages of music overall. Not only does this require immense concentration and considerable practice time, it takes years of learning and mastering one’s chosen instrument. If that’s not skill, then I don’t know what is.
Physical prowess; the one thing that naysayers never fail to underestimate in a marching band. Statistically, marchers put in as much, if not more, conditioning as any other sports team. The combination of fundamental marching, marching drills, physical conditioning, and practicing the show’s drill all create an immense workload for marchers. At Spring Valley, the marching band practices an hour and a half longer than football, and has twice as demanding a summer work schedule. Especially considering the arm strength needed to support proper positioning for lighter instruments such as flutes, clarinets, and trumpets, and the abdominal strength necessary for heavy instruments like drums, tubas, and euphoniums, a marcher can be considered to have just as much physical prowess as any other athlete.
Finally, the aspect of competition comes into play again. Though bands take turns marching, and scores are awarded after the presentation, the competition is not only tough, it is borderline insane. Unlike a sport where you know the scores instantly, the tension mounts within a band until the anxiety is almost palpable. That feeling of triumph, or the feeling of crushing defeat, when a band’s score is announced is unrivalled by any other sport.
| 16 | English | male | High School | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
ww | With so much innovative technology being developed in and around Stanford, the CS department plays a major role in all of these inventions, and the department even benefits from it. It is located near Silicon Valley, which is where the modern industry of computing began. Besides their CS program, Stanford also boasts a fine liberal arts program, which caters to my second choice of major.
Now, not all of college life is about academics. Since a large majority, if not all, of a student’s time is spent on the campus, it is important to know the ins and outs of each college’s campus. This includes architecture, activities, and location. At Clemson, the campus is a wonderful tribute to its agrarian roots. Lush green lawns cover all 1,400 acres of the massive, secluded campus. The trees are mostly deciduous, leading to some spectacular natural shows of beauty in the fall. The architecture is a mix of both contemporary and older styles. The college town, known affectionately as Tiger Town, offers a wide range of shops and eateries for students. At Furman, the architecture is not a selling point for me. The extremely colonial styles don’t suit my tastes at all, and I wouldn’t want to spend a long period of time there. It is located only a short distance from Greenville, a major metropolitan area. This gives students both the natural feel of a secluded campus and the quick access to a city that they all need. Personally, I have never wanted to live near the city, so this doesn’t act in Furman’s favor for me. At UNC, the same problems apply. The colonial theme pervades this campus as well. Similar to Furman, it is located only a short distance away from a city, namely, Raleigh. Boston College’s campus, however, is magnificent. Its style is reminiscent of old English architecture; in fact, it reminds me of Oxford. The Gothic architecture is imposing, but the insides of the buildings are furnished beautifully, with a contemporary touch. The quiet grounds boast many shady spots, and large trees dot the landscape. Many Boston College students enjoy sitting and working in the massive library. At Notre Dame, the campus is very similar, though with an admittedly religious feel. Shrines and chapels dot
the campus, making for ideal spots for quiet thinking. In addition to these quaint destinations, Boston College is located only an hour or two away from Chicago, giving students a chance to experience some of the facets of city life. Stanford is very secluded, almost completely insular. The architecture is similar to that found in Arizona and New Mexico, with many open air forums and large lawns. The red stone theme pervades all of the buildings, with the exception of the sleek, contemporary buildings of the science department.
Extracurricular activities are another thing to consider. When classes are over, it’s what the students do with the rest of their time that can really define their college experience. | 16 | English | male | High School | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
ww | It has a good campus and liberal arts program, but its astounding failure to dredge up even a rudimentary Computer Science department hurts its chances terribly. Next is UNC. Admittedly, it has an excellent program in Computer Science, but it also lacks a good liberal arts program. I find the architecture distasteful, and the proximity to a metropolitan area is a little too close for comfort. In third is Clemson. I have been to Clemson, and find its campus beautiful. Its CS program is also extremely good, as are its extracurriculars. However, it lacks the reputation that it needs to capture the attention of a prospective employer. Second is Stanford. Stanford seems to have everything locked down, but the difficulty of admittance is what made the decision for me. I would much rather go to a school that isn’t so heavily focused on academics, and a little more on the experience. Therefore, my top college selection is Boston College. It is Catholic, it has a beautiful campus, and its extracurriculars are first-rate. The only quirk is that its CS program only goes up to a Bachelor’s degree, but after careful consideration, I have decided that this is a minor gripe. My chosen career path, Information Security, does much of its training on the job, so a Ph.D. is not necessarily required. I think Boston College is the overall best college for me.
The engineering goal for this project was to create a computer program that could effectively simulate several creatures foraging in a simple dynamic biological system, using a programming technique known as genetic algorithms. Genetic algorithms are a heuristic programming method that account for a wide range of possible solutions when solving a problem and select the most effective solution based on the principles of natural selection. The programming language selected was C++; the version implemented was Bloodshed Dev C++ Version 4.9.9.2. The simulation included three two-dimensional arrays that represented multiple “patches” of a total environment. Creatures, nicknamed “anims”, were then generated and given the necessary functions to move, hunt, eat, and think. Several genetic algorithms were then written as control programs to select the most efficient strategy for each function of the anim; in the case of patch selection, a general equation derived from previous work in dynamic systems was used.. Other functions included a binary conversion program and a menu function. After writing the initial code, it was debugged and run several times in order to ensure the validity of the randomness of the random number generators, as well as to check for potential errors in the execution of the code. The engineering goal was met, since the program ran efficiently, without error, and demonstrated a significant effect of the genetic algorithms on the learning patterns of the simulated creatures.
Evolution is a curious phenomenon. Thrust into the harsh, unyielding environment of nature, organisms must adapt themselves to their environment or die out. | 16 | English | male | High School | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
ww | The fact that he is even alive is a miraculous blessing in and of itself. Doodle’s probable rationale is that the world has given everything he has ever needed or wanted, and that he needs nothing else from it. This contrasts with his older brother, who seeks only to make Doodle better. This is ostensibly for Doodle’s own good, but is truly selfish. At several points in the story, Doodle can be heard crying out “Don’t leave me!” This is his intuition kicking in. He knows that his entire family sought to simply leave him behind, buried in a small, mahogany coffin. Instinctively, he reaches out for comfort, willing those around him to take him into their arms. Doodle’s entire character is centered on this need that arose from his deplorable conditions at birth. When he is told to begin walking, he responds with “Why?” Doodle doesn’t understand his brother’s need to fulfill his pride. However, through the connection of their brotherly bond, Doodle senses that it is important to his brother that he become as normal as possible. In his own, struggling way, Doodle is selflessly working throughout the entire story to please his brother, and nobody else. However, when the ibis lights in the tree, a change comes over Doodle. The ibis, so weak and fragile, so far from its natural environment, dies right in front of him. Doodle is clearly shaken. He is determined to bury the bird himself, because he feels a special connection. He knows what it is like to
feel weak. At the very end, when his brother leaves him in the rain, the singular, wretched fear that Doodle has carried with him his whole life becomes a wicked reality. He has been left behind to die by the one person he trusted completely, implicitly. The bond that he shared with his brother killed him.
The narrator’s point of view is as much a part of the story as any character. Told from the standpoint of a much older protagonist looking back on his childhood, the tone of sadness and regret carries through as clear as crystal. Not only the tone, but the wonderfully flowing, eloquent descriptions of the world around him allow the reader to see the world completely through the narrator’s eyes, with no detail left out. As the narrator tells the story, he slips in a few comments that betray a much wiser version of the rash young boy in the story. “There is within me (and with sadness I have watched it in others) a knot of cruelty borne by the stream of love, much as our blood sometimes bears the seed of our destruction…” This quote is a great example of both reflecting and foreshadowing by the narrator. He describes having watched others with the same affliction as himself, indicating that he has moved on from the time where he was unaware of it. | 16 | English | male | High School | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
ww | Extracurricular activities include sports, music, and clubs. At Clemson, the sports teams are a big bonus for me, and not just because I am an avid supporter of the Tigers. Their football and basketball programs are consistently nationally ranked, with the basketball team competing in the NCAA Tournament consistently in recent years. Intramurals are also offered, as well as water sports that take place on Hartwell Lake. The Tiger Band, the Clemson marching band, performs their shows at competitions throughout the marching season, and I definitely want to continue with band as a college student. Furman actually sounds a little boring. It has no competitive sports teams, though it does have a reputable marching band, the Paladins. It also has several fine arts clubs, including drama club. The UNC Tar Heels compete in the ACC in both football and basketball, and are competitive in both sports. The “Pride of the ACC” Tar Heel marching band is among the nation’s finest and is a great addition for me. The Boston
College Screaming Eagles rival UNC in the ACC in football, basketball, and marching band. The Screaming Eagles always have exciting schedules against strong opponents, and the sports aspect of college isn’t exciting without difficult opponents. At Notre Dame, the Fighting Irish make their home. Although they are competitive within their own circle of teams, the Fighting Irish rarely get the recognition of other sports teams on this list. Notre Dame offers an excellent drama program, however, and I would very much like to continue with drama past high school. Stanford’s football team is not exactly top of the line, but they do have a well-respected basketball program. I would be willing to settle for one good sports program instead of two. Also, the Stanford marching band, known as the only “rock ‘n roll” band in the country, is a group of eccentric musicians who enjoy having fun while playing. I would be glad to join them.
Affiliation is important when selecting a school, because it determines the kind of life that the students lead while on campus. Affiliation refers to whether a school is public or private, and what religion it is associated with (if any). Clemson is a public school, and as such has no specific religious affiliations. Students of all races and religions are able to come to Clemson and live together. Furman is a private school, which some associate with a negative connotation, because they assume that it means “snobbish”. However, this is not the case. Private schools like Furman are simply exclusive to only a few students, and the students get in solely on merit. UNC is a public university, with a wide variety of students attending from all across the country, and even the world. The two religiously affiliated schools on my list are Notre Dame and Boston College. Both are
private schools, and both are Catholic. This appeals to me because I myself am Catholic, and I would enjoy going to college in an atmosphere that enriched my faith while enriching my mind. | 16 | English | male | High School | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
ww | Perpetuation of an organism’s genetic line is imperative, and the ability to evolve is a species’ greatest asset in the competitive world of predation. To simplify an explanation of evolution, consider the following scenario: A population of organisms lives in a single environment, free from the fear of predation by stronger, more aggressive species, and supplied with ample food. The population has no need to evolve past its current stage. However, if a predator is introduced into the environment, the dynamics of the situation shift immediately. The predator begins hunting and killing the members of the population, and while some are able to hide from it, many are not, and they are slaughtered and eaten. This continues for many generations, with the population being preyed upon at a constant rate. One day, however, a new member of the species is born with a strange mutation. This mutation allows some form of defense to the organism. When confronted by the predator, the mutant utilizes its abilities and either defends itself or evades capture. Due to this beneficial mutation, the mutant survives much longer than its more unfortunate siblings, allowing it to mate at a greater rate. Its genes are passed down through the next generation, and those who receive the mutant gene have a correspondingly high chance of survival.
In the preceding example, many facets of evolution are demonstrated: mutation, survival, reproduction rate, etc. While it is a rough outline of a very intricate process, the basics of evolution are conveyed. However, it is difficult to study a phenomenon that takes place over eons. Instead, it is much simpler to simulate evolution within the confines of a computer. In order to do this, genetic algorithms were invented. Genetic algorithms work with a predefined search space to evolve the most efficient solution for problems that would take far too long to compute by hand. One can immediately draw parallels between evolution in nature and evolution of computer programs; each has a population that is moving towards an ultimate goal, and are adapting to the environmental situation to reach it. In terms of conserving computer resources, genetic algorithms are an invaluable tool that can be used in a variety of environments
A genetic algorithm (GA), as defined by Hsuing and Matthews, is an algorithm that solves problems through the process of Darwinian natural selection. The algorithm takes a given solution and generates a fitness function to match it. Then, through the production of individuals (solutions to the problem), the algorithm compares all solutions to the fitness function and assigns a fitness score. Those individuals with a higher score are given higher reproduction priority. Individuals mate through recombination and pass their genes on to their offspring. The algorithm repeats this process until a solution is found.
