Robyn Matthers

Robin Matter's was an extraordinary young person; a young woman who is physically short and nuggets, but graceful and well balanced, who is normally calm and quiet but loves to win and who is at her best in the toughest of situations . She saves Lee's life when he is shot and keeps Elli going when they strike to rescue Lee. She is a leader, and not Just when the going is tough. When Elli or Homer are active, she will let them run the show, but when leadership is needed, she will provide, even in ‘normal' situations.She is also compassionate and caring, sometimes in a big way. But often Just little things that make a big difference. At the beginning of the novel we are introduced to Robin as a responsible, reliable teenager who wasn't able to commit to the camp out without the conformation and permission from her strict parents. Elli finds Robin's parents' trust issues in their daughter quite amusing, â€Å"The funny thing about it was that if parents ever had a daughter they c ould trust it was the Matter's and Robin, but they didn't seem to have worked it out yet.The biggest problem she was ever likely to give them was being late to church. And that'd probably be because she was helping a boy scout across the road. Robin was fairly quiet and serious. She got effort certificates at school every year, and she was heavily religious. Though underneath the coax of this surface, Robin was an extremely determined, strong minded person, who could be highly competitive at times. Throughout the novel we see Robin progress and slowly, bit by bit; and she cracks the shell of the quiet obedient good girl she used to be, before the invasion.Robin's major character traits stay pretty much the same and she is still content to keep her morality throughout the war but we do notice small changes and impacts the war has ad on Robin. For one, Robin emerges as a leader. She was able to rise above the others when they were all having emotional breakdowns as their world was cru mbling around them, trying to comprehend the idea of an invasion on their own soil. She was no longer the small quiet girl who always carried out good deeds and lived a typical Wireman life.The invasion had created a certain strength within Robin that only really shed light in her past life when she was intently competing in sport. This strength allowed her to undertake tasks without a moment's hesitation in times of life or death situations. Robin skipped over the next bit pretty quickly but it's one of the reasons for writing all this down, because I want people to know stuff like this, how brave Robin was that night.She picked up the photocopier that sits on a stand near the lottery desk and chucked the whole thing through the door. Then she ran to Lee, heaved him onto her back, across her shoulders, and carried him through the shattered door, kicking out bits of glass as she went. † Robin's bravery saved Lee that night of the patrol raid. She turned into a heroin over the course of a night and as well as her commendable bravery and strength in arraying Lee to safety, Robin was able to overcome her fitful fear of blood and needles. I've given him two injections today. It was cool fun. ‘ ‘Robin! ‘ I nearly passed out myself, in amazement. ‘You faint when people even mention injections! ‘ ‘Yes, I know,' she said, with her head on one side as though she were a botanist studying herself. ‘It's funny, isn't it? † Overall, I think the drastic effects of the war had flicked a newly found switch within Robin's kind heart. The changes within had shaped her to be resilient in tough situations and had consequently saved the lives of friends.

Comparison between the “Incident” and the “Travel” Poems Essay

Comparison between the â€Å"Incident† and the â€Å"Travel† Poems Introduction First poem: Incident Keep looking straight at me. Now I was eight and very small, And he was no whit bigger, And so I smiled, but he poked out His tongue, and called me, â€Å"Nigger.† I saw the whole of Baltimore From May until December; Of all the things that happened there That’s all that I remember. Second poem: Travel By Edna St. Vincent Millay The railroad track is miles away, And the day is loud with voices speaking, Yet there isn’t a train goes by all day But I hear its whistle shrieking. All night there isn’t a train goes by, Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming, But I see its cinders red on the sky, And hear its engine steaming. My heart is warm with friends I make, And better friends I’ll not be knowing; Yet there isn’t a train I wouldn’t take, No matter where it’s going. Comparison between the two poems above   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The first aspect to compare between the two poems above is the themes portrayed. In the first poem, â€Å"Incident† highlights the theme of racial discrimination. The speaker in the poem tells the audience how he was travelling in a bus when he encountered an event that he says that he is unlikely to forget. He says that while in the bus travelling to Baltimore, his happiness suddenly turned to sadness when a young boy of his age called him a Niger. In stanza three, the speaker says, â€Å"†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦but he poked out His tongue, and called me, â€Å"Niger†. Niger is a word that is used to sarcastically insult African-Americans living in America. The speaker felt so sad and in the next eight months (from May to December) that he spent in Baltimore; he cannot remember anything else but that annoying incident. In stanza four of the poem, the speaker confirms that he can never forget. He says, â€Å"†¦.From May to Decem ber; of all the things that happened there, That’s all that I remember†.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   On the other hand, the theme in the second poem, â€Å"Travel†, is that of discontentment. The speaker describes her feelings to the audience. She says in stanza threeâ€Å"My heart is warm with the friends I make, And better friends I’ll not be knowing†. In these lines, the speaker says that although she is presently happy with the friends that she has; she thinks the friends that she has not met already may be better. This is a clear indication of dissatisfaction that the speaker expresses.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   It is also important to analyze the choice of the titles of the poems that the authors use and find out how relevant they are to the poem. The title that the author chooses carries too much weight in the understanding of the poem. The theme of the poem is highlighted in the title, albeit hidden and, therefore, identified after reading the whole poem. In the first poem, the title is â€Å"Incident†. The literal meaning of this word is a happening that is unusual. In this poem, the speaker describes an unusual happening that apparently happened to him. In his context, the speaker experienced an incident. Therefore, the title is very relevant to the poem. In the second poem, the title is â€Å"Travel†. The word travel means movement from one location to another. In the poem, the speaker is discontented by her present state. She longs to move to the next level. She uses train metaphorically to indicate that she wants to cease the next opportunity available and move to the next level. Therefore, the title captures this desire of the speaker so vividly and, therefore, in the context of the theme in this poem, it is very relevant.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The other aspect that needs comparison in these two poems is the choice of the language. The language that the author uses is aimed at making the poem interesting to the reader while bringing out the desired message. In the first poem, â€Å"Incident†, the author chooses to use the first person â€Å"I† in the poem. He allows the speaker to tell the audience about this incident in a direct manner. The reader, who is the audience, is able to connect with the speaker when the speaker talks about himself. For instance, in stanza two, the speaker says, â€Å"Now I was eight and very young,†¦..†. The speaker informs the audience that, at the time of the incident that happened to him, he was eight years old and was very small. Incidentally, the second poem also uses the first person â€Å"I†. The speaker tells the audience about her feelings. This style improves the connection between the audience and the speaker because the poem is about the speaker.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   In addition, the two poems have used contracted language in several instances. In the first poem, there is the use of â€Å"That’s† instead of â€Å"That is† in the last stanza line four. This makes the poem informal and makes the readers connect with the speaker easily, especially in the modern times. In the second poem, instances of contractions are numerous. For example, there is the use of â€Å"I’ll† instead of â€Å"I will†, â€Å"isn’t† instead of â€Å"is not† and â€Å"it’s† instead of â€Å"it is† in the last stanza. Again, this contraction makes the poem informal. In the modern times, the poem becomes understandable. The choice of contractions is deliberate. The contractions make the number of syllables in the lines where they are equal to the rest of the lines.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Another aspect of the poems that is worth comparison is the use of the rhyme technique in the poems. Both poems have a regular rhyme pattern that serve to make them more interesting to read. The rhyme pattern in the first poem is ABCB. To illustrate this rhyming pattern, it is necessary to pick the last words in one stanza. In this case, the last stanza has last words as â€Å"†¦Baltimore, †¦December, †¦there and †¦remember†. In the case of the second poem, the rhyme pattern is ABAB. The last stanza has the last words as â€Å"†¦make, †¦knowing, †¦..take and †¦.knowing†. The words illustrate the regular rhyme pattern. The same patterns are repeated throughout the poems. The regular rhyme pattern help make the poem rhythmical and lyrical.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   It is important to compare the mood in each, and the tone used in either poem. In the first poem, the mood is jovial initially as depicted in the first and the second stanza. The speaker expresses his joy when he smiles at the stranger boy. However, the mood changes to sadness after the speaker is insulted by the boy when he calls him Nigger. As the mood changes, so does the tone. It starts as joyfully to a somber one. In the second poem, the tone is optimistic. The speaker is optimistic and hopeful of a better future. However, there is some tinge of negativity in the tone in the first two stanzas. This negative tone expresses speaker’s dissatisfaction about her current status.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The first poem uses imagery when the speaker tells the audience how he saw a boy staring straight at him. He smiled at him. The reader can vividly see the mental image of the speaker smiling at the stranger. In the second poem, the author employs metaphor by using a train to signify different paths in life. The speaker says that â€Å"†¦..Yet there isn’t a train I wouldn’t take, No matter where it’s going† in the last stanza. It means that the speaker is willing to take any path in life although there is no opportunity that is presenting itself. In addition, the second poem has employed personification in the first stanza when the speaker implies that the Train â€Å"whistling† and â€Å"shrieking†.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The two poems have so much in common. The similarities emanate from the choice of the language and the styles employed. Therefore, it is clear that poets have one thing in common as far as their writing skills are concerned. They have a rich background of poetry techniques. They always employ them appropriately to suit the message intended to be delivered. References St, John R. A. Explorations in Literature. Greenville, S.C: BJU Press,  2013. Print. Source document

