Autobiography Anita and me Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Autobiography Anita and me - Essay Example 150). The book is a semi-autobiography and is loosely based on the life of the author, Meera Syal. It is set in the background of a once flourishing mining village, Tollington, which was on its decline by the early 1970s. When the mines shut down, the men find themselves idle and out of work. The towns women, assertive and now in control, worked at the local ball-bearing factory and formed a group calling themselves the Ballbearings Committee. A highway threatens to take away part of the village, the grammar school is closing down, and the village thus faces many threats of doom and ruin. This is the background setting in which Meena sets out to discover her life. Bored with her mundane life, Meena is looking for some excitement to break the monotony of her life. "When would anything dangerous and cruel ever happen to me?" (Syal, Pg. 37). Her diary is her refuge and she takes to it to float into her dream world where she finds a life very different from the one she leads. This is beyond the understanding of her parents, who believe in hard work, proper education and take pride in their heritage. Meenas mother is portrayed as a soft-spoken, slender, well educated and poised lady. She plays the dual role of a professional teacher and an untiring housewife. Born in a village in Punjab and rich in her traditions, she doesnt lose sight of her values even as she lives in the racist neighborhood. "It was her duty to show them that we could wear discreet gold jewellery, dress in tasteful silks and speak English without an accent" (Syal, Pg. 25). She runs her house with an iron fist, not wasting a penny on what she deems as unnecessary. "My mother never eats out, never, always affronted by paying for some over-boiled, under seasoned dish of slop when she knew she could rustle up a hot, heart-warming meal from a few left-over vegetables and a

The Things They Carried Discurse Essay Example for Free

The Things They Carried Discurse Essay â€Å"The Things They Carried† displays men in the heart of war trying maintain some sort of semblance of their normal lives.   The main character of the story, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, spends a good deal of his time thinking about his love interest back at home.   In fact, the story opens by saying that he â€Å"carried letters from a girl named Martha†¦They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack† (PAGE #). Immediately the reader is thrust into this world of war, and what is important to the men who live it.   There are countless different clichà ©s/sayings regarding how one can tell a lot about a man by X or Y (by the way he dresses, by the way he treats his mother, etc.); in this story, we can tell everything at the heart of a man by what he carries with him trekking through the jungles of Vietnam. Jimmy Cross is a dreamer; he spends his time fantasizing about building a life with a woman who hasn’t really expressed the same kind of interest in him, and who maintains a great deal of emotional distance from him.   But it is this idea of a â€Å"normal† life, a life in which he can focus on marriage and children and just life, a life he hopes to return to after the war.   The thought of Martha, as well as her letters, acts as a beacon of normalcy for him, and it is what he feels he must cling to for his own survival. Jimmy ultimately ends up shunning his own need of maintaining some sort of focus on life outside of the war because he feels his own incessant daydreaming was the cause of another soldier’s death; in a great symbolic gesture, he burns her letters and her pictures, turning his back on any hope he clung to of a normal life and vowing to be the solider he failed to be: â€Å"Henceforth, when he thought about Martha, it would only be to think that she belonged elsewhere.   He would shut down the daydreams.    This was not Mount Sebastian, it was another world†¦a place where men died because of carelessness and gross stupidity†¦He was not determined to perform his duties firmly and without negligence† (PAGE #).   Jimmy is so shaken by the experience of witnessing one of his men’s death that it forces him to become a different person—in a sense, to adapt, and to become hard and cold.   As much as his daydreaming was for his own survival before, his hardened personality after the death of Ted Lavender is as well. The use of Ted Lavender’s name and story is the dominant theme throughout the story.   O’Brien uses Lavender’s tragic demise as a constant reminder of the horrors of war.   Throughout the whole story, in the middle of what might seem to be a casual description of various items being â€Å"humped† by the men, O’Brien drops Lavender’s name attached to a reminder of how he was shot.   This occurs towards the beginning, when the narrator is describing the different things the men carried: â€Å"Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head outside the village of Than Khe in mid-April† (PAGE #). His name is brought up repeatedly throughout with this same kind of cryptic reminder of his death.   When referring to how everyone had to carry a poncho, it is noted that it â€Å"weighed almost two pounds, but it was worth every ounce.   In April, for instance, when Ted Lavender was shot, they used his poncho to wrap him up†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (PAGE #). This name-dropping of Ted Lavender throughout the story is an effective tool that O’Brien utilizes the emphasize the point that this man died.   The deeper-lying message behind the use of Lavender’s demise as a running metaphor is that people die in war; it is terrifying; these men are children (with the Lieutenant being a mere 22 years old) and they’re scared and they want to go home, and these things they carry they keep because it makes them feel safe and reminds them a little of home. There is emphasis in the story about how their constant marching and their humping of endless items from village to village seemed pointless to them—as pointless as Ted Lavender’s life ending.   â€Å"By daylight they took sniper fire, at night they were mortared, but it was not battle, it was just the endless march, village to village, without purpose, nothing won or lost†¦They had no sense of strategy or mission.   They searched villages without knowing what to look for†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (PAGE #). These men, who have to hump a great many number of items (of both the personal and the protective nature) from one place to the next to the next, are being shipped off to war without a clear sense of what it is they’re doing there and are sacrificing their lives without really understanding what their lives are being sacrificed for.    They do what they are told because they are told to do it, and because they are too afraid not to: â€Å"Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.   It was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor.   They died so as not to die of embarrassment† (PAGE #).   These young men were dying for little other reason that they knew of besides that they felt that they had to. O’Brien’s message throughout this story is clear: war is terrifying.   O’Brien uses the lists of what they had to carry with them to illustrate the heavy burden each of them had to hump around everywhere they went, with the underlying theme that the things they carried physically were nothing in comparison to the things they each carried around with them emotionally.    All of them were scared for their lives; all of them wanted to go home.   Much of their personal belongings were things that would remind them of home, that would possibly allow them to escape for brief moments (like Jimmy Cross did with Martha’s letters) and fantasize about the lives they could and did have outside of this war, reminding them that there is still another world outside of Vietnam.   Many of the men carried with them the hope of a safe return; many more carried with them the fear that there wouldn’t be one for them. O’Brien is very careful to allow these characters’ lives (and one death) speak for themselves.   He uses their example of their experience in war to speak for a greater number of young men across the country who had been shipped off to Vietnam to die without understanding why.   Part of O’Brien’s message is that these experiences—the hopes, the fears, the daily terror and the struggle to combat it—are universal, and can universally be applied to anyone who has been through war.   The bottom line is that war is hell, it is terrifying, and no amount of pride or glory can change that, and whether or not the war was being fought for the â€Å"right† reasons (a big debate during the Vietnam conflict) couldn’t change that either. O’Brien is largely concerned with the pointlessness of all of it, and he succeeds in making his point effectively by using these very poignant lists of things the men carried and for what reasons to hammer his point home.   He is able to do so without being preachy or pedantic; the story is so simple that the message becomes just as simple.   Whether or not you support war, you cannot deny that the men fighting it are forced to live through things that the rest of us would rather not know about.   We would rather remain in our self-deluded bubble in which we understand war only as far as its being for freedom, for honor, for the greater good†¦we would rather be spared the knowledge of the blood loss and the body counts.   Not to mention the terror.   We would rather not hear the story of the Ted Lavenders, but O’Brien insists that we have to. Works Cited O’Brien, Tim.   â€Å"The Things They Carried.†Ã‚   (1986) [NAME OF ANTHOLOGY.] Ed. [NAME OF EDITOR(S) OF ANTHOLOGY.]   (DATE OF ANTHOLOGY’S PUBLICATION.)

Drugs And Welfare Essay -- essays research papers

A current issue that is going on today is welfare recipients that are drug abusers. Welfare is supposed to meet the basic needs. Drugs seem far from one of the basic human needs to me. If the recipient gets all the benefits from the programs they will more than likely turn around and sell their food stamps for their fix rather than go to the store and get their family some food. Drugs also go hand and hand with family problems, violence, and crime. It is estimated that between 50% and 80% of Family-Based Services involve drug and alcohol abuse. So why not drug test the recipients before a person can get qualified for services? Drug abuse, of course, is not new to any culture. Drugs have been a part of American culture, their popularity increased in the 1950s, when writers and social figures started popularizing them. In the 1960s, drug use took on a whole new meaning. It became a way of rebelling, particularly among college students who were disenchanted with America's values and the war in Vietnam, which they viewed as a senseless conflict. The popularity that drugs achieved in these days two decades paved the way for their dangerous and widespread use in the 1980s. The 1980s saw the drug industry grow bigger and more deadly - both for users and for dealers. The emergence of new and relatively cheap drugs has also helped encourage drug use, especially among the urban poor. One way of cutting down on the number of drug abusers on the welfare system is to do a mandatory drug ...