For this project, it was decided that binary coding would be the most efficient form of representing individuals. Binary coding assumes that the target solution is a real number and converts it to a string of 1s and 0s that represent said number. | 16 | English | male | High School | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
ww | This class was given the public functions Move(), Hunt(), Eat(), and Think()- all of type string- and a static constant of type char called ANIM_CHAR. This was represented by an “O”, and it acted as each anim’s avatar in the virtual environment. This class was also given the private functions Move_GA(), Hunt_GA(), and Think_GA(), as well as move_results(), hunt_results(), and decision(), all of type string. Private variables called energy and fitness, of type int, were also assigned to the Anim class. A constructor was declared that gave each new organism (3 total) 400 energy and 0 fitness.
The basic template for the genetic algorithm was written in a header file, and was inserted into the main program. The template defined a string of binary digits as instructions, and instructions were given on assembling these strings into chromosomes of structure chromosome. The crossover rate was set at 0.07, and the mutation rate was set at 0.025. The fitness function was written to accept generic integers that would produce an integer result that could be converted to a fitness score. The function took results from previous runs of the function, compared the solution to the new solution, and determined if the fitness was higher. If so, it kept the new solution. After each solution was given a fitness score, they were bred using roulette selection, where a higher fitness score corresponded to a greater chance of being selected to mate by the program. The new population was returned as the new solution set.
After customizing the variables and fitness function of the GA to fit each template (moving, hunting, thinking), it was rewritten as an inline function that could be called at any point.
The Move() function took a string of binary instructions and translated them into one of four possible directional motions. The avatar was adjusted accordingly on the screen. Moving one space cost one unit of energy. The Hunt() function utilized a basic sensor program to determine whether a food item or other organism was in an adjacent space, or further away. If so, the function moved the organism towards its prey until it was close enough to attack and kill. Attacking cost a proportionate amount of energy to the difficulty of taking the prey down in combat. The Eat() function analyzed the energy content of food or a dead organism and added it to the anim’s energy total. The Think() function allowed the anims to differentiate between multiple environments (created later) and select the best one to forage in.
After the code was written, debugging began. To debug the program, it was tested several times in succession to determine the effectiveness of the time-seeded random number generator, the effectiveness of the mutation and crossover rates, and the overall function of the program. After debugging, optimization began. Optimization consisted of cleaning small pieces of code to make them run faster. This included rendering displays and streamlining user interface. | 16 | English | male | High School | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
ww | Organisms would have the abilities to move, eat, hunt, and think. These functions would be optimized by genetic algorithms.
To create this simulation, there were several steps. The first was to decide upon a programming language. The C++ programming language was chosen for its versatility and large pool of tutorial resources. The next step involved writing pseudo-code, or planning out the program itself. The actual program was broken into several functions. The first function, a global function that provided access to all other parts of the program, generated an arbitrary number of environments and filled them with a random number of food items that had a varying energy level based on the environment. The next step was to generate an arbitrary number of organisms and give them very basic programming for their four main functions: movement, hunting, eating, and intelligence. To optimize movement, hunting, and intelligence, a genetic algorithm was written. This general genetic algorithm followed the basic structure of binary coding, and it was modified for each function that it was required to optimize. These modifications included different representations of data and different fitness functions. Once the environment and organisms were created, the program would iterate through the sequence of each organism taking an action in the environment until the cycle ended. By utilizing the data that each organism collected during its run (general map of environment, efficiency of genetic algorithms, total energy gathered, and risk of death), the next generation would evolve with that data as a selection parameter. The program was given a graphical representation and a main menu to select various functions to run.
Before any code was written, a program outline was developed. The outline, known as pseudo-code, combined English and programming terms into a hybrid document that could be accessed at any time as a reference to the build of the program. Also, a flowchart detailing constants, classes, and functions was created. A project was started in Bloodshed Dev-C++ 4.9.9.2 under the name “ANIM Project”. The project was labeled as a console application. After the project was set up, a brief skeleton of the code structure was written. The skeleton included use of the standard namespace, the inclusion of relevant C++ libraries, declaration of global variables, and function prototypes.
The first function written was the “create_environment()” function, of type void. This function created an array of characters representing a 20 by 20 virtual environment. The array was then filled with food items based on a random percentage. A blank space was denoted by “-“, while a food item was denoted by “X”.
The next two functions written were the “main_menu()” and “main()” functions, each of type void. Main_menu() displayed several options to the user; display the environment, display a list of the current anims and their statistics, display the process and results of the genetic algorithms, run the simulation, or exit. The main() function ran the main menu.
The first class created was the Anim class. | 16 | English | male | High School | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
ww | Obviously, with all of the requirements that must be met for a successful college experience, one cannot be too selective in deciding upon the college they will attend. Each college has its own unique style, as well as academic focus and extracurricular involvement; no two colleges are the same, though many colleges offer the same opportunities. Selecting a college is one part merit and one part personal preference, but with such a variety of choices, how would one whittle down their choices to the colleges that are surely right for them? In this essay, I will explore several different criteria for selecting a college, including difficulty of admission, main academic focus and presence of desirable programs, campus life, extracurricular activities, affiliation, and student body. The colleges I plan
to examine for these criteria are Clemson University, Furman University, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Boston College, Notre Dame College, and Stanford University.
The first criterion to be examined is difficulty of admission. This facet of a school can tell a good bit about its academics right off the bat. For example, the more rigorous admissions are, the harder the programs are likely to be. To start off, the admission rate of Clemson University is about 85%. This means that 85% of all applicants are accepted, though not all attend. This shows that Clemson is not necessarily the toughest school to get into, though it has been trying to make its admissions more rigorous in past years. Furman University, a private college in South Carolina, has an admission rate of about 60%, which places it much higher on the scale of difficulty. It speaks for the academic programs at Furman that it has such a low acceptance rate, though some believe that private schools have more difficult admissions than public schools. UNC has the same rate of acceptance as Furman, about 60%. However, UNC has much more to offer academically than Furman does, and I can attribute its difficult admissions to its academic programs. Boston College has an acceptance rate of about 60%, and, like Furman, it is a private school. However, like UNC, it also has terrific academic programs, and I believe that embodies the best of both of these previous schools. Notre Dame accepts about 85% of its students, like Clemson. I believe that these two schools have such similar acceptance rates because of their similar academic structure. Notre Dame
has a few good programs, as well as some that are not as appealing. Of all of the colleges mentioned here, Stanford has the most difficult admissions, accepting a mere 30% of all
applicants. To put that into perspective, Stanford received more than 25,000 applications this year, and only 2,400 were accepted. That is less than a tenth of all applicants. Obviously, Stanford has the most rigorous admissions by far, which speaks to its superb academic programs.
Once one has been accepted into college, the next thing to consider is the academic programs offered there. | 16 | English | male | High School | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
ww | Many colleges have a specialization, be it liberal arts, sciences, mathematics, or the humanities. However, looking past the specialization, I will also be discussing the presence of a Computer Science (specifically Computer Security) program or a Writing program, as well as the reputation of these programs. These are the two areas that I believe hold the future of my career, and it is imperative that the college I attend have outstanding accreditation in these majors. At Clemson, the main focuses are engineering, teaching, and biology. This reflects Clemson’s agrarian roots; its agricultural program is second to none. Since engineering, a direct predecessor of Computer Science, is heavily emphasized, I inferred that Clemson would have a strong Computer Science program. I was right; Clemson’s School of Computing offers programs all the way up to Doctorate. Although the lack of a Computer Security department is conspicuous, the general program comes highly acclaimed, and is staffed by some of the finest professors in the nation. However, there is a lack of a writing-specific program, though the Liberal Arts program has merit. At Furman, the main focus is on liberal arts. This immediately casts doubt on the quality of their CS program. The program at Furman is a standard CS
program; there is nothing particularly outstanding about it. However, if I do switch over to writing, Furman would end up having exactly the major I want. This makes it a good
fall back school. UNC is a very well-rounded school, academically. At UNC, CS majors can earn a Ph.D., which is a tremendous advantage in the field of computer security. After all, doing that much work shows that you truly are among the best of the best in your chosen field. UNC’s research-intensive courses encourage both individual discovery and group learning. This is good, because I function well in both scenarios. UNC does lack a writing program, however, which is a loss. Boston College’s CS program lacks the reputation of other, more concentrated programs, like those of Clemson and UNC. It offers accreditation only up to a BS, far below the Doctorates offered at other colleges. However, its liberal arts program is particularly strong, and the college focuses on this program. This means that my career as a writer could find a good start here. Notre Dame falls short of my expectations in academics. Though they have an undoubtedly fine classics and humanities department, they are lacking horribly in the technology department. The Computer Science program is barely worth mentioning, much less even considering as a major selling point for this college. If my career choice holds steady, I would dismiss Notre Dame without a second thought. If I do pursue writing, I might still consider it, but it would still not be a heavy contender. At Stanford, a school known for its engineering, medicine, and science programs, the Computer Science program is the finest this college has to offer. | 16 | English | male | High School | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
ww | Also, I believe it would be easier to connect with my fellow students if we shared a common faith. Stanford is a private school, and it has no religious affiliation. Students from across the globe are all welcome at Stanford. Indeed, many of the finest students there are foreign exchange students.
The student body, that is, the students who attend the school, is the last vital characteristic of a college. The students there will be one’s comrades, friends, and rivals. It is important to consider the student body when considering a college because it can largely influence your decision, based on what demographics attend. For example, I would be much less likely to attend a traditionally African-American school than I would a mixed race school, simply because of the tradition. Another thing to consider is size. I like medium sized colleges; not too small, not completely huge. At Clemson, there are a total of 17, 890 students. A vast majority of these students are white, while a much smaller percentage is dedicated to Asians and African-Americans. It is almost even in regards to the amount of men and the amount of women, with just a few hundred more men. Furman has a small student body, just fewer than 3,000. This is far too small for me; it seems like there would be too few people to talk to and meet. It is evenly split between men and women, and it has the same racial ratios as Clemson. UNC has 29, 286 students, which is too big. Unlike Clemson, which has about the number of students that I would like, having that many students seems overwhelming. There are almost 4,000 more
women than men, and the racial distribution is slightly more even, with only about 70% of students being white. Boston College has 13, 903 students currently studying on campus. The genders are evenly split, again leaning towards women. The races represented are predominantly white, with a small Asian population as well. Notre Dame has a positively tiny population, only 1,358. This is far too small for me to consider. There are almost twice as many women as men, and the racial majority is white, with some African-American and Hispanic students. Stanford has a population of 14, 332, which is the closest to my ideal size of 15, 000. The spread of races at Stanford is much more distributed than at other schools. Whites are still predominant, with a strong Asian and Hispanic contention. There are about 2,000 more men than women.
After examining all of the schools under all criteria, the final order of schools is as follows. Furman would be the school I would least like to attend; it’s small size, lack of viable sports teams, lack of a good CS department, and ugly architecture place it in dead last. Second to last would be Notre Dame. | 16 | English | male | High School | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
q | He assembles teams of friends to help quarantine families of the sick and care for those who have fallen ill. He works day and night, day after day. He works with such feverish commitment that his friend Tarrou asks him about his motivation. He tells Rieux, “‘your victories will never be lasting; that’s all.’ Rieux’s face darkened. ‘Yes, I know that. But it’s no reason for giving up the struggle” (128). Rieux demonstrates that, even in the absence of God, where the plague will forever take lives faster than he can save them, he still feels it is worthwhile to struggle against the plague with all his might, and do what he can to save. In true existential fashion, he helps others with no thought towards himself. He explains to his friend Rambert, “there’s no question of heroism in all this. It’s a matter of common decency. That’s an idea which may make some people smile, but the only means of fighting a plague is—common decency” (163). Though Rieux denies his own heroism, Camus deliberately portrays him as a special type of hero—an existential hero.