Geology Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 5

Geology - Essay Example It is in these mountains that the described rock was found (‘Washington Geologic Newsletter’ 56) According to further research, there is evidence suggesting that uplifting of the Cascade Mountains that occurred in the Columbian river, which is denoted as the ancestral Columbia river exhibited a coincidence that saw the formation of a canyon through cutting. In the years that followed, fluid deposition and intracanyon flows accounted for the existence of basalt in the river channel. Such basalt is the basic material that formed the volcanic rocks similar to the type presented in the image. The latest event in the Columbia River basalt was the deposition of the saddle mountain basalt. Saddle Mountains have been described as containing high silica content, and of noticeably thin nature compared to other basalts of the Columbian river (70). The nature of appearance is the result if extensive compression as well as that of the ensuing extensional events that followed as the deposited basalt

Terrorism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 1

Terrorism - Essay Example Strongly believing in the cause a person is fighting for, therefore, proves to be the key factor that drives a person into committing acts of terror.2 From a psychological standpoint, it becomes clear the influence people’s beliefs have on their actions. Prominent, social Psychologists advance that people conform to the beliefs of a group in order to find acceptance from other members. Therefore, they adopt their beliefs without questioning them; fearing rejection from the rest. These scholars further posit that people within a group rarely stop to question the beliefs shared by other group members. The psychological, emotional, social and physiological wellbeing brought about by belonging to a group ensures people go out of their way to preserve their positions within the group. In addition, there exists a faction of dominant, leaders within these groups who formulate the code of conduct of group members. Research in Psychology shows that people tend to gravitate towards domi nant, authoritative individuals. They do this by sharing in these people’s believes even when these believes prove to be wrong. This is because these dominant individuals provide their followers with a standard, which can be used to justify their actions.2 Looking at separate acts of terror committed around the world, helps to show how belief plays a crucial role in leading a person to terrorism. ... Dictators played with their followers’ psychological make-up. They did this by twisting their thoughts into believing that their actions were right despite the selfish motives behind their agendas. They understood people’s main weakness of needing something to believe, which gave them a sense of purpose in their lives. In Hitler’s case, he made most Germans believe in the superiority of their race while he rallied for them to commit inhumane acts towards people of other races especially the Jews. As a result, an estimate of about six million Jews lost their lives under the hands of German soldiers in the Holocaust. German soldiers found nothing wrong in their actions because they adored and believed everything Hitler said and further used it to justify their actions. The inhumane treatment of people within the concentration camps spread out all over Germany, and advocacy for World War I & II resulted under the influence of Hitler on people’s beliefs.1 Reli gious beliefs also play a vital role in the guiding of people towards committing acts of terror. Many people around the world gravitate towards believing in a supernatural entity. In most cases, people join religions and begin to believe in the doctrines advanced by these religions because these religions reinforce their faith by giving them something to believe in consistently. Looking back at the history of the Roman Catholic Church, it is apparent that many people gravitated towards this religion because it was the most widespread religion at the time. People believed in the holiness of the papacy and the Holy Mother Church. Therefore, those chosen to form the church’s army believed that their killing sprees were justifiable despite the irony that the command to kill

Professional Development about Constructivist Learning Environments Research Paper

Professional Development about Constructivist Learning Environments - Research Paper Example Self-regulated Learning with technology accounts for much of the present thinking about the utilization of technology as a supporting tool for learning. As a tool, the internet can be a means of finding and processing information, and to reflect on one’s understandings, beliefs, and thinking processes. Utilized in such a manner, internet technology provides learner to collect information and explore new content knowledge on his own and without the assistance of teachers and parents. Ordinary application software such as word processing, spreadsheet, graphics, presentation, and database software, problem-solving software, simulations, electronic mail, and the Internet are technological tools that help an individual in his quest of learning. Self-regulated learning with the help of online course animations, hypertext, or clickable diagrams and video clips helped concepts that a static textbook image simply cannot. Video clips showing how to mount a camera on a tripod can help ex plain concepts much more easily through visuals that are not easily explained by a lecturer or a book's textual description. The risks in Self-regulated learning involves learner’s dilemma to gather the right knowledge from the flood of information available and incoherency of some of the documents provided. Many changes, which the learners might get, distracted from their learning objectives and without the proper guidance of teachers and classroom instructions. Self- regulated learner will be consuming his valuable time searching for irrelevant information.

Skill Plan - Management Skills Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Skill Plan - Management Skills - Assignment Example Nonetheless, I have understanding that these goals are highly achievable, though not without required level of skills and competencies. Moreover, in order to facilitate achievement of these objectives there is need to develop a plan that can facilitate acquisition of complementary skills. Therefore, this paper will focus on discussing an outline of five-year skills development plan that can assist in fulfillment of my vision for my career or professional life. 2. Skills and Competencies Required to Fulfill this Vision Some of the skills and competencies that are required in order to fulfill this vision are determined through realization and identification of objectives involved Furthermore, I should focus on creasing self-awareness, which will serve as a pertinent element in good management and leadership in the future. In this case, I have to spend significant amount of time in acquiring experience in the field of business and fashion design. Most significant way of acquiring requir ed competence concern developing of substantial foundation of knowledge by understanding of basics from my degree program. Therefore, this competence will facilitate increase of ability to cope with rapidly changing business environment. Conversely, I will consider increased need for integration of business and advanced technology in order to increase efficiency in decision-making. Apparently, I find it necessary to have increased competence in application of technology in order to form a basis of developing competitive advantage in my future business. On the other hand, in order to achieve set objectives, there is need to develop significant understanding of required interpersonal skills (Johnson, 1999). In this case, interpersonal skills will assist in with dealing business associates and employees in order to facilitate successes. In fact, I have understanding that interpersonal skills that I will require as a manager include effective communication, listening, non-verbal skills (Eunson, 2008). Besides, these skills have a significant contribution to management of business in order to facilitate its success. I will also seek to develop other interpersonal skills that will enable formation and management of teams and groups that can facilitate effective implementation of business strategies (Honey, 2001). Moreover, some of the other relevant skills that will require for succeed include; time management, setting of objectives, decision-making, conflict management and effective negotiating (Thompson, 2001). For instance, after acquiring these interpersonal skills, I will have ability to resolve conflicts that would occur within the organization or with other business partners (Bolton, 1998). In addition, negotiation skills can also assist sealing significant deal with business associated that will improve performance of my business (Thompson, 2001). 3. Evaluation of Proficiency in these other skills and competences at the present time, and summary of progress made on your nominated skill this semester My interpersonal skills and individual’s awareness are the starting points required for management and leadership in a team. In order to realize the effort made towards achievement of set objectives, there is need for an evaluation of proficiency concerning the skills and competencies now, thereby giving summary of progress. Now, I have realized the significance of ensuring that I am up to date with relevant information regarding my field of study. I have been

Fascism, Nazism, Communism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Fascism, Nazism, Communism - Essay Example This paper compares and contrasts Italian fascism, German Nazism and Soviet communism. â€Å"Fascism broke new grounds in its use of mass politics against the conservatives’ enemies, the left and liberals† (Paxton & Hessler, p.180). Same way fascism and communism also fought against capitalism and democracy. Hitler was not in a mood to accept an ideology like socialism. In his opinion, Germans were superior to other cultures and hence they have the right to enjoy more privileges than other cultures. Instead of working class, Hitler gave more importance to the ruling class. It should be noted that Soviet communism gave more importance to the interests of working class. It argued that the gap between the rich and poor should be reduced as much as possible and for that purpose the interests of the working class should be given priority. â€Å"Fascism and Nazism planned to make life better for the people through expanding the power of the government. Communism thought that people could have better lives if there was not a class system†(Nosotro). Italian fascism gave more importance class collaboration rather than class conflicts while Soviet communism gave more importance to class struggles rather than class collaboration. On the other hand, German Nazism gave more importance to national pride rather than socialism or economic inequalities. In fact â€Å"The catalyst to fascism was the threat of revolutionary socialism† (Paxton & Hessler, p.199). In other words, Italian fascism never believed in socialism. It argued that both working class and ruling class should work in collaboration to the economic growth of the country instead of trying to achieve socialism through revolutions. German Nazism on the other hand gave more importance to nationalism rather than economic inequalities of socialism. Hitler in a speech in 1928 argued that brutality rather than humanity is the basis of life! Man has become master of the world through conflict a nd continual struggle†¦ But mankind is not a uniform and equal mass. There are differences between races. The Earth has received its culture from elite peoples; what we see today is ultimately the result of the activity and the achievements of the Aryans (Kitson, p.1925). Nazism was adamant about the supremacy of Aryan culture over other cultures. It believed that only Aryans have the right to rule the world and other cultures should work under the Aryan leadership. Both Soviet communism and German Nazism were accepted uniformly in Soviet Union and Germany. However, Italian fascism was not accepted uniformly throughout Italy. â€Å"While the worker strongholds like Turin remained close to fascist ideas whereas the underdeveloped south remained in the hands of local bosses†(Paxton & Hessler, p.184). In other words, fascism failed to attract all Italians just like Soviet communism or German Nazism. ‘Italian fascism gained power in 1920 with the help of traditional co nservatives. Nazism also gained power in Germany in 1933 with help of similar alliances† (Paxton & Hessler, p.195). In short, both fascism and Nazism sought help from conservatives and fundamentalist to gain power. However, conservatives and fundamentalists were the strongest opponents of Soviet communism. Both fascism and Nazism are autocratic in nature compared to communism. Even though communism is not autocratic in nature, its principles and ideologies are not so democratic. It should be noted that Soviet communism was not giving any respect

