Immanuel Kant Essay

HYPERLINK â€Å"http://www. philosophypages. com/ph/kant. htm† Immanuel Kant answers the question in the first sentence of the essay: â€Å"Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. † He argues that the immaturity is self-inflicted not from a lack of understanding, but from the lack of courage to use one’s reason, intellect, and wisdom without the guidance of another. He exclaims that the motto of enlightenment is â€Å"Sapere aude†! – Dare to be wise! The German word Unmundigkeit means not having attained age of majority or legal adulthood. â€Å"Unmundig† also means â€Å"dependent† or â€Å"unfree†, and another translation is â€Å"tutelage† or â€Å"nonage† (the condition of â€Å"not [being] of age†). Kant, whose moral philosophy is centred around the concept of autonomy, here distinguishes between a person who is intellectually autonomous and one who keeps him/herself in an intellectually heteronomous, i. e. dependent and immature status. Kant understands the majority of people to be content to follow the guiding institutions of society, such as the Church and the Monarchy, and unable to throw off the yoke of their immaturity due to a lack of resolution to be autonomous. It is difficult for individuals to work their way out of this immature, cowardly life because we are so uncomfortable with the idea of thinking for ourselves. Kant says that even if we did throw off the spoon-fed dogma and formulas we have absorbed, we would still be stuck, because we have never â€Å"cultivated our minds. † The key to throwing off these chains of mental immaturity is reason. There is hope that the entire public could become a force of free thinking individuals if they are free to do so. Why? There will always be a few people, even among the institutional â€Å"guardians†, who think for themselves. They will help the rest of us to â€Å"cultivate our minds. † Kant shows himself a man of his times when he observes that â€Å"a revolution may well put an end to autocratic despotism . . . or power-seeking oppression, but it will never produce a true reform in ways of thinking. † The recently completed American Revolution had made a great impression in Europe; Kant cautions that new prejudice will replace the old and become a new leash to control the â€Å"great unthinking masses. † Immanuel Kant’s Ideas on Science and Morality According to the 18th-century German thinker Immanuel Kant, no person may possess inherent wisdom about reality. This is best summarized in the philosopher’s famous expression, â€Å"Thoughts without content are empty; intuitions without data are blind. † Indeed, Kant believes that in order for us to utilize our sensible intuition, we must possess two stimuli, â€Å"physical sensation† and â€Å"moral duty. † The first of the two addresses a portion of Kantian thought known as â€Å"empirical realism,† a reasoning that defines that absolute reality as the entire universe in which all human beings dwell. Every time we acquire external data from that absolute reality, our perception of it assumes a greater degree of accuracy. And what would be the optimal way of acquiring such data with only minimal if any contact with other persons’ perceptions (which are, like ours, inaccurate, only in different ways, since each human being possesses a unique arsenal of experiences)? Scientific exploration is, therefore, the key to an ultimate comprehension of things-in-themselves. Kant was a fervent admirer of Newtonian thought and the Scientific Method, which permitted scientists to ascend to unprecedented heights in their understanding of and control over nature. The second stimulus to action, moral duty, provides the explanation for the purpose of all human actions toward the comprehension of the universe. This portion of Kant’s doctrine has been dubbed by the philosopher as â€Å"transcendental idealism,† since it establishes a framework outside the natural world upon which correct actions are based. Kant sees the ultimate virtues to be the attempts to reach three goals which are not yet found in reality, God, freedom, and the immortality of individuals. God, the Creator and Supreme Being of the universe, must be fathomed, properly interpreted, and obeyed in accordance with his true desires. Freedom, the individual liberty to act as one wishes and to grant all others this right, must be instituted through societal reforms and a development of ideology to understand the proper order that would establish such an atmosphere. And, at last, every human being must rise to possess the right to exist for an indefinite length of time that he may 1 / 3 obey the commandments of God and practice his freedoms. Kant states that all which is right and moral must be based upon those three principles. As such, Kant separates the scientific realm (which describes what is) from the moral realm (which explains what ought to be), but he considers these two realms to go hand-in-hand — ultimately advocating putting the scientific realm in service to moral one. Kant: The â€Å"Copernican Revolution† in Philosophy The philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is sometimes called the â€Å"Copernican revolution of philosophy† to emphasize its novelty and huge importance. Kant synthesized (brought together) rationalism and empiricism. After Kant, the old debate between rationalists and empiricists ended, and epistemology went in a new direction. After Kant, no discussion of reality or knowledge could take place without awareness of the role of the human mind in constructing reality and knowledge. Summary of Rationalism The paradigm rationalist philosophers are Plato (ancient); Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz (modern). Don’t trust senses, since they sometimes deceive; and since the â€Å"knowledge† they provide is inferior (because it changes). Reason alone can provide knowledge. Math is the paradigm of real knowledge. There are innate ideas, e. g. , Plato’s Forms, or Descartes’ concepts of self, substance, and identity. The self is real and discernable through immediate intellectual intuition (cogito ergo sum). Moral notions are comfortably grounded in an objective standard external to self — in God, or Forms. Kant says rationalists are sort of right about (3) and (4) above; wrong about (1) and (2). Kant would like (5) to be true. Summary of Empiricism The paradigm empiricist philosophers are Aristotle (ancient); Locke, Berkeley, Hume (modern). Senses are the primary, or only, source of knowledge of world. Psychological atomism. Mathematics deals only with relations of ideas (tautologies); gives no knowledge of world. No innate ideas (though Berkeley accepts Cartesian self). General or complex ideas are derived by abstraction from simple ones (conceptualism). Hume — there’s no immediate intellectual intuition of self. The concept of â€Å"Self† is not supported by sensations either. Hume — no sensations support the notion of necessary connections between causes and effects, or the notion that the future will resemble the past. Hume — â€Å"is† does not imply â€Å"ought†. Source of morality is feeling. Kant thinks empiricism is on the right track re (1), sort of right re (2), wrong re (3), (4), (5), and (6). Summary of Kant’s Argument The epistemological debate between rationalism and empiricism is basically about whether, or to what extent the senses contribute to knowledge. Both rationalism and empiricism take for granted that it’s possible for us to acquire knowledge of Reality, or how things really are, as opposed to how they seem to us. But both rationalism and empiricism overlook the fact that the human mind is limited; it can experience and imagine only within certain constraints. These constraints are both synthetic and a priori. All our possible experience must conform to these SAPs. The SAPs include location in space and time, causality, experiencing self, thing-ness, identity, and various mathematical notions. (Twentieth- century Gestalt psychology’s attack on psychological atomism is based on Kant’s views. ) Therefore, we must distinguish the world we experience, bounded by SAPs, and the world of things as they really are â€Å"in themselves†. Kant calls these two worlds the phenomenal (apparent) world versus the noumenal (real) world. Empiricism pretty much nails what it means to know something, once the SAPs are in place; i. e. , within the phenomenal world, empiricism rules. The phenomenal world is a world of things, publicly observable, describable by science, known to the senses, determined by physical laws. No God, no 2 / 3 freedom, no soul, no values exist in this world. If God, freedom, souls, and values exist, then they must be noumenal and unknowable by any ordinary means. Thus, according to Kant: Both rationalism and empiricism are wrong when they claim that we can know things in themselves. Rationalists are wrong not to trust senses; in the phenomenal world, senses are all we have. Rationalists are right about â€Å"innate ideas†, but not in Plato’s sense of Forms— much more like Descartes’ in argument of the wax. Hume is wrong when he claims the concept of self is unsupported by senses, and thus bogus. Rather, the experiencing self is a pre-condition for having any experience at all (Descartes was right). Hume is wrong when he says the notion that the future will resemble the past is due only to â€Å"custom and habit†. That notion is a SAP; we couldn’t have ordinary experience without it. Hume is wrong when he says the source of morality is feeling. Morality, properly understood, provides the key to linking the noumenal and phenomenal worlds. Kant argues that if morality is real, then human freedom is real, and therefore humans are not merely creatures of the phenomenal world (not merely things subject to laws). Ramifications of Kant’s Views Kant revolutionized philosophy. Kant showed that the mind, through its innate categories, constructs our experience along certain lines (space, time, causality, self, etc. ). Thus, thinking and experiencing give no access to things as they really are. We can think as hard as we like, but we will never escape the innate constraints of our minds. Kant forced philosophy to look seriously at the world for the agent (what Kant calls the phenomenal world) independently of the real world outside consciousness – the world in itself (the noumenal world). Ethics had long recognized the importance for moral evaluation of â€Å"how things seem to the agent. † But the ramifications of Kant’s noumenal-phenomenal distinction extend far beyond ethics. Philosophers like to take credit for all the big events in 19th century intellectual history as direct consequences of Kant’s philosophical legitimizing of the perspective of the subject: Hegel and German idealism, Darwinism, Romanticism, pragmatism, Marxism, the triumph of utilitarianism, Nietzsche, and the establishment of psychology as a science, especially Gestalt psychology. Phenomena and NoumenaHaving seen Kant’s transcendental deduction of the categories as pure concepts of the understanding applicable a priori to every possible experience, we might naturally wish to ask the further question whether these regulative principles are really true. Are there substances? Does every event have a cause? Do all things interact? Given that we must suppose them in order to have any experience, do they obtain in the world itself? To these further questions, Kant firmly refused to offer any answer. According to Kant, it is vital always to distinguish between the distinct realms of phenomena and noumena. Phenomena are the appearances, which constitute the our experience; noumena are the (presumed) things themselves, which constitute reality. All of our synthetic a priori judgments apply only to the phenomenal realm, not the noumenal. (It is only at this level, with respect to what we can experience, that we are justified in imposing the structure of our concepts onto the objects of our knowledge. ) Since the thing in itself (Ding an sich) would by definition be entirely independent of our experience of it, we are utterly ignorant of the noumenal realm. Thus, on Kant’s view, the most fundamental laws of nature, like the truths of mathematics, are knowable precisely because they make no effort to describe the world as it really is but rather prescribe the structure of the world as we experience it. By applying the pure forms of sensible intuition and the pure concepts of the understanding, we achieve a systematic view of the phenomenal realm but learn nothing of the noumenal realm. Math and science are certainly true of the phenomena; only metaphysics claims to instruct us about the noumena. POWERED BY TCPDF (WWW. TCPDF. ORG).

