Monday, September 30, 2019

Groups Act

The signs and symptoms which people can recognize physical abuse is series of unexplained falls or major injuries. Injuries and bruises at different stages of leaning On adults' body such as having bruising in unusual sites- inner arms, thighs. Seeing fingerprints, abrasions on the head or face deliberately several times. When someone in shy, insecure but didn't used to be but may be a sign of physical abuse. Neglect- Neglect is one of the most common abuses.It is when person failures to provide necessary care, assistance, guidance or attention to the helpless, defenseless adult that can cause or is reasonable likely to cause the person physical, mental and emotional harm or substantial damage and or loss of assets. Financial abuse- This is when a person involves stealing money of people, not allowing a victim to take part in any financial decisions, preventing the victim from having a job. The form of abuse tends to happen in relationships. Sexual abuse: This abuse can range from ra pe to inappropriate touching of the body.Happens when someone is forcing someone to do something sexual that they may not want to engage in but are forced to otherwise there will be consequences. Emotional or psychological abuse: Often happens when a person who is being abused may also be threatened n order to keep them silent as if there not they could tell others and be found out. The victim may be told it's ‘our little secret' or that they will lose their accommodation if they tell anyone what has happened as it is often not a good thing happening to them.Victims often have continuous put-downs and name-calling in front of others, which often causes humiliation and loss of self-respect and pride in themselves as they often start to believe them. Such actions can lead to horrible things happening such as mental health; self harm, suicide. (UP) explain factors that may lead to abusive situations There are a range of factors that could lead to abusive situations. People who ar e abused are people who have something different about them to other people as some people may not view this as normal.Most commonly this could be something like skin color or where you are from, there culture or religion but really anyone who is different from what is seen as ‘normal'. A physical or mental disability or health problems can make someone vulnerable as they may think its k to happen to them. For example a person with a mental disability may not be capable of making responsible decisions or themselves and may make things easier to be abused in some way.Elderly people are vulnerable to from being fraud form people who want money and are often the targets Of telemarketing scams and other crimes. Young people and children can be easily lead with social media etc, a child could meet a ‘friend' online and not realist that they are really a bad person such as a photocopied posing as a child and go to meet this ‘friend' and get sexually abused in that way. B ullying is when someone keeps doing or saying things to have power over another person.Some of the ways they bully other people are by: calling them names, saying or writing nasty things about them, leaving them out of activities, not talking to them, threatening them, making them feel uncomfortable or scared, taking or damaging their things, hitting or kicking them, or making them do things they don ‘t want to do. People who are a different culture, color, background, religion etc can be discriminated against them, this can often lead to bullying and psychologically abuse the victim by insulting, tormenting, excluding them because of there well being.This can lead the victim to self-abuse or it can end up with the abuser hectically abusing them to gain more power over them and feel bigger and better than them by hitting, slapping and beating their victims. Another thing about abuse is gender, gender is also a factor that could lead to abuse. Typically women are seen to be the weaker sex and can generally be overpowered by a man meaning they are vulnerable and a bigger target for abuse. Sexual Abuse in any age is when a person has sexual contact between an adult or older teen and a child.This type behavior, is often wrong but is used to gain power over the child, person etc. There are many types of sexual buses, some include physical contact or touching offenses. MI) assess the likely immediate effects of two different forms of abuse on the health and well-being of adults Effects of sexual abuse: If an adult is still in a relationship with someone and are being sexually abuse by someone else may then cause friction between them as they may not believe what's happening.They may also find it difficult watching sexual scenes on the television or in movies and may freak out at this because of what happened and may not know how to explain it. A woman may also feel signal pain due to forced sexual intercourse, this could last for quite a while and can be very uncomfortable for the woman as they may not want to face up to what's happened. For a man being abused outside a relationship they might find erections problems.When being touched they might feel guilt, fear, anger, disgust or other negative feelings as they may feel that its going to happen again. .Ã'Å¡Ã'Å¡Effects of Bullying: CLC The experience of being bullied can end up causing lasting damage to victims. And this isn't often seen on the outside but inside the person. The person isn't have to be physical abused but even Words and gestures are quite enough to have a long lasting effect. People often will start to view themselves as a less than desirable, incapable individual.The first things also is that it becomes more likely that a person will become increasingly susceptible to becoming depressed and/or angry and/or bitter. Being bullied teaches you that you are undesirable, that you are not safe in the world, and (that you are relatively powerless to defend yourself because peo ple may start to believe it. DEL]Some people who are being or have been bullied may tart to self-harm and may have suicidal thoughts and feelings because of how it makes them feel.The person may be so fed up with the bullying and feel so worthless that they do not see the point in living anymore. Self- harming may be away of the person releasing their anger and pain. In the long-term they may find it difficult interacting with other people in the fear of something hurtful being said to them and will find it difficult trusting other people as previous people haven't trusted them. They may also have an increased tendency of wanting to be alone as they may feel that they are at sees risk of being bullied by others around them.UP) outline key legislation and regulations which govern safeguarding adult work The Disability Discrimination Act- 1995 but was later updated in 2005- This act tired to aim to put an end to disability discrimination which is aimed at the disabled in any different situations they may face in every day life and defined what disability may be- physical and mental The Mental Capacity Act 2005- The main aim of this act is to try and give help and empowerment to the vulnerable people who are unable to make any decisions by themselves thou people helping them for many reasons such as they may be suffering from a mental illness.Within the act it states who is able to make the decisions for them and it also allows people to people to plan ahead if one day in the future they would lose the mental capacity to make decisions for themselves. The people who are able to make their decisions on their behalf are family, doctors and social workers.CLIP C]The Human Rights Act- This Act applies to everyone and the law requires everyone to be able to have each Of the different rights within the act some are; the right to life, the redeem from slavery and forced labor, the right to a fair trial, the right to respect for private and family life, the freedom to ex press yourself, the right not to be discriminated against in respected of these rights and freedoms, the right to vote when over a certain age, the right to have an education and to be able to challenge public bodies over discrimination.The Health and Social Care Act 2008- This act aims to make the public health and social care system better by providing mesas re's that will try shrinking the amount of diseases that gets bread around and control it if there is an out break of disease Download this essay Print Save L]Safe Guarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006- C]This act was set up for people who work with children/ young people and also come into care with vulnerable individuals that need to be registered so they can have the care they require.DC The independent safeguarding authority to be able for deciding who shouldn't be allowed to be working with people that are vulnerable. Act applies to employed people and volunteers Candy there are lists to be taken out for those working with hillier and adults and checks must take place before an individual can work with the vulnerable as they may make them worse. AS: Outline working strategies and procedures used in Health and Social Care to reduce the risk of abuse.Recruitment of staff-Adults Barred List: This lists aimed at people who are banned from working with vulnerable adults for a number of reasons but the list is there to protect them. It then subdivides them into two categories- those who are automatically barred because they offer a ‘risk of threat' to the adults and those who offer a ‘very rabble risk of harm' and shouldn't be allowed near them. Employers and providers of services must check a person's status before employing them.This can be done by doing a CAR check of the person and making sure they provide the correct information about them. Organizational policies: This is Guidelines that are able to provide the basis on which organizations can develop their own policies to sort the type of company and people they are working with. It is important that the local and regional frameworks within the policies, strategies and procedures can be developed between agencies, so the protection of vulnerable adults is the best that it can be.Codes of practice for nursing and social: Professional codes for any types of practice require professionals to work to high standards in order for things to work the best that they can, and to be able to respect people using services as individuals and minimize the risk to them and harm that could promotional happen. The Nursing and Midwifery Council and the British Association of Social Workers produce such codes for their members, as does the regulatory body-the General Social Care Council.

Sunday, September 29, 2019

Jack Davis ( No Sugar Essay)

NO SUGAR (JACK DAVIS) Jack Davis’ â€Å"No Sugar†, written in 1985, is a play that highlights Australian racism and cultural destruction caused by British colonialism. It is set in 1929 (Great Depression) in Northam, Western Australia. The play explores the impacts of the European social and political philosophy of the early 20th century on Aboriginal society. The focal points of this play are the superiority of white people, racism, and the bond between Aboriginal families. These themes highlight Australian culture, and have shaped it into its many different forms for all Australian’s today.Jack Davis has used dialogue between the characters in this extract to privilege a postcolonial reading of the text. Davis uses dialogue in order to construct a world in which the aboriginal people can be identified to the audience as an ill-treated, oppressed race. Davis uses dialogue to represent how the colonized react to the social situations in which they were subjugated to, on a regular basis in the early times of colonization. â€Å"CISSIE: Aw mum, Old Tony the ding always sells us little shriveled ones and them wetjala kids big fat one. Through this dialogue the audience identifies that society at the time did not allow the colonized to be classed as the same standard as the colonizer. Davis lends this text to a postcolonial reading through the use of characterization. The use of characterization in the play reinforces the idea that the characters amplify a sort of submission to English culture displays to the audience the effect of colonization. Although the characters retain many of their aboriginal attributes, such as living off the land â€Å"Come on, let’s get these rabbits. They have allowed themselves and their culture to be colonized by accepting many of the British attributes such as playing cricket â€Å"DAVID and CISSIE play cricket with a home-made bat and ball. † The aboriginal people have allowed themselves to colon ized acquiring British aspects, which coincide with their aboriginal heritage. Through this extract the characters also begin to read the paper, the combination of the children playing cricket and the elder reading the paper appears from an outside point perspective a very British activity. Looking at the context, which surrounds the writing of the play, can also support a postcolonial reading.Another device used by Davis is stage directions principally used to invoke or create a rising dramatic tension, an example of this is â€Å"He nicks his finger with the axe and watches the blood drip to the ground. † This is symbolic of the Aboriginals manifesting frustration; they are inflicting pain on themselves because they know it isn’t possible to inflict pain on their conquerors. Jimmy’s character represents the rebellion of any marginalized race; he pushes the boundaries as far as he can. The fact that Aboriginals are â€Å"dancing† for the white Australian s shows their power.This dancing is a form of service provided by the Aboriginals, they are expressing their culture but to the people who have destroyed it. It could almost be read as a child trying to get an adults attention by jumping around and holding out what they want. To Jimmy these dancing Aboriginals are jumping around and showing the White Australians that they want their culture back. This reach out to white settlers shows how much more dominate they are and their culture is. Through the use of dramatic conventions Jack Davis’ play No Sugar can be read as a postcolonial criticism.It presents a number of issues with colonization and the particular effects it had on the Australian Aboriginal people. First performed in 1985, the play deals with the struggles of the aboriginal people and oppression in which they endured by white Australian society. The play was set in 1929, a time when aboriginal people were not yet accepted as equals in society. The main ideas presen ted in the play are shown through the dialogue, characters and context. This extract uses techniques to set the basis for the idea’s that will be expressed throughout the entire play.

