My Christian Way of Life Essay Example for Free

My Christian Way of Life Essay I would not start this personal essay by saying that I am a devout Christian and that I love helping people or something to that effect. I am a Christian; however, I am not the devout type. I do not regularly attend church gatherings. I do not really engage in community services or avoid vices. My moral beliefs were first cultivated by my parents’ teaching. They are devout Catholic, so it is reasonable to conclude that Jesus Christ is the most influential philosopher in my life. It is because of Him that I am able to walk through life confidently and accept different challenges. I am against violence and vengeance because He has taught us to forgive. Nevertheless, I still have my own spiritual doubts and questions about life and about being a Christian. I also consider myself as a victim of popular culture who has the tendency to get easily influenced by unreasonable circumstances. I am skeptical most of the time which is why I am convinced that Pepperdine is the most fitting university which can cater my needs for spiritual development. The fact that George Pepperdine did not mean for any of the university’s students to become full-pledged or devout Christians is what attracts me most in the university’s mission. It interest me not because I do not want to become strictly dictated by Christian values but because in this critical point of my life, I believe that I need all the freedom to make my own choices so I can later ponder about them and reflect on my own life. At a young age, a person must be allowed to discover his or her own spirituality by his or her own means. This way, this person can become more experienced and driven to arrive to what he or she believes is the truth about one’s spiritual being. If one would analyze one’s surroundings closely, it is evident that we live in a material world. Everything that our eyes conceive is physically material. On the contrary, I believe that there is much more in this world than earthly things. The world is a puzzle that we need to piece together—a problem that we need to solve. However, it is a problem unsolvable—a problem too complex and beyond comprehension. Yet, we can only see the world as such if we close our eyes from superficiality and open them to greater extents. Simply put, the world is merely an illusion that we have created to fulfill our sight—and the only way to avoid being fully blinded by it is to develop our own spirituality. A person who aspires to accomplish a developed spiritual being must learn how to act in his or her own accord. Religion can be quite pressuring at times, which can even cause a person to lose his way. However, if one is given enough leeway to discover everything on his or her own, this person becomes more responsible in choosing the right path without any feeling of rebellion or being forced. I am confident that through the guidance of a university which values Christianity, I can become more disciplined and responsible in discovering the spiritual aspect of my life. I do not usually attend Sunday church but I honestly have my so-called personal relationship with God. I am more comfortable in talking to Him like a confidant who is always ready and available to listen than repeating prayers everyday. George Pepperdine is right. Maybe I am not fully aware yet of what is the real Christian way of life. Maybe â€Å"personal relationship† with God is not enough to be called a true Christian. Maybe it includes so much more than just a relationship. I guess I am not that confident yet about my own spirituality which is more than just a reason enough for me to become accepted in this university.

Unstructured interviews to investigate violent crime Essay Example for Free

Unstructured interviews to investigate violent crime Essay Assess the strengths and weaknesses of using unstructured interviews to investigate violent crime. (15 marks) Violent crime is difficult to study in the context where it occurs; this is because by their nature, violent crimes are often swift and unexpected. It is very difficult, if not impossible, for a researcher to know when and where a violent crime is likely to be committed. Unstructured interviews are a research method which entails a sociologist asking participants a series of open-ended questions in an unstructured format. This method has both strengths and weaknesses, but is overall preferred by interpretivists as it provided qualitative data and is highly valid. This method is highly valid as it uses open-ended questions which allow for follow up questions to be asked. There aren’t any pre-set questions on the topic; the participant’s answer to a question determines what is asked next. This means that participants are more likely to answer questions about violent crime and they will be more inclined to give in depth answers which can be used to paint a true to life picture. However, unstructured interviews lack reliability, this is because they aren’t standardised. As the questions are created based on previous answers, no two people will have the same interview; they also cannot be repeated as it is unlikely that someone will provide the same answers on separate occasions. Also victims of violent crime are likely to answer differently to perpetrators as they have different experiences, for example, in cases of domestic violence. Another issue is representativeness as unstructured interviews are very time consuming, sociologists can only focus on small groups of people. Also as they are so personalised, they may not be representative of all who have a connection with violent crime. A factor in unstructured interviews is the interviewee’s view; participants can speak freely about themselves due to the fact that there are not set questions. The greater freedom allows the participant to bring in new ideas about themselves and what they have experienced within violent crime. One problem found with using interviews to study violent crime, is that victims are less likely to agree to participate, especially if the violence was recent (Crawford et al, 1990). Aldo investigating the perpetrators of violent crime after the event raises problems of cooperati on, memory and ethics. Unstructured interviews allow for the interviewer to form a rapport with the person being studied.

