New media study

The emergence of highly advanced technologies resulted in new methods of communication, including visual and image-based communication, through which businesses and their respective target market interact. Thus, it is highly important to understand the underlying concepts and theories behind these emerging methods of communication and optimally utilize them. For this reason, I would like to take up New Media Studies in DePaul University. As an advertising graduate who currently specializes in creating designs for a marketing firm, the program can surely help me develop sophisticated conceptual designs and advance my career. As I a native of South Korea, coming to the United States to study and establish a career has aided me in developing a profound understanding of diverse cultures and societies with this country’s multicultural population. Moreover, I was also able to obtain a deep grasp of the market and the media. I took up advertising in the Illinois Institute of Art in Chicago where I was able to acquire a basic understanding of the meanings behind images and designs and their impact on the public. This university also taught and honed my skills in producing conceptual designs. Thus, my academic background and experience serve as a solid foundation which would be really helpful when I become accepted to the New Media Studies program. After graduation, I worked in CMO Graphics as prepress artist and helped the company create design solutions for its clients. After a few months, I started working for Point B Communications and contributed in providing marketing and advertising solutions for its various clients through brand-building. My experience with them has further enhanced my skills in graphic design, fine arts, and layout design. My working experiences have enlightened me about the true meaning of design. I believe that design is important to express the way an artist feels and turn this emotion and vision into an image or design. Despite the diversity of knowledge and skills that I acquired through my academic and work experiences, I realized that there is still so much that I have to learn. For this reason, I decided to apply at DePaul University and take up Master of Arts in New Media Studies. Through the program, I would like to achieve this goal and objective: to learn and improve my skills in a variety of areas such as writing, digital design, and media-related studies. One of my objectives that I would like to realize through the New Media Studies program is to improve my writing skills and learn how to change my writing style so that it can fit any category, whether it is for technical, professional, or creative purposes. It is also one of my objectives to further develop my abilities in creating digital media and design which I can use in making more advanced advertising design concepts. Learning more about media representation would also be advantageous for me as my work mostly deals with visual images and design. I believe that it is highly important to understand the public’s impression of these images and designs on the public so that I can produce design concepts that will have a positive impact on them. I chose to study at DePaul University because it offers the New Media Studies courses exclusively at night to accommodate working adults such as myself. With the courses provided at night, I would be able to attend classes and focus on my studies without worries. The program is also flexible enough to teach me technicalities and advancement in the new media field. Hence, if I become accepted to this program, I look forward to the fresh new ideas that I will gain which I would definitely apply to my current job. I also selected DePaul University because I believe that it can offer me the best academic experience and instill the knowledge and skills that I need through the New Media Studies program. With this university’s rich and wider resources, highly acclaimed professors, cultural and educational diversity, I would most certainly achieve personal and career growth. I believe that attending a school where diversity is present plays a large role in bridging cultural gaps and settling the differences. Through this, I would be able to further nurture my understanding of various different cultures. Furthermore, the New Media Studies program of the university can guarantee absolute learning experience and offer me the best career opportunities and help me attain success in my chosen field.

Cost Behaviors and Allocation Essay

The relationship between fixed, variable, and total costs of an organization is called cost behavior. It is also known as underlying cost structure, and is used for planning, control, and decision making within the organization. Healthcare organizations face several challenges to try and improve the quality of care and reduce costs at the same time. Their response to how to do this describes their cost behavior. Fixed costs is a cost that are certain regardless of the volume of services that are delivered and will occur even if the facility is closed. Variable costs are related directly to the amount of service that is delivered. These two costs make up the underlying cost structure of an organization. For example the costs of supplies used to draw blood in a laboratory, would be the variable costs, the costs to keep the laboratory open would be fixed costs. To understand the cost behaviors of the organization you have to figure out the relationship these costs have with the amount of services that they are delivering. To manage your costs you want to make sure that you are bringing in enough volume that will cover your costs. Cost allocation is a very important part of cost measurement. It is a pricing process that within the organization where managers allocate the costs of all the departments. Within healthcare organizations the overhead costs, costs from patient services departments, and support costs have to be allocated. Due to this pricing and service offerings are based on the total costs in relation with each services. If the allocations of overhead costs are allocated properly the organization is better able to make good decisions for the organization. Works Cited Evans III, J. H. (1998). Cost Management and Management Control in Healthcare Organizations: Research Opportunities. Behavioral Research in Accounting , 10, 78-103. Gapenski, L. (2012). Healthcare finance: An introduction to accounting and financial management (5th ed. ). Chicago: Health Administration Press.

Assignment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 29

Assignment - Essay Example This gave me more chances to listen to other songs and become more critical about music. Moreover, my readings enabled me understand deeper what have been discussed and to discover other materials that are helpful in understanding harmony, melody and rhythm. I also learned to listen more carefully and become more observant about instrumentation. For instance, when I listen to a song, I try to identify the instruments used without looking at the performers. In this manner, I also learned to distinguish what instruments are vital and what could be a good combination of instruments that could be used to create beautiful melodies. I learned to become more observant not only in the music that I listen to but also on how musicians perform. Movements indeed are essential as it has been observed in most successful performers because body movements help to relate the message of the song to the listeners. Today, I am not just able to enjoy music but I also have the confidence to attempt to cre ate my own music with the understanding I have gained in the

Journal 2 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Journal 2 - Essay Example Barfing is something that is universal and yet so private, which makes it a perfect symbol of identity. Myles is telling a story about her political sestina, and then she narrates a story concerning a boat of barfers. She wants to puke herself because of her poem and her own feelings for it. She wants to express her sincere emotions, like a barf would have. In real life, however, it is hard to be â€Å"real† without being judged as fake. I believe she wants to say that to puke is â€Å"to be,† in the terms of â€Å"identity.† To puke is utterly natural in a most disgusting way. Who said it is disgusting anyway? Why cannot people freely barf without being judged? In other words, why cannot people be who they are and who they want to be with without feeling the disgusted eyes of the people around them? Myles is showing the way to knowing thyself through the art of barfing the inner contents of oneself. Myles’ relationship with her mother is troubled and the center of her barfing because as her mother, she is her foundation as a person. Myles, nevertheless, admits her complex relationship with the woman who gave birth to her. On the one hand, she wants to be near her again. I want to confirm with Myles if it is for companionship. Does she want to be with her mother because of her failed relationships with other women? She might be craving for comfort from the original woman of her life. Or, Myles might be blaming her mother for controlling her life, so she might as well suffer with her. Despite the restless emotions, Myles understands that her mother has not completely destroyed her. Living with her mother has turned her into a puke hater. She must have wanted to puke because she has a hard time being who she is with her mother. Myles cannot directly express her identity to her mother. Puking is her release. It is her way of â€Å"being† without being so blatant about it. Forming and

Astor Piazzolla Histoire du Tango Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Astor Piazzolla Histoire du Tango - Essay Example As with tango music, Astor Piazzolla's life was also filled with many changes and deviations that eventually helped him discover his true style and identity in the field of music. Piazzolla was born on March 11, 1921 to an Italian family in Mar del Plata, Argentina. His family moved to New York, and it was there that he first discovered his love for music. When his father gave him a bandoneon, he began to explore his musical talents that would have to undergo many changes and evolutions before he would come to realize the true directions in his music career. While growing up in New York, Piazzolla learned to appreciate classical music as he studied piano with Bela Wilda, a disciple of Rachmaninov (Pessinis and Kurl). During that same time, he met with the tango legend, Carlos Gardel, who became a good friend to him. When the family then decided to move to Argentina in 1936, Piazzolla started to play with some orchestras. Whereas he learned to appreciate the music of Bach while studying with Bela Wilda, he began to embrace tango as a musical style when he lived in Argentina. He was particularly impressed with the Elvino Vardaro's alternative style of rendering tango pieces (Pessinis and Kurl). ... Piazzolla continued to develop his skills and talent music. In 1944, he formed his own orchestra, which brought to the public a more vibrant form of tango music, more daring and dynamic (Pessinis and Kurl). This sparked the first controversies in Piazzolla's career. The orchestra was disbanded eventually in 1949, and the musician decided to take a different path musically. He thought that it was better for him to pursue classical music instead. Even as he did that, Piazzolla also listened to a lot of jazz music. In his quest to find his own style, Piazzolla decided to stay away from tango music. In the early 1950s, Piazzolla created music pieces that very much deviated from the traditional tango music during that time. He won the first prize for the Fabien Sevitzky competition with his "Buenos Aires" symphony, which caused strong reactions from some of the listeners who thought that the music was an abomination of classical music, when he incorporated the bandoneon in the symphony. As part of the prize, he was privileged to study under the legendary educator, Nadia Boulanger, who played a huge role in Piazzolla's discovery of his own style. Because of his decision to stay away from tango and pursue classical music, Piazzolla did not reveal his past musical experience to his teacher. Eventually, Boulanger found out the true style of Piazzolla and encouraged him to follow his own direction. Boulanger was quoted as saying to Piazzolla, in reference to his rendition of his tango Triunfal, "your classical pieces are well written, but the true Piazzolla is here, never leave it behind" (Pessinis and Kurl). His teacher's encouragements became the driving force for him to compose

Cross Culture Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Cross Culture Management - Essay Example The nature of the Indian culture comprises of people who believe in sharing love with one another yet fall short on the count of being good to them all the same. What this means is the fact that the Indians are very sensitive within their judgments and hence could lead to a number of consequences in the long run for their own domains (Henderson, 2002). The culture of India is a mixture of the Hindu and Muslim religions since Hindus are in majority while Muslims are also in a sizable proportion. India is famous for its culture manifestations through films, music, cricket and so on. These have essentially bolstered the basis of India as a country all over the world, and people know that India is one nation where one can expect color and excitement as the people like to live their lives to the maximum. The culture of India has many different forms since this is one country whose population is more than 1 and a half billion, making it the second most populous country in the world after C hina. India serves a huge population and hence its culture is manifested in a number of different ways and means. The culture of India is such that the people derive pleasure from its varied manifestations and representations. The celebrities form an essential part of the Indian culture and this is easily witnessed on the television, in the movies and on the outdoors. What is interesting to note is the fact that India boasts of a population that absolutely cherishes the idea of dance and music (Cohen, 2000). The people believe it to be a part of their everyday lives, and hence the reason that th