Information Use CIS/207 Essay

In today’s world, most businesses rely heavily on the use of information technology ad information systems. Corporate communication is usually dependent upon wired as well as wired networks within the company. With these networks being set up in businesses, there has been a major shift in data storage to using computers to store and transfer data instead of the traditional ways of using paperwork and hard copies. Companies can securely share information with other companies through the use of virtual private networks, called VPNs. My current occupation is very technologically driven. My current occupation is based completely around technology and it’s use and innovation. The company contains a large area of production and workers that produces and delivers several different innovative pieces of machinery. They are involved in the production of items such as ATM machines, video rental kiosks, self-checkout registers, vending machines and other products of a similar nature. We also have a large information technology department that I am a part of to assist with servicing our products as well as providing third party support for other products from other vendors. In our area of business, networks are extremely important to our everyday work processes. I work in the smaller of two locations, but we are all connected to the same network and have the same job duties. We have multiple computer software programs that we use to accomplish our daily tasks and also have software to connect us to the same telephone queues and networks in order to assist clients. The computer network gives us access to all of the same information and data that is used to assist us with providing support to clients and also access to internal documents that are needed. We communicate with our other team members through instant messages and email networks that are used everyday all day. Without these networks, there are times that we would not be able to even communicate with members of our leadership that are in the other location. Our phone calls are routed though queues that all of our team members are assigned to in both call centers.  Some of the software and information we use are shared with clients and they also have access. In order to keep this information secure, we use a virtual private network, or VPN. We sign into this network to access the tools that are used daily. After signing in with individual passwords, we are able to access a complete set of software programs that we need to complete our job each day. Each location of ours, also contain local networks that are for business and personal use. There are employee and guest wireless (wifi) networks that are available for leadership and clients that need to access the Internet on their wireless devices and laptops. There is also an additional wifi network that is set-up for other employees to use on personal laptops, ipads, tablets, etc. As with everything computer related, there are times when the information systems have issues or fail. One of the reasons that we have two call centers is to have our call center serve as a backup for the main location. There are times when the main call center’s network goes down due to server issues while our area is still operable, and there are other times when our center goes down and they are still in operation. Unfortunately, at times there are still issues that shut down both locations simultaneously. With the use of computers and networks, there is also a large focus on security. Whenever there is sensitive data being stored and transferred through computer networks, there is the risk of unauthorized individuals gaining access to this information. To lower these chances, we have several different pieces of software and also require multiple passwords that are unique to each authorized individual and a requirement to change the passwords often. Today’s home and business processes rely more and more on the use of technology and information systems each day. Computers and networks have increased productivity greatly by speeding up the way information is transferred. Information can now be transferred across the world almost instantly, which is very useful in business endeavors. Large amounts of data  can also be stored in computers to save the amount of physical paper used, which is good for the environment also. Research and communication are also more effective and efficient through information technology. There is always a downside with the threat of hackers and unauthorized use, but with the proper network security and software, this can be reduced. Reference Turban, E., Volonino, L., & Wood, G. (2013). Information technology for management: Advancing sustainable, profitable business growth (9th ed.). Retrieved from The University of Phoenix eBook Collection database.