Education & Assessment of English Language Learners Assignment

Education & Assessment of English Language Learners - Assignment Example If children from poor families are having difficulty in learning the school curricula, it is because maybe it is not tailored to incorporate their culture. They have lifestyles, resources, or belief systems that different from those found in the curricula. Because it has been pointed out in the article that the type of English a pupil uses is largely dependent on what is done in their community, the best way to make pupils learn more is to tailor the language so that it fits the culture of the student. The references, allusions and stories should be derived from the culture of the pupil. However, this poses the challenge of what the children would like to aspire to; let’s face it, the children are in school so that they can be able to improve their lives and join the middleclass; if their literature ,material is to be modified so as to fit their cultures, it is likely to discourage them. Employers are also not looking for people who speak â€Å"Black† English or a diffe rent dialect that is not standard; they want Standard English. This problem is rather difficult to address because people already believe the stereotypes. In my opinion, poor people just need to conform and teach their children better English; it is the easier option than changing the curriculum to something the children are working hard to get out

Shopping Mall and Theater Concession Sales Essay Example for Free

Shopping Mall and Theater Concession Sales Essay 1. Scale Economies and Diseconomies at McDonalds: How does having a menu that is uniform around the country provide McDonald’s with economies of scale? How is menu planning made more complex by expanding into other countries? McDonalds menu is economy to scale because when they order their product, they can order in bulk to lesion the cost. Also when you have a uniform menu, no matter what state you go to you know what to expect; which in return could increase sales. In places like India, where they do not eat cow, ordering a McDouble is simply not going to happen. The cow is their â€Å"God† and to put a food chain that specializes in serving their â€Å"God† between two buns will be hurtful to their image and customer base in that company. If they wanted to expand into the other countries, they have to make sure they do not offend the customer base in that country. 2. Scale Economies and Diseconomies at the Movies: Movie theater concession sales account for well over half the profits at most theaters. Given this, what are the benefits of the staggered movie times allowed by multiple screens? What is the benefit to a multiscreen theater of locating at a shopping mall? Staggering movie times would mean less wait in the concession, people don’t like to wait and if you have 4 movies showing at the same time with 60 people at each showing, and if 25% of the people want concession foods, that could be 80 people waiting in line for a movie that starts in 10 min. It is less hassle for the movie theaters to stagger times for their concessions rather than all at the same time. A Mulitscreen theater showing helps the mall revenue. The malls always have a food court which while you are waiting or go window shopping could lead into people buying goods from the mall when they only wanted to go to the movies.

The Handsomest Drowned Man Essay Example for Free

The Handsomest Drowned Man Essay The story begins with several children playing on the beach. That pretty much suffices for They see an abnormal looking bulge in the ocean. They try and guess anything that it might be until it washes up shore and they realize it’s a drowned man. The children, being children, start to play with the body until an adult spots the new toy and lets the rest of the village know. The men of the town carry the body to the nearest house and talk about how heavy he is. Since the body was in the ocean for so long, they figured it was the water that went to his bones. In their small fishing community, there is such little space around that dead bodies are not buried, but thrown over the cliffs and into the ocean. Since the village is so small, the men look around to see that none of them are missing, and automatically know that the dead man is a stranger. That night, the men of the village go around to other towns to seek a better idea of where he might’ve come from. The women stay behind to clean the ocean’s waste off the body. As they clean him off, the women notice that he comes from somewhere far away because the junk that they clean off isn’t a part of anything around their part of the world. When the drowned man is finally cleaned off, the women are left in awe because he is the biggest and tallest and most proud looking man they have ever seen. Hes so big that the women can’t find a bed big enough for him. They can’t find any clothes to fit him, so the women, sewed clothes for him from a sail. While they work on his clothing, the women feel like everything has changed because of their discovery. They start to compare the dead man to their husbands in such a way that made their husbands seem like the worst choice they’ve ever made. The oldest woman in the group of women looks down at the drowned man and says he has the face of someone named Esteban. All of the other women agree right away. Later on after midnight, while the women watch the body being dragged along the ground, they start feeling pity for the drowned man because of his massive size which must have been a burden for him. They thought about his life; and how he would have probably had trouble going through doorways, hitting his head on crossbeams, and not being able to find a chair sturdy enough to seat him. When the men come back and announce that none of the nearby villages can claim the dead body, the women get hyped up about the idea that he is now theirs. The men think their women are being ridiculous and just want to get this burial done as fast as possible. They make a type of stretcher to carry him to the cliffs. While the men rush to get the task done, the women try to waste time by covering the dead body up with other little items. The men complain the entire time until the handkerchief uncovers the dead man’s face and they all stand there in awe about how handsome he is and know that he is â€Å"Esteban†. They thought the same thing about the man and how he must have had such a hard time moving his massive body around and how burden he was causing the villagers. So the villagers make a formal funeral. They go to villages around them to get flowers, and they choose for him honorary family members from their village, The women mourn so loud it steers the sailors off course. As they carry his body to the cliff, the women are aware for the first time that everything they know doesn’t compare to the beauty of their drowned man. When they finally let the body go off the cliff, they don’t anchor it, so that he can come back if he wishes. The villagers realize that everything will be different from now on. They will make the best of their village and make it progress by building houses bigger and better, paint them bright colors, and plant flowers on their cliffs so that future sailor’s going by will see and smell them, and they will know that it’s â€Å"Esteban’s Village†.

