Toscas Rome in the 19th century essays

Toscas Rome in the 19th century essays Living in the nineteenth century was not easy, especially for the people living in the city of Rome at the time. The opera by Giacomo Puccini takes place in the city of Rome where at the time was unstable. Giacomo Puccini was a descendant of a family of musicians, he is considered to be the most important Italian opera composer in the generation after Verdi. Tosca is an opera that deals with the love of a singer for the painter Cavaradossi. Cavaradossi gets involved with revolutionary activities and is questioned and tortured by Scarpia, the chief of police. Scarpia is a ruthless man that after seeing Tosca wants her for himself and will do anything to get his way. After sending to have Toscas lover Cavaradossi executed, Scarpia tells Tosca that the only way that she can save him is that if she gives in to him. Tosca is a strong believer that she belongs to the man she loves, she plays his games after she asks him to write a safe passage note for her and her lover. Tosca then murders Scarpia and hurries to tell her lover the good news. Cavaradossi execution was only supposed to be pretended but he is really killed, at the same time the body of Scarpia is found and they go after Tosca. In the final act Tosca leaps to her death when she has nothing to loose, because her dear Cavaradossi is dead. Much of what Puccini includes in the opera is related to the time at which this great work was created. In the opera Puccinis Tosca realism represents the some of the realities of life in the 19th century, romanticism expresses the strong emotions of love and sense of religion that the characters had, neo-classicism expresses political and historical references. Realism represents the realities that the people of Italy were living in at the time when Puccini wrote Tosca. The reality is that that the people that Puccini uses as characters could have been true to a certain point. The setti...

The Joy Luck Club Quotes

'The Joy Luck Club' Quotes Amy Tan is best-known for The Joy Luck Club, a collection of vignettes  meant to show how our lives are shaped by the stories we tell. Set in China and the United States, the stories cross the generational divideas mothers and daughters attempt to come to terms with family history, relationships, and that connections between family and nations that are so hard to forge. Here are a few quotes from The Joy Luck Club. Over the years, she told me the same story, except for the ending, which grew darker, casting long shadows into her life, and eventually into mine.- Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club, Ch. 1Your father is not my first husband. You are not those babies.- Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club, Ch. 1Even though I was young, I could see the pain of the flesh and the worth of the pain.- Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club, Ch. 2I was no longer scared. I could see what was inside me.- Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club, Ch. 3After the gold was removed from my body I felt lighter, more free. They say this is what happens if you lack metal. You begin to think as an independent person.- Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club, Ch. 3For woman is yin, the darkness within, where untempered passions lie. And man is yang, bright truth lighting our minds.- Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club, Ch. 4Why do you have to use me to show off? If you want to show off, then why dont you learn to play chess.- Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club, Ch. 5This house was built to o steep, and a bad wind from the top blows all your strength back down the hill. So you can never get ahead. You are always rolling backward.- Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club, Ch. 6 I discovered that maybe it was fate all along, that faith was just an illusion that somehow youre in control.- Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club, Ch. 7My mother had a look on her face that Ill never forget. It was one of complete despair and horror, for losing Bing, for being so foolish as to think she could use faith to change fate.- Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club, Ch. 7I had new thoughts, willful thoughts, or rather thoughts filled with lots of wonts. I wont let her change me, I promised myself. I wont be what Im not.- Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club, Ch. 8I was determined to put a stop to her foolish pride.- Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club, Ch. 8Only two kind of daughters. Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind! Only one kind of daughter can live in this house. Obedient daughter!- Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club, Ch. 8I began to look at all events and all things as relevant, an opportunity to take or avoid.- Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club, Ch. 9And I remember wondering why it was that eatin g something good could make me feel so terrible, while vomiting something terrible could make me feel so good.- Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club, Ch. 9 Now that Im angry at Harold, its hard to remember what was so remarkable about him.- Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club, Ch. 9You are busy. You want to live like mess what can I say?- Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club, Ch. 10I saw what I had been fighting for: it was for me, a scared child.- Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club, Ch. 10And below the heimongmong, all along the ground, were weeds already spilling out over the edges, running wild in every direction.- Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club, Ch. 11True, cannot teach style. June not sophisticate like you. Must be born this way.- Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club, Ch. 12I felt tired and foolish, as if I had been running to escape someone chasing me, only to look behind and discover there was no one there.- Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club, Ch. 12Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.- Amy Tan, The Joy Luck ClubIn my mothers case, this would be the first day of the lunar new year. And because it i s the new year, all debts must be paid, or disaster and misfortune will follow.- Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club, Ch. 13 I have always known a thing before it happens.- Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club, Ch. 14It is because I had so much joy that I came to have so much hate.- Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club, Ch. 14I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these things do not mix?- Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club, Ch. 15Why are you attracted only to Chinese nonsense?- Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club, Ch. 15Look at this face. Do you see my foolish hope?- Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club, Ch. 16And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood.- Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club, Ch. 16

Is Inclusion a failed ideology Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words

Is Inclusion a failed ideology - Essay Example Teachers must have enough training such that they can teach children with disabilities without any problems. On the other hand, parents must work hand in hand, with teachers to ensure the smooth learning of their children (Gray and MacBlain 2012). However, according to a report released by the House of Commons education and skills committee, the government’s policy of inclusion has been criticised for its confused and unclear definition of special schools. This has forced some children into wrong mainstream schools, something that result into distress for both children and their parents. According to the report, the government should concentrate on not just putting up special schools, but how the whole system should have high quality and well resourced to meet the needs of every student. While the world is advancing and normal people continue to enjoy education and other facilities at their disposal, disabled youth are left behind. Norwich 2008 argues that this is not only soc ially wrong but also ethically inappropriate. Including students with disabilities in our education system where they will get their special needs, in addition to what their able, peers are getting is a big step towards achieving the aim of better education for all (Atkinson and Claxton 2000) With reference to Sage (2004), many people have never been able to differentiate between mainstreaming and integration from inclusion. Mainstreaming tries to bring people with disabilities to regular classrooms so that they can grow with their peers without giving them support. Conversely, integration gives these disabled pupils a part time interaction with their peer, and this denies those students an opportunity of feeling that, they are members of that class. Never the less, inclusion gives equitable education and training opportunities for all young people. This help to prepare all young people to a productive life ahead. Therefore, those who have various disabilities can be able to live th eir lives to the fullest (Wilkinson and Ahmed 2007). Special Education Needs (SEP) are the principles that govern sustainable inclusion, and outline several practices that various shareholders are required to do to ensure that the project succeed. Norwich 2008 argues that, if inclusion is to be successful, early intervention and involvement of children is required. Many parents don’t give their children time to develop among their peers. Schools do not have special facilities to cater for the needs of these children. Later in life when these young people are introduced in the normal classrooms at their secondary or more advanced stage, they cannot co-exist with other children. This limits the effectiveness of inclusion (Byers and Rose 2004). Is Inclusion A Failed Ideology? The idea of having inclusion in the education system was a smart move and although this idea has not been fully realized. For example, a study conducted by Blazzard 2011, evidenced that some teachers displa yed negative attitudes towards pupils with special needs. This, according to Blazzard, affected school’s commitment to commitment. In addition, parental resistance to inclusion, lack of funding, training and resources were also among the identified barriers. However, students with disabilities are likely to have high self-esteem when they attend classes with other student than when

Law Enforcement Information Sharing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 5250 words