To fight the plague, Rieux has to team up with the other healthy residents of Oran. For instance, Rieux forms a strong bond with a man named Tarrou. Tarrou is not a resident of Oran; he merely vacations there. When the plague strikes and the gates close, however, Tarrou is trapped inside. He forms a strong bond with Rieux as they struggle to save plague victims side by side. During one instance, he stays up all night with a young boy who is dying. When Rieux arrives in the morning to do what he can to help, Tarrou’s face is streaked with tears. During a long talk Tarrou has with Rieux (in which the philosophical Tarrou does nearly all the talking), he explains that he does not believe in any God, and that he finds that humankind only has meaning when people choose to struggle against the inevitability of death.
Teamwork like that between Tarrou and Rieux gets special attention from Camus. Rieux cannot help all of the plague victims by himself—the plague is much too large for that. The only hope he has to make any difference is to team up with as many people as possible. Only by creating a network of civilians all working to fight the plague can he hope to stop its deadly spread. Even with the group Rieux assembles to look over makeshift hospitals and quarantines, Rieux still works day and night and the plague still claims hundreds of victims each week. The comradery of the men is given special emphasis—rarely does Rieux tend to a patient with no help. In Oran, saving people is a team effort.
In order to include a team of people in his efforts to save, Rieux must be exceedingly modest. He cares not for his own glory, but merely for saving people—however it can best be accomplished. | 19 | English | male | Some College | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
q | The idea behind each Dhutanga was that it would help monks shed their worldly attachments, meditate more easily, and acquire enlightenment more easily. The Dhutangas were not a part of mainstream Buddhist life—the forest monks began practicing them to aid in their asceticism. In this way, traditional Buddhism was again slightly skewed by the Thudong monks.
Buddha claimed to be a follower of the “middle path”—something between indulgence in sensory pleasures and sensory pain. Other religions in the area put heavy emphasis on one or the other. It can be easily observed, however, that the Thudong monks fell to the side of self-mortification. One story tells of Ajan Man, Thudong master, suffering from extreme hunger. Despite intense stomach pain, Ajan Man would still wander into villages—not to eat, but to purposefully tempt himself. This helped his detachment to be sure, but it also strayed dangerously close to the self-mortification Buddha advocated so strongly against. In this way, Thudong monks were again pushed by their surroundings to defy the conventional notions of Buddhism.
Finally, Thudong monks placed heavy emphasis on one unique form of meditation—corpse meditation. In corpse meditation, an ascetic spends the night meditating in a cemetery. The idea is that the fear of ghosts and corpses drives all else from the monk’s mind. The monk experiences no desire for sensory pleasures or for sensual contact. All that the monk can consider is his own fear. The monk then learns to control his fear and get rid of it. In so doing, the monk realizes the fundamental concept of Anicca—impermanence. This form of meditation did not receive special attention in mainstream Buddhism. In the forests, however, where conquering fear was of paramount importance and spending the night in a cemetery was sometimes a necessity, corpse meditation was emphasized. In this way, forest monks again tweaked the standard Buddhist practice.
The Thudong monks practiced a unique form of Buddhism. They strove to recognize Anicca by living in the forests and cultivating no attachments whatsoever. They took the Dhutanga very seriously, and integrated it into their daily lives. They upheld the Visuddhimagga as their primary enlightening text. For all of these reasons, they were different than the mainstream Theravada Buddhist community. However, they were a benign influence. The Thudong monks did not convince all Buddhists to become ascetics, nor did they scare the community away from asceticism. In fact, Ajan Man felt that most people saw them as interesting periphery figures. They did not interest themselves much in learning from the ascetics, but rather in observing them and marveling at their strange ways. Therefore, the Thudong monks of Thailand were an internal, benign force on both the Buddhist monastic and lay communities.
The doctrinal concept most affected by the Thudong monks was the Noble Eightfold Path. The Buddha described it as a “middle path” between sensory pleasures and self-mortification. Inherent in the Noble Eightfold Path was the concept of meditation. | 19 | English | male | Some College | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
q | The only way in which he was documented to have strayed at all from Buddha’s teachings was that his interpretation of the Dhamma was always slightly tinged with his Hindu background. However, since he sent out missionaries to convert new Buddhist territory, this tinged belief did not play much of a role in Asoka’s effect on the Buddhist community. Asoka’s effect on the doctrinal notions of Buddhism was marginal, at most.
In Thailand, Buddhism has been around for at least two thousand years (largely because of the efforts of Asoka). In the late nineteenth century, a Buddhist tradition later chronicled by Kamala Tiyavanich—the Thudong tradition—began in Thailand. The Thundong monks were Thai forest wanderers. They renounced the domesticated, scholarly life that many monks had chosen. Instead, they wandered around the forests and lived primarily off of begging. They were within the Theravada tradition, but they were a benign force in the changing of doctrinal concepts.
In wandering, the Thudong monks found that they were often afraid. The source of their fears was threefold. First, they feared being attacked by wild animals. Tigers, snakes, and elephants—all of which were easily capable of taking human life—populated the forests of Thailand. Second, they feared sickness and injury. In the forests, they did not have immediate access to almost any medical treatment. Finally, they feared ghosts. These monks relied on the Visuddhimagga and the Dhutanga to help them overcome these fears. They came up with a special brand of Buddhism, different than the conventional Buddhism of the time.
The Visuddhimagga is the most important source for the wandering monk. It explains a chunk of suttas that deal with asceticism. As is it not technically a part of the Tripitaka, it is unusual for monks to place so much importance on it. Generally, monks stuck to suttas to study the Buddha—the suttas were the Buddhavacana—the words of the Buddha that made up his Dhamma. This Dhamma was in turn a part of the triple gem in which all Buddhists—especially the monks—aimed to take refuge. By choosing not to hold the suttas up as the premier texts to live by, they established a unique religious culture.
Another way in which they acted differently than other monks of the time was in the embracing of the Dhutangas. The Dhutangas were thirteen different practices that monks could choose to observe, if they so desired. All forest monks observed at least one Dhutanga. The Dhutangas were these: using only abandoned cloth as robes, only using 3 robes as garments, only eating what one gets from begging, avoiding houses which give good tasting food, only eating in one place, only eating a certain amount of food, not accepting extra food after beginning a meal, not living in a village or noisy temple, living under a tree, living out in the open, living in a cemetery, sleeping anywhere, and always sleeping sitting up. | 19 | English | male | Some College | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
q | Institutions like the theater, restaurants, and even the church completely crumble. All of the values society seemed to cherish go out the window. In addition, many images bring the Holocaust to mind. For instance, the foreboding walls of Oran reflect the notion of Fortress Europe. Residents are trapped inside. Escape is a dodgy business, and those who try put themselves at great personal risk. Another image of the Holocaust in Oran is the burning of bodies. This action is unthinkable under normal circumstances, but in plague time it prevents the spread of disease. In Nazi time, it was a tool of pure genocide. The image of burning bodies alone is enough to immediately draw a comparison to the Holocaust. Camus’ allegory sheds great light on the Holocaust.
The Rieuxs of the real world are few and far between. The French village of Le Chambon was a haven for Jews (and was where Camus lived as he wrote The Plague). The residents reflect sentiments of common decency when explaining their motives. They are the existential heroes of the Holocaust—with no notion of self-advancement, they put themselves at great risk to save Jews from the Nazi death camps.
On the day after France surrendered to Germany, the congregation in the Church of Le Chambon agreed to a code of conduct. The key word was “resist.” But furthermore, they agreed to resist Nazi influence “without pride, and without hate.” Andre Trocme was instrumental in leading the congregation to these decisions. Marguerite Roussel, a resident of Le Chambon, says, “we never analyzed what we were doing. It happened by itself.” After the Holocaust, there was no grand reward for those who helped the Jews. The world returned approximately to normal, with those who lost something in the Holocaust being the only ones who felt its lasting effects. After the Holocaust, the hiding Jews left Le Chambon, and the residents never heard from them again. They made no grand thank you. The residents of Le Chambon were neither surprised nor offended. This clearly impacted Camus. He designed characters who took on the burden of helping the victims with neither questions nor self-interest, and who were forgotten about once the epidemic was over. The people of Le Chambon set an example that too few others followed. They saved with no notion of reward.
By offering the conjecture that those who helped the Jews during the Holocaust had nothing to gain by doing so, Camus explains why so many bystanders witnessed the systematic murder of millions without so much as lifting a finger to help. In making an effort to save Jews, the stakes were astronomical—anyone with a Jew-saving agenda could readily expect a death sentence from the Nazis. The payoff, to some, seemed small. They would save some lives, but those people would then go on their way and the life of the savior would be largely unchanged. Bystanders saw no reason to risk their life if the net result, as they saw it, was that their lives would go on unchanged.
| 19 | English | male | Some College | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
q | Finally, that the path to overcoming suffering is the Noble Eightfold Path, which consists of right beliefs, intention, speech, action, job, effect, awareness, and mental state. Finally, there are ten fetters which bar people from enlightenment: self belief, doubt, clinging to rituals, lust for sensuous pleasures, ill will, craving for material existence, craving for nonmaterial existence, conceit, mental restlessness, and ignorance. These concepts represent the very basic doctrinal concepts of Buddhism, the framework around which all other discussions of Buddhism are built.
It is also important to have a basic understanding of the Buddhist social structure. The Buddhasasana consists of four components: the Bhikkus, the Bhikkunis, the Upasakas, and the Upasikas. Essentially, there are monks and there are lay people. The monks live by the rules of the monastic order—two volumes of the Suttavibhanga, two volumes of the Khandaka, and the Parivara. The lay people merely have to live by the five precepts. Any layperson is welcome to renounce the world and become a monk, but first they must act as Samaneras or Samaneris—monks in training, who are responsible for ten precepts. There are occasional controversies about what monks can and can not do—most notably in terms of their relationship to politics. But, at its most basic, this is what the Theravada Buddhist community looks like. The monks have an entirely different experience from the lay people.
An example of a purely external, benign force is British colonialism in Sri Lanka. The British colonialists kicked the Dutch out of Sri Lanka, and established themselves as sole colonialists of the island. Under the British, Sri Lanka saw a collapse of the caste system, and a replacement with a previously unknown race consciousness. This race consciousness set the scene for massive Sri Lankan strife, which will be explored later. The British were the final colonial powers in Sri Lanka, and with regard to Buddhism, they were the most lenient.
The British were responsible for the 1815 Kandyan Convention. This convention was a sound overall representation of British colonial intention with Sri Lanka, especially in regard to the Buddhist tradition. Though they did force the Sri Lankan King and his family to leave Sri Lanka, they had no interest in destroying the rich Buddhist tradition (as previous colonial powers had) in Sri Lanka. The fifth clause of the Kandyan convention said “[t]he religion of the Buddha is declared inviolable and its rights to be maintained and protected.” In this instance, an external force was actually fairly benign for the Sri Lankan Buddhist community. This was, however, a rare exception—especially in Sri Lanka. Far more often, external forces were hostile.
Hostile external forces were truly a plague of Sri Lanka, especially with regard to colonialism. In 1505, the Portuguese arrived in Sri Lanka, looking to exploit it for trading purposes. As Catholics, they had a fundamental problem with the “heathen” religion of the native Buddhists. A king by the name of Dharmapala, a Catholic, eventually came into power and began to cooperate with the Portuguese. | 19 | English | male | Some College | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
q | Then, in the seventeenth century, the Dutch arrived and took over Sri Lanka. They too were against Buddhism. In the late eighteenth century, the British came and kicked the Dutch out—but as the Kandyan convention shows, the British were not hostile to Buddhism. The two hostile colonial groups were the Portuguese and the Dutch.