Radio and mobile communication Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Radio and mobile communication - Essay Example tems developed in the first generation category were incompatible with one another for the reason that all they were operating at different frequencies. For this reason, mobile users had to change their mobiles when they moved to different countries. Since this generation was based on FDMA standard that why it supported only limited roaming and capacity. Hence, in order to deal with the problems of 1st generation, a new generation of mobile computing evolved in the 1990s known as 2nd generation of mobile networks (Joshi, 2012; Patil, et al., 2012). The design process of 1st generation cellular networks started in 1980 but the actual implementations of these networks appeared in early 1991 and continued until the 2nd generation appeared. Basically, this generation included the majority of currently used ubiquitous cellular networks. As compared to 1st generation networks, 2nd generation networks depended completely on analog FM and FDMA. Some of the well-known techniques used by 2G standards included Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) and digital modulation formats with Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA). These systems are normally known as Personal Communications Service (PCS) in the United States. In this scenario, three TDMA standards (GSM, IS-136, and PDC) and one CDMA standard (IS-95) are believed to be the well-known standards of 2G networks (Joshi, 2012; Patil, et al., 2012). One of the major problems with 2G technologies was that it used circuit-switched data modems for this reason data users were limited to a single circuit-switched voice station. As a result, data transfer rate reduced to a very low rate. In fact, the majority of 2G networks supported a data transfer rate of 10 Kbps for all kinds of users. In this scenario, 2G networks were unable to support sophisticated short messaging capabilities and effective Internet browsing and. Short Messaging Service (SMS) is a popular feature of GSM. Thus, in order to help 2G standards overcome

Leader Follower Communication Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Leader Follower Communication - Research Paper Example This paper illustrates that a leader is expected to be honest, and manage to gain his followers’ trust, as the latter determine if the leader is effective or not. Moreover, followers are in a position to determine whether a leader should be followed or not. Followers are different and hence require different forms of leadership. For instance, new employees may require more supervision compared to experienced employees, while an employee who is de-motivated may require a different form of leadership compared to the motivated employee. The growth of followers is determined by the effectiveness of a leader. Generally, there exist several types of followers, including the effective follower, who is independent and active, the conformist follower who is dependent of the leader but also active, and the alienated follower who is independent but not much of a team player. In addition, there is the passive follower who is prone to resistance and therefore requires a high level of super vision, and the pragmatic follower who is normally stuck in the middle, as he is not sure on his stand and sometimes maximize on their self-interest only. In addition, leadership varies with situations, such that a certain type of leadership may be applicable in one situation but it may not be applicable in another. Leaders and followers differ in that everyone can be a follower but not all can be leaders since leadership is not only a position defined by a state of mind and character. Followership is the willingness to follow a leader or to be led; however, a leader can as well be a follower, as he has to follow his superiors and his followers. For instance, in the case of a flight captain who gives orders to his crewmembers, if the crew does not understand, he goes ahead and teaches them on how to attend to that particular matter, thereby becoming a follower since he reacted to the actions of his followers. In this research, a selection of followers was made from nurses who report to doctors, a clerk who reports to the manager, a personal secretary who reports to the managing director and technician who reports to the head engineer.

Equity and Trusts (England and Wales) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Equity and Trusts (England and Wales) - Essay Example d her children in equal shares. Thus there can be no doubt that Sir Clarence intended to create a trust out of the transfer of the property/gifts to Tilda. In order to give effect to Sir Clarence’s intention to create a trust, certainty of subject and object must be satisfactorily established.4 In this regard, certainty of subject matter is sufficiently established if the property transferred or to be transferred to the trust can be identified and administratively workable.5 The sum of money transferred to Tilda to administer is specific and certainly capable of division and is thus identifiable and readily administrable. Since the seaside property was transferred to Tilda, the seaside cottage is likewise identifiable and administrable. Certainty of objects is established if the words used to describe the beneficiaries are sufficient for the courts or the trustees to identify and administer the trust among specific beneficiaries or a class of beneficiaries.6 In a discretionary trusts, the trustees need only be able to identify by virtue of an in or out test, who the beneficiaries are. However with a fixed trust, as this particular trust appears to be, the trustees must be in a position to draw up a complete list of all of the beneficiaries.7 Even so the in or out test will be effective for determining who Davina’s children are. It is also possible to draw up a complete list of the beneficiaries. Therefore whether or not the trust is discretionary or a fixed trust, certainty of objects can be established. Tilda, who is Sir Clarence’s friend should certainly be able to identify Davina and her children. Likewise the courts can easily identify who Davina’s children are as births are a matter of public record. Thus far it has been established that the three certainties have been satisfied in the gifts to Davina and her children. However, the disposition of the freehold in the cottage to Tilda upon trust for Davina and her children cannot be enforced unless it meets the formal requirements for the disposition of an equitable interests in land pursuant to Section 53(1)(c) of the Law of Property Act, 1925. Section 53(1)(c) of the Law of Property Act 1925 provides that the disposition of an equitable interests in land must be evidenced in writing.8 It therefore follows that while the gift of 200,000 pounds forms the subject of a valid trust, the seaside cottage does not since it does not meet the requirements of Section 53(1)(c) of the Law of Property Act, 1925. Therefore the principle of resulting trusts is relevant. A resulting trust will arise to essentially transfer the property back to Sir Clarence. This is possible because the resulting trust functions to give effect to that which is conscionable.9 In particular a resulting trust will arise when both the trustee and the settlor agreed and know that the settlor never intended to transfer the property to the trustee absolutely or the trustee treats the property in a way that does not correspond with the settlor’

Misogyny in Theogony Essay Example for Free

Misogyny in Theogony Essay In Theogony, Hesiod expresses misogynistic notions and shows the triviality of the creation of women. Hesiod portrays the insignificant role for women. He uses marriage as a light-hearted yet serious judgment and stereotypes against all women. Hesiod explains the most misogynistic attitudes in the story of Pandora. He works misogyny into female monsters and goddesses that use their tricks on men. Hesiod displays the dominance of the male sex in his poem, Theogony. Hesiod touches on his feelings toward the idea of marriage. Referring to Theogony, he states that the man who avoids marriage arrives at an old age with no one to look after him and distant relatives share out his living. The man who finds a good wife spends a life, that is balanced between evil and good, / A constant struggle.(393-394) While the man who gets an awful wife lives with, He lives with pain in the heart all down the line, / Pain in spirit and mind, incurable evil.(395-396) Hesiod’s idea of marriage is more of a teaching process with the man as dominant and the woman is to be controlled. The very creation of women was a punishment to mankind. Out of Zeus anger toward Prometheus, came Pandora, the first woman. Hesiod explains the thoughts of immortal gods and mortal men as they first glanced at the beautiful creation as â€Å"sheer deception, irresistible to men. / From her is the race of female women, / The deadly race and population of women, / A great infestation among mortal men.† (373-376) The only reason women live in this world is because of the sins of one male figure. Women have no other purpose in Hesiod’s words than to be the bad that upsets the good in the world. In Theogony, Hesiod mentions the monster Echidna stern of heart, who was half nymph with fair cheeks and curling lashes, and half a monstrous serpent, terrible and huge, glinting and ravening, down in the hidden depths of the numinous earth. This monster that Hesiod describes seems to parallel with his image of women: beautiful but deceiving. Theogony also describes Aphrodite as a modest and beautiful goddess. Although she is the goddess of intimacy, tenderness, and pleasure, she is also the goddess of deceptions. Aphrodite claims she is the most powerful because she can influence all other gods. Hesiod wrote this poem with a lot of misogynistic thoughts in mind. The idea of marriage is irrelevant except for the matter of reproduction of strong and courageous men in Theogony. The creation of women was originally a punishment to Prometheus but Hesiod shows that this is a punishment to all mankind. Women are also often compared to monsters and evil creatures. Hesiod states throughout his poem that women are often insignificant and trivial to the lives of men.