Social Media in Business and Society

Social Media in Business and Society Most organizations tend to look upon social media as a threat, where some even opt to ban the usage from the workplace altogether. The idea behind it being that employees would be given the opportunity to waste time online, chat, and possibly pose as a security threat to the organization. (Turban, 2011) (Smith, 2010) outlines risk of employees social media use at work, these can be both intentional or not and they could lead to legal and reputational risks for organisations. These have been categorised as three main problems: Use of social media cannot be fully regulated, monitored or controlled thus organisations are giving up control. Social media is a worldwide means of communication, once a negative post is online its only a matter of time till it goes viral thus reaching competitors, regulators and customers. Social media is emotional and employees can express their feelings of happiness and/or frustration. Furthermore, (Flynn, 2012) identifies the risks of having employees participating in social media by causing reputational damage, trigger lawsuits, cause humiliation, crush credibility, destroy careers, create electronic business records, and lead to productivity losses. (Dreher, 2014) argues that social media is not to be feared, but rather embraced and seen as an opportunity where employees can act as corporate advocates and brand ambassadors. If anything, it helps employees keep up to date with latest news related to the industry together with continuous knowledge development. Nonetheless, even though there are many studies that point out the benefits of social media, there is still no clear-cut decision whether it can influence work performance or whether it can fuel the social capital of the employees and help in knowledge transfer (Zhang, 2016). However, it cannot be denied that every organisation allowing social media at work will always have its fair deal of challenges to overcome. (Eliane Bucher, 2013) speaks about the health issues that can be encountered. Starting off with stating that there is so much information available on social media that professionals may face information overload. Not to mention the mix of work life with private life overlapping with social media. New technologies should improve workers efficiency and reduce stress levels however often the opposite occurs (Eliane Bucher, 2013). Technostress as referred to by (Brod, 1984). To be successful in the social media environment one needs to overcome the below 3 points otherwise technostress is formed: Techno-overload Increase in workload which could be actual or perceived. Techno-invasion Social media enables people to be constantly connected from almost every device. This can lead to the feeling of the need to be connected or online causing reduction in family time allowing work issues to invade the private life (Eliane Bucher, 2013). Techno-uncertainty Social media is constantly changing and therefore brings with it uncertainty as regards to what technologies and skills are needed to perform the job and what will they be in the future. Social media comes with many legal issues tied to it. These range from pre-employment to post employment. Wrong usage of social media will for sure lead to waste of time, inefficiency, reputation issues and negative image for the organisation. Some of the laws are outlined below by (Lieber, 2011): Employment Laws by tagging co-workers in certain provocative photos or videos, Defamation and Libel Laws by stating certain comments on co-workers or employers thus effecting their reputation., As stated in (Trott, 2009) a Microsoft Survey found that 41% of employers based their decision of not hiring an applicant based on what they found online in relation to their reputation. This is also known as Netrep. This constitutes a legal risk of discrimination in itself if the recruiter is basing decision on the netrep. Fair Credit Reporting Act by having interviewers friending an applicant on Facebook to acquire more information than is required for the job applied. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act by having a medical professional LinkIn with a patient. Uniform Trade Secrets Act by having employees discussing or commenting on social media about company internal only discussions or non-public projects. Employers can monitor the use of social media at work if the employees are informed in advance. Disciplinary actions can be taken once any abuse is being noticed. Policies should include what is allowed and what is considered as abuse (Trott, 2009). If the employees post on their personal accounts outside of office hours and such posts are in relation to work having a negative impact in some way to the employer or the organisation then there is still grounds for disciplinary action even though employees try to advocate for respect for private and family life, home and correspondence (article 8) or freedom of expression (article 10) from the Human Rights Act 1998. As discussed above, social media has its advantages and disadvantages and seeing that social media is here to stay organisations have little choices but to accept the new reality, address it and learn how to make good use of it. (Lieber, 2011), among others, identifies the following criteria that any organisation willing to harness social media must address: The creation and enforcement of solid social media policies within the organisations personnel addressing fair use, access during work time and general behaviour on social media (even during personal time). Directly using social media for the benefit of the organisation such as for recruitment, marketing and investigating competing organizations. Monitoring of key social networks to data mine information regarding your organisation (and potentially others as well), possibly using automated algorithms and software for maximum efficiency and accuracy. From the above-mentioned criteria, the first two deal with human resource aspect of social media where organizations lay out guidelines to their employees on how to use them, and they as the organizations can use social media directly for recruitment, marketing etc. However, as the third criteria suggests, to make most use of social networks organizations must make sure that any information/data being released on such platforms, is gathered and used effectively. It is important that an