Under Portuguese rule, the Buddhist community was crippled—particularly the monastic order. Initially, the Sri Lankans tried to live in harmony with the colonialists and had no problem allowing the Portuguese to worship however they saw fit. But because of the Portuguese’s aggressively anti-Buddhist policies and evangelical tendencies even in the face of the Sri Lankan acceptance, the Buddhist monastic order felt extremely threatened and many monks fled. It all but disappeared during this time period, once again showing how the monastic order simply cannot survive without political support. This external, hostile force (especially hostile to the monks) ended up having some effect on the doctrinal elements of Theravada Buddhism, even though the monks were so scarce during this period.
The Sri Lankans hoped that the Dutch would chase the Portuguese out of their country and then leave them to govern themselves. They did the former, but not the latter. Under Dutch rule, the Buddhist monastic community remained scarce. The Dutch made Buddhism illegal in Sri Lanka, but they allowed the Buddhists to keep their temples in the villages. The Dutch priests were much more focused on conversion—they offered incentives for conversion to Catholicism. For instance, only Catholics could go to the top-notch Dutch schools. Only Catholics could inherit property, and the Dutch government would take a third of “heathen” property. During this period, the monastic order was again seen to be extremely weak. However, the doctrinal concepts of Buddhism were again relatively safe, as there were so few monks around to make any changes. Once again, an external, hostile force could be seen to devastate both the monastic and lay communities in Sri Lanka.
The colonial period in Sri Lanka turned the nation in a completely new direction. It was imposed with social structures it had never seen before. Racial and socioeconomic divides that they had never seen before were suddenly emphasized. Yet through all of this, Theravada Buddhism continued. The people of Sri Lanka, even under immense pressure to convert, clung to their religion. The Catholic priests of the Portuguese and Dutch colonialists spent years trying to convert them, but they ultimately failed in large part. The primary religion of Sri Lanka remained Theravada Buddhism, demonstrating the religion’s endurance. External forces, no matter how hostile, were powerless to change it. What the people of Sri Lanka did do, however, was modify their doctrines slightly in the face of colonialism.
A fascinating element of the colonial period in Sri Lanka is the growth of folk Buddhism—a blending of Buddhism with local traditions and beliefs. Because there was no centralized monastic order, different villages were free to interpret Buddhist doctrine as they pleased. | 19 | English | male | Some College | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
q | This was primarily a phenomenon among the lay community, as the colonial rulers had silenced the monks. This interesting phenomenon accounts for much of religious syncretism in Theravada Buddhism. Amongst the lay community, this period saw many different tweaks in classic doctrinal Buddhism, which differed from region to region. This decentralization of belief would one day lead to major problems in Sri Lanka. But, thanks to the colonialists and the collapse of the monastic order, basic doctrinal changes of Theravada Buddhism were made in the lay community of Sri Lanka.
Around the turn of the fourth century BCE, the Mauryan dynasty produced its third emperor in India. He was the son of Bindusara, and was called Asoka. He, like his predecessors, had a predilection for conquest. Though he managed to greatly increase the reach of the Indian empire, he did it at great cost to the lives of Indians. Each conflict was fearsome and bloody, despite their general success. It was one of these battles, the Kalinga campaign, that was so devastatingly gruesome that it caused Asoka to completely and drastically change his lifestyle.
Upon seeing the carnage of the wars he had instigated, Asoka suddenly renounced warfare of all kinds, and converted to Buddhism. He then launched yet another campaign—but this time a nonviolent one. He wanted a “moral, spiritual and social renewal within his empire.” This included a revision of governmental agencies like the judicial system and public works. More importantly, however, Asoka made it a mission to spread Buddhism. Missionaries were sent throughout India to convert citizens—but they also travelled to new territories such as Sri Lanka and much of Southeastern Asia. In so doing they converted a great number of people.
It was Asoka who called for the third council. This council was of great importance for Theravada Buddhism. During this council, varying sects were analyzed—to determine which sects were “heretical.” It was this council that officially accepted a school of teaching that it referred as Theravada. This council also was highly important because it caused Asoka’s son to travel to Sri Lanka with the Tripitaka. The Sri Lankans have, of course, made Theravada Buddhism their official religion since that time. Without Asoka and the third council, Buddhism would not have found its way into the hands of the Sri Lankans.
Asoka was raised a Hindu—outside of the Buddhist community entirely. He began as an external but converted to an internal member of Buddhist society. He was, in any event, a benign force. He was one of the most important forces in all of Buddhism’s long history, but he did not do much to change it. He merely spread it—he allowed people who would otherwise have had no access to the Dhamma to practice Buddhism. Though Asoka could be interpreted as either an external or an internal force for Theravada Buddhism, what is clear is that he was a benign force.
Asoka had a surprisingly marginal effect on the doctrinal aspect of Buddhism. | 19 | English | male | Some College | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
q |
Sometime in the fifth or sixth century BCE, a prince who would one day be called Buddha was born. Over the course of his life, he renounced the world and became enlightened, and his teachings led to the formation of Buddhism—the most orthodox sect of which is known as Theravada Buddhism. The religion is around twenty five hundred years old; it looks different today than it did when Buddha was alive. This can be seen all over, for instance in the Theravada nation of Sri Lanka, where the annual water-cutting ceremony is observed. Monks and laymen alike participate in this ceremony, and it holds some religious significance, despite Buddha never teaching about any festivity of the sort. These differences run all the way from the superficial traditions to the soteriological core of the religion. The Theravada Buddhist community, both from the monastic perspective and from the lay perspective, has had to change its doctrinal principles over time. This can be attributed to forces both external and internal, both hostile and benign.
There are a number of qualifying terms this discussion will make frequent use of. There is the concept of internal versus external. Here, an internal force is defined as a force borne of members of the Buddhasasana, regardless of monastic status. An external force is any force from non-Buddhists. A hostile force is any force that damages or intends to damage the Buddhist community—a force borne of a negative perception of Buddhism. A benign force is a force that does not wish to harm or help the Buddhist community—though it may end up doing one or the other as a byproduct. These terms will come up repeatedly throughout this discussion.
First, it is important to investigate the basics of the religion—the doctrines that lie at the core of Theravada Buddhism. Buddhists seek refuge in the triple gem of the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. The Dhamma is essentially comprised of the Tripitaka—the three baskets—of Buddhist text. The Sutta Pitaka contains all the Suttas, the Vinaya Pitaka contains the disciplinary rules, and the Abhidhamma Pitaka contains the metaphysical components of Buddhism. The metaphysical notions consist of things like Anatta—no soul, Dukkha—inherent suffering in life, and Anicca—impermanence of everything. Only by recognizing these concepts can one end Sansara, the cycle of death and rebirth, which happens continuously. Along with Sansara will end lobha—desire, dosa—hatred, and moha—delusion, when one becomes enlightened. In the Vinaya Pitaka, rules for life are set forth. For laymen, there are five precepts (I shall not kill, I shall not lie, I shall not steal, I shall not misbehave sexually, and I shall not take intoxicating substances). For monks, there are many more disciplinary rules to be followed. The most fundamental doctrinal notion in Buddhism is the notion of the four noble truths. First, Dukkha; the truth that life is suffering. Second, that attachment causes suffering. Third, that suffering can be overcome. | 19 | English | male | Some College | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
q | He never wonders if people will consider him a hero—he never even considers himself to be a hero. He narrates his own story, but does so anonymously, to stress the fact that he is not bragging. He recruits a team to help him, rather than try to take on the whole plague himself—a foolish act which could obviously end only in failure. Without this modesty, Rieux could not have gathered a team, and could not have been so effective in fighting the plague.
Camus also demonstrates the existentialist qualities he perceives in the world around him by emphasizing the circular nature of the events in the novel. At the outset, he establishes Oran as an average town, with nothing at all extraordinary. He explains, “all that was to be conveyed was the banality of the town’s appearance and of life in it” (5). He then describes the gradual devolutionary spiral the town enters into, step by step. First, diseased rats die in the streets and cause general disquiet. As the plague spreads to people, “[t]he local press, so lavish of news about the rats, now had nothing to say. For rats died in the street; men in their homes. And the newspapers are concerned only with the street” (35). But soon, the weekly death rate becomes too high for people to ignore. As one family after another is escorted off to the quarantine and people die by the hundreds, the town erupts into anarchy. People are routinely shot on the streets and bodies are burned, “authorities… declare martial law and enforce the regulations deriving from it. Two looters were shot” (171). As the plague ends, however, the town gradually returns to normal. The narrator finishes his explanation of those whose lives were ruined by the plague by asking, “[b]ut who gave a thought to these lonely mourners?” (296). One of Rieux’s patients responds to the news that there is going to be a monument erected for the victims of the plague by saying, “I could have sworn it! And there’ll be speeches… I can almost hear them saying: ‘Our dear departed…’ And then they they’ll (sic) go off and have a good snack” (307). By emphasizing that the town is not changed by the epidemic, Camus shows the futility of Rieux’s efforts. Despite all the work Rieux dedicates to plague victims, he is not recognized as a hero, nor does the world even work particularly hard to remember the plague he fought so hard against.
Camus intends for his novel to be an allegory for the Holocaust. His novel captures the collapse of society and devolution encouraged by the Nazis. It brings to mind a time in which life is cheap and society is pervaded by a general, formless terror—a terror of some unspeakably wicked force, which has the power to strike and kill anyone at any instant. There is a general sense that no one is safe. | 19 | English | male | Some College | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
q | Though Brook Farm was founded on educational tenets, Hawthorne was overwhelmed by the workload, and his vicious invectives against the community did not convey the objective conditions at Brook Farm, but rather the extreme negative side of Brook Farm—which Hawthorne needed to see before he could allow himself to leave.
By June, Hawthorne’s optimism was completely gone. He wrote, “[t]hat abominable gold-mine! Thank God, we anticipate getting rid of its treasures in the course of two or three days! Of all hateful places that is the worst”. The summer apparently took a toll on Hawthorne, and he did not write again until August 12th. That day, he expressed that, “[e]ven my Custom House experience was not such a thralldom and weariness; my head and heart were free. Oh, labor is the curse of the world”. This hyperbole was written by Hawthorne for Hawthorne—he did not intend for his journals to be published or released to the public. In this way, Hawthorne tried to convince himself that he was doing the right thing by leaving. By taking an extreme stance, he justified his decision in his own mind.
At that point, Hawthorne just wanted to leave the community. He initially hoped that he and his companion could live there together. Because leaving the community meant giving up this potential future and a considerable sum of money, Hawthorne had to convince himself that he could absolutely never live there. He wrote of the “one other week that I shall remain a slave”, again using hyperbole to express the sheer horribleness of Brook Farm. He expressed his hopefulness for a living in “little books as I mean to write”. On Brook Farm, he often felt that his labor had left him too exhausted to write, or that he simply did not have enough time. He used his journal to establish that he simply could not live his life happily on Brook Farm.
Over the course of his stay at Brook Farm, Hawthorne changed dramatically. He wrote initially of his determination and excitement to become a laborer. A month later, he skipped work to read. By June, he complained of spending long days toiling in the fields as if it were the worst fate anyone could ever be forced to endure. He preferred more scholarly pursuits—even the dreadfully boring Custom House was preferable to Hawthorne. His shift to the negative conveys his need to convince himself that, despite the time, energy, and money he had invested in Brook Farm, he had to leave. He wrote of Brook Farm in such negative terms because he had to justify leaving.
Brook Farm put a priority on education. Instead of focusing on that, however, Hawthorne wrote about the labor. His journal reflects a frustration with having to constantly work, and a wish that there was more time to read and write. The very fact that Hawthorne kept a journal reflects his desire to write, not work. | 19 | English | male | Some College | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
q | They changed the doctrinal philosophy of Buddhism—as a result of Dharmapala.