Cantebury Tales

Cantebury Tales Essay Canterbury Tales In discussing Chaucers collection of stories called The Canterbury Tales, an interesting picture or illustration of the Medieval Christian Church is presented. However, while people demanded more voice in the affairs of government, the church became corrupt this corruption also led to a more crooked society. Nevertheless, there is no such thing as just church history; This is because the church can never be studied in isolation, simply because it has always related to the social, economic and political context of the day. In history then, there is a two way process where the church has an influence on the rest of society and of course, society influences the church. This is naturally because it is the people from a society who make up the church. and those same people became the personalities that created these tales of a pilgrimage to Canterbury. The Christianization of Anglo-Saxon England was to take place in a relatively short period of time, but this was not because of the success of the Augustinian effort. Indeed, the early years of this mission had an ambivalence which shows in the number of people who hedged their bets by practicing both Christian and Pagan rites at the same time, and in the number of people who promptly apostatized when a Christian king died. There is certainly no evidence for a large-scale conversion of the common people to Christianity at this time. Augustine was not the most diplomatic of men, and managed to antagonize many people of power and influence in Britain, not least among them the native British churchmen, who had never been particularly eager to save the souls of the Anglo-Saxons who had brought such bitter times to their people. In their isolation, the British Church had maintained older ways of celebrated the major festivals of Christianity, and Augustines effort to compel them to conform to modern Roman usage only angered them. When Augustine died (some time between 604 and 609 AD), then, Christianity had only a precarious hold on Anglo-Saxon England, a hold which was limited largely to a few in the aristocracy. Christianity was to become firmly established only as a result of Irish efforts, who from centers in Scotland and Northumbria made the common people Christian, and established on a firm basis the English Church. At all levels of society, belief in a god or gods was not a matter of choice, it was a matter of fact. Atheism was an alien concept (and one dating from the eighteenth century). Living in the middle ages, one would come into contact with the Church in a number of ways. First, there were the routine church services, held daily and attended at least once a week, and the special festivals of Christmas, Easter, baptisms, marriages, etc.. In that respect the medieval Church was no different to the modern one. Second, there were the tithes that the Church collected, usually once a year. Tithes were used to feed the parish priest, maintain the fabric of the church, and to help the poor. Third, the Church fulfilled the functions of a civil service and an education system. Schools did not exist (and were unnecessary to a largely peasant society), but the Church and the government needed men who could read and write in English and Latin. The Church trained its own men, and these went to help in the government: writing letters, keeping accounts and so on. The words cleric and clerk have the same origin, and every nobleman would have at least one priest to act as a secretary. The power of the Church is often over-emphasized. Certainly, the later medieval Church was rich and powerful, and that power was often misused especially in Europe. Bishops and archbishops were appointed without any training or clerical background, church offices changed hands for cash, and so on. The authority of the early medieval Church in England was no different to that of any other landowner. So, the question that haunted medieval man was that of his own salvation. The existence of God was never questioned and the heart-cry of medieval society was a desire to know God and achieve intimacy with the divine. Leading a life pleasing to God was the uppermost concern, and the wide diversity of medieval piety is simply because people answered the question, How can I best lead a holy life? in so many different ways. Beginning with The Pardoners Tale, the theme of salvation is truly paramount. Chaucer, being one of the most important medieval authors, uses this prologue and tale to make a statement about buying salvation. The character of the pardoner is one of the most despicable pilgrims, seemingly along for the ride to his next gig as the seller of relics. For myn entente is nat but for to winne,/ And no thing for correccion of sinne, admits the pardoner in his prologue. As a matter of fact, the pardoner is only in it for the money, as evident from this passage:I wol none of the Apostles countrefete: I wold have moneye, wolle, cheese, and whete, Al were it yiven of the pooreste page, Or of the pooreste widwe in a village Al sholde hir children sterve for famine. Nay, I drinke licour of the vine And have a joly wenche in every town. In his tale, the Pardoner slips into his role as the holiest of holies and speaks of the dire consequences of gluttony, gambling, and lechery. He cites Attila the Hun with, Looke Attila, the grete conquerour,/ Deide in his sleep with shame and dishonour,/ Bleeding at his nose in dronkenesse. The personification of the deadly sins, along with his story of the three greedy men that eventually perish at the hands of their sin is a distinct medieval device. The comic twist that Chaucer adds to the device, though, is that the Pardoner in himself is as the personification of sin, as is evident from the passages of his prologue. At the conclusion of his tale, the Pardoner asks, Allas, mankinde, how may it bitide/ That to thy Creatour which that thee wroughte,/ And with his precious herte blood boughte,/ Thou art so fals and unkinde, allas?. He then goes on to offer each pilgrim a place READ: Robotics Essayfor a price, of course. The Pardoners place in Chaucers idea of redemption becomes evident in the epilogue of the tale. After offering the host the first pardon (For he is most envoluped in sinne and, supposedly, the equivalent of Chaucer), the host berates the pardoner, saying, I wolde I hadde thy coilons in myn hond,/ In stede of relikes or of saintuarye./ Lat cutte him of. By this, the idea of the pardoner as the most important man on the pilgrimage is brought to fruition and Chaucer makes the main point of this tale: Salvation is not for sale. Another example of the medieval obsession with redemption. However, some did not accept this and questioned the church It was what they wanted other than a holy life with a Old-Testament God; That style of thinking evenually lead to a more gentle, mother-figure as a goddess The Cult of the Virgin. The eminent question then becomes, Why would people change from a long-lasting, Old-Testament God to a mother-like goddess ? The answer is simply because they thought their new found Goddess would never be as harsh on people as the often criticized male like aspect of God. In both current Catholicism and that of the medieval period, Mary is worshipped with more fervor than even God or Jesus. Church after church was (and still is) erected in her name. Her likeness graced statues and stained glass with as much frequency as Jesus bloody head. The worship of Mary is fervent, institutionalized, and approved of by the Christian church. Is she not a goddess? Mary simply took the place of the female aspects of the spirit that were once worshipped as Roman or Anglo-Saxon goddesses. The medieval period, stretching approximately from the late seventh century to the early sixteenth, was bound together under one constantRoman Catholic Christianity. But beneath this curtain of Christianity many legends were being formed and passed down, as old pagan traditions became assimilated into a newly Christian society. The two religious forms were becoming intertwined. They seemed at this time to be tolerant of each other, not entirely distinct. A peoples habits and thought processes are not easily changed, and being that the Anglo-Saxons of Britain were not Christians until the mid-600s, a period of transition can be expected . At least, a fascination with their pagan ancestors existed, at most, the practice of the old ways. Examples of a fascination with magic, worshipping more than one god-like figure, and a continuing love for worshipping goddesses, exist in many texts written in this period. Yet, this does not mean that every village had a sorceress in their midst, but literature usually reflects the society within which it emerges. At the time of The Canterbury Tales, many of a people who were Christians officially, politically, and in most cases at heart, saw that there were elements of paganism and sorcery which is tolerated and respected. The society in which Chaucer writes these stories is Christian as well, politically and spirituallycould it be that they tolerated and respected paganism and magic? Perhaps the separation of the two is not necessary and was not complete at this point in time. Not only was magic a pagan tradition that persisted throughout the Middle Ages. .another tradition, changing at the time, reflected the transition from worshipping the unseen forces in the world as many gods, to one, omnipotent God. Although the people were Christians, they took the separation of spiritual powers far beyond the creation the Trinity. The specific powers or emphasis given to each saint carries on even into todays Catholic tradition. The medieval period may have had some of this (although many of the saints were not even born yet) but in their literature, many immortal and powerful creatures are found. This form of Paganism existed in Britain of the Middle ages, full of spiritual beings, full of magic, alive with heavenly power existing on Earth. It has been the nature of the Christian men in power through the ages to, for fear, deny their people the knowledge of the un-Christian richness in their ancestry, and so the traditions that were not masked as Christian are lost to students of Christian history and literature. But it seems this period had not seen such extensive discrimination. The two ways of the world were not quite so separate then, and matters of the occult were not yet labeled as evil. This again implies that perhaps the two forms of religious thought do not have to be completely separate. There are strong similarities for them to coincide and complement each other, and for an entire people trying to make the Christian transition, maybe this complementing was necessary. However, the age of forceful patriarchy and witch-burning would not come about for several hundred years. Each new way of leading a holy life was thought to be progressively more acceptable to God by its proponents than the ones that had gone before. Such new ways were normally inspired by a desire to break away from the corruption and worldliness which was perceived in the older or more established forms of Godly living. These new ways often became corrupt themselves and over time breakaways from them were hailed as a newer and more perfect way of following God. This roller-coaster ride of corruption and reform is basically the story of popular medieval religion as man battled to define and discover what it really meant to be a Christian. In an effort to escape persecution, but to also flee the evil, prevalent in the world and to seek God free from many worldly distractions, monks began to assemble as communities of Christians . These communities, although they had little organization, were regarded as possessing the best Christian life by having a solitary, ascetic, celibate existence where the world had been totally renounced and had been entirely replaced with heavenly contemplation. These new martyrs were usually just called monks: theirs was a life of daily martyrdom as they constantly died to self and lived totally for God. The monks paid particular veneration to the physical remains of the martyrs (relics) and were therefore connected to the martyrs who they replaced. The rise of ascetic monasticism and relic worship however was quite controversial Both the worship of relics and ascetic monasticism however became mainstays of this Medieval religion, and the idea that monks were a new form of martyr persisted over time. READ: Moral and Ethical Dilemmas Essay Both monks as well as martyrs were looked upon as holy men. In relating this solitary world to readers, there is also a monk in Chaucers work He is someone who combined godliness and worldliness into a profitable and comfortable living. He was the outrider or the person in charge of the outlying property.. ..which lead him to enjoy hunting, fine foods, and owning several horses. Monks renounced all their worldly belongings and by taking vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, joined a community of monks. Their lives were spent in communal worship, devotional reading, prayer and manual labor all under the authority of the abbot of the monastic house. Particular monks often had particular jobs- the cellarer or the infirmarer for example, and these like every aspect of monastic life were laid down in the Rule. Monks were nearly always of noble extraction (one had to have wealth in order to give it up) but could also be given to the monastery as children (called oblates) to be brought up as monks. Hindsight has blurred our vision of the Medieval monk and the result is that the modern Christian mindset has condemned him for his selfish escapism from the world and for his apparent neglect of those who needed Christ outside of the cloister. The Medieval mindset was very different. The monastery was an integral part of the local community it probably owned most of the farming land in the area- and the fortunes of the people in any area were bound up with the spirituality of its monastic house. The monks were on the front line of the spiritual battle-it was they who did battle in prayer for their community, who warded off devils and demons and who prayed tirelessly for the salvation of the souls of those in their community. Rather than being the cowards of Christianity unable to take the strain of living a Christian life in the real world, the monks were like spiritual stormtroopers interceding for an area against its supernatural enemies in mudh the same way as a local lord in his castle protected an area against its physical enemies. The people gave gifts to both lord and abbot in return for a service. The Pardoner also represents the tradition of faith in respect to the church of his time. The Pardoner is representative of the seamy side of the corrupt church and a broken or twisted (if you will) faith. The faith of a bureaucracy, which is what the church had become. The Pardoner was a church official who had the authority to forgive those who had sinned by selling pardons and indulgences to them. Although, the Pardoner was a church official, he was clearly in the church business for economic reasons. The Pardoner, a devious and somewhat dubious individual had one goal: Get the most money for pardons by almost any means of coercion necessary. A twisted and ironic mind, has basically defined himself through his work for a similarly corrupt church. In contrast, the Plowman has nothing but a seemingly uncomplicated and untwisted faith. The Plowman has the faith of a poor farmer, uncomplicated by the bureaucracy of the church. The Pardoner is probably on this journey because he is being required to go by the church or he sees some sort of economic gain from this voyage, most likely from selling forgiveness to the other pilgrims. The Plowman on the other hand is probably on this voyage because of his sincerity and faith in its purpose. While this was the story of religion at grass-roots level, at the organizational and hierarchical level, the church developed along a different line. It became more organized, more bureaucratic, more legal, more centralized and basically more powerful on a European scale. This process was spearheaded by the papacy and reached its pinnacle under Pope Innocent III in the early 13th Century. He embodied what became known as the papal monarchy a situation where the popes literally were kings in their own world. The relative importance of spiritual and secular power in the world was a constant question in the middle ages with both secular emperors and kings, and the popes asserting their claims to rule by divine authority with Gods commands for Gods people proceeding out of their mouths. The power of the church is hard to exaggerate: its economic and political influence was huge, as its wealth, movements like the crusades, and even the number of churches that exist from this period truly show its greatness. By the early 10th century, a strange malaise seems to have entered the English church. There are comments from this time of a decline in learning among churchmen and an increase in a love for things of this earthly world. Even more of these lax standards had begun a decline in the power structure of the church which included a decrease in acceptable behavior amongst churchmen and a growing use of church institutions by lay people as a means of evading taxes. Christianity affected all men in Europe at every level and in every way. Such distances however, led to much diversity and the shaping of Medieval religion into a land of contrasts. One can also see how mans feelings of extreme sinfulness and desire for God are quite evident in these tales. Still, we are told that history repeats itself because nobody listens to it, but more realistically history repeats itself because man is essentially the same from one generation to the next. He has the same aspirations, fears and flaws; yet the way that these are expressed differs from age to age. This is why each period of history is different. The fact that man is the same yet different is what makes the study of the people who formed the medieval church directly applicable to Christians lives and experiences today. Book Reports