Law Enforcement Information Sharing - Essay Example es and technology (National Institute of Justice, 1999).   Organized criminals, taking advantage of these developments, have become more agile than governmental agencies (Brock et. al. 2006). On the other hand, though technology and other infrastructure are available to law enforcement agencies, democratic governments require a consensus among leaders and citizens to establish priorities and allocate funds before significant changes are implemented. (Broude & Teichman, 2009). This constraint slows down government progress and makes law enforcement a complex process. Thus, making policy change and implementation becomes difficult and is not always successful (Broude & Teichman, 2009).  In contrast, criminals act independent of bureaucracy, advancing their own interests (Beare, 1997).  The agility of the criminal enterprises makes it difficult to anticipate criminal activity, making such activity an insurmountable threat (Williams & Godson, 2002).  The reluctance of some commun ities to recognize a developing or already present criminal threat can also contribute to the growth and entrenchment of crime. (Mackenzie, 2007).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Available literature on the topic chronicles twentieth and twenty-first century efforts undertaken by the federal government to combat transnational crime. (Dowling et al. 2006).   However, there is a dearth of literature on the trends in criminality from the perspective of federal law enforcement officers (Small & Taylor, 2006).   Statement of the Problem: Transnational crimes, especially terrorism, have remained a huge threat to nations all over the world from time immemorial. Experts in the fields of law enforcement and counter terrorism believe that proper sharing of information among various intelligence agencies in different countries... From this research it is clear that events of September 11, 2001 demonstrate what can happen when the law enforcement community fails to adequately share and analyze information available to them. Those events are an extreme example, but many other terrorism and transnational crimes threatened society long before 9/11 and continue to do so today. The U.S. Government recognized key information sharing gaps that contributed to the terrorist’s ability to execute their attack and took measures to curtail such gaps in the future. One noticeable paradigm shift was the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, merging 170,000 employees from 22 federal agencies, and move by DHS leadership to develop unique â€Å"one-DHS† culture. The purpose of this case study is to describe what measures federal law enforcement agencies have implemented, and what steps can still be taken, to enhance information sharing with State and local partners and other peer agencies. A review of t he literature on sharing in the law enforcement community includes an exploration of factors related to (a) An awareness of transnational criminal and terrorist threats before and after 9/11, (b) Human factors related to the sharing of information in person and through technological tools, (c) Organizational changes contributing to information sharing, (d) Factors affecting sustainability of information sharing initiatives. While modern transportation and technology enhanced the developmental activities on one hand, it also accelerated the country’s illegal enterprises on the other.