Comparison between the Great Gatsby and Macbeth Essay

Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s most intense plays and one his most complex psychological studies. It is also a play about which there is a great deal of historical background, which I think you’ll find interesting because it reveals Shakespeare’s creative process. The play was written in 1605–1606. It’s one of the plays where the date is pretty firmly established by internal references to external events, and most scholars have agreed on the date. Shakespeare was at the height of creative powers, and his theatrical company, the King’s Men, was the official royal acting company. He had the large Globe Theater, a large public playhouse on the south bank of the Thames. He would soon open the Blackfriars Theater, a small private theater within the city itself where the plays were performed indoors, and he and his men performed often at the court for the king and his family. The Blackfriars Theater would be exempt from the law prohibiting theaters within the City of London by being a private club. It could accommodate only a couple of hundred people, opposed to the Globe audiences of a couple of thousand, and therefore Shakespeare charged a higher price for entry. That in turn meant that the audience was wealthier and more sophisticated than the average attendee at the Globe was. Because the plays were performed indoors by artificial light, they could be done at any time or weather. Because it was a smaller theater, the acting style used could be more subtle and understated than the broad, overly dramatic acting used in the Globe before audiences of several thousand. As far as we know Shakespeare’s company continue to perform all the plays in both theaters; it’s just that the productions would have differed in the way they were performed. Once you know something of the complex historical background, a very curious fact emerges about this bloody, violent drama: the story of this psychotic killer and his fiendlike wife was actually written as a tribute to Shakespeare’s royal patron, King James I of England, who was also king of Scotland. What an unusual way to thank the king for his patronage! Of all of his plays, this is a powerful suspense thriller. We may know who the killer is, but we are fascinated to see if Macbeth gets away with it and to see how he convinces himself to commit the multiple homicides. The historical background is necessary to help you understand why Shakespeare wrote the play the way he did. Without the background there are many passages and references which make no sense to a modern audience. This background also reveals the fascinating way Shakespeare used and twisted history to make a better play and to address the political agenda of King James. It also shows some of the things going on at that time in English society and politics. Macbeth is an openly political play. Macbeth is considered a history play, based on the events in the life of a real historical figure, but it is even more a powerful tragedy. Shakespeare played fast and loose with historical fact in all his history plays, but none more so than this play. When Shakespeare wrote a play like Richard III, he was writing about events that had taken place about 100 years before, so most people in his English audience had a general sense of what that time was like. In the case of Macbeth, he was writing about a time over 500 years in the past in a country about which most of his English audience was totally unfamiliar. Shakespeare and his audience did not consider history to be a science, in which the goal was accuracy; rather history was an art, related to storytelling. The purpose of history was to make a moral point about the present society. You looked to the past to find or create parallels with the present age that would help you explain how people should behave right now. Therefore history was often manipulated, changed or simply created to support some political agenda. Every king at this time used history as a tool in his arsenal to help hang on to power. They would hire professional historians to rewrite the past to support their claim to power in the present. Similarly, religious figures would use history as a weapon to attack their opponents. In many accounts written at this time by Protestant advocates, history is seen as the rise of many proto-Protestants, people who lived hundreds of years before Martin Luther, the first official Protestant. These earlier figures are shown to be forerunners who simply didn’t realize they were Protestants. The historical sources that Shakespeare used were as much mythologies as they  are reality. Actually there was very little known about the historical Macbeth, so if the historians hadn’t made things up they wouldn’t have had much to say about him. Shakespeare’s principal source, Holinshed’s Chronicles of Scottish History, was a loose collection of gossip, tales and fantasies, so the material he was using was already seriously flawed from a historical perspective. Shakespeare then used this flawed material selectively, not telling the whole story, but only bits and pieces that made for a good drama. He altered historical records to heighten dramatic effect, as we’ll see in the dramatic account of Macbeth’s first murder. Shakespeare also changed history to simplify complexities and, quite frankly, to kiss up to King James. Shakespeare took a story supposedly set in the 11th Century, around the year 1050, and filled it with many references to events taking place in 1605 in England, in particular to one of the most dramatic events in English history, the Gunpowder Plot, which had happened just the year before. No wonder the play bears little resemblance to the historical reality. The historical Macbeth had become king in the year 1040 when he killed the previous king, Duncan, in battle. To put this in a historical context, this is hardly the Middle Ages; it’s still the Dark Ages, as historians have termed the various stages of European history. It is 26 years before the Norman invasion of England, which is generally considered to be the beginning of the medieval period in Britain. In 1040 Macbeth became king and ruled for 17 years until he was overthrown and killed by Duncan’s son, who became King Malcolm III. Malcolm is famous primarily because he married an English princess named Margaret who was later made a saint. According to the Scottish historian Archibald Duncan, little is known about Macbeth and his lovely wife Grunnich, except that they were pious and endowed a religious house at St. Andrew’s (which is probably the caddy shack on the fourth green of that famous golf course — joke). The couple went on a religious pilgrimage to Rome where, the chroniclers said, â€Å"they sowed money like seed.† (Many of us when we go on vacation do the same thing.) That’s all we know for certain about the real Macbeth. Now the fact that Macbeth killed the previous king was not a big deal. Of  the eight Scottish kings who ruled during this time, seven had died unnatural deaths, including several who burned to death until suspicious circumstances. It was highly unusual for a Scottish king to die of natural causes in bed. This violent record was largely the result of how Scottish kings came to power. There was no fixed process of succession from one king to the next. In effect, when an old king died every male who was related to the royal family, no matter how distant the relationship, had an equal chance for the throne. It was a kind of royal free-for-all with the last man standing getting to be the king until he was done in by the next ambitious claimant. Macbeth is overthrown in 1057, still nine years before the Norman French invasion of England under William the Conqueror. Two hundred years pass by. The Norman kings are on the throne of England. A succession of English kings and queens has tried to extend their power north into Scotland, as generations of Scots have raided English settlements to the south. The warfare between these two historic enemies is almost constant. In the mid-1200’s the English king Edward, also known as Longshanks and the Scots Killer, has invaded Scotland determined to subjugate it once and for all. He pushes north and reaches the holy place of Scone where the Scottish kings were crowned. Here he seizes the holy relic called the Stone of Scone and takes it back to London where he places it under his throne at Westminster Abbey, where it remained for seven centuries, despite the efforts of Scottish nationalists to steal it back. (Prime Minister Tony Blair finally returned the stone to Scotland after his election — a smart political move.) The film Braveheart gives you a highly dramatic sense of the conflict at this time between the Scots and the English. The Scots fight back unsuccessfully because they are not united in their efforts. Finally one man arises who is able to weld the Scottish people into a single nation, Robert the Bruce, and he is able to lead to a Scottish victory. The English have to acknowledge the right of the Scottish State to exist. King Edward is bitterly disappointed and when he dies, he leaves instructions that if England ever mounts a new invasion of Scotland, his bones are to be carried at the head of the army. So you see how bitter the hatred is between the two nations. Under Robert the Bruce the Scots succeed in driving the English out, but in 1329 he dies and his daughter ascends the throne. She had married a guy who was like the business manager or steward of the royal estates. Not surprisingly the guy’s name was â€Å"Steward† or as it came to be spelled, â€Å"Stuart.† And so the Scottish throne passed on to this obscure family that had never been more than civil servants. Now every royal family worried about two things: succession, or who would inherit the throne. Henry VIII had gone through five wives trying to sire a male heir to the throne and broken with the Catholic Church over the issue. The second worry was to try and keep the crown within the family against attacks on their legitimacy. So kings were always seeking ways to bolster their claim on the throne in the perception of the people. The family of Elizabeth, the Tudors, had had on-going problems in both these areas. The first Tudor, Henry VII, lost his oldest s on soon after the boy had been married to Catherine of Aragon. So as not to have to return her substantial dowry to the King of Spain, Henry VII simply married the young widow to his next son, Henry VIII, setting in motion all the turmoil of that king’s five wives. Henry’s son Edward died while still in his teens, and his daughter, who reigned as â€Å"Bloody Mary Tudor,† was unable to produce an heir. The next Tudor monarch, Elizabeth I, declined to try to have a child by refusing to marry. Her decision caused all kinds of political problems as she approached death in 1603, until she declared on her deathbed that her distant cousin, James VI of Scotland, would rule after her. The Stuart kings, by contrast, had been very prolific. By the time Shakespeare wrote Macbeth, there had been eight generations of Stuart kings on the throne of Scotland. They were the longest-surviving royal family in all of Europe. They boasted that they would remain on the throne until Doomsday. However, the Stuarts continued to worry about the public perception of their legitimacy. After all the original Stuart king had had little claim to the throne. So it was that in the early 1500’s one of the Stuart kings hired a professional historian and ordered him to create an older, more respectable connection to the throne for the Stuarts. This historian made up an ancient ancestor of the Stuarts, Banquo, who lived clear back in the time of old King Macbeth. This Banquo, a thane or nobleman, was told by goddesses of Scottish destiny that his descendents would eventually become kings of Scotland. These goddesses were  given special powers to look into the future of the Scottish nation. So the Stuarts had a mystical claim on the throne for several hundred years before they actually were crowned. This Banquo was a completely fictional character that the historian/PR guy simply made up. Not surprisingly this character and the prediction of his descendant’s rise to power figure prominently in the play. Queen Elizabeth’s grandfather, Henry VII, had used history in just the same manipulative manner. After he defeated and killed the rightful king, Richard III, in 1485, he hired a number of â€Å"professional† historians to do a hatchet job on poor old Richard. They â€Å"proved† that he was not the legitimate king and was in fact a monster who deserved to die so the Tudors could take power. In the mid-1500’s Scotland was ruled by Mary, Queen of Scots, a distant cousin of Elizabeth I. Mary has come down in history as a kind of romantic figure, but in reality she was not nearly as sympathetic. She was a Catholic trying to rule a land that was fiercely Presbyterian, and she was not very adept at the politics of power. Plus she had the unfortunate habit of blowing up the castles where her estranged husband was staying. She was finally driven out of Scotland and fled to England where she was given asylum by Elizabeth. Rather than being content and grateful for her cousin’s kindness, she began almost immediately plotting with malcontents to overthrow Elizabeth. She let it be known that if the Catholic minority in England was able to get rid of the queen, she would graciously accept the crown. Elizabeth tried to ignore the threats and then tried to confine Mary in an isolated country home where she could cause less trouble. But Mary persisted in her plots. Finally Elizabeth is forced to stop Mary’s intrigues by having her beheaded Now when Mary fled from Scotland she left her infant son, James, and he was crowned James VI and ruled throughout his childhood. Poor James was manipulated and used by the powerful men who had custody of the young king. He learned to be very slippery and deceitful in order to survive to adulthood. In one of the great ironies of history, when Elizabeth faces  death she bequeaths the English throne to the son of her mortal enemy, Mary, Queen of Scots. James was finally able to escape from Edinburgh and the clutches of the Presbyterian elders and go to the sinful city of London, the Las Vegas of that age. In 1603 James is crowned James I of England and becomes a dual monarch. A few months later he names Shakespeare’s company the King’s Men, the royal dramatic company. The company has royal protection from local authorities and they make a great of money performing all the plays Shakespeare had written for the court. It’s no wonder that Shakespeare felt compelled to write a tribute to his royal patron, Macbeth. As I said earlier, it’s an odd play to be a tribute to a Scottish king, but then Shakespeare made a career out of doing the unusual. Now as Shakespeare pays tribute to James, he also wants to support James’ political agenda. England and Scotland had been historic enemies, but now they were governed by the same monarch, and he wanted to unite them into a single kingdom. In several plays written before 1603 Shakespeare used the Scots as convenient ethnic targets. (We see this Scots-bashing in Merchant of Venice and Henry V.) After 1603 it became politically incorrect to take potshots at the Scots. Although James and the other Stuarts wanted a United Kingdom, it would take over 100 years for England and Scotland to merge into a single political entity. To advance the king’s agenda, Shakespeare wrote the play in a certain way. He created and emphasized commonality between the two kingdoms. He was also careful not to show Banquo, the king’s mythical ancestor, in a bad light. Rather than being actively involved in overthrowing King Duncan, Banquo just stands around and waits for Fate to fulfill the prophecy of his family’s future greatness. (In Holinshed’s account Banquo had been an active participant in Duncan’s overthrow and death.) Having set up the story of the Stuart family’s rise to power, Shakespeare shift gears and makes the homicidal maniac Macbeth the protagonist of the play. The other political event which shaped the composition of the play was the criminal conspiracy to assassinate James, his family and most of the Protestant leadership of England in the Gunpowder Plot. This took place in early November of 1605, when a group of Catholic extremists planned to blow  up the Houses of Parliament on the occasion of a speech by the king to Parliament. There had been a long history of hostility between the Catholics and Protestants in England through the 1500’s, especially during the time of Elizabeth. Catholics considered her an illegitimate ruler and a bastard because she was the child of King Henry VIII’s second wife, after the illegal divorce. The film Elizabeth, with Cate Blanchett, gives you a good sense of the conflict in this time with the Catholic side being represented by the Pope and Queen Mary. By contrast with Catholic intransigence, Elizabeth is shown to be much more humane and tolerant. She had seen too much bloodshed over religious differences. She did not much mind what people’s private beliefs were as long as they avoided public display of religious heresies. So under Elizabeth it was not illegal to be a Catholic, unlike Mary Tudor’s persecution of Protestant dissenters; it was just illegal to perform a Catholic mass in public. Understandably Catholics chafed under the restrictions of Elizabeth’s rule and believed that a strong Catholic monarch could bring England forcibly back to the Catholic faith. When Elizabeth died in 1603 many Catholics hoped their persecution would end with James. After all, his own mother had been a Catholic. However, that belief ignored the fact that James had been raised as a Presbyterian, not a Catholic. Also he found Elizabeth’s principle of allowing private faith a good compromise. And so the more militant Catholics plotted to fill the basement of Parliament with gunpowder and at the critical moment blow i t up. Now this plot was the 17th Century equivalent of 9/11 or the harebrained scheme of Timothy McVey to blow up the federal building in Oklahoma City. The plot was discovered at the last minute. According to the official account released at the time the king himself, with the help of God, covered the plan. He was shown some intercepted messages which referred to â€Å"strike a blow† for the cause and realized that â€Å"blow† could mean an explosion and ordered the building searched. The effect of the discovery on England was electric, traumatic. In a flash the country realized how close they had come to disaster. As the conspirators were arrested, tortured, confessed and were executed more details came out. English society was changed in ways that are still visible today. For example to this day on November 5, the day the plot was discovered, called Guy Fawkes Day, children throughout  Britain collect money in the neighborhood to buy fireworks to set off and burn a wooden effigy called â€Å"the Old Guy† in honor of Guy Fawkes, one of the principal conspirators. The revelation of the plot did not ease the pl ight of Catholics, who were forbidden the vote or the ability to serve in Parliament. One of the other conspirators turned out to be a secret Jesuit priest named Henry Garnett. Although it was illegal to perform the mass, the Jesuits recruited young courageous English Catholics, trained them in France and smuggled them back into England to perform as priests. Garnett was the confessor of several of the other conspirators and he was detained in the initial investigation. The authorities suspected he was a priest and they asked him under oath if he knew anything about the plot. He denied any knowledge. Subsequent suspects were arrested and they revealed that Garnett had known about the plan and had advised the conspirators on what to do. He was arrested again, questioned and this time he admitted that he did know about the plot. When confronted with his earlier perjury under oath, Garnett explained that as a Jesuit he was not required to tell the authorities what they wanted to know. In defense of his own faith he had not lied under oath; he had simply equivocated. That simply meant he had not told the whole truth and had played fast and loose with the terminology, a lot like a former president testifying under a threat of impeachment. This aspect of the scandal was in some respects the most shocking for the public because he seemed to cast the Jesuits as sneaky, lying shock troops of the Pope who would commit any sin to further their own cause. And so the concept of â€Å"equivocation† became infamous, a kind of shorthand reference to the evil behind the plot. It was so shocking that the legal oath Englishmen took when they testified in court was changed at that time to include the provision that the oath was taken â€Å"without equivocation† to cover any future Garnetts. That provision continued in the English legal system down to the twentieth century. Both the celebration of Guy Fawkes Day and the legal oath demonstrate how traumatic the Gunpowd er Plot was on English society. A lot of popular works were written at this time which refer to the details of the plot, including at least three plays called Gunpowder dramas. One was called The Whore of Babylon all about the Pope leading a black mass to call  forth Satan to engineer the assassination of Queen Elizabeth. The second play was called The Devil’s Charter which traces the efforts of the evils Catholics to engineer the assassination of an English ruler. The third play was Macbeth, according to noted author Garry Wills. In the plays the Jesuits are linked to witchcraft. This was not the first attempt on King James’ life; he had survived three earlier assassination attempts. (One reason James may have been able to uncover the plot so quickly is that he had had lots of experience,) The would-be assassins were subsequently tried as witches. In another related case a plot was uncovered to kill James’ bride, a princess of Denmark. A group of accused witches from a town called Forres, mentioned in the play, had disapproved of James marrying a foreigner, and so the charmed the winds and caused a major storm on the North Sea to try and sink the ship bringing the Danish bride to Scotland. As in the other cases the plotters were arrested, tortured, confessed and were executed. As a result of his experiences and his own interest in the occult, James fancied himself an expert and had written a book called Daemonology, all about Scottish witches. In the first two Gunpowder plays listed above it is a male witch that is behind the plots to kill the English monarch. What Shakespeare does in his play is to take the â€Å"goddesses of Scottish destiny† that he had read about in Holinshed and change them into very unusual witches, in keeping with the interest of the principal person for whom he was writing the play, King James.