The Tlatelolco Massacre Night Of Bloodshed And Tears History Essay

The Tlatelolco Massacre Night Of Bloodshed And Tears History Essay The Plaza of the Three Cultures, known as the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Spanish, symbolizes Mexicos unique cultural heritage. La Plaza de las Tres Culturas was once the center of one of the most powerful Native American empires, the Aztecs, located in the ancient city of Tlatelolco. The square contains the remains of the Aztec temples and is flanked by the Colonial Cathedral of Santiago, and the Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores (Department of Foreign of Affairs) building. Las Tres Culturas is in recognition of the three periods of Mexican history reflected by those buildings: pre-Columbian, Spanish colonial, and the independent mestizo nation. The plaza not only represents three cultures but is an important reminder of the Mexican spirit of determination. It is the site where the Aztecs made their final stand against the Spanish army in 1521 and the massacre of 1968. It has been called Mexicos Tiananmen Square, Mexicos Kent State. During the presidency of Gustavo Dà ­az Ordaz (1964-1970), there were several antecedents to the 1968 student confrontations with the Mexican government, but nothing comparable to the Tlatelolco Massacre that occurred on the night of October 2, 1968, in Mexico Citys Plaza de las Tres Culturas. Background The year1968 was a year of political turmoil around the world. The International Olympic Committeeheaded by Avery Brundage from the U.S.had chosen Mexico as the first Third World country ever to host the Olympic Games. This was aimed both to draw oppressed countries into imperialist-dominated world sport and to showcase Mexico as a model of U.S.-sponsored growth and relative stability. Mexico was supposed to provide a contrast to the national liberation struggles which were shaking most of Latin America, Asia, and Africa and sparking rebellions in the imperialist citadels from Detroit to Paris as well. To date, no other Latin America country has subsequently hosted the Olympic Games. The Mexican government invested a massive $150 million in preparations for the Olympics, an ostentatious amount considering the poverty that existed in Mexico. The Mexican president during the Olympics, Gustavo Dà ­az Ordaz ineptly strained tenuous conditions in Mexico in an attempt to preserve the peac e. During the Dà ­az Ordaz presidency, Mexicans endured the suppression of independent labor unions, peasant farmers, and the economy. From this general dissatisfaction with President Dà ­az Ordaz, the student movement was born. Initially their demands were limited to greater employment and respect for university autonomy; however, the struggles of the factory workers and rural peasants soon resonated with them. This movement of rebellious students was touched off on July 24 when a fight between gangs at two high schools connected with the longtime rivals, the Mexican National Autonomous University (UNAM) and National Politechnical Institute (IPN, or Poli), was viciously put down by antiriot police called granaderos. When outraged vocational students protested, granaderos attacked again, killing many. In response, students seized buses and put up barricades to defend their schools. Student strikes and takeovers hit high schools all over the capital. The high school students were supported by UNAM and IPN students. Students from 70 universities and preparatory schools in Mexico formed a grassroots National Strike Council (CNH) and put forward six strike demands: disband the granaderos; fire police chiefs; investigate and punish higher officials responsible for the repression; pay compensation for students killed and injured; repeal laws making social dissolutionbreaking down of societya crime (under these laws many independent unionists and communists had been jailed); and free political prisoners, including students arrested in the recent disturbances as well as those seized earlier for social dissolution. Within three days the government had to call in the army to take back several Mexico City prepas (preparatoriashigh schools connected to universities). There were clashes which led to many hundreds of arrests and injuries. Thirty-two students had been killed since the first confrontation, but this only fired up the youths resistance. The student strike spread to the UNAM, IPN, and universities throughout the country, supported by a majority of professors. By late August and September the students were calling marches of 300,000 to 600,000 people; important contingents of workers and peasants participated regularly. Over the coming months, the student movement gained support from students outside the capital and other segments of society that continued to build until that October, despite several instances of violence. CNH Tactics Student brigades strained their creativity and skills to foil police and get the word out. Engineering students designed balloons which would burst when they got to a certain height and rain leaflets on the heads of pedestrians. Acting students put on realistic street theater in which a student and a conservative woman in pearls and heels carried out loud debates in crowded markets. Hundreds of observers would be drawn in, the majority on the side of the youth, and the advanced would be quietly contacted by undercover students in the crowd. Some students found that they and the barrio or slum dwellers spoke what seemed to be two different languages. They had to throw out bookish talk and learn from the vivid calà ³ slang of the streets. After a full day of brigade work, they would spend the night in classrooms they had taken over, discussing the conditions and outrages the masses had exposed them to and figuring out how to use this new knowledge in their leaflets and agitation. The red and white buses of the IPN, always with some daring students and a loudspeaker perched on the roof, became famous for a kind of roving speak-in. Workers, market vendors, and even mariachi singers would climb up on the bus roof one after another to voice their support or disagreement with the students demands or tactics and to air their grievances. In some neighborhoods, just the appearance of an IPN bus was enough to immediately attract crowds of hundreds of people who would gather around. Students captured the spirit of the people in a way that the national government was never able to do. In fact, the national government was despised by its people. Mexican Government The turmoil of the 1960s in part reflected a widespread dissatisfaction among Mexicans with the rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The PRI was aptly described in 1968 as entrenched, stagnant, and primarily self-serving in the eyes of many Mexicans. The PRI controlled the nation with an iron fist for over 70 consecutive years. The party has been known to use violence, manipulation and corruption to win elections and hide information from the public, such as the details concerning the Tlatelolco massacre. President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz was known for an authoritarian manner of rule over his cabinet and country, despite Mexico being a democratic country. Luis Escheverria, Interior Secretary to Ordaz, was also known for a no nonsense attitude against student protesters. The Mexican governments planned response to the student rally on the evening of October 2 was called Operation Galeano. The most definitive account of this operation, culminating with the Tlatelolco Massacre, is found in a Mexican special prosecutors report released in November 2006. According to this report, early on October 2 elements of the militarys Estado Mayor Presidencial (the Presidential High Command) were placed in apartments on the upper floors of the Chihuahua apartment building and other apartment buildings surrounding Tlatelolcos Plaza de las Tres Culturas. Once the rally started, the Army, using from 5,000 to 10,000 soldiers (the accounts varying) and more than 300 tanks and other vehicles, would surround the plaza to prevent those attending the rally from fleeing, while armed military men in civilian clothes, members of a unit called the Batallà ³n Olimpia that had been organized to help protect the Olympic Games, would prevent anyone from entering or leaving the Chi huahua apartment building, in which the organizers of the rally were to be arrested. The planned response of the government ended in bloodshed by the order of Luis Escheverria. Tlatelolco Massacre: The Event On October 1, the CNH held two rallies at UNAM. Speakers urged the thousands of students present to attend an October 2 rally at the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, in the Tlatelolco area of Mexico City, to be followed by a march to Casco de Santo Tomà ¡s to demand the withdrawal of authorities from the IPN campus. On October 2, 1968, approximately 10,000 people, most of them students carrying red carnations, arrived in the vast colonial plaza of Tlatelolco for a demonstration. At 6:04 p.m. green and red flares dropped from helicopters, soldiers burst into the square, tanks blocked the exits and an elite plainclothes battalion stormed the speakers platform on the third-floor balcony of an apartment building, where the National Strike Committee, the leadership body of the student movement, was stationed and opened fire. The gunfire lasted for sixty-two minutes, then started again and continued for hours. Late in the evening, when the shooting finally ceased, scores of demonstrators lay d ead and woundedchildren and the elderly among them. The official government explanation of the incident was that armed provocateurs among the demonstrators, stationed in buildings overlooking the crowd, had begun the firefight. Suddenly finding themselves sniper targets, the security forces had simply returned the shooting in self-defense. By the next morning, newspapers reported that 20 to 28 people had been killed, hundreds wounded, and hundreds more arrested. Most of the Mexican media reported that the students provoked the armys murderous response with sniper fire from the apartment buildings surrounding the plaza. El Dà ­as morning headline on October 3, 1968 read as followed: Criminal Provocation at the Tlatelolco Meeting Causes Terrible Bloodshed. The government-controlled media dutifully reported the Mexican governments side of the events that night, painting the students as trouble makers who needed to be brought to order by any and all means necessary. Olympic Games 1968 Controversy The death of hundreds did not even phase the International Olympic Committee. They did not consider to cancelling the games, due to their belief that the massacre was an isolated event involving a social minority. On October 16, 1968, an action by two African-American sprinters at the Mexico City Olympics shook the sporting world. Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the gold and bronze medalists in the mens 200-meter race, took their places on the podium for the medal ceremony barefooted and wearing civil rights badges, lowered their heads and each defiantly raised a black-gloved fist as the Star Spangled Banner was played to show their support for the student protesters and the Olympic Project for Human Rights. Some people (particularly IOC president Avery Brundage) felt that a political statement had no place in the international forum of the Olympic Games. In an immediate response to their actions, Smith and Carlos were suspended from the U.S. team by Brundage and banned from the Olympi c Village. Those who opposed the protest said the actions disgraced all Americans. Supporters, on the other hand, praised the men for their bravery. Tlatelolco Massacre: Response and Investigation Some argue that an understanding of the domestic political context within Mexico explains why the government reacted in such a harsh manner. Mexico stayed relatively isolated from other foreign powers which provided them more freedom in their ability to deal with their domestic problems. The strongest censure from abroad that Mexico received for the massacre was a mild finger wagging from the representatives of a few foreign governments. The worlds failure to confront and condemn the actions of the Mexican government fueled the killing rampage throughout Mexico in the years to follow. In 1998, President Ernesto Zedillo, on the 30th anniversary of the Tlatelolco massacre, authorized a congressional investigation into the events of October 2. However, the PRI government continued its recalcitrance (defiance of authority) and did not release official government documents pertaining to the incident. Eventually in 2001, President Vicente Fox, the historic president that ended the 70-year reign of the PRI, attempted to resolve the greatest of these unanswered questions: who had orchestrated the massacre? President Fox ordered the release of previously classified documents concerning the 1968 massacre. The documents revealed that the students did not open fire first and showed that the snipers were members of the Presidential Guard, who were instructed to fire on the military forces in order to provoke them. President Fox also appointed Ignacio Carrillo Prieto in 2002 to prosecute those responsible for ordering the massacre. In June 2006, an ailing, 84-year-old Luis Eche verrà ­a was charged with genocide in connection with the massacre. He was placed under house arrest pending trial. In early July of that year, he was cleared of genocide charges, as the judge found that Echeverrà ­a could not be put on trial because the statute of limitations had expired. However, in March 2009, after a convoluted appeal process, the genocide charges against Echeverria were completely dismissed. Despite the ruling, prosecutor Carrillo Prieto said he would continue his investigation and seek charges against Echeverria before the United Nations International Court of Justice and the Inter-American Human Rights Commission. In October 2003, the role of the U.S. government in the massacre was publicized when the National Security Archive at George Washington University published a series of records from theCIA, the Pentagon, the State Department, the FBI and the White House which were released in response to Freedom of Information Act requests. The LITEMPO documents detail: That in response to Mexican government concerns over the security of the Olympic Games the Pentagon sent military radios, weapons, ammunition and riot control training material to Mexico before and during the crisis. That the CIA station in Mexico City produced almost daily reports concerning developments within the university community and the Mexican government from July to October. Six days before the massacre at Tlatelolco, both Echeverrà ­a and head of Federal Security (DFS) Fernando Guiterrez Barrios told the CIA that the situation will be under complete control very shortly. That the Dà ­az Ordaz government arranged to have student leader Sà ³crates Campos Lemus accuse dissident PRI politicians such as Carlos Madrazo of funding and orchestrating the student movement. Still, some today believe the United States government was only concerned with security and safety during the Olympic Games 68 and was not involved in the Tlatelolco massacre in any form. Determining who is at fault however, will not change the events that occurred on October 2, 1968. The blood and tears shed that day are still fresh in the minds of those who witnessed the horrific event. Remembering Tlatelolco In 1993, a stele was erected to remember those who lost their lives. The former headquarters of the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs is now a memorial museum called Memorial 68 to remember the Mexican student demonstrations and the Tlatelolco massacre victims and survivors. Each year the anniversary of the Tlatelolco massacre is marked with a march to the same plaza and a protest for the release of government records. On October 2, 2008, the 40th anniversary, two marches were held in Mexico City to commemorate the event. One traveled from Escuela Normal Superior de Maestros (Teachers College) to the Zocalo. The other went from the Instituto Politecnico Nacional to the massacre site of the Plaza de las Tres Culturas. According to the Comità © del 68 (68 Committee), one of the organizers of the event, 40,000 marchers were in attendance. Unfortunately, still too many are unfamiliar with the events that occurred since the massacre fails to appear in most history textbooks. When asked how this could be, high school Headmaster Samuel Gonzalez Montano, replied, You cant teach anything that didnt officially happen. As of now, the newest generation of Mexicans only have a general knowledge of the events surrounding the 68 Olympic Games, which are unavoidably intertwined. Gregory P. Groggel, a graduate of the University of Puget Sound, recounts: During a visit to the plaza, I encountered a group of boys playing soccer. When I inquired from one of them if he knew what happened in October of 1968 here in the plaza, he shrugged and looked around. I told him some 300 people died. He seemed lost and turned slowly to read the memorial he was sitting in front of and had lived near his whole life. The end of it reads: Who? Whom? No one. The next day, no one. The plaza awoke swept; The newspapers said for news the state of the weather. And on the television, on the radio, in the theaters, there was not a single change in the program, not a single announcement. Nor a moment of silence at the banquet (or following the banquet). The deaths of so many youths and protesters must not be forgotten. They deserve more than a simple moment of silence. Remember Tlatelolco. Fore, those who can not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.(George Santayana)