Analysis of the Internet of Things

Analysis of the Internet of Things The Internet of things is a term coined by Massachutes Institute of technology (MIT).The term describes a vision of the internet in the future where all things or objects are on one network. These things will contain: A Unique identifier Its own individual digital presence- it will know who and where it is. The ability to process or exchange information Can store data about itself Is capable of participating in or making decisions relevant to its own destiny on a continuous basis? The term Internet of things covers the whole infrastructure such as the hardware, software and services supporting the networking of physical objects. (European Commission, 2008) A Brief History of the Internet The first development to the present World Wide Web was Enquire. This contained a project management tool that allowed pages of notes to be linked together and edited. (Anderson, 2007). Eventually, after the evolution of various technological and software developments was the World Wide Web created. With a browser/client that could view and edit pages of marked-up information (HTML). The edit function only really materialised in later browsers: Viola WWW and Mosaic (the current Netscape browser.). Web 1.0 Introduced in 1994, web 1.0 consisted of an individual source (e.g. Website or a file) publishing information which could be viewed or downloaded by a client. This was a straight client-server network, so those individual clients were not able to fully interact with the source. The main purpose of web 1.0 was to push information to a relatively passive audience. (Castelluccio, Michael, 2008). This passive audience would consist of users who would create their own websites. So, the majority of web 1.0 websites contained HTML tags scattered all across the web but without the ability for users to add to the website unless they understood HTML. This left internet interaction exclusive to people who were HTML literate. Web 2.0 In 2008 web 2.0 became the associated term for the uprising of new products and services on the internet. The term was created four years previous by Dale Dougherty, vice president of OReilly Media Inc.2 Evolving from web 1.0, 2.0 represented a more peer to peer environment. This concept emphasized more the individual user having the ability to upload content (pictures, music, and videos) to a website. These websites took the form of blogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds and social networking sites. This user interaction coupled with improvements in networking technology, has made the internet more personal and accessible. According to (Anupriya Ankolekar et al, 2007), Web 2.0 is distinguished mainly from Web 1.0 by the following characteristics: Community: Web 2.0 offers multiple users to work together and to share information. So the website is more effective than that of just having one contributor to the site. Each contributor gains more from the system than she puts into it. Such community website examples would be the music file sharing service Napster and an event calendar Upcoming. Mashups: Services from different sites can be brought together, in the creation of a new website such as using Google maps in your website. Ajax: The base for the previous two characteristics, Ajax creates responsive user interfaces. Asynchronous JavaScript + XML, AJAX for short is a number of technologies ranging from CSS and XHTML for standards based presentation to XML for data retrieval and data interchange to JavaScript for binding everything together (Garrett, 2005). The traditional Web application model was based on the users actions on a web interface triggering a HTTP request to a web server. And in turn the server sending a HTML page back to the client. This lead to stop/starting of information as it goes and comes back to the user. Ajax prevents this by having an ajax engine being placed between the client and server. Instead of a webpage the browser loads an ajax engine made of javaScript code. This engine creates a asynchronous connection with the user independent of the server. Every action which would normally result in an HTTP request generation now turns into a JavaScript call to the AJAX engine. Web 3.0- The Semantic web Web 3.0 or a semantic web is being proposed as the natural progression for the development of the Web. A definition from Paul Anderson in an article in the American scientific explains that the semantic web is about the shift from documents to data- the transformation of a space consisting largely of human-readable, text oriented documents, to an information space in which machine readable data, imbued with some sense of meaning is being exchanged and acted upon. This machine readable data would consist of metadata. Defined by (NISO 2004) Metadata is structured information that describes, explains, locates, or otherwise makes it easier to retrieve, use, or manage an information resource. Metadata is often called data about data or information about information. RDF There are current technologies which are being developed by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) which aims to bring development towards a Semantic Web. These technologies such as RDF (Resource Description Frame work) can be used to give meaning to the metadata on the World Wide Web. RDF according to (Berners-lee et al, 2001), encodes a triple (object, subject, verb) using XML tags. These tags are hidden labels that annotate web pages but these tags have no meaning to the document. With RDF, the document makes decisions that things (people, webpages) have properties (is an author of) with certain values (another webpage). He goes on to develop that these objects can be identified by an URI (Universal Resource Identifier), the best known being a URL (Universal Resource Locator). The triples produced by RDF form webs of info about related things. And with URI encoding the document, the URI makes sure that this information is not just words but is tied to a unique definition that everyon e can find on the web? Ontologies But how can a machine differentiate between these terms/objects? OWL or Web Ontology Language is a formal language which represents ontologies (intelligent agents) in the semantic web. These intelligient agents will help relate various types of metadata from the RDF. According to (Berners-lee et al, 2001) ontologies have taxonomy and a set of interference rules. Taxonomy: Defines classes of objects and relations among them. And can express a large number of relations among objects by assigning properties to classes and allowing subclasses to inherit such properties. Interference Rules help distinguish similar terms, for example that an address from Sligo it, being in Sligo, must be in Co. Sligo, which is in Ireland. (Berners-lee et al, 2001) explains the computer doesnt truly understand any of this information, but it can now manipulate the terms much more effectively in ways that are useful and meaningful to the human user ?. With the ability to perform this function more accurate web searches can be produced, as the searches are based on a precise concept instead of using vague keywords. Turn to the Internet of Things The possibilities of the semantic web can give a base for the IOT to be developed, due to the quick, intelligent and personal nature of semantic technologies and to the fact that URIs can point to anything. This includes physical objects, which through RDF can promote their functionality (What they do and how they are controlled) (Berners-lee et al, 2001). (Artem Katasonov et al, 2008) suggests that for the IOT to happen the semantic base or (middleware) must be decentralised. This is suggested due to the high volume of devices connected to the internet, administrators will have it difficult in managing such a wide variety of unscalable information and media. There will be a need for self-manageable complex systems. They also go on to argue that semantic technologies firstly, will function as the basis of heterogeneous components and the integration of data across many domains and secondly, will be used for the coordination of the intelligent agents representing those resources. As previously mentioned in the last section, intelligient agents can roam as a middleware between the heterogeneous component and an autonomous software agent. (Artem Katasonov et al, 2008) defines the role of the agent as having the ability to monitor the state of the component, make decisions on behalf of the component and to discover, request and utilize external help if needed. The agents offer a more flexible system, one in which networks will be monitored easily as information will be already processed. What are Things? The IOT will be based on these intelligent objects which will all communicate with the each other and the end user. These things as previously stated will be individual entities which can interpret and communicate with the internet. They will have an active part within the internet and have the ability to share information about themselves and their environment. (European Commission, 2008) gives a few examples of objects which do menial tasks but use very smart systems and advanced network connections: Retail Example Mobile Phones will have the ability to be used as credit cards, travel passes and to gain information from the internet. With the use of NFC (Near Field Communications) technology could this be possible. They estimate that there will be 1billion by 2015. Another example given is a fully automated warehouse, where items are checked in and out. Orders can be passed directly to suppliers automatically. All the cause of RFID (Radio Frequency Identifiers) attached to goods and products. Manufactures can view the market needs in real time, this saves time and energy leading to the whole process being more environmentally friendly. E-health Example RFID and sensor technologies will help in early diagnostics of patients help doctors make more informed decisions and it will produce alerts if a patients health deteriorates. All information will be gathered through lightweight, intelligent sensors on the patient or by possible smart dust (microscopic computers) within the patient. Energy Example Through a network of sensors can temperature and lighting be dynamically controlled. This helps intelligent houses to reduce energy consumption without the loss of an individuals comfort. Environment Example The IOT will have an effect on how certain conditions (traffic, weather, air particles, water pollution, and the environment are monitored and examined. RFID Radio frequency Identification tags typically are small devices that can be embedded in or attached to objects for the purpose of identifying the object over a radio channel (Karjoth et al, 2005). RFID consists of a reader and a tag. Uses of RFID technology RFID has been in use now for many years. It started being used in World War II, by British planes to help them discover their own aircrafts using the Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) system. In the 1960s it was used by Los Alamos National Laboratory to gain access control to there company. People in the company wore RFID badges so they could be identified. This helped limit access to important areas in the company and also made it harder for badges to be forged. Since then RFID has being used to identify animals, track airline luggage, locate lost items, prevent theft and make toys more interactive. Recently, a few multi-national companies have shown an interest in this technology such as Wal-mart, Tesco, and the US Military. The main aims according to Roy Want is to make the cost of tags decrease, streamlining the tracking of stock, sales and orders (Want, 2006). With the ability to store information and to connect with tags over a digital communication network, RFID can track the journey an object makes between the factories, warehouses, vehicles, and stores (Want, 2006). RFID Tags The tag, when attached to an object can be identified by the reader over a radio channel. Tags can be read easier and faster than that of normal barcodes, usually within the range of a few meters. An RFID tag contains two main components: An antenna which is a flat, metallic conductive coil which has the potential to be less than half a millimetre in size, is used to send and receive radio waves. An antenna can be printed, etched or stamped on a plastic foil or silicon chip which (Karjoth et al, 2005) defines as a substrate. The second component the silicon chip is a microchip or Integrated Circuit (IC). According to (Plaggenborg, 2006), the smallest IC is 0.15 mm x 0.15 mm and is 7.5 m thick. Both the antenna and IC are attached to a plastic tag. The main types of RFID tags are active, passive and semi-passive. Active tags contain their own internal power source. The word active is due to the fact that it uses an active radio frequency transmitter to communicate in a session with the reader. This gives active tags a better read range than passive tags, covering hundreads of meters. It can communicate through difficult environments such as water or heavy metal, which Plaggenborg states is impossible for passive tags. He goes on to say that active tags have a greater amount of memory and are more secure because of their more advanced IC processing capabilities. Passive tags use electromagnetic waves from the reader to attract a connection to the tags antenna. Power is transferred from the reader to the tag through the electromagnetic waves. Because it does not need its own battery passive tags can have an unlimited lifespan (in theory). But a passive tags response is limited by the readers signal strength. The tags response or backscatter is limited by its range which is around four to five metres. Because of there simple design and low cost (five cent a tag), passive tags are mainly used in the retail industry. Semi-passive tags contain both a small battery and require waves from the reader to send a response. The small battery within the tag is used for the ICs logic and to give a response to the reader through the antenna. Due to the small battery these tags have a short lifespan, they are more delicate and are very expensive. Classes of Tags Tags are separated into different classes depending on there functionality. This framework which was developed by the Auto ID centre and later by EPC (Electronic product Code), 1separates tags into five different classes. From class one to the greater functionality of class five. Tag Memory A tags chip is either read-only memory (ROM) or read-write. Data which is embedded onto the chip at its manufacturing stage that can only be read was called class 0 tags. Tags can be used with static random access memory (SRAM) to produce what is called a Write Once Read Many (WORM) tag. The unique id in this tag type is permanently stored on the chip.12 Read-only chips are mainly used for tracking. Read-write allows the ability to change the chips ID and also to add some data to the tags memory. Information can be programmed onto read-write chips but these are very expensive. EEPROM (a technique for erasing memory and overwriting it) can also be used for this process. Also chips can be manufactured in such a way that the ID is cannot be altered but that information can still be written to memory. Passive tags can store from 32 bits to 128 kilobytes of data. Since active tags have their own battery they can afford to store more, some tags having the ability to store up to one megabyt e of memory.13 Frequencies (Plaggenborg, 2006) states that there are four frequency bands, each with their own characteristic in