Intellectual Craftsmanship Essay Example for Free

Intellectual Craftsmanship Essay TO THE INDIVIDUAL social scientist who feels himself a part of the classic tradition, social science is the practice of a craft. A man at work on problems of substance, he is among those who are quickly made impatient and weary by elaborate discussions of method-and-theory-in-general; so much of it interrupts his proper studies. It is much better, he believes, to have one account by a working student of how he is going about his work than a dozen , codifications of procedure by specialists who as often as not have never done much work of consequence. Only by conversations in which experienced thinkers exchange information about their actual ways of working can a useful sense of method and theory be imparted to the beginning student. I feel it useful, therefore, to report in some detail how I go about my craft. This is necessarily a personal statement, but it is written with the hope that others, especially those beginning independent work, will make it less personal by the facts of their own experience. 1.  It is best to begin, I think, by reminding you, the beginning student, that the most admirable thinkers within the scholarly community you have chosen to join do not split their work from their lives. They seem to take both too seriously to allow such dissociation, and they want to use each for the enrichment of the other. Of course, such a split is the prevailing convention among men in general, deriving, I suppose, from the hollowness of the work which men in general now do. But you will have recognized that as a scholar you have the exceptional opportunity of designing a way of living which will encourage the habits of good workmanship. Scholarship is a choice of how to live as well as a choice of career; whether he knows it or not, the intellectual workman forms his own self as he works toward the perfection of his craft; to realize his own potentialities, and any opportunities that come his way, he constructs a character which has as its core the qualities of the good workman. What this means is that you must learn to use your life experience in your intellectual work: continually to examine and interpret it. In this sense craftsmanship is the center of yourself and you are personally involved in every intellectual product upon which you may work. To say that you can have experience, means, for one thing, that your past plays into and affects your present, and that it defines your capacity for future, experience. As a social scientist, you have to control this rather elaborate interplay, to capture what you experience and sort it out; only in this way can you hope to use it to guide and test your reflection, and in the process shape yourself as an intellectual craftsman. But how can you do this? One answer is: you must set up a file, which is, I suppose, a sociologists way of saying: keep a journal. Many creative writers keep journals; the sociologists need for systematic reflection demands it. In such a file as I am going to describe, there is joined personal experience and professional activities, studies under way and studies planned. In this file, you, as an intellectual craftsman, will try to get together what you are doing intellectually and what you are experiencing as a person. Here you will not be afraid to use your experience and relate it directly to various work in progress. By serving as a check on repetitious work, your file also enables you to conserve your energy. It also encourages you to capture fringe-thoughts: various ideas which may be by-products of everyday life, snatches of conversation overheard on the street, or, for that matter, dreams. Once noted, these may lead to more systematic thinking, as well as lend intellectual relevance to more directed experience. You will have often noticed how carefully accomplished thinkers treat their own minds, how closely they observe their development and organize their experience. The reason they treasure their smallest experiences is that, in the course of a lifetime, modem man has so very little personal experience and yet experience is so important as a source of original intellectual work. To be able to trust yet to be skeptical of your own experience, I have come to believe, is one mark of the mature workman. This ambiguous confidence is indispensable to originality in any intellectual pursuit, and the file is one way by which you can develop and justify such confidence. By keeping an adequate file and thus developing self-reflective habits, you learn how to keep your inner world awake. Whenever you feel strongly about events or ideas you must try not to let them pass from your mind, but instead to formulate them for your files and in so doing draw out their implications, show yourself either how foolish these feelings or ideas are, or how they might be articulated into productive shape. The file also helps you build up the habit of writing. You cannot keep your hand in if you do not write something at least every week. In developing the file, you can experiment as a writer and thus, as they say, develop your powers of expression. To maintain a file is to engage in the controlled experience. One of the very worst things that happens to social scientists is that they feel the need to write of their plans on only one occasion: when they are going to ask for money for a specific piece of research or a project. It is as a request for funds that most planning is done, or at least carefully written about. However standard the practice, I think this very bad: It is bound in some degree to be salesmanship, and, given prevailing expectations, very likely to result in painstaking pretensions; the project is likely to be Presented, rounded out in some arbitrary manner long before it ought to be; it is often a contrived thing, aimed at getting the money for ulterior purposes, however valuable, as well as for the research presented. A practicing social scientist ought periodically to review the state of my problems and plans. A young man, just at the beginning of his independent work, ought to reflect on this, but he cannot be expected-and shouldnt expect himself-to get very far with it, and certainly he ought not to become rigidly committed to any one plan. About all he can do is line up his thesis, which unfortunately is often his first supposedly independent piece of work of any length. It is when you are about half-way through the time you have for work, or about one-third through, that such reviewing is most likely to be fruitful -and perhaps even of interest to others. Any working social scientist who is well on his way ought at all times to have so many plans, which is to say ideas, that the question is always, which of them am I, ought I, to work on next? And he should keep a special little file for his master agenda, which he writes and rewrites just for himself and perhaps for discussion with friends. From time to time he ought to review this very carefully and purposefully, and sometimes too, when he is relaxed. Some such procedure is one of the indispensable means by which your intellectual enterprise is kept oriented and under control. A widespread, informal interchange of such reviews of the state of my problems among working social scientists is, I suggest, the only basis for an adequate statement of the leading problems of social science. It is unlikely that in any free intellectual community there would be and certainly there ought not to be any monolithic array of problems. In such a community, were it flourishing in a vigorous way, there would be interludes of discussion among individuals about future work. Three kinds of interludes-on problems, methods, theory-ought to come out of the work of social scientists, and lead into it again; they should be shaped by work-in-progress and to some extent guide that work. It is for such interludes that a professional association finds its intellectual reason for being. And for them too your own file is needed. Under various topics in your file there are ideas, personal notes, excerpts from books, bibliographical items and outlines of projects. It is, I suppose, a matter of arbitrary habit, but I think you will find it well to sort all these items into a master file of projects, with many subdivisions. The topics, of course, change, sometimes quite frequently. For instance, as a student working toward the preliminary examination, writing a thesis, and, at the same time, doing term papers, your files will be arranged in those three areas of endeavor. But after a year or so of graduate work, you will begin to re-organize the whole file in relation to the main project of your thesis. Then as you pursue your work you will notice that no one project ever dominates it, or sets the master categories in which it is arranged. In fact, the use of the file encourages expansion of the categories which you use in your thinking. And the way in which these categories change, some being dropped and others being added-is an index of your intellectual progress and breadth. Eventually, the files will come to be arranged according to several large projects, having many sub-projects that change from year to year. All this involves the taking of notes. You will have to acquire the habit of taking a large volume of notes from any worth-while book you read-although, I have to say, you may get better work out of yourself when you read really bad books. The first step in translating experience, either of other mens writing, or of your own life, into the intellectual sphere, is to give it form. Merely to name an item of experience often invites you to explain it; the mere taking of a note from a book is often a prod to reflection. At the same time, of course, the taking of a note is a great aid in comprehending what you are reading. Your notes may turn out, as mine do, to be of two sorts: in reading certain very important books you try to grasp the structure of the writers argument, and take notes accordingly; but more frequently, and after a few years of independent work, rather than read entire books, you will very often read parts of many books from the point of view of some particular theme or topic in which you are interested and concerning which you have plans in your file. Therefore, you will take notes which do not fairly represent the books you read. You are using this particular idea, this particular fact, for the realization of your own projects. 2 But how is this file-which so far must seem to you more like a curious sort of literary journal-used in intellectual production? The maintenance of such a file is intellectual production. It is a continually growing store of facts and ideas, from the most vague to the most finished. For example, the first thing I did upon deciding on a study of the elite was to make a crude outline based on a listing of the types of people that I wished to understand. Just how and why I decided to do such a study may suggest one way in which ones life experiences feed ones intellectual work. I forget just when I became technically concerned with stratification, but I think it must have been on first reading Veblen. He had always seemed to me very loose, even vague, about his business and industrial employments, which are a kind of translation of Marx for the academic American public. At any rate, I wrote a book on labor organizations and labor leaders-a politically motivated task; then a book on the middle classes-a task primarily motivated by the desire to articulate my own experience in New York City since 1945. It was thereupon suggested by friends that I ought to round out a trilogy by writing a book on the upper classes. I think the possibility had been in my mind; I had read Balzac off and on especially during the forties, and had been much taken with his self-appointed task of covering, all the major classes and types in the society of the era he wished to make his own. I had also written a paper on The Business Elite, and had collected and arranged statistics about the careers of the topmost men in American politics since the Constitution. These two tasks were primarily inspired by seminar work in American history. In doing these several articles and books and in preparing courses in stratification, there was of course a residue of ideas and facts about the upper classes. Especially in the study of social stratification is it difficult to avoid going beyond ones immediate subject, because the reality of any one stratum is in large part its relations to the rest. Accordingly, I began to think of a book on the elite. And yet that is not really how the project arose; what really happened is (1) that the idea and the plan came out of my files, for all projects with me begin and end with them, and books are simply organized releases from the continuous work that goes into them; (2) that after a while, the whole set of problems involved came to dominate me. After making my crude outline I examined my entire file, not only those parts of it that obviously bore on my topic, but also those which seemed to have no relevance whatsoever. Imagination is often successfully invited by putting together hitherto isolated items, by finding unsuspected connections. I made new units in the file for this particular range of problems, which of course, led to new arrangements of other parts of the file. As you re-arrange a filing system, you often find that you are, as it were, loosening your imagination. Apparently this occurs by means of your attempt to combine various ideas and notes on different topics. It is a sort of logic of combination, and chance sometimes plays a curiously large part in it. In a relaxed way, you try to engage your intellectual resources, as exemplified in the file, with the new themes. In the present case, I also began to use my observations and daily experiences. I thought first of experiences I had had which bore upon elite problems, and then I went and talked with those who, I thought, might have experienced or considered the issues. As a matter of fact, I now began to alter the character of my routine so as to include in it (1) people who were among, those whom I wanted to study, (2) people in close contact with them, and (3) people interested in them usually in some professional way. I do not know the full social conditions of the best intellectual workmanship, but certainly surrounding oneself by a circle of people who will listen and talk-and at times they have to be imaginary characters-is one of them. At any rate I try to surround myself with all the relevant environment-social and intellectual-that I think might lead me into thinking well along the lines of my work. That is one meaning of my remarks above about the fusion of personal and intellectual life. Good work in social science today is not, and usually cannot be, made up of one clear-cut empirical research. It is, rather, composed of a good many studies which at key points anchor general statements about the shape and the trend of the subject. So the decision-what are these anchor points? -cannot be made until existing materials are re-worked and general hypothetical statements constructed. Now, among existing materials, I found in the files three types relevant to my study of the elite: several theories having to do with the topic; materials already worked up by others as evidence for those theories; and materials already gathered and in various stages of accessible centralization, but not yet made theoretically relevant. Only after completing a first draft of a theory with the aid of such existing materials as these can I efficiently locate my own pivotal assertions and hunches and design researches to test them-and maybe I will not have to, although of course I know I will later have to shuttle back and forth between existing materials and my own research. Any final statement must not only cover the data so far as the data are available and known to me, but must also in some way, positively or negatively, take into, account the available theories. Sometimes this taking into account of an idea is easily done by a simple confrontation