Vidyalankara did not change the doctrinal fundamentals of Buddhism, but they did go against some of what the Buddha taught. The Buddha taught that monks should have no involvement with politics. This subject has recently been a topic of extreme controversy, but the Vidyalankara monks certainly made their standpoint very clear. They deliberately involved themselves in politics—in fact they often made it their lives work. Though they did not change any doctrinal concept, they did shape how Sri Lankans currently interpret the word of Buddha.
But Dharmapala’s greatest impact on Sri Lanka was arguably his contribution to the ethnolinguistic polarization of the country. Sri Lanka had two prevailing cultures—the Sinhala culture and the Tamil culture. For thousands of years they coexisted, but Dharmapala was the first to highlight their differences. He vocally supported the Sinhala people over the Tamils. Because of his influence, a hegemonic pattern developed in Sri Lanka. The Sinhala people had complete control over the government, and used it against the Tamils. For instance, in a 1956 election, Sinhala was made the official language of Sri Lanka. This tension, established initially by Dharmapala, led to massive conflict between the two groups.
H.M. Gunaratne documented his experience in this massive conflict in his memoir Life Means Not to Kill. As a boy, he is enrolled in a nearby monastery but shortly realizes that the monastic life is not for him. He prefers the life of a scholar, and even spends some time at an American college. Gunaratne develops strong socialist and Marxist sentiments, and becomes minimally involved with the JVP—the group in opposition to the government. Government officials take him to a prison where he is savagely beaten and deprived of food, in an attempt to get him to reveal information about his supposed JVP connections. The insight his account provides to this discussion is in his title.
During these racial conflicts, the first precept was lost by the laypeople of a Theravada Buddhist country. Anyone who calls him or herself a Buddhist must agree to refrain from killing, but in these troubled times in Sri Lanka, assassinations were regularly made on a political basis. This doctrinal shift is as important as any in the history of Theravada Buddhism. Even the ruthless Emperor Asoka, who was responsible for the death of thousands and commanded numerous bloody wars, converted to Buddhism and immediately venerated the first precept. Yet in Sri Lanka, during the Sinhala-Tamil conflicts, the first precept was less emphasized. Other precepts were violated casually by Buddhist laypeople—for instance, Gunaratne misbehaved sexually and enjoyed intoxicating liquor. But this conflict represented a tremendous shift in the lay perspective of doctrinal Buddhism—the First Precept could be broken on a national scale, just as casually as any of the others.
Dharmapala was an obvious internal force on Theravada Buddhism, but it is arguable whether he was hostile or benign. | 19 | English | male | Some College | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
q | At the very end of the novel, Rieux finds himself being drawn into a crowd of jubilant citizens, celebrating the defeat of the plague. He distances himself from the crowd and in so doing, he observes that it is only those who depended on love to get through the plague who celebrate. He considers their desires to be “limited” but thinks it is right that they should “enter, if only now and then, into their reward” (301). He resolves at this point to make a record of his experiences during the plague. He explains that, while it is impossible to be a saint, people, “in the never ending fight against terror,” must always “strive their utmost to be healers” (308). Finally, Rieux makes the observation that the people celebrating must not know anything of the nature of plague. The plague “never dies or disappears for good,” but has the ability to “lie dormant” and undetected for years (308). Therefore, the world is at constant risk of another plague epidemic, and defeating it once is not a lasting victory but a temporary one. Therefore, Rieux sees no reason for celebration. The people celebrating in the streets are the bystanders of tomorrow—those who will be unprepared for another coming of the plague. Rieux instead greets the end of the plague with a weary satisfaction, making sure to never let himself slip into complacency—as the plague could strike again without warning.
In studying the Holocaust from a psychological perspective, the bystander is an incredibly difficult person to understand—but Camus uses The Plague to suggest that their motivation sprung from simple self-interest. It is simple to understand why someone would not risk their life for a reason they could not see or understand. Camus suggests that the only type of hero that could exist during the Holocaust was the existential hero—someone who did not care about personal reward. According to Camus, the bystanders were prevented from being saviors by their solipsism.
Nathaniel Hawthorne joined the Brook Farm community in 1841, the year of its founding, and kept a journal of his experiences there. From April 13th, 1841 through September 3rd of the same year, he documented his daily experiences on Brook Farm. Hawthorne left the community after a short five months. He was initially excited about the labor component of his stay there, and wrote, “I shall make an excellent husbandman,--I feel the original Adam reviving within me”. Over time, his excitement was worn down. By May, he skipped work to read—“I intend to keep myself on the sick-list this one day longer, more especially as I wish to read Carlyle on Heroes”. By June, his outlook had made a one-hundred-eighty-degree shift, and he wrote of Brook Farm with loathing disdain. He used extremes and hyperboles to justify his departure from the community. | 19 | English | male | Some College | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
q | The Thudong monks clearly were closer to self-mortification than indulgence in sensuous pleasures, and therefore not following exactly the middle path. They practiced corpse meditation and always followed some number of the Dhutangas, further demonstrating their tendency towards self-mortification. This certainly came into effect for Theravada ascetics and wandering monks, but the mainstream Buddhist community did not feel the effect of these tweaks in the Buddha’s teachings.
A Sri Lankan Buddhist named Anagarika Dharmapala (not the same as the King under Portuguese colonial rule) had incalculable effect on the Sri Lankan Buddhist tradition. Dharmapala was widely respected for claiming the site where Buddha gained his enlightenment for Buddhist nations. It was Dharmapala who pressed into Sri Lankans the idea of “Protestant Buddhism” around the turn of the twentieth century. This concept had both a monastic and social leg to it—he wanted the laypeople to be more like Protestant laypeople and the monks to be more like Protestant priests. During Dharmapala’s time, the government was seen to become increasingly Buddhist but also increasingly English-speaking. As a result, politicians drifted out of touch with their electorate, and needed Buddhist monks to act as go-betweens. Dharmapala also made it his political work to get rid of the colonialists in Sri Lanka. He achieved a great deal of success in all his works and was considered a hero of Theravada Buddhism.
It is difficult to overstate the impact of Dharmapala on Sri Lankan Buddhist culture. In the wake of Dharmapala’s work, two monastic colleges were founded near Colombo—Vidyodaya and Vidyalankara. The two colleges were a representation of the binaries contained within Dharmapala’s teachings. He loved and hated the Protestants. In so doing, he established a tension between nationalism and internationalism—in Protestant Buddhism it was difficult to say which was more important. These two monastic colleges are yet another binary. Vidyodaya was focused on social issues. They worked primarily on rural development. Politics were not their primary focus. Vidyalankara was focused on political issues. They worked to develop the country politically—and their prevailing sympathies lay with Socialism. Social issues were not their primary focus. These two colleges both had an impact on doctrinal Buddhism for the monastic order.
From a doctrinal standpoint, Vidyodaya completely changed the notion of dana, almsgiving, for monks. Vidyodaya monks began doing charity work in rural Buddhist communities. This, of course, had no basis in the Dhamma and the monks were pressed for a reason why. What they cited was the classic concept of dana. They had to change it slightly to let it apply to them, however. In the traditional doctrinal sense, dana is a concept intended for the laypeople. It suggests that Buddhist laypeople should give alms to those who have renounced the world, as part of their commitment to Buddhism. Dana, as Buddha preached it, did not have anything to do with monks giving back to their community. But that is just what the monks did. | 19 | English | male | Some College | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
q | His intentions for the Theravada Buddhist community (or at least the Sinhala component of it) were certainly good, but the effects his philosophy brought about devastated the small island nation. In any event, it is difficult to find a figure in Theravada Buddhism, short of Buddha himself, who had a greater impact on how doctrines were interpreted in Sri Lanka. As a result of Dharmapala, the concepts like dana and doctrines like the first precept were drastically changed. Upon viewing the carnage of the Sri Lankan Sinhala-Tamil conflicts, it is difficult to say Dharmapala was benign. But, upon viewing his vision for Buddhism, it is also difficult to say he was hostile. What is not difficult to determine is his tremendous impact on Sri Lankan Buddhism in both the monastic and lay communities.
A hundred years after the life of Buddha, the Second Council was held. At this council, several minor disciplinary rules were clarified. For instance, it was a cause of controversy if monks should be able to accept gold and silver as alms. Several doctrinal concepts also arose at this council. There was a group of monks who argued that there was a way to become even more enlightened than an Arhat. They claimed that a person could achieve actual Buddhahood. This major doctrinal question was deliberated over by a council of elders. It was eventually determined that the concept of achieving Buddhahood was not in the Buddha’s teachings, and that it was blasphemous against the religion. The monks, however, could not accept this and formed the now-popular Mahayana tradition. The Second Council was an internal, benign force that ended up fracturing the Buddhist community in two. It served to clean up the doctrine, however. Because of the Second Council, it became set in stone that the highest possible level of enlightenment one can obtain in the Theravada tradition is that of Arhat.
This discussion has observed three external forces: British colonialism (especially the Kandyan convention), Portuguese colonialism, and Dutch colonialism in Sri Lanka. One force—Asoka—was difficult to categorize. There were also three internal forces: the Thudong monks, Dharmapala, and the Second Council. Of these seven forces, four were benign: British colonialism, the Thudong monks, the Second Council, and Asoka. Two were hostile: Portuguese and Dutch colonialism in Sri Lanka. One force—Dharmapala—was difficult to categorize. Some forces had a stronger effect on the monastic community than the lay community, while others affected the lay community much more drastically. Not all of these forces caused a doctrinal change in Buddhist tradition. These were only a handful of the forces that shaped modern-day Theravada Buddhism—countless other forces contributed to the formation of modern-day Buddhist soteriology.
This discussion has also looked at a few doctrines affected by these forces, such as the Noble Eightfold Path and the Five Precepts. It appears from the examples that internal forces more easily change doctrinal Buddhism, as external forces both benign and hostile did not cause drastic change in doctrinal Buddhism. | 19 | English | male | Some College | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
q | In addition, benign and hostile forces were equally likely to invoke change in doctrinal concepts. Finally, external forces tended to affect both the lay and monastic community fairly drastically, while internal forces had no clear tendency towards either the lay or monastic communities.
Theravada Buddhism is not immune to the laws that govern all religions. As thousands of years go by, and the world around it changes, it shifts and adjusts. These changes can be attributed in some degree to internal and external forces that naturally cause the doctrines of the religion to shift. Theravada Buddhism, despite being the more orthodox and rigid Buddhist tradition, has shown itself to be a dynamic, changing religion. It has adapted to situations by modifying its doctrines as necessary and in so doing, shown its endurance. Buddhism has lasted for over twenty-five centuries, and is likely to continue on for thousands of years to come, because of the ability of its followers to adapt and interpret doctrine. The Buddha said, “Even well-decked royal chariots wear away;/And the body too falls into decay./But the dhamma of good ones goes not to decay,/For the good speak [of it] with the good.” These words apply to the entire Theravada tradition—it endures.
In the wake of the Holocaust, French Existentialist Albert Camus published a novel that, on the surface, had nothing to do with the Holocaust. The Plague was, however, an allegory for the genocide that the world was suffering through. The narrator tells the story of Rieux (and turns out to be Rieux). When the plague strikes the small North African French village of Oran, Rieux—the doctor—finds himself faced with countless difficult decisions to make; the first decision is the closing of Oran’s gates and its isolation from the rest of the world. In Rieux’s desperate struggle to save as many people as possible, Camus reveals an insight about the Holocaust. Camus portrays Rieux as a quintessential existential hero, and in so doing he suggests that the submission of Europe to Nazi rule can be explained by a general focus on self-interest.