I Love My Gay Friends :: Friendship Essay

I Love My Gay Friends I've grown up around gays and lesbians, and some of my best friends are gay, so I support them. One day I was on my way downtown after school and saw a crowd. I figured it was another peace march since it was only a week after September 11th, but it wasn't. My friend and I were sitting on the wall in front of Jimmy Johns and talking when our friend, Mary, ran up to us. "You guys should come and help us out. They're protesting against gay people and saying God doesn't love us," she said. As we joined our friends across the road from the Christian protesters, I thought back to church and remembered my preacher saying that God loves everyone. A guy came over and told us the protesters were from out of state and were here because ours was one of the largest gay communities in the country. I thought, I wish we were the gayest community, all happy and stuff. My friend grabbed my arm and pulled me aside, saying, "We have to stand up to this. We should make our own signs." I agreed, and we headed to a shop we often visit. I made a sign that said, I'm not gay, but I love my gay friends. On our way through the crowd, we saw the pastor from the church. She said she wanted three people to go with her to talk with the protesters, and be kind to them. Great, I was chosen. I walked with my head held high, listening to their screams of hate. This wouldn't be easy, but maybe someone would listen. I approached a young guy holding two anti-gay signs. One said, AIDS cures fags, the other proclaimed, Fag sin is filthy. "Hey, would you mind explaining to me the purpose of all this hate?" I asked, thinking he would be really cute if he weren't holding those nasty signs. "This town needs help," he replied. "Do you really believe that God hates?" I asked. "Yes, He does," he said, and showed me a Bible verse that read, "God hates the work of iniquity." "Yes, but not the workers. He loves everyone," I countered. "No, you are mistaken. Go ask a preacher," he said, sounding angry.

Frankenstein: A Warning Against Masculine Individualistic Freedom Essa

Frankenstein: A Warning Against Masculine Individualistic Freedom In this commentary, I wanted to examine a little further the implications of a point brought up in the presentation on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. They briefly suggested that Victor might occupy a space of idealised masculine freedom; given Victor's less than ideal fate and Mary Shelley's Feminism, such a masculine idealisation becomes highly problematic. Victor holds a privileged social position that allows him a financial and social freedom through which he can choose his occupations at will. In choosing Science, Victor's freedom to experiment holds potential benefit, both for him and for Others. However, I'd suggest that it's Victor's overdetermined sense of individualistic Self that results in a misuse of his freedom and the destruction of his social sphere. Victor's specific type of unfettered individualism results in the ultimate danger of individualism: he shakes off the shackles of social responsibility both literally, in his solitude, and metaphorically, in his failure to a cknowledge the possibility that his actions might have some social impact. His ultimate and most dangerous freedom lies in that he is free to consider only his own ambition. In creating the monster, Victor is, in both of these senses, outside the range of society. Quite literally, he moves away from his family (and his social background) to an unfamiliar space; he achieves an extra measure of freedom in his solitude in Ingolstadt. It is through this solitude that he is able to immerse himself in Science. Even as Victor leaves Geneva for Ingolstadt he believes himself "totally unfitted for the company of strangers" (38) but in Ingolstadt he becomes even more secluded, relating ... ...108-110). Thus Lucifer's vow in favour of the forces of evil is based on a loss of hope, fear and -- most importantly -- remorse; Frankenstein's Monster does abandon both hope and fear but his remorse is intense. Paradoxically, it is the Monster who is torn by "the bitterest remorse" (170) while Victor refuses it. In the end, Victor's freedom to create in league with his believed freedom from social responsibility makes him not the 'ideal scientist' but a destructive force towards himself, his creation, and his society. Perhaps, as critics have suggested, it is Victor who is the real 'monster' in Mary Shelley's story. Works cited Milton, John. "Paradise Lost." John Milton: The Major Works. Ed. Stephen Orgel and Jonathan Goldberg. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. 355-618. Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Chatham: Wordsworth Classics, 1999. Frankenstein: A Warning Against Masculine Individualistic Freedom Essa Frankenstein: A Warning Against Masculine Individualistic Freedom In this commentary, I wanted to examine a little further the implications of a point brought up in the presentation on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. They briefly suggested that Victor might occupy a space of idealised masculine freedom; given Victor's less than ideal fate and Mary Shelley's Feminism, such a masculine idealisation becomes highly problematic. Victor holds a privileged social position that allows him a financial and social freedom through which he can choose his occupations at will. In choosing Science, Victor's freedom to experiment holds potential benefit, both for him and for Others. However, I'd suggest that it's Victor's overdetermined sense of individualistic Self that results in a misuse of his freedom and the destruction of his social sphere. Victor's specific type of unfettered individualism results in the ultimate danger of individualism: he shakes off the shackles of social responsibility both literally, in his solitude, and metaphorically, in his failure to a cknowledge the possibility that his actions might have some social impact. His ultimate and most dangerous freedom lies in that he is free to consider only his own ambition. In creating the monster, Victor is, in both of these senses, outside the range of society. Quite literally, he moves away from his family (and his social background) to an unfamiliar space; he achieves an extra measure of freedom in his solitude in Ingolstadt. It is through this solitude that he is able to immerse himself in Science. Even as Victor leaves Geneva for Ingolstadt he believes himself "totally unfitted for the company of strangers" (38) but in Ingolstadt he becomes even more secluded, relating ... ...108-110). Thus Lucifer's vow in favour of the forces of evil is based on a loss of hope, fear and -- most importantly -- remorse; Frankenstein's Monster does abandon both hope and fear but his remorse is intense. Paradoxically, it is the Monster who is torn by "the bitterest remorse" (170) while Victor refuses it. In the end, Victor's freedom to create in league with his believed freedom from social responsibility makes him not the 'ideal scientist' but a destructive force towards himself, his creation, and his society. Perhaps, as critics have suggested, it is Victor who is the real 'monster' in Mary Shelley's story. Works cited Milton, John. "Paradise Lost." John Milton: The Major Works. Ed. Stephen Orgel and Jonathan Goldberg. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. 355-618. Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Chatham: Wordsworth Classics, 1999.

salinger Essay -- essays research papers

LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY OF J.D. SALINGER J.D. Salinger is one of the most renowned writers of his time. J. D. Salinger is most known for his controversial in the Catcher in the Rye. Salinger is also known for many of his writings such as Franney and Zooey, Nine Stories, and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters. The summer of 1930 he was voted â€Å"The Most Popular Writer†. â€Å"Salinger is a beautifully deft, professional who gives us a chance to catch quick, half-amused, half-frightened glimpses of ourselves and our contemporaries, as he confronts us with his brilliant mirror images† (Lomazoff 1). In the novel, Catcher in the Rye, there is a relationship between the main character, Holden Caulfield, and Salinger. J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye explicitly demonstrates his life and philosophy in relation to his work.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Salinger was born January 1, 1919 in New York City. He was the second of two children. He had an older sister named Doris. His parents were Sol and Marie Salinger. His father was Jewish, and his mother was Scotch-Irish. He was raised up in Manhattan during 1920’s and early 1930’s. His parents enrolled him in McBurney Prep School in 1932. He flunked and his parents sent him to Valley Forge Military Academy, Pennsylvania. Later, after graduating he was drafted into the military and was known for carrying a typewriter around so he could write and publish stories. His perspective on life was molded by his experience in World War II. The ...