Friday, September 27, 2019

Controlling Global Warming Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Controlling Global Warming - Essay Example By implementing a set of clean energy initiatives at federal state and local levels, the US could reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by about 20 percent. The following are a few steps that could help towards controlling climate change. First create opportunities to lower emissions in many ways possible. Over the past decade, large resources have been channeled towards creating inclusive climate and energy laws at federal level. These legislatives will for good reason be crucial to generate emission reduction required to keep the US and other countries across the globe on track to curb the effects of climate change. However there are several extra opportunities to reduce emission using current federal laws and the chances presented by action at local and state levels. Certainly, time and again grand policy action by local and state governments has led to a precedent for great action at federal level, Murray & Burnett. (2009). Furthermore, as explained below local and state awareness campaigns can include citizens in means that the federal laws cannot achieve. Within appraise conditions these policies cannot offer real emission decline . Another strategy to control imminent global warming is to bring together the environmental community and new partners; forming partnerships with individuals who might not portray themselves as environmental specialist. There main concern might not be climate change. In reality it means concentrating on awareness campaigns for clean energy use and creation of sustainable economies and communities. There is no prospect in this approach for policies that create extreme environmental damage. Whether in terms of hazardous nuclear energy, mountaintop removal coal extraction and badly managed hydraulic fracturing for innate gas. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, (2010) energy

Research survey Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Research survey - Coursework Example There are very many cyber crime that can be commited using the computer or with the aid of a computer. The most appropriate way to look at it in detail is identifying them by the types and level of cyber attacks.Cyber attacks are a deliberate or unintentional unauthorized task, which cannot be avoided or is in avoidable that that is capable of causing a vagary on the cyberspace resources. The scope of cyber attack is expands from hardware, software, data that is stored, data in transit, people, documents and other hardware needed like printer cartridges. Scope of the problem The different types of attack that amount to cyber crime and are detriment to cyber security are keylogging and spyware. This is a malware that is built to illegally obtain, track and block the right of a user to get access to the system. An example of this attack is where someone or an individual tries to log on to the system or a website like an email account but the system or the site fails to authenticate the user. To prevent this system administrators should establish a mechanism where if the user complaints of such issue the system should prompt the user by asking some questions relating to the account. The second attack is backdoor or command/control. These are weapons that give remote access that are created to divert the functionality of the system. The other attack is SQL injection. This is a unique attack that targets the web pages of the system application. It cuts down the communication between the database and the system application interface. This attack is common in organization where system implementation is taking place. An example is a situation where an attacker alters the name of the database and hence disconnects it from the user interface. The best measure that can be used to curb this is by limiting the number of the people who has the right to manipulate the database activates and also the punishment that individual that uses a computer to physically hurt another pe rson or tries to commit a felony with an aid of a computer is made severe. There was also a provision of extensive security to media group that gave hand to the police while carrying out the investigation while the vulnerable attacks that were frequent were blacklisted so that more security concern were availed in those areas (Middleton, 2005). Another attack that is very rampant is abuse of system access rights. This kind of attack is mostly executed by the employees in a company in and intention of vengeance or sabotage. Detecting such issue is cumbersome since the intrusion will be taking place internally and hence task tracking may be a challenge. The employees use his or her right to access the system to make alteration and modification of data with the intension of financial gains for example in an employee in the IT department of a water providing company can reduce the consumption figures of some specific accounts then liaise with the holders of those accounts for payment. T o combat all frauds that are related to inappropriate billing, the people that are authorized to enter the company’s data concerning the customers must exercise the professional ethics to the fullest. Individual that are given this assignment must have the appropriate integrity basing on the previous records. A body that vets such individual should be established. Such a body should be external and should randomly do the auditing to ensure that the way the

Thursday, September 26, 2019

Nursing - Health Promotion Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Nursing - Health Promotion - Essay Example Theories and Models of Health Promotion There are a number of fundamental theories and models associated with health promotion. It is essential to differentiate between theories and models. Theories are an integrated set of proposed ideas that serve as an explanation for a phenomenon. Models are a sub-class of a theory. They provide a plan for investigation, and or addressing an event (Robinson & Hill, 1999). Below is a summary of the main theories and models utilized in health promotion: 1. The theories and models that attempt to expound health behaviour change and health behaviour by focusing on an individual. Examples include: †¢ Health belief model †¢ Theory of reasoned action †¢ Stages of change model †¢ Social learning theory 2. Theories and models that attempt to explain changes in communities and community actions for health. Examples include: †¢ Community mobilization; social planning, social action and community development †¢ Diffusion of inno vation 3. Models that attempt to explain the changes in organisations and the creation of health-supportive organisational practices such as theories of organisational change (Freire, 2002). Health Promotion Policy Documents There widely known policy documents on health promotion are the Ottawa Charter and the Jakarta Declaration. The Ottawa Charter outlines three basic tactics for health promotion. These are enabling all people to attain their full health potential; mediating between the various interests in society in the chase of health. The Jakarta Declaration identifies five health priorities. These are; promotion of social responsibilities for health, expanding partnerships for health promotion, increasing investments for health development, increasing community capacity and empowering individuals, and securing infrastructure for health promotion (Wallace & Appleton, 2011). Mental Health Promotion as an Aspect of Health Promotion Mental health promotion is vital for modern hea lthcare. Mental health nurses are a vital part of efficient and effective mental health services. In the past few years, they have participated in an absolutely crucial role in the transformation of mental health services. One of the most crucial aspects in health promotion is mental health promotion. Mental health nurses should focus on the broader needs of patients, applying their expertise to improve physical fitness through better health promotion activities and assessment, and by providing sufficient psychological therapy. Inpatient care delivery should be improved by extending the time mental health nurses spend in direct clinical contact with patients and minimising the time spent on administrative roles. Career structures for mental health nurses should be reviewed according to current needs and a wide range of new nursing roles developed and sustained. Mental health nurses should promote social inclusion for carers and their service users. Recruitment and retention of menta l health nurses should be improved through presenting positive messages on health to the media, linking colleges and schools and other initiatives. Case Study Michael is a 30-year-old man who lives alone in a bungalow in the outskirts of a city. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was

Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Critical review on norther canada Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Critical review on norther canada - Essay Example He is one of the most qualified and eminent scientists of fresh water today. Professor John P. Smol is a professor in the Department of Biology and also chairs Environmental Change at Queen’s University. He has rested his entire career to the study of environment and problems related. His work has been widely used in acid-rain debates and in studies related to global environmental change. He has written more than 230 publications and will soon publish his thirteenth book related to environmental issues. In the last ten years he has been awarded 18 medals, fellowships and various prizes for his phenomenal contribution. The article throws light on the impact of climate warming on the Arctic over the North America, Eurasian Arcitic and other polar regions. The authors stress that Arctic is high latitude system which has come under threat due to warm climate and human-caused environmental activities. The paper seeks to refute claims and the widely believed perception that Arctic l akes, ponds and rivers are immune from the impact of activities undertaken by humans. It is explained how changing albeta and cold water biota make them sensitive to climate changes and green house warming only accelerates the process. They suspect Arctic Aquatic fauna to comprise of a high concentration of contaminants due to changes in its lakes and rivers over the years. The purpose of the paper is to point out the gravity of impact of human activities on the Arctic and it is way more than most environmental mangers predict. The authors cite Sprague’s (2006) work â€Å"Great wet north? Canada's myth of water abundance† in pointing out that the flowery stories planted by Canadian media and politicians over abundance of water in the region are a fluke. Sprague’s work is correctly quoted to correct the false impressions people have about the country’s water resources. The biggest strength of this paper is the consistency of the work. The authors of the pa per do not digress. This assertion is repeated again with a plausible concern in the end when Krummel’s (2003) work is cited to explain why in high latitude regions politicians tend to ignore environmental problem. It is well illustrated with a lot of pictures and graphs. The article is well supported with a lot of correctly cited statistical references. For instance, the authors point out Brunskill’s hydrological figures when stating that most lakes in the north have less than one percent of their water replaced every year. However, there are places, where the authors could have gotten into more insight for instance they assert that high exposure to ultra-violet rays can inflict a lot of harm to the DNA in phytoplankton’s and zoo-planktons. Hessen and Williamsons work from the nineties is quoted but without any further explanation. When I piqued through their work, I figured they had also explained how and what causes the damage. Again while specifying how snow cover affects lake properties, they point out by citing Sorwari’s (2003) workthat snow cover can have huge limonological implication. But they failed to cover what kind of limonological limitations? These were some of the minor glitches in the otherwise well researched paper. The authors made it a point to use most of the latest references which was a major plus point. There were only a few places where they had referenced all the way back to papers from 1980s- Carmouse (1983) and Prowse (1985) to name a

Tuesday, September 24, 2019

Discussions Replies Education Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Discussions Replies Education - Coursework Example Defend your choice. 1. Posted: by:  Margarett    Both art and culture have been the significant parts of earlier centuries. If we explore the association between arts and culture that existed in the 20th  century, we come to know that there had been a close connection between them. For example, artists of the 20th  century represented the overall culture of that century through their artworks. 20th  century is known as the beginning of today’s era of modernism. The artists of the 20th  century greatly revealed the elements of modernism, expressionism, and abstractions in their artworks. Moreover, the artists of the late 20thcentury also revealed through their artworks the need for change and peace that people wanted after the two big events of war that occurred in the first half of the century. In my view, the artist who best represented the social and cultural trends of his time period through his artworks was Pablo Picasso. He was a Spanish painter and sculptor w ho reinvented the foundations of art in the 20th  century through including the shadow of ongoing movements and overall environment in his artworks. My Response: Taking it a step further, it seems to me that the artists of the early 20th century were increasingly aware of the progression of art. What I mean is, the artists, although sometimes separated by continents appeared to be more aware and cognizant of what other artists were working on, what inspired them, the evolution of art during this time took much more rapid steps than say art a hundred years before. Obviously the industrial age and the beginning of the technological revolution had something to do with that – but one can’t help but wonder if art and culture were not even more closely connected with the artists of the 20th century than it had ever been before. 2. Posted by:  Andrea    Picasso is a great example. His art is so very different than the art of his predecessors.   In a sense, artists lik e him were taking big risks, departing from the norm! Class, what do you think it was that gave people the impetus to begin taking bigger risks in terms of art and music during this time?   My Response: Andrea, good point - Picasso definitely departed from the norm! However, art in the early 20th century was all about deviating from the norm and creating new ways of expression. Whereas art in past centuries had been more about gradually adopting new styles and mimicking the masters, art of the 20th century evolved at such a rapid and break neck pace that artists seemed to be doing all possible to express their own tastes and differentiate themselves. This collective attitude is what proved 20th century art to be so diverse and varied in such a short time scale. 3. Posted: by:  Dawna The other century ushered a new way of thinking into the art world.   With the world still recovering from the  atrocities of WWI, many artists reflected this in their style.   A new form of ar t was starting, the ism movement.   Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, and German Expressionism.   Pablo Picasso of course, was a huge figure in this movement, with his extreme style and use of colors.   Many people that were used to more traditional art found his style and type of art disturbing and confusing.   I feel the one artist that encapsulates the time though would have to be Ernest Hemingway.   His point of view writing styles of WWI and help express the feelings after the war and the feeling of loss that many felt.