organization is always aware of what the average user is saying about their brand, effectively getting the general feel or mood while analysing the trends across time. The same principle could be applied to monitor competitors; possibly for example identifying any weak products which the competitors have and having your own similar product take advantage of the situation. Effective monitoring comes from generating good data. Data mining involves the following steps to make data meaningful for monitoring: (Raghav Bali, 2016) Removing unwanted data and noise Transformation of the raw data into data that can be used for further processing Study the data and come up with patterns that can give further insight to our data Represent the data in a way that is useful to companies or to who the data intended for. There are different data mining techniques which can be used to monitor social media use. Social media is a form of real time communication therefore an effective monitoring tool needs to monitor and provide alerts as things happen. Most text mining tools make use of search engines to go through social media sites and collect information related to the keywords or interests. (Mark My Words article) Text Analytics (Text/Data Mining)   Ã‚   Text analytics involves a complex and elaborate number of steps to strip down conversations into separate words and analyse the way these words are being used, positive or negative and even derive patterns from collected data. When we search for a movie and receive some other movie recommendations that technique is using text mining. Text Mining is made up of Data Mining (Information retrieval, Natural Language Processing Machine learning) + Text Data (Emails, Tweets, News Articles, Websites, Blogs etc.) Figure 1: Text Mining (Charu C. Aggarwal, 2012) As indicated in Figure 1, Stop Word Removal and Stemming eliminate the generic and less meaningful words form a phrase, this helps categorizing different words with same meaning as see, seen and being seen. Bag of Words (BOW) is having words separated from the sentence and each word having a numerical value which represents its importance. Limitations (Charu C. Aggarwal, 2012) outlines several limitations that can be observed and future in-depth research is required: The real-time posts on social media are a very important resource as mining data in real time as it is being posted can yield many advantages. This however remains a challenge for when these posts are not conducted from work computers or from outside work. Social media is very unstructured and some applications like twitter even limit the amount of characters per post. This brings about problems of text recognition when short length words are used like gnite gr8 etc. Social media allows different ways to express opinions or emotions these could be through images, videos and tags making the text analytics much more complex and difficult in its pre-processing stage. Method 1: Keyword Search (Rappaport, 2010) Organisations can decide which keywords they want to monitor, these may be chosen based on what is important for that company, it could be their products or emotional states. Social media is a very unstructured place containing noise and unwanted data for our data mining process. This form of search is good to capture keywords and try and form a meaning of these words and the frequency used however its very hard to come up with what is the users intent. For that reason, we then consider a more complex search method called Sentiment Analysis. Method 2: Sentiment Analysis and Emotion Analysis Sentiment Analysis is the process of identifying sentiment in text and analyse it. There are three types of sentiment analysis (Walaa Medhat, 2014): Document Level Analyse the entire document as one topic and form an opinion or sentiment on the entire document Sentence Level Analyse sentiment in each sentence Aspect Level Analyse sentiment in respect to entities as you can have more than one aspect in a sentence for the same entity. For this study, we are focusing our research on Sentence Level analysis using Semantic search. Semantic Search: Semantic search goes beyond the traditional keyword search by providing a meaning to a phrase and makes use of a wide range of resources to interpret the phrase and thus providing a more accurate result. Some examples of semantic search in our daily lives: Conversational searches:   Figure 2: Conversational Search (Google, 2017) Auto Correct spelling mistakes: Figure 3: Auto Correct (Google, 2017) Display information in graphics format: Figure 4: Information in graphics format (Google, 2017) (Charu C. Aggarwal, 2012) outlines some challenges that are encountered when going through mining. These are the difficulty in recognising opinions, subjective phrases and emotions. Opinion mining challenges. When using semantic search method on a post one needs to understand that the post can contain all the following: Positive opinions I like the computer I bought, it has a very clear screen Negative opinions however my wife thinks its too expensive Different targets The targets in the positive opinions relate to the computer and the screen whereas the targets in the negative opinions are the price Different opinion holders The positive opinions are mine however the negative opinions are of my wife Subjectivity mining challenges Posts are also made up of objective and subjective comments. Subjective expressions like opinions, desire, assumptions amongst others may not contain opinions or may not express any positive or negative comments. Emotions mining challenges Emotions (love, joy, anger, fear, sadness, happiness and more) fall under a form of subjective expression. Sometimes emotions give no opinions in a phrase. To observe the usefulness and ideal approach towards the analysis of social media related posts and messaging, a software algorithm was designed and partially developed to illustrate this scenario. The idea behind this software is to have the user write inside a textbox, mimicking an actual employee typing using a company machine, while the system monitors such text and acts per what it registers. Therefore, this tool will be presented as a standalone software/algorithm concept, emulating an actual activity of a possible employee, and as such must be adapted accordingly to make use of it in a real-life situation. The basic principle of the solution proposed is made up of