Origins Of Alternative Education In India Education Essay

Harmonizing to one of the position, instruction has been derived from the Latin word educare which means to convey up or to raise. Harmonizing to this position, instruction is procedure of leaving to an single certain information and cognition which was considered by the society. Education implies the alteration of the behavior of the person by enforcing criterions of society upon him. Therefore, this derivation gives the construct of teacher-centred instead than child-centred instruction. There is another group of minds who believes that the term ‘education ‘ has been derived from the Latin word ‘educere ‘ which means to ‘lead out ‘ or ‘to pull out ‘ . Education hence, means to take out or pull out the best in adult male. It is the procedure of ‘drawing out from within ‘ instead than ‘imposing from without ‘ . In the Indian Context the Education agencies The Indian Synonyms of Education are the words ‘Shiksha ‘ and ‘vidya ‘ . Shiksha is derived from the Sanskrit verbal root ‘Shas ‘ which means to ‘discipline ‘ ‘to control ‘ ‘to instruct ‘ or ‘to Teach ‘ . Similarly Vidya is besides derived from Sanskrit verbal root ‘vid ‘ which means ‘to know ‘ . Hence the training the head and acquisition of cognition have ever been the dominant subject in Indian attacks to understanding the instruction.Experimental acquisitionThe experimental instruction is an organic and invariably germinating attack to larning.According to them they believe that ‘anyone can make it ‘ . The thoughts advocated can be replicated about anyplace, and can be used, as some are making, in mainstream ( authorities and private ) schools. This type of teaching method aids in Enhancement in Education. It explores the ways in which kids can detect their ain endowments and involvement, at their ain endowments and involvement, at their ain topographic points, in their ain ways, assisted by instructors, parents, and friends and others-learning in and from their neighbors, their small town, their community and the environment in which they live. It tells that how instruction can be successful in footings of kid ‘s ain demand for cognition. This sort of instruction therefore relies to a great extent on experiential acquisition which compiles of advanced attacks, method, and thought of acquisition, purpose to be child centred ) . The relevant and liberating instruction should include: – Bing child-focussed- the kid is the Centre. The kid dictates the gait and involvements. Leting larning in multiple ways. Enhancing the senses through acquisition. Not being sole, there is a ( government-prescribed ) scrutiny for school completion, nor it should sole in the footings of category, gender, caste or faith. Meeting a kid ‘s life -enriching demands in conformity with kid rights, leaving religious values, cognition of moral, societal norms and responsibilities and eventually, it should seek out to run into life-development demands of functional preparation of unconditioned endowments, and vocational instruction. The importance of instruction being child-centred, get downing from what the kid knows and is interested in, and at the gait preferred by the kid. Now Approach to primary instruction has been officially accepted non merely by the one state but besides by the whole universe including the developed and under developing states as a human right for about half a century. Yet, today even we enter into the epoch of twenty-first Century ; there is merely about three-fourthss of kids of school-going kids are able to go to a primary school. In a development states big figure drop-out of kids took topographic point before making Class V and there are many others who are ne'er able to make schools. Although the state like India in which the authorities had placed a high precedence on instruction in policy statements, every clip fails because of proper execution is missing in the policy. Thus an India base with 30 per cent of the universe ‘s nonreaders has female literacy rates much lower than in sub-Saharan Africa [ PROBE 1999 ] . The universe ‘s largest figure of kids who are out-of-school is reached the grade which is close t o 59 million are in India, out of which 60 per centum are misss ( Human Development Report 2000, UN ) .37 per centum of the kids from India are unable to make Class V [ Haq and Haq 1998 ] . And this despite the Directive Principles in Article 45 of the Indian Constitution which prescribes that the province shall seek to supply, within a term of office of 10 old ages from the beginning of the Constitution, for free and mandatory instruction for all kids until they reach the age of 14. Although after this determination the figure of primary schools has increased 2.82 times since 1951 and registrations have improved, the duty of the authorities for making a satisfactory substructure has in pattern non been matched by matching out-lays which continue to stay deplorably unequal at around 3 per cent of the GDP. The huge figure of labyrinth of literature on primary instruction in India has identified assorted grounds for its abysmal province ; why kids bead out and why they remain un enrol led or non traveling in the school. In this infinite several surveies have been done which indicated that the hapless quality of schooling is responsible for low keeping [ Colclough 1993 ; Bhatty Kiran 1998 ; PROBE 1999 ; Banerji 2000 ; Dreze and Gazdar 1996 ] . However, most of these surveies look at the job of instruction within the confines of the schoolroom. They tend to disregard or underact the fact that besides hapless quality, demotivated or un interested instructors and unequal substructure, there are larger other structural restraints which impede entree of kids to schools. There are several literature written on primary instruction in India besides reveals that entree and keeping remain job countries in this domain.Beginnings of Alternate Education in IndiaHistory OverviewThe present mainstream educational system was inaugurated in India in the mid-nineteenth century. Over the following century ; it about wholly supplanted earlier educational establishments. There had, ea rlier, been a broad web of little small town schools- pathsahlas, gurukuls and madarasas. There was a construct of ‘One Village-One School ‘ and was become the norm in assorted parts of the state, up to the earlier 19th century. A big figure of such learning schools-reportedly100, 000 was merely in Bihar and Bengal. They played of import societal function and ‘were, in fact irrigating holes of civilization of traditional communities ‘ . ( Dharampal, 2000 ) .Students from assorted castes studied in these schools, although there was no such favoritism on the footing of castes, credo and coloring material. It was unfastened for all but there must hold been disproportionately representation in the school, the male childs outnumbered misss. Most of the misss learnt a scope of accomplishments within their places ; from parents, relations, and private tutors- including Humanistic disciplines, trades, practical accomplishments, agribusiness, wellness and linguistic c ommunications. Harking back to the tradition of monasteries and ashrams, schools interspersed preparation in practical life accomplishments with academic instruction. As the clip goes on within the overall context of diminution of local economic systems, these went into diminution and decay under colonial regulation. Intentionally the policy was employed by the authorities to pass over out this community based schooling, and replace it with an foreign theoretical account. In 1931, Gandhi alleged that ‘ today India is more illiterate than it was 50 or a 100 old ages ago ‘ ( M.K.Gandhi 1931, Dharampal 2000 ) . He besides added that British decision makers had ‘aˆÂ ¦.scratched the dirt and begun to look at the root, and left the root like that and beautiful tree perished. ‘ Autochthonal instruction was replaced by an foreigner and rootless, intentionally set up, as it was explained by Lord Macaulay ( 1835 ) , to ‘form a category who interprets between us and the 1000000s we govern. Despite the transportation of power in 1947, Indian schools continued in the same mold. Some alterations were introduced: the authorities expanded its range and web of schools in both rural and urban countries and local slang linguistic communications were accepted as medium of direction in these schools. Today we have huge web and figure of authorities in our state and turning figure of private tally establishments. Yet, the basic format remained the unchanged, a big figure of school today based on derivative and mechanistic theoretical account. They are designed to bring forth persons who fit into modern society and its ( Consumerist and competitory ) Valuess, and are easy to regulate since they learn to be extremely disciplined within hierarchal, centrally administered establishments. Schooling therefore, tends to reenforce societal inequalities-Class, caste and gender. Affluent Children go to in private run schools, while hapless attend schools run by the province because for hap less entree to private school has become the dream. Despite of Vital differences in installations and support, all these schools portion a similar ethos. The acclivity is on absorbing information instead on original thought and imaginativeness. The set up is centralised and bureaucratic, instructors distanced from pupils largely simply making a occupation, while school act as a bringing points for a set course of study and content. Schools generate ‘failures ‘ in big scale-contributing to crises of assurance at national degree.Early PioneersAlternative or the experimental acquisition to the educational system began to emerge every bit early as the late nineteenth and the early 20th century ‘s. Some of these attempts truly tag a important alteration and their attempts are still seeable. Social reformists began researching alternate instruction by the late of 19th century. Swami Vivekananda, Dayanand Saraswati, Syed Ahmed Khan, Jyotiba Phule, Savitribai Phule and others promoted the thought of instruction as a force fo r societal regeneration, and set up schools/institutions toward this terminal. Vivekananda and Dayanand Saraswati combined spiritual revival with societal service/ political work, through the Rama krishna Mission and Arya Samaj Schools severally. Syed Ahmed Khan set up the Aligarh Muslim University ( originally, Mohammadan Anglo Oriental College ) , with the ends of leaving modern instruction without compromising on Islamic Values. Jyotiba and Savitribai Phule were actively concerned with get the better ofing the societal inequalities. They chiefly work with the dalit kids and miss schooling in Maharashtra. There were some Significant educationalists emerges in half of the 20th century included Rabindra Nath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, Jiddu Krishnamurthy, Gijubhai Badheka And Sri Aurobindo. By the mid of the 1920s and 1930s, these loyalists had created the figure of feasible theoretical accounts of alternate acquisition, as a considered response to the ailments of mainstream instruction. Some of the thoughts were in confederation with the battles for national Independence and the revival of Indian society. The ‘alternatives ‘ emphatic committednesss, and mutual links between school and the society. Rabindranath Tagore pointed out several restrictions of school set up by colonial governments, in his Hagiographas Shikhar Her Fer ( 1893 ) and Shikhar Bahan ( 1915 ) . As a kid, Tagore had refused to go to School ; he subsequently wrote, ‘What tortured me in my school yearss was the fact that the school has non the completeness of the universe. It was a particular agreement fo r giving lessonsaˆÂ ¦But kids are in love with life, and it is their first love. All its coloring material and motion attract their eager attending. And are quite certain of our wisdom in smothering this love? We rob the kid of his Earth to learn him geographics, of linguistic communication to learn him grammaraˆÂ ¦Child-Nature protest against such catastrophe with all its power of agony, subdued at last into silence by penalty. ‘ ( Tagore, in Chakravarty1961, pg 218 ; in Prasad2005, pg81 ) . Tagore set up his ain option to the predominating educational system: Vishwa Bharati in Shantiniketan, Bengal. Classes here, were- and still are held in the lap of nature. Vishwa Bharati becomes a Centre for excellence in art and aesthetics, originative activities and consciousness of local every bit good as universe civilizations. Gandhi ‘s position resembles Tagore ‘s in the accent on contextually relevant instruction, mother lingua as the medium of direction, and resistance to examination-oriented studious stretch. He translated his vision into pattern through a series of school, get downing in Phoenix Farm and Tolstoy Farm in South Africa and go oning into schools set up in Champaran, Sabarmati, Wardha and many other parts of India. Gandhi developed Nai Taleem or Basic Education in which pupils giving few hours daily to academic chases, and the remainder of the twenty-four hours to the public presentation of ‘Bread Labour ‘ that includes trade work, agribusiness, cookery, cleansing and related undertakings. His attack to instruction aimed at beef uping village life and communities. Equally early as 1917, When Gandhi began five little schools for provincials ‘children in Champaran, so he said, â€Å" The thought is to acquire clasp of as many kids as possible and give them an a ll unit of ammunition instruction, a good cognition of Hindi or Urdu and through that medium, cognition of arithmetic, basicss of history and geographics, simple scientific rules and some industrial preparation. No cut and dried course of study has yet been prepared because harmonizing to him I am traveling on a unconquered path. I look upon you present system with horror and misgiving. Alternatively of developing the moral and mental modules of the small kids it dwarfs them. Phase trades, humanistic disciplines, athleticss and jubilation of festivals from all faith were of import parts of Nai taleem. In Nai Taleem there were no text editions as such, but pupils were invariably encouraged to utilize library and can acquire the cognition of diverse field. In the library instruction is non merely the motivation but exposure to different field or topics are besides required. Educationist Gijubhai Badheka emphasised on kids ‘s demand for an atmosphere nurturing independency and autonomy. He gave this thought an institutional footing by set uping Bal Mandir in Gujarat in 1920, and in his Hagiographas, he identified the different aspects of thought. Gijubhai ‘s Divaswapna ( 1990 ) is the fabricated narrative of a instructor who rejects the Orthodox civilization of instruction. This authoritative piece of composing by him outputs rich penetrations into effectual instruction, as it describes experiments in instruction undertaken by an inspires instructor in a ordinary small town school. Gijubhai explains and clearly showed that how to learn history, geographics, linguistic communication and other topics through narratives and rimes, in a manner that appealed to kids. He believed in eliciting the kid ‘s wonder in a 1000 and one things runing from insects to stars, instead than routine text edition learning. Gijubhau wrote a figure of books an d brochures for parents, instructors, general readers and capturing narratives and poetries for kids. J. Krishnamurti excessively thought of instruction in connexion with the whole of life. It is non something stray, prima to disaffection. He looks closely at the procedure of larning in relation to human life. In the life of Krishnamurti, pupul jayakar quotes him speech production of that period in his life some 75 old ages subsequently. â€Å" The male child had ever said, ‘ I will make whatever you want ‘ . There was an component of subservience, obeisance. The male child was obscure, unsure, and ill-defined ; he did n't look to care what was go oning. He was like a vas, with a big hole in it, whatever was put in, went through, nil remained. â€Å" ( J. Krishnamurti: a life. Arkana,1996 ) . He noted that the instructors have a duty to guarantee that'aˆÂ ¦when