Camus explains the world in terms of one simple truth: people die. As a corollary to this truth, Camus explains that the decisions people make on a day-to-day basis are trivial and meaningless. In fact, all free will is meaningless, as the net result of any decision, in the very very long term, is death. In light of this sole truth, Camus describes existential heroes as men or women who understand that the choices they make are meaningless, and choose to help others nonetheless. They help others, even knowing that they will not be rewarded for their heroic actions. These existential heroes can be found in nearly all of Camus’ work.
Dr. Rieux is a prime example of an existential hero. When the plague strikes Oran, he devotes his life to saving as many people as possible. | 19 | English | male | Some College | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
jj | As we see it happened again in 2000; and it didn't just occur twice. The election of 1876 between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, is one of the most debated and controversial elections to have ever taken place. As the day came to an end, Samuel J. Tilden held the popular vote at 4,300,590 almost 300,000 more than Rutherford B. Hayes. With the electoral vote at 184 to 165 in favor of Tilden, it all seemed to be in the bag for Tilden; but we know better by now, things did not go as planned.
Florida, Louisiana, Oregon and South Carolina held 20 electoral votes which had not been given to either candidate as of yet (with one vote in Oregon being declared illegal.) Both parties rallied for those votes, and both claimed that it was clear that their nominee was the victor.
Legal proceedings began and votes began to be discounted for things such as improper ballot labeling, and threats towards voters. In the end, all 20 of the disputed votes were given to Hayes, bringing his electoral college vote win to 185 over Tilden's 184. Cries of corruption were heard far and wide, but it was not just sound the of tears that was disrupting things. Shots were fired into Hayes' home as he sat down to eat dinner, and threats on his life were far from rare.
The final results ended with President Rutherford B. Hayes being awarded the presidency which he took control of on March 4th, 1877. A common belief as to why the election turned out as it did, was an informal deal known as the Compromise of 1877. In the unwritten compromise, Rutherford B Hayes was awarded the necessary electoral votes in exchanged for promising to end the the reconstruction put in place after the Civil War; including the removal of federal troops. At that point the only troops which were still in place were Louisiana, South Carolina and Florida – the three disputed states. Florida sold itself too quickly, as the troops were removed by President Ulysses S. Grant before Hayes even took the Presidency. So we are left to wonder, what was truly gained?
Just a few short years later, we saw even more challenge against the electoral college system. Incumbent President Grover Cleveland was running for his second term against Benjamin Harrison. Harrison's grandfather, William Henry Harrison had once held the nations highest tittle as the 9th President of the United States, but died soon into his term.
Grover Cleveland ran a tough campaign, and it showed in the results as he dominated the southern states and taking a victory as far north as Connecticut (270towin). Winning the popular vote 5,540,309 to Benjamin Harrison's 5,439,853 the incumbent President became the newest victim of the electoral college system. While Cleveland held the popular vote, the northern states which Harrison carried, carried most of the electoral votes as well; causing an electoral vote loss for Cleveland at 168 to 233.
| 23 | English | male | Associates | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
jj | Within each party there is an elected President and the Bundestag has the responsibility to elect a Federal Chancellor of Germany (a position currently held by Angela Merkel, the first female Chancellor of Germany.) A chancellor can be recalled by the parliament if they feel that he or she is not doing a proper job, this has only occurred successfully once, in 1982 when Helmut Schmidt was ousted and replaced immediately by Helmut Kohl. (Hartmann, 2011)
The Federal Chancellor is in control of the direction that the government goes. It is his or her job to guide the ministers (which they choose) and tell them of their responsibilities, as well as the platform of government responsibility. Germany based this system off of the British Prime Minister, with one exception with their multi-party system of power and disfavor towards the “First past the post” system of England. (Hartmann, 2011)
The Bundestag also is in charge of passing amendments, laws and other forms of legislation, mostly those which have been proposed by the Federal government. They do so by discussing the bills and reading them to their full extent rather than arguing and debating. As well as discussing the bills, it discusses the work of the federal government, and keeps its actions within the knowledge of the common people in an open and honest fashion. (Hartmann, 2011)
Germany also has a Federal President who represents the country and deals with other heads of state. It is his or her job to appoint certain members such as judges, and sign certain acts into legal law. While the President lacks the right to veto, he or she can dissolve parliament in rare cases. Overall, it is his or her duty to ensure that the Parliament follows the Basic Law. (Hartmann, 2011)
The second chamber of the German government is the Bundesrat which is involved in around half of all legal procedures by representing the 16 states of Germany. Votes are given to the states on a population basis (between 3 and 6 votes depending on size.) The Bundesrat's main job is to approve any laws which repeal and replace laws which are considered central federal laws, or such a legislation that would require higher amounts of administrative costs. (Hartmann, 2011)
Finally, Germany's final wing of their government is the Federal Constitutional Court which serves a similar process to the U.S Supreme Court by repealing any legislative act which it deems unconstitutional, or against the Basic Law. This system of checks and balances is similar to that used in The United States and is important to stop complete control from being gained. (Hartmann, 2011)
Berlin is the current capital of Germany, and the location of the Bundesrat and the Bundestag. The Capital of West Germany during the split was Bonn, a city located on the river Rhine in Nordrhein-Westfalen. The main choice of this was to keep it in a smaller city to insure that one day the capital would be relocated to a reunified Berlin. | 23 | English | male | Associates | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
jj | Though his iron-fist rule was the source of his downfall, when he was assassinated not by Roman forces but by Germanic. Still, he gave a voice to the people which showed that they could stand shield-to-shield with the Roman forces and have a chance at victory. As the Visigoths, came down towards the borderlands after fleeing form the Huns, they found the conditions which the Romans enforced to be unacceptable. Under the leadership of Alaric I the Visigoths and other Germanic tribes sacked Rome, the jewel of the Western Roman Empire, in 410.
The Visigoths held their rightfully gained power, but there was a new power quickly growing between the Rhine and Meuse rivers, the Franks. The Franks had themselves a large amount of territory by 481 when Clovis I united the kingdoms. Centered around the modern day city of Aachen, Germany; The Empire would soon grow to become one of the strongest in all of Europe.
Grandson of Merovech (the Empire's semi-legendary founder and namesake), Clovis I was hidden beneath a clandestine fog of mystery and the supernatural. It was said that he, and other Merovingian leaders had the ability to cure the sick with their hands, to tame wild animals and other powers. (Sewell, 2006) While we can look at this now in modern times and understand how silly such a claim is, Clovis was able to do something much more unbelievable: unite the Gauls. With a victory at The Battle of Soissons in 486, Clovis conquered the last Roman territory in Gaul and executed its Magister militum Syagrius. (The History Files, 2011) Followed by his victory at the Battle of Vouille, where he killed king Alaric II and pushed the Visigoths south of the Pyrenees. (Medieval Times History, 2011) Clovis' reign importantly involved converting his troops to Roman-Catholicism which he converted to himself to appease his wife. He claimed that during a battle against the Alemanni he invoked the name of Jesus Christ for aid. (Ozment, 2005 pg. 37) Clovis united the Frankish kingdoms, defeated the Thuringians, the Alemanni, the Alsace and the Arian Goths all to gain considerable land mass in present day Germany and Europe.
Charlemagne would continue the Frankish reign, under the Carolingian Dynasty where he extended their land holds to the highest points. The extent of the Frankish Empire can be seen below in blue. (Sewell, 2006)
From this point, things move forward with great losses and regains. Beginning with the grandchildren of Charlemagne who fought over control of the land when their father died. After the Treaty of Verdun ended their civil war, the once grand empire was split into three. This would start to define the border between what would later become France and Germany. (Koeller, 1999)
Taking the pieces left, Otto I was crowned King of Germany in 962 in what was considered to be the unofficial start of the Holy Roman Empire. (Velde, 2008) The Empire never took to the grandeur it could have. | 23 | English | male | Associates | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
jj | Due to its smaller size, it was jokingly known as Bundesdorf during that period, which literally meant “Federal Village.” (Time Magazine, 1964)
The core areas of the country would be the city-states of Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen as well as Bavaria for its unique foods, dress (such as the Lederhosen and Dirndl), interesting dialects, music, and culture which attracts millions to its area, and to events such as Oktoberfest.
The German language itself is an art-form, and quite well established within the world. Germanic languages form the basis of English itself and it doesn't take long for one to notice the similarities between the two languages if you study them both. The most widely used and proper form of German is called Hochdeutsch, or “High German” though once you travel outside of the major cities, you'll start to encounter several different forms. Estimates vary, but it is believed that between 50 and 250 different dialects of the German language exist. (About.com, 2011)
Part of this reason is the fact that Germany was not united until the 1870's, and thus the border cultures tended to take in similarities to their neighbors, and their neighbors took in parts of German. Such as The Elsace-Lorraine region of France where one can find a dialect known as Elsässich. (About.com, 2011) Everything from greetings “Hallo”, “Grüß Gott!”, “Moin!” change depending on which part of Germany you are in.
As stated in (About.com, 2011), there are 6 dialect families. They include Friesich, or Frisian which is spoken in small areas around the North Sea coastal region and is the smallest of them all. Niederdeutsch, also known as Plattdeutsch is low-German, and is named after the low lands of the area (Nieder is the same basis for the name of the The Netherlands, or Niederlande in German.)
Next we have Mitteldeutsch (Middle German) through the middle of the country, with the Fränkisch dialect within its borders, that follows the Main river. Alemannisch in Switzerland and the Bavarian-Austrian dialect.
This can cause some minor problems, though this is mainly a problem for tourists or inexperienced German as a second language, speakers. Germans usually have little problem understanding a German from another dialect other than a few key words which may cause confusion (similar to jelly/jam/jello, or college/high school/university confusions that we see in American vs British English.) Though a certain Austrian had no trouble speaking publicly to the masses of Germany, and they understood him just fine.
Adolf Hitler attempted to turn Germany into a nation-state. Though historically and currently, Germany has been a conglomerate of different tribes, races, religions, and people. After World War II, there was a great urge to get people to immigrate to Germany, and that they did! Especially from the country of Turkey.
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The oldest areas and regions are known as Stem Duchies, Stammesherzogtümer. These included Saxony in the north. With Bullungers, Lusatia, Meissen, Merseburg and Thuringia to its east. To the west were Lower Lorraine which is in modern day Netherlands, and Upper Lorraine which is part of Belgium now. In the center stood Franconia, and Bohemia with Swabia and Bavaria to the south which would later make up modern day Germany. (Ross, 2011)
During the first unification, Germany combined the four kingdoms including: Prussia who had the capital of Berlin; Bayern with the capital of München; Sachsen with its capital Dresden; and Württemberg with Stuttgart. With the Grand Duchies of Baden, Hessen, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Mercklenburg-Strelitz, Oldenburg, and Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach also included.
The main losses since then was much of Prussia. Prussia at the time of unification reached straight through Poland, and Lithuania followed all the way to Russia in the east and even part of Belgium in the west. Through WWI and WWII Prussia lost its land until it was abolished in 1947.