three modules: The key logger that monitors the users input at runtime and effects certain rules The keyword and semantic analysis on the data gathered The storage of produced analysis and log The following flowchart outlines the lifecycle of said solution, followed by a detailed analysis of each component mentioned above, as well as possible ways on how it can be further enhanced to produce even more accurate results. The flow of the proposed solution. Created using draw.io (https://www.draw.io/) Collecting and Processing Data In this solution, key logging is used to monitor the data inputted by the user, which is a constant monitoring of the keystrokes registered by ones activity, and registered as a stream of text ready to be dissected and analysed as required. The main advantage of using such a strategy is that data is collected and used in real-time, making it ideal for scenarios where an alarm (for example a negative post related to work) needs to be raised as quickly as possible to the relevant personnel, providing a detailed log of what the employee has typed (through the key logger) eliminating the need to monitor and access the relevant social media to check what has been posted. Note: there are other strategies one can pursuit to monitor the users activity, such as firewall policies or general network surveillance, however in real-life situations such solutions can prove rather difficult to setup due to the expertise required; while web encryption and proxy services makes it even harder to effectively monitor the traffic generated by the users. A key logger, even if effective, generates a lot of unneeded garbage beyond the scope of social media. For example, an employee working on his station would be constantly registering keystrokes which the logger is then adding them up to its own text stream. This could prove to be very problematic for three main reasons: The logger would begin to amass a significant amount of storage space, unless the key logger is given a limit of how much information it can hold and removing old data to make up space for the new data, but than some information can get permanently lost. The analysis of the text stream generated can be quite intensive, which can significantly affect the performance of the machine doing the analysis, especially when considering that the analysis is assumed to be processed on the users machine which most probably isnt very well suited for such intensive work. Furthermore, following the previous point, the garbage log is being analysed too needlessly. The chances are that an employee would spend very little time on social media, thus logging and analysing the work-related activity is quite pointless for such a scope. To overcome the above-mentioned issues, the proposed solution makes use of predefined social media trigger keywords i.e. a list of social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc., where depending on such triggers being hit or not, the key logger will have two states, passive monitoring and active monitoring. When the tool is running normally, the key logger is in a passive state keeping only the last 30 characters in its memory, without processing the stream. The only thing it does however, is to constantly check the stream read from the textbox in the tool against the trigger keywords, and if any of the keywords is found to have been registered then the key logger would go into active state. While in this state the key logger would increase its maximum capacity, and begin to log every keystroke while constantly analysing the feed. The key logger will go back to passive state when the predefined character limit is reached or enough time has passed. Following this logic, only a set of keystrokes would be registered, reducing the chance of collecting and processing unneeded information while maintaining the workload and storage use of the machine to a minimum. Note: in this approach once the key logger goes into active state, it is monitoring and analysing the feed at runtime locally, and this could prove to be quite intensive depending on the parameters set and the overall performance of the users machines. Organizations implementing this solution can opt to have the log analysed after the key loggers goes back into passive state and therefore analysing the data only once. Better yet, since the solution assumes that the key logger is analysing the data locally, instead the logs can be sent to a common server and be analysed as a scheduled task. Once this data is captured through the key logger the feed can be processed by means of the methods discussed earlier (Method 1 and 2). Based on the outcome we store the data in our information system and align the data based on the organisations social policy. Approaching data analysis using keyword and semantic methods The designed software makes use of two different types of analysis algorithms, keyword based and semantic based, and are used together to try and cancel each others limitations and thus providing much more accurate results. Keyword based analysis The more traditional keyword analysis algorithm consists of having a list of keywords i.e. a predefined set of texts, and hit the data to be analysed against that list to determine whether any keywords have been hit and at what frequency. For example, having a text (representing the data) analysed against a list of negative texts (the keywords) would provide a set of statistical information which could be used to evaluate how negative the text is, which is conceptually what a social media monitoring tool should be trying to achieve. However, the major flaw of this analysis algorithm within the context of social media monitoring, is that keyword based analysis is far too broad and prone to false alarms if not controlled. Having the data gathered from the key logger (therefore filtered to social media activity) analysed against a set of negative texts, the statistical information produced may not be relevant to the organizations interest. An employee could simply be posting a feed about how bad the weather is and how much s/he hates it, which the keyword analysis algorithm would recognize as negative and report accordingly. In the proposed solution, the keyword based algorithm uses two different sets of keywords against the gathered data, with the aim to filter the batches of logged texts by relevance. The first set consists of a list of works related text, such