Monday, September 23, 2019

Internet Technology, Marketing, and Security Essay

Internet Technology, Marketing, and Security - Essay Example Social Media includes internet sites which facilitate the communication between individuals with the help of pictures, videos and writings. This essay will focus on the role of Social Media Marketing in the business profit generation. The researcher would consider the contribution of Social Media in marketing activities of Pepsi. In the later stage, the paper would consider several other empirical case studies and enumerate the importance of Social Media Marketing in future. The learnt from the essay would help to understand the importance of internet commercial segments (Bosari, 2012). Growing Popularity of Social Media Marketing CompuServe was the first Social Media networking site, established in United States in the 19th century. With the rise in literacy levels and the progress in technology, the proportion of internet users has increased significantly. Currently, famous social networking sites like, Youtube, are viewed by approximately 4 billion viewers per day. About 1.11 bill ion individuals across the world are regular users of Facebook and the viewership ratings for Twitter are about 500 million (Bosari, 2012). In the contemporary world, such sites are used for both commercial and non-commercial purposes. The corporate business firms often use Social Media for marketing their products to the consumers. In the theory of Customer Behavior Management, Customer Relationship Management plays a pivotal role. There are various reasons for which Social Media Marketing has become so popular in the modern days. There are: Social Media helps the companies to easily reach a wider base of customers across different marketplaces. The marketing activities through Social Media are relatively less costly that the other forms of traditional marketing methods. Online shopping has become a popular shopping destination in the modern world. The growing popularity of the digital marketplaces has forced the companies to set marketing strategies through internet media. Most of the consumers today are preoccupied with their daily activities. The proportion of television or radio viewers is much lesser than the proportion of the internet users. Thus, marketing consumer goods and services in the social networking sites helps the companies to reach out to a wider customer base, within the least possible time. Special Media marketing activities of the companies help to reduce their cost of marketing. The accumulated finances which are saved can be used by the companies for the purpose of growth and development. Social Media marketing is a more comprehensive, flexible and trendy form of marketing as opposed to the traditional methods (Bosari, 2012). Figure 1: Growing Popularity of Social Media Marketing (Source: Acra, 2012) The above bar graph shows that among all the different uses of internet media, Social Media is the most popular of them. Figure 2: Steps of Purchase (Source: Acra, 2012) The above graph shows the marketing stages. Figure 3: Social Fieldwork Cycle (Source: Acra, 2012) The above graph shows that social media marketing gives the maximum importance to ‘consumerism’. Advantages and Disadvantages There are various types of advantages and disadvantages of Social Media marketing. Advantages Social Media marketing activities help to enhance the business-to-customer relationships. It helps to engage the customers in

Sunday, September 22, 2019

Life without IT Essay Example for Free

Life without IT Essay In 21th century, people are probably all in Facebook, Twitter, Weibo, etc. Are you spending too much time on your computer? A recent survey shows that about 83% of users said â€Å"Yes† and only 17% of users said â€Å"No†. Internet influences us so much! But, did you ever think that if there haven’t computer any more, so what would life be like without the Internet? People may say that:† No, it is impossible! Although Steve Jobs died, but Apple Company still survives. † So here I want to say, everything is possible, not absolutely. And what would happen if the Internet completely disappeared? For me, Life is very different without the internet. Because without the internet, I maybe always go out to the pubs and enjoy the company with them. Also without the internet I cant have this much knowledge in computers because I usually learn some cool stuffs under the internet. The Internet is a useful tool for communication through email and instant messaging, finding information and other resources and for just killing free time. People who find social relations difficult in the real world, or infirm or elderly people, can use the internet to reach out and forge lasting relationships with people they otherwise would never have been able to meet. Well, people would have to start talking to each other more, like they used to, and the whole morning chat at the post office will return. Kids would have to used the library to find stuff out instead of using Google, which will get them out of the house and learning to do things for themselves. People will receive letters instead of emails. So many people use the Internet that if whoever banned it from the world everyone would complain that much and so many people would sue them that they would be forced to put it back on to regain all their money, or everyone should just move to the planet mars. It’s boring life! The Internet was a technological advancement that excelled us into the 21st century and changed the way we socialized, did business and purchased goods. It paved the way to the future and still has many exciting advancements ahead of it’s self. There are however many of us who practiced life before it’s time and have experienced a life without the Internet. A life without Internet, I cant imagine, myself, living in this century, without the internet, therefore we should treasure the things we have, don’t let Internet disappeared in the world!

Saturday, September 21, 2019

Single Party States Notes Essay Example for Free

Single Party States Notes Essay Single Party States notes From: Topic 3- Themes and Exams Tips Chapter: â€Å"Origins and development of authoritarian and single party states† â€Å"What constitutes an authoritarian or single-party state? † Country or state to be classed as an authoritarian or single party state: * Only one legal political party A leader chosen by or from the military following a revolution * Group or leader that controls the state even though there are existing parties * Jean Kirkpatrick (US ambassador-United Nations) once expressed that authoritarian state was â€Å"better than† a totalitarian state- a chance that it would move towards democracy (p. o. v expressed during the Cold War) Characteristics in common- authoritarian or single-party: * Little-no freedom of speech * No freedom of: * Assembly (government must approve meetings) * To travel abroad No idependent judicial system * All sources of information censored * Any idea against the regime will be harshly punished (opposition to them) * â€Å"A leader whose popularity is reinforced by personality cult† Not all states the share charactersistcs some are less oppressive but they all share the strict control over the freedom of the people and use different methods to hold on to power. The age of Kings and Emperors ended with WWI 20th century one of the bloodiest century in history- includes 2 major world wars Left and right wing: Left- wing: Describes the single party, leaders and states that are communist or socialist. Example: Nasser, Stalin, Mao, Castro and Neyerere Right wing: Most fascist leaders of the 20th century began their political careers as members of socialist parties. Fascist leaders and states – right wing Examples: Hitler, Mussoluni and Franco Policies supportive of capitalism as an economic system, ultra nationalist, some cases they promoted religion as a way to unite the people. Right wing ideologies| Left wing ideologies| Facism (in Italy and Nazism-Germany) * Socialist (intended to appeal lower classes) * Strongly nationalistic and considered communism to be a threat| * Widespread ideology (20th C) was communism * â€Å"All people are equal† * â€Å"No private property to protect† * Will to bring the ideal state| Socialism: Characteristics: redistribution of wealth through taxation, the state owns the major industries like coal and steel, the state owns the â€Å"mon opolies† such as the water, transportation and communications, free education and health care for all. This criterion became known as ‘welfare state’. (Gov. hould control ensure the basic standard living for al citizens) Stages of communism: 1) Primitive communisms: â€Å"No monopoly over the means of production† 2) Feudalism: â€Å"Agricultural-based communities developed into kingdoms and powerful rulers took ownership of the land and the people who farmed it† 3) Capitalism: â€Å"commercial activities- trading in manufactured goods† 4) Communism: no private properties, people contribute with their skills, taking only what they needed. No laws to protect wealth and property From States, Governments and Ideologies: The State: * Sovereign state: is independent of all others Way in which is governed- Constitution: basic laws- lay down the power and duties of many institutions and officials of government * Rule of law * Arbitrary government * Sovereignty * States -3 kinds: Unitary states, federal and confederations * Held state – embodies the nation and represents it * Monarchy, republic * Legitimacy, device right of kings (constitutional monarchs) president (republic state) Government: * â€Å"Those persons and institution of state which exercise the power in accordance with the constitution† * Head of the state head of the government (prime ministers) * Executive, cabinet Legislative—making laws (unicameral, bicameral) * Separation of powers, presidential system of government, parliamentary system of government Changes of Government By legal means: (elections) majority system and proportional system—coalition By force: rebellion, revolution, provisional government, co nstituent assembly, new constitution, and peaceful revolution Political Ideologies:( framework theories) Implicit ideologies (propaganda designed etc) * Conservatism * Liberalism Reformist Ideologies: critique of existing society, describe the ideal society would be like, prescriptions from the living situation to the ideal * Socialism: reaction to injustices of the capitalist economic system (social democrats, syndicalist, revolutionary socialists) Marxism: â€Å"an industrialized society, the working class would revolt and take over the ruling class, and would in effect, create a classes society * Anarchism: fight against the order, don’t want any authority Incomplete Ideologies: * Racism * Nationalism * Social Darwinism From: Authoritarianism, Fascism and Totalitarianism Authoritarianism,| Fascism| Totalitarianism| * Ruled by threat or fear * â€Å"Black or white† posture (in or out) * Outlawed the opposition * Enforce their control by torture, execution, etc. * Motivated by patriotism * Resorting law and order * Defending country against the threat of Bolshevism * Leading a regeneration of the nation * Employed and censored the media| * Lower middle class radicalism * Deliberate diversion of the workers * Radical populist solution to the problem of restoring the â€Å"hegemony† of the dominant class| * Subordinate all aspects od the individual’s life to the authority of the gov. Official ideology * Single mass party * Terroristic police control of the population * Monopoly control of the media * Monopoly control of the arms * Central control of the economyâ€Å"worthless- creation of Cold War propaganda- designed to tie the Soviet system together with that of the Nazis† – some historians|