Online Store Popularity vs. Retail Outlets Research Paper

Online Store Popularity vs. Retail Outlets - Research Paper Example How to target consumers buying over the internet and how to make online store fruitful? The chief objective of the research is to estimate and inspect the consequences and decide is it worthy of time and effort when opening an online store (Laura, 2011). Online shopping turned out to be widely held 10 years ago. 94 percent of Americans use PCs for individual purposes. Nearly two-thirds have "a great level of dependency†. Nearly 70 percent of Americans shop online and 88 percent of that number has shopped online to some degree in the previous six months. Profits for products bought online now average over and above $34 billion annually, up to 500 percent further from the year 1999. According to a website which gives people a lot of discount vouchers, â€Å"The highest percentage of both men (77 percent) and women (68 percent) shop online in the mornings before lunch. Top level professional males and females prefer to shop at night. Stay-at-home moms tend to shop in the mid-afte rnoon, perhaps during nap time† The research also states that twenty-nine percent of males and 30 percent of females said their picks are "recurrently" inclined by online ads while 43 percent say choices are "from time to time" swayed. For this research, the use of random sampling method will be employed, since every living person has an equal right of being carefully chosen. The objective is to define the age group as well as gender from the people who purchase online. Likewise, the aim is to determine how repeatedly people shop online and what is the attractiveness of online shopping, and similarly to observe the most repeatedly bought products online. Literature Review Referring to an article by Gerald & Trifts (2003; n.p.), it is evident that a distinctive characteristic of online shopping is that they permit sellers to form retail crossing point with extremely intricate communication types. One looked-for method of interactivity from a customer viewpoint is putting into p ractice refined tools to help customers in their buying choices by adapting the electronic shopping environment to their separate preferences. The most important objective of this paper is to explore the environment of special effects that communication decision supports may have on customer choice-making in online shopping environment. Although while making buying-choices, customers are every so often incapable to assess all accessible substitutes in great deepness and, as a consequence, have a habit of using two-stage procedures to influence their judgments. At the major phase, customers naturally monitor a great set of offered goods and categorize a subcategory of the most auspicious substitutions. Afterwards, they appraise the latter with more gravity, carry out comparative judgments across goods on significant qualities, and make a buying choice. The two interactive tools used: RA (Recommendation Agent) and CM (Comparison Matrix) are used in the first and second stage respectiv ely. In conclusion the major findings by the two authors put forward are that the communication tools, used to support customers in the early selection of accessible substitutes and to assist in-depth judgments among carefully chosen substitutes in an online shopping environs, may have strong promising effects on both the superiority and the good organization of buying decisions-shoppers; this can make much improved choices by buyers who can spend considerably less energy this

Critique qualitative Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Critique qualitative - Essay Example Unhealthy diets are the consumption of foods containing low levels of nutrients. In the article, the researchers conducted a qualitative study. In the study, they used interviews, which is one of the methods of data collection in a qualitative study. The data was recorded in form of audios. The research demanded induction form of analyzing the data because the research was supposed to give the exact situations as they were. Therefore, the researchers decided to use a critical incident technique as a method of doing data analysis. However, the researchers failed because they did not use the observation methods of data collection. The research was supposed to get exact data from the participants and not conclude I from another perspective or generalization of the data collected. Before conducting the research, the researchers seek consent from their institution. However, the research does not fully indicate on the procedures followed during the study. They did not indicate how they seek consent to conduct the study from the participants. There must have been ethical issues apart from the schedule of data collection. Using the CIT method, the situations mentioned by the participants made up the results. Therefore, there was very little to be analyzed because the analysis was not complex. In fact, the researchers used all the data collected and came up with the final analysis. Therefore, the researchers came up with categorization technique to analyze the data. That was the most important subjectivity of the research done. Research question for the study was how night shift working amongst community nurses influenced their eating and exercising habits both positively and negatively. In addition, the question addressed all the situations that affected and influenced healthy diet and exercising habits of the nurses in question. The question aimed at finding out how the nurses’ lifestyle influences their

Congestive Heart Failure Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Congestive Heart Failure - Case Study Example The mechanism and resulting physiologic alteration c. The resulting effects on body system d. Citations from Peer Reviewed Articles IV. Analysis of Clinical Findings Manifestations a. Discussion of the Patient’s Clinical Presentation b. Review of Patient’s Clinical Course c. Comparison of this case to pathophysiologic findings in the literature d. Critical Thinking V. Analysis of Laboratory Tests VI. Treatments VII. Outcome Analysis VIII. References Introduction to Congestive Heart Failure Opening paragraph in which the topic is introduced and the content: More than 5 millions of the Americans are suffering from Congestive Heart Failure (CHF) and these people have been in and out from the hospital because of CHF and its clinical sequelae (American Heart Association, 2004). CHF changes lives. It affects the structure of the family and the society as well. Once it strikes the breadwinner of the family, it would mean loss of income and shifting of one’s role in the family. In general, this debilitating disease greatly affects the family and the society as a whole, since any problem that might occur in the family affects the community as well. How severe the condition is determines the impact to the life of a person. The milder CHF is in the life of the person, little does it affect the person’s life. ... Incidence of Congestive Heart Failure Discussion of the prevalence of Congestive Heart Failure in the United States: Congestive heart failure is a â€Å"serious condition† resulting to a considerable morbidity and mortality (Schocken, et al., 1992). In the US, CHF is an increasing public health concern because of the limited data that identifies the validity in diagnosing CHF (Goff, et al., 2006). Lui and Wallace (2011) noted that although the annual prevalence rate of CHF was 1.6 percent, which is much lower than that of hypertension, the number of average rate of hospitalisation was reversibly higher with high rate of hospitalisation among the older population belonging to the adults aged 75 and above, compared to the younger population who have the least group of individuals being hospitalized (Lui and Wallace, 2011). According to the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (2012), the prevalence rate of CHF is increasing and an estimated 4.8 million Americans were diagnose d to have CHF and likewise, an increasing incidence of prevalence rate of hospitalizations and deaths secondary to CHF is increasing (National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, 2012). The incidence of new cases of mortality of 400,000 secondary to CHF is increasing each year and others were due to its complications (National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, 2012). Statistics of Morbidity and Mortality: CHF occurs equally in both men and women but is more prevalent in descent other than white Americans such as African – American, Hispanics, and American - Indians (Cleveland Clinic, 2011). About 1 million are hospitalized each year in the United States due to CHF and around 30 – 60 percent of these populations are readmitted due to the same problem (Cleveland Clinic, 2011). The

Non-transportation Uses of Oil Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words

Non-transportation Uses of Oil - Research Paper Example though oil presents with various dangers, when used appropriately it can bring about benefits which cannot be gained through other products and non-transportation activities. Oil is defined as â€Å"any of a large class of substances typically unctuous, viscous, combustible, liquid at ordinary temperatures, and soluble in ether or alcohol but not in water: used for anointing, perfuming, lubricating, illuminating, heating, etc.†1. This definition is very broad and encompassing, therefore it does not only include oil used for fuel and for transport, but it also includes other kinds of oil of varying viscosity, utilization, and application. There are two main types of oil, namely, organic and mineral oils. Organic oils are produced by plants and animals through their natural metabolism. Lipid is the term used to define the fatty acids and other substances from oils produced by living things with oil being the general mixture of the various chemicals2. These oils have chemicals, as well as other lipids, proteins, and alkaloids3. These lipids can be identified based on how they are made, as well as their chemical make-up and their water solubility in r elation to oils. These lipids may be high in carbon and hydrogen and may be lacking in oxygen as compared to other compounds and substances4. They may also be nonpolar molecules, and may also include polar and nonpolar qualities, especially in the case of phospholipids and steroids5. Mineral oils on the other hand, include crude oil or petroleum oil, including its more refined elements known as petrochemicals6. Crude oil comes from fossilized organisms including algae and zooplankton which, after undergoing geochemical processes, turn into oil. They are mineral oils because they generally do not have organic beginnings and are instead derived from rocks, sands, and underground traps7. Some distillates of crude oil are also classified as mineral oils. Organic oils have many uses. Most of these oils are not

Euthanasia is Inherently Wrong Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Euthanasia is Inherently Wrong - Essay Example It is becoming increasingly apparent that the concept of ‘euthanasia’ is gradually winning the approval of different cultures and societies. Skeptics may believe that this is due to the growing propensity to belittle the value of human life, but others think this is not the main reason. They claim that it is much more probable to be the consequence of blunt compassion and kindness. Widely publicized, heartbreaking events draw out intense feelings of sympathy. Many people believe that in these instances a person and his/her loved ones would be better off if s/he were dead hence making it right to take the life of that individual. However, this essay argues that this belief is wrong. This essay tries to prove that euthanasia is immoral. It is naturally immoral, but is also not right to interpret euthanasia from the perspectives of self-centeredness and of convenience. Before laying down arguments against such belief, it would be important to provide an accurate definition of ‘euthanasia’. A basic feature of euthanasia is that it entails killing a person or taking one’s own life. Moreover, the individual who is killed should be a person who is confirmed to be tormented by some injury or illness from which healing cannot realistically be anticipated.

Operating Systems and Networking Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words - 1

Operating Systems and Networking - Coursework Example Background and Requirements The chosen case which requires solution is a storage and logistics company based in Surrey. Evidently through research, the company has around 200 vans with drivers running daily nationwide and 3 storage warehouses in London area. They aim to offer the best services for customers needing temporary storage spaces and deliveries (Bergman & Steven, 2009, P. 23). There is the need for any profit making company to have organizational measures and appropriate network design if the business is to run smoothly and make good profits. The organizational aspect of a company tends to incorporate a business plan which keeps the company or firm on track. Requirement Analysis Any piece of technological development comes in handy and thus being able to promote performance of organizations. The technological developments have enabled organized to adopt new materials and techniques which have as well led to an improvement in the kind of security being offered and delivery o f products (Bergman & Steven, 2009, P. 25). In that case, any given business organization should be able to adopt such technologies and apply means of security and risk management operations. Such applications are vital in ensuring that profitable business involvement has been done and eventually leading to business growth and expansion. The issue of network design and security has become a new form of development which has been able to effectively change the focus of security and business transactions in majority of the organizations today. The issue of network design is something which can have great impacts on any given organization and the reason it is something which should be adequately addressed (Bergman & Steven, 2009, P. 26). In that case, implementing network design in addition to enhancing security is one way through which several different organizations are adopting in order to become effective and competitive in the business realm. This is a new kind of network design p rovision through which technological knowledge and tools have to be incorporated, and thus has been able to change the mode of performance. In any given business, there are very many issues and operations which are done through connected networks, and which should be safeguarded to avoid any damages and losses on the organization. This is so because such kind of a loss can have very great impacts on the organization thus compromising its future developments (Bergman & Steven, 2009, P. 27). As more and more technological breakthroughs continue to be invented, similar infiltrations shall be expected and the reason the security blueprints which was mainly more of physical security has been on the change, and that shall be the case for the coming years as well. This has thus been able to integrate the use of commoditized controls which should function correctly other engaging in other forms of risks management systems. There are various functional tools or requirements that are involved in a network solution. Such functionalities vary accordingly depending with the organizational structure and the network design to be implemented. That is been the case such tools help to develop a strong and reliable network design for the organization (Bergman & Steven, 2009, P. 28). This is the design, which considerably brings positive