as work, job, company, [company name] etc. i.e. every keyword that could somehow link the user to the organization implementing the solution. In the second set, a list of keywords/texts associated with negativity are stored, such as bored, unhappy, hate, dull, sick and tired etc. When the data passed along through the key logger reaches the keyword analysis module, it would first check the log against the first set and therefore determine whether the data fed is of any relevance to work, and if not simply do nothing. On the other hand, if any of the keywords from the first set is hit, it means that the data inputted is relevant and therefore must be analysed further. In this case, the tool would analyse the entire log within the key logger (which is currently in an active state as described in the previous section) and extract the statistical information with regards to the second set. The flow of the full keyword based algorithm adapted in the tool Created using draw.io (https://www.draw.io/) Examples Keywords to assume: First Set (work): WORK, JOB Second Set (negative): BORED, UNHAPPY, SAD, HATE, DULL, TIRED, SICK AND TIRED, ANNOYED, FED UP Example 1: Input Hate this weather, its severely effecting my mood. Constantly feeling tired and sad. Output None Example 2: Input At work and bored. Wish I could find a better job, this one is just so annoying. Output BORED x 1 [full log] Example 3: Input Never a dull moment at work. At the end of the day, the management brought in pizzas, fresh doughnuts and beer. In a couple of hours, the food was gone leaving everyone too tired to move. Got to love this company, always making sure their employees are never bored and unhappy. Output DULL x 1 TIRED x 1 BORED x 1 UNHAPPY x 1 [full log] From the examples above one can note a few limitations concerning the keyword based analysis algorithm. In example 2 the logged text is alarming, which most probably would require the full attention of the responsible personnel, but due to the limited keywords, only a single piece of text was hit which would make the output seem not so alarming. Furthermore, the logged text had the word annoying which in the negative keyword set is listed as annoyed, but still this was not captured. Therefore, this means that this algorithm is highly dependent on the keywords lists and possible deviations of each text. In example 3 the output looks very alarming since the negative keywords list was hit 4 times, but the input is very positive. The algorithm was unable to take into consideration the context of how the negative words were used and simply counted the number of times they were encountered within the log, hence raising a false alarm. To overcome such limitations, other algorithms must be used in conjunction with the keyword based, where in this solution the semantic based approach is used to compliment the algorithm and try to provide more accurate results. Semantic based analysis As explained in previous sections, semantic analysis introduces a certain degree of understanding when analysing a given text, and this is achieved by giving meaning to what it is fed. In this proposed software algorithm, this type of analysis is used to evaluate the sentiment and emotion behind the fed input, and therefore can determine whether the users work related activity on social media is negative or positive, which by extension may be able to overcome the limitations of keyword based approach. Basic forms of semantic based algorithms used to analyse text in relation to sentiment and emotion, often providing a single value output denoted by a percentage, where 0% means that the text is absolutely negative and a 100% would indicate that without a doubt it is positive. However, semantic analysis is capable to go beyond a simple value, where some of which can produce a fully detailed report indicating the level of emotions for multiple types, such as anger, fearfulness and joy. The following is an example of such a report produced by the tool Tone Analyser offered by (Cloud, 2017). Example report of a semantic based algorithm offered by IBM Watson Developer Cloud Applying such an algorithm which produces a very detailed report, may be well beyond the scope of monitoring work related activity on social media. In the end, what the proposed solution is trying to achieve is to detect negative activity which would harm said organizations, that when detected, the log of that activity is passed along to the corresponding personnel with perhaps a brief report of the analysis. Another drawback to be considered in this scenario, is that light weight semantic algorithms are much less intensive than algorithms which consider different types of emotions when analysing a text, and given that in the solution such an analysis will be triggered almost constantly, having a heavy algorithm being triggered would result in a very negative experience to said users. This is why in the proposed solution a lighter semantic analysis is considered, that is the API provided by (ParallelDots, 2017). Note: one could argue that using a semantic analysis algorithm which produces a detailed report, could replace the entire algorithm which is using both the keyword based analysis and the light weight semantic based analysis. However, performance wise the latter would operate much smoother, and from a technical point of view considerably easier to setup. Note: in the proposed solution, the semantic analysis will be conditional to whether the keyword based algorithm is triggered or not, and therefore subject to the filter which is detecting whether the activity on social media is related to work or not. Examples using the sentiment analysis demo provided by (ParallelDots, 2017), which outputs single value percentages 0% being negative, while 100% being positive. Example 1: Input Hate this weather, its severely effecting my mood. Constantly feeling tired and sad. Output 0% Example 2: Input At work and bored. Wish I could find a better job, this one is just so annoying. Output 6% Example 3: Input Never a dull moment at work. At the end of the day, the management brought in pizzas, fresh doughnuts and beer. In a couple of hours, the food was gone leaving everyone too tired to move. Got to love this company, always making sure their employees are never bored and unhappy. Output 79% Classifying severity based on score and frequency of words Thus far, the algorithm detected negative