of the idea with overturning or supporting fact; sometimes a detailed analysis or qualification is needed. Sometimes I can arrange the available theories systematically as a range of choices, and so allow their range to organize the problem itself. (1) But sometimes I allow such theories to come up only in my own arrangement, in quite various contexts. At any rate, in the book on the elite I had to take into account the work of such men as Mosca, Schumpeter, Veblen, Marx, Lasswell, Michel, Weber, and Pareto. In looking over some of the notes on these writers, I find that they offer three types of statement: (a) from some, you learn directly by restating systematically what the man says on given points or as a whole; (b) some you accept or refute, giving reasons and arguments; (c) others you use as a source of suggestions for your own elaborations and projects. This involves grasping a point and then asking: How can I put this into testable shape, and how can I test it? How can I use this as a center from which to elaborate-as a perspective from which descriptive details emerge as relevant? It is in this handling of existing ideas, of course, that you feel yourself in continuity with previous work. Here are two excerpts from preliminary notes on Mosca, which may illustrate what I have been trying to describe: In addition to his historical anecdotes, Mosca backs up his thesis with this assertion: Its the power of organization that enables the minority always to rule. There are organized minorities and they run things and men. There are unorganized majorities and they are run. (2) But: why not also consider (1) the organized minority, (2) the organized majority, (3) the unorganized minority, (4) the unorganized majority. This is worth full-scale exploration. The first thing that has to be straightened out: just what is the meaning of organized? I think Mosca means: capable of more or less continuous and co-ordinated policies and actions. If so, his thesis is right by definition. He would also say, I believe, that an organized majority is impossible because all it would amount to is that new leaders, new elites, would be on top of these majority organizations, and he is quite ready to pick up these leaders in his The Ruling Class. He calls them directing minorities, all of which is pretty flimsy stuff alongside his big statement. One thing that occurs to me (1 think it is the core of the problems of definition that Mosca presents to us) is this: from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, we have witnessed a shift from a society organized as 1 and 4 to a society established more in terms of 3 and 2. We have moved from an elite state to an organization state, in which the elite is no longer so organized nor so unilaterally powerful, and the mass is more organized and more powerful. Some power has been made in the streets, and around it the whole social structures and their elites have pivoted. And what section of the ruling class is more organized than the farm bloc? Thats not a rhetorical question: I can answer it either way at this time; its a matter of degree. All I want now is to get it out in the open. Mosca makes one point that seems to me excellent and worth elaborating further: There is often in the ruling class, according to him, a top clique and there is this second and larger stratum, with which (a) the top is in continuous and immediate contact, and with which (b) it shares ideas and sentiments and hence, he believes, policies. (page 430) Cheek and see if anywhere else in the book, he makes other points of connection. Is the clique recruited largely from the second level? Is the top, in some way, responsible for, or at least sensitive to, this second stratum? Now forget Mosca: in another vocabulary, we have, (a) the elite, by which we here mean that top clique, (b) those who count, and (c) all the others. Membership in the second and third, in this scheme, is defined by the first, and the second may be quite varied in its size and composition and relations with the first and the third. (What, by the way, is the range of variations of the relations of (b) to (a) and to (c)? Examine Mosca for hints and further extend this by considering it systematically. ) This scheme may enable me more neatly to take into account the different elites, which are elites according to the several dimensions of stratification. Also, of course, to pick up in a neat and meaningful way the Paretian distinction of governing and non-governing elites in a way less formal than Pareto. Certainly many top-status people would at least be in the second. So would the big rich. The Clique or The Elite would refer to power, or to authority, as the case may be. The elite in this vocabulary would always mean the power elite. The other top people would be the upper classes or the upper circles. So in a way, maybe, we can use this in connection with two major problems: the structure of the elite; and the conceptual-later perhaps, the substantive-relations of stratification and elite theories. (Work this out. ) From the standpoint of power, it is easier to pick out those who count than those who rule. When we try to do the first we select the top levels as a sort of loose aggregate and we are guided by position. But when we attempt the second, we must indicate in clear detail how they wield power and just how they are related to the social instrumentalities through which power is exercised. Also we deal more with persons than positions, or at least have to take persons into account. Now power in the United States involves more than one elite. How can we judge the relative positions of these several elites? Depends upon the issue and decisions being made. One elite sees another as among those who count. There is this mutual recognition among the elite, that other elites count; in one way or another they are important people to one another. Project: select 3 or 4 key decisions of last decade-to drop the atom, to cut or raise steel production, the C. M. strike of 45-and trace in detail the personnel involved in each of them. Might use decisions and decision-making as interview pegs when you go out for intensives. 3 There comes a time in the course of your work when you are through with other books. Whatever you want from them is down in your notes and abstracts; and on the margins of these notes, as well as in a separate file, are ideas for empirical studies. Now I do not like to do empirical work if I can possibly avoid it. If one has no staff it is a great deal of trouble; if one does employ a staff, then the staff is often even more trouble. In the intellectual condition of the social sciences today, there is so much to do by way of initial structuring (let the word stand for the kind of work I am describing) that much empirical research is bound to be thin and uninteresting. Much of it, in fact, is a formal exercise for beginning students, and sometimes a useful pursuit for those who are not able to handle the more difficult substantive problems of social science. There is no more virtue in empirical inquiry as such than in reading as such. The purpose of empirical inquiry is to settle disagreements and doubts about facts, and thus to make arguments more fruitful by basing all sides more substantively. Facts discipline reason; but reason is the advance guard in any field of learning. Although you will never be able to get the money with which to do many of the empirical studies you design, it is necessary that you continue designing them. For once you lay out an empirical study, even if you do not follow it through, it leads you to a new search for data, which often turn out to have unsuspected relevance to your problems. Just as it is foolish to design a field study if the answer can be found in a library, it is foolish to think you have exhausted the books before you have translated them into appropriate empirical studies, which merely means into questions of fact. Empirical projects necessary to my kind of work must promise, first, to have relevance for the first draft, of which I wrote above; they have to confirm it in its original form or they have to cause its modification. Or to put it more pretentiously, they must have implications for theoretical constructions. Second, the projects must be efficient and neat and, if possible, ingenious. By this I mean that they must promise to yield a great deal of material in proportion to the time and effort they involve. But how is this to be done? The most economical way to state a problem is in such a way as to solve as much of it as possible by reasoning alone. By reasoning we try (a) to isolate each question of fact that remains; (b) to ask these questions of fact in such ways that the answers promise to help us solve further problems by further reasoning. (3) To take hold of problems in this way, you have to pay attention to four stages; but it is usually best to go through all four many times rather than to get stuck in any one of them too long. The steps are: (1) the elements and definitions that, from your general awareness of the topic, issue, or area of concern, you think you are going to have to take into account; (2) the logical relations between these definitions and elements; building these little preliminary models, by the way, affords the best chance for the play of the sociological imagination; (3) the elimination of false views due to omissions of needed elements, improper or unclear definitions of terms, or undue emphasis on some part of the range and its logical extensions; (4) statement and re-statement of the questions of fact that remain. The third step, by the way, is a very necessary but often neglected part of any adequate statement of a problem. The popular awareness of the problem-the problem as an issue and as a trouble-must be carefully taken into account: that is part of the problem. Scholarly statements, of course, must be carefully examined and either used up in the re-statement being made, or thrown out. Before deciding upon the empirical studies necessary for the job at hand, I began to sketch a larger design within which various small-scale studies began to arise. Again, I excerpt from the files: I am not yet in a position to study the upper circles as a whole in a systematic and empirical way. So what I do is set forth some definitions and procedures that form a sort of ideal design for such a study. I can then attempt, first, to gather existing materials that approximate this design; second, to think of convenient ways of gathering materials, given the existing indices, that satisfy it at crucial points; and third, as I proceed, to make more specific the full-scale, empirical researches that would in the end be necessary. The upper circles must, of course, be defined systematically in terms of specific variables. Formally-and this is more or less Paretos way they are the people who have the most of whatever is available of any given value or set of values. So I have to make two decisions: What variables shall I take as the criteria, and what do I mean by the most? After Ive decided on my variables, I must construct the best indices I can, if possible quantifiable indices, in order to distribute the population in terms of them; only then can I begin to decide what I mean by the most. For this should, in part, be left for determination by empirical inspection of the various distributions, and their overlaps. My key variables should, at first, be general enough to give me some latitude in the choice of indices, yet specific enough to invite the search for empirical indices. As I go along, Ill have to shuttle between conceptions and indices, guided by the desire not to lose intended meanings and yet to be quite specific about them. Here are the four Weberian variables with which I will begin: I. Class refers to sources and amounts of income. So Ill need property distributions and income distributions. The ideal material here (which is very scarce, and unfortunately dated) is a cross-tabulation of source and amount of annual income. Thus, we know that X per cent of the population received during 1936 Y millions or over, and that Z per cent of all this money was from property, W per cent from entrepreneurial withdrawal, Q per cent from wages and salaries. Along this class dimension, I can define the upper circles-those who have the most-either as those who receive given amounts of income during a given time-or, as those who make up the upper two per cent of the income pyramid. Look into treasury records and lists of big taxpayers. See if TNEC tables on source and amount of income can be brought up to date. II. Status refers to the amounts of deference received. For this, there are no simple or quantifiable indices. Existing indices require personal interviews for their application, are limited so far to local community studies, and are mostly no good anyway. There is the further problem that, unlike class, status involves social relations: at least one to receive and one to bestow the deference. It is easy to confuse publicity with deference-or rather, we do not yet know whether or not volume of publicity should be used as an index to status position, although it is the most easily available (For example: On one or two successive days in mid-March 1952, the following categories of people were mentioned by name in the New York Times-or on selected pages-work this out) III. Power refers to the realization of ones will even if others resist. Like status, this has not been well indexed. I dont think I can keep it a single dimension, but will have to talk (a) of formal authority defined by rights and powers of positions in various institutions, especially military, political, and economic. And (b) powers known informally to be exercised but not formally instituted-pressure group leaders, propagandists with extensive media at their disposal, and so on. IV. Occupation refers to activities that are paid for. Here, again, I must choose just which feature of occupation I should seize upon. (a) If I use the average incomes of various occupations, to rank them, I am of course using occupation as an index, and as the basis of, class. In like manner (b) if I use the status or the power typically attached to different occupations, then I am using occupations as indices, and bases, of power and skill or talent. But this is by no means an easy way to classify people. Skill-no more than status-is not a homogeneous something of which there is more or less. Attempts to treat it as such have usually been put in terms of the length of time required to acquire various skills, and maybe that will have to do, although I hope I can think of something better. Those are the types of problems I will have to solve in order to define analytically and empirically the upper circles, in terms of these four key variables. For purposes of design, assume I have solved them to my satisfaction, and that I have distributed the population in terms of each of them. I would then have four sets of people: those at the top in class, status, power, and skill. Suppose further, that I had singled out the top two per cent of each distribution, as an upper circle. I then confront this empirically answerable question: How much, if any, overlap is there among each of these four distributions? One range of possibilities can be located within this simple chart: (+ = top two per cent; = lower 98 per cent). CLASS ___________________________________________ + __ STATUS STATUS ____________________________________________________________ _____________ + __ + __ + Skill + 1 2 3 4 Power __ 5 6 8 8 Skill + 9 10 11 12 __ 13 14 15 16 __________________ _______________________________________________________ This diagram, if I had the materials to fill it, would contain major data and many important problems for a study of the upper circles. It would provide keys to many definitional and substantive questions. I dont have the data, and I shant be able to get it-which makes it all the more important that I speculate about it, for in the course of such reflection, if it is guided by the desire to approximate the empirical requirements.