regards to communication. For example low frequencies can penetrate such conditions as water and metal but are much slower than that of high frequencies. High frequencies are faster but with the defect that they cannot penetrate the conditions mentioned. RFID operates on an unlicensed spectrum space called ISM (industrial, scientific and medical). The ISM frequencies vary on which country you are in. There are two distinct systems in regards to its physical properties to which RFID communicates from the tag to the reader. Low frequencies and high frequencies use near field communication through the process of inductive coupling from a magnetic field. The reader creates a magnetic field between itself and the reader. The reader induces an electric current in the tags antenna. From this, the reader gains the tags ID and also gives power to the tags IC. The reader learns the tags ID, by varying the load on the antennas coil which changes the current on the readers communication coil.12 Ultra High frequency and Microwave frequency use far-field communication. It uses the physical property of backscattering, which is the process of the reader sending a continuous signal frequency that is reflected back by the tags antenna. The tag encodes the reflected signal with information using modulation (i.e. changing the amplitude of the waves returned).12 RFID uses a frequency spectrum similar to that of wireless and Bluetooth networks and hybrid tags are currently being developed for them to communicate.12 Standards As with any established product and technology, RFID has many proposed standards. Standards provide many benefits such as universal procedures for all and interoperability between technologies. There are a number of bodies in the development of RFID Technology ISO EPC global ETSI FCC 12 (Plaggenborg, 2006) states the point that the main areas to which standards have being proposed are Air interface protocols These are ISO standards ranging from ISO 18000-1 to 7 and are concerned with how tags and readers communicate. EPC has its own set of standards similar to ISOs 18000-6 (860-960 MHZ range). These EPC tags are not interoperable with each other and are not interoperable with the ISO standard. So EPC are working on a new set of protocols (GEN 2) that can work with the class 0 and class 1 passive tags and should be closely aligned with the ISO standard.12 Data content and Encoding This is concerned with data formatting or organisation, numbering schemes (Plaggenborg, 2006). Conformance- This is the testing of products to see if they meet the standards. Applications- How standards are used on certain labels13 Electronic Product Code Is a unque code which is contained within an RFID tags memory. It is much the same as the barcode scheme UPC for identifying physical objects. EPC is differs from UPC as it has the capability to identify every single product item individually. For example when a shopkeeper scans a barcode the code relates to the type of product he is scanning (this packet is a packet of Jacob biscuits).If he scanned another packet of Jacob biscuits he would get the same result. In contrast, if he scanned an EPC tag he would be able to identify not just the make of the product but the individual product he is scanning. So this time when he scans another packet of Jacob biscuits, (that is not the original packet) it will come up with a different result. EPC uses a 96 bit number to identify a product. This gives it a huge scope of numbers for product identification as opposed to UPC. As shown in figure 3 The EPC code consists of many components. The header identifies what coding scheme is in use. There are many different schemes to which Matt Ward gives three examples Global Trade Identification Number GLTN, Serial Shipping Container Code SSCC and Global Location Number GLN.15 The Manger number defines the company that produced the product (Manufacturer). The object class identifies the actual product. The Serial number refers to the individual item/product. EPCs 96 bit code according to Matt Ward can identify 268 million companies, each manufacturer can have 16 million object classes and 68 billion serial numbers for every individual object. Matt Ward in his paper (Ward et al, 2006), also discuss about the EPC Network Architecture. He explains, clearly how RFID tags do not work in isolation but are part of an overall system be it a supply chain or any kind of logistical recording. He notes how the RFID tag can work as the primary key in representing a product within the database. A vision of this technology is being developed which is called the EPC Network Architecture. The architecture consists of many tags being connected through their readers to an organisations database or back-office enterprise system. In the previous chapter we observed the possible middleware for the Semantic web. Well here are the key technologies which (Ward et al, 2006) suggests are appropriate for supporting the massive increase of information that will result from in an RFID system. Savant is as he puts it is the middleware software system that links reader devices and processes the information streams from tags. It acts as the gateway to the enterprise systems and database applications, providing filtering, aggregation and counting of tag-based data. (Ward et al, 2006) ONS Object Naming Service much like the Domain Name Service (DNS) on the World Wide Web helps translate the EPC code into a Uniform Reference Locator. This is where it looks up the location of where the tags associated database is. Physical Mark up Language (PML) is an XML-based language which uses a standard vocabulary for describing physical objects, observations made by the RFID readers of these objects and observations made about the readers themselves and there exchanging of data throughout the EPC network (Ward et al, 2006). It uses two main vocabularies: one for communication between Savant and the enterprise applications and a second (Core PML) for communication throughout the EPC network. (Seong Leong,2004) (Ward et al, 2006) notes indirectly about the IOT when he mentions of the possibilities of IPV6 as an alternative to EPC coding. IPV6 is a communication network standard which delegates the addressing and routing of data packets through a network. It is an improved addressing protocol from that of IPV4 which has the capacity up to 4 billion addresses. IPV6 can give 430 quintillion addresses for every inch of the worlds surface.15 But Ward explains that for a tag to have an IPV6 address, it would no longer be used as an assigned permanent identifier on objects. Saying this he highlights the fact that the U.S. military are investigating and planning to use IPV6 tags in the near future. RFID Readers Readers can be handheld or a fixed device. Examples of handheld readers are similar to that of barcode readers, but readers can be placed in PDAs or mobile phones. Class 5 tags are actually designed to be readers; they can read and exchange information with other tags.15 Fixed readers are used for electronic tolls or can be placed within walls or ceilings. Readers communicate with a tag to gain its id number. When the reader is held close to a passive tag, the tags antenna consumes the energy from the reader which in turn powers the IC. The IC responds information back. This depends on the type of tag. There are two main types of readers: ones in which the reader can only read information from the tag. These usually operate with an EPC class 1 tag. The other type is readers which can write information onto the tag. This depends on if the memory on the tag is read/write. According to (Ward et al, 2006), Readers are becoming more sophisticated and are beginning to act as an entry to th e internet through supporting TCP/IP technologies and other such protocols as DHCP, UDP/IP and wireless 802.11. RFIDs Relevance to the Future of the Internet From the research into this area we have seen that RFID has the components to develop a network of communicating things. Because RFID can both send and receive data about an object within various conditions e.g. underwater, through walls etc. We can communicate with solitary objects and their position, condition and other relevant information for whatever purpose they were placed on an object. Through examining various papers on this topic, most come to the conclusion that RFID as a technology is not attractive enough of a proposition for companies to develop at present. RFID is too expensive to be added too or implemented in a manufacturers product. Currently, you can get the cheapest RFIDs at 5 cent each.13 Matt Ward sees RFID tags as a stepping stone to ubiquitous computing. There will not be a fully fledged IOT but one in which will be developed systematically. He proposes that the internet will be extended to a level below computational devices, which consists of simpler devices/items. As the RFID technologies become more accepted in the market place, there will be more of a demand for tags that can achieve greater amounts of tasks. Similar to the pre requites we defined in section two, Matt notes the technological developments needed for their relevance in the internet of things. Firstly, each of these items must be able to identify itself to other items and to the network in general. This is provided for by the introduction and development of RFID technology. Secondly, these items should include some element of embedded computational power in order to act with some level of intelligence. Thirdly, they will need to have some sense of their physical environment and geographical location. Continuing developments in computational science and electronics, particularly work on miniaturisation, tiny operating systems and wireless communication will make this vision increasingly realistic (Ward et al, 2006) Near field communication This is a new development in RFID, one of which uses near field coupling signalling between devices in the 13.56 MHZ band.11 This standard has the ability to read existing passive tags and aims to develop them to communicate with peer devices at a 20cm locality. It was set up by the Near-field communication forum. The NFC standard aims to streamline the discovery process by passing wireless Media Access Control addresses and channel-encryption keys between radios through a near-field coupling side channel, which, when limited to 20 cm, lets users enforce their own physical security for encryption key exchange (Want,2006). He also mentions how through this two way authentication process can a more reliable connection be made then that of Wireless and Bluetooth. Reliable in the sense that it would not form any associations with devices that arent local. Sensory RFID Many commentators believe the next development of RFID will be an enabled sensory function. This will give tags the ability to make measurements about its surrounding environment based on such gauges as pressure, temperature, flow-rate and speed vibrations.15 These devices will be connected to the internet by radio frequencies or through wireless communication systems. Due to the batteries capacity, active tags would seem to be more qualified for development.13 Plaggenborg describes in his developmental paper of RFID about Mitsubishis research team who developed location aware objects with light sensitive RFID tags. This consisted of an RFID reader with a projector to give precise feedback of a products location. The device is aimed at the products in question. It projects a pattern over the product and each pixel shows a different code. This code with its identity is then communicated back to the handheld device. It then uses an (x, y) coordinate to visually give the user feedback. As we can see, its not impossible for this technology if creatively used to be developed further. Distributed Memory The amount of memory a tag can store could be limitless if the tag can store and recover its information from a local database. But the tag could not be able to implicitly recover the information all the time. For tags to work more effective, it will need to utilise its self storing capability. Currently a tag can store from 200 to 8,000 bits.12 believes that tags in the future will have the ability to store more information. Leaving to more distributed information being placed in our surroundings. Standardisations for the IOT If the IOT is going to happen then interoperability is a must. There are currently a number of groups who are working on low power wireless communication standards between objects. ZigBee, 6LoWPAN, Z-Wave, and Bluetooth Low Energy are the main standards for this type of communication. But the base of communication for the Physical layers for Zigbee and 6LoWPAN is IEEEs 802.15.4. IEEEs 802.15.4 Developed and maintained by the IEEE 802.15 working group, 802.15.4 is a low power wireless personal area network (LoWPAN) standard. Released in 2003, it was the first low power-radio standard.18 It is used as a specification for the physical (PHY) and medium access control (MAC) layers. To gain a complete protocol stack other standards are needed to define the higher layers. According to (Orrevad, 2009), the physical of the protocol uses three different frequency bands: 868-868.8 MHz within Europe which allows one communication channel, 902-928 MHz within North America that allows ten to thirty channels and 2400-2483.5 MHz range for the rest of the world and uses up to sixteen channels. This standard aims to work with multiple low cost nodes of a long lifespan. To achieve an IOT such attributes would have to be viable. But this low cost/ low power solution, limits the capability of both the microcontroller and the LoWPANs links. The throughput is suggested to reach the 250Kbps limit . And the frame length is only 128 bytes. It uses short 16-bit link addresses, as well as IEEE EUI-64 addresses, to reduce header overhead and memory requirements. LoWPANs make contact over multiple hops. Microcontrollers which work with this standard usually have about 8 Kbytes of data RAM and 64 Kbytes of program ROM. The main features of IEEE 802.15.4 highlighted within (Orrevad, 2009)s informative paper are the fact of its use of carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) which avoids collisions, sharing a single channel with multiple users by using direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS), with the ability to sleep it gives appropriate energy efficiency and through its use of guaranteed time slots (GTS) it can guarantee sensors transmission if they are critical in nature. Frames Frames contain a certain patterns in which other devices can understand. Differerent frames have different uses. There are four types of frames defined in the IEEE 802.15.4 standard : Beacon, used by a coordinator to transmit beacons A data frame, for different data transfers An acknowledgement(ACK) frame, used for a confirmation of successful frame transfer A MAC command frame, used for handling all MAC transfers between entities The beacon, ACK, and MAC frames are mainly used for lower layer signalling. Headers Headers in the IEEE 802.15.4 standard consist of the physical layer (PHY) and medium access control (MAC) layer headers which contain different features that can be set when sending a packet. Maximum physical layer packet size including overhead is 102 octets.19 He adds, if you add link-layer security you add an extra 21 octets for an AES-CCM-128 encryption. This leaves 81 octets available for the higher levels of the protocol stack. IPV6 integration IPV6 is the newest version of the Internet protocol, which was created in the late 1990s as a solution to the limited numbe