activity on social media relating to work, using both keywords and semantic analysis. However, the term negative can be rather broad and it may be the case that the organization would not want to be alerted for every minor negative activity, since that will become counterproductive. As such the proposed algorithm has a threshold mechanism which determines whether to send in alerts or not. The threshold settings are two. The minimum number of negative words the activity must contain, and the minimum percentage of negativity to be considered. Right after the key logger is finished monitoring the social media activity, if work related activity is logged, the system evaluates the log based on the threshold set by the administrators of the system, and proceed accordingly. Using same parameters of previous example for keyword and semantic based approaches. The thresholds are set as follows: Minimum Keywords 1, Minimum Semantic Percentage 30%. Example 1: Input Hate this weather, its severely effecting my mood. Constantly feeling tired and sad. Output None (not work related) Alert No Example 2: Input At work and bored. Wish I could find a better job, this one is just so annoying. Output Keywords hit: 1 Semantic: 6% Alert Yes Example 3: Input Never a dull moment at work. At the end of the day, the management brought in pizzas, fresh doughnuts and beer. In a couple of hours, the food was gone leaving everyone too tired to move. Got to love this comp

Plan for a A Virtual Community for Teenagers on the Web :: Internet Communities Essays cyberspace

Plan for a A Virtual Community for Teenagers on the Web The Internet, though only considered to be approximately a decade old, has blossomed into an incredible method of communication. However, many of the resources contained on the Internet are hard to find, especially for less-experienced users. A virtual community project would ideally consist of all resources needed for high school juniors and seniors to access at any time and at any location. A perfect online community for teens would consist of many useful resources while allowing for expandability as technology advances. The most important factor of a virtual community would be the obligatory desire to visit and use the site. This could be accomplished by utilizing various techniques. A simple yet appealing interface would have to be employed to build a successful online village. Contests would also draw students from around the world to such a site. Daily winners to trivia or knowledge contests, all with some educational component involved, could win prizes supplied by the site's advertisers. Another important element, the aspect of customization, would also draw students to the site. An abundance of popular Internet sites are progressing toward personalization within the confines of their Web presence. All users to the virtual community would enroll using a short but complete registration form directly linked to the main page of the site. The initial form would consist of such straightforward entries as the user's name, e-mail address, ZIP code, time zone, desired username, and password. By using existing technology, the user would be greeted with a "Hello [name]!" message each time that he or she visited the site. The key to a successful community is accessible information about all of the site's users, but a sensitive issue arises with the mention of personal information. Many students and parents feel uncomfortable releasing information about themselves to a worldwide audience. It is important, therefore, that any particular user does not have to submit personal information to be released to all other users of the site. A strong emphasis would be placed on the importance of releasing enough information so that other users could find those students with similar interests. It is important to note that after completing the initial entry form, all registered users could access all services of the site. After providing personal information, users would be able to create a profile utilizing that information to show such information as interests, location, and current classes.

black and red drum :: essays research papers fc

Have you ever been fishing before? Not fishing based on lucky casts with worms or a bobber but fishing based on knowledge of what the fish do under the waves. I’ve been interested in fishing since the beginning of my time here on earth. Fish fascinate me, and catching them on rod and reel excites my inner primal being. I chose this topic to get into the mind of the fish I aim to catch. I already know much about my quarry. I know that Red Drum come in from the ocean to spawn in salt water back bays. I know that Black Drum eat stuff off the ocean bottom. I also know that Red Drum get caught by anglers during their search of spawning territory. These are the few facts I know about Drum. I want to learn much more. I want to learn enough to be called ‘Ryan the Drum slayer.’ I wonder where drum go while in open ocean? I wonder where Drum spawn and why they spawn there? I wonder how big the biggest Drum ever caught is? These questions and many more encircle my head. I h ope in reaching up and snatching a circling question, then answering it, I can become the greatest fisherman in the world. What is the scientific name of the Red and Black Drums? Well this answer is easy. The Red Drum’s scientific species name is Sciaenops ocellatus.(Red Drum in Texas). The Black Drum’s scientific species name is Pogonias cromis. (Black Drum in Texas). Where exactly do the fish live? The Black Drum is found in the Western Atlantic Ocean from Massachusetts coasts to Southern Floridian coasts. The Black Drum is found across the Gulf of Mexico an into North Mexican shores. The Black Drum rarely is found North of New Jersey (Schaltz, Ken †Black Drum†).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Red Drum are found in the western Atlantic Ocean. They inhabit the coastal waters from the gulf of Maine to the Florida Keys and all of the gulf coasts to Northern Mexico. (Schaltz â€Å"Red Drum†). The Red drum are an estuarine-dependent fish that morphs into an oceanic fish later on in life. It can be found in brackish water or saltwater. It can be swimming above sand, mud, or weeds. It is found in weeds of shallow inlets, bays, tidal passes, bayous, and estuaries (Schaltz â€Å"Red Drum†). Why the drum head out of their sheltered bays and into the ocean is a mystery.