The Cycle of Technology Integration Essay -- Education Teaching

The Cycle of Technology Integration The cycle of technology integration begins with planning, investigation, and experimentation. Schools go through an initial stage of planning and experimentation in which a few educators begin using technology in new ways. Then, these individuals become technology proponents. The next step in the cycle of technology integration is initial capital investments. This allows the department to determine the value of technology necessary in the schools. The ideal situation would be to have a computer in every classroom and have all of the teachers and students know and understand how to use it and receive a better education due to the technological advancements in the classrooms. After all of the costs are determined, readjustments are made. Technology Integration is a learned process requiring schools to continually re-figure their investments and methods of teaching with technology in schools. It allows the school to know how much money they have and what they will need. After t he readjusting process, new work and organizational models are created. Technology integration allows for students to greatly benefit. It allows for collaborative learning to take place with students peers and improves ones performance academically. In the United States today, most schools are currently in the first two stages of the process of technology integration (CEO 2000). Technology Innovations Technology Integration can truly only occur once the technology has been created. Film, radio, and the television were a few of the first ever created technologies in the world. In 1920, the first radio was created. This was just the beginning of the technological boom in America, which is quickly growi... ... Monitoring School Quality: An Indicators Report. Washington D.C: GPO, 2000. -A magazine article giving statistics and discussing how the learning ability of students is different from integrating the classroom. Hopkins, Gary. Education World. Principals Talk Tech: How is Technology Integration going? Retrieved November 5, 2002. http://www.educationworld.com/a_admin/admin268.shtml -An article talking about technology integration in the classroom from the principal’s point of view. It also discusses the current status of a few local schools. â€Å"Technology Integration in Education.† Edgewater Technology Teams With ASA to . Retrieved Novemeber 24, 2002 from Academic Search/Lexisnexis database. -The article talks about how a partnership allows for the Education Department of Missouri to have both better technology and cuts the cost down.

Research on Cost Control and Management of Real Estate Project Essay

This paper takes the cost control and the management of real estate project as the object in research, and analyzes and studies relevant issues. By analyzing the cost structure of real estate construction, this paper identifies problems in cost control and management of real estate construction at present. Along with the fast development of China’s economy, the real estate industry has achieved wonderful successes, pulling economic development significantly, and contributing a lot to China’s economic development. Today, real estate construction assumes more tasks. In 2008, 3,000 billion RMB enters real estate construction. The cost control and regular management of real estate construction turns into the focus. Once the construction cost is out of control, it will lead to a great waste and will bring about more pressures for property management in later. A nice cost control is meaningful for the whole real estate construction project. To realize better cost control and management of real estate construction is important for today’s harmonious society. The cost of real estate construction is composed of four parts. The first part is the land cost, accounting for 30% of the total cost. It mainly refers to cost for building land, greening land, equipped facility land, and property management land. The second part is the construction installation cost, as the main body of real estate construction cost, accounting for 20%-50% of the total cost. Among the construction installation cost, materials cost the most, accounting for 60% of construction installation cost. The third part is the cost for equipments and machines, accounting for 1%-3% of the total cost. This part is mainly for meeting the needs of operations, management, and maintenance. The fourth part is other cost, accounting for more than 15% of the total cost. It is difficult to control this part. It mainly includes the cost for investigation and design, the cost for project supervision, and the cost for infrastructure. In special, the management cost usually surpasses the budget, which is the largest part that is hard to control in real estate construction. The management cost is only accounting for 1% of the total cost. But the absolute amount is large. It is easy for the construction company costing more in management. At present, serious problems exist in the cost control and management of real estate construction. For example, for some real estate construction, the design is earlier than the study of feasibility, which makes the later turn into useless. In bidding, some construction companies perform illegally, which makes the bidding fail to control project cost well. The popularization of assigned subcontracts and various subcontracts serve as potential threats for project quality. The delay for project payment, especially for workers’ wages, is serious. Some projects can not manage the changes of designs. Construction companies fail to follow the designs completely, which may lead to larger costs for construction. Some construction companies emphasize on the control of quality and period but fail to control the cost. All these activities make the cost of real estate construction out of control in China, which is harmful for the sustainable and healthy development of real estate industry . * Fail to Estimate the Project Exactly: Investment estimation is performed at the very beginning, namely in the study of feasibility. Present compilation of study of feasibility is lack of details. No effective items to control the number of project. The estimation has a lower preciseness. Besides, the study of feasibility has no necessary investigation. Some potential geological disasters can not be identified effectively, which leads to the rise of costs. Although some companies make â€Å"details for implement†, the effect is poor. In order to establish the project, some companies may reduce the number of project and decrease costs. * The Compilation of Project Budget Has Poor Reliability: At the stage of design, the investigation is far from sufficient. Some fundamental materials for design are inexact. As a result, the design may be irrational and will be changed significantly in construction, which causes the poor reliability of budget. * Working Drawing Budget is Unpractical: At the working drawing design stage, compile the project budget according to the design. The working drawing budget is to calculate the cost of design. The rationality of working drawing budget is about how to organize the construction and how to reach the design requirements by what kinds of methods, plus how to arrange the construction period, and how to manage workers and machines under different seasons, according to scientific designs. All these tasks are supposed to be arranged by construction companies. For design companies, to compile the budget is unpractical. * Do not Follow Basic Construction Procedures and Cannot Control Costs: For some projects, time is urgent. Therefore, the design is maybe imperfect. And the construction does not follow the basic procedures strictly. Sometimes, the study of feasibility turns into useless papers. As a result, the estimation and the budget cannot control the project cost effectively. * Contract is not Managed Well, Especially for Subcontracts and External Workers: Some real estate developers neglect to manage contracts. They do not follow the terms written in contracts strictly. Besides, some developers cannot calculate the cost of project quantities correctly. They are incapable of managing external workers effectively. * Irregular Management and Many Changes for Project: Real estate developers cannot design properly and have to change the management methods. Or, the execution is weak. They can change the design as will. Then, the scale of project is increasing and the cost is rising. * The Financing Structure is Unreasonable and Depends on One Financing Channel too Much, Which Contributes to the Rise Of Costs: At present, the funds for real estate construction in China are mainly from domestic loans, foreign funds, self-collected by construction companies, and other sources. Although financing ways are few and some are immature, limits are more. Sometimes, funds can not arrive in time. In order to insure the process of project, the construction companies have to apply loans from banks. Therefore, a large proportion of construction funds are from banks as loans. And the credit period is long and cannot match with investment return. The characteristics of real estate industry determine the lagged-behind investment return. One financing channel increases risks and costs, which leads to the accumulation of loan balance in banks, increasing construction costs and pressures for later in operation. * Cost Management is Unscientific. Lack the Idea of Cost Control. System is Imperfect. Management Cost Is High: By auditing lots of projects, we find that management is one of factors that cause overspending. Main items that cause overspending include management fees, compensation fees for removing, and supervision. Main reasons include: Lack a perfect cost control system and cannot manage and control the cost systematically, which makes it hard to identify the out-of-control of cost in time. Lack the idea of cost control and the constraint mechanism. Project managers are always focusing on quality and construction period, but not cost control. The absence of system makes the expenditure more irregular. No integrated standards for management fee are effective. Workers are more than necessary in construction companies.