How to reduce student stress(time, environment) Essay Example for Free

How to reduce student stress(time, environment) Essay Manage time wisely Student feeling stress when they are no enough time to do their work. Student always like to do the last minute work, because they didn’t plan well for their time. And also student lazy to do their job early, they feel that they can finish at the end, but when the due date was come, they have to rush and finish the job in the limited time. Most of the last minute job was not as good as the job start early. Few ways that student can do to manage their time well, example like create their own timetable Most of the students always forget what they have to do because they didn’t plan at all. Student should create their own timetable to arrange their time, example like week to start to do the assignment, make sure they have enough time to complete the job well before the due date; time to start study for their exam, if student got enough time to prepare for their exam, they can gain a more good result. Result also one of the reason cause student stress, all the source of stress was related if student did not handle well. Besides that, student should jot down the list to do of the day. Example like what homework that lecturer given, or others important task should be finish, so they won’t miss out the important things. With the list to do, student can clearly know that what they going to do and can evaluate how they spending the time. Of course, while the time was arrange prop erly, student will found that they have a lot of time to do other things after they finish they tasks and work; they can arrange for others activity to take a break, example like sport activity they like, club society activity, have a high tea with friends, shopping, movie and so on. Always plan well, work hard to play harder, and must have appropriate time for rest, then the stress will far away from them. Create a good study environment A proper and comfortable environment to study is very important to student; it can influence student mood and motivation to study. If student be in a place was noisy and rowdy they will hard to focus and will feel annoying and irritating at the moment. The irritating emotion will also cause stress to student. Some factors will influence the comfortable of environment, example like noise, music, lighting, and temperature. For sure a quite place is suitable for study, some of the people need a totally quite environment to  study, but some people prefer have some music. The soft music can reconcile the mood of student and let them feel relax or not too tension. The lighting was also important to create a good environment to study, too harsh bright light was no suitable but too soft light will cause student feel sleepy. The lightness should in a moderate level to create the most suitable environment. Lastly the temperature, too hot or too cold both can make people feel uncomfortable. Some place was recommended as comfortable environment to study, the library, a peaceful coffee shop, bedroom, and a draughty balcony. People also can influence a comfortable study environment. Some students prefer a group study than individual, because they feel lonely and can’t stand off being alone, they need others friends accompany and they can have a discussion with friends when they have any question. And also friends can help student to share their stress when they feel pressure. References http://www.wcu.edu/academics/campus-academic-resources/writing-and-learning-commons-walc/course-tutoring-and-academic-skills/academic-strategies/ideal-study-environments-and-factors-that-influence-studying.asp