kid leaves the school, he is good established in goodness both externally and inside ‘ . Krishnamurti set up two schools in the 1930s, Rajghat Besant School in Varanasi, UP and the Rishi Valley School in Andhra Pradesh, over the decennaries, the KFI ( Krishnamurti Foundation of India ) has kept alive its committedness to meaningful instruction, spread outing its web of schools to Chennai, Uttarkashi, Bangalore and Pune. Like Gijubhai ‘s and Gandhi ‘s schools, KFI has shown that alternate instruction can be made accessible to those from underprivileged backgrounds every bit good. Learning ends are individualised for each kid, and learning AIDSs are carefully designed utilizing cards, books, marionettes, narratives and local stuff. A visit to any of this school of Krishnamurti bring to his idea: ‘Education is non merely to go through scrutiny, take a grade and a occupation, acquire married and settle down, but besides to be able to listen to the birds, to see the sky, to see the extraordinary beauty of a tree, and the form of hills, and to experience with them, to be truly, straight in touch with them. ‘Mainstreaming OptionsInvention of Alternatives Schools can distribute to mainstream Education?Though it might look disconnected and confusing, the landscape of alternate schooling is surely fertile! From the scope of schools discussed before, it is clear that there are people scattered across the different parts of the state, woolgathering of a different sort of instruction, and many who are really populating out their dreams. Most of the experiments are little but basically replicable. They reached out their mark population in a meaningful ways to diverse kids, from the different economic backgrounds and from diverse societal scenes. Several Experiments are clustered in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra with the scattering in other topographic points including Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bengal, Gujarat, Delhi, Pondicherry, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and others. It is informative to retrieve that sometimes, there is no difficult and fast line spliting the mainstream from the option. Even hardcore ‘mainstream ‘ schools bit by bit follow some elements of ‘alternative ‘ acquisition in their teaching method to learn the kids. Tonss of primary and nursery schools across the state have for case have adopted the some elements of Montessori and play manner methods, through which kids enjoy the acquisition and catch the technique more rapidly and expeditiously. Widespread inquiring has propelled even the authorities to show in some betterments. Therefore, non formal instruction runs links instruction to societal consciousness. The Bihar Education Project ( in partnership with UNICEF ) has opened Charwaha Vidyalayas ( for kids croping animate beings ) and Angana paathshalas ( courtyard schools for misss in distant countries ) . The Cardinal authorities ‘s ‘ Education Guarantee Scheme, and Alternative and Innovative Education Scheme ‘ employ flexible schemes for out of school kids, including span classs, back to school cantonments and residential cantonments for accelerated acquisition. In some of these, larning results have proved to be of rather a high criterion ( Education for All 2005 ) . Premier teacher developing establishments such as the District Institutes for instruction and preparation ( DIET ) have incorporated a few originative, kid centred teaching methods. The NCERT has devised a new, province of art curricular model for school instruction. Yes all this is still a far call from the realization from the full blown options. It is truly sad to cognize that mainstream instruction still dominates the lives of the huge bulk of Indian kids. It chiefly depends upon its philosophical foundation which rest on big graduated table, centralised, scrutiny oriented instruction, with flexible day-to-day agendas and stiff course of study. In India they are many such illustrations which can be illustrated to a figure of groups who were engaged in seting in their best attempts to convey about important alteration in the field of instruction. They believe in their ain work it does non count to them that their attempt was non in the big graduated table or that it was non seeable to all people in the state. They think that if they or their work even act upon the few immature heads, they set us believing about the tremendous possibilities that would open up if the if local or national authorities support this alterations. The authorities poli cy to put up a National Institute of Open Schooling ( NIOS ) was found to be the most popular and important measure toward betterment in the field of instruction. Such a measure opens the door to informal and individualized gait of acquisition, which was welcomed by most of the alternate schools. Indeed it was the first clip when alternate acquisition was coming on their way of chief watercourse professional instruction. With this authorities enterprise to open NIOS has made possible the followers: The gap of school for slow scholars Inclusive instruction for the otherwise able along with ‘normal ‘ kids. Delinking of the methodological analysis of a larning programme from the stringent demands of the Board Examination. Addressing the different gait of acquisition. Giving a point of entry to the mainstream from an alternate paradigm. In Pedagogy of Hope, Freire writes, ‘ I do non understand human being, and the battle needed to better it, apart from hope and dream ‘ ( Freire 1996 ) . Keeping the hope alive is non easy. To even place and research bing ‘alternatives'-however they may be possibility of being imperfect and uncomplete but still it is an exercising in hope. So today it is really necessary demand to make and remain near to mainsprings of alternate educational thinking-which cuddles within the visions of wider transformative socio-political alterations. These options will go on to develop, spread out and widen. We are required to cast the impression that ‘There is No Alternative ‘ and alternatively, work toward conveying and actively progressively cohesive, meaningful options to the society.Why such Education is needed?Harmonizing to Martha C. Nussbaum, she explains in one of her article that Public instruction is important ingredients for the wellness of democracy. Recently there are many enterprises has been taken around the universe in the field of instruction, nevertheless they are chiefly narrow down their focal point on scientific discipline and engineering, pretermiting the of import topic such as humanistic disciplines and humanistic disciplines. They besides focus on the internalisation of information, instead than on the formation of the pupil ‘s critical and inventive capacities. The writer demonstrated the unrecorded illustration which she has experienced in Bihar with the one of the Patna centred Non authorities administration named Adithi. When they reached a topographic point near to Nepalese boundary line, they found really meager installations. Teaching is done largely outside the schoolroom on the land, or under the shadiness of barn. Students were enduring from basic installations such as paper and merely few slates were available that has to be passed manus to manus. However it was originative instruction. Following she visited the girl literacy plan, house in a caducous following door. The day-to-day agenda of misss were small busy as in the forenoon they went for herding of the caprine animal, So there categories began around 4p.m. about 15 misss in entire comes to this individual schoolrooms age 6-15 old ages for three hours of after work acquisition. There are no desks, no chairs, no chalkboard are available, and there is merely few slates and spot of chalks but these job does non halt misss from coming to the category and the passion of the instructor is besides one of the major factor of this binding. The instructor is themselves among the hapless rural adult females assisted by the Adithi plan. . Proudly the misss brought in the caprine animals that they had been able to purchase from the nest eggs account they have jointly established in their group. Mathematicss is taught in portion by concentrating on such practical issues. Author thinks that there are many things to larn fro m given illustrations but few of them can be: foremost, the close linkage between instruction and critical thought about one ‘s societal environment ; 2nd, the accent on the humanistic disciplines as cardinal facets of the educational experience ; third, the intense passion and investing of the instructors, their delectation in the advancement and besides the individualism of their pupils. Now the writer elaborates theoretical account of instruction for democratic citizenship. Harmonizing to her there are three types of capacities are indispensable to the cultivation of democratic citizenship in the today ‘s universe ( Nussbaum, 1997 ) . The First is a Capacity stressed by both Tagore and Jawaharlal Nehru. They emphasise on the capacity for critical scrutiny of oneself and one ‘s traditions, for populating what we may follow Socrates ; we may name ‘the examined life ‘ . This capacity can merely be obtain if we train one ‘ ego, Training this capacity requires developing the capacity to ground logically, to prove what one what he or she reads or says for consistence of logical thinking, rightness of fact, and truth of judgement. Testing of this kind often creates new challenges to tradition, as Socrates knew good when he defended himself against the charge of ‘corrupting the immature ‘ But he defended his activity on the evidence s that democracy needs citizens. Critical thought is peculiarly important for good citizenship in a society that needs and required to come to clasps with the presence of people who differ by ethnicity, caste, and faith. Then after she describes the 2nd portion of the her proposal Citizens who cultivate their capacity for effectual democratic citizenship demand, farther, an ability to see themselves as non merely citizens of some local part or group, but besides, and above wholly, as human existences bound to all other human existences by ties of acknowledgment and concern. It is really indispensable that they have to understand both the differences that make understanding hard between groups and states and the shared human demands and involvements that make understanding indispensable, if common jobs are to be solved. This means larning rather a batch both about states other than one ‘s ain and about the different groups that are portion of one ‘s ain nation.This undert aking includes demoing pupils how and why different groups interpret grounds otherwise and build different narrations. Even the best text edition will non win at this complex undertaking unless it is presented together with a teaching method that fosters critical thought, the critical examination of conflicting beginning stuffs, and active acquisition ( larning by making ) about the troubles of building a historical narration. This brings me to the 3rd portion of my proposal. As the narrative of the dowery drama in Bihar indicates, citizens can non believe good on the footing of factual cognition entirely. The 3rd ability of the citizen, closely related to the first two, can be called the narrative imaginativeness. This means the ability to believe what it might be like to be in the places of a individual different from oneself, to be an intelligent reader of that individual ‘s narrative, and to understand the emotions and wants and desires that person so located might hold. A s Tagore wrote, †we may go powerful by cognition, but we attain fullness by sympathy aˆÂ ¦ But we find that this instruction of understanding is non merely consistently ignored in schools, but it is badly repressed † ( Tagore, 1961, p. 219 ) . Finally, the humanistic disciplines are great beginnings of joy – and this joy carries over into the remainder of a kid ‘s instruction. Amita Sen ‘s book approximately Tagore as choreographer, competently entitled Joy in All Work, shows how all the ‘regular ‘ instruction in Santiniketan, which enabled these pupils to execute really good in standard scrutinies, was infused with delectation because of the manner in which it was combined with dance and vocal. Children do non like to sit still all twenty-four hours ; but they besides do non cognize automatically how to show emotion with their organic structures in dance. Tagore ‘s expressive, but besides disciplined, dance government was an indispensable beginning of creativeness, thought, and freedom for all students, but peculiarly for adult females, whose organic structures had been taught to be shame-ridden and inexpressive ( Amita Sen, 1999 ) .Narrative of a BirdA really beautiful narrative has b een demonstrated by the writer about the instruction that if there is no proper counsel is given to teacher towards the kids, so it led to the terrible harm to child ‘s head. Harmonizing to her there is no more fantastic word picture of what is incorrect with an instruction based on mere proficient command and rote acquisition than Tagore ‘s sad narrative ‘The Parrot ‘s Training ‘ . A certain Raja had a bird that he loved. He wanted to educate it, because he thought ignorance was a bad thing. His initiates convinced him that the bird must travel to school. The first thing that had to be done was to give the bird a suited building for his schooling: so they build a brilliant aureate coop. The following thing was to acquire good text editions. The initiates said, †Textbooks can ne'er be excessively many for our intent. † Scribes worked twenty-four hours and dark to bring forth the needed manuscripts. Then, instructors were employed. Somehow or other they got rather a batch of money for themselves and built themselves good houses. When the Raja visited the school, the instructors showed him the methods used to teach the parrot. †The method was so colossal that the bird looked laughably unimportant in comparing. The Raja was satisfied that there was no defect in the agreements. As for any ailment from the bird itself, that merely could non be expec ted. Its pharynx was so wholly choked with the foliages from the books that it could neither whistle nor whisper. † The lessons continued. One twenty-four hours, the bird died. Cipher had the least thought how long ago this had happened. The Raja ‘s nephews, who had been in charge of the instruction ministry, reported to the Raja: †Sire, the bird ‘s instruction has been completed. † †Does it skip? † he Raja enquired. †Never! † said the nephews. †Does it wing? † †No. † †Bring me the bird, † said the Raja. The bird was brought to him, guarded by the kotwal and the sepoys and the sowars. The Raja poked its organic structure with his finger. Merely its interior dressing of book-leaves rustled. Outside the window, the mutter of the spring zephyr amongst the freshly budded Asoka leaves made the April forenoon wistful. ( Tagore, 1994 ) This fantastic narrative barely needs commentary. Its important po int is that educationalists tend to bask speaking about themselves and their ain activity, and to concentrate excessively small on the little stamp kids whose avidity and wonder should be the nucleus of the educational enterprise. Tagore idea that kids were normally more alive than grownups, because they were less weighted down by wont. The undertaking of instruction was to avoid killing off that wonder, and so to construct outward from it, in a spirit of regard for the kid ‘s freedom and individualism instead than one of hierarchal infliction of information. I do non hold with perfectly everything in Tagore ‘s educational ideal. For illustration, I am less anti-memorization than Tagore was. Memorization of fact can play a valuable and even a necessary function in giving students bid over their ain relationship to history and political statement. That is one ground why good text editions are of import, something that Tagore would hold disputed. But about the big point I am absolutely in understanding: instruction must get down with the head of the kid, and it must hold the end of increasing that head ‘s freedom in its societal environment, instead than killing it off.