During World War II, Germany gained land but it was not recognized. It was what happened afterward that is the most important in terms of geography. After victory in Europe, Germany was split into four occupation zones. These zones defined what would later become two separate Germany's. On May 23rd of 1949, The Federal Republic of Germany, or West Germany, was formed. On October 7th of the same year East Germany, the German Democratic Republic formed. The two countries became almost polar-opposites of each other. With different political styles, and different life styles they went down different paths. Still, on November 9th of 1989 the Berlin Wall was opened and by October of 1990 reunification talks began, and once again Germany was whole. (Germanplaces.com, 2011)
Germans modern states were reformed during the allied occupation, with the addition of 9 new states. This was mostly due to bringing together various smaller states and including parts of Prussia which officially ended in 1947. Since then, Baden, Württemberg-Hohenzollern and Württemberg-Baden combined to form Baden-Württemberg. In 1957 Saarland became part of Germany again from under France control. The current states with the capitals in parenthesis are Baden-Württemberg (Stuttgart), Bayern (München), Brandenburg (Potsdam), Hessen (Wiesbaden), Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Schwerin), Niedersachsen (Hannover), Nordrhein-Westfalen (Düsseldorf), Rheinland-Pfalz (Mainz), Saarland (Saarbrücken), Sachsen (Dresden), Sachsen-Anhalt (Magdeburg), Schleswig-Holstein (Kiel), and Thüringen (Erfurt.) And the current city states are Berlin, Hamburg, and Bremen. (Germany Insider, 2011)
Germany itself is mainly a compact state, and slightly fragmented in the north. Germany has several rivers, including the Rhine in the west and its tributary Main flows through Frankfurt. In the north the rivers Ems, Wesser and Elbe flow out into the North Sea. The last significant river of Germany is the Danube which flows through Bavaria. The north border of Germany includes the North Sea and the Baltic Sea which are connected via the Kiel Canal.(MapsOfWorld.com, 2009)
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jj | In October of 2010, German Chancellor Angela Merkel made the shocking statement that multiculturalism in Germany had “utterly failed.” and that there should be immediate action to stop the flow of Turkish immigrants entering the country. The Chancellor claimed that these groups could not happily work together for the betterment of the country. (Guardian, 2010)
One of the main issues in Germany is their birth rate, the lowest in all of Europe. Germany includes great government support for those who wish to have kids, including incredible support for the mother and father with time off from work to raise the kid (and guaranteed jobs when they return.) so it is no surprise that immigrants are needed in the country. Still Chancellor Merkel is no stranger to her fight against immigrants. In 2007 she made it so that all immigrants must be able to speak, and write German before they could be considered citizens. Though these laws do not count for those who are coming from North America, something which has been seen as xenophobic. (Cisneros, 2007)
In East Germany in 1953, a conflict known as the Uprising in East Germany took place. Only a few months after the death of Joseph Stalin, a huge workers rights uprising began to the great surprise of the leaders of East Germany, and the Soviet Union. Within the factories the workers were met with unimaginable quotas and they took the streets on June 17th to protest these in hopes of reform. Within days the protesters showed up in over 400 locations within East Germany and took on political protesters as well. They took the force of the protest to speak out against not only labor reform but free elections and an end to the communism. The Red Army was issued with tanks and a license to open fire onto protesters and the revolt was ultimately crushed. (Domber, 2001)
East Germany went on to aid the Soviets in the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Germany then gave aid against Yugoslavia in the Kosovo War in 1999 and participated in the War on Terror by giving troops to the cause in Afghanistan in 2001. (History Guy)
While Germany has remained fairly free of terrorist attacks, one major event took place on April 5th, 1986 when a bomb was placed by suspected Libyan terrorists by order of Mu'ammar Qadhafi. The bomb exploded inside a Discotheque frequented by American soldiers in West Berlin, causing the deaths of three, and the injuries of over 200 others. (Oettinger, 2011)
Germany has enjoyed a rich history, very few countries can give praise to heroes born in 18 BC, for a battle which stopped a Roman invasion and give thanks to it at a memorial built in the 1840s and still call him a national hero despite there not being a country to begin with until the 1870s. While it took so long for Germany to unite, and then reunite, I believe Germany is here to stay.
Certainly there are major differences between different parts of Germany.
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jj | The Empire went up and down through the ages, and gradually began to lose large amounts of land as new Empires started to gain power.
In 1870 Germany saw the threats of these other nations growing around them. With the French on their border, the English looking down on them, the Russians making a name for themselves and Austria out for blood, it came down to uniting or being taken apart piece-by-piece. Otto von Bismarck realized the importance of having a Prussian dominated Germany. In 1871 his dream was realized as a unified Germany became an official state for the first time. (Ozment, 2005 pg 212)
Germany has since gone through major changes but currently holds an important place in the European world. When Greece began to experience growing financial instability, Germany approved a controversial bill which gave Greece 110 billion euros in loans over the next three years. (Washington Times, 2010)
Germany is greatly involved in world politics as a whole. It is a member of NATO, The United Nations, as well as the Council of Europe. It is involved with the G8 – which it hosted 5 times – and the G20 summits.
Germany recently made monumental steps against nuclear energy. Chancellor Angela Merkel claimed that “[Germany has] the chance to become the first industrialized nation to switch over to the electricity of the future” by disabling all of its nuclear power plants by 2022. (Bundesregierung, 2011)
The main exports of Germany are metals, and automobiles. With more than 1.3 trillion dollars in exports this past year (a 16.77% increase since last year, and nearly a trillion dollars more than in 2003) the German export market continues to increasingly grow despite foreign markets struggling. (IndexMundi, 2010)
In order to discuss the size and shape of Germany, one has to decide what you consider Germany. Throughout this essay I've discussed the history and prehistory of Germany and how much it has changed. Therefore I find it vital to begin there again in terms of the geography. Germania as a whole covered a vast area. It generally signified the regions which were unconquered by the Romans. From the Rhine river to the North and Baltic seas and far into modern day Russia, the region was something grand. However, size does not always count. Despite it being such a large region, it was not one united group, or nation but various small, nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes often at war with each other.
As the Frankish Empire began to grow out of the area between the Rhine and Meuse rivers, it quickly began to expand. In 481 it held Austrasia, a region which currently consists of Aachen, Köln, parts of France and The Netherlands. Clovis I went on to conquer what is now France but was part of the Frankish Empire at that point. After Clovis came the conquests of Burgundy, and Gascony in the 530's. Charlemagne brought it to the greatest extent as he brought in Bavaria, Italy, and Upper Saxony to the empire. | 23 | English | male | Associates | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
jj | Though we have to look a bit of a distance back in history to see it, but us historians knew that this was far from the first time this had occurred.
As we gaze back in history, we come across one of the most controversial elections that makes the Gore and Bush dispute look like a minor hassle. The year was 1824, and unlike the two-nominee melee that we experienced in 2000, this was a five man race. Dwindling down to four towards the end with John C. Calhoun dropping out to accept the vice presidential position, the remaining four were in heated battle. John Quincy Adams, son of the second president; Andrew Jackson, the hero of The Battle of New Orleans; William H. Crawford, the Secretary of the Treasury during James Madison and James Monroe's terms; and Henry Clay, The Speaker of the House of Representatives, all wanted the position of leader of the country. The Democratic-Republican party shared a common name but their Jeffersonian ideals, or lack there of, as described in (American Experiment, 2006) caused five distinct factions to form (p. 382).
From even the 4th and 3rd place, we see the same occurrence of the Bush and Gore issue. In 4th place with 37 electoral votes, and 47,531 popular votes was Speaker Henry Clay. The ill William H. Crawford crawled slightly ahead of him with 41 electoral votes but only 40,856 of the popular vote (270towin). The top two contenders left were John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, and if you know your history, you know that Jackson did not become President until 1829.
Therefore it must be assumed that John Quincy Adams won the election in popular and electoral votes. However, that is simply not the case, neither of those are true. The election of 1824 ended with a landslide victory for Andrew Jackson with 153,544 votes and 99 electoral votes. With 84 electoral votes and 44,804 votes behind Jackson, John Quincy Adams was clearly not the victor. However, there was a problem, no one had won the majority (270towin).
Therefore it came upon the house to decide who would take the position of the Presidency of the United States of America. Henry Clay, was confident that Adams would nominate him to position of Secretary of State and thus supported and rallied for support for Adams. Jackson, outraged, protested of the corruption with fellow southerner Calhoun who called the alliance of Clay and Adams “The most dangerous stab, which the liberty of this country has yet received” (The American Experiment, 2006).
In the end, President John Adams was inaugurated on March 4th, 1825 after having been thoroughly defeated in the eyes of the public. Andrew Jackson did however, go on to have a great victory over John Quincy Adams in 1828, where he finally rightfully gained the Presidency after Adams served just one term.
The problem was spotted, it had yet to occur on such a scale before, surely it was fixed afterward? | 23 | English | male | Associates | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
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Grover Cleveland would regain his Presidency in 1892. Following in the steps of Andrew Jackson who defeated Quincy Adams twice, but only won the Presidency from him once; Grover Cleveland went on again to win the popular vote against Benjamin Harrison. This time, however, Cleveland also carried far more states and won the electoral vote as well taking taking the vital states of New York, Illinois and California as well as the lake states which he lacked in 1888.
One would think that after the tie that Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr found themselves in the year 1800, the 12th amendment (which outlines the procedures of President and Vice Presidential election) would have done a lot more to prevent any sort of confusion or debate ever again. You would think that after 1824 they would have tried again, or even 1876, or again in 1888. As we look back at the election of 2000, is it not time to finally say that we should be the ones who step up and make a change? History repeats itself, if nothing more has been gained from this, at least take that in. The year 2000 will not be the last time this happens. Again people will look back and say “Why was nothing done about this the first time, or the fourth time?”
Why let a system take our vote and twist and mold it to fit their desires? Why should each vote not count? Looking even to the events of 1836 where Martin Van Buren was successful in his bid for the Presidency. However, there was a problem with his Vice President, Richard Johnson, namely that he did not get the same amount of electoral votes that Van Buren did. It came down to the 12th amendment to settle and in the end Johnson did secure the vice presidency.
And why not let them decide who should win? They do not even care if the candidate is alive or dead. Needless to say, the General of the United States Army during the Civil War was not a very liked President in the south. As the election of 1872 came around, there was a strong desire to take down Ulysses S. Grant in favor of someone who would be a supporter of the south. While he once backed Grant, Horace Greeley soon became the man for the challenge.
Shortly after the election, Mary Cheney Greeley wife of Greeley passed away. Horace Greeley quickly spiraled into madness and died before the electoral votes could be cast. The Democrats spread their votes that Greeley would have won, around to many others – namely Thomas A. Hendricks – but it was not enough to defeat Grant.
Despite Horace Greeley being downgraded to deceased, there was still an attempt to give him three electoral votes. A posthumous honour of a great man? Or just an attempt to once again show how much they hated Grant, that they'd rather have a dead man than him as President. | 23 | English | male | Associates | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
jj | While the Berlin Wall is nothing more than a memorial, the political systems set up on either side of it have stuck strongly into the hearts of many. While ignoring the problems with the Stasi , many yearn for the days of a Soviet run Germany. (Barkin, 2009) The costs of living, the rights to work, the benefits granted to the citizens and much more are nothing in comparison to the current system set in place in a reunified Germany.
Therefore I believe that each state, including the perforated Brandenburg, will be able to adopt more socialist based systems, while still staying united with Germany as a whole. Allowing these regions to best fit to the wants and needs of its people will allow for a happier Germany while keeping the country united under one flag.
With the states of Germany firmly cemented in their places, so too shall the borders be. While Germany may not have much protection from invasion, there is no longer a reason to fear such a thing. It is amazing to think that in 50 years the world has changed so greatly in the way that views such actions. I could never imagine ever opening up a newspaper to read that a country has invaded Germany. In fact, that entire region of Europe is fairly stable and working together. The only invasions you see these days are when the Swiss forget where their borders are and invade Liechtenstein by mistake. (BBC, 2007)
In the end, Germany is here to stay. To enjoy the sights from the coast of the North Sea, to the peaks in the Alps. To be able to head to München for Oktoberfest or to Köln for Karneval, there will always be a reason to celebrate being German. A people proud of their culture, despite it being a blend of many. A country with a powerful language, including its hundreds of dialects. A place with a long history, despite being a fairly new country. And a place like no other, a place where millions can claim heritage to. So many people in this world can say that they are proud to be German, can you?
The World Wars were meant to end warfare forever. Never again would we as a planet fear that everything we have worked so hard for could be destroyed. The Cold War showed us that that there was never going to be an end to war, and our own creations may just be the end of us and all life on Earth.