Clearly Pacifist, Clearly Credible Essay -- Weapons Warfare Essays

Clearly Pacifist, Clearly Credible Many people tend to think war is a part of life that mankind will never be able to rid itself of. This comes from the assumption that war is one of the basic needs of mankind. However, Margaret Mead does not make this assumption. In fact, she denies its credibility in her essay â€Å"Warfare is Only an Invention – Not a Biological Necessity.† In this essay, Margaret Mead combines a great deal of logos and ethos with limited pathos to support her pacifist claim that warfare is merely an invention of man, and not a need found in the very nature of man. While Mead’s claim does not agree with the most common beliefs about warfare, its mixture of logos and ethos is as strong as the bricks and mortar of a brick wall. Margaret Mead begins her essay with a subtle strength. The subtlety comes from discussing other, more popular, views of warfare that do not agree with Mead’s pacifist view. This helps the audience view Mead as an honest person who is willing to acknowledge others even though she does not agree with their opinions. The appearance this introduction gives the audience serves as a strong way of opening the essay because right away she is able to get into the ethos part of her argument without seeming too intrusive. In fact, even when she introduces her own argument she does not seem at all intrusive or aggressive. This makes her audience more willing to listen and more receptive to what she has to say. After first acknowledging other perspectives, Margaret Mead explicitly defines the main purpose of her essay. She clearly states her main claim which says â€Å"that warfare . . . is an invention like any other of the inventions in terms of which we order our lives, such as writin... ...ent tightly. She says, â€Å"we can take comfort from the fact that a poor invention will usually give place to a better invention† (Mead 5). This offers just a shade of hope, which may be just what the audience needs to fully accept her ideas. Though Margaret Mead possesses a view of war that many people do not agree with, she builds a strong support for her argument. While the logos Mead presents functions as the bricks of a wall, the ethos she incorporates acts as the mortar, which holds the bricks together. This makes the logos, which many people find convincing in an argument, even more appealing because the ethos lets her audience know that she has put a great amount of thought and research into her view and essay. The combination of logos and ethos gives Mead’s essay the ability to stand on its own even though many people disagree with what it has to say.

Hawthorne To Faulkner: The Evolution Of The Short Story Essay examples

Hawthorne to Faulkner: The Evolution of the Short Story Nathaniel Hawthorne and William Faulkner’s short stories â€Å"Young Goodman Brown† and â€Å"A Rose for Emily† use a moral to endorse particular ideals or values. Through their characters examination and evaluation of one another, the author’s lesson is brought forth. The authors’ style of preaching morals is reminiscent of the fables of Aesop and the religious parables of the Old and New Testament. The reader is faced with a life lesson after reading Hawthorne’s â€Å"Young Goodman Brown:† you cannot judge other people. A similar moral is presented in Faulkner’s â€Å"A Rose for Emily.† The use of morals combined with elements of Romantic era writing show the stories of Hawthorne and Faulkner to be descendants both of fables and of Romance literature. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s â€Å"Young Goodman Brown† tells the story of a young man who decides to league himself with the devil. Goodman Brown is a citizen of a typical town with its share of good people and not-so good people. Goodman Brown believed that he knew the inhabitants of the town fairly well. He knew Goody Cloyse, for example, to be â€Å"a very pious and exemplary dame, who had taught him his catechism in youth, and was still his moral and spiritual advisor, jointly with the minister and Deacon Gookin† (598). He knew Deacon Gookin was a strict man of the Church and was always â€Å"bound to some ordination or ecclesiastical council† (599). However, in his travels through the woods with the old man, Goodman Brown notices Goody Cloyse progressing down the path. â€Å"‘A marvel, truly that Goody Cloyse should be so far in the wilderness at nightfall,’ he [Goodman Brown] said† (598). Just as he begins to have doubts about the woman’s pureness of heart, he comes across Deacon Gookin in the woods as well. As they are supposedly fine, upstanding citizens of the village, Goodman Brown has to wonder why they are traveling through the woods on the same path that he is taking with the devil. Afterwards, he is astonished to see not only these two upstanding citizens at Satan’s ceremony, but almost everyone else in the town as well. It is through his assumption that his fellow townspeople were good that Goodman Brown learns the story’s most important lesson: namely that you should not judge people at face value; anyone can put on airs, and his encountering of the devil’s ceremony emphasize... ...b ¾that he was not a marrying man† (461). Later in the story, Faulkner makes reference to Emily’s possible necrophilia, although no direct statement is ever made. Homosexuality and necrophilia would in no way be topics to be discussed in Hawthorne’s time. As a modern writer, Faulkner had a considerable amount of freedom in what he wrote, and this freedom is reflected in his work. The short story began as fables and parables that evolved into more complex psychological studies of virtues, ideals, and values. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s â€Å"Young Goodman Brown† emphasizes these morals as he examines the inner workings of his main character’s thoughts as he encounters the devil and the townspeople. Faulkner also uses these techniques in his modern style of writing, however he tailors them to fit the more controversial issue of his generation while still maintaining a hold on the past generation he is examining. Over time, values and ideals stay the same, but the manner in which the technique is used evolves with current affairs and modern vocabulary. Works Cited Charters, Ann. The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1995.

Care of Suicidal Patient in Ed

This article Is about caring for pediatric patients who are suicidal. I believe In coincided with what we have recently been learning about during our clinical experience. I was also Interested in this article because I had worked In pediatrics for six years prior to working in a rehab/nursing home setting. After reading this article, I learned ways to carefully screen the pediatric patient, how to do an assessment and how some families act and what measures of support they need during their families time of crisis.This oracle gave a case study of a boy that was brought Into the emergency apartment with his mother and grandfather. When the nurse met him in the reception area he was sitting In a chair with his legs pulled up to his chest and his shoe laces were untied. He avoided eye contact during their meeting. The mother in the case study was visibly upset.This boy was brought to the emergency department because this young boy was found in the kitchen holding a butcher knife to his neck, when his mother walked In and got the young boy to give her the knife, Prior to this day there were many changes in the young boys life, he recently started a new school and he was diagnosed with Espalier's syndrome. This boy also had trouble making friends in his school and he was being bullied. Other children at school were threatening this boy. This story made me think of all the children that are In POEMS and how he seemed to have a lot of things In common with them. They were all in similar situations.The nurse after obtaining this history from his mother and asking about any medications, vaccinations, allergies, possible exposures to communicable diseases also needed to obtain his vital signs and head to toe assessment The young boy let the nurse do his height and weight but as soon as the nurse put the stethoscope to he boys chest he felt his heart pounding and he thought It meant he was going to die. The boy had anxiety during the assessment so the nurse stopped the a ssessment and showed what she needed to do on his mother and after the boy relaxed a little bit, he allowed the nurse to finish the assessment on him.The nurse got a one on one to stay with this patient because he was at risk for doing harm to himself. The nurse also had to obtain an EGG and urine drug screen. In our clinical setting, I have seen the urine drug screen used on every patient but not the EGG. According to this article, It Is Important to obtain a baseline EGG because many psychophysiology agents can affect the conduction system of the heart. After the boy was medically cleared, he was eligible to meet with the psychiatrist and social worker. He had to wait for the psychiatrist and he became agitated and started kicking the wall.Security had to be called Into the room and the safety door was lowered. The nurse removed their name badge and their bandage scissors as they were both safety hazards. The nurse re-entered the room keeping their pathway to the door unobstructed . All dangerous items were removed from the room. The nurse used many different techniques to deescalate the situation and used the mother to get Information of things that have worked In the past. When the boy was ready to discharge, the nurse gave them education on a safety plan the called tort keeping knives out to the boys reach and tallow up tort outpatient care.No medications were given to calm him down. The suicide rate in the entire world has increased over the past few decades with a greater number of boys attempting suicide then girls. In 2010, there was a study hat found 14% of children ages 11-20 reported having suicidal thoughts within the previous month. According to this article, Native American males have the highest suicide rate in the United States for children over 10, and non-Hispanic black females have the lowest rate.Some psychosocial risk factors include, the presence of an underlying psychiatric condition, a history of prior suicide attempts, a history of phy sical or sexual abuse, and a lack of mental health treatment. Poor coping skills have been identified as a predictive of a suicide attempt in both sexes. Environmental and social risk factors include owning a gun in the household, being homeless or living in a corrections facility or group home, poor parent-child communication, social isolation, bullying and difficulties at school.Many emergency rooms are using the five level triage classification systems called Emergency Severity Index Triage Algorithm. This takes into account not only the acuity of the patient but also the number of resources that will be required during the evaluation. A level 1 patient would require immediate life-saving intervention. A level 2 patient would be considered in the â€Å"danger zone,† and needs emergent retirement. Level 3 patients need more the 1 resource, level 4 patients require 1 resource and level 5 patients require none.At the Children's Hospital Boston, the use a screening tool that c onsists of 4 questions, â€Å"Are you here because you tried to hurt yourself? † â€Å"In the past week, have you been having thoughts about killing yourself? † â€Å"Have you ever tried to hurt yourself in the past other than this time? † â€Å"Has something very stressful happened to you in the past few weeks? † If the patient answers yes to one or more of these questions they become characterized as SSI bevel 2, and the nurse would explain the policy on physical and chemical restraints which are only used as a last resort.Some strategies that nurse's use to promote successful interactions with the patient and their family members include active listening, close observation of behavior, attending to non-verbal body language, asking open-ended questions, conveying a non-judgmental attitude, clarifying information, and providing support. The patient's safety is always the greatest concern as well as the staffs safety. Family education is very important wh en working with suicidal patients, because heir care is often managed at home.It is important for them to follow up with outpatient care, outpatient psychiatric support, and a home safety plan. Also, the nurse needs to let the family know if when they will need to seek emergency care again. This article has helped me gain a better understanding of the psychiatric patient, no matter the age, even though it focused on pediatrics. All these techniques can be used when dealing with suicidal patients. Our role as nurse's plays an important role in managing our patient's care while they are in our care and promoting their health y educating our patients and their families.