Friday, September 20, 2019

The Anthropogenic Impacts On Biodiversity Environmental Sciences Essay

The Anthropogenic Impacts On Biodiversity Environmental Sciences Essay Introduction Anthropocentrism or being Anthropogenic in nature refers to the way of thinking that regards humans as the source of all value and is predominantly concerned with human interests. (Carter, N, 2003, p. 14) Biodiversity is the abundance of different species and ecosystems in nature making it the earths most valuable resource. Biodiversity is of very much importance as it boosts the productivity of the ecosystem where each species, no matter how small, all have an important role to play. In other words, there would be no population of humans without biodiversity but the irony is that, the biodiversity is decreasing at an alarming rate due to the various human activities which is also referred as the biodiversity crisis. The three main factors impacting the biodiversity as a whole may be listed as: population growth, overconsumption and technology. This essay will describe how and where the biodiversity has been impacted at very great extents because of the above mentioned factors. Population growth of the humans can be considered as the root of the problem of the loss of biodiversity. According to Ehrlich (The Population Bomb, 1968 as cited in Cahn, A and OBrien, R, 1996), the human population has been doubling every 37 years and if this continued for the next 900 years, then the world population will be nothing less than sixty million billion people implying that there will be about 100 persons for each square yard of the Earths surface, land and sea. The human population now is at 6 billion; with an annual global growth rate of 1.8%, three more people that are added to the earth every second. (Quebec biodiversity, 1994) The simple fact that the countries are not able to feed their populations shows that they are overpopulated. With such high rates of increase in human inhabitants, the problem of the need to convert the natural habitats to land for human consumption becomes obvious. This ultimately results in five primary processes of degradation namely: over harvesting, habitat fragmentation, habitat destruction, alien species introduction and pollution. (Biodiversity and Human Health, 2001) It is the anthropogenic nature of the humans to rule the environment by spreading to new habitats in order to find newer food sources. The innovative man has always been discovering various types of technologies right from the technology of the spear and arrow to the modern technology of the harpoon, gun-powder and the drift nets helping him to over harvest on the various species. According to the Fisheries Agency, Japan consumes about 60,000 tons of fish a year, mainly the three blue fin tuna species which is more than 75% of the worlds annual catch and also other countries, such as the U.S. and Russia, are catching up with the Japanese as a result of which the blue fin tuna has been becoming very hard to find and the prices for these species have hit the extremes. (Tuna Shortage in Japan, 2007) Apart from overconsumption, humans have also been de monstrating their anthropogenic nature by wasteful mass kills where the entire herds of some species are slaughtered. A classic example of this is the Dumfries fish killing festival of Scotland where individuals have been killing fish in the Galloways River Urr as a part of the Grande Internationale World Flounder Tramping Championships where the person who captures the most number of fish by the unorthodox method of treading on the fish is awarded by giving three bottles of whisky,  £150 and also the title of The Undisputed Champion Of The World. (Facebook, 2010) Also the Denmarks Gruesome Festival of mass killing dolphins and whales to prove adulthood, where nearly 1,000 whales and dolphins are killed annually. (Think about it, 2009) This clearly shows the mans exploitation of the natural resources exceeding their cycling capacity. Natural resources are classified as renewable and non-renewable resources. Forests and wild-life are considered as renewable resources because of the ir ability to regenerate by reproduction but the rate at which humans have been utilizing the so called natural resources is very much of a concern. The extensive use of forest lands for timber and other valued wood resources has resulted in the loss of habitats for hundreds of species. And with the increase in human inhabitants arises the need to convert natural habitats to land for more human consumption. The innovative man has been able to exploit the forests and its resources for his selfish needs with the use of new machines and better means of transport. Clearing a dense forest has become much easier now. Humans have been able to sustain their growth by converting natural habitats to fields where food can be produced. At least 23 percent of the earths land is being used for agriculture. Most tropical forests were not greatly disturbed in the past mostly because of their inaccessibility and other factors but now the trend has been changing with the increase in the demand for th e various raw materials used in plastic production. Tropical forests have been disappearing rapidly as a result of the need of the humans to make room for more farms of timber used for construction and also used as a fuel. Deforestation has alarming global consequences such as: extinction of species (plants and animals) and climate change. Although the tropical forests cover only about 7 percent of the Earths dry land, they are home to half of all the species on Earth. Many species have micro-habitats or in simple terms, they are present only in those small areas in these forests and due to this their extinction is very much at stake because of the deforestation here. The edges of the deforested fragments dry out because of incoming hot winds as a result of which the matured rain forest trees die standing at the margins and eventually the biodiversity is lost. This also has a devastating effect on the tropical soils as the soil cover in the tropical rain forests is very thin and wit h deforestation, over time all the minerals in the soil are lost because of the high temperatures and heavy rains. (Deforestation in the Amazon, 2010) (Tropical Deforestation, 2007) (Deforestation in the Amazon, 2010) A large portion of deforestation in Brazil has been primarily because of land being cleared for pastureland by commercial and speculative interests. Between May 2000 and August 2006, Brazil lost nearly 150,000 km2 of forest and over 600,000 km2 of Amazon rainforest has been destroyed. About 60-70 percent of deforestation in the Amazon results from cattle ranches and the want for palm oil while the rest mostly results from small-scale agriculture. The numbers of endangered species in the forests of Brazil have been increasing at alarming rates because of the various anthropogenic activities of the humans as reported by the Associated Press. (Mongabay website, 2010) Deforestation and fragmentation is increasing at an alarming rate in Amazon. In Amazon nearly 2 million ha of land is deforested annually (Fearnside et al. 2005). Habitat fragmentation is a serious threat to species persistence in tropical forests (Ewers Didham 2006). According to Wilcox and Murphy (1985), the effects of f ragmentation are loss of original habitats, creation of edge effects, and isolation of habitat patches and this will affect the species composition. According to Turner and Corbett (1996), forest patches are further affected by invasion of further plant and animal species, and increased human exploitation such as hunting, burning, grazing, and extraction of resources. The greatest human impact in Southwest Australia has been the clearing of native vegetation for agriculture. Forest fragmentation differentially affects seed dispersal of large and small-seeded tropical trees (Cramer et al. 2007) Due to fragmentation, not only are individual species are affected but the plant- animal interactions are also affected (Andresen and Levey, 2004). In tropical regions, fragmentation affects the dispersal of large seeds to a greater extent than the small seed. Cramer et al. (2007), studied the seed dispersal of two Amazonian tree species, the large-seeded, mammal dispersed Duckeodendron cestro ides and the small-seeded, avian dispersed Bocageopsis multiflora. The percentage, distance and distributions of Duckeodendron cestroides seeds were all reduced in fragments when compared to Bocageopsis multiflora. This is supported by facts such as, large seeded plant species are prone to extinction, fragmentation affects large animals dispersers than small animal dispersers; and large and small seeded plants are linked differentially to primary and secondary habitats (Cramer et al. 2007). Large animals are for needed for dispersal of large seeds, and these animals need large home range but are affected by edge effects caused by fragmentation and also due to hunting. Primates are often absent from fragments (Gilbert and Setz, 2001). From Meehan et al. (2002), it is known that the extinction of frugivorous pigeons in Tonga (Polynesia) left 18 large-seeded plant species with no dispersers. From the work of Babweteera et al., (2007), the loss of elephants in Ugandan forests has left Balanites Wilsoniana regeneration concentrated under parent plants and is greatly affected. Bush fires have been used for hunting and clearing land here. Although native plants are highly adaptive to fires, intensified burning changes the composition and condition of the natural vegetation. This has resulted in the spread of a root disease called jarrah dieback caused by the root fungus called Phytophthora cinnamomi which has been spreading to other habitats, particularly in the Stirling Range National Park, where it has caused the loss of plants like the Banksias. (Conservation International, 2007) The tiger population in India is declining so fast that the whole population may be extinct here in the next 10 years because of deforestation and poaching. (Animal of the Day, 2010) In the forests of Armenia, habitat loss poses a particular threat to a range of species. Many species have been threatened to extinction because of the increasing use of land for agriculture. (National Repor t, 2002) The forests in Succulent Karoo have been affected badly by the diamond mining carried out in these areas. Approximately two-thirds of the South African coastline and almost the complete Namibian coastline have been mined for diamonds and other minerals like gypsum, marble, monazite, kaolin and titanium threatens the regions biodiversity. (Conservation International, 2007) Destruction of habitats for requirements such as building of canals, dams and houses is the most important threat to biodiversity. The Aswan High Dam located in Egypt, is an example for habitat destruction where the environmental side effects of the project have been disastrous with the spread of the disease called, schistosomiasis which is spread by snails living in the irrigation channels here. (Quarterdeck, 1995) A major contributor to depletion and extinction, after habitat loss, is the introduction of alien species. Man has always tried to introduce animals and plants familiar to him where ever he is. It started with the goats and pigs for familiar animal protein. These alien species damage the flora and fauna of the local area where they are introduced. The spread of these alien species replaces healthy, diverse ecosystems with biologically weak landscapes. Prior to the arrival of humans, there were a range of species of birds, invertebrates and plants in Hawaii but with the introduction of many plant and animal alien species, more than half the bird species and also many species of snails have become extinct. (Biodiversity and Human Health, 2001) Rabbits being introduced into Australia, Asian fish species put into the waters of Florida, introduction of Africanized bees into Brazil and also the introduction of rhododendrons into England are few examples of alien species that have destroyed the local plant and animal species. It is estimated that about 4,000 plant and 2,300 animal alien species are present in the United States at this time resulting in the endangering of more than 42% of the animal and plant species here. (Biodiversity Web, 2005) Also in the Nile river, despite the presence of a wide variety of fish, the regions fishing industries struggled to grow because the fish that lived there were small-bodied and bony, not the kind they wanted thereby, there was a need for a larger and a more commercially desired fish for the fishing economy to grow. They introduced the fish species called the Nile perch, Lates niloticus. It grew far larger than many of the other Nile fish, and was perfect for commercial fishing purposes. Being carnivorous, the Nile perch made the smaller native fish its prey. As the population of the Nile perch grew, the populations of the other 150-200 of the native species have vanished entirely. Introduction of foreign species has had simil ar impacts in other waterways worldwide by making the simplified ecosystems unstable indefinitely. (Human Impacts on the Nile River, 2010) ArcGIS map examining modern day fish biodiversity. (Human Impacts on the Nile River, 2010) Climate change has significant impacts on ecosystems. It is predicted to be the greatest long-term threat to biodiversity in many regions and is listed as a key threatening process under the Threatened Species Conservation Act 1995 and the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Commonwealth). The various technological developments made by man giving him an upper hand over other species come only at a price and this price is undoubtedly pollution. The use of various fossil fuels, petrochemicals and many other heavy metals has been increasing the greenhouse gas emissions. The drastic increase in the emission of green house gases has resulted in global warming and thereby causing a sea level rise and ultimately leading to melting. The oceans are being acidified due to the tremendous increase of the carbon content in the atmosphere which leads to the loss of biodiversity.   (Biodiversity Web, 2005) (Global Issues, Climate Change and Global Warming Introduction, 2010) (Global Issues, Climate Change and Global Warming Introduction, 2010) The quantity of oceanic plankton on earth is being affected by the depleting ozone layer.  The tiny organisms that float in the oceans are known as planktons and they play a vital role in maintaining the marine biodiversity as they are major sources of food here. Therefore, a decrease in quantity will cause a domino effect in the marine food chain species which is dangerous for the marine plant and animal species. Even though there have been global warming instances in the past, the rate at which the temperature has been increasing now is what is alarming. (Global Issues, Climate Change and Global Warming Introduction, 2010) Strategies adopted by humans to mitigate these impacts: Educational programmes are being introduced by governments to educate the populations on the importance of biodiversity. One such educational programme was initiated in the 1990s by the US Congress where they had set up an environmental education office to promote environmental education at all levels. The Plant Conservation Alliance and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service were the partners to the U.S government. In 2002, the UK along with all other Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), made a commitment to achieve by 2010 a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the global, regional and national level as a contribution to poverty alleviation and to the benefit of all life on earth. This commitment was subsequently endorsed by world leaders at the World Summit on Sustainable Development. At its meeting in Gothenburg in 2001 the European Council agreed to halt biodiversity decline with the aim of reaching this objective by 2010. The 2010 biodiversity target has become incorporated into the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as one of the targets under MDG 7 (Ensure environmental sustainability). (Natural Environment Research Council, 2007) The concept of protected areas has been introduced for the conservation of the biodiversity. These are locations which receive protection by the enabling laws of each country or rules of international organizations. They include parks, reserves and wildlife sanctuaries and they also Marine Protected Areas whose boundaries include some area of ocean. There are over 147,000 protected areas in the world with more added daily, representing a total area of 19,300,000  km2 (7,500,000 sq  mi). (Green Facts, 2009) The governments have also been purchasing property rights for the sake of conservation taking over all the rights from the owner or it can purchase a conservation easement where it acquires rights necessary to protect the target species or ecosystem while leaving the owner free to use the land. This law also allows water rights to increase stream flows, and permits for grazing or the emission of air pollutants can be bought and retired. Like acquisition, regulatory approaches a re being used by governments to limit the manner in which any activity can be carried out. Regulations are being enforced by governments by a wide range of sanctions. Sanctions carry additional internal (guilt) and external (bad publicity) costs for the individuals or the companies who violate the regulations. The example of biodiversity regulation is the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA). (U.S Environmental Protection Agency, 2009) Another major strategy is to encourage private conservation action through incentives like tax credits and regulatory reliefs. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services Safe Harbor program is an example of a regulatory relief incentive. Safe Harbor agreements assure landowners who improve habitat that they will not be responsible for protecting the increased populations of endangered or threatened species those lands may attract. (U.S Environmental Protection Agency, 2009) Finally, with the help of genetic engineering, using the various DNA techniques, different kinds of bacteria capable of synthesizing plants to be able to restrain to the changes in climate and also to avoid various diseases are being created by the modification of their genes. I would like to conclude by saying that, the very little the governments do to save biodiversity, What matters is the initiative taken by each individual human to save himself and his future generations (or) Only if the last tree has been cut down and the last river has dried to a trickle will man finally realise that we cannot eat money!