Formal and Informal Organisations Management

Introduction This essay is based on Formal and Informal organisations and the details and difference between the two. Recommendations and conclusions are also drawn based on the information presented. Formal and Informal Organisations The fundamental concepts of formal and informal organisations are regarded with the nature and processes in the workplace. A formal organization is the actual framework of the organization including its organizational chart and its chain of command which determines accountability.However, within the informal organization, otherwise known as the ‘grapevine’ in a business, is the familiar working relationships that are established in the business place and contributes significantly to work culture. (Reingold, 2007) The real purpose of an organizational chart is to effectively outline the structure of the formal organization. It shows who is accountable to whom, from the top management to middle management and front line employees. It also sho ws the horizontalrelationships of the different functional and operational divisions and department personnel.This chart consists of the functional framework and is important in the workplace to establish stability, clarity in work relationships and reporting standards between supervisors and subordinates. (Parker, 2002) Although top management in some businesses does not take into account, the actuality of informal organizations when trying to determine culture, it does have an essential influence on work dynamism. Workers interact with each other at different intervals and in different situations such as lunch, in the break room, and even after work.These encounters can greatly influence the level of the sense of belongingness each employee experiences or feels in the working environment. If it is that these encounters are generally negative, the quality of work ethics and morale will be very poor. (Reingold, 2007) Understanding the direct reporting relationships outlined in the o rganizational chart is often less important than knowing the ‘go-to people’ in the company. For ambitious employees, this may mean looking beyondimmediate coworkers and managers and finding helpful mentors and internal coaches that want to help them succeed.Information communication networks are also useful tools in learning how the company works just beyond what is conveyed from top management. It is important to note that when front line employees get prompted into management positions they often forget the significance in striking a balance between the formal structure and informal networks within the business. Disciplined structure and clear reporting relationships are important. However, management also has a lot to gain by remembering that informal networks are real and is of much use.Managers can maximize insight on how employees feel towards their jobs and how functional terms are operating through familiar conversations. While formal relationships are key to ac complishing organizational and departmental goals and objectives they are sometimes restrictive to open interactions. (Parker M. , 2003) An example of a formal organization would be the Jamaica National Building Society which has clear concise goals written and duly communicated. It is a registered financial institution that provides service to the public in a very organized and structured manner both in physical space and information management.An example of an informal organization would be a study group where interactions are familiar and there is no legal framework or organizational structure that governs the operations of the group. In businesses, employees are both part of the formal organization as well as the informal. A sales clerk in a marketing company is part of the formal structure of the business and is given a job description and specification but can also be part of an informal organization within the same business such as a partner group.Recommendation Individuals i n an organization normally work according to the structure prescribed by formality. However, at the same time, they develop other relationships in the organization, which may be deeply grounded on personal rather than work related principles. Both formal and informal organisations exist in all businesses and can impact their operations in negative and positive ways. My preference and recommendations with regards to choosing between the two would be the formal organization as it has many advantages.It constitutes the fundamental structure of the delegation of work and responsibilities. Without a structure it would be very difficult for employees to agree between themselves and their roles and functions and such problems multiply in large amounts with the increase in size of the organization. In addition to this, formal organisations generate clarity of what support and input each employee can expect form others and in turn what is expected of him/her by others. Extreme discipline is promoted in the business and so employees have respect for each other.In formal organisations it is easier to review and revise the organization with changing requirements. It provides a framework or structure for laying down pay scales and taking other decisions linked to organizational levels. It also helps in other human resources development activities such as recruitment, promotions, career planning and development and manpower planning. Conclusion Formal organisations are characterized by a chain of command and empowered individuals to enforce agreed upon rules. Rotary clubs and boy scouts are examples of formal organisations.They both have a charter stating their place and function in society. On the other hand, an informal organization is one where the participants have no empowered central leader who has the power to enforce rules on the group. References Parker, A. (2002). Myths about Informal Networks. Sloan Management Review , 345-350. Parker, M. (2003). The Psychologica l Foundations of Business Administration. The Early Siciology of Management and Organisations , 216-235. Reingold, J. (2007). Hidden Workplace. Comments on organisation , 706-811.