Beautiful Boy by David Shelf

Beautiful Boy by David Sheff 1. Sheff intrigued me with his story just by the back of the book. The entire story is about his eldest son, Nic, who is an amazing student as a child; however, his childhood begins to fade when he gets into the life of drugs and alcohol. The experiences and hardships that the author goes through is very emotional which really kept me reading. 2. The setting affects the author and his story. The book takes place in modern day times as in 2008.This impacts the author and his experiences because this is the time where drugs became more known and they were easy to get which made it harder for Nic, David Sheff’s son, to stop the drug abuse. 3. The themes in this book are patience and faith. David must be patient towards the recovery of his son’s drug addiction. He knows that this process cannot happen over-night no matter how hard he wishes it could be that easy. He waits patiently for Nic to get better. Nic, however, goes through rough patches while on this journey to succession, but his father always has faith in him.I think that David and Nic’s experiences were incredibly traumatic. Sheff felt the pain that his son went through while being an addict and felt the need to share it with others. Another reason Sheff might have wanted to share this experience is because he wanted to show the difficulty and how bad it is to take drugs. 4. â€Å"When Nic was growing up, I thought I would be content with whatever choices he made in his life†¦ Now I live with the knowledge that, never mind the most modest definition of a normal or healthy life, my son may not make it to twenty-one†(195-196).This proves the understanding that David has over his son’s life and that even though he believed at one point that Nic’s decisions will be made by himself, Nic has not made all the right decisions. This proved to David that his son needs guidance through out his whole life because once you are a father you ar e always a father. I chose this passage because this to me is David Sheff’s entire understanding of his son and this memoir. It shows that he understands what it means to be a father and what his role is 5.If I could meet the author I would feel a little nervous. I would feel uncomfortable asking him any questions because I wouldn’t know how he would react: would he get emotional? Would he get annoyed? Would he act fine because he gets questions all the time. A hypothetical meeting with David Sheff is if he came to my school to talk about drug and alcohol addiction and how it impacted his life and others around him. A question I might ask is when did you realize that your son was not a casual user, but was an addict?What was your immediate reaction? I would talk about the impact on his family, siblings and friends. I would ask about whom his friends were and if they were older because of the drug use. I would ask how he had the money for the drugs. A story of my own th at I would share with the author is about a kid that I know that ended up not being able to go to college. All of a sudden he began going to rehab and no one knew why. As time went on people began to realize that he did drugs and drank a lot.He became banned form school grounds for a certain amount of time. He was supposed to go off to college, but ended up not because he got in trouble with the law and had separation anxiety. His younger sister had to deal with the fights at home and her brother that she loved very much. I would share this story with Sheff to show that even though this story is not about my family or me, my family was one of the people impacted by this child’s actions.

Market Equilibrium Process Analysis

The main goal of the market equilibrium is to get match the common intention of buyer and seller in the market. According to McConnell, the market equilibrium is the base point in which the supply and demand of the product quantity (McConnell, 2009). The equilibrium process play role for the buyer and seller agreement and confidence in each other. The process of equilibrium has impact of the following facts †¢Equilibrium price and quantity of products. †¢Changes and shift in demands of the products. †¢Changes and shift in supply of the products. The equilibrium price and quantity also can be referred by the total intersection of supply and demand curve. The shift in this curve will affect the shift in the equilibrium price and quantity. The change in the demand of product also effect the price and quantity structure at equilibrium because if the demand is higher then the price will be higher and the production in quantity will be higher as well. The supply will have impact on the equilibrium level as well because if the product supply in large amount then the price will stay at the low but if the supply level decreases then the price might go up due to the demand of the product. Above all facts about the market equilibrium process can be shown in the experience at the music store while buying music CD. One of the favorite band CD price was $15 until previous week, but at present the price have gone up to $22. The sudden price change was the effect of the demand of the band CD. The change in demand of the CD was higher this week and the supply was only 50 in quantity, which producer thought to be enough for the market demand. But the same CD was requested by more than 50 people, and increase in the demand prompt to increase in the price. Thus the effect of the demand change affected the equilibrium structure of price and quantity. The same effect can be seen in the supply. The supply of the same band CD was 70 and only 50 people have requested about the band CD on the price of $15. It shows that the 50 people are fine with the product and they are not planning to buy more same band CDs. Therefore, the price of the CD dropped to $10 in order to produce cell of remainder 20 CD in supply. The shift in the supply caused the equilibrium to reach lower for both price and quantities. Thus the supply and demand have major impact on the equilibrium price and quantity. These three factors would explain that the market equilibrium process can be achieved in the theory but in the real-world market with constantly changing price and economy would make it harder to achieve market equilibrium. Thus, the factors of supply and demand have affected the market equilibrium process including the equilibrium price and quantity. The change in supply and demand impacts largely on the market equilibrium and bring level of equilibrium higher or lower. Reference: McConnell, C. R. , Brue, S. L. , & Flynn, S. M. (2009). Economics: Principles, problems, and policies (18th ed. ). New York: McGraw Hill/Irwin.

Cases Research

* Masters v Cameron (1954) * Estate agent retained by Cameron drew up a sale note for the sale of Cameron’s property to Masters. * Cameron’s insistence included in the sale note a clause. * Agreement made subject to the preparation of a formal contract of sale, which shall be acceptable to solicitors on the above terms and conditions. * Both parties signed the sale note. * Masters paid a deposit. * Masters did not signed the contract prepared by Cameron’s solicitors as Master experienced difficulties arranging necessary finance and wished to withdraw the purchase. Cameron wished to proceed the sale. * The court have to decide whether the parties were contractually bound by the sale note(which has been signed by both of them) or whether they would only have formed a binding contract by Cameron’s solicitors(which could not apply, since Masters did not signed. * Souter v Shyamba Pty Ltd (2003) * Shyamba owned land at Merimbula, NSW on which it operated a hote l and motel. * 8 October 2001, Souter wrote to Shyamba enquiring whether the property was for sale and one Bennett, a director of Shyamba, telephoned Souter and told him that the price was $3 million. Negotiations at lower figures failed. * Fresh negotiations in March and April 2002 resulted a signed document by Souter and by Bennett and one Mirabito on behalf of Shyamba. * The document provided that â€Å"This sale will become unconditional upon the purchaser paying the amount of $1,000 into the vendor’s bank account. The purchaser agrees to pay a further $299,000 to the vendor’s solicitor upon exchange of contracts, not later than 16 June 2002 and the balance ($2,700,00) at settlement 1 July 2002. On 1 May 2002, Souter paid $1,000 unto the vendor’s bank account and Shyamba instructed its solicitors to prepare formal agreements. * On 31 May 2002, Bennett wrote to Souter, stating that the sale had â€Å"hit a hurdle in the form of a huge Gazzumpt†. * Ben nett Stated that he had been informed that the agreement of 1 May did not bind the purchaser and could not therefore bind Shyamba as vendor. * Souter sued for specific performance of the agreement dated 1 May 2002. The court held that the document dated 1 May 2002 did not constitute the binding contract and made an order for specific performance. * The judge held that the decisive issue is always the intention of the parties, which must be objectively ascertained from the terms of the document when read in the light of the surrounding circumstances. * If the terms of the document indicate that the parties intended to be bound immediately, effect must be given to that intention irrespective of the subject matter, magnitude or complexity of the transaction. * The judge itemised the reasons for his finding that the document had the effect of a contract. * Instrument 7020202154 v Ormlie Trading Pty Ltd * The court held that the parties had no intention of entering into a binding contrac t of sale despite reaching agreement on the essential terms. * In both the letter of offer and in the letter of acceptance of the offer the words â€Å"in principle† were used. * The word â€Å"in principle† used was indicated and unqualified acceptance by the offeree of the offer. Teviot Downs Estate Pty Ltd & Anor v MTAA Superannuation Fund (Flagstone Creek and Spring Mountain Park) Property Pty Ltd * Alleged agreement made on 29 August 2003 for the sale of land of Spring Mountain Estate, Beaudesert in Queensland for $11m. * Teviot sent a letter of offer to the defendant on 22 August 2003 and a response accepting the offer was sent on 29 August. * Deposit of $1. 1 million was paid. * 3 October 2003, the firstnamed plantiff wrote to the defendant saying that its due diligence enquiries had been satisfactorily completed and that the contract was unconditional. On the same day, defendant wrote to Tevoit saying that its Trustee did not approve of the sale. * The Supreme Court of Queensland has to decide whether the exchange of correspondence (the letter of offer of 22 August and the letter of acceptance of 29 August) constituted a legally enforceable agreement (as the defendant contended). * The court observed that the case suggest that there is no binding contract unless and until formal contact documents are signed and exchanged. * Tinn v Hoffman and CO (1873) Two offers, identical in terms, cross in the post, there will be no contract as neither can be construed as an acceptance of the other, even though there is a meeting of the minds. * Patterson v Dolman (1908) * The offer may be construed by the court as being accepted by a number of persons and the offeror will be bound to each and every person who accept. * The contract is only able to be performed with one party, the offeror may be liable in damages for breach of contract to the others who accepted the offer. Felthouse v Bindley (1862) * An uncle and his nephew had conversation about the possible sale of the nephew’s horse to the uncle, but there had been some confusion about the price. * The uncle subsequently wrote to nephew, offering to pay $30 and 15 shillings and saying, ‘If I hear no more about him, I consider the horse mine at that price. * The nephew was on the point of selling off some of his property in an auction. He did not reply the uncle’s letter, but did tell the auctioneer to keep the horse out of the sale. The auctioneer forgot to do this and the horse was sold. * The court felt that the nephew’s conduct in trying to keep the horse out of the sale did not necessarily imply that he intended to accept his uncle offer. * The nephew actually wrote afterwards to apologise for the mistake and so it was not clear that his silence in response to the offer was intend to sell but there are many situations in which it would be undesirable and confusing for silence to amount to acceptance.