Fluke, or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings Chapter 26

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Picking the Lock to Davy Jones's Locker † ‘Bite me'?† Libby Quinn said, reading the tail. The whale tail slowly twisted in space, pixel by pixel, as the computer extrapolated the new angle. Margaret Painborne sat at the computer. Clay and Libby stood behind her. Kona was working across the room on Quinn's reassembled machine. † ‘Bite me'?† Clay repeated. â€Å"That can't be right.† He thought about what Nate had said about seeing a tail just like this and shivered. Margaret hit a few keys on the keyboard, then swiveled in Clay's chair. â€Å"This some kind of joke, Clay?† â€Å"Not mine. That was raw footage, Margaret.† As attractive as Clay found Libby, he found Margaret equally scary. Maybe the latter because of the former. It was complex. â€Å"The tail image before you shifted it is exactly what I saw when I was down there.† â€Å"You've all been saying how sophisticated their communication ability was,† said Kona, trying to sound scientific but essentially just pissing everyone off. â€Å"How?† said Libby. â€Å"Even if you wanted to, how would you paint a whale's flukes like that?† Margaret and Clay just shook their heads. â€Å"Rust-Oleum,† suggested Kona, and they all turned and glared at him. â€Å"Don't give me the stink-eye. You'd need the waterproof, huh?† â€Å"Did you finish inputting those pages?† Clay said. â€Å"Yah, mon.† â€Å"Well, save them and go rake something or mow something or something.† â€Å"Save as a binary,† Margaret added quickly, but Kona had already saved the file, and the screen was clear. Margaret wheeled her chair across the office, her gray hair trailing out behind her like the Flying Sorceress of Clerical Island. She pushed Kona aside. â€Å"Crap,† she said. â€Å"What?† asked Clay. â€Å"What?† asked Libby. â€Å"You said save it,† Kona said. â€Å"He saved it as an ASCII file, a text file, not a binary. Crap. I'll see if it's okay.† She opened the file, and text appeared on the screen. Her hand went to her mouth, and she sat back slowly in Clay's chair. â€Å"Oh, my God.† â€Å"What?† came the chorus. â€Å"Are you sure you put this in, just as it came off the graphs?† she asked Kona without looking at him. â€Å"Truth,† said Kona. â€Å"What?† said Libby and Clay. â€Å"This has got to be some sort of joke,† said Margaret. Clay and Libby ran across the room to look at the screen. â€Å"What!† â€Å"It's English,† Margaret said, pointing to the text. â€Å"How is that possible?† â€Å"That's not possible,† Libby said. â€Å"Kona, what did you do?† â€Å"Not me, I just typed ones and ohs.† Margaret grabbed one of the legal pages with the ones and ohs and began typing the numbers into a new file. When she had three lines, she saved it, then reopened the file as text. It read, WILL SCUTTLE SECOND BOAT TO__ â€Å"It can't be.† â€Å"It is.† Clay jumped into Margaret's lap and started scrolling through the text from Kona's transcription. â€Å"Look, it goes on for a while, then it's just gobbledygook, then it goes on some more.† Margaret looked back at Libby with Save me in her eyes. â€Å"There is no way that the song is carrying a message in English. Binary was a stretch, but I refuse to believe that humpbacks are using ASCII and English to communicate.† Libby looked over to Kona. â€Å"You guys took these off of Nate's tapes, exactly the way you showed me?† Kona nodded. â€Å"Kids, look at this,† Clay said. â€Å"These are all progress reports. Longitude and latitude, times, dates. There are instructions here to sink my boat. These fuckers sank my boat?† â€Å"What fuckers?† Margaret said. â€Å"A humpback with ‘Bite me' on his flukes?† She was trying to look around Clay's broad back. â€Å"If this were possible, then the navy would have been using it a long time ago.† Now Clay jumped up to face Kona. â€Å"What tape is this last part from?† â€Å"The last one Nate and Amy made, the day Nate drown. Why?† Clay sat back on Margaret's lap, looking stunned. He pointed to a line of text on the screen. They all leaned in to read: QUINN ON BOARD__WILL RENDEZVOUS WITH BLUE-6__AGREED COORDINATES__1600 TUESDAY__NO PASTRAMI â€Å"The sandwich,† Clay said ominously. Just then Clair, home from school, stepped into the office to discover an impromptu dog pile of action nerds in front of Quinn's computer. â€Å"All you bastards want to be part of a sandwich, and you don't even know what to do with one woman.† â€Å"Not the spoon!† squealed Kona, his hand going to the goose egg on his forehead. Nathan Quinn awoke feeling as if he needed to crawl out of his skin. If he hadn't felt it before, he would have thought he had the generic heebie-jeebies (scientifically speaking), but he recognized the feeling as being hit with heavy subsonic sound waves. The blue-whale ship was calling. Just because it was below the frequency of his hearing didn't mean it wasn't loud. Blue-whale calls could travel ten thousand miles, he assumed that the ship was putting out similar sounds. Nate slipped out of his bunk and nearly fell reaching for his shirt. Another thing he hadn't noticed immediately – the ship wasn't moving, and he still had his sea legs on. He dressed quickly and headed down the corridor to the bridge. There was a large console that spanned the area between the two whaley-boy pilots that hadn't been there before. Unlike the rest of the ship, it appeared to be man-made, metal and plastic. Sonar scopes, computers, equipment that Quinn didn't even recognize. Nuà ±ez and the blond woman, Jane, were standing at the sonar screens wearing headphones. Tim was seated beside one of the whaley boys at the center of the console in front of two monitors. Tim was wearing headphones and typing. The whaley boy appeared to be just watching. Nuà ±ez saw Nate come in, smiled, and motioned for him to come forward. These people were completely incompetent as captors, Nate thought. Not a measure of terror among them, the humans anyway. If not for the subsonic heebie-jeebies, he would have felt right at home. â€Å"Where did this come from?† The electronics looked incredibly crude next to the elegant organic design of the whale ship, the whaley boys, and, for that matter, the human crew. The idea of comparing designs between human-built devices and biological systems hadn't really occurred to Nate before because he'd been conditioned never to think of animals as designed. The whale ship was putting a deep dent in his Darwin. â€Å"These are our toys,† Nuà ±ez said. â€Å"The console stays below the floor unless we need to see it. Totally unnecessary for the whaley boys, since they have direct interface with the ship, but it makes us feel like we know what's going on.† â€Å"And they can't type for shit,† said Tim, tucking his thumbs under and making a slamming-the-keys gesture. â€Å"Tiny thumbs.† The whaley boy next to him trumpeted a raspberry all over Tim's monitor, leaving large dots of color magnified in the whaley spit. He chirped twice, and Tim nodded and typed into the computer. â€Å"Can they read?† Nate asked. â€Å"Read, kind of write, and most of them understand at least two human languages, although, as you probably noticed, they're not big talkers.† â€Å"No vocal cords,† said Nu;ez. â€Å"They have air chambers in their heads that produce the sounds they make, but they have a hard time forming the words.† â€Å"But they can talk. I've heard Em – I mean, them.† â€Å"Best that you just learn whaleyspeak. It's basically what they use to talk to each other, except they keep it in the range of our hearing. It's easier to learn if you've learned other tonal-sensitive languages like Navajo or Chinese.† â€Å"I'm afraid not,† Nate said. â€Å"So the ship is calling?† Tim pulled off his headphones and handed them to Nate. â€Å"The pitch is raised into our range. You'll be able to hear it through there.† Nate held a headphone to one ear. Now that he could hear the signal, he could also feel it start and stop more acutely in his chest. If anything, it relieved the discomfort, because he could hear it coming. â€Å"Is this a message?† â€Å"Yep,† said Jane, pulling up a headphone. â€Å"Just as you suspected. We type it in, the computer puts the message into peaks and troughs on the waveform, we play the waveform for the whaley boys, and they make the whale sing that waveform. We've calibrated it over the years.† Nate noticed that the whaley boy at the metal console had one hand in an organic socket fitted into the front of the console – like a flesh cable that ran to the whale ship through the console's base, similar to the ones on the flesh consoles the pilots used. â€Å"Why the computers and stuff at all if the whaley boys do it all by†¦ what? Instinct?† The whaley boy at the console grinned up at Nate, squeaked, then performed the international signal for a hand job. â€Å"It's the only way we can be in the loop,† Jane said. â€Å"Believe me, for a long time we were just along for the ride. The whaley boys have the same navigational sense that the whales themselves do. We don't understand it at all. It's some sort of magnetic vocabulary. It wasn't until the Dirts – that's you – developed computers and we got some people who could run them that we became part of the process. Now we can surface and pull a GPS coordinate, transmit it, communicate with the other crews. We have some idea of what we're doing.† â€Å"You said for a long time? How long?† Jane looked nervously at Nuà ±ez, who looked nervously back. Nate thought for a moment that they might have to dash off to the bathroom together, which in his experience was what women did right before they made any major decisions, like about which shoes to buy or whether or not they were ever going to sleep with him again. â€Å"A long time, Nate. We're not sure how long. Before computers, okay?† By which she meant she wasn't going to tell him and if he pressed it, she'd just lie to him. Nate suddenly felt more like a prisoner, and, as a prisoner, he felt as though his first obligation was to escape. He was sure that was your first obligation as a prisoner. He'd seen it in a movie. Although his earlier plan of leaping out the back orifice into the deep ocean now seemed a tad hasty, with some perspective. He said, â€Å"So how deep are we?† â€Å"We usually send at about two thousand feet. That puts us pretty squarely in the SOFAR channel, no matter where we are geographically.† The SOFAR channel (sound fixing and ranging) was a natural combination of pressure and temperature at certain depths that cause a path of least resistance in which sound could travel many thousands of miles. The theory had been that blues and humpbacks used it to communicate with each other over long distances for navigational purposes. Evidently whaley boys and the people who worked their ships did, too. â€Å"So does this signal replicate a natural blue-whale call?