Free Essays on Live Life

abruptly halts, with the frequent pauses and punctuation of the last stanza. The once graceful flow now resembles that of stop-and-go rush-hour traffic, tripping the reader up and forcing the tone of the poem to change. One must now reread the poem in order to understand why the author chooses to destroy such a brilliant and completely iambic poem, a feat not easily accomplished. Upon reading the poem again, it takes on a much slower, softer rhythm, creating a somber tone. A pause is discovered after each foot, forcing the reader to reflect on what was just read. No longer can one view the poem as... Free Essays on Live Life Free Essays on Live Life Live, Living Life At first glance, Emily Dickinson’s poem #470 seems to be written by a depressed and apathetic person. However, upon further examination, it is clear she is not depressed or apathetic. She is, in fact, enlightened and concerned. Emily Dickinson detests â€Å"accepted society.† She believes it is a void, which one cannot easily escape from, and she feels the need to enlighten her readers and give them ability and drive to break the chains of imprisonment. Dickinson’s consistent and constant use of the same forms of meter, tone, rhythm, and sound brilliantly creates a level of security and stability in the poem, which she destroys in an effort to emphasize the instability, chaos, and false security in â€Å"accepted society,† as well as point out her view of how to overcome these tribulations. Initially, the poem seems to be a call from a very depressed author who â€Å"guesses† she is alive and dreams of her own funeral. While reading the poem for the first time, one immediately falls into the rhythm and â€Å"flows† with the poem. The iambic meter, the meter and style of normal speech, is easy to read and not very taxing on the brain, lips, or eyes. This sets up a strong, secure base, which allows for quick reading of the poem, an error that Dickinson wants the reader to make. The swift flow of the words abruptly halts, with the frequent pauses and punctuation of the last stanza. The once graceful flow now resembles that of stop-and-go rush-hour traffic, tripping the reader up and forcing the tone of the poem to change. One must now reread the poem in order to understand why the author chooses to destroy such a brilliant and completely iambic poem, a feat not easily accomplished. Upon reading the poem again, it takes on a much slower, softer rhythm, creating a somber tone. A pause is discovered after each foot, forcing the reader to reflect on what was just read. No longer can one view the poem as...

Early American Literature Test Atkins 2017 Essays

Early American Literature Test Atkins 2017 Essays Early American Literature Test Atkins 2017 Paper Early American Literature Test Atkins 2017 Paper Essay Topic: Poetry What does the speaker claim at the beginning of To My Dear and Loving Husband? Her relationship is the best that there ever was. Which description from Upon the Burning of Our House shows the speakers belief that faith in God is more important than earthly possessions? moldering dust The speaker of Upon the Burning of Our House reveals her belief that God is protective when she says that God will provide everything she needs Bradstreet uses hyperbole in the first four lines of To My Dear and Loving Husband to exaggerate the truth that she and her husband love each other The speaker of Upon the Burning of Our House learns of the fire when she wakes up during the night and hears people screaming Which line from Upon the Burning of Our House indicates that the speaker misses her home after it burns down? There lay that store I counted best The hope and treasure that the speaker refers to at the end of Upon the Burning of Our House represent eternal life and happiness from faith in God Which of the following is the major theme of Anne Bradstreets poem The Author to Her Book? The parent-child relationship In The Author to Her Book, why does Bradstreet use the metaphysical conceit of an illegitimate orphan to describe her book of poetry? * She feels that the poems were taken from her and thrown out into the world Anne Bradstreet is mainly known for writing poems about all of the following except for politics Which of the following is a recurring theme in Bradstreets work? Puritan belief that one must not become too attached to things of the world Anne Bradstreet is considered the first American poet (true or false) True In Huswifery, the poet compares the speaker to a loom What does the poet of Huswifery use to show that practicing faith is an everyday activity? a metaphor that compares practicing faith to making cloth The speaker in Huswifery hopes to be ready for eternal life In Huswifery, what does the metaphor that compares the speaker with a loom and God with a weaver suggest about Puritan life? Making cloth at home was an everyday activity. Both Bradstreet and Taylor have written poetry that expresses the daily challenges of living in the new world Another common element both Bradstreet and Taylor share is that they use their poetry to express the view that God does not desert people Edward Taylors main profession was minister Although Taylors poems were written in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, they were not available to the public until 200 years later Taylors poems were discovered in this universitys library in 1937 Yale Taylors poems are usually put into 2 groups, Preparatory Meditations and Gods Determinations Only one book of poetry was found amongst Edward Taylors possessions. This book was written by Anne Bradstreet Taylors poems are primarily addressed to God and/or Christ As part of his Meditations organizational method, the poems typically involve 3 faculties of the soulMemory, Understanding, and Will What was the preferred name for communion among the Puritans? The Lords Supper Which of the following forms best describes traditional Native American literatures in origin? oral performance Before the American Revolution, in what language was the largest book printed in any of the thirteen colonies? German Which of the following European navigators did not sail the Atlantic directly to the Americas during the century after Columbuss first voyage? Vasco da Gama Which of the following foods did European colonists bring to the Americas? Wheat, onions, radishes and sugar cane. Among the hundred people on the Mayflower when it landed in Massachusetts in 1620, how many were Separatists? about one quarter Who wrote The Selling of Joseph, one of the earliest antislavery tracts written and published in North America? Samuel Sewall By what means did Native Americans record their experience of European invasion and colonialism? shellwork belts, written texts, and painted animal hides, tepees, and shields What famous work, collecting the literary productions of countless European mariners, was edited by Richard Hakluyt? The Principal Navigations For two centuries after its name was changed to New York in 1664, what language continued to be used widely in public and private life? Dutch Which of the following languages was not spoken by Native Americans in 1492? Tamil Which of the following is an accurate statement about the difference between Native Americans and European colonists in 1492? Unlike most of the Native Americans, the European colonists used a written alphabet Whose writing best typifies early American writing as a literature of witness to the ruthless destruction of Native American cultures by Europeans? Bartolome de las Casas By what means did Cortà ©s seek to justify his invasion of Mexico in violation of directives from Spain? * sending several long letters to Charles V and promising lavish returns if his conquest could proceed. Of what cause did native people begin to die almost immediately after the arrival of Europeans in the Americas? war, enslavement, brutal mistreatment, diseases brought from Europe With what European literary movement came recognition from a Western perspective of Native American verbal expression as a literature? Romanticism Under what condition did Columbus return to Spain in 1500? in chains Which of the following was a type of writing practiced by the prolific writer and clergyman Cotton Mather? moral invectives against the institution of slavery Which of the following is not a primary purpose that colonists sent written texts to Europe? to counter Native American responses to European chronicles of events Which European nation most aggressively expanded its presence in the Americas through colonial conquest? Spain Which of the following is not one of the characteristics of Native American Literature? Ornate and elevated language Which of the following is not one of the Main Purposes of European Explorers Literature? to recruit skilled sailors to crew the increased demand for the number of ships traveling to the New World One of the characteristics of Puritan Literature is that it makes strong use of personification, alliteration, simile, metaphor, and__________________ repetition The Puritans modeled their plain style of writing off of which version of The Bible? Geneva In the earliest of years associated with American Literature, the majority of what was written came from: European Explorers What happened after the Pilgrims discovered that they had landed on Cape Cod? They considered heading for the Hudson River, but were blocked by rocks and rough seas. 2. To what cause does Bradford attribute the weakening of the Plymouth community, starting about 1632? Prosperity With how many ships did the Pilgrims set forth from Holland in 1620? two After establishing their colony at Plymouth, the Pilgrims faced a difficult first winter. How many of the original one hundred survived this first season? fifty Why was the contractual agreement known as the Mayflower Compact necessary? Mutinous members of the company sought to take advantage of the fact that their charter had been for Virginia, and the ship had landed far outside of that jurisdiction. Which person established a mad Bacchanalian settlement at Merrymount that disgusted Bradford with its lewd and shiftless behavior? Thomas Morton Upon their arrival on Cape Cod, what did the Pilgrims find to sustain them in their trials? God and His grace What did the colonists do first when they arrived in North America? fell on their knees and blessed God The First Encounter is the name the colonists gave to their first experience with Native Americans Which detail shows that fairness was a cultural characteristic of the colonists? The colonists repaid the Nauset Indians when they took the Nausets corn and beans Which sentence is the best summary of The Starving Time? Many people died, and the few strong people took care of the weak. Squanto helped the colonists by interpreting for them What problem did the colonists encounter upon their arrival at Cape Cod? There was a lack of shelter in the face of brutal winter conditions. William Bradfords description of the colonists victory in the First Encounter reveals the cultural characteristic that the colonists felt that God protected them in their endeavors Bradford gives special recognition to William Brewster and Myles Standish because they worked tirelessly to care for the people during a period of sickness and starvation What cultural characteristic of the colonists is most evident in this term from the treaty with Massasoit? If any did unjustly war against him, they would aid him; if any did war against them, he should aid them. belief in mutual support Summarize the conditions the Pilgrims faced at the time of the First Thanksgiving. The harvest was small, but game and corn were plentiful. Accounts of real-life historical experiences, written by either a person who experienced those events or someone who studied or observed them are called historical narratives Letters, diaries, journals, speeches, autobiographies, and histories are examples of primary sources Records of events written by people who were not directly involved in the events are called secondary sources Puritanism covered a period from 1550s to 1700 All of the following are lasting effects of the Puritans except for high fashion style The Puritan belief that good was accomplished through hard work, self-reliance, and self-discipline is called the Puritan Ethic William Bradford served as governor of the Plymouth Colony for how many terms? 15 Bradfords Of Plymouth Plantation was lost for how many years? 200 Smith says that the other Jamestown leaders were lazy during times of peace When Smith as the narrator says he built others shelters before he built his own, he is portraying his actions as unselfish Restate The President and Captain Archer not long after intended also to have abandoned the country, which project was curbed and suppressed by Smith. Smith stopped the President and Captain Archer from leaving the colony How was Smith saved from death in Powhatans court Pocahontas offered her life for Smiths The Native Americans were important to the colonists because they brought food to the colonists What is the most likely reason that President Ratcliffe and Martin appointed Smith to oversee the activities outside the walls of the colony Smith worked harder than everyone else The narrators comment the what he carefully provided the rest carelessly spent allows Smith to portray himself as more sensible than the other colonists Smith includes descriptions of the disagreements among the Jamestown leaders because he feels it is better to reveal shame than ignore it Smiths comment that while himself by following sought them victuals means that Smith hunted birds to get food for them What does Smiths description of giving gifts to the Native Americans reveal about His reference to the gifts as toys suggest that he viewed Powhatan and his people as childlike In New Englands Trials, Smith says that how many men accompanied him on his initial journeys? 8 Interpret Thus you may see plainly the yearly success from New England (by Virginia) which hath been so costly to this kingdom and dear to me His journey to the New England area was a waste of his efforts In A Description of New England, Smith says that his purpose is: have towns send their orphans and young married people to settle New England Smiths writing style can best be described as action oriented propaganda By writing about himself in the 3rd person, Smith creates this type of effect on his writing a tall-tale feel One possible reason Smith wrote about himself in the 3rd person, is so that he could gain a higher government position All of the following are themes in Smiths General History except for living a quiet life int the country At 1 point Smith uses 1 of the Native American guides as a shield during a violent encounter. What should this action tell us about Smith? devalued Native American lives John Smith is credited with all of the following excerpt for Survived a fall from a 1000 foot high waterfall After his life is spared, Smith gives Powhatan 2 guns and a grindstone All of the following are reasons Smith considered the journey to America ill-advised except for their boat had several leaks When the Indians decide to spare the colonists, Smith attributes their change of heart to Gods blessing Wingfield, the colonys first president, was removed from office because he hoarded food and tried to escape with one of the ships How many people died within the first four months of the colonys existence? 50 In New Englands Trials, Smith says that Native Americans killed the English because They wanted their weapons and commodities accounts of real-life historical experiences, written by either a person who experienced those events or someone who studied or observed them Historical Narratives the way in which a literary work is put together the arrangement of its parts Structure a type of folktale that features an animal or human character who typically engages in deceit, violence, and magic Trickster Tale A form of autobiographical writing that shares personal experiences as well as observations of significant historical events or people memoir the ideas, details, and social context from the authors time that influence the written work Historical Context Folk tales, myths, fables, and legends passed orally from one generation to the next Folk Literature When a writer writes for one of these reasons: to inform, entertain, express, or persuade purpose materials written by people present at the event Primary sources a traditional story, usually involving supernatural beings that explains how some aspect of human nature came to be Myth a figure of speech that compares 2 things that have something in common Metaphor an indirect reference to a person, place, event, or literary work with which the author believes the reader will be familiar Allusion character types that can be found in literary works from different cultures throughout the ages Archetypes that were once in common use but that are now considered old-fashioned or out-of-date Archaic Language records of events written by people who were not directly involved in the events secondary sources a comparison between 2 essentially unlike things that nevertheless have something in common extended metaphor sentence structure in which the expected order or words inverted syntax a specific kind of myth typically describing how the universe, earth and life began creation myth person(s) who are intended to read a piece of writing audience language that communicates ideas beyond literal meaning of words figurative language messages designed to persuade an audience by creating strong feelings emotional appeals