Causes of the American Revolution Essay

The American Revolution began in 1755 as an open conflict between the thirteen colonies and Great Britain. The Treaty of Paris had ended that war in 1783, giving the colonies their own independence. There are many factors contributing to the start of the Revolution, but the war began as the way The Great Britain treated the colonies versus the way the colonies felt they should be treated. For example, the French and Indian War, Salutary Neglect, the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, smuggling, etc. are some of the starters to the American Revolution. This problem is provided in one of the most rallying cries of the Revolution: No Taxation Without Representation. I believe that the American Revolution was a radical revolutionary war because similarities between American government and British Parliament and the fact that those in positions of power and leadership in the colonies were the same men who led the revolution. Events like the Boston Tea Party were acts of civil disobedience. They intentionally broke a law to showcase the unjustness of said law. Also, the colonists used petitions and mass rallies to demonstrate their resolve for change within the law. The colonists wanted westward expansion, which Parliament was limiting. The only way to continue expanding at the current rate would mean taking the land. Whether or not this was right, it demonstrates the Colonists willingness to abandon their parent country in favor of their own desires. If the revolution was a ‘conservative protest’, then the colonists would have dispersed after events like the closing of Boston Harbor and Lexington and Concord. Instead the colonists rallied, supply Boston through massive wagon trains after Boston harbor was closed, and created an army after Lexington and Concord. The final colonial war was the French and Indian war (1689-1763). During this war, England lost a lot of money and felt that the Americans should pay for the â€Å"protection† they gave us. T his was also solidified America as America. Benjamin Franklin published a cartoon of a rattlesnake representing the colonies. The phrase â€Å"join or die† was added, sending a clear signal that this was a new nation in the â€Å"New World.† The cost of the French and Indian War caused the Britain the need for getting more money, and to do this, they made the Americans pay more taxes. This lead to the rebellion and revolution of America. From 1603 to 1763, the British policy for governing the American colonies was called Salutary Neglect. Under Salutary Neglect, enforcement of parliament law was not strict enough for the colonists. According to the law of the days, trade between American colonists and other nations were very restricted. Colonists were only allowed to trade with England, Scotland, and Ireland. Salutary Neglect allowed Great Britain to turn a blind eye to illegal trade activities with other countries, which were difficult and expensive to enforce. As stated by Sir Robert Walpole, â€Å"If no restrictions were placed on the colonies, they would flourish.† In 1764, Parliame nt passed an the Sugar and Molasses act. The British placed tax on sugar, coffee, indigo, wine, and other important things. They did this because they wanted more money to help provide security for the colonies. The Sugar Act made colonists very upset because if they only traded with Britain, they would not be able to sell their goods for much. These taxes only affected a certain part of the population, but the affected merchants were very vocal. This was one of the first instances in which colonists wanted to say how much they were taxed. This act, and the Currency Act, set the stage for the revolt of the Stamp Act. The Stamp Act was passed by the British Parliament on 1765. The new tax required all American colonists to pay a tax on every piece of paper they used. For example, birth and death certificates, marriage licenses, ship’s papers, newspapers, and even playing cards. The money collected from the Stamp Act would be used to help pay for the cost of defending and protecting the American frontiersmen. With this act, the colonists’ anger reached the boiling point. The frustration was now to take the form of rebellion. The previous Molasses Act, Navigation Acts, and Sugar Act suddenly were seen as a prelude to this final blow. During the revolution, the Declaration of Independence served as a motivational document for the revolutionaries. King George III dismissed it, and it carried no political patch. The signitaries did risk their lives by signing it, and therefore the Declaration lifted moral, or at least the decision to overthrow British rule. The document gave a clarity to the American cause that it had previously lacked, and that the British were never to gain. The Declaration of Independence also made any hopes of a peaceful settlement much less likely – Independence once declared could not easily be surrendered. Each colony declared itself an independent state and replaced the king’s governor. Citizens, including women and slaves, plunged into the War under the command of General Washington. In the end, the American Revolution grew out of their restrictions placed upon their colonies by the British. The treaty signed in Paris on September 3rd, 1783 brings the American Revolution to its successful conclusion. The causes of the American Revolution were both economical and political. Each action by the colonists or Parliament seemed to bring about an effect by the other side. It was a progress changing the colonies from dependent to independent states, from monarchy to republic, but in the end, we succeeded. Individuals and groups drastically changed the course of history.

Attitudes 2 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Attitudes 2 - Essay Example Furthermore, this link is solid when attitudes are founded on individual capability and direct reflection. Attitudes are crucial to an individual`s significance system, thus as a result making some attitudes to be more significant than other. In addition, the connection between behavior and attitude is strong when the availability of people`s attitude is extraordinary. The availability of an attitude is the comfort people feel in perceiving what they think about something or their capacity to express their attitude. There are various aspects that affect availability or accessibility; these encompass anticipations, cognitive explanation, recency of activation, and regularity of stimulation. For instance, in the anticipation factor, a person is likely to think more when he or she knows he will have to assess an item in the future. Moreover, the extra task a person performs the stronger and accessible the attitude becomes concerning the cognitive expansion. Concerning regularity of activation, the more an individual thinks about something, the more accessible his or her attitude towards it will be. The attitudes are not consistent with the behavior concerning organ donation because social pressure. Thus, this can be strengt hened by the regularity activation, where the more a person thinks about donating an organ, the more likely he or she is bout to change his attitude and also sign up to be among the donors. Accordingly, it may also be solid when the likelihood of the public attractiveness is reduced. This implies that people may act in a different ways when not in public. Therefore, these are some of the examples demonstrating the inconsistence of attitudes with people`s

Social policy development for the aged in the modern day context Dissertation

Social policy development for the aged in the modern day context - Dissertation Example Over the past couple of decades, the senior citizens have become contributing members of the society in their own way (Chung, McLarney and Gillen, 2008). The complete change in the perception about the elderly in the past few decades warranted for a change in the way policy makers devised policies to meet their meets. In 2002, under the aegis of United Nations, the Second World Assembly was conducted in Madrid and the Madrid International Plan of Action on Aging was declared. The conference proposed a strong plan for providing social care and social development for the elderly, and for providing supportive environments for the same (DESA, 2002). This plan forms the basis of several countries own policies. Though the awareness regarding the need for a social policy for the elders is a recent development, many nations have already formulated policies regarding this. For most developed nations, these policies for the elderly revolve around improving the social status that the senior cit izens have and ensuring that they continue to function at their optimum (Voit and Vickers, 2012). Policies continue to focus on their safety and healthcare, but also endeavor to enhance participation in cultural and social activities. The overall aim is therefore to improve the quality of life for the elderly members of the society. Most nations like the United States and Canada have active Elderly Assistance Programs that function with the help of the government and the non-governmental organizations and help provide a supportive environment to the elderly citizens (Litwin, 2000).On the other hand, in the developing nations, such policies are in a nascent stage only. However, much of the policymaking related to the aged is undertaken in a normative manner with the government paving the way to develop new benefits or incentives for the elderly in a bid to make their life more comfortable. There appears to be little focus on understanding the perceptions of the elderly and their opin ions on what social policies related to them need to imbibe. The current research therefore endeavors to fill this gap by exploring the perceptions and opinions of the elderly and hence to present an assessment of their needs from their perspectives. The following research questions will guide the research: Research Questions 1. Are the senior citizens of XYZ satisfied with the quality of social policy aimed at them? 2. What are some of the changes that are needed for social policy so that the needs of the older citizens are adequately met? Literature Review A review of the available literature has highlighted the fact that The Elderly Assistance Programs of several countries are found to have become more and more responsive to the needs of the overall development of the seniors (Everard et al 2000). For example, in the European Union (EU), several innovative policies have been implemented that provide for the elderly to engage themselves more with their lives. Countries in the EU p rovide facilities that enable the elderly to have free or subsidized access to the cultural institutions. Also, there are several initiatives and programs that the elderly can participate in or lead, like the EU environment care programs that