Thursday, September 19, 2019

My Father and I :: essays research papers

Actually, all members of my family have the same important influence to my life. Each of them has a different way in making me be a grown-up girl like now. But since I was a little girl, the one who is close to me the most is my father. I am always proud of my father and our relationship. People often get jealous of our closeness, even my mother. I remember when I got the scholarship from one of the computer and internet courses in my city; it is an informal education institution, which obliged me to attend the class at night, whereas I go to school from morning till afternoon. He tried to warn me that it could be tiring for me, let alone, the place is quite far from my house. But at that time, seeing me really eager for that chance, he allowed me. Every night, he took me there and home without complaining although I realized he might be warn out after working all day. One night, he should attend a kind of meeting in the Church Organization. Actually, he was too tired to go. But when my mother said that God may bless me for my father’s kindness, he went. Since then, I swear to make my parents proud of me as their daughter. My father always supports his children in every good thing they interest in. He also did when I told him about my willing to study in Singapore. Although he seemed to be calm, I was sure he should be very surprised about that, because it will need much money. We both know he will hardly afford it for me. That is why I really attempt to get the scholarship. Getting that kind of rare faith as my father has on us, I always and will always do my best effort in everything he supports me in. Analyzing my own abilities and interests, I think Business is the most suitable subject for me.

Wednesday, September 18, 2019

Drinking and Driving Essay -- Drunk Driving, DUI, Alcohol

â€Å"Have one drink for the road† was, until recently, a commonly used phrase in American culture. It has only been within the past 20 years that as a nation, we have begun to recognize the dangers associated with drunk driving (Sutton 463). According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, this year 519,000 people, or one person per minute, will be injured in alcohol-related accidents. 10,839 people will die in drunk-driving crashes this year – that is one death every 50 minutes. The heartbreaking part is, every injury and lost life due to driving after drinking can be prevented. Drinking while driving â€Å"accidents† are not merely â€Å"accidents.† Getting in a vehicle after consuming alcohol, which severely affects the function of the brain, is not an accident. It is lack of responsibility. Individuals that consume alcohol irresponsibly must begin to take responsibility for themselves and for other innocent drivers on the road. Unfort unately, in spite of great progress, alcohol-impaired driving remains a serious national problem that tragically affects many victims annually (Hanson). It is time that laws and consequences for drinking while driving strengthen and people begin to think twice before driving a vehicle after drinking. Individuals who make the decision to drive after consuming alcohol, not only put themselves in a dangerous situation, they also put an entire community at risk. Current laws, which are not strict or powerful enough, must be increased in order to keep our neighborhoods around the nation safe. Although many people think current drinking while driving limits and laws are strict enough, the rising number of individuals who continue to make an irresponsible decision to get behind the wheel of a vehicle ... ...king & Driving." WWW2 Webserver. State University of New York Sociology Department. Web. 5 Apr. 2011. Lightner, Candy. "Campaign to Eliminate Drunk Driving." Mothers Against Drunk Driving. 2011. Web. 01 Apr. 2011. Saunders, Carol Silverman. "'It's suicide.'(Drinking and Driving)." Current Health 2, a Weekly Reader publication Feb. 1996: 26+. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 20 Apr. 2011. Sutton, Amy L. "Drinking and Driving." Alcoholism Sourcebook. Detroit, MI: Omnigraphics, 2007. 463. Print. "Update: Drunk Driving." Issues & Controversies On File: n. pag. Issues & Controversies. Facts On File News Services, 21 Sept. 2007. Web. 20 Apr. 2011. Wagner, Heather Lehr. Alcohol. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2003. Print. "What Is a Drink?" Arizona Department of Public Safety (DPS), Arizona Highway Patrol - State of Arizona. 2011. Web. 12 Apr. 2011.

Tuesday, September 17, 2019

Performing a cable installation Essay

When performing a cable installation, there are a lot of things that you have to put into consideration. First, you want to draw up a plan. Some things that you would want to include in the plan would be: where your telecommunications rooms are located, what is the distance from your leased line to your core router, and what type of cable are you going to be using for your backbone and horizontal lines. The first thing shouldn’t be cost when you are designing a network. You want to think of the safety and how your network will function with different mediums of cable. These things are important because your network has to meet the needs of the company. You also want to make sure you have things in place like what type of fire protection your network will have. You want to make sure your racks in your telecommunication rooms are grounded properly. Without these things your network will not be very safe. You want it to be useful but you don’t want to lose everything in a telecommunications room because you failed to plan ahead for accidents that can happen. Once you have your plan intact and it has been approved you need to think about how you are going to get this cable in the building. What types of tools are you going to need? If you are going to run CAT 5e though out the building you will need several different tools; such as cable pulleys, punch downs, wire cutters, and cable strippers. You will need most of these tools to install your cable into your building. There will be a few different tools you will need if you are putting cable into a preexisting building. You may then need a fish tape or fiberglass push pole. It really depends on the type of job you are going to be doing and what type of cable or fiber you are going to be working with. This will determine what tools you will need to get the job done correctly and safely. If you are at a worksite and don’t have any wire strippers you could also use a razor blade knife to strip the jacket off the cable. It is something that will work if you don’t have any strippers handy. But of course this is not the most used method to strip cable. It will work if you need it right then. All the things that I have talked about are important because it will help  you to make sure you have a plan that covers everything. You not only need to think about cost but safety as well. Make sure you have the right tools for the right job. Also make sure your measurements are correct cause this could also make or break your network plan. Definitions: Wall plate – it is the plastic or metal plate that screws into the wall. It has some sort of connector, usually coax, rj11, rj45, duplex receptacle, or fiber optic. This is where the device plugs into the wall. Connector – a device that joins two pieces of cabling Crossover cable – A crossover cable is a type of twisted pair copper wire cable for LANs (local area network) in which the wires on the cable are crossed over so that the receive signal pins on the RJ-45 connector on one end are connected to the transmit signal pins on the RJ-45 connector on the other end. NIC – A network interface controller (NIC, also known as a network interface card, network adapter, LAN adapter, and by similar terms) is a computer hardware component that connects a computer to a computer network HUB – An Ethernet hub, active hub, network hub, repeater hub, multiport repeater or hub is a device for connecting multiple Ethernet devices together and making them act as a single network segment. Bridge – A device used to connect two separate Ethernet networks into one extended Ethernet. Bridges only forward packets between networks that are destined for the other network. Term used by Novell to denote a computer that accepts packets at the network layer and forward them to another network Switch – A switch is a multi-port network bridge that processes and forwards data at the data link layer (layer 2) of the OSI model. Some switches have additional features, including the ability to route packets. These switches are commonly known as layer-3 or multilayer switches. Router – A router is a networking device that forwards data packets between computer networks, commonly specialized hardware. This creates an overlay internetwork, as a router is connected to two or more data lines from different networks. Infrared (IR) – Infrared (IR) is a wireless mobile technology used for device communication over short ranges. Radio Frequency – RF is any frequency within the electromagnetic spectrum associated with radio wave propagation. When an RF current is supplied to an antenna, an  electromagnetic field is created that then is able to propagate through space. Many wireless technologies are based on RF field propagation. Microwave – A series of microwave repeaters, spaced up to 50 miles (80 kilometers) apart, which relay messages over long distances using highly directional microwave beams.