Online Public and Charter Schools, K-12 in Indiana

Online Public and Charter Schools, K-12 in Indiana Indiana offers resident students the opportunity to take online public school courses for free. Below is a list of no-cost online schools currently serving elementary and high school students in Indiana. In order to qualify for the list, schools must meet the following qualifications: classes must be available completely online, they must offer services to state residents, and they must be funded by the government. Virtual schools listed may be charter schools, state-wide public programs, or private programs that receive government funding. List of Indiana Online Charter Schools and Online Public Schools Indiana Virtual Charter School (off-site link) About Online Charter Schools and Online Public Schools Many states now offer tuition-free online schools for resident students under a certain age (often 21). Most virtual schools are charter schools; they receive government funding and are run by a private organization. Online charter schools are subject to fewer restrictions than traditional schools. However, they are reviewed regularly and must continue to meet state standards. Some states also offer their own online public schools. These virtual programs generally operate from a state office or a school district. State-wide public school programs vary. Some online public schools offer a limited number of remedial or advanced courses not available in brick-and-mortar public school campuses. Others offer full online diploma programs. A few states choose to fund â€Å"seats† for students in private online schools. The number of available seats may be limited and students are usually asked to apply through their public school guidance counselor. (See also: 4 Types of Online High Schools). Choosing an Indiana Online Public School When choosing an online public school, look for an established program that is regionally accredited and has a track record of success. Be wary of new schools that are disorganized, are unaccredited, or have been the subject of public scrutiny. For more suggestions on evaluating virtual schools see: How to Choose an Online High School.

Proto-Oncogenes Their Role in Cancer Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Proto-Oncogenes Their Role in Cancer - Article Example Specific genes of chicken and rodent retroviruses were first noted to transform normal mammalian cells in culture. These cancer-causing genes (oncogenes) proved to be activated homologues of mammalian genes (proto-oncogenes), which were stolen from the host cell during viral evolution. Primary human cancers harbor similarly activated alleles of proto-oncogenes (Haber, 2006) Some of the mechanisms by which proto-oncogenes are activated in human cancers include: point mutations, gene amplification, and chromosomal translocations. These mutations are known as gain-of-function mutations because â€Å"they result in novel or altered functional properties for the encoded protein and are genetically dominant over the second normal allele†(Haber, 2006) Proto-oncogenes can be classified based either on their normal function within cells or upon sequence homology to other known proteins (National Science Teachers Association. 2001). â€Å"Proto-oncogenes that were originally identified as resident in transforming retroviruses are designated as c- indicative of the cellular origin as opposed to v- to signify original identification in retroviruses† (National Science Teachers Association. 2001). The classification listed below includes only those genes that have been highly characterized (National Science Teachers Association. 2001). Of particular interest is the ras family of proto-oncogenes. There are three homologs of this gene, H-ras, K-ras, and N-ras, and these have been detected in more human tumor types and at a higher frequency than any other oncogene (Anderson et al., 1992). They acquire transforming activity by a point mutation in their coding sequence. Invivo, activating point mutations have been observed in codons 12, 13, 61, 117, and 146 (Anderson et al., 1992).

Is Virginia Woolf a Feminist Writer Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Is Virginia Woolf a Feminist Writer - Essay Example Does this style predispose Virginia Woolf as a feminist writer because she was female and wrote about issues that were important to women? Is she still a feminist if her emotional dependence upon men was greater than her intellectual dependence? Or through current retrospect, do we see her as a champion of feminism because she overcame the prevailing male attitudes within her family and society to write about what she thought was essential? Critics offer the opinion that â€Å"†¦her life has come to stand for a great deal; it has become a heavily loaded symbol in the current dialogues over gender, class, madness, and marriage. The famously gifted, original, neurotic, courageous, difficult, and very imperfect human being she once was has disappeared†¦Ã¢â‚¬ .Virginia Woolf gained prominence during the first-wave of political feminism in the early 20th century, but the major focus of this effort revolved around suffrage. She has been portrayed as a feminist, but her writing supports idealist views that humans, in general, should be free to pursue activities that make them whole, regardless of the sexual orientation, gender, or culture. Eyal Amirane asserts that biology is not destiny, and the use of specific language is not synonymous with having a feminist philosophy, â€Å"Thus feminist analysis can take a textual form that is not bound to the body, though it is already (always) about the body†¦it takes place not on the writer's body but in the body of the text†¦Ã¢â‚¬ .... synonymous with having a feminist philosophy, "Thus feminist analysis can take a textual form that is not bound to the body, though it is already (always) about the bodyit takes place not on the writer's body but in the body of the text" (Amirane, np). A writer can be of either sex, since art is created in the mind first, and passed through the body of the artist. When Woolf tells us that, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is going to write", she intimates to us that there is no need to establish a political philosophy, just the need for privacy and economic support. (Lavender, np). Woolf did not embrace a specific political ideology and was ambiguous about suffrage, but still believed in being feminine, and her definition meant assurance by allowing " women the fundamental right to control their own lives and income" (Allen, np). In Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa wants to perform purposeful roles-wife, mother, lover, and hostess, with aplomb. The role created for her character is one of a strong feminine tradition. She is artificial and shallow, but tries to be everything to everyone. Her party is a tribute to the prestige of her husband and family's reputation. Her selfish attitude and demeanor exemplify the divisions in social class, the acceptable exclusions, and how snobbish women can be towards each other. Clarissa is a strong protagonist and she is stereotypical in her assertions and behavior. We are privy to the inner emotional workings of the characters, but within the context of this novel these are not special or unique (Crawford, np). This novel might be considered an example feminine writing, but not feminism. This work does not espouse a feminism point of view. The context is about everyday life and events, plain and ordinary, and

Oracle Database Concepts Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Oracle Database Concepts - Assignment Example In invoice table (2NF), item price and item description are dependent on item alone and is independent of the invoice information. Thus invoice table is further reduced to 3NF by moving the independent fields to another table named ITEM as shown below: Thus the final design has 3 tables: CUSTOMER, ITEM, and INVOICE. Customer and Item are related to INVOICE using customer id and item id respectively as foreign keys. The new tables (reduced to 3NF) are shown below: The initial design for storing invoice information had a single table. All the information was stored on the single table. This created a lot of redundancy in the database. For example, if a customer purchases three quantity of 5 items, then the information for the customer has to be repeated for all 15 (3 * 5) rows. This not only creates redundant data but also increases the database size. Further, if the customer information changes, then all the rows have to be updated. This might create a lot of update anomalies. Though this sort of anomalies can be avoided by updating all rows by using customer id in the WHERE clause, there are chances for the presence of huge records for each customer in the invoice table. This may result in heavy updates and lowers the overall efficiency and throughput. After reduction to 2NF, though the data redundancy and update anomaly is eliminated to some extent, it still exists for item information. The information for items like item description and item price is purely dependent on ITEM id and not on invoice. This may again create redundancy and update anomalies. Hence the item information is moved to a new table thereby storing each business entity in separate tables. Thus, the new design that is reduced to 3NF eliminates redundancy and update anomalies and increases the overall efficiency.