Trait Paradigm of Psychology for Intelligence

Trait Paradigm of Psychology for Intelligence Trait Paradigm of Psychology and How It Applies To the Measurement of Intelligence and Personality: An Explanation It has long been observed that individuals differ one from another on many psychological dimensions. This is why Cervone and Lawrence (2007) say that traits, the primary unit of personality description, are relatively enduring ways in which individuals differ. Assessment at the level of traits is variable centered and nomothetic, focusing on differences among individuals, as opposed to the person-centered and idio-graphic approach that focuses on individuals, and that typically characterises assessment at deeper and more abstract levels of personality. An area of intense interest among psychologists is the measurement of individual differences in personality. Lubinski (2004) mentions personality is commonly defined as the constellation of traits, or typical and relatively stable patterns of responding to the environment, which are unique to various individuals. An important focus of educational psychology is the assessment of these traits and other related psychological attributes su ch as interests, preferences, and attitudes (Lubinski, 2004). Personality traits describe individual differences in human beings typical ways of perceiving, thinking, feeling, and behaving that are generally consistent over time and across situations. Three major research areas are central to trait psychology. First, trait psychologists have attempted to identify sets of basic traits that adequately describe between-person variation in human personality. Second, social scientists across disciplines use personality traits to predict behavior and life outcomes. Third, trait psychologists attempt to understand the nature of behavioral consistency and the coherence of the person in relation to situational influences. Cervone and Lawrence (2007) mention that there are two prominent approaches to identifying the basic personality traits and their organizational structure (McCrae and John 1992). The lexical approach emphasizes the evaluation of personality trait adjectives in the natural language lexicon and assumes that those personality descriptors encoded in everyday language reflect important individual differences, particularly if they are found across languages. The questionnaire approach attempts to assess important traits derived from psychologically based and biologically based personality theories. Self- and peerratings on sets of lexically derived or theoretically derived traits have typically been subjected to factor analysis to develop hierarchical organizations of traits reflecting a small number of broad superordinate dimensions overarching a large number of narrow-band traits. At the superordinate level, contemporary trait structural models vary in the number of dimensions necessary to organize lower-order traits, ranging from two to sixteen. Each of these models can be assessed via self- and peer-report using reliable and well-validated questionnaires and rating forms (Cervone and Lawrence, 2007). In the most influential and widely used structural model, thirty traits are hierarchically organized into five broad bipolar dimensions, reflecting a convergence of the Big Five lexical traits and the questionnaire-based five-factor model. The Big Five/FFM dimensions are neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Adherents of the Big Five/FFM model assert that these dimensions can be found across languages and personality measures, providing a comprehensive and parsimonious account of individual differences in personality (Cervone and Lawrence, 2007). Contemporary research on the heritability of traits has focused on the Big Five/FFM dimensions. Behavioral genetic studies have found substantial heritability ranging from 41 percent to 61 percent for the broad dimensions, with little evidence of shared environmental effects (Cervone and Lawrence, 2007). Heritability of the narrowband traits of the FFM is more modest, ranging from 30 percent to 50 percent. It is widely believed that traits are influenced by multiple genes; molecular genetic studies, however, have not replicated results linking specific genes to personality traits. In addition to the genetic correlates of traits, promising new efforts by neuropsychologists using functional brain imaging and electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings have begun to reveal the neural basis for traits. Trait theory has been applied to industrial/organizational psychology where it has been used to predict employee satisfaction and job performance. Personality traits have also been of interest to forensic psychologists in predicting psychopathic and deviant behavior. Other areas in which traits have been successfully employed include: predicting mate selection as well as marital satisfaction, social psychology, counseling, studies of human development across the lifespan, cross-cultural studies, learning and educational outcomes, and health-related behaviors and outcomes (Cervone and Lawrence, 2007). Individuals differ from one another behaviorally in myriad ways. Differential psychology, the scientific study of these individual differences, provides an organizational structure for this vast array of psychological attributes (Lubinski, 2004). In words of Cervone and Lawrence (2007) by examining broad behavioral patterns and using systematic assessments of relatively stable personal attributes, differential psychology allows longitudinal forecasting of a variety of important life outcomes. Because much of the research in this area focuses particular attention on predicting long-term life outcomes, and because work is such a large and important feature of adult life, the relationships between many commonly investigated individual difference constructs and various aspects of work behavior. For example educational-vocational choice, acquisition of job-related knowledge, job performance, job satisfaction and tenure are well understood. Traditionally, the measurement of individual differences has relied on psychometric scales based on the aggregation of many items. Because any single item on a scale represents only a sliver of information about a personal attribute, aggregation is used to create a composite of several lightly correlated items. This approach distills the communality running through the items and constitutes highly reliable and useful information about the human characteristic under analysis (Gottfredson, 2003). Although individuals are commonly described in the more popular press in terms of types, implying that people are members of distinct categories (e.g., extraverts or introverts), individual difference variables are rarely observed as discrete classes. Rather, the majority of individuals are found near the center of a continuous distribution, with few observations at either extreme. The distributional pattern of most individual difference variables is well represented by the normal (bell-shaped) curve (Cervone and Lawrence, 2007). The major dimensions of individual differences can be classified into three overlapping clusters: cognitive abilities, preferences (interests and values), and personality (Gottfredson, 2003). The predominant scientific conceptualization of cognitive abilities involves a hierarchical organization. Various models of additional specific abilities have been proposed, but the hierarchical nature of human abilities is salient in each (Lubinski, 2000). For example, John Carroll factor analyzed more than 460 data sets collected throughout the 20th century and found a general factor (g) at the apex that explained approximately half of the common variance among a heterogeneous collection of tests, revealing a communality running through many different types of more specialized abilities and the tests designed to measure them. This general intelligence factor exhibits an extensive range of external correlates, implicating it as arguably the most scientifically significant dimension of human psychological diversity uncovered by differential psychology to date. It has repeatedly demonstrated its utility in the prediction of educationally and vocationally relevant outcomes, including the acquisition of job-related knowledge and job performance (Lubinski, 2000). For example, in a meta-analysis of 85 years of research on personnel selection methods, Frank Schmidt and John Hunter reported that g is the best single predictor of performance in job-training programs, exhibiting an average validity coefficient of .56. Schmidt and Hunter further reported that the validity of g in predicting job performance is second only to that of work sample measures. However, because the use of work samples is limited to use with incumbents and is much costlier to implement, g is usually considered more efficient. The predictive validity of g in forecasting job performance varies as a function of job complexity, with stronger relationships among more complex positions. Hunter reports validity coefficients of .58 for professional and managerial positions, .56 for highly technical jobs, .40 for semiskilled labor, and .23 for unskilled labor. For the majority of jobs (62%), those classified as medium-complexity, a validity coefficient of .51 was observed. The general factor of intelligence is supplemented by several more circumscribed, specific abilities that have demonstrated psychological importance. David Lubinski and his colleagues have shown that at least three add incremental validity to the variance-explained by g: verbal, mathematical, and spatial abilities. The importance of specific abilities may be even more apparent at higher levels of functioning (Cervone and Lawrence, 2007). In examinations of numerous job analysis data sets, for example, Linda Gottfredson found that, although the functional duties of jobs were characterized primarily by their cognitive complexity (i.e., demands on general intelligence), jobs requiring above-average intelligence were more dependent on profiles of specific abilities than were those jobs requiring average or below average general intelligence (Lillienfeld, Wood and Garb, 2000). Dpecific abilities are relevant in the prediction of job performance, but they are also important in predicting the educational and vocational niches into which individuals self-select. This self-selection occurs even at extraordinary levels of general intellectual development. In a recent 10-year longitudinal study, for example, Lubinski compared the educational-vocational tracks chosen by three groups of profoundly gifted individuals (top 1 in 10,000 for their age): a high verbal group (individuals with advanced verbal reasoning ability, relative to their mathematical ability), a high math group (individuals with advanced mathematical reasoning ability, relative to their verbal ability), and a high flat profile group (individuals with comparably high verbal and mathematical abilities). Despite having similar levels of general cognitive ability, the three groups diverged in their professional developmental choices (Lillienfeld, Wood and Garb, 2000). High math participants were frequ ently pursuing training in scientific and technological professions, whereas high verbal participants were doing so in the humanities and arts. High flat participants were intermediate. Hollands model of interests organizes six general occupational themes in a hexagon with one theme at each vertex in the hexagon. The themes are ordered according to their pattern of inter-correlations: Adjacent themes in the hexagon are more highly correlated to one another, whereas opposite themes are least correlated. This model is known as the RIASEC model, an acronym for the six themes represented in the hexagon: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional (Cervone and Lawrence, 2007). Individuals with high realistic interests exhibit preferences for working with things and tools; those with high investigative interests enjoy scientific pursuits; high artistic interests reflect desires for aesthetic pursuits and self-expression; social interests involve preferences for contact with people and opportunities to help people; individuals high in enterprising interests enjoy buying, marketing, and selling; and those with conventional interests are comfor table with office practices and well-structured tasks. Individuals relative normative strengths on each of the RIASECs general occupational themes are commonly assessed using the Strong Interest Inventory (Carroll, 1993). Although the generalizability of the RIASEC model has emerged repeatedly in large samples, Dale Prediger has suggested that the model can be reduced to two relatively independent bipolar dimensions: people versus things, and data versus ideas. People versus things may be superimposed on the social and realistic themes, respectively (Carroll, 1993). Running to the first dimension, the second dimension, data versus ideas, locates data between the enterprising and conventional themes and ideas between the artistic and investigative themes. The people versus things dimension represents one of the largest sex differences on a trait uncovered in psychology (a full standard deviation, with women scoring higher on the desire to work with people, and men, with things), revealing important implications for the occupations that men and women choose. Values constitute another category of personal preferences germane to learning and work, which have demonstrated their utility in the prediction of both educational and occupational criteria. Values are validly assessed by the Study of Values, which reports the intra-individual prominence of six personal values: theoretical, economic, political, social, aesthetic, and religious. These dimensions provided an additional 13% of explained variance above the 10% offered by math and verbal abilities in the prediction of undergraduate majors in gifted youth assessed over a 10-year interval; moreover, this finding has recently been generalized to occupational criteria, measured in commensurate terms, over a 20-year interval. However, although preferences do seem to play an important role in predicting occupational group membership and tenure, once individuals self-select into occupational fields, the utility of preferences for predicting job performance in those fields is limited (Carroll, 1 993). Empirical examinations of personality use trait models to understand a persons typical interpersonal style and behavioral characteristics. These models have historically relied on a lexical approach that assumes that important dimensions of human personality are encoded in human language. This method has been fruitful: Lewis Goldberg, among others (Ackerman, 1996), has factor analyzed the lexicons of many languages and found a five-factor model of personality with remarkable similarities across cultures (see also investigations by Robert McCrae and Paul Costa). Although the labels for each of the factors have varied, similar underlying constructs consistently emerge: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience. Extraversion is characterized by terms such as talkative, sociable, or not reserved; agreeableness by good-natured, cooperative, or not cold; conscientiousness by responsible, thorough, or not disorganized; neuroticism (sometimes referred to as emotional stability, reversed) by anxious, emotional, or not calm; and openness to experience (sometimes referred to as culture or intellect) by imaginative, reflective, or not narrow. The normative standing of individuals on each of the dimensions of the five-factor model of personality is commonly assessed using the NEO Personality Inventory, although an analogous instrument, the IPIP-NEO (IPIP is International Personality Item Pool), is available in the public domain at http:/ / ipip.ori.org/ Collectively (and sometimes individually), these broad dimensions of personality are valid predictors of occupational training and subsequent performance. For example, across multiple occupational categories, conscientiousness alone exhibits validity coefficients in the low .20s for predicting training and job proficiency. This particular combination of personality factors, conscientiousness and emotional stability, is found in tests of integrity commonly used in personnel selection (Spies Plake, 2005). From an individuals perspective, an appreciation of ones cognitive abilities, preferences, and personality provide invaluable insight for directing ones career development in personally rewarding ways. From an organizational perspective, one may use this information—available through measures of individual differences—to estimate the likelihood of desirable work behavior (e.g., citizenship, job performance, satisfaction, and tenure). References Ackerman, P. L., 1996, A Theory Of Adult Intellectual Development: Process, Personality, Interests, And Knowledge. Intelligence vol. 22 pp. 227-257 (1996). Aiken, L. R. (2000), Psychological Testing And Assessment (10th ed.). Boston: Allyn Bacon. Carroll, J. B. (1993), Human Cognitive Abilities: A Survey Of Factor-Analytic Studies. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Cervone, Lawrence A. Pervin, 2007, Personality: Theory and Research, Wiley; 10th edition (February 26, 2007), pp. 45-67. Gottfredson, L. S., 2003, The Challenge And Promise Of Cognitive Career Assessment. Journal of Career Assessment vol. 11 pp. 115-135 (2003). Lubinski, D., 2000, Scientific And Social Significance Of Assessing Individual Differences: â€Å"Sinking Shafts At A Few Critical Points.† Annual Review of Psychology vol. 51 pp. 405-444 (2000). Lubinski, D., 2004, Introduction To The Special Section On Cognitive Abilities: 100 Years After Spearmans (1904) â€Å"‘General intelligence, objectively determined and measured.† Journal of Personality and Social Psychology vol. 86 pp. 96-111 (2004). Lillienfeld, S. O., Wood, J. M. , and Garb, H. N., 2000, The Scientific Status Of Projective Techniques. Psychological Science in the Public Interest vol. 1 (2000). pp. 27-66 Spies, R. A. , ed. , Plake, B. S. (Eds.). (2005), The Sixteenth Mental Measurements Yearbook. Lincoln, NE: Buros Institute of Mental Measurements. Candidate Number 33156762 Rapid (complex) decision making based on facial appearance Making first impressions, evaluating a person from the moment we first see them, happens spontaneously and seemingly without any cognitive effort. We do it naturally when we see and meet new people, in order to have an idea of who they are beforehand instead of unknowingly acting in a way they might find inappropriate. It appears that humans are excellent in judging personality traits and such things as complex social characteristics like dominance, hierarchy, warmth, and especially threat. For instance, think about this example. Youre walking down a dark street, late at night trying to get home, and you see someone coming towards you. As you pass the person, you see a tall and bulky figure wearing a black hood that puts a shadow on a roughed up looking man. Before you can make a conscious thought, your legs have already moved as far away from him as possible, purely out of instinct, even thought a second later you realize its your neighbor and you shakily smile at them and keep walking. The first impression that had subconsciously and immediately formed in the mind had already controlled the bodys reaction to what it perceived to be a threat (a scary looking man). Yet, it also shows how incorrect first impressions can be, and that can have a huge effect on peoples lives. Since its such a big part of everyday life, psychologists have looked deeply into the workings of first impressions. Social perception is the field of study which looks into how we form impressions and make inferences about other people. It is a very complex process, especially forming impressions of objects, animals and most importantly people. We form first impressions of others very quickly and usually based on little information. We give special attention to salient features, focusing first on the face, then physical features while moving on to appearance and clothes. Then the process continues to categorizing the first impression of a person into a member of a group, starting broadly, from age and gender, and narrowing down to explicit features. It is followed by our own previous knowledge that comes into effect of our impression as well as previous behavior that has been gathered about that impression, as then our own needs and goals influence how we perceive others. And that information is needed, as people can be unpredictable. In the past the information was needed in order to distinguish trustworthy people from those who mean us harm, when now its socially needed to interact suitably with people. In order to understand first impressions, the biology behind it must be understood. From an evolutionary point of view, first impressions have adaptive advantages, such as picking the appropriate mate. The first impression we perceive of someone is essential for us to understand how physically attractive, reliable, and strong they are, as we make that decision based on physical appearance rather than the personality of the person, as we would like the offspring to be good looking, healthy, meaning characteristics that are advantageous to the perceivers reproductive needs, and we must act fast before the window of opportunity closes. Also if someone means us harm, or is ill, there is the possibility of us being harmed or falling ill ourselves, again we must act fast to avoid this. Usually the first impressions are most accurate, but there is always human error, as sometimes what we perceive to be trustworthy, isnt. What the evolutionary point of view argues is that its possible that o ur ability to form first impressions isnt due to practice, but instinct. We seem to effortlessly form first impressions and even better with practice and experience. There are reasons to suggest that people may have an adaptive predisposition to form rapid first impressions when meeting someone. When people look at other peoples features its important to act fast, because for an instance, if someone is untrustworthy then they may look like they may harm, cheat or insult us and we should register the fact as quick as possible in order to act appropriately. If not, then the consequences may be being killed, hurt or cheated. Its better to be prepared to fight off harm rather than mull over the intent of the other person. There have been several studies that have looked at trustworthiness and first impression. These are not just the source of benefits, but there are also the sources of threats, for instance when forming the first impression, it must be fast as there is competition, and sometimes the competition could mean us harm. Even good meaning individual s may pose a threat to our health or reproductive fitness. Schiller et al 2009, investigated the brain mechanisms that rise when first impressions are rapidly formed when meeting a stranger (Schiller et al 2009). There were nineteen right-handed participants, who were told that they would see information about different people and were asked to give their impressions of them. In their neuro-imaging analysis, where they examined which regions showed the difference in evaluation effect out of regions that were broadly engaged in the impression-formation task, the only regions showing significantly greater bold responses to evaluation-relevant sentences were the amygdala the PCC and the thalamus. There were no regions showing the opposite effect. The first study suggesting that the amygdala, a part of the brain that research has shown to perform a role in the processing and memory of emotional reactions has an important role in trustworthiness judgments, was conducted by Adolphs, Tranel, Damasio, 1998. They showed that patients with bilateral amygdala damage perceived untrustworthy-looking faces as trustworthy, and couldnt discriminate between trustworthy and untrustworthy faces (Adolphs, Tranel, and Damasio, 1998). Several years later, Engell, Haxby Todorov, 2007, looked into the fact of whether a stranger is trustworthy, as one of the most important decisions in social environments and relations, something we consider when acquainting with new people (Engell, Haxby Todorov, 2007). There is considerable data about the significance of trait impressions from faces, yet there is little research about the neural mechanisms causing these impressions. There were one hundred and twenty-nine undergraduate students participating i n the study, where functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to show that the amygdala is involved in hidden evaluations of trustworthiness of faces, consistent with previous findings. They reported that the amygdala response increased as perceived trustworthiness decreased in a task that did not demand person evaluation. Engell, Haxby Todorov also tested whether the increased amygdala response was due to an individuals own personal perception or to face characteristics that are perceived as untrustworthy throughout individuals. The amygdala response was better predicted by agreed ratings of trustworthiness than by an individuals own judgments. Individual judgments accounted for little outstanding variance in the amygdala after controlling for the shared variance with agreed ratings. The findings of this study suggested that the amygdala categorizes faces automatically according to face characteristics that are seen to show trustworthiness. More recently, Todorov Duchaine, 2008, looked at developmental prosopagnosics who had severe impairments in their memory for faces and perception of facial identity who showed they could make normal trustworthiness judgments of novel faces (Todorov Duchaine, 2008). Their control group consisted of forty-eight undergraduate students, mostly male with the mean age of twenty, which were younger compared to the four developmental prosopagnosics used in the experiment, where they were presented with face sets with the question â€Å"How trustworthy is this person?† and asked to respond on the scale below the photograph. What they found was that there were no significant differences between male and female control participants on both their agreement in the ratings of the faces and their mean trustworthiness judgments. They also tested the four prosopagnosics on three different face sets: set one consisted of faces that contrasted on multiple proportions and which were also used t o demonstrate injuries in trustworthiness judgments of patients with bilateral amygdala damage. The other two sets consisted of normal faces with a direct look, with neutral expression and similar age. Todorov Duchaine found that on all the tests, two of the prosopagnosics made judgments that agreed with the controls judgments while the other two showed weak. The implications of this experiment suggest that there is a correlation that the tests mapped the same underlying judgment irrespective of the specific face stimuli. The normal performance of two of the prosopagnosics suggested that forming person impressions from faces involves mechanisms functionally independent of mechanisms for encoding the identity of faces. A later study by Oosterhof Todorov, 2009, proposed that changes in trustworthiness match to the subtle changes in expressions, which show whether the person displaying the emotion should be avoided or approached (Oosterhof Todorov, 2009). Oosterhof and Todorov used a dynamic paradigm where faces expressed either happiness or anger. There were sixty undergraduate students participating in the experiment, with twenty-one participating in the selection of trustworthy and untrustworthy faces, and thirty-nine participated in the dynamic stimuli study. They manipulated changes in face trustworthiness at the same time as with the change in the face expression, for instance changes from high to low trustworthiness increased the intensity of participants perceived anger but decreased the intensity of participants perceived happiness. What they found was that trustworthy faces who expressed happiness were seen as happier than untrustworthy faces, and untrustworthy faces who expressed anger w ere seen as angrier than trustworthy faces, which makes sense as the more angry and unapproachable someone looks, the more likely we are to avoid them for our own safety as they would look intimidating to us. When we first make an interaction with someone, our facial recognition of them is essential for the social interaction. Its not a conscious thought per se, when the decision of how trustworthy someone is, but it happens, and we decide whether the person weve just met is someone we can relate to, then maybe consider a friend, and later depend on them with everything that we care about. Its not a light matter, our lives are who and what we are, and unfortunately as it is we cannot rely sorely on ourselves, and we need other people, may it be for help, comfort or just a chat. And of course, the people we look for are those who wont turn their backs on us when we need them and will be there to support us. Its a simple survival skill, trust those who wont hurt us and we can live normally. When people are emotionally animated it is much easier to perceive the expressions they convey, particularly threatening and fearful ones very swiftly, which helps us respond to danger quickly. But how fast are first impressions exactly? Several researches have looked into how fast first impressions are made. In 2006, Bar et al looked into the fact that first impressions of peoples personalities are often formed by using the visual appearance of their faces (Bar, Neta, Linz, 2006). They reported four experiments; with the first measuring the speed of how first impressions of intelligence and threatening personality are made. They used sixty adults, mostly women, where the participants in the experiment were shown one face at a time and were asked to rate, on a scale ranging from 1 to 5, the level that they perceived each face to belong first to threatening person, and later followed with an intelligent person at the second part of the experiment. What Bat et al did was present the faces for different time lengths to different groups of participants, the first group was presented the faces for a short time and the other group was presented with faces for a longer time and then the correlation between the judgments of each group was measured, they identified how quickly participants judged a face as having a certain personality. The results demonstrate that consistent first impressions can be formed very quickly, based on whatever information is available within the first 39 ms. First impressions were less consistent under these conditions when the judgments were about intelligence, suggesting that survival-related traits are judged more quickly. The study showed that when faces are particularly emotionally expressive, people can detect these expressions that are being conveyed, such as threatening and fearful expressions, very quickly and mostly subconsciously. While Bar, Neta, Linz, 2006, looked at neutral expressions in their study, Blair, Morris, Frith, Perrett, Dolan, 1999, looked at emotions portrayed by the face. Blair et al, 1999, used functional neuroimaging to test two hypotheses: one, whether the amygdala has a neural response to sad and angry facial expressions and two, whether the orbito-frontal cortex has a specific neural response to angry facial expressions (Blair, Morris, Frith, Perrett, Dolan, 1999). There were thirteen male participants, all with the mean age of 25 who were PET scanned, while performing a sex discrimination task that consisted of grey-scale images of faces that expressed different degrees of sadness and anger. They found that increasing force of sad facial expressions was associated with enhanced activity in the left amygdala and right temporal pole. The results also indicated