Deception Point Page 84

â€Å"Jesus,† the pilot said. â€Å"Eighteen-knot current? Don't fall overboard!† He laughed. Rachel did not laugh. â€Å"Mike, you didn't mention this megaplume, magma dome, hot-current situation.† He put a reassuring hand on her knee. â€Å"It's perfectly safe, trust me.† Rachel frowned. â€Å"So this documentary you were making out here was about this magma dome phenomenon?† â€Å"Megaplumes and Sphyrna mokarran.† â€Å"That's right. You mentioned that earlier.† Tolland gave a coy smile. â€Å"Sphyrna mokarran love warm water, and right now, every last one for a hundred miles is congregating in this mile-wide circle of heated ocean.† â€Å"Neat.† Rachel gave an uneasy nod. â€Å"And what, pray tell, are Sphyrna mokarran?† â€Å"Ugliest fish in the sea.† â€Å"Flounder?† Tolland laughed. â€Å"Great hammerhead shark.† Rachel stiffened beside him. â€Å"You've got hammerhead sharks around your boat?† Tolland winked. â€Å"Relax, they're not dangerous.† â€Å"You wouldn't say that unless they were dangerous.† Tolland chuckled. â€Å"I guess you're right.† He called playfully up to the pilot. â€Å"Hey, how long has it been since you guys saved anyone from an attack by a hammerhead?† The pilot shrugged. â€Å"Gosh. We haven't saved anyone from a hammerhead in decades.† Tolland turned to Rachel. â€Å"See. Decades. No worries.† â€Å"Just last month,† the pilot added, â€Å"we had an attack where some idiot skin diver was chumming-â€Å" â€Å"Hold on!† Rachel said. â€Å"You said you hadn't saved anyone in decades!† â€Å"Yeah,† the pilot replied. â€Å"Saved anyone. Usually, we're too late. Those bastards kill in a hurry.† 101 From the air, the flickering outline of the Goya loomed on the horizon. At half a mile, Tolland could make out the brilliant deck lights that his crewmember Xavia had wisely left glowing. When he saw the lights, he felt like a weary traveler pulling into his driveway. â€Å"I thought you said only one person was onboard,† Rachel said, looking surprised to see all the lights. â€Å"Don't you leave a light on when you're home alone?† â€Å"One light. Not the entire house.† Tolland smiled. Despite Rachel's attempts to be lighthearted, he could tell she was extremely apprehensive about being out here. He wanted to put an arm around her and reassure her, but he knew there was nothing he could say. â€Å"The lights are on for security. Makes the ship look active.† Corky chuckled. â€Å"Afraid of pirates, Mike?† â€Å"Nope. Biggest danger out here is the idiots who don't know how to read radar. Best defense against getting rammed is to make sure everyone can see you.† Corky squinted down at the glowing vessel. â€Å"See you? It looks like a Carnival Cruise line on New Year's Eve. Obviously, NBC pays your electric.† The Coast Guard chopper slowed and banked around the huge illuminated ship, and the pilot began maneuvering toward the helipad on the stern deck. Even from the air, Tolland could make out the raging current pulling at the ship's hull struts. Anchored from its bow, the Goya was aimed into the current, straining at its massive anchor line like a chained beast. â€Å"She really is a beauty,† the pilot said, laughing. Tolland knew the comment was sarcastic. The Goya was ugly. â€Å"Butt-ugly† according to one television reviewer. One of only seventeen SWATH ships ever built, the Goya's Small-Waterplane-Area Twin-Hull was anything but attractive. The vessel was essentially a massive horizontal platform floating thirty feet above the ocean on four huge struts affixed to pontoons. From a distance, the ship looked like a low-slung drilling platform. Up close, it resembled a deck barge on stilts. The crew quarters, research labs, and navigation bridge were housed in a series of tiered structures on top, giving one the rough impression of a giant floating coffee table supporting a hodgepodge of multistaged buildings. Despite its less than streamlined appearance, the Goya's design enjoyed significantly less water-plane area, resulting in increased stability. The suspended platform enabled better filming, easier lab work, and fewer seasick scientists. Although NBC was pressuring Tolland to let them buy him something newer, Tolland had refused. Granted, there were better ships out there now, even more stable ones, but the Goya had been his home for almost a decade now-the ship on which he had fought his way back after Celia's death. Some nights he still heard her voice in the wind out on deck. If and when the ghosts ever disappeared, Tolland would consider another ship. Not yet. When the chopper finally set down on the Goya's stern deck, Rachel Sexton felt only half-relieved. The good news was that she was no longer flying over the ocean. The bad news was that she was now standing on it. She fought off the shaky sensation in her legs as she climbed onto the deck and looked around. The deck was surprisingly cramped, particularly with the helicopter on its pad. Moving her eyes toward the bow, Rachel gazed at the ungainly, stacked edifice that made up the bulk of the ship. Tolland stood close beside her. â€Å"I know,† he said, talking loudly over the sound of the raging current. â€Å"It looks bigger on television.† Rachel nodded. â€Å"And more stable.† â€Å"This is one of the safest ships on the sea. I promise.† Tolland put a hand on her shoulder and guided her across the deck. The warmth of his hand did more to calm Rachel's nerves than anything he could have said. Nonetheless, as she looked toward the rear of the ship, she saw the roiling current streaming out behind them as though the ship was at full throttle. We're sitting on a megaplume, she thought. Centered on the foremost section of rear deck, Rachel spied a familiar, one-man Triton submersible hanging on a giant winch. The Triton-named for the Greek god of the sea-looked nothing like its predecessor, the steel-encased Alvin. The Triton had a hemispherical acrylic dome in front, making it look more like a giant fishbowl than a sub. Rachel could think of few things more terrifying than submerging hundreds of feet into the ocean with nothing between her face and the ocean but a sheet of clear acrylic. Of course, according to Tolland, the only unpleasant part of riding in the Triton was the initial deployment-being slowly winched down through the trap door in the Goya's deck, hanging like a pendulum thirty feet above the sea. â€Å"Xavia is probably in the hydrolab,† Tolland said, moving across the deck. â€Å"This way.† Rachel and Corky followed Tolland across the stern deck. The Coast Guard pilot remained in his chopper with strict instructions not to use the radio. â€Å"Have a look at this,† Tolland said, pausing at the stern railing of the ship. Hesitantly, Rachel neared the railing. They were very high up. The water was a good thirty feet below them, and yet Rachel could still feel the heat rising off the water. â€Å"It's about the temperature of a warm bath,† Tolland said over the sound of the current. He reached toward a switch-box on the railing. â€Å"Watch this.† He flipped a switch. A wide arc of light spread through the water behind the ship, illuminating it from within like a lit swimming pool. Rachel and Corky gasped in unison. The water around the ship was filled with dozens of ghostly shadows. Hovering only feet below the illuminated surface, armies of sleek, dark forms swam in parallel against the current, their unmistakable hammer-shaped skulls wagging back and forth as if to the beat of some prehistoric rhythm. â€Å"Christ, Mike,† Corky stammered. â€Å"So glad you shared this with us.†