Ethical issues Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Ethical issues - Assignment Example On one hand, there is accountability, while there is confidentiality on the other. While the counsellor’s decision making on a case is limited by the premise of indirectly allowing positive decision making from a list of options availed to the client, it is not always easy. Counsellors are expected to induce positive thinking on the part of the client but when faced with stubborn hard-line stances by the clients, it becomes a presenting challenge in itself. The client’s HIV status, the fiancà ©Ã¢â‚¬â„¢s unawareness, the client’s unwillingness to disclose to the fiancà © and the short duration of time to the alleged wedding appear to be major diagnostic problems of the case. This case falls in the category of relationships which definitely require the involvement of both partners at one point of the therapy. Since the client does not want the fiancà © to be involved in the details of the case poses the confidentiality issue of ethics. Whereas the details of the case are required to be positively progressing, the client wants to be fixated and progressing at the same time. Intrusive counsellor input is required in the manner of streamlined options with deep influential implications to the client. In other words, the counsellor needs to be assertive in case the stubbornness does not tone down. The only hard part in achieving this is the short duration time to the wedding, an action which changes the details of the case to a fundamentally difficult level (Corey, 2008). The counsellor client relationship is built on trust, which would be compromised if the counsellor informed his fiancà © of the risks involved in marrying the client. It is equally important that the counsellor understands the details of the client’s level of intimacy with his fiancà ©, because if they have been having a sexual relationship without protection, it could change the direction of the case (Sommers and Sommers, 2004). The counsellor must obtain all formation on the client to such a level

Autism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words

Autism - Essay Example This paper approves that this theory alludes to the notion that autistic children fail to understand the thoughts and opinions of others. Moreover, they have difficulties in understanding other the attitudes and emotions of their parents and peers. This theory has been used to test typical children and those with mental retardation; its phenomenon seems to be distinctive for autistic children. The theory appears to be independent of intelligence. Interestingly, pre- primary children with autism have trouble understanding when others do not have an answer to their question. They are likely to get upset. These children do not realize that other people are different from them and this result to difficulties in communication and social interactions as earlier explained. Additionally, they may have difficulties understanding how to react in different situations and seem to be overly distracted at all time. This report makes a conclusion that parents or caregivers first spot symptoms of autism in the first three years of a child’s life. As earlier stated, autism is a broad-spectrum condition which means that exactly no two children will exhibit the same symptoms. In other words, autistic children have shortfalls in the following imaginative play, social awareness and verbal and non- verbal communication. The precise cause of autism is not known. Previous studies have revealed that children have a genetic inclination to autism, which means that they are predisposed to develop this condition passed on from their parents. There is ongoing research on the genes contributing to increased vulnerability. Other studies have revealed that autism develops in the uterus from an interference of early brain development. Event if there is no cure for the condition now, early detection and treatment allows for comparatively normal development of the child and reduces manifestation of undesirabl e behavior. Treatment entails special education, occupational therapy, occupational therapy, behavior modification, speech therapy and specific types of medication that manage some of the symptoms of the condition (Towel, 2013). On the other hand, medications cannot treat the basic symptoms of the condition although they can greatly manage seizures, depression, inability to focus and high energy levels. Identification of an autistic child Like all other diseases, autism has key symptoms. The signs and symptoms of the condition are diverse as it effects. Some pre- primary children may have difficult obstacles to overcome while some may present mild impairments. The bottom line is every autistic child has problems in the following areas. Thoughts and behaving flexibly, social interaction and verbal and non- verbal communication/ There are varying opinions among caregivers, health practitioners and parents on the causes and treatment of the disorder, and there is a lot that is not know n. Nevertheless, it can be agreed on that early identification and intervention makes a huge difference in an autistic child’s life (Towel, 2013). Once the child has any of these

Ethical issues Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Ethical issues - Assignment Example On one hand, there is accountability, while there is confidentiality on the other. While the counsellor’s decision making on a case is limited by the premise of indirectly allowing positive decision making from a list of options availed to the client, it is not always easy. Counsellors are expected to induce positive thinking on the part of the client but when faced with stubborn hard-line stances by the clients, it becomes a presenting challenge in itself. The client’s HIV status, the fiancà ©Ã¢â‚¬â„¢s unawareness, the client’s unwillingness to disclose to the fiancà © and the short duration of time to the alleged wedding appear to be major diagnostic problems of the case. This case falls in the category of relationships which definitely require the involvement of both partners at one point of the therapy. Since the client does not want the fiancà © to be involved in the details of the case poses the confidentiality issue of ethics. Whereas the details of the case are required to be positively progressing, the client wants to be fixated and progressing at the same time. Intrusive counsellor input is required in the manner of streamlined options with deep influential implications to the client. In other words, the counsellor needs to be assertive in case the stubbornness does not tone down. The only hard part in achieving this is the short duration time to the wedding, an action which changes the details of the case to a fundamentally difficult level (Corey, 2008). The counsellor client relationship is built on trust, which would be compromised if the counsellor informed his fiancà © of the risks involved in marrying the client. It is equally important that the counsellor understands the details of the client’s level of intimacy with his fiancà ©, because if they have been having a sexual relationship without protection, it could change the direction of the case (Sommers and Sommers, 2004). The counsellor must obtain all formation on the client to such a level

International Law and Terrorism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

International Law and Terrorism - Essay Example Terrorism in all its aspects is a criminal act under International Law. Art.51 says that "Nothing in the present charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security." Let us examine some cases which define the international Law standard for whether a particular use of force is self defense. American ship, The Caroline in a US port; because the Caroline had been used in American raids into Canadian territory. The British claimed the attack was a self defense. But the dispute was resolved in favor of Americans. This particular case had given a clear meaning to the term self defense under International Law as "there must be a necessity of self defense- instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means and no choice of means and no moment for deliberation." The means of self defense must involve nothing unreasonable or excessive: Since the act, justified by the necessity of self defense, must be limited by that necessity, and kept clearly within it. This has been accepted rule in International Law. This is some what called as "anticipatory Self defense". This c The representive of Nicaragua Vs The United states of America

Going Green To Save The Environment Essay Example for Free

Going Green To Save The Environment Essay The purpose of this essay is to enumerate and discuss several ways to save the environment through the principle of green living. Conservation is really an umbrella principle for all of green living. It really means using only what truly needs to be used in order to save something for coming generations (Green Living Ideas, 2007). Conserving energy by way of recycling is a crucial environmental benefit. As the natural energy sources become scarcer it is important to learn how to save energy. Making smaller, more fuel efficient cars can help conserve energy. Riding a bike instead of a car is much better since a bicycle doesn’t use gas. Making new houses that are well insulated also helps to save energy. According to Seventh Generation (2007), â€Å"Municipal Solid Waste (MSW), more commonly known as trash or garbage, consists of everyday items such as product packaging, grass clippings, furniture, clothing, bottles, food scraps, newspapers, appliances, paint, and batteries. This is commonly generated from peoples’ homes, but it also comes from commercial, institutional, and industrial sources. † One man’s trash is another man’s treasure is among the many adages being revived with fresh significance and recycling supports this idea. It has been in the American vocabulary for years now and in many households it is a way of life. Very simply, it finds new uses for old materials, mainly trash. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, recycling, including composting, diverted 72 million tons of material away from landfills and incinerators. Not only does this spare the environment, the EPA said a study found that recycling can create jobs as well. The consumer-oriented economical and environmental merits of reuse were easily recognized by our grandparents. And even today having a jar of salvaged nails, bolts, and screws can save several trips to the hardware store. Recycling paper products saves our trees and water resources as well! Making a ton of paper from materials that were recycled protects 17 trees from harm and consumes 50% less water, or 7,000 gallons (Quest4glory, 2004). But, while the philosophy of reuse is working its way into the business sector, the complexities of a global economy demand that the practical advantages and disadvantages of reuse be continually discussed and evaluated. However, industrialized nations are coming full-circle: governments are passing regulations, businesses are cutting costs, and consumers are reducing waste in the realization that applying the reuse philosophy in all areas will help to sustain our comfortable quality of life, enhance it for others, and maintain it for future generations. Furthermore, the most appealing reason to recycle is because of its ability to create a myriad of jobs, which can consequently improve the US economy. Recycling creates eight times the amount of jobs incinerator and landfill companies generate. Reuse, recycling, and waste reduction offer direct development opportunities for communities (Quest4glory, 2004). In conclusion, the benefits of recycling and conservation of energy cannot be overemphasized. Technology is making it easy to be green. Renewable energy can make your home more efficient. Efforts to clean up our air and water, preserve our non-renewable resources, and stop endangering plant and animal species, will ultimately lead to happier, healthier humankind living in partnership with the earth. Reference Green Living Ideas. (2007). Reuse. Retrieved on September 7, 2007 from http://greenlivingideas. com/reuse/reuse. html Quest4glory. (2004, July 5). Recycling: It’s time to clean up. Retrieved September 7, 2007 from http://www. echeat. com/essay. php? t=26204 Seventh Generation. (). Living Green: Reduce, reuse, recycle. Retrieved September 7, 2007 from http://www. seventhgeneration. com. /living_green/reduce_reuse_recycle. php