As the Doomsday Clock ticked closer to midnight, both the United States and the Soviet Union began to strengthen their stockpiles and strategically position their warheads. On October 14th of 1962 a U-2 plane flying for the United States Air Force was able to acquire photographic proof of missile bases being constructed in Cuba by the Soviet Union. Along with the United States' missiles in Turkey, both sides now had the ability to strike a devastating and destructive blow to the capitals of their respective countries. | 23 | English | male | Associates | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
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Other key geographic places in Germany include der Schwarzwald, a wooded mountain region in Baden-Württemberg and the various peaks as well as the protective power of the alps in the upper German area that makes up the southern border. Though from the early days when Julius showed that he could bridge the Rhine quickly, most of Germany has been exposed (and occasionally surrounded) by threats.
Germany is a federal, parliamentary-democratic, republic and it is the second attempt at a democracy in Germany. The first attempt was the period before Nazi Germany known as The Weimar Republic. The flaws within the original system allowed Adolf Hitler to rise to power and slowly but surely assume total control. So it was vital to ensure that such a thing did not happen again when the new Federal Republic of Germany began in Western Germany in 1949. (Hartmann, 2011)
The constitution of Germany was written then, and called “The Basic Law” While it promoted things like reunification, it also took great steps into the deserved liberties of the German people, especially human dignity. The first section states that “Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority” It also granted freedoms of press, media, protection of the family and other basic rights. (Hartmann, 2011)
The Basic Law states that Germany is a constitutional, federal and welfare state and that its leaders are overseen by judicial law. Germany grants ruling powers to the states as well as the central power. Adding to this, it also became a state which provides welfare for its people who need it, including the unemployed, the disabled and those whom are too ill or old to care for themselves. (Hartmann, 2011)
Germany promotes its political parties, and even reimburses them for monetary costs which they account for during their election campaigns (the first of now many countries to do so.) However, again to keep groups from rising in authoritarian power such as the Nazis did, all political parties must accept and promote democracy. It is within the rights of the Federal Government of Germany to revoke a parties ability to participate in the government if they feel that the party no longer holds its commitment to democracy. Though this has rarely had to happen and the system has mainly remained a five party system since reunification in 1990. This includes the Christian Democratic Union/ Christian Social Union, the Social Democratic Party, Free Democratic Party, The Green Party, and the Left Party. With this system it makes it very difficult for one party to assume control. It is so rare that it has only happened once in 56 years. (Hartmann, 2011)
The Bundestag is the parliament of Germany and the federal representation of the people; it is housed inside of the Reichstag building in Berlin. There are 598 seats in total, half of which are party seats and the other half are held by people who are elected into the position.
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The Germany of today is considered a strong force, a united country with its own blend of culture from within the shadows of the alps in München, all the way to Baltic sea city of Kiel. The same culture can be felt from Köln on the river Rhine, through the centre of Germany to the Saxon city of Dresden located on the Elbe. With such a unique culture, it shouldn't be surprising that Germany as we now know it comes from several different sources, and tribes.
Germania is the ancestral land of the Germans. The origins of the name are highly disputed among scholars and historians. Tacitus claimed that the name came from a Germanic Tribe known then as Tungrians, and that they had previously been known as Germans before they crossed the Rhine and battled the Gaulish forces (Tacitus, 98.) Julius Caesar first used the word “Germanus” in his commentary on the Gallic Wars where he put down the Gauls and battled with Germanic tribes which crossed the Rhine often under mischievous premisses. He took this word from The Gauls themselves, and used it to distinguish between those which he had conquered (The Gauls) and those which he had not. While the origin is uncertain, some believe it referred to a neighbor in the Gaulish language. In the first chapter, of his first book on these wars, Julius Caesar notes: “Germans, who dwell beyond the Rhine, with whom they (The Gauls) are continually waging war.....They contend with the Germans in almost daily battles.” (Julius Caesar, 50-40 BC) Others claim the meaning comes from the spear that they used in warfare, known as a ger (O.E.D, 2010), or perhaps from the Old Irish word garim meaning “to shout”, which indicated the Germans were loud, or noisy. (Names of Germany)
The early Roman historian Tacitus recorded in his AD 98 writing “De Origine et situ Germanorum”, which told of the origins of the Germans, that “I should regard (The Germans) as aboriginal, and not mixed at all with other races through immigration or intercourse. For, in former times it was not by land but on shipboard that those who sought to emigrate would arrive.......Who would leave Asia, or Africa, for Italy for Germany, with its wild country, its inclement skies, its sullen manners and aspect, unless indeed it were his home?(SIC)” (Tacitus, 98)
And who would leave Rome for Germania? Certainly not the Romans, not yet at least. They would send out their conquests into the lands of Germania for goods, and lead the occasional land campaign but in the end they mostly returned back home to their sprawling empire. So as the Germanic tribes began appearing in the middle of the first century, they lived on the borders of the Roman Empire and traded their goods taken from the land, and their skills by serving within the ranks of the Roman army, (Ozment, 2005 pg. 17.) | 23 | English | male | Associates | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
jj | The Romans did not see them as a threat, a mistake made too often in their history, and let them be.
Ozment (2005, pg 18) goes on to describe how a Germanic tribe known as the Cimbri, crossed into Roman territory – modern day Austria – in 113 BC in search for food and land to live on. A Roman army confronted the tribe and a battle broke out in Noricum. Once the dust had settled, the Cimbri stood victorious, marking the first time in history that a Germanic tribe defeated a Roman army. Joined by the Teutones, the Cimbri drove the Roman army, which was sent to defeat them just four years later, back into Gaul. The continued to gain strength, and numbers and defeated two more Roman armies before finally being defeated. This not only marked one of the greatest military loses by a nomadic tribe to the Roman army, but also a period of unity between Germanic tribes.
Though as Caesar noticed immediately, the inhabitants of Germania lusted for battle. Be it the Romans in their way in Noricum, or the Gauls taking the fertile land past the Rhine, the tribes were always ready to fight. This would be a great hindrance to complete unity in these early days, as they were not against also fighting each other. Tacitus noticed this trend as well, he wrote that the Germanic tribes would rather win something by battle and blood, than by wasting their sweat by doing manual labor.
The Romans used this against the tribes, allowing them to destroy themselves with their own centrifugal forces. Still, some saw the possibility of assimilation. The belief was, that if tribal leaders could become civilized Romans, then they could change the barbaric lifestyle that the others live by. The children of major figures in Germania were offered invites to grow up in Rome, and were occasionally simply kidnapped (Ozment, 2005 pg. 20.) They would be raised as free men in the Roman Empire, where they would have land, receive an education and live as the Romans do. While some would chose to live there for the rest of their lives, others returned to their native lands as pro-Roman, Germanic tribesmen.
This system occasionally backfired on the Romans. With tensions growing between the extremes of pro-Roman and near rebellion between the Romans and the Cherusci tribe, it was no surprise that the son of the chieftain: Arminius was sent to be raised in Rome. Arminius rose in rank in the Roman army, and took command of the German contingent in A.D 4. His service was greatly respected within the Roman world, however just 5 years later he would be leading his own warriors against the Romans who were hoping to expand into Germania. Arminius used guerrilla war tactics including ambushes in the thick Teutoberg forest as what (Ozment, 2005) claimed was an early use of the German blitzkrieg tactics.
Arminius became a hero to all the Germans, and united great numbers of tribes into one force. | 23 | English | male | Associates | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
jj | People in Kiel might think that some customs of München are strange, but they are not opposed to heading down to Bavaria, strapping on some lederhosen and enjoying the festivities every September. This is what makes Germany special. It still has its “tribal” roots which were planted in the ancient days, and now respected by all.
They battled with Julius Caesar, they battled against Julius Caesar and the same with Rome. They raided the Gauls, they fought enemies from the east and they slew their own too. From the days of Tacitus who noticed this warrior spirit, Germany was no stranger to fighting, but today they are fighting for the pride of Germany.
Though I often hear people say that they are afraid to be proud of Germany, because people forget that Germany actually existed before 1933. Today Germany is only remembered by many foreigners as “The place where Nazis come from.” When searching for printed resources for this essay I found only one out of 20+ books which did not deal with Hitler's Germany, and that is a shame. The atrocities committed under the Nazi regime shall – rightfully so – never be forgotten. Still, one most remember the struggle that the Germans themselves went through. To consider every German alive then, and every German around now and believe they supported such acts, is ignorant, and intolerable.
That too shall bring the German people together. Not only can they stand at the Herrmansdenkmal and give thanks to Arminus, they can also visit the Altes Schloss in Stuttgart and give thanks to Claus von Stauffenberg and the others who were assassinated for their attempts to kill Adolf Hitler and overthrow the Nazi government during Operation Walküre.
The people of Germany are learning to live together, despite the views of Chancellor Angela Merkel. It is within their nature to adapt, and to progress. The rise in immigrants in Germany will allow the country to further share their strong culture with others, and to bring in new cultures which they too can enjoy. Still, Germans must avoid the thinking patterns which Merkel shares. A return to such xenophobia will do nothing good for the country and will only take them backward.
Financially, I believe Germany will eventually return to the Deutschmark. The foreign market is a force which they can not allow to drag them down, not with their prosperity in such rough times. The Euro will not be completely abolished, and would still be accepted within German borders for ease of travel, but it shall return officially to the Mark. While I understand why Germany is bailing out countries such as Greece, I believe this could become problematic if they become the country which people seek a hand-out from. Germany must invest within its own country before it attempts to put out the never-ending fires of others.
At a state and federal level, I do believe Germany will – and shall – begin to see individual states gaining more power. | 23 | English | male | Associates | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
jj |
The purpose of this historiographical report is to take a look at the affects of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, Operation Mongoose and other attempted coups by the United States to discover their impact on Cuba. It will look at how it positively affected the Caribbean island country and how it has negatively affected it. The essay will use these sources to discover if there are any lasting impacts even still today on the Cuban people.
This report will also find sources which speak about the impact from the Soviet Union's part in these events. The author will discover sources discussing impacts from a soviet point of view and a Cuban point of view to see what – if any – positives or negatives came from the spreading of the iron curtain to the Caribbean.
This essay's purpose is justified because it seeks to look at the affects of Cuba while traditionally more of the spotlight is shined on the superpowers of the United States and the U.S.S.R while seeing Cuba as merely a pawn, or location for the events. It will be able to look at how Cuba has become what it is today and how these events impacted the country, including the rise of Fidel Castro and if the events truly helped him gain power.
By viewing these secondary sources on this topic, the author of this report can find a large amount of accounts of the events which fall on all sides of the spectrum in order to avoid a biased report.
The biggest mistake any citizen of the United States of America can make is that we actually have a vote that counts. You can not avoid the phrase “Every vote counts!” that is spewed out of mouths every Presidential election. “Yes we can!” Should be “Yes we probably can, you have your say, but nothing is guaranteed!” According to (American Government, 2009) Thomas Jefferson called it “The most dangerous blot on our Constitution” (p. 141). Even more, it is a threat to the rights of citizens, and the things that the revolutionary soldiers fought against. That thing is the electoral college.
The election of 2000 is still very clear in the minds of adults and children old enough to remember it. The confusion, the court battles and the constant recounts. (The American President, 2007) states the final tally of votes as “Bush: 50,460,110; Gore: 51,003,926” With a victory margin of 543,816 votes (just short of the population of Wyoming.) I am proud to say congratulations to President Albert Arnold Gore! However, that is not the direction that history took; a sad reminder of our flawed system.
While Albert Gore held the popular vote by a sizable margin, it was the electoral vote which gave George W. Bush the victory with a total of 271 electoral votes over Gore's 266. The average citizen was shocked, and those who voted for Albert Gore felt cheated out of their rightfully earned victory. | 23 | English | male | Associates | Student | Y,Y,Y,Y,Y |
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