War and Terror - It’s Time to Stop the Killing :: Argumentative Persuasive Argument Essays

War and Terror - It’s Time to Stop the Killing Somewhere within the last 120,000 thousand years, our ancestors began migrations quite different from any that appear in the archeological record preceding that time and somewhere between forty and fifty thousand years ago those migrations accelerated to the point that Cro Magnon hominids, our forebears, settled every nook and cranny on the planet. The last major migration occurred when the land bridge opened up in Siberia, as the glacier receded ten thousand years ago, and Homo Sapiens, who our species had become by then, trudged all the way to Tierra del Fuego within a thousand years or so. Jared Diamond (â€Å"The Third Chimpanzee† & â€Å"Guns, Germs, and Steel†) makes a case for some biological change, probably related to speech, as the variable making such migrations possible. He also makes the observation that these human migrations were coincident with the extinction of large mammals. The archeological evidence seems to bear this out. All over the planet there is fossil evidence of the extinction of one large mammal after another at approximately the same time the human migrations happened in that part of the world. Some scientists speculate that the cause of these extinctions is more complicated than the fact that they are coincident with the expansion of the number of humans and they are probably right; but something of major proportions in the evolution of our species definitely changed to allow humans to sweep across all but the most uninhabitable places on earth in a relatively short period of time. Dr. Diamond is careful to temper his speculation with the caution that all the facts are not yet in, and probably never will be, I might add. As a biology-oriented scientist, he continues to look to some physical/anatomical change to account for the advances made by humans resulting in our capacity to take on the unknown dangers lying beyond the next range of mountains or across the next river. For a couple of million years humans had evolved fairly slowly toward that point when a â€Å"great leap† occurred in the pace of our development. Anatomically we are about the same now as we have been for the last 125,000 years, so the guess is that some language advancement made the difference. Linguists have traced the capacity to speak back through a few proto languages to a point where the development of the ability to speak gets lost War and Terror - It’s Time to Stop the Killing :: Argumentative Persuasive Argument Essays War and Terror - It’s Time to Stop the Killing Somewhere within the last 120,000 thousand years, our ancestors began migrations quite different from any that appear in the archeological record preceding that time and somewhere between forty and fifty thousand years ago those migrations accelerated to the point that Cro Magnon hominids, our forebears, settled every nook and cranny on the planet. The last major migration occurred when the land bridge opened up in Siberia, as the glacier receded ten thousand years ago, and Homo Sapiens, who our species had become by then, trudged all the way to Tierra del Fuego within a thousand years or so. Jared Diamond (â€Å"The Third Chimpanzee† & â€Å"Guns, Germs, and Steel†) makes a case for some biological change, probably related to speech, as the variable making such migrations possible. He also makes the observation that these human migrations were coincident with the extinction of large mammals. The archeological evidence seems to bear this out. All over the planet there is fossil evidence of the extinction of one large mammal after another at approximately the same time the human migrations happened in that part of the world. Some scientists speculate that the cause of these extinctions is more complicated than the fact that they are coincident with the expansion of the number of humans and they are probably right; but something of major proportions in the evolution of our species definitely changed to allow humans to sweep across all but the most uninhabitable places on earth in a relatively short period of time. Dr. Diamond is careful to temper his speculation with the caution that all the facts are not yet in, and probably never will be, I might add. As a biology-oriented scientist, he continues to look to some physical/anatomical change to account for the advances made by humans resulting in our capacity to take on the unknown dangers lying beyond the next range of mountains or across the next river. For a couple of million years humans had evolved fairly slowly toward that point when a â€Å"great leap† occurred in the pace of our development. Anatomically we are about the same now as we have been for the last 125,000 years, so the guess is that some language advancement made the difference. Linguists have traced the capacity to speak back through a few proto languages to a point where the development of the ability to speak gets lost

Building a Fire to Fight Nature Essay

Jack London’s title for the story â€Å"To Build a Fire† starts the reader off with a very basic idea; building a fire. Almost anyone can build a fire. All it takes is a match and some kindling. London’s story is about more then building a fire, though. This story is about a man’s belief in himself, self-confidence and even arrogance, to such an extent that he doesn’t recognize the power of nature around him. London’s story is more like a â€Å"Man against Nature† story. London’s â€Å"To Build a Fire† casts a clear image that in the ever long-lasting battle between man and nature, nature is not a force that should be reckoned with. The author’s characters are even very general. The main character of the story is never given a name except to be called a â€Å"chechaqua† or newcomer in the land. â€Å"The constant struggle of Man against the natural world and physical forces which threaten to undo him at any moment is expressed greatly by this story.