Monday, September 16, 2019

A Materialistic Society Essay

A happy life is more important than anything someone can buy in a store. It’s not a physical thing nor is it materialistic. Society has come to orbit around the quality of things they can buy to impress the neighbors and to show off how much money they have invested. They want the shinier, the bigger house, and the greener lawn. It doesn’t matter how expensive your car is or how big of a house you have. Material possessions are great for only so long, but nothing lasts forever. Society shouldn’t be focusing so much on materialistic things that can always be replaced, when memories are out there to be made. Today, life is being lived too fast. No one slows down to enjoy their life. We should all get off the train once in a while and experience things at our own pace. In today’s society, life is about how successful a person can be, how much money they can earn, and how much nice stuff they have. Society’s prime focus is mainly about materialism instead of the more important things in life such as family. According to New York Times there are statistics stating that â€Å"materialism is bad for you† In Lexington Massachusetts, a psychologist and couples therapist named Aline Zoldbrod says† A husband and wife no longer connect, they are so exhausted from the pursuit of nicer things ( a big house, private school for the kids, fancy cars) that they are time starved and depleted. Life is luxurious yet unsatisfying and simply no fun†. Now, children are starting school around three and four years old. People are even staying in school longer. Now instead of going to get a job, when a student graduates high school, they immediately go to college. After college, they go to work. At this job they will have a 401K and a pension plan. They will work at this job for over twenty years. During these twenty years, they will raise a family and put them through school. The cycle has begun again for another generation. While working this job, people in society are expected to support their family financially. Parents are too busy working to notice their child’s life is passing them by. It is understandable after all, with the cost of living increasing, parents have to work more hours to make ends meet. Everything a family is doing in today’s society is either to save money or to earn more money. For example, every store has some kind of sale going on at any given time to try and get more business so they can make more money. When did society start worrying more about their financial situation rather than the quality of their life? A person can have all the money in the world but that doesn’t mean they lead a happy and fulfilled life. Life shouldn’t be about having the best things possible, but rather having the best times possible. Life has become too rigid and too structured that no one even has time to sit back and relax. It’s important to make time for yourself and for your family because you can’t take back time you can only pass it. Everyone is constantly running and looking for ways to make their life easier and ways to make things faster so they can fit more things into their schedules. A persons life is so busy because of the almighty quest for more money. A happy life is more important than anything someone can buy in a store or online. Its not a physical thing nor is it materialistic. Its life and you only live once so you need to make the best of it, and enjoy the little things. If you just make a little less room for the materialistic things that can be easily replaced, and a little more room for memories that are out there to be made.

Sunday, September 15, 2019

My Dream Organisation Essay

Every human being has some dream in life, which varies from person to person according one’s attitude towards life. Some have a craze for riches, others for brilliant academic career still others have vaulting ambition to hold some key position or a plum host. In the modern age of materialism there are very few people who have philanthropic inclination. How nice it is to blend one’s ambition to some mission in life. After all people who enhance the happiness of humanity and work in the service of society and the nation at last are essentially great persons in the real sense of world. My aim has been since my early childhood to achieve something in the corporate world and with this very vision I’ve been planning my career. By joining prestigious institution as admirable as Amity certainly brings me to the threshold of a commendable career I’ve been envisaging so far. I think that I’ve taken a right decision at right time of life. I aspire to be an indispensable part of some great organization and this will be My Dream Organization. How do I define it is the question? I feel that an organization I’d like to join after completing MBA will be an Organization well established, reputed, ideal, opening a golden gate towards the career I’ve been dreaming of. Since joined the challenging finance branch I’d like to equip myself with all the desirable traits expected from an ideal, dynamic and successful manager. Being humorous is one important element that a manager must have. It can not only attract employee’s attention but also avoid employees from falling asleep during worktime To sum up, friendly, humorous, and easy going manager are the first point that my dream organisation life must have, One of the most important things my dream organization should have is that the organization should be clear and unambiguous about its objectives. The organization should enable me to learn and grow more in my field and help me to climb the ladder of success in the corporate world. The best time of the day of a committed employee is spent in the office. Obviously it should provide a harmonious atmosphere where people work in complete harmony with each other. The secret of the success story of any organization lies in the way people work with a sense of belongingness and a spirit of togetherness. The colleagues in any business organization or corporate are more than a family because they spend maximum of time together. The organization should have well established lines of communication and the work and responsibilities of each worker should be well defined. Every individual should be well familiar with his/her responsibilities and should very well know to whom he/she is accountable to so that there are less conflicts. The organizational environment should be such that the workers are motivated to come up with new and creative ideas. And lastly the organization in which I dream to work should not only be working for profit motive but should also keep in mind the welfare and interest of the society and should also work or their well being.