Influence of culture on fashion

Influence of culture on fashion â€Å"The more we learn about culture the greater our understanding of the future of global consumerism in Fashion.† Fashion industry is all about making fashion statements. The industry runs on the motto to be different, stylish, edgy as well as continuous changes in every season of every year. Fashion to customers is being different from the crowd or making a statement by using clothing and accessories that set them apart. Fashion industry is getting more expensive with passing time. In the United States, around 250 billion dollars is spent on fashion and accessories like bag, shoe, etc. (Anon., 2012) When fashion industry is concerned, culture is an integral part of it. Fashion and culture goes hand in hand. Our clothes are a source of non-verbal communication which send messages about who we are, where we come from, what we do and etc. Overall, fashion is a way of expressing ourselves through our clothing and accessories. People try to stay â€Å"in fashion† and they are mostly influenced by popular culture which is reflection of cultural forces as well as social factors. Global consumerism: Widespread use of the internet and communications are changing how and on what people spend their money. This phenomenon has led to emergence of the global citizens who participate in the global marketplace through multinational corporations offering brands which meet their ever changing needs. (Byrnes, 2007, p. 1) This combination of global culture and global connectivity can be defined as globalization. Globalization has created a market with no border and as a result culture is running free in this new era. Now a day, we can see Indian food in every city of the globe or people living in Western countries are wearing ethnic clothes. Consumption is an action that varies from culture to culture. (Byrnes, 2007, p. 2) The result of adopting consumption related values on a worldwide scale has been referred to as a ‘global consumer culture’. Global consumer culture is â€Å"shared sets of consumption-related symbols such as product categories, brands, and common consumption activities†. (Lee, 2006) Global fashion consumerism: The global fashion industry is growing and changing at an incredible rate. According to a study in 2010, Dubai was supposed to reach $655 billion in textile and apparel trade which is 6% of global exports. The data indicates how fashion is evolving in the era of globalization. UAE was the biggest market for Swiss watches in 2013 and had increased 23% year-on-year to $835 million. (Wyne, 2013) This data shows the shift it global fashion consumerism. Meaning, now the Middle East has started emerging as the fashion hub though New York and Paris are still considered as fashion cities of the world. This change has been possible because of UAE’s vast amount of disposable income and also the influence of western culture in the people’s mind. Cultural influence on fashion: It is important to know the influence of culture on fashion industry and to foresee cultural and social movements in order to comprehend the fashion environment. Fashion is not an isolated factor of clothing or accessories but it is connected to our life in every aspect and among them culture is the most significant. Fashion goes further than clothing and into the manner we desire to live our lives.Meaning, fashion influences our lifestyle. Fashion is influenced by cultural changes, such as modernization, art and even technological innovation. There is an apparent interaction of shifts in consumer lifestyle, fashion and culture.It is essential to realize that fashion is made by people living in different cultures and different locations. If we want to understand fashion and its trend then it is necessary to understand what surround us in terms of the way we live. It is our society and culture which is our surrounding and they are the ones which influence our lifestyle. Development of new fashions has mainly three sources in terms of culture. They are: High culture, low culture and pop culture. (Anon., 2010) 1. High culture means elite activities like visual art, auditory art, and applied art like photography, design and architecture. In terms of influencing fashion inspiration, these sources bring new types of ideas and concepts to the designers. How art impacts fashion can be seen in the Louis Vuitton partnership with quite a few contemporary artists, like Takeshi Murakami or Stephen Sprouse, who had embellished Louis Vuitton Monogram bags in the past. 2. Pop culture or popular culture, is a cultural segment, which is followed, appreciated and understood by a larger portion of the world audience. Usually it is highly influenced by movie or music celebrities. This type of culture is seen as a mercantile culture which is produced at a mass level for mass consumption.An example of how pop culture influences our lifestyle and our fashion can be seen by taking into account the most fashionable TV shows, like ‘Sex and the City’ and how everybody wanted to wear clothes like the central characters of the serial.With the progress of globalization, common trends of fashion are seen all around the globe (i.e. Levi’s jeans). 3. Low culture includes local street activities like graffiti or Hip Hop. The power of subculture to fashion can be seen clearly skateboard culture from the 70s to present day.It can be difficult to distinguish certain styles as subcultures because they are quickly (predominantly clothing and music) adopted by mass culture. For example, the Japanese Harajuko girls, who are teenagers, originally from Tokyo’s Harajuko district, who dress in a particular way. American singer Gwen Stefani named her 2005 world tour as well as her clothing line after these girls.In this way, a subculture or local culture has become a part of the global fashion and has been adopted by the global fashion market. (Anon., 2010) Macro and micro trends in fashion: Macro trends are drivers for 5-10 years whereas micro trends are drivers for 1-3 years. (Sheppard, 2014) Like most industries fashion industry is also shaped by macro and micro trends. Macro trend is a larger behavioral group and a micro trend is the mini fashion craze. Currently the micro trend is undoubtedly the skinny jeans, which is closely followed by leggings and footless tights. But a larger macro-trend for a while in the fashion has been ethical and environment friendly clothing and accessories. Trends come and go because of the impact of media in our lives. The hit US TV drama Mad Men, which is set in the early 1960s, has had a big influence on high street fashion. Actress Christina Hendricks has helped to bring back full skirts, longer hemlines, and cropped cardigans as well as almost single-handedly brought back the curvy fit in the fashion market. The micro trends are also changing because of the internet.(Anon., n.d.) Culture is made of factors like society, education, values, and norms and so on. Since, fashion deals with how we look and what we wear; it is largely influenced and controlled by culture. In the past, fashion was segmented and local culture influenced but with the emergence of globalization we are turning towards a more global fashion consumerism. This is why brands like Chanel, Burberry are seen in India, Thailand, and Dubai and so on. To understand the future of global fashion consumerism, we need to understand how people interpret fashion these days and whether they are influenced more by their own culture or popular culture. Though in countries like India, local culture plays a bigger influence on consumerism but still common people are seen wearing trendy clothes matching current global fashion. This shows the cultural difference among the people in the country. Thus, understanding the culture is very important for global fashion consumerism. Bibliography Anon., 2010. Cultural influences on trend forecasting. [Online] Available at: http://www.intothefashion.com/2010/01/cultural-influences-on-trend.html [Accessed 22 February 2015]. Anon., 2012. Fashion and Consumerism. [Online] Available at: http://fashionormassconsumerism.blogspot.com/ [Accessed 21 February 2015]. Anon., n.d. BUDGET STYLE TIPS: FASHION CYCLES. [Online] Available at: http://www.bargainshopper.com.au/Fashion-cycles [Accessed 22 February 2015]. Byrnes, K., 2007. The Sharing of Culture: Global Consumerism. UW-L Journal of Undergraduate Research. ght.com/tools/porters-five-forces.html Lee, J.-W., 2006. Young consumers peceptions of multinational firms and they acculturation channels towards western products in transition economies. International Journal of Emerging Markets. Sheppard, S., 2014. FORECASTING THE FUTURE. [Online] Available at: http://global-influences.com/interview/forecasting-the-future/ [Accessed 22 February 2015]. Wyne, H., 2013. Consumerism, affluence fan UAEs fashion flames. [Online] Available at: https://www.zawya.com/story/UAE_puts_shine_on_fashion-ZAWYA20131013094850/ [Accessed 21 February 2015].

At Cooloola Essay -- English Literature Essays

At Cooloola At Cooloola is a lyrical poem written by a well recognized Australian poet, Judith Wright. This poem creatively describes a beautiful scene of nature. The poet uses highly descriptive language and a diverse range of poetic devices to engage the reader into imagining a picture of how peaceful and serene this exquisite the scenery is down by Lake Cooloola. Underlying the subject matter is the implied theme that the lake is under threat from â€Å"conquering people† who will not protect its â€Å"white shores of sand, plumreed and paperbark†. This poem reflects Judith Wright’s concern for our special and unique flora and fauna, how fortunate we are to have stunning scenery, how easily mankind can destroy it, and our need to appreciate it. This poem portrays the unfortunate incident that occurred at Lake Cooloola due to white settlement. This tragic poem captures the essence of the peaceful partnership the wildlife shares with the land. â€Å"Walking on clean sand among prints of bird and animal† This illustrates the tranquil scene before the massacre of the Aboriginal people took place. â€Å"The invader’s feet will tangle in nets there and his blood be thinned by fears† This quote from the poem found in stanza three describes how after many years of the invasion, white people started to feel sorry and remorseful for the impact which white settlement had on Aborigines. This relates to Judith Wright’s concern for the Aboriginal people and the land which human settl...