†(Colin) This is not a story about one individual person or one isolated incident, but a story used to illustrate a larger continuous gamble or battle between man and nature. London spends the first few paragraphs setting the physical scene. The setting is in Alaska along the Yukon River. It is close to the end of winter but the sun is still not yet in the sky. It is mentioned that this does not bother the man. The rest of the setting is described around the man and the places he has passed on this current journey and where else the trail leads in other directions. The description of the scenery is one of the most intriguing aspects of this story. London had a way of almost making the reader feel cold for the man in the story just by his descriptions of the surrounding territory. â€Å"The Yukon lay a mile wide and hidden under three feet of ice. On top of this ice was as many feet of snow. It was all pure white, rolling in gentle undulations where the ice jams of the freeze-up had formed. North and south as far as his eye could see, it was unbroken white..†(Charters, 910) The scene is set as beautiful, peaceful and cold. The harshness of this physical setting begins to become more and more clear as the story  progresses. Later the man notices that his spit is cracking and freezing before it reaches the ground. He remembers that at fifty degrees below zero spit will freeze when it hits the ground. â€Å"Undoubtedly it was colder than fifty below.†(911) This also means that there is at least 107 degrees of frost if it is truly 75 degrees below freezing. To increase the readers awareness of the cold, London describes how the mans breath is freezing on his whiskers and beard, the man is also chewing tobacco and with the temperature as cold as it is his cheeks and lips are numb and his spit tends to just end up on his beard and freezes in seconds. This man must be out of his mind to be out in the wilderness in these extreme climate conditions. â€Å"Seeing a man that oblivious to the dangers of traveling alone in colder than fifty below weather, walking on ice, and making a fire under a snow covered tree should be enough to substantiate that he was not unlucky but just plain stupid!†(Wilson) The man starts to grow this â€Å"crystal beard of the color and solidity of amber.†(912) The surroundings are beautiful, peaceful and cold but the man did not see the danger that nature could bring upon him. That it was too cold out to travel or that it could get worse â€Å"was a thought that never entered his head.†(912) The man had a native of the land with him. â€Å"At the man’s heels trotted a dog.†(911) No name is ever given to the dog in the story. Another way for London to keep the story general and the focus on the theme. The dog is a big, native Husky, a brother to the wild wolf it had the instincts to respect nature. The dog knew the temperature was too cold to be traveling but stayed at the man’s heels. The dog plays a dual role in this story. He plays the man’s conscience and natures voice and personification. â€Å"Often a dog can reflect the same personality and character traits as it’s owner. Dogs are extremely intelligent creatures and will reflect and behavior that they are exposed to for lengthy periods of time.†(Feinson, 127) The man treats the dog the same way he treats nature; with no respect. The dog is just a tool, a sled dog and later considered expendable to possibly save the man’s life. The man treats nature much the same way. The dog also shows at  the end how nature moves on. The dog stays to watch the man as he dies and once the dog realizes the man is dead he runs off to the cabin where there are â€Å"other food providers and fire providers†(921) The protagonist in the story is the unnamed man. He’s a â€Å"newcomer† to this area of Alaska and it his first winter. He is on his way to a cabin at a claim where he will meet up with â€Å"the boys.† London refers to him as a man without â€Å"imagination† but, â€Å"quick and alert in the things of life.†(910) It is this lack of imagination that makes the man unable to believe or heed the warnings of the veteran Alaskan men who told him not to travel alone when it is fifty below. One needs to have a second person to try and start a fire if the first person should fail. But, the man in the story is over confident. He stops once and makes a fire without a problem to thaw his face so he can eat his lunch. The man doesn’t notice how much the dog wants to stay at the fire. He doesn’t respect the instincts of the native animal. The trail follows along a creek, which is frozen but has natural springs along it that create small pools of water with thin ice and coatings of snow to cover them up. The man almost prides himself on how well he can spot these warning signs of possible danger. He also is increasingly happy with the pace he is keeping. The man soon falls into one of nature’s little traps, a small pool of water, and has only a few minutes to build a fire and get warm and dry before he freezes to death. He tries to stay as calm as possible but in his haste doesn’t pick a good spot to build a fire. He realizes too late when the heat from the fire he has just built starts to melt the snow in the tree branches above him and drops down smothering the fire. â€Å"A man alone in the wilderness coupled with stupidity is a deadly combination. To deal with nature takes skill and know-how, this man seems to have neither, he was doomed from the moment he went off alone.†(website) When it is 75 degrees below freezing one person doesn’t have a second chance to build a fire. The temperature is just too cold and exposed parts of the body will start to freeze. The man still believes in his strength to overcome the power of nature and continues to try and build a fire. He doesn’t succeed and at the end accepts his fate and falls asleep thinking about the next day when â€Å"the boys† would find him. The  story is an illustration of what can happen to a person that doesn’t respect nature and its power. â€Å"This is the story of a man’s struggle against nature, trying to survive against impossible odds in a universe indifferent to an individuals fate.†(909) The man was so confident in himself that he traveled with nothing but his lunch and a few matches and birch bark to start a fire. â€Å"He has also been warned not to travel alone in such cold, but he goes anyway, with only his dog and confidence for a companion.†(Synopsis, 220) He has no company, or supplies for the possibility he may confront some type of danger. Whether the danger be with another animal or with his surroundings. The short version of the story was originally published in the Boy Scouts of America Handbook. Any Boy Scout might remember the story form when they were a kid and the lessons that were taught from it when they were younger. They were taught to respect nature for what it is, what it can do, and of course, to always be prepared. If you aren’t, nature will take it’s toll, and what a deadly toll it can be.