Saturday, September 14, 2019

Fluke, or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings Chapter 15~16

CHAPTER FIFTEEN A Song for Your Supper Amy picked the whale. It had been a stressful morning for her, and Quinn wanted to convey his complete confidence in her, so he handed over the headphones and took directions as they narrowed down which of their whales was actually the singer. â€Å"Wait a second,† Amy said. â€Å"Shut down the engine.† And then she did something that Quinn had seen no one do for twenty-five years, and then it had been his mentor, Gerard Ryder, who most people agreed had been eccentric to the point of being full-blown bat shit. Amy hung over the side by her knees and put her head in the water. After about thirty seconds she swung up, spraying a great crest of seawater all over the boat, then pointed north. â€Å"He's over there.† â€Å"That doesn't work, you know,† said Quinn. It was pretty much accepted that humans didn't have directional hearing underwater. He was just gently trying to remind her. â€Å"Go that way. That's where our whale is.† â€Å"Okay, there may indeed be a singer over there, but you didn't locate him by hearing him.† She just stood there next to him – dripping on his feet, the console, the field notes – looking at him. â€Å"Okay, I'm going.† He started the engine and pushed the throttle over. â€Å"Tell me when I get there.† A couple of minutes later Amy signaled for him to cut the engine, and she was hanging over the side with her head in the water while the boat was still coasting. â€Å"Well, this is just stupid,† Nate said while Amy was submerged. Amy dedunked long enough to say, â€Å"I heard that.† â€Å"Looks like you're bobbing for whales, is what it looks like.† â€Å"Shut up,† said Amy, up for a breath. â€Å"I'm trying to listen.† â€Å"You look like that cartoon character in ‘B.C. that used to watch fish all day.† â€Å"That way,† said Amy, up again, pointing and dog-shaking the water out of her hair onto the Ph.D. â€Å"About six hundred yards.† â€Å"Six hundred yards? You're sure?† â€Å"Give or take fifty.† â€Å"If we're within a half mile of a singer, I'll buy you dinner.† † ‘Kay. What do you suppose the freight is to fly a lobster from Maine to my plate in Lahaina?† â€Å"I'm not going to need to know that.† â€Å"Drive the boat, please. Over there.† And she pointed again, not unlike Babe Ruth indicating the Wrigley Field fence over which he would hit the famous promised home run (except Amy was thin, a girl, and alive). Quinn heard the singer even before they put the hydrophone in the water. The whole boat started resonating to the song as they coasted into a drift. Amy hopped up on the bow and pointed to some white spots dancing below the surface – pectoral fins and a tail. â€Å"There he is!† If there had been a crowd, they would have gone wild. Quinn smiled. Amy looked back at him and grinned. â€Å"Steak and lobster,† she said. â€Å"Something red and French and expensive for the wine, something on fire for dessert – don't care what it is, long as there's flames coming off it – then a backrub before I send you back to your cabin alone, disappointed and confused. Ha!† â€Å"It's a date,† said Quinn. â€Å"No, it's not a date. It's a bet, which you have lost miserably because you had the audacity to doubt me, and for which you shall remain ever sorry. Ha!† â€Å"Shall we work now? Or would you like to gloat a bit longer?† â€Å"Hmmm, let me think about it†¦Ã¢â‚¬  She's so small, yet she contains so much evil, Quinn thought. He threw the field journal at her and read her the longitude and latitude off the GPS. â€Å"Film's in the camera. New roll. I loaded it this morning.† â€Å"I was thinking I'd gloat some more.† Amy picked up the notebook, then paused as she opened it to begin writing. â€Å"Singing stopped.† â€Å"Sometimes I think they just stop singing to freak me out.† â€Å"He's moving,† Amy said, pointing. â€Å"Moving,† Quinn repeated. He looked over the side and saw the white pec fins and flukes flash out of sight. â€Å"Hold on.† He started the engine. â€Å"They can hunt these kind, as far as I'm concerned,† Quinn said after they'd been on the whale for two hours. They'd recorded three full cycles of the song and gotten a crossbow biopsy, but the whale simply would not fluke, so they hadn't been able to get an ID photo. A lot of good it did to have a DNA sample when you couldn't identify the animal. â€Å"Hunt them and make them into pet food,† Nate continued. â€Å"Get their tainted, nonfluking genes out of the gene pool.† â€Å"Maybe you should have a doughnut or something, get your blood sugar up,† Amy said. â€Å"Use their pathetic, nonfluking baleen for corsets and umbrella stays. Use their vertebrae for footstools. Use their intestines to make giant, nonfluking whale sausages to serve at state fairs. Remove their putrid unfluking gonads and –  » â€Å"I thought you liked these animals.† â€Å"Yeah, but not when they won't cooperate.† The whale had led them five miles out toward Molokai and very close to the wind line, where the waves were too big and the current too fast to stay on a singer. If the whale continued in this direction, they would lose him within the next two dive cycles and the day would be wasted. What was even more frustrating was that this animal was hanging in the water and singing with his tail only a few feet below the surface. Typically, a singer in the channel would be thirty to fifty feet down – this guy was at about seven. Nate kept having to pull up the hydrophone to keep it from bopping the whale in the noggin as they drifted over it. â€Å"He's coming up,† Amy said. She grabbed the camera off the seat and aimed it at a spot twenty yards or so in front of the boat so the auto-focus and exposure would already be set. Nate pulled up the hydrophone with two yanks and started the engine. The whale was moving faster this time. Nate adjusted the throttle to put Amy at the right distance for a full-frame tail shot. One breath and he was down for ten seconds, another breath twelve seconds, another breath and the great tail peduncle arched high into the air. â€Å"Looks like he's going to do it,† Nate said. â€Å"Ready,† Amy said. The tail cleared the water by just a foot, presenting an edge view instead of a flat horizontal view that would give them all the markings, but Nate thought he saw something. Something that looked like black letters on the underside of the tail. â€Å"You get that? You get that?† â€Å"I got what there was. He didn't present very well.† Amy had run the motor drive for the whole cycle of the dive, maybe eight frames. â€Å"Did you see those markings? On the underside? The black†¦ uh, stripes?† Quinn whipped off his sunglasses and wiped them with his T-shirt. â€Å"Stripes? Nate, I didn't see anything but edge through the camera.† â€Å"Damn it!† â€Å"Look, he fluked. Maybe he will again.† â€Å"That's not the point.† â€Å"It's not?† â€Å"Get up on the bow, see if you can find him.† Amy stood on the bow and directed Quinn. When she dropped her arm, he killed the engine. And there was the whale, hanging there, singing, his tail not ten feet under the water. They weren't a hundred yards off the wind line, and the boat was drifting away from the whale faster than it had before. They'd be over it for only a minute or so. This close to the wind line, they'd probably lose him the next time he came up. Nate was not going to finish this day wondering if he was having hallucinations again. â€Å"Amy, hand me my mask and flippers from the bow cabinet, would you?† â€Å"You're going in the water?† â€Å"Yes.† â€Å"But you never go in the water.† â€Å"I'm going in the water.† Nate opened a plastic Pelican case and pulled out his Nikonos IV underwater camera, checked to make sure it was loaded. â€Å"You're not a water guy.† â€Å"See if there's a weight belt in there, too.† â€Å"Clay says you're not a water guy. You're a boat guy.† â€Å"I'm going to get an ID photo from under his tail. If he's going to be accommodating enough to stay this close to the surface, I'm going to go get the photo.† â€Å"Can you do that?† â€Å"Why not?† She handed him a belt weighted with ten pounds of lead, and Nate buckled it around his hips. He pulled on the mask and fins, then sat on the gunwale with his back to the water. â€Å"You're going to drift off of me. I'm not going to try to swim to catch you, so come back and get me. Wait till I wave. I don't want you to start the engine until I'm sure I have the picture. Keep recording until you come get me.† † ‘Kay.† Amy's mouth was sort of hanging open as if she'd just been slapped. â€Å"This is no big deal.† â€Å"Right. You want me to do it? It's my fault I didn't get the shot last time.† â€Å"Not your fault. The shot wasn't there. See ya.† Quinn put the snorkel in his mouth and rolled backward off the boat. At seventy-five degrees, the water was still cold enough to knock the breath out of him. He floated to the surface and tried to take controlled breaths until his system adjusted. The whale was close, only a hundred or so feet away. The song reverberated in Nate's ribs as he kicked over to it. This had to be the â€Å"bite me† whale. Even if he'd somehow been wrong about there actually being letters, there were certainly some strange markings on this animal's tail. And there was more than that, too, if he could prove to himself that this was the same animal. It would mean that the whale had stayed in the general area of the Au'au Channel for over three weeks, which was fairly unusual. Of course, conclusions weren't reached from that lack of data. It could simply be that they hadn't computerized the catalog of Hawaiian ID photos the way they had in Alaska. And without the first picture there'd be no proof that this was the same animal, but Quinn would know. He would know. That had become the impetus of this silly mission, not just proving that he wasn't hallucinating. He was a man of science, of facts, of reason. He didn't need to prove he was sane. I'm out of my mind, he thought. He'd never even heard of anyone trying to do an ID photo underwater. The animal was perfectly motionless, a great swath of gray in a field of infinite blue. But Quinn thought he saw movement on the far side of the whale. He lifted his head out of the water and looked back at the boat. Amy gave him a thumbs-up. He took a deep breath and made his dive to take the photo. If he'd been wearing tanks, he might have let the weight belt take him down slowly, but he knew he'd be able to stay down for only forty to sixty seconds, so he went headfirst, kicking hard until he was down twenty or so feet. Then he leveled off, holding the camera in front of him, and looked up at the underside of the whale's tail. There it was, in big, sans-serif, spray-paint-like letters: BITE ME! He nearly forgot to take the picture. How could this possibly be? Had the animal somehow been caught in a net when it was younger and marked by a sardonic fisherman before being released? Was it one of those animals that had swum up a river and got stranded, then been rescued by an army of fish-and-game people? He centered the tail in the viewfinder and hit the shutter. Advanced the film and shot again. Then he needed to breathe. He turned and kicked to the surface, but again he saw the dark shape moving near the whale. Remora, he thought. Although it looked too big to be one of the parasite fish that often attached themselves to whales. At the surface he looked back down at the singer, near the left pec where he'd seen the movement. The animal was doing ribbits. Quinn smiled around his snorkel, took three deep breaths, held, then dove again. This time, before he could get the camera up, he saw the movement of a dark fin on the far side of the whale, and he squinted to see deep into the blue distance. Blue-water willies, was how he'd always thought of it. The feeling you get when you realize that something big and carnivorous could come at you from any direction, then you start looking for gray missiles in the blue, like looking for a malevolent face to appear at a dark window. Then the whale moved. The wash of the tail pushed Quinn back, but he maintained his bearings and started toward the surface, trying to keep his eye on the animal. The whale turned around in little more than its own length and shot toward Nate. He kicked laterally, trying to move to one side or another, then up, so he'd be tossed over the top of the animal rather than under it as it came up, because it was definitely going to bump him. He looked back beyond his fins as he kicked and saw the whale adjust its direction to keep coming toward him. Nate kicked once for the surface, then looked back again to see the animal's enormous mouth opening beneath him. No, this can't be happening, he thought. The panic rising in his chest demanded air, but it was as if the entire ocean had opened up a hole behind him, and he wasn't going to make it to the surface. The whale came halfway out of the water as it scooped him up, and Nate saw sky, and white water, and baleen fringing the upper jaw above – all of it framed by the huge trapezoid that was the whale's open mouth. Then he felt the whale sinking back, and he saw the baleen close over him. He rolled into a ball, hoping not to be crushed by the jaws, hoping to be spit out as a horrible dining mistake. But then the great tongue came forward, warm and rough, driving him against the baleen plates – it was like being smashed into a wrought-iron fence by a wet Nerf Volkswagen. He could feel the baleen ripping the skin on his back as the tongue covered him, pressing the seawater out around him as it would strain krill, then crushing him until the last of the air exploded from his body and he blacked out. PART TWO Jonah's People Men really need sea monsters in their personal oceans. For the ocean, deep and black in the depths, is like the low dark levels of our minds in which the dream symbols incubate and sometimes rise up to sight like the Old Man of the Sea. – JOHN STEINBECK CHAPTER SIXTEEN Shoes Off in the Whale! â€Å"Shoes off in the whale!† a male voice said out of the dark. Quinn could see nothing. His entire body ached like, well, like it had been chewed. He crawled to his hands and knees on what felt like wet latex. He reached down and felt for his feet. He still had his flippers on, and logic protested through his confusion. â€Å"I'm not wearing shoes. These are fins.† â€Å"Shoes off in the whale! And don't try and make a break for the anus.† Two things that, if asked about an hour earlier, Nate might have said with conviction he'd never hear in a lifetime of conversation. â€Å"What?† Quinn said, squinting into the dark. He realized that he was still wearing his dive mask and reached up to push it back. â€Å"I'll bet he didn't bring the pastrami on rye I asked for either, did he?