Gore Vs. Bush :: essays research papers

Gore vs. Bush Foreign Policy Ø  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  CHINA Bush would like to redefine the relationship between China and the United States to become one of competitors, not partners. Both Bush and Gore feel that the free market will most likely produce more individual freedom in China and he also supports increased trade with them. They also agree on defending Taiwan against aggression from the mainland, supporting the One-China Policy that has defined our relationship with them for a number of years. Gore believes that china should be encouraged to be a prosperous society by inducting them into various international institutions. He also feels that the U.S. should be a mediator between China and Taiwan. Ø  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  RUSSIA Bush opposes any further monetary assistance to Russia from the International Monetary Fund because he says he fears that government officials will pocket the money. Gore says he supports providing financial assistance to the Russian government so that they can become a free market democracy. He feels that both Russia’s and China’s threat to the U.S. is in their weaknesses, not their strength. Richard Nixon also argued this point. Ø  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  MIDDLE EAST / ISRAEL Gore and Bush both agree that the Israeli-Palestinian peace process needs to be moved forward. Bush says that the U.S. embassy should be moved from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem and he wants to work at re-establishing weapons inspection in Iraq. Gore vows to keep working with U.S. allies so Saddam Hussein isolated and to eventually get him out of power. He also said he would use military forces against Iraq if it ever became necessary. Ø  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  AFRICA Both Bush and Gore feel that free trade will aid in building democracy and economic development in struggling Third World Countries. Gore supports debt forgiveness to the poorest of these nations and Western aid to help in stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS in Central and Southern Africa. Ø  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  OTHER Both Bush and Gore support the Good Friday Accord in Northern Ireland, which calls for both sides to lay down arms. Gore wants to assist dialogue between North Korea and South Korea, and India and Pakistan. Bush wants to increase trade and investment with India making it a secure force in Asia and aid Australia with its peacekeeping efforts in east Timor. Military Ø  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Both candidates are in favor of increasing the pay for military personal and also for increasing benefits. Gore wants to enhance military readiness by maintaining a strong force, which will result from increased training. Bush feels that morale is low in the military.