Writing an Essay in English 101 The Guide for Beginners

Writing an Essay in English 101 The Guide for Beginners English 101 course is a specific discipline which every foreign student should take to familiarize with the culture of the university and generally the student’s life. Nonetheless, the course often changes its direction, meaning that each student can take English 101 as an additional opportunity to improve their skills in writing and critical thinking. Commonly, a professor presents challenging literature to allow the students to work on the controversial issues and ideas. The main activity which the subject focuses on is extensive writing that allows the students to practice their critical thinking. As a result, the students become able to use their developed writing skills in other university disciplines which also require the performance of writing. The Main Types of Essays in English 101 and Their Components One of the writing activities in English 101 is an essay. The latter is probably the main type of writing activities as it is usually short, yet requires concise and well-explained statements, and also well-structured. There are various types of essays which the discipline encompasses, however, all of them are similar in their structure and the core elements. Additionally, the most common essays in the English 101 discipline are persuasive and argumentative ones as these types of essays require significant argumentation and the presentation of strong analytical skills. Usually, the argumentation is based on the course readings, which, in turn, make the significant part of the writer’s List of Literature. While writing an essay in English 101, one should remember that this writing activity demands the presentation of facts which support the writer’s claim but also serve as valid evidence for the thesis. Another necessary component of the English 101 essay is the construction of the argument which usually means placing the facts in a specific sequence that allows the reader to trace the thread of the writer’s thoughts. The facts should also be set in a proper order which resembles their importance. Meanwhile, the writer is supposed to present the sources which prove the reliability of the facts. Choosing a Topic for the Essay and Other Pre-Writing Tips While thinking about a topic for writing an essay in English 101 course, one should choose a topic which may offer many arguments as well as counterarguments at first. Secondly, a student should familiarize with the topic well in order to be able to make strong argumentation. Thirdly, it is advisable to choose a topic which one would consider meaningful and interesting to explore. For instance, if a student is more interested in learning the sociological issue, then he or she should not try to defend a notion in the field of politics. The last advice is to choose a topic in which a student is confident. The following list of topics contains some examples of ideas which may be interesting and challenging to explore: Community service: an obligation of free choice? School uniform and the student’s identity. The legalization of marijuana. The pros and cons of using the tablets instead of textbooks in the university surroundings. Immigration laws: what should be changed for better conditions in a democratic country? Prostitution: should it be legalized? One can continue the list of the topics as there are many controversial ideas for argumentation. However, while choosing a topic, a student should remember that he or she should take a one-sided view of a problem, be ready to defend it and later think about the possible counter arguments to refute. For instance, the title of the essay which defends a notion of the school uniform that destroys the student’s identity should sound like the following â€Å"Modern School Uniform and How It Destroys the Student’s Identity.† From the title, the reader already knows the writer’s point of view, yet is prepared for the ideas which he or she will learn from the paper. On the contrary, such a vague title as â€Å"School Uniform and Modernity† only distracts the reader from the writer’s point. The Structure of the English 101 Essay: Introduction and the Thesis Statement An essay in English 101 usually shares the same structure with other types of essays. The structure includes five parts with different purposes. At the same time, the number of the parts may vary depending on the extent of knowledge which the task requires. The main element of any task is a thesis statement or in other words, the claim which the writer is going to defend. Anyway, the thesis may be a combination of some claims as it is shown in the Pic 1. The main characteristic of the thesis statement is that it is placed in the Introduction or the Introductory paragraph. The main idea is that a student must be sure of their ability to defend such number of statements. An appropriate thesis statement is concise and valid. For instance, the thesis statement for the topic â€Å"Modern School Uniform and How It Destroys the Student’s Identity† may sound as following: â€Å"In the modern school life, clothing, especially for teenagers, has turned into a way of self-expression due to which students can construct their own identities and lifestyles.† The thesis statement will sound wrong if it does not explain the writer’s point of view, â€Å"The schools should reject the idea of school uniforms.† In the second case, the reader cannot familiarize with the essence of the writer’s statement or in other words, the facts which support it. The Essay Structure: Sections with Arguments As it has been already mentioned, the first part includes the thesis statement, while other parts aim to defend it. With that in mind, the following sections of the essay contain the well-developed evidence for the claims and the counterarguments. The supporting facts for the claim â€Å"clothing styles have turned into a form of teenagers’ self-expression† may be the following: â€Å"Clothing styles serve as a form of self-expression for teenagers due to the way they resemble the individualistic spirit of a teenager†; â€Å"The clothes are also considered a language in the teenagers’ groups as being dressed in a specific way implies being a part of a certain group†; â€Å"Being a social instrument, the clothing styles allow the teenagers to initiate relationship with others†; â€Å"The informal clothing style creates friendly surroundings and contributes to the socialization among the students,† etc. After having proved the claims which correspond to ones in the thesis statement, one should think about the counterarguments which may appear in the reader’s mind, yet be ready to refute them. Meanwhile, the sections which present the claims for the thesis statement and the evidence for the counterarguments construct the Body of the paper. For the topic â€Å"Modern School Uniform and How It Destroys the Student’s Identity,† the possible counterarguments may be as following: â€Å"School uniform reduces the peer pressure regarding the clothes in the school surroundings,† â€Å"School uniform creates a different identity of one being a student,† and â€Å"School uniform does not distract one from his or her responsibilities.† The Essay Structure: Sections with Counter Arguments Though the statements above are hard to refute, the writer should think about the disadvantages which the statements present. For instance, school uniform does not prevent the peer pressure as the latter always exists in the school surroundings. Moreover, not all students can afford to have a school uniform. Further, school uniform does not create a â€Å"special† identity: instead, it makes the students similar and does not allow them to be creative and search for their own identity. At last, school uniform does not always make the students less distracted. To search for additional reliable arguments, one should use databases which offer scholarly sources, for instance, JSTOR, Google Scholar, ScienceDirect, etc. For instance, the article Rationales and Strategies for Amending the School Dress Code to Accommodate Student Uniforms has been published in the American Secondary Education journal and presents many counter arguments which a writer should familiarize with in order to see a problem from a different angle (https://www.jstor.org/stable/41064330). Additionally, it is advisable not to forget about the in-text citations to avoid plagiarism. The Essay Structure: Conclusion The last part which is Conclusion contains the results of the argumentation in the essay. The Conclusion should not present any kind of information which is new to the reader and also should not continue the process of argumentation. Instead, the conclusive paragraph generalizes the information which the reader has already familiarized with. As an example, the conclusion for the essay â€Å"Modern School Uniform and How It Destroys the Student’s Identity† may start with such summarized statement, â€Å"Psychologists argue whether school uniform should be obligatory in the school surroundings. However, various reasons prove that school uniform deconstructs the student’s identity and creativity. Also, school uniform is considered an obstacle in the process of socialization among the students. Though it is said that school uniform reduces the peer pressure as well as the level of student’s distraction, it still does not eradicate the whole phenomenon of pres sure or distraction associated with the school environment.† From the passage above, one may understand that the conclusion contains not only the arguments and their evidence but also the counterarguments. The Structure and Subheadings As a result, the main parts which construct the outline of the essay and the paper itself are the following: An Introductory paragraph which contains a Thesis Statement; The Body of the essay which encompasses two or more sections where the writer presents the facts and ideas for the valid argumentation as well as refutes the possible counterarguments; Conclusion. This part contains the generalized arguments or in other words, the conclusions which the writer came to during the argumentative process. The subheadings should resemble the essence or in other words, the ideas and aims of each section. As an example, the sections of the essay â€Å"Modern School Uniform and How It Destroys the Student’s Identity† may be as following: Introduction; Arguments: The Reasons for Not Wearing a School Uniform; Why School Uniform is Inappropriate in the Modernity (Counterarguments); Conclusion. Additional Guides on Writing an English 101 Essay There are various book guides aimed at advising on writing academic papers. Among the most popular ones are such guides as The Handbook of Academic Writing: A Fresh Approach by Rowena Murray and Sarah Moore; How to Succeed in Academics by Linda L. McCabe and Edward R.B. McCabe; A Guide to Academic Writing by Jeffrey A. Cantor; Writing at University by Phyllis Creme and Mary R. Lea, and Get Great Marks for Your Essays by John Germov. The books above will be significantly helpful for one’s writing as they explain the essence of the academic writing with clear examples. Also, if a student is willing to improve their style of writing or learn about the academic writing more, then he or she should visit a writing center in the university. Post-Writing Tips It is advisable to pay attention to the quality of the paper not only the information or ideas but also to make sure that the essay does not contain grammar mistakes. In order to provide a high-quality essay, a student should use anti-plagiarism software and grammar-checkers. Among the best anti-plagiarism programmes is Turnitin. The latter checks the document and then creates a report where one can familiarize with the plagiarism frequency and grammar mistakes. The programme is not free, and this fact is probably the only reservation about using the programme. Another programme which is less effective if compared to Turnitin is Grammarly. The latter has been created recently as a free tool for everyone who wants to improve their writing skills and grammar knowledge. Grammarly mostly focuses on improving one’s grammar more than detecting plagiarism. Nonetheless, the programme is helpful as it also improves one’s academic writing style. For instance, Grammarly encourage s a writer not to use Passive Voice and not to make the sentences cumbersome. Having completed the previous step, which is detecting plagiarism and correcting the grammar mistakes, it is advisable for a writer to follow the next English 101 tips: The re-reading of the paper. Grammar-checkers usually skip some mistakes, that is why double-checking is a must. Checking the structure of the essay. This step is important as sometimes a writer may change places of the passages or forget to mention some important facts. Checking the structure of the sentences. It is strongly recommendable to write in simple sentences as the complex ones may confuse the reader and make the meaning of an idea vague. Checking the in-text citations. This step is important as properly written in-text citations allow a student to keep academic integrity. Checking the language. Using informal language is inappropriate in academic writing. With that in mind, one should avoid slang words. The steps in the article were aimed to help one familiarize with what academic writing generally means and how to write an English 101 essay particularly. It is also advisable to find more information in the guiding books for more specific knowledge concerning the academic writing and one’s further improvement of academic writing skills.