† came the voice. Shapes began to define themselves in the darkness, and Nate saw a face not a foot away from his. He gasped and pulled away from it, for although it seemed to be examining him with great interest, the face was not human. Clay Demodocus was known throughout the world as one of the calmest, most level-tempered, most generous and considerate individuals in the entire milieu of marine biology. His reputation preceded him when he went on assignment, and people took it for granted that he would remain amiable throughout a long voyage in cramped quarters, as well as efficient in his own work, respectful of the work of others, and cool-headed in an emergency. Because he often had to subjugate himself to the head researcher on any given assignment, Clay did not indulge in ego battles and testosterone-slinging contests with researchers or crew. None of these qualities were evident when he went over the desk of the Coast Guard commandant and stopped only inches from head-butting the tall, athletic-looking officer. â€Å"You call this search off now and I'll see to it that your name is remembered for all time in concert with Adolf Eichmann and Vlad the Impaler. Nathan Quinn is a legend in his field, and every t ime there's a documentary on whales on the Discovery Channel, or National Geographic, or Animal Planet, or PBS, or the fucking Cartoon Channel, I'll see to it that your name is mentioned right after Nate's as the man who left him out there. You'll be the official Coast Guard pariah for the next hundred years. This will be the Coast Guard's My Lai. Every time a kid drowns, your name will be mentioned – nay, every time someone gets a soaker, the name of Commodore Whateveryournameis shall be brought forth and your effigy burned in the streets and your head stuck on a pole, lipsticked, and marched around school yards, forever. And all because you're too goddamned lamebrained to put a couple of helicopters into the air to find my friend. Is that what you want?† Clay had strong views on loyalty. The commodore had been in the Coast Guard for most of his adult life, spending the majority of his time and energy either rescuing people or training others to do so, and as a result he was taken aback more than somewhat by Clay's tirade. He looked across his office to where Kona and Amy stood by the door, looking nearly as haggard as he felt. The surfer looked at him and shook his head sadly. â€Å"It's been three days, Mr. Demodocus. In open water with no life preserver? You're not a tourist – you know the odds. If he were alive, he'd have drifted far out of where we're able to patrol by now anyway. We're doing no fewer than ten rescues a day on Maui. I can't have our helicopters out to sea when there's just no chance.† â€Å"What about tide maps, currents?† Clay pleaded. â€Å"Can't we try to predict which way he might have drifted? Narrow the search area.† The commodore had to look away from Clay when he answered. The first thing the surfer kid with the uneven dreadlocks had said when they'd come into his office was â€Å"Sucks to be you.† And right now the commodore couldn't have agreed more. He'd lost friends at sea; he understood. â€Å"I'm sorry,† he said. Clay sighed heavily, and his shoulders sagged. Amy came forward and took him by the arm. â€Å"Let's go home, Clay.† Clay nodded and allowed himself to be led out of the commodore's office. As they made their way across the parking lot to Clay's truck Kona said, â€Å"That was amazing, Clay.† â€Å"Throwing a fit? Yeah, I'm proud of that, especially since it worked so well.† â€Å"Why didn't you say anything about the whale eating Nate?† In the three days since Quinn had disappeared, Kona had forgotten to speak brophonics and Rasta talk almost completely, and now he just sounded like a kid from New Jersey with a â€Å"whoa, dude† surfer accent. â€Å"Whales don't eat people, Kona,† Clay said. â€Å"You know better.† â€Å"I know what I saw,† Amy said. Clay stopped and stepped away from both of them. â€Å"Look, if you're going to do this stuff, you have to be practical. I believe that you saw what you say you saw, but nothing about it helps. First, a humpback's throat is only about a foot in diameter. They couldn't swallow a human if they wanted to. So if the whale did scoop up Nate, then there's a good chance he was spit out very quickly. Second, if I told that story to everyone else, either they'd think you were being hysterical or, if they believed you, they'd assume that Nate had been drowned immediately, and there wouldn't have been a search. I believe you, kid, but don't think anyone else will.† â€Å"So what now?† Kona asked. Clay looked at the two of them, standing there like abandoned puppies, and he pushed aside his own grief. â€Å"We finish Nate's work. We do this work, we carry on. Right now I've got to go up the mountain and see the Old Broad. Nate was like a son to her.† â€Å"You haven't told her?† Amy asked. Clay shook his head. â€Å"Why would I? I haven't given up on Nate. I've seen too much. Last year they thought they'd lost one of the black-coral divers. The boat came back to where they'd sent him down, and he was gone. A week later he called from Molokai for them to come get him. He'd swum over and had been so busy partying he'd forgotten to call. â€Å"Doesn't sound like Nate,† Kona said. â€Å"He told me that he hated fun.† â€Å"Still, it would be wrong not to let the Old Broad know what's happened,† Amy said. Clay patted them each on the back. â€Å"Intrepid,† he said. As he drove up the volcano, Clay tried to formulate some gentle way of breaking the news to the Old Broad. Since his mother had passed away, Clay had taken the bearing of bad news very seriously – so seriously, in fact, that he usually let someone else do the bearing. He'd been in Antarctica on assignment for National Science, snowed in at the naval weather station for six months when his mother, still in Greece, had gone missing. She was seventy-five, and the villagers knew she couldn't have gone far, yet, search as they might, they did not find her for three days. Finally her location was revealed by her ripening odor. They found her dead in an olive tree, where she had climbed to do some pruning. Clay's older brothers, Hektor and Sidor, would not hold the funeral without Clay, the baby, yet they knew their brother would be completely out of touch for months. â€Å"He is the rich American,† came the ouzo-besotted lament. â€Å"He should take care of Mama. Perhaps h e will even fly us to America for the funeral.† And so the two brothers, having inherited their mother's weakness for alcohol and their father's bad judgment, packed the remains of Mother Demodocus in an olive barrel, filled the barrel with the preserving brine, and shipped it off to their rich younger brother's house in San Diego. The problem was, in their grief (or perhaps it was their stupor) they forgot to send a letter, leave a message, or, for that matter, put a packing label on the barrel, so months later, when Clay returned to find the barrel on his porch, he broke into it thinking he was about to enjoy a delicious snack of kala-mata olives from home. It was not the way to find out about his mother's death, and it engendered in Clay very strong views about loyalty and the bearing of bad news. I will do this right, he thought as he pulled into the Old Broad's driveway. There's no reason for this to be a shock. There were cats and crystals everywhere. The Old Broad led him through the house and had him sit in a wicker emperor's chair that looked out over the channel while she fetched some mango iced tea for them. The house could have been designed by Gauguin and landscaped by Rousseau. It was small, just five rooms and a carport, but it sat on twenty acres of fruit-salad jungle: banana trees, mango, lemon, tangerine, orange, papaya, and coconut palm, as well as a florist's dream of orchids and other tropical flowers. The Old Broad had cultivated a low, soft grass under all the trees that was like a golf-course green over sponge cake. The house was made almost entirely of dark koa wood, nut brown and with black grain running through it, polished to a smooth satin and as hard as ebony. There was a high-peaked galvanized-tin roof with a vented tower in the center to draw heat out the top and cool air in from under the wide eaves that surrounded the whole house. There were no windows, just open sliding walls. You could look through any part of the house to the other and see the tropical garden. The Old Broad's telescope and  «big-eye » binoculars stood on steel and concrete mountings in front of where Clay sat, looking very much out of place: the artillery of science planted in paradise. At Clay's feet a skinny cat happily crunched the legs off a scorpion. The Old Broad handed Clay a tall, icy glass and sat in another emperor's chair beside him. She was barefoot and wore a flowered caftan and a yellow-and-red hibiscus blossom in her hair that was half the size of her face. She had probably been a dish back around the time of Lincoln, Clay thought. â€Å"It's so nice to see you, Clay. I don't get many visitors. Not that I'm lonely, you know. I have the cats and the whales to talk to. But that's not like having one of my boys to visit with.† Oh, jeez, Clay thought. One of her boys. Oh, jeez. He had to tell her. He knew he had to tell her. He had come up here to tell her, and he was going to tell her, and that was that. â€Å"This is excellent tea, Elizabeth. Mango, you say?† â€Å"That's right. Just a little bit of mint. Now, what is it you needed to talk to me about?† â€Å"And ice? I think the coldness makes it, gives it a fantastic, uh†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"Temperature? Yes, ice is an essential ingredient in iced tea, Clay. Thus the name.† Sarcasm is so ugly on the aged, thought Clay. No one likes a sarcastic oldster. He said, â€Å"Iced tea, you mean?† Oh, this is just going to kill her, he thought. â€Å"If this is about a new boat, Clay, don't be shy. I know how you loved that boat, and we'll get you another one. I'm just not sure we can go for one quite that nice. My investments haven't been doing well the last couple of years.† â€Å"No, no, it's not the boat. The boat was insured. It's Nate.† â€Å"And how is Nathan? I hope he's handling his little infatuation with your new researcher with a bit of dignity. He was wearing it on his sleeve that night at the sanctuary. You'd think a man as smart as Nathan would have better control over his impulses.† â€Å"Nate had a thing for Amy?† Clay was going to tell her, really. He was just working up to it. â€Å"You said ‘had, † said the Old Broad. â€Å"You said Nate ‘had' a thing for Amy.† â€Å"Elizabeth, there's been an accident. Three days ago Nate went into the water to get a better look at a singer, and†¦ well, we haven't been able to find him.† Clay put down his tea so he could catch the old woman should she faint. â€Å"I'm very sorry.† â€Å"Oh, that. Yes, I heard about that. Nate's fine, Clay. The whale told me.† And here Clay found himself balancing on another dilemma. Should he let her have her belief, no matter how crazy it might be, or should he dash her spirits to earth with the truth? Although Nate had found Elizabeth's eccentricities irritating, Clay had always liked her insistence that the whales spoke to her. He wished it were true. He scooted to the edge of his chair and took her hand in his. â€Å"Elizabeth, I don't think you understand what I'm saying – ; â€Å"He took the pastrami and rye, right? He said he would.† â€Å"Um, that's not exactly pertinent. He's been gone for three days, and they were right at the wind line toward Molokai when he was lost. Rough sea. He's probably gone, Elizabeth.† â€Å"Well, of course he's gone, Clay. You'll just have to carry on until he gets back.† Now she patted his hand. â€Å"He did take the sandwich, right? The whale was very specific.† â€Å"Elizabeth! You're not listening to me. This is not about the whales singing to you through the trees. Nate is gone!† â€Å"Don't you shout at me, Clay Demodocus. I'm trying to comfort you. And it wasn't a song through the trees. What do you think? I'm some crazy old woman? The whale called on the phone.† â€Å"Oh, Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, I don't know how to do this » â€Å"More tea?† asked the Old Broad. As Clay made the long drive down the volcano and back to Papa Lani, he tried to fight letting his spirits rise. The Old Broad was completely convinced that Nathan Quinn was just fine and dandy, although she could give no reason other than to say that the whale, after ordering a pastrami on rye, had told her that everything would be all right. â€Å"And how did you know it was the whale on the phone?† asked Clay. â€Å"Well, he told me that's who he was.† â€Å"And it was a male voice?† â€Å"Well, it would be. He's a singer, isn't he?† She'd gone on like that, reassuring him, encouraging him to go back to work, dismissing any guilt or grief, until he was almost to the gates of the compound before he remembered. â€Å"She's a total loony!† he said to himself, as if he just needed to hear the words, to feel their truth. Nothing is all right. Nate's dead. Clair would be sleeping at her house tonight, and although it was late, Clay could not make himself go to sleep. Instead he went to the office, knowing that nothing in the world could eat up time like editing video. He attached a digital video camera to his computer and turned on the recently replaced giant monitor. Blue filled the screen, and then he could sense the motion of descent, but there was only a faint hiss of his breathing, not the usual fusillade of bubbles from a regulator. This was the rebreather footage, from the day he had almost drowned. He'd completely forgotten about it. The breath-holder's tail came into frame. Clay's first instincts had been right. This was great footage of a breath-holder – the best they'd ever recorded. As he passed the tail, the genital slit came into view, and he could tell that they were dealing with a male. There were black marks on the underside of the tail, but the view was still edge on, and he couldn't make out their shape. He heard a faint kazoo sound in the background and ran back the tape, with the sound turned up. This time his breath sounded like a bull snorting before a charge, the kazoo sound, louder now, like a voice through wax paper. He ran back the tape again and cranked the sound all the way up, bringing down the high frequency to kill some of the hiss. Definitely voices. â€Å"There's someone outside, Captain.† â€Å"Does he have my sandwich with him?† â€Å"He's close, Captain, really close. Too close.† Then the tail came down, and there was a deafening thud. The picture jerked in a half dozen directions, then settled as tiny bubbles passed by the lens in a field of blue. The lens caught a shot of Clay's fin as he sank, and then it was just blue and the occasional shot of the lanyard that secured the camera to his wrist. Clay ran the tape back again, confirmed the voices, then set it to dub onto the computer hard drive so he could manipulate the audio in a waveform, the way they did with sound recordings. Even though he was sure what was on the tape, he couldn't figure out how it could possibly have gotten there. Only five minutes of watching little progress bars move across the monitor, and he could stand the suspense no longer. He smiled to himself, because now was the time he would have gone to Nate, as he had so many times before, to help him figure out exactly what it was they were hearing or looking at, but Nate was gone. He checked his watch, and, deciding that it wasn't too insanely late, he headed across the compound to get Amy.