The Caribbean Essay -- Caribbean Islands Culture Essays

The Caribbean The inhabited islands clustered in the Caribbean Sea are an interesting study in cultural and social identity. Colonized by european powers from the Fifteenth Century, the Caribbean islands have become mixtures of cultures from Europe, Africa, and India, as well as from the original inhabitants of the islands. As a result, describing and defining the Caribbean is a much more difficult task than it appears on the surface. The norms and ideas of identity and history that exist on one island are vastly different than those that exist on a near neighbor, despite similarities in geography and history. To better understand the differences and similarities between Caribbean islands and the people who inhabit them, a look at the works of three individuals can be of assistance. The first, Sidney Mintz, was a knowledgeable historian and well respected authority on the Caribbean. His article, titled, â€Å"The Caribbean as a Socio-cultural Area,† is based upon his efforts to create a rigid taxonomy of the Caribbean’s past and how that past affected the present. The second author, Antonio Benitez-Rojo, attempts to do the same thing as Mintz, albeit in a more modern and open-minded way, by breaking down the ideas of what makes the Caribbean the Caribbean. Benitez-Rojo uses the idea of â€Å"rhythms† to describe the connection and ideas of community that, to him, make up the idea of â€Å"the Caribbean.† The final author is not a historian or literary critic like the previous two, but she does offer perhaps the most revealing look at what life is like on a Carib bean island out of the three. Michelle Cliff is a writer from Jamaica and in her two works, Abeng and â€Å"If I Could Write This in Fire, I Would Write This in Fire,† she explores the de... ...lf.(Abeng p.158) On the other hand, the black residents of the island feel that any presence of â€Å"whiteness† is a negative aspect as well. Clare’s friend Zoe asks her mother why Clare wouldn’t let her try on her new bathing suit, and Zoe’s mother responds, â€Å"de buckra people, dem is fe dem alone,† meaning that white people (although Clare is only partly white) can only fraternize with other white people. This division based on color is the main issue of the book, and one that is extremely relevant in Jamaica even today. All of these pieces of writing try to define what makes the Caribbean, in all of its variations, the Caribbean. The mixing of different cultures and races over the past three four hundred years has created a geographical area that, despite looking similar from a general view, is actually extremely diverse and different when looked at from close-up. The Caribbean Essay -- Caribbean Islands Culture Essays The Caribbean The inhabited islands clustered in the Caribbean Sea are an interesting study in cultural and social identity. Colonized by european powers from the Fifteenth Century, the Caribbean islands have become mixtures of cultures from Europe, Africa, and India, as well as from the original inhabitants of the islands. As a result, describing and defining the Caribbean is a much more difficult task than it appears on the surface. The norms and ideas of identity and history that exist on one island are vastly different than those that exist on a near neighbor, despite similarities in geography and history. To better understand the differences and similarities between Caribbean islands and the people who inhabit them, a look at the works of three individuals can be of assistance. The first, Sidney Mintz, was a knowledgeable historian and well respected authority on the Caribbean. His article, titled, â€Å"The Caribbean as a Socio-cultural Area,† is based upon his efforts to create a rigid taxonomy of the Caribbean’s past and how that past affected the present. The second author, Antonio Benitez-Rojo, attempts to do the same thing as Mintz, albeit in a more modern and open-minded way, by breaking down the ideas of what makes the Caribbean the Caribbean. Benitez-Rojo uses the idea of â€Å"rhythms† to describe the connection and ideas of community that, to him, make up the idea of â€Å"the Caribbean.† The final author is not a historian or literary critic like the previous two, but she does offer perhaps the most revealing look at what life is like on a Carib bean island out of the three. Michelle Cliff is a writer from Jamaica and in her two works, Abeng and â€Å"If I Could Write This in Fire, I Would Write This in Fire,† she explores the de... ...lf.(Abeng p.158) On the other hand, the black residents of the island feel that any presence of â€Å"whiteness† is a negative aspect as well. Clare’s friend Zoe asks her mother why Clare wouldn’t let her try on her new bathing suit, and Zoe’s mother responds, â€Å"de buckra people, dem is fe dem alone,† meaning that white people (although Clare is only partly white) can only fraternize with other white people. This division based on color is the main issue of the book, and one that is extremely relevant in Jamaica even today. All of these pieces of writing try to define what makes the Caribbean, in all of its variations, the Caribbean. The mixing of different cultures and races over the past three four hundred years has created a geographical area that, despite looking similar from a general view, is actually extremely diverse and different when looked at from close-up.

Personal Narrative- Books Have Greatly Impacted my Life Essay -- Perso

I wasn't interested in books when I was very young, except for an interest in comic books. Maybe that's because I was never really read to consistently. My mother claims to have read to me some when I was younger, but I don't remember it. Giving birth to five kids in seven years, and having one die at three days old, sort of cut into her time for entertaining me with thrilling renditions of The Cat in the Hat. I had to entertain myself with what I could find, and I picked up some basic reading skills from some of the kid's shows on television in the sixties. When I hit that magical age of six and went to elementary school, I was introduced to the first real books I can remember. There I learned about the world of Alice and Jerry, who played all the time and had such a wonderful life. Jerry even had a dog named Spot who sounded like great fun. I always wanted that dog for my very own. And Alice had a beautiful doll with golden hair named Betsy Lee that I wanted, too. Guess what my sister who was born that year was named at my insistence? She's hated me for it ever since, and I can tell you in all honesty, she didn't end up being a doll either. So you see the influence of books had already begun to affect my life even at that age, even though they hadn't gotten into my blood at that point. Rather I did my own thing, and I was much happier just riding my bike, playing dolls with my friends, or reading comic books, which amounted to mostly looking at the pictures. Even before I started school, I remember riding my bike to the local gas station every week to buy a bag of penny candy and a new comic book with money I got from finding soda bottles and trading them in for the nickel deposit. Superman, Spiderman, Aquama... ...nd writing dynamic essays. And as soon as I got home, I had to make myself do my homework first, because I was writing every day by that time. I knew if I started writing fiction first I'd discover the next time I looked up from the computer screen that it was already 4 am. It was the second revelation in a year for me when I realized that I had only one path of study that felt right for me. Writing and books were the only things that ever made me that happy. So now I have college texts instead of comic books. I still love the art that made comics special, but now I have text as well as a passion in my life. And now I have lots of new friends--Dickinson and Foucault and Chopin and so many others. Here I have so many opportunities to read for shared and new insight, and to write to my heart's content. I'm a happy woman. It's like I've come home at last. Personal Narrative- Books Have Greatly Impacted my Life Essay -- Perso I wasn't interested in books when I was very young, except for an interest in comic books. Maybe that's because I was never really read to consistently. My mother claims to have read to me some when I was younger, but I don't remember it. Giving birth to five kids in seven years, and having one die at three days old, sort of cut into her time for entertaining me with thrilling renditions of The Cat in the Hat. I had to entertain myself with what I could find, and I picked up some basic reading skills from some of the kid's shows on television in the sixties. When I hit that magical age of six and went to elementary school, I was introduced to the first real books I can remember. There I learned about the world of Alice and Jerry, who played all the time and had such a wonderful life. Jerry even had a dog named Spot who sounded like great fun. I always wanted that dog for my very own. And Alice had a beautiful doll with golden hair named Betsy Lee that I wanted, too. Guess what my sister who was born that year was named at my insistence? She's hated me for it ever since, and I can tell you in all honesty, she didn't end up being a doll either. So you see the influence of books had already begun to affect my life even at that age, even though they hadn't gotten into my blood at that point. Rather I did my own thing, and I was much happier just riding my bike, playing dolls with my friends, or reading comic books, which amounted to mostly looking at the pictures. Even before I started school, I remember riding my bike to the local gas station every week to buy a bag of penny candy and a new comic book with money I got from finding soda bottles and trading them in for the nickel deposit. Superman, Spiderman, Aquama... ...nd writing dynamic essays. And as soon as I got home, I had to make myself do my homework first, because I was writing every day by that time. I knew if I started writing fiction first I'd discover the next time I looked up from the computer screen that it was already 4 am. It was the second revelation in a year for me when I realized that I had only one path of study that felt right for me. Writing and books were the only things that ever made me that happy. So now I have college texts instead of comic books. I still love the art that made comics special, but now I have text as well as a passion in my life. And now I have lots of new friends--Dickinson and Foucault and Chopin and so many others. Here I have so many opportunities to read for shared and new insight, and to write to my heart's content. I'm a happy woman. It's like I've come home at last.