ACT Score Percentiles and Ranks (High-Precision 2016)

ACT Score Percentiles and Ranks (High-Precision 2016) SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips Do you want to know your exact ACT score up to six digits of precision? Every digit can help when you want to know your exact performance. I've used real ACT data, newly released in 2016, to calculate these ultra-high-precision percentiles. What Are Percentiles for the ACT? Revisiting the Question If you'd like to review what ACT percentiles are, check outthis excellent articlethat clearly explains them.Put simply, your ACT percentile ranking lets you know how well you didcompared to other test takers. If you got a 55 percentile(sometimes spelled %ile), that means you scored better than 55% of students who tookthe ACT. Unlike test scores, your percentile is not a score out of 100. While test scores usually indicate the fraction of questions you answered correctly (for example, if you got a 90% on atest, you got 90% of questions right), a percentile shows the fraction of other test takers you beat. What Are theACT Percentile Ranges? Most charts, including ones developed directly by the ACT, only havetwo digits of precision when they give percentiles.This means that scores of 35 and 36 both map to 99th percentile, and, while a 34 maps to 98th percentile, you can't be sure whether that means 98.9 or more like 97.5. For many purposes, two digits just doesn't give you enough precision. For example, if you score a 36 on the ACT, that means you're the top test taker out of 300 students while scoring a 35 means you're the best in a group of 100 students. That's a significant difference; however, both these scores map to the 99th percentile. This means that, if you're scoring close to the top of the ACT range, having access to high precision percentiles is very helpful. Higher precision can also help students receiving less than near-perfect ACT scores. For instance, if you're trying to get into a competitive college, every percent matters, the same way a fraction of a second can determine who wins a race at sporting competitions. As an example, sayyou learn that you improved from the 60th percentile to the 61st percentile for the ACT. This doesn't tell you everything you'd like to know. Your improvementcould be a tinyjump from 60.4 to 60.5, or it could be a much more significantimprovementfrom 59.5 to 61.4. Put another way, having higher precision helps you understand your progress and achievements more. And now, here is the table, based ondata released in2016: ACT Scores and High Precision 6-Digit Percentiles ACT Composite Score Percentile 36 99.9585 35 99.6962 34 99.0642 33 98.0761 32 96.7558 31 95.1067 30 93.0592 29 90.6171 28 87.7440 27 84.3200 26 80.3561 25 75.8399 24 70.7371 23 65.1384 22 59.1688 21 52.8696 20 46.3758 19 39.8415 18 33.2960 17 26.8432 16 20.6258 15 14.7890 14 9.5555 13 5.2653 12 2.3433 0.8449 10 0.2846 9 0.1084 8 0.0451 7 0.0180 6 0.0068 5 0.0025 4 0.0007 3 0.0003 2 0.0001 1 0.0000 Methodology: How did we come up withthese percentiles? To calculate them, we usedofficial data released by the ACTthat givesthe exact number of students who earned certain scores. Using that information, we summed the exact number of students to get the percentile. Within a single score group (e.g. studentsscoring exactly a 34), we presume exactly half are above. Did you know that raisingyour ACTscore by 4points can dramatically increaseyour chances of getting into your topschool?We've written a guide onthe top 5 strategies you need tobe using to have a shot at boostingyour score. Download it for free now: Do Percentiles Change From Year to Year? Within the last three years of the ACT, from roughly January 2013 to January 2016 inclusive,the percentiles have not changed much at all. Therefore, this data can be used for 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016 scores. However, you shouldn't use scores much earlier than this (for example, scores from 2006) because long-term drift does affect the ACT. What’s Next? Want to start prepping for the ACT but aren't sure where to start? Check out these 5 tips on preparing for the ACT. Is there a particular ACT section that's giving you more trouble than the rest? We can help! Check out our section-specific guides to ACT Math, Reading, English, and Science. Aiming for a top score? Read this guide, written by a perfect-scorer, to learn how to get a perfect 36 on the ACT.

Political Ideologies Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Political Ideologies - Essay Example The purpose of communism is to have common ownership of properties. The government regulates access to labor and its produce on to what is satisfactorily needed by each individual in the society. There are different kinds and forms of communism developed by several philosophers such as Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. But we shall focus on the economic reforms that both Libertarianism and Communism wish to offer. Communism believes that the working class is the solution, and that giving more power to the working class, dissolving any division in the society and avoiding any possible exploitation from the capitalist class can eliminate a division in society. This is why the government chooses to regulate the economy, and abolishes private ownership. Communism sees capitalism as a mere exploitation of the working class. Rousseau's (1978) origin story of the bourgeois political order holds that the ideology of communism, evolves through a pledge by the citizenry, a social pact to establish equality among each other, that they will place themselves under the same conditions and enjoy the same rights (p. 76). Libertarianism and Communism are two opposite ideology, put it simply, the first gives importance and the sanctity of an individual’s freedom, separate from any control by society. It is the free will and independence of man and his own volition that controls his fate. On the other hand, the Communist is ruled by the society, as a working class, co-equal in everything without any other class or division. It is unity between every man, without having one man better than the other. This â€Å"one† society regulates and controls each other, making sure that no one man exploits another. The Libertarian wishes every man to love â€Å"live his life in any way he chooses so long as he respects the equal rights of others" (Boaz, p. 2). The Communist ideology on the other hand abolishes the idea of â€Å"private property† and follows common ownership. A man is viewed as one with society. It is the society and the community that holds property in order to prevent any division in society, of having one person higher or richer than the other. Economically, a very good example of this ideology of libertarianism is economic freedom through the doctrine of laissez faire, in which free enterprise between businesses is upheld without government intervention. The opposite of this would be the ideology imposed by Communism, in which the government takes economic control, to avoid the business owners or so called capitalists to exploit its working class. The defect of Communism lies on the very existence of every individual, the component of free will. In order to attain equality and fairness, the Communist removes every chance for an individual to work better for his own accomplishments. He is not allowed to go beyond his means or ability in order to have a better and improved life. The control of the mean and resources infringes the righ t of each individual to be rich and successful by his own work and self-motivation. There is hindrance to self-actualization and self-fulfillment. In a country like the United States of America, were all, if not every nationality is part of its citizenry, libertarianism is more appropriate. A free enterprise