The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner Chapters 11

That didn't make sense to me. Didn't the secrecy protect her more than it protected any of us? Riley hurried on before we had too long to examine his statement. â€Å"Of course, it doesn't matter now that they've decided to move on Seattle. We wil surprise them on their way in, and we wil annihilate them.† He whistled a single low note through his teeth. â€Å"Done. And then not only is the city al ours, other covens wil know not to mess with us. We won't have to be so careful to cover our tracks anymore. As much blood as you want, for everyone. Hunting every night. We'l move right into the city, and we will rule it.† The growls and snarls were like applause. Everyone was with him. Except for me. I didn't move, didn't make a sound. Neither did Fred, but who knows why that was? I was not with Riley because his promises sounded like lies. Or else my whole line of logic had been wrong. Riley said it was only these enemies that kept us from hunting without caution or restraint. But that didn't go along with the fact that al other vampires must have been discreet, or humans would have known about them long ago. I couldn't concentrate to work it out, because the door at the top of the stairs had not moved. Diego†¦ â€Å"We have to do this together, though. Today I'm going to lead you through some techniques. Fighting techniques. There's more to this than just scuffling around on the floor like toddlers. When it gets dark, we'l go outside and practice. I want you to practice hard, but keep your focus. I am not losing another member of this coven! We al need each other – every one of us. I wil not tolerate any more stupidity. If you think you don't have to listen to me, you are wrong.† He paused for a short second, the muscles in his face shifting into a new arrangement. â€Å"And you wil learn how wrong you are when I take you to her† – I shuddered and felt the tremor through the room as everyone else did, too – â€Å"and hold you while she tears off your legs and then slowly, slowly burns off your fingers, ears, lips, tongue, and every other superfluous appendage one by one.† We'd al lost a limb, at least, and we'd al burned when we became vampires, so we could easily imagine how that would feel, but it wasn't the threat itself that was so terrifying. The truly scary thing was Riley's face as he said it. His face was not twisted in rage, the way it usual y was when he was angry; it was calm and cold, smooth and beautiful, his mouth curled at the edges into a smal smile. I suddenly had the impression that this was a new Riley. Something had changed him, hardened him, but I couldn't imagine what could have happened in one night to create that cruel, perfect smile. I looked away, shivering a little, and saw as Raoul's smile shifted to echo Riley's. I could almost see the gears turning in Raoul's head. He wouldn't kil his victims so quickly in the future. â€Å"Now, let's get some teams figured out so that we can work in groups,† Riley said, his face normal again. â€Å"Kristie, Raoul, get your kids together and then divvy up the rest evenly. No fighting! Show me you can do this rational y. Prove yourselves.† He walked away from those two, ignoring the fact that they fel almost immediately into bickering, and made an arc around the outside edge of the room. He touched a few vampires on the shoulder as he passed, nudging them toward one of the new leaders or the other. I didn't realize at first that he was heading in my direction, because he took such a wide way around. â€Å"Bree,† he said, squinting toward where I stood. It looked like this took some effort. I felt like a block of ice. He must have smel ed my trail. I was dead. â€Å"Bree?† he said, softer now. His voice reminded me of the first time he'd talked to me. When he was nice to me. And then even lower, â€Å"I promised Diego I'd give you a message. He said to tel you it was a ninja thing. Does that make any sense to you?† He stil couldn't look at me, but he was edging closer. â€Å"Diego?† I murmured. I couldn't help myself. Riley smiled a tiny bit. â€Å"Can we talk?† He jerked his head toward the door. â€Å"I double-checked al the windows. The first floor is total y dark and safe.† I knew I wouldn't be as safe once I walked away from Fred, but I had to hear what Diego had wanted to tel me. What had happened? I should have stayed with him to meet Riley. I fol owed Riley through the room, keeping my head down. He gave Raoul a few instructions, nodded to Kristie, and then went up the stairs. From the corners of my eyes I saw a few people curiously watch the direction he was going. Riley passed through the door first, and the kitchen of the home was, as he'd promised, total y black. He motioned for me to keep fol owing and led me through a dark hal past a few open bedroom doors, then through another door with a dead bolt. We ended up in the garage. â€Å"You're brave,† he commented in a very low voice. â€Å"Or real y trusting. I thought it would be more work to get you upstairs with the sun up.† Whoops. I should have been more skittish. Too late now. I shrugged. â€Å"So you and Diego are pretty tight, right?† he asked, just breathing the words. Probably, if everyone were silent in the basement, they would stil be able to hear him, but it was pretty noisy down there right now. I shrugged again. â€Å"He saved my life,† I whispered. Riley lifted his chin, almost but not quite a nod, and appraised. Did he believe me? Did he think I stil feared the day? â€Å"He's the best,† Riley said. â€Å"The smartest kid I've got.† I nodded once. â€Å"We had a little meeting about the situation. We agreed that we need some surveil ance. Going in blind is too dangerous. He's the only one I trust to scout ahead.† He exhaled, almost angrily. â€Å"Wish I had two of him! Raoul's got too short a fuse and Kristie is too self-absorbed to get the big picture, but they're the best I've got, and I'l have to make do. Diego said you were smart, too.† I waited, not sure how much of our story Riley knew. â€Å"I need your help with Fred. Wow, that kid is strong! I couldn't even look at him tonight.† I nodded cautiously again. â€Å"Imagine if our enemies can't even look at us. It wil be so easy!† I didn't think Fred would like that idea, but maybe I was wrong. He didn't seem like he cared anything for this coven of ours. Would he want to save us? I didn't respond to Riley. â€Å"You spend a lot of time with him.† I shrugged. â€Å"Nobody bothers me there. It's not easy.† Riley pursed his lips and nodded. â€Å"Smart, like Diego said.† â€Å"Where is Diego?† I shouldn't have asked. The words just ripped out of their own accord. I waited anxiously, trying to look indifferent and most likely failing. â€Å"We don't have time to waste. I sent him south the second I found out what was coming. If our enemies decide to attack early, we need the advance warning. Diego wil meet up with us when we move against them.† I tried to imagine where Diego was now. I wished I were there with him. Maybe I could talk him out of doing Riley's bidding and putting himself in the line of fire in the process. But maybe not. It seemed like Diego was thick with Riley, just like I'd worried. â€Å"Diego wanted me to tel you something.† My eyes snapped to his face. Too fast, too eager. Blew it again. â€Å"Sounded like nonsense to me. He said, Tel Bree I've got the handshake figured out. I'l show her in four days, when we meet up.' I have no idea what that means. Do you?† I tried to force a poker face. â€Å"Maybe. He did say something about needing a secret handshake. For his underwater cave. Some kind of password. He was just kidding around, though. I'm not sure what he means now.† Riley chuckled. â€Å"Poor Diego.† â€Å"What?† â€Å"I think that kid likes you a lot more than you like him.† â€Å"Oh.† I looked away, confused. Was Diego giving me this message as a way to let me know I could trust Riley? But he hadn't told Riley I knew about the sun. Stil, he must have trusted Riley to tel him so much, to show Riley that he cared about me. I thought it would be wiser to keep my mouth shut, though. Too much had changed. â€Å"Don't write him off yet, Bree. He's the best, like I said. Give him a chance.† Riley was giving me romantic advice? This could not get weirder. I bobbed my head once and muttered, â€Å"Sure.† â€Å"See if you can talk to Fred. Make sure he's on board.† I shrugged. â€Å"I'l do what I can.† Riley smiled. â€Å"Great. I'l pul you aside before we leave, and you can tel me how it went. I'l keep it casual, not like tonight. I don't want him to feel like I'm spying on him.† â€Å"Okay.† Riley motioned for me to fol ow and then headed back to the basement. The training lasted al day, but I wasn't part of it. After Riley went back to his team leaders, I took my spot beside Fred. The others had been divided up into four groups of four, with Raoul and Kristie directing them. No one had picked Fred for a side, or maybe he'd ignored them, or maybe they couldn't even see that he was there. I could stil see him. He stood out – the only one not participating, a big blond elephant in the room. I had no desire to insinuate myself into either Raoul's team or Kristie's, so I just watched. No one seemed to notice that I was sitting out with Fred. Though we must have been somewhat invisible, thanks to talented Fred, I felt horribly obvious. I wished I were invisible to myself – that I could see the il usion so that I could trust it. But no one noticed us, and after a while I could almost relax. I watched the practicing closely. I wanted to know everything, just in case. I wasn't planning on fighting; I was planning on finding Diego and making a break for it. But what if Diego wanted to fight? Or what if we had to fight to get away from the rest? Better to pay attention. Only once did anyone ask about Diego. It was Kevin, but I had a sense that Raoul had put him up to it. â€Å"So, did Diego end up getting fried after al ?† Kevin asked in a forced joking tone. â€Å"Diego's with her,† Riley said, and no one had to ask who he meant. â€Å"Surveil ance.† A few people shuddered. No one said anything more about Diego. Was he real y with her? I cringed at the thought. Maybe Riley was just saying that to keep people from questioning him. He probably didn't want Raoul getting jealous and feeling second best when Riley needed him at his most arrogant today. I couldn't be sure, and I wasn't going to ask. I kept quiet, as usual, and watched the training. In the end, watching was boring, thirsty work. Riley didn't give his army a break for three days and two nights straight. During the daytime it was harder to stay out of the mix – we al were crammed so tightly into the basement. It made things easier in one way for Riley – he could usual y catch a fight before it got ugly. Outside at night, they had more room to real y work around each other, but Riley was kept busy darting back and forth to catch limbs and get them back to their owners quickly. He kept his temper wel, and he'd been smart enough to find al the lighters this time. I would have bet that this would spin out of control, that we'd lose at least a couple of coven members with Raoul and Kristie skirmishing head to head for days on end. But Riley had better control of them than I had thought possible. Stil, it was mostly repetition. I noticed Riley saying the same things over and over and over again. Work together, watch your back, don't go at her head-on; work together, watch your back, don't go at him head-on; work together, watch your back, don't go at her head-on. It was kind of ridiculous, real y, and made the group seem exceptional y stupid. But I was sure I would have been just as stupid if I'd been in the thick of the fight with them rather than watching calmly from the sidelines with Fred. It reminded me in a way of how Riley had dril ed into us our fear of the sun. Constant repetition. Stil, it was so dul that after about ten hours that first day, Fred produced a deck of cards and started playing solitaire. That was more interesting than watching the same mistakes over and over again, so I mostly watched him. After about another twelve hours – we were inside again – I nudged Fred to point out a red five that he could move over. He nodded and made the change. After that hand, he dealt out the cards to both of us, and we played rummy. We never spoke, but Fred smiled a few times. No one ever looked our way or asked us to join in. There were no hunting breaks, and as time went on, this got harder and harder to ignore. Fights broke out more regularly and with less provocation. Riley's commands got more shril, and he tore off two arms himself. I tried to forget the burning thirst as much as possible – after al, Riley must have been getting thirsty, too, so this couldn't last forever – but mostly thirst was the only thing on my mind. Fred was looking pretty strained. Early into the third night – one more day to go, and when I thought about the ticking clock it tied my empty stomach into knots – Riley cal ed al the mock fights to a halt. â€Å"Round it up, kids,† he told us, and everyone moved into a loose half-circle facing him. The original gangs al stood close together, so the practicing hadn't changed any of those al iances. Fred put the cards in his back pocket and stood up. I stood close to his side, counting on his repulsive aura to hide me. â€Å"You've done wel ,† Riley told us. â€Å"Tonight, you get a reward. Drink up, because tomorrow you're going to want your strength. â€Å" Snarls of relief from almost everyone. â€Å"I say want and not need for a reason,† Riley went on. â€Å"I think you guys have got this. You've stayed smart and worked hard. Our enemies aren't going to know what's hit them!† Kristie and Raoul growled, and both of their companies fol owed suit immediately. I was surprised to see it, but they did look like an army in that moment. Not that they were marching in formation or anything, but there was just something uniform about the response. Like they al were part of one big organism. As always, Fred and I were the glaring exceptions, but I thought only Riley was even the slightest bit aware of us – every now and then his eyes would scan across where we were standing, almost like he was checking to make sure he stil felt Fred's talent. And Riley didn't seem to mind that we weren't joining up. For now, anyway. â€Å"Um, you mean tomorrow night, right, boss?† Raoul clarified. â€Å"Right,† Riley said with a strange little smile. It didn't seem like anyone else noticed anything off in his reply – except for Fred. He looked down at me with one eyebrow raised. I shrugged. â€Å"You ready for your reward?† Riley asked. His little army roared in response.