† â€Å"Yes,† said Tim. â€Å"That's one of the advantages of communicating in English within the waveform. When the whaley boys were doing the direct communication, there was a lot more variation in the call, but our signal is hidden, more or less. Except for a few busybodies who may run across it.† â€Å"Like me?† â€Å"Yes, like you. We're a little worried about some of the acoustic people at Woods Hole and Hatfield Marine Center in Oregon. People who spend way too much time looking at spectrograms of underwater sound.† â€Å"You realize,† said Nate, â€Å"that I might never have found out about your ships. I didn't make any sort of intuitive leap to look at a binary signal in the call. It was a stoned kid who came up with that.† â€Å"Yeah,† said Jane. â€Å"If it makes you feel any better, you can blame him for your being here. We were on hold until you started to look in the signal for binary. That's when they called you in, so to speak.† Nate sincerely wished he could blame Kona, but since it appeared that he might never see civilization again, having someone to blame didn't seem particularly pertinent right now. Besides, the kid had been right. â€Å"How'd you know? I didn't exactly put out a press release.† â€Å"We have ways,† said Nuà ±ez, trying not to sound spooky but failing. This evidently amused the whaley boy at the console and the two pilots no end, and they nearly wheezed themselves out of their seats. â€Å"Oh, fuck you guys,† said Nuà ±ez. â€Å"It's not like you guys are a bunch of geniuses.† â€Å"And you guys were the nightwalkers that Tako Man was talking about,† Nate said to the pilots. â€Å"You guys sank Clay's boat.† The pilots raised their arms over their heads in a menacing scary-monster pose, then bared their teeth and made some fake growling noises, then collapsed into what Nate was starting to think of as whale giggles. The whaley boy at the console started clapping and laughing as well. â€Å"Franklin! We're not done here. Can we get the interface back?† Franklin, obviously the whaley boy who had been working the console, slumped and put his hand back in the socket. â€Å"Sorry,† came a tiny voice from his blowhole. â€Å"Bitch,† came another tiny voice from one of the pilots, followed by whaley snickering. â€Å"Let's send one more time. I want base to know we'll be there in the morning,† Nuà ±ez said. â€Å"Morale's not a problem, then?† asked Nate, grinning at Nuà ±ez's loss of temper. â€Å"Oh, they're like fucking children,† Nuà ±ez said. â€Å"They're like dolphins: You dump them in the middle of the ocean with a red ball and they'll just play all day long, stopping only long enough to eat and screw. I'm telling you, it's like baby-sitting a bunch of horny toddlers.† Franklin squeaked and clicked a response, and this time Tim and Jane joined in the laughter with the whaley boys. â€Å"What? What?† asked Nate. â€Å"I do not just need to get laid!† shouted Nuà ±ez. â€Å"Jane, you got this?† â€Å"Sure,† said the blonde. â€Å"I'm going to quarters.† She left the bridge to the snickering of the whaley boys. Tim looked back at Nate and nodded toward the sonar screen and headset that Nuà ±ez had vacated. â€Å"Want to stand in?† â€Å"I'm a prisoner,† said Nate. â€Å"Yeah, but in a nice way,† said Jane. That was true. Everyone since he'd come on board had been very kind to him, seeing to his every need, even some he didn't want seen to. He didn't feel like a prisoner. Nate wasn't sure that he wasn't experiencing the Helsinki syndrome, where you sympathized with your captors – or was that the Stockholm syndrome? Yeah, the Helsinki syndrome had something to do with hair loss. It was definitely the Stockholm syndrome. He stepped up to the sonar screen and put on the headset. Immediately he heard the distant song of a humpback. He looked at Tim, who raised his eyebrows as if to say, See. â€Å"So tell me,† Nate said, â€Å"what's the singing mean?† It was worth a shot. â€Å"We were just going to ask you,† said Jane. â€Å"Swell,† said Nate. Suddenly he didn't feel so well. After all this, even people who traveled inside whales didn't know what the song meant? â€Å"Are you all right, Nate?† Jane asked. â€Å"You don't look so good.† â€Å"I think I have Stockholm syndrome.† â€Å"Don't be silly,† said Tim. â€Å"You've got plenty of hair.† â€Å"You want some Pepto?† asked Jane, the ship's doctor. Yes, he thought, escape would seem a priority. He was pretty sure that if he didn't get away, he was going to snap and kill some folks, or at least be incredibly stern with them. Funny, he thought, how your priorities could change with circumstances. You go along for the greater part of your life thinking you want something – to understand the humpback song, for instance. So you pursue that with dogged single-mindedness at the expense of everything else in your life, only to be distracted into thinking maybe you want something in addition to that – Amy, for instance. And that becomes a diversion up until the time when circumstances make you realize what it is you really want, and that is – strangely enough – to get the fuck out of a whale. Funny, Nate thought. â€Å"Settle down, Kona,† Clair said, dropping her purse by the door, â€Å"I don't have a spoon.† Clay jumped off Margaret's lap. He and Kona watched as Clair crossed the room and exchanged hugs with Margaret and Libby, lingering a bit while hugging Libby and winking over her shoulder at Clay. â€Å"So nice to see you guys,† Clair said. â€Å"I'm not going out to get the pizza, mon. No way,† said Kona, still looking a bit terrified. â€Å"What are you guys doing?† Clair asked. And so Margaret took it upon herself to explain what they had discovered over the last few hours, with Kona filling in the pertinent and personal details. Meanwhile, Clay sat down in the kitchen and pondered the facts. Pondering, he felt, was called for. Pondering is a little like considering and a little like thinking, but looser. To ponder, one must let the facts roll around the rim of the mind's roulette wheel, coming to settle in whichever slot they feel pulled to. Margaret and Libby were scientists, used to jamming their facts into the appropriate slots as quickly as possible, and Kona†¦ well, a thought rolling around in his mind was rather like a tennis ball in a coffee can – it was just a little too fuzzy to make any impact – and Clair was just catching up. No, the pondering fell to Clay, and he sipped a dark beer from a sweating bottle on a high stool in the kitchen and waited for the roulette ball to fall. Which it did, right about the time that Margaret Painborne was reaching a conclusion to her story. â€Å"This obviously has something to do with defense,† Margaret said. â€Å"No one else would have a reason – hell, they can't even have a good reason. But I say we write our senators tonight and confront Captain Tarwater in the morning. He's got to know something about it.† â€Å"And that's where you're completely wrong,† Clay said. And they all turned. â€Å"I've been pondering this† – here he paused for impact – â€Å"and it occurs to me that two of our friends disappeared right about the time they found out about this stuff. And that everything from the break-in to the sinking of my boat† – and here he paused for a moment of silence – â€Å"has had something to do with someone not wanting us to know this stuff. So I think it would be reckless of us to run around trying to tell everybody what we know before we know what we know is.† â€Å"That can't be right,† said Libby. † ‘Before we know what we know is'?† quoted Margaret. â€Å"No, that's not right.† â€Å"Is making perfect sense to me,† said Kona. â€Å"No, Clay,† said Clair, â€Å"I'm fine with you and the girl-on-girl action, and I'm fine with a haole Rasta boy preaching sovereignty, but I'm telling you I won't stand for that kind of grammatical abuse. I am a schoolteacher, after all.† â€Å"We can't tell anyone!† Clay screamed. â€Å"Better,† said Clair. â€Å"No need to shout,† Libby said. â€Å"Margaret was just being a radical hippie reactionist feminist lesbian communist cetacean biologist, weren't you, dear?† Libby Quinn grinned at her partner. â€Å"I'll have an acronym for that in a second,† mumbled Clair, counting off words on her fingers. â€Å"Jeez, your business card must be the size of a throw rug.† Margaret glared at Libby, then turned to Clay. â€Å"You really think we could be in danger?† â€Å"Seems that way. Look, I know we wouldn't know this without your help, but I just don't want anyone hurt. We may already be in trouble.† â€Å"We can keep it quiet if you feel that's the way to go,† said Libby, making the decision for the pair, â€Å"but I think in the meantime we need to look at a lot more audio files – see how far back this goes. Figure out why sometimes it's just noise and sometimes it's a message.† Margaret was furiously braiding and unbraiding her hair and staring blankly into the air in front of her as she thought. â€Å"They must use the whale song as camouflage so enemy submarines don't detect the communication. We need more data. Recordings from other populations of humpbacks, out of American waters. Just to see how far they've gone with this thing.† â€Å"And we need to look at blue-, fin-, and sei-whale calls,† said Libby. â€Å"If they're using subsonic, then it only makes sense that they'll imitate the big whales. I'll call Chris Wolf at Oregon State tomorrow. He monitors the navy's old sonar matrix that they set up to catch Russian submarines. He'll have recordings of everything we need.† â€Å"No,† said Clay. â€Å"No one outside this room.† â€Å"Come on, Clay. You're being paranoid.† â€Å"Say that again, Libby. He monitors whose old sonar matrix? The military still keeps a hand in on that SOSUS array.† â€Å"So you think it is military?† Clay shook his head. â€Å"I don't know. I'm damned if I can think of a reason the navy would paint ‘Bite me' on the tail of a whale. I just know that people who find out about this stuff disappear, and someone sent a message saying that Nate was safe after we all thought he was dead.† â€Å"So what are you going to do?† â€Å"Find him,† Clay said. â€Å"Well, that's going to totally screw up the funeral,† said Clair. PART THREE The Source We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of selfish replicators. – RICHARD DAWKINS, The Selfish Gene Ninety-five percent of all the species that have ever existed are now extinct, so don't look